Slashdot Mirror
@Home Gets the Usenet Death Penalty
A reader wrote to us with the news that an UDP has been declared on @Home in news.admin.announce.
You can read it on Deja.com for the full post. Interesting - let's see how long it takes @Home to respond to the UDP. Usually, this gets people attention pretty quickly, and I'll welcome any sort of respite from the spam flood of the last couple months. The penalty is due to begin 17:00 PST, Jan. 18, 2000.
This is an interesting phenomenon - USENET has no central authority and no control centre, so if the UDP has the desired effect, then it's an example of anarchism actually working (for once; note - I'm not in any way an anarchist). It's also support for what your mother told you about bullies and annoying brothers and sisters - "ignore them and they'll get fed up and stop it". Thanks, mum!
ben_ the technologist and platform agnostic
The death penalty will go into effect at the "close of business, 17:00 PST, on Tuesday, 18 January 2000 (19 Jan 2000 01:00:00 GMT)", not today as stated in the story. .sig: File not found.
ls:
ls:
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?
Not to sound ignorant, but what does this mean? I'm not familiar with the "Usenet Death Penalty"...
Check out Greg's Bridge Page!
FYI... "Because of this lack of response to serious, ongoing problems, even when they have been pointed out repeatedly, a full active Usenet Death Penalty will go into effect at the close of business, 17:00 PST, on Tuesday, 18 January 2000 (19 Jan 2000 01:00:00 GMT)."
And he saw what he and done and said "it is good". Now, if only the same action could be applied to post from *.aol, the people in the streets would rejoice!
The Midnight Watch - All the news that's fit to ridicule:
the UDP begins at 17:00 PST on January 18, 2000, not on January 12, 2000.
According to the article, the UDP doesn't start for another week:
Usenet Death Penalty will go into effect at the close of business, 17:00 PST, on Tuesday, 18 January 2000 (19 Jan 2000 01:00:00 GMT).
Presumably to give @home a chance to become YclueK compliant?
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
I've been on the Internet for 11 years now (c'mere kid and pull my finger). But seriously, I remember when I could read about 50 newsgroups in 1/2 hour and most of the messages were not spam in any sense of the word.
/..
The last time I read USENET was gosh..almost 2 years ago. Full of spam, threads that went all over the place, crossposting galore. I have since given up and am using
What would problably work in this day and age would be a WDP (Web Death Penalty). Block port 80 from and to known ISPs that spam. Boy will that get people's attention.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
this sucks for me, being a new @home user. i have wanted to stop by the usenet, but i havent had a chance to anytime. now im being punished for something im not even doing... anyway a hapless victim could get around this?
---- Sig? What sig? Who needs one, anyway?
This is the sort of thing I like to see. As someone else stated, it's comparable to anarchy working.
:) It's just not the same in my book).
I like the idea of people/organizations fending for themselves on the internet. The last thing we need is any government intervening and trying to enforce it. Anarchy may not be suitable for real life, but I think the general concept is perfect for the Internet where the real laws lie in the software. For example, when someone tries to break into your box, you shouldn't call the cops - you should make sure your box is secure and defend yourself. If you're incapable, then buy software to assist you. (note: Please, nobody make analogies comparing this to some crime in real life
Although the story is wrong (in that it says the penalty starts today), the penalty is announced today, and goes into effect 5 business days after announcement.
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
Oops.. what I meant to say was, of course, that it goes into effect 5 business days later if nothing changes.
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
"Death Penalty"? @Home? Is it possible we could get Kevorkian in there for an assisted suicide?
Here is a better link to the article in question: Keeps from /. 'ing one server.
I'm a disgruntled @home user, or in other words, I've been on the service for more than three months. No one at @home takes proper measures to inforce the acceptable use policy. Instead, they cap bandwidth at 5k a second to make their ISP a less viable 'server', inconveniencing every user.
@home costs $65 a month Canadian, and they cut corners everywhere they can. My personal WAN area has between 32 and 40 people on it, and the packet drops are phenomenal. I have been phoning their tech support for thirteen months in a row, and they have told me it's everything BUT a crowded WAN area. They most recently have told me that 'Internet Access' does not include UDP. They do not support UDP, therefore they have no responsibility to control the quality of Internet gaming, despite advertising gaming on their network on television with fullscreen Quake pictures. I have been keeping track and am wondering about the viability of a lawsuit.
As I hinted above, servers are against the rules with @home. Have you ever played on a Quake server with an IP starting with 24.113 or 24.112? That's @home cable. Expect 5 to 50k/s upstreams.
Ever gone to a mp3 search engine? A ton of the sites are 24.113 or 24.112.
@home has been banned from Dalnet, due to excessive numbers of people spamming the network. The Dalnet ops have tried to contact @home about the problem, but they were ignored. The only way to connect to Dalnet for @home members is through gate.dal.net, which has too much lag. My two year old channel dwindled to zero people within a week.
The bottom line is, do NOT sign up with @home if there are any other alternatives. They will hook you in with a high installation fee, and it goes downhill from there. You're on your own. Everyone who has any sense of right and has power at @home must be ignored internally.
I'm no USENET expert, by any stretch, but you *may* (most likely, you can) still be able to read/post messages using DejaNews. Of course, this is just in theory (my theory too, which isn't saying much.) So, like a lot theories, it stands an equal chance of being proven wrong or right.
I will be sending email, making phone calls, sending more emails, having my friends/relatives/coworkers send emails and make phone calls, and basically abusing the hell out of @home.
As far as I'm concerned, this is not excusable in any way by @home, and besides, my news server @ work (news.eni.net) doesn't carry some of the ng's that @home's news server does (specifically alt.os.linux.slackware and a few gimp ng's.)
Rest assured that the not-asshole-ish users of @home will be very, very active in making this stop.
Mike
Sure, I have a thankless job. That's okay. I have a lot of (non
On a relational note, I seem to remember that the alt.scientology folks went about self moderating usenet to remove offending posts about their beloved L. Ron a few years ago, and it was never resolved exactly how to approach/moderate the Usenet hierarchy in general. Self-moderating is a misleading term, since only a few Admins are capable of actually issuing something like a UDP (outside of alt. of course). Eventually, the issue of spam and individual user rights on Usenet has to be adressed, but I for one believe that you kinda gotta take the good with the bad (*Raise Flame shields*), and let the spammers post their crap in the name of protecting the ability to post any and every idea, trivial or not.
-just My 2cents
I agree that to "call the cops" is overall a pretty useless thing to do if someone tries to break into your system.
... see what happens. Keep abreast of the newest script-kiddie fads and they won't surprise you.
However, the right answer to security isn't to "buy software" either. As Bruce Schneier is fond of pointing out, security is not a checklist feature: it's not something that can be slapped onto the side of a fundamentally poorly-designed system.
"Poorly-designed" here refers not only to the software and other instrumentality, but also to your administrative methodology. Administrative methodology has to do with the things you do as routine system upkeep. Do you monitor security-related mailing lists (CERT-CC, BugTraq)? When setting up a new system, do you close unneeded services? Do you make a habit of knowing everything that should be running on your system, and noticing when things that shouldn't be there appear? Do you run security audits against your system? Do you regularly check for security updates to your software and install them?
My new favorite security procedure: Go to a script-kiddie Web site, download some k00l t00lz (cracking tools, DoS utilities, etc.) and wield them against your own system (over your own network)
Security is a way of thinking -- some would say a way of life. It's not something you can just buy a program to install.
I've been an @home user for almost 3 years now.
/dev/null.
I find it amusing that they have managed to let this come down to a UDP. @Home has some of the most draconian user rules in existance. If they were enforced at ANY level this wouldn't of happened.
I suspect abuse@home.com =
Have you compiled your kernel today??
In general, Usenet is way to cluttered and meaningless anymore, even without Spam.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
The author of the slashdot story misread the original DEJA reference. The 12th is the date of the posting of the usenet message, not the UDP. The UDP is set for 17:00 (local) on the 18th (GMT 0100 on the 19th)
Surely Deja has the volume to absorb a slashdotting. Their servers seem to have ground to a halt.
The tech support boiler-room for Rogers.com (one of the @home resellers) was unaware of the UDP call. There is no response yet at Rogers.
The Deja page is an archive of a usenet news posting. If Deja falls over, you should be able to pick up the usenet posting from your NEWS: server.( Posted to: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet ; news.admin.net-abuse.policy ; news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins ; news.admin.announce )
The faq for UDP is
http://www.stopspam.org/usenet/faqs/udp.html
In general I think usenet is just elitist in general. Anyone who wants to post must obtain a client. You must have access to a particular server. Even then it is not 100% likely that you will be able to get that group that you want. Then it is also possible to have a varring range of messages inside each group. They mentioned in the article that @home people are operating "open proxies" I assume that this means that they are allowing public access from the outside world. Well my friend what is wrong with that? You know I have had accounts at the infameous hotmail and even then I got spam in small quantities. What people need to do is to simply delete the spam and just look at what's there. How hard is it to just delete it? Is it's presence that bad that it actually causes people to react like it was a cockroach or maybe a demon? I think if the mythical Lucifer were to appear in front of one of these people they would most likely get more irritated or enraged at the spam than their most hated enemy (for Christians).
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Like I said in my response to one person give everybody guns and things go wrong give everybody good bandwidth at home and things go wrong
You can tell your usenet client to pick up its news items from any server. Performance is better from your ISP, but it is not the biggest concern. I'm not sure who the usenet (sometimes called "Internet News" or "newsgroups" providers are. I've picked up the impression that buying this service from someone other than your ISP costs real money. (my impression is about US$10 a month)
A quick net search pointed to: National Usenet Newsgroup Providers
Please note that no one has successfuly sued the Realtime Blackhole List, either.
UUNet attempted to do the same thing two years ago when they got UDP'd. Their lawyers, and the government also, told them that they had no case.
We aren't attempting to destroy @Home, we're simply not carrying their packets on USENET - which we aren't obligated to do anyways. They could only sue us if we had a contract requiring us to carry any and all spam from them.
UUNet thought they were all that with lawyers too, and when they tried, the number of people supporting the UDP nearly doubled in anger.
Nope, no one is required to carry it. Freedom of speech doesn't supercede (sp?) my freedom to hear. If I choose not to re-print or listen to someone's words, unless I have a contractual obligation to them, they have no recourse against me. @Home would be laughed out of court.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
According to the FAQ that one gentleman posted, UUnet got this in 1997, and threatened legal action. That was stupid, infeasible, and generally clueless, and was laughed out in short order. However, the internet was not really Big Business then, with Big Pockets and Stupid Corporate Lawyers (tm). How stupid is @Home? Might they try a lawsuit? Yes, it would kill them and not work anyway, but stupidity knows few bounds...
Communication is only possible between equals
Been on the 'net for 15 years here (oh gosh, is the Internet really that old? Heh.), and I'm not sure which internet you remember. We used to get spam all day long, but it was more "personal" and "targeted" than the spam today.
Your false memories are probably part of the "it was always better in the old days" disease.
apologies to OT.
Ironic UDP is same acronym for thin layer communication protocol User Datagram Protocol (UDP) which is thinner than TCP/IP.
One UDP connects.
Another UDP disconnects.
I like the irony.
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
Can @Home users still post on Deja then?
I have been reading a discussion on the incidents mailing list (www.securityfocus.com) were a great deal of site admins are reporting scans and other attacks orginating from @home IP addresses. It appears that abuse@home.com goes to /dev/null.
I have road-runner and they check their customers for open wingates, relayable sendmail ports and trojans like BO, netbus etc.. ( I know this because I probed one of the admins boxen after I saw my kernel dropping packets from his IP. He directed me to the security website for road runner which explained everything. http://bofh.rr.com)
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
I have personally felt the wrath of spam from @home. Everyday around lunch I would recieve more unwelcomed spam originating through the horrid depths of @home. I replied, complained and nearly cried as I could do nothing. I made doubley sure and verified that I was not the only user recieving these questionable spams...sure enough roughly 15 other subscribers to my isp were being spammaged. Unfortunately blocking the site entirely would have caused more problems with @home than it would have solved. In the end I tweaked our spam shield and since then "I" have not recieved an ounce of spam to this day.
The point of this is...I did attempt to contact @home on a at least 3 seperate occassions...I do not recall recieving one letter from any of thier support or administration personnel.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
You won't win any friends by "fighting back" like some sort of Che Guevara wannabe of the Internet. But, if it makes you feel any better, you can forge cancels for all of _my_ posts, too.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
No offense meant, but I'd be more impressed if you indicated who you are. If you are not in control of a major newsfeed, who will notice? If you don't pass the NG articles on, then most likely a number of others will. A UDP, to be effective, must be enforced by the majority of the sites which relay the articles. Again, not saying that you can't do this. It is your right. Just as it is the right of other people who relay newfeeds to say that they won't relay articles from one area. Kind of like having an area in a business for "free" newspapers. The business owns the area, therefore they can say to a distributor, "I don't want your newspaper." Is this wrong? I don't think so.
this doesn't affect @home, only their users.
So basicly people are getting a bug up thier a** that a minority of @home users are spammers. What about the AOL minority, they get off scott free? I would be willing to bet that the AOL spammers make a bigger chunk of abusers than @home users. Where I am at I have to use @home for high speed access. DSL is not availible in my neighborhood(about 3k feet too far), and isdn is way too expensive. I will be calling @home and asking about this.
From the UDP FAQ (http://www.stopspam.org/usenet/faqs/udp.html):
10.What about legal issues? Don't you worry about being sued?
As UUnet (and others) have found, there is no legal requirement for other sites to carry or post their messages. Cancel messages are advisory in nature, and the sites which accept them have to have the ability to process them enabled in their software for them to be effective (the vast majority of sites have them enabled). UUnet threatened legal action when they were UDP'ed in August of 1997, but both the US Justice Department and the FBI (and presumably their own legal department after they consulted them) stated that there had been no laws broken and that they refused to investigate or act. Because none of their own equipment or networks were attacked, compromised, or even affected, there was no legitimate Denial Of Service (DOS) complaint that could be filed. What was happening, in effect, was an organized boycott of their messages. Nothing more, nothing less - and there is nothing illegal in all that. There would also be a horrendous negative public relations wave from actually instituting any legal action. When UUnet threatened, even more people came out in support of that UDP, contributions to legal funds were offered by a large number of people, lawyers volunteered to defend those participating in the UDP, and many ISPs promised to alias UUnet permanently (and work to get others to do the same) the moment they actually instituted legal action.
As another example, there was a rogue canceler, nicknamed "the Kikecanceller" [because his racially inspired cancel message paths all had "!kikecancel" (along with "!spiccancel," "!wopcancel," and others) in them], who was active for a short while. This rogue canceler nuked over 25,000 articles for no legitimate reason before his account got canceled. James M. Hawkins, the supervising agent at the FBI's Tulsa office, stated: "We don't have a case. I don't think we're going to be getting involved in the matter." The local United States Attorney's office was contacted about the cancellations and they replied that no law had been broken. (see the NY Times article about the "Kikecanceller". Note: this site requires you to enter a user name and password to access it, although it is free. There have been no reported instances of spam being sent to any test address that was used to enter the site, so it appears as if this data is only used by that site and not released to anyone who might utilize it for a spamlist).
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
Actually your statement is wrong!!
:)
24.x.x.x represents for the most part CABLE ISP's!!
I live in Montreal, Canada, where we use Videotron CAble (which has no association whatsoever to @Home) and my IP starts by 24.x.x.x!!
Just a small correction
" Microsoft Integration = Inbread software! " SpIcEz
hmm, i'm paying $40 a month i think, and i get 50kB/sec up and 300kB/sec down, only problem i have are the occasional short (10-20 minute) downtimes and online gaming (weird network pauses and packet loss)
Deliberate attempts to destroy a business are illegal.
Uh, this _isn't_ an attempt to destroy a business. There has been a huge rise in spam coming from @home, and even messages sent to @home about it have been ignored. This spam is causing problems for other sites, so the UDP is meant to help the other sites lower their spam intake, and to get @home's attention.
I don't know what you're reading, but nowhere in the message I read did I see anything that said "let's get @home." I do see things like Because of this lack of response to serious, ongoing problems, even when they have been pointed out repeatedly,... Looks to me like @home is at fault for not taking any action.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
i get awesome pings and like 0 pl and there is more than 500 people in my town with @home
http://www.remarq.com/
I'm not going to say it's great, but the interface is IMHO a lot better than Deja's.
The spammers will post from somewhere else, and the users will have to suffer.
Namely WebTV, Deja, Hotmail, and AOL. I don't see them getting UDP'ed
I am also paying $40/month for @Home. An extra ip address is another $10. ... ...
Sometimes the service is good, occasionally it is terrible.
When I own my own home, I'll probably get wired for DSL
In the meantime, I am looking for an email address to complain to @Home about this UDP. I could just use my Deja account, but figure I should make a point
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
I need to check my email, my @home email. This is frustrating as hell. Usenet folks picked the wrong damn day to start this. If they want to make a point, then they should do this on the weekend. That way, innocent people such as myself don't get hurt as badly when we can't get business emails in a timely manner. They would still cause a headache, and @home or whoever else would still scramble to fix the problem, but at least the people caught in the middle wouldn't feel the hurt as badly.
I do not agree. Just because there are users who abuse the internet and usenet groups the entire domain is black listed. This is the dirtiest part of human nature! Why is it when there are bad apples the entire stereotyped population suffers! I agree that there is a problem. All the good users should be made aware of the issues at hand. They should be then able to isolate the insolent users and cancel their subscription to @home. Being an @home user, I will be glad to kick off the assholes that are causing crap. Hell, I would even BOTCOT @home if they do not allow users to self-moderate the system. HELLO? It is a shared network. We are all paying for it. It is about time we all share in the democracy of the system and flush out the bad apples. Make the all go to AOL for all I care! They are cost all other users of @home MONEY, TIME, and STRESS! This is more that enough justification to spend the time and effort to isolate the 10 - 20% who are abusing this service. All those with me, call @home and complain. We should put up a website saying that there should be a faster turnaround on kick out delinquent users. On another note: I would like to see where the AOL IPs stand in the UDP priority. I always get spam from them... is it just because it is easier to see people from @home (Ips are generally 24.112... or 24.113... etc....)???? Thanks for you time.
This
A newsreader with a killfile in today's USENET is a must. You also would like one with good filters that can rank messages based on subject or author.
Can anybody recommend a good newsreader for X? I used to use YA-Newswatcher on my Mac, and I loved it. It would be nice if it could handle inline images, too (gotta get my daily prawn allowance)
I do not agree. Just because there are users who abuse the internet and usenet groups the entire domain is black listed. This is the dirtiest part of human nature! Why is it when there are bad apples the entire stereotyped population suffers!
I agree that there is a problem. All the good users should be made aware of the issues at hand. They should be then able to isolate the insolent users and cancel their subscription to @home.
Being an @home user, I will be glad to kick off the assholes that are causing crap. Hell, I would even BOTCOT @home if they do not allow users to self-moderate the system. HELLO? It is a shared network. We are all paying for it. It is about time we all share in the democracy of the system and flush out the bad apples. Make the all go to AOL for all I care! They are cost all other users of @home MONEY, TIME, and STRESS! This is more that enough justification to spend the time and effort to isolate the 10 - 20% who are abusing this service.
All those with me, call @home and complain. We should put up a website saying that there should be a faster turnaround on kick out delinquent users.
On another note: I would like to see where the AOL IPs stand in the UDP priority. I always get spam from them... is it just because it is easier to see people from @home (Ips are generally 24.112... or 24.113... etc....)????
Thanks for you time.
This
reminds me of the Southpark episode where Stan and Kyle were ripped off by a carnival game and called "Shananagans" on the guy.
Submit to my authority! I'd be glad to take away your privledgies and rights!
Or does this guy sound like he works for @Home? He's the only @Home customer who's had something good to say about the service, and it sounds like the complete opposite of what everyone else's experience is...
Nope, no can do, Nimrod. This is a boycott against @Home's known abusive business practices, similar to boycotts held against Exxon concerning the Exxon Valdez incident, or the current NAACP boycott against South Carolina.
People have the right to boycott a business they feel has perpetrated some wrong. @Home spams. Period. Most UseNet'ers hate spam, ergo most UseNet'rs don't much care for @Home. Therefore, the UseNet'rs have the right to boycott @Home for failing to address their well-known spam problem.
@Home cannot make the upstream ISPs carry their spam, anymore than Microsoft can come into your home and force you to install Windows on your computer. (Hey! By your logic, Microsoft could claim that since everyone doesn't run Windows, they have to right to sue, because their business is being harmed.)
Face is, pal, @Home hasn't a legal foot to stand on. The only action they can take to remedy the UDP is to clamp down on their spam problem.
@Home should sue any site that refuses to carry its traffic (at least those subject to US courts).
The UDP is a community action. @Home was not a good neighbor, and now they can't borrow the weed whacker. There is no obligation to carry a particular companies usnet articles. There is no obligation to even allow IP packets from @home into their networks (except for their upstream provider who IS under contract).
Besides that, there are very few 'smaller' sites out there. Most ISP's that don't own their own national network outsource their usenet service.
I like porn, and binaries groups are the best way to get it fast. Better than wading through websites.
This isn't to punish the users, this is to force @home get its act together. If deja started allowing too much spam, they might get it too...
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
x
You've been taken in by spammer FUD and BS. Net sites are the private property of their respective owner, free to reject traffic according to their own rules (though they may be liable if they selectively enforce the rules in a prejudicial manner).
Especially go after the smaller sites. They'll BUCKLE under the legal pressure as their bosses realize that they cannot afford a long expen$$$ive lawsuit.
@Home presumably hires reputable and competent lawyers, who do not wish to besmirch their recordss with frivolous-lawsuit sanctions. Their spammer customers are welcome to file such lawsuits, if any of them can find an attorney willing to accept chick en bones as a form of currency.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Maybe I am missing something, but how would the UDP (which will go into effect on the 18th, and involves USENET, not email, AFAICT) affect you getting your business emails???
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
You must be one of the $cientologist spammers who love @Home's wide open network.
Do we close highways when a few people speed? There are numerous newsservers out there that spammer can just switched over to. The only people that are going to get hurt are the legimate news posters. The internet is free and open. Lets keep the old-school draconian society from controlling the network. I hate spam as much as the next guy. The solution is easy don't support them.
hmm, my sympatico HSE installed nice and easy ./adsl-connect, yeah it eats up 10% cpu on my p133, but I can deal with that
rp-pppoe added my password to pap-secrets, and typed
proxy server? it seems pretty transparent, I get 50-80k on some sites
I can look at my web server
the only problem was I got my modem friday, but they wouldn't activate my account till monday
I kinda think you haven't actually tried anything other then your precious cable.
Corporations tend to move slowly and avoid doing anything outside their normal regiment that they absolutely are not forced into. I really believe this is an effective way to deal with them. The corporate types hate nothing more than the tail wagging the dog. I would guess most likely that the reason they've been ignoring the requests to filter their postings is because it would cost them time and resources, of which they want to give neither. Sometimes you have to force their hand.
Cutting off @home isn't going to do jack for stopping spam. Hello people, the spammers are just going to find some other domain to use for distribution. This UDP is not going to cut down spam by much.
Oh please, don't use the excuse that the spam adds MBs or GBs to newsfeeds. WhatEVER. Use killfiles, content filters, etc. And if you still come across spam? Don't read it. It takes you what, less than a second to click or hit a key to move on to the next message?
Enough ranting, I can only hope that many news servers out there will carry out the udpcancel.
Nevermind, I posted that previous in anger when I attempted to check my email, and the mail server appears to be down. Then, I just happened to notice about @Home being the target of usenet death, but I didn't check the part about "starts on the 18th"
Oh well. Stupid me.
Tanman
the way a UDP works is that several news admins are generating cancel messages for articles originating from @Home. If you go read the UDP FAQ you would know this. Anyone not wishing to participate in an active UDP can refuse to accept articles from the pseudosite udpcancel.
All cancels delaing with an active UDP have udpcancel in their path header.
So, the majority of usenet admins are participating simply because they haven't chosen to ignore these cancels.
Even if a site that ignores these cancels passes them on to another site which honors these cancels, the second site will get the cancels and the messages will go away. (It's magic!) The only news servers where the articles originating from @Home will be found are the guys who ignore the udpcancels.
And not to try to impress you, but I do control a major newsfeed. You can also reach me at my deja.com address. I'm their primary news admin.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
...you clearly did NOT read the original declaration of an impending UDP. Things were qualified rather carefully, and in particular, a listing of the 100 news servers that were the origin of the most spam to usenet was listed.
/dev/null.
EVERY DAMN ONE OF THEM WAS AN @HOME NEWS SERVER.
The AUP Enforcement department for @Home has had their thumbs stuffed up their asses for long enough. The throw the book at anyone who dares have a web server showing the default Apache page on it, but never do a damn thing about open relays, which are a much bigger threat. The reasoning seems to be that open relays aren't a bandwidth muncher, but a web site that gets twelve hits a month is.
In all honesty, they'll probably ignore this UDP since the summary cancellations will mean they will no longer have to forward so many complaints about Usenet spamming to
I'm in a 'group' and in which I am the head of newsgroup posting. My status in the group itself is based upon how and what I post... But the problem lies in the fact that I post to @Home servers, sometimes up to 2.5gig/week and NOTHING spam.
Rest assured, I WILL be contacting them and fighting my way through their system to talk to someone intelligent about this whole situation.
- 8Complex
Corrinne-
:-)
Just because I forgot to mention this in a previous thread: You Rock.
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
Lack of authority is Bad. This same anarchistic quality you praise so much also keeps an ample supply or w4r3z and kiddie pr0n available to anyone on the 'net.
It's not lack of authority that's Bad. It's lack of personal honor, integrity and responsibility that requires us to have authorities. I'm with Ralph Waldo Emerson on this one (paraphrasing from 'On Civil Disobedience'):
If we take it that that government governs best which governs least, then it follows that that government governs best of all which governs least of all; and that is the government that men shall have, when they are ready for it . (Empnasis mine)
Pfft advocating an authoritarian stance based on the actions of a few irresponsible individuals? Sounds like you're trying to stop crimes from occuring by sticking everyone in jail from the get go.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
- Dave
Stupid.
As a former Usenet administrator and current user, I thoroughly (sp?) applaud the decision. The entire point of a UDP (as you would glean had you actually read the sentencing) is that admins around the world have tried to work with @home's administration for an extended period of time and had all their efforts ignored. A UDP is never taken lightly or until all other options have been exhausted. It's the usenet equivilent of air bursting a 25 megaton nuke over someone's capital. While it does stir the blood, it's not to be undertaken lightly. Historically, whenever the offending site shows the least tendency to reopen communications, apologize and even talk about cleaning up their act, the UDP is lifted. Sometimes it turns out that they're blowing wind and it has to go back (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this happened to uunet, who used to be notorious), but the benefit of the doubt always goes to the targeted site. Admins realize they have innocent victims, but just as innocents must occasionally die in war-time bombing to stop a greater evil (i.e. see WWII German cities), the greater world must be looked out for. Good job usenet! --Jason
I like lots of people. That doesn't mean I go carting them around the galaxy with me. --Dr. Who
Didn't she invent the internet anyway? This should be a simple task for her.
As a customer I just spoke with a tech at
Bresnan who hadn't heard of any problem.
(the 1-888-bresnan # is for their
@home quarters I think.)
He said that he's gonna transfer me to
"another level of tech support" who could
help me better.
The mashine then said that hold is on avg.
10min or so.
> Lack of authority is Bad. This same anarchistic
> quality you praise so much also keeps an ample
> supply or w4r3z and kiddie pr0n available to
> anyone on the 'net. Is this what you are
> supporting.
Some, like myself, would argue that neither of
these is imnherently bad. (while I am against
forcing children into sexual situations for
any reason- especially something as base as
capital gain, I see nothing wrong with the
act of transmission of pictures themselves)
Noone is being hurt by these simple transmissions
of data. Noones rights are being abused. I see
no real problem.
Its simply the free exchange of information. Is
that what you are against?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
@Home contracts with Supernews or whatever to receive news and to propagate outgoing news. @Home can sue for failure to provide contractually obligated service.
It'd be nice to see this extended to other services, I'm not sure how feasable it would be. I suppose a centralized procmail filter database would be feasible.
Take a look at the Realtime Black Hole List. This is a DNS-based hack that publishes the domain names of sites that allow spammers to send through their mailservers - in a form that lets mail transfer agents do a quick DNS inquiry and dump mail if it is coming from such a site.
Interestingly, it's an example of anarchism in action. Anybody can publish such a list. Anybody can hack their sendmail to use such a list - and pick any such list they chose. (As far as I know there's only one such list at the moment - probably a sign that it's doing a good job.)
The RBH client code is included in current Linux distributions. (I saw it as a {recommended} sendmail configuration option in Red Hat 6.1, for instance.) I've heard estimates that about 60% of the email inboxes in the world are now behind mail transfer agents that subscribe to RBH and thus bounce mail from any site on the list.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The ARIN whois at http://www.arin.net/whois lists many separate owners of 24.x.x.x addresses. Yes, many of them do belong to cable companies like Videotron, Time Warner and MediaOne (Road Runner) and @Home Networks, but some don't, like those for Blazenet and its customers.
There is nothing illegal about a UDP, as has been proven over and over again. @Home's users can still post to Usenet. What will happen is that they will be the only ones to read their own messages. The other servers aren't saying home.net can't post, they are simply choosing not to carry any messages from them. It's their right to do so, as the data resides on THEIR private property. If they actually went in and stopped @Home from posting, then it would be a Denial of Service.
@Home was repeatedly asked to do something about the spam problem, and nothing was done. The activation of a UDP is a last resort to protect the servers from overload of junk. It's not an action to destroy a company, but an effort to protect a larger community from a company's blatant disregard or disrespect.
A final thought...I normally have my threshold on 1 (I made an exception this time). This is not to deny anyone their right to post, but to filter off a majority of garbage posts that I don't have the time to read. Do you think I'm actually after anyone for it? No, I do it for my OWN well being. I'm not abridging free speech, I'm choosing what I wish to see. Same rule applies to the news server admins, who have the right to pick and choose what abides on their servers.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
It will affect @Home when they get hundreds of calls from their pissed off users.
My other
> and to think we could have 1.5mbit BOTH ways
;-), but doesn't ADSL stand for "ASYMMETRIC digital subscriber line"? So you won't get 1.5mb both ways, even if other ISPs get to the lines eventually (wasn't there a court ruling some time ago saying that the telcos *had* to open the lines to everyone?).
IMBW (I might be wrong
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Yes, there is a way to get around it.
Fire them. Quit sending them a check every month.
USENET is not a god givin right. You don't pay for the use of the USENET servers. If the admins want to block trafic over their own servers then thats their right.
I have to return some videotapes...
If you look at the history of the UDPs, we have yet to find a UDP that has lasted longer than five days.
/dev/null.
We hurt millions of users for five days to remove billions of crossposted spam from millions of Usenet servers - and also as retaliation for @Home's little alias of abuse@home.com to
Have you ever run a Usenet server? Do you have any idea of the pure amount of GARBAGE from spam and advertisements that will suck up entire T3s 24/7? If you want a better analogy, this is little different than when Iraq invaded Kuwait and didn't respond to demands to stop; most of NATO got together and pounded on them.
Given the choice of massive spamming or blocking cable users from direct Usenet access (they can still use Deja) for a few days, I pick the block. Who knows, @Home might even clean up their act before the UDP goes into effect. Historically UDPs are usually released before the deadline for that very reason.
You're a moron.
It feels just like the Usenet in here!
The point is, the execs will swiftly change their behavior, which they need to do if all users--including their own--are going to enjoy a usable Usenet. It's called tough love!
I think it's not like blockading Taiwan, I think it's like invading Poland. Anyone? Anyone?
No, that doesn't work. At least not very well.
This works by prodding the folks who CAN do something about the problem into actually doing something about it and NOT "just ignoring" it.
Most problems are like nasty infections - ignoring them only makes them worse. They have to be attended to and properly treated into no longer being problems.
Here is a (poorly rendered) table of network classes:
Class Maximum Maximum bits in-----
Class Number Networks Hosts NetID HostID
A 1-127 127 16,777,214 7 24
B 129-191 16,383 65,534 14 16
C 192-223 2,097,151 254 21 8
> The reasoning seems to be that open relays
> aren't a bandwidth muncher, but a web site that
> gets twelve hits a month is.
Web sites are also easier to find.
Any moron can write a script that looks around
for web servers. You actually have to know what
a relay is before you can scan for open ones.
Probably just clueless admins.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I've tried Bell's HSE, and it pissed me right off. Try masquerading with pppoe and you'll see what I mean. Any time you try to send more than 1k upstream in a single packet, the modem disconnects. I've had absolutely no problems with @Home service in Toronto, I just hook up it to my machine, set the ip address and it works. I don't have to try to figure out why the modem is disconnecting all the time and fiddle around with pppd, mtu and pppoe settings.
Perpetrators of the UDP are just as moronic as those in the real-life examples given above. And no different in their actions.
All I can do is suggest everyone do the same. The office in PA is (215) 981-8531. You may or may not get someone knowledgable right off the bat, so be polite (but really, you should be polite anyway!). You might want to even check out the Canons of Conduct from the Linux Advocacy mini-HOWTO for some good pointers.
Good luck!
Um, read the UDP FAQ, item 10 in particular. In short: It's not DOS, it's simply an organized boycott, which is perfectly legal. UUNet threatened legal action when they got UDP'ed, and the Justice Dept. and the FBI just laughed at them.
Gosh, when countries do it they call it a trade embargo. It lasts for decades and people go without food and medicine. Great Idea! When Usenet does it hurts users that could just as easily have gone to deja.com and stops them from wasting our time w/ spam. Then and only then is it ...Stupid.
Thank you, I understand now.
Shal we stop all the good that comes through the pipe just to prevent the few specs of dirt that get by too?
that sounds too bad for @Home. maybe they'll take spam seriously next time. i hope they go out of business.
If you want a good dejanews interface that's free of the crap and all the advertisements,
copy this old dejanews search form to your home directory
and bookmark it from your browser. This search form was saved from my cache when deja ruined their interface. It has none of the voting crap and your search will just yield the facts and what you are looking for.
Substitute cancer for the ebola virus. Now the people with the virus are coming over to your house every day. You don't kill them, you quarantine them. These spam messages are being carried on whatever usenet server you use. If there is too much spam (on any newsgroup) your server may just decide that usenet isn't worth the space it takes and get rid of it.
Vermifax
Vermifax
Logout
newsgroup. So, L. Ron is not really "beloved" there. Rather to the contrary: the regulars of the newsgroup were in a years lasting war against Church of Scientology, where the CoS tried every possible trick to disrupt the newsgroup, and the newsgroup developped ever more ingenious countermeasures. Not using those countermeasures would basically have meant giving up the group entirely.
Say no to software patents.
Actually, I believe it was Al Gore
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Way to fuck over the innocent user. If you have a problem with spammers, you should go after them, not their ISP. This is like those idiots suing gun makers for the actions of a few killers.
@Home can't sue admins for controling their news feeds. That would be like suing a person to turn on their TV or radio to tune in their station.
I just called my friendly @home customer service rep (she actually *was* friendly!) and asked her about the UDP problem. She was not aware of it, but she escalated the call and found out that the issue has been elevated to the corporate level and it is hoped things will be addressed before the UDP goes into effect. It seems they have started taking a lot of calls over this.
-Jeff
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
AT&T/TCI/@home, and cfu--the municipal utility. I called both, and it was five bucks a month cheaper on both my cable and my internet with the muncipal utility--and one bill with everything from sewer to internet (hmm, depending upon your taste, those could be the same).
/home elsewhere. I think I've only seen it go above 500k/s download once, but it seems to me that it stayed near that when I was uploading the disk.
Free installation and first month (from both, I think) due to the shortage of modems at the time. Now I pay $25 total for service & modem. They want an extra $5 if you want a second computer (but it seems you provide your own hub & wiring), and the terms of service explictly prohibit sharing an IP with linux or that dark-side program (but how could they tell?).
I have no idea how to configure it. I put in my two install disks for FreeBSD, and it took care of absolutely everything. Since I wanted to massively rearrange the hard drive, I called and got an ip that I could grab, changed the address in in my old configuration, and stashed about a gig of
Competition in cable is such a wonderful thing.
Oh, and the deciding issue wasn't that it was $5/month cheaper, but that I called both places, and the cfu folks knew what was going on, while the @home folks could barely figure out which out of state tech support might be able to answer questions . . .
What is the response to the UDP from the major players out there? Will Deja, AOL, etc. honor the UDP? For this UDP to have any teeth, it needs to be honored by the major ISPs and news services.
Sue for what? Usenet works like this: "Hey, I'll post the articles from your server on mine if you post my articles on yours." By refusing to accept articles from a host, you are in NO WAY breaking any law or hurting that host. Their equipment is not touched, their connections are left intact. What you propose is like saying Pizza Hut should sue me because I refuse to eat there. Give me a break.
I also have internet at home, does this
concern me ?
Free Slash !
OK, not exactly on this topic (if you say "offtopic" they don't mark you offtopic :) but in a related and interesting coincidence:
I just now got a message from BugTraq saying that their mailing list has gotten blocked by ORBS because their ISP blocks ORBS probes. I think (I'm not an expert on this) that ORBS (anti-spam police) is probing to see if above.net's sendmail will allow "open relaying", but above.net blocks the probes. So, ORBS is treating the ISP as if they allow open relaying... does ORBS have "proof" that some machines in that domain are relaying, or is this a "play ball our way or screw off" (you know, kinda like cookies on Slashdot :) move?
Here's the email (I've corrected some errors to make it readable):
After a (somewhat funny) conversation with a bewildered @Home help desk lackey, I was told that noone in _entire office_ (including his supervisor) knew what I was even talking about. I was directed to e-mail abuse@home.com.
The following is the text of my e-mail message to them. I would encourage other @Home customers to write letters of their own. Perhaps @Home will get the point and begin acting more responsibly.
-----email follows-----
to: (several addresses, repeated in body of msg.)
from: (Chris Stearns)
--
I would like to know what @Home intends to do about the Usenet UDP that is scheduled to begin on Tues, Jan. 18 at 1700 PST.
Usenet access (reading and posting) is one of the services I pay @Home for. Now, because of @Home's continuing reluctance to address the abuse of its mail servers by spammers, my Usenet postings may be blocked by various sysadmins, who have elected to reject all traffic originating from within the home.com domain.
This would be an unacceptable interruption of service. @Home has an obligation to ensure that the services I subscribe to are available to me.
Futhermore, @Home has an obligation to ensure that its mail servers are not being abused by spammers. The requests for action that have been forwarded to @Home (by myself and others) are apparently being ignored. My own requests have been met with excuses. David Ritz, the originator of the UDP, details largely the same experience when describing his attempts to contact @Home. These responses from @Home - deferral, ignorance - are not good enough.
The remedy to this problem is completely within @Home's ability to to enact. I am a paying customer who wants to know what is being done.
Tell me, what are you going to do to clean up your act? When?
I have attached a copy of the UDP notice, originally posted by David Ritz in news.admin.net-abuse.usenet. This message, as well as the original notice, has been mailed to abuse@home.com, abuse@corp.home.net, news@corp.home.net, noc@corp.home.net, abuse@rogers.home.net, and Internet.Abuse@shaw.ca
A timely response would be appreciated.
Chris Stearns
(email address omitted)
(UDP notice was attached here)
-------end email message------------
Happy writing!
Chris Stearns
If you wish to comment on Usenet-related issues, it behooves you to learn a little bit about what Usenet is and how it works.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
--Quote begins--
give everybody access to bandwidth and things go wrong
--Quote ends--
As I've said before, it's the issue of broad access that makes many of the big commercial services an incomplete Internet experience. You get so many people who act up that it ruins it for everyone. A friend of mine left AOL because he's an avid IRC person, and aol.com is k-lined on most servers. AOL was convenient, but the stigma ended up being too much and they lost another customer...one who honestly wasn't an AOLamer.
Usenet kill files, IRC server k-lines, Spam filters...all over people lock out entire companies because they're sick of the garbage. You can't really have a complete Net experience with them. The big companies don't take the time to police what's going on, and often don't bother to respond to complaints. It takes something like a UDP to wake them up, and that's only because the UDP usually gets in the news. My advice remains, if you can find a local ISP with good service, stick with them and avoid the corps. The BS you have to put up with because of the other lamers who get on big companies like AOL and @Home isn't worth it.
My opinion, of course.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
Are you a spammer, Anon Coward?
>You may want to keep in mind that the spam nazis >are pretty wacko themselves and go to inordinate >lengths to stop spam.
Such as? I've seen LOTS of claims about what these supposedly EEEVIL despammers do, but noone's ever substantiated them.
> They don't even care that innocent companies
> will suffer.
@Home is not an innocent party here. Things have to get really dire before a UDP is considered..
> Think I'm exaggerating? Well consider this, an
> internet site not responsible for *any* spam
> leaving its network may qualify for
> listing on the RBL, IOW being blackholed.
> I know. Been there, done that.
BS. You need to submit traced spam, send it to the RBL folks who contact (by phone) the maintainers of the submitted server and then they MAY enter it in the RBL if there's no hope of the mail server operator getting a clue.
You haven't "been there, done that" at all. You're just pushing spammer FUD.
> Check http://www.mail-abuse.org/ if you have any > doubts.
...and expose you as a clueless tool??
You've never adminned a news server, have you? Until you do, please remember your opinions have about as much value as your usenet admin experience.
Use killfiles, content filters, etc.
Um... That what the UDP is. It's a sort of killfile for mail admins so spam won't kill their servers.
The UDP is also a 'weapon of last resort'. Beleive me, it would be a LOT easier for all concerned if @home would just do the right thing, police their own network, and actually enforce their own Acceptable Use Policy.
Don't like the UDP? Tell it to @home.
I can get on almost any DalNet server and my hostmask shows *.home.com clearly, not even just the IP.
Try liberty.dal.net (my favorite), raptor.dal.net, or qis.dal.net (I think). These are just a few I connect to daily... and BTW, I'm an op on a channel that gets into the mid-500's so I know what I am talking to about. And yes, lots of @Home people in there too.
Possibly it was your subnet banned at that time though, since I got cable just 11 mts ago now and hadn't had trouble since then. I was on dialup previous to that.
BTW, I know what you are talking about with clogged networks... I've been told there was 64 machines going through the router that I am on. 64!! When I got on total was 3!
@Home is going commercial, and this happens when people flock to one thing or another. Obviously, because of the story, more and more stupid people are getting on also. I hope that they get banned, I really do. I hate spam also, though I've learned to ignore it, unfortunately.
- 8Complex
With programs like this.
Bounce Spam
I also understand that some unix and linux email programs have a "bounce" capability built in. I guess some might say this increases the problem by increasing the amount of traffic and bandwidth used. But my guess is that the spammer's servers and network would be the only ones to suffer any real slowdown and then maybe they would stop.
Besides.. I would rather have people who are interested in such a thing (the kiddie porn) releave their... sexual pressures... by looking at porno.. rather than acting it out... So maybe such a thing is.. Good?
im an @home user(and att employee, incidentally), and i frequently lurk and post to various ng's.
if i cant post from here, on @homes servers, can i just set up an nntp server for my own use and post via it ?
by the way, we do have an abuse list, and it is generally *very* long. from what i see, were playing whack the mole keeping all of the abuse to a minimum.
USENet: you need to get rid of the spam
@Home: we need more moderators, our men are working double shifts as it is. we can do it with more moderators
USENet: the newsgroups do not share your optomistic appraisal of the spam
@Home: we need more men!
USENet: well than perhaps you should tell that to the newsgroups when they impose the UDP
@home: the ng's are imposing a UDP?!
USENet: yes
@Home: we shall double our efforts
No, breaking into someone's computer shouldn't be treated like a physical assault. Not even close IMO.
But it SHOULD be treated like a property crime. After all, it is costing the victim money. If something of value is copied or destroyed then the victim is financially hurt. Say what you will about closed source, but it still holds a market value.
Hell it doesn't even have to be source code. People store all kinds of information on computers (credit cards, anyone?). Sure, this stuff should be secured, but there's no denying the fact that harm is done if someone steals it.
Even if nothing is done aside from breaking in the victim still loses. Why? He has to invest time (= money) in resecuring / reinstalling his machine.
Don't try to glorify computer intrusion as a harmless activity. It's not.
For what it's worth, I agree that sysadmins should work together to solve problems as much as possible before involving the authorities. It's generally a faster way to take care of the problem. But, when the abuse warrants it, either through damage, or through repeated activity, I have no problem contacting law enforcement to resolve the issue.
Best regards,
SEAL
Actually, as someone pointed out, it has already been done. Although the mailserver admin must add a few things to his setup in the config file, things such as
;)
:)
http://www.orbs.org (and)
http://maps.vix.com/rbl/
already implement this.
I work at an ISP, and we co-locate hundreds of boxes for customers. ORBS is quite effective, and so is MAPS.
I remember a while back, a customer was completely clueless on how to setup a mailserver. Rather than ASK how to do it (we would have setup his sendmail, it doesn't take long), he instead set up his mailserver as an open relay, no restrictions, and forwarded all mail onto the main server. Since he was "inside" our company network, as he was colocated, our mailserver accepted his mail. (this oversight has since been corrected.
Therefore, as they always do, spammers located his box quite quickly and spam mail poured through his server. The traffic load was caught by one of the admins within an hour or so, and the IP of his box was blocked from our mailserver, but it was too late and the damage had already been done.
Since the colocated customer was relaying into our main mail server, ORBS placed our primary mail server on their list. A good percent of our mail (I'd say about 40% or so) was returned to us by ISP's subscribing to the (free) ORBS database, with a nice note stating that our mailserver was on the ORBS spam list and therefore the messages could not be delivered. heh.
One of our admins completed the process with ORBS to remove our server from their list, and after they verified there were indeed no possibilities of relay, they promptly removed us from their list.
ORBS did indeed adjust their records quickly, and our mail returned to normal status the next day, with no blocking.
So ORBS and the MAPS RBL do indeed work quite well. I'm glad they're there, and that they do indeed function. We had a lot of headaches from customer calls, etc asking what the HELL was wrong with our mail servers, but in the end, it served its purpose and we corrected our customers mistake.
Click here to get info on signing up for MAPS RBL, and/or here to get info on signing up for ORBS.
(Shameless plug): ProcessTree - Put your idletime to use.
You do ticket them and/or revoke their licenses.
@Home has repeatedly been asked to fix their problem (ticketing....) Now, their being told that they're not allowed to drive until they fix their bus.
AFAICT, @home users will still be able to read newsgroups, they simply won't be able to post. (And sense not being able to post doesn't affect porno and warez collection, I don't expect to see too many @Homers complaining about this.)
Not to say that all @Homers only collect Porno and Warez on newsgroups, but...
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Optus@home is released here soon.. hopefully this won't affect us?
-- when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
And more.
The point is not to just try and shut off spammers from sending mail; except for some certifiable net.kooks, they're mostly trying to get you to buy something, and therefore eventually they have to have a fixed presence somewhere. The RBL tries to cut off those fixed presences.
What they're trying to do is to make every Internet service have a policy against any of their customers being involved in spam.
OK, so we do know ths ISP. However, the spammer can set the user account to absolutely anything. Therefore... One goes to the ISP, and nicely asks them to check this out. They would have logs of who was on when, and could probably figure out who actually did it (to them, you see, the remote would be the spammers own machine. They know who they gave which IP to, and can figure out the identity of the spammer). If they didn't keep the logs, they could watch for him to resurface (ie keep logs temporarily and deal with it if he does it again). This would almost certainly be acceptable as a response, and would get them off the hook.
If the ISP is uncooperative, then all that can be done (from the next level up) is to blackhole the ISP. Only the ISP can really know who the spammer was, so theu have to deal with it, or ignore it. If they ignore it, I guess the people at the next level have the right to recommend blocking and to block it for themselves. If you read the post, individual news-carrying sites have the choice if a) whether or not to follow UDPs at all or b) to follow them, but exempt this one. How to do so was described. So if you like spam or think this is too extreme (maybe it is, I haven't hear whan @Home's response was or how many warnings they got) find a news-carrier who is not going to follow it. Or run nntpd yourself, and don't follow it.
So it's a lot like the system right here at slashdot. Read at -1 if you want, or don't if you can't stand trolls and spam. Individual choice (except that you do have to be the person running the newsserver and using up the resources to be able to make the choice.
At least, that's my understanding of the setup, but I don't actually run a usenet server, so any innaccuricies are hereby disclaimed. If I'm wrong, would someone reply and say so.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
This, as I understand it, is the purpose of a UDP.
You hurt the company (a few execs) by pissing off the millions of users. @home has already shown that they ignore repeated requests by other admins to stop the abuse, hopefully they will listen to their customers.
What traffic I, or any other admin, allows to pass through our networks is our business. Our companies own the equipment and we maintain it. I can block any and all traffic coming from @home if I so choose.
That, and not the quantity of spam, is what gets the USENET Death Penalty rolling.
It doesn't help that there are maybe five people in the entire @Home company nationwide who know what the hell they're doing, and your chances of talking to one of those people are about the same as your chances of calling the White House and talking to the President. As with The Phone Company, @Home takes pains to make sure that their precious techies aren't bothered with anything as mundane as helping customers.
Easy way to get hung up on by @Home "technical service"... "Hello, I'm running Linux and ...".
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Use the URL:
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/home_ps.shtml to get to the old DejaNews PowerSearch form.
They appear to have re-enabled this feature over the past couple of months.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
There's a small problem with the picture used to depict "spam", as in junk e-mail and the like. It depicts a can of SPAM luncheon meat , which is a registered trademark of Hormel foods.
Hormel's position on this matter is best expressed by the following quotation from their "Spam and the Internet" page:
This means Hormel don't like pictures of cans of their SPAM luncheon meat used in conjunction with junk e-mail and the like.
I suggest that the logo for "spam" be changed for those legal reasons. Perhaps we could change it to the picture of a pig from O'Reilly's book "Stopping Spam", or some similar porcine picture that's suggestive of "spam".
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
. In fact, it would be over a year before I ever saw an intelligent post from the aol.com domain.
There are no intelligent posts from aol.com. You must be mistaken.
Like this AC has been saying in a couple of earlier posts (which I doubt were read by more than a few people if even them): do not underestimate the power of ignoring. This UDP works by people choosing to collectively ignore, in this case the source of spam. Ignoring is very, very powerful way in combatting the rotten eggs in the basket.
What would I like to ignore next? My alarm clock!
Besides, only @home can really tell who the spammer is. see My other comment
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
Then it's not Supernews that is going to be refusing to propagate. It's going to be people down the line.
:)
If a company wants to legally make sure everyone can read its usenet postings, then it would have to contract with every ISP and newsgroup server in the world.
There's no one for @Home to sue. Go read the faq for the UDP.
~Chris Carlin
Deja it is.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
I really have to ask, does anyone know is SPAM profitable? Are these just un-informed idiots that really don't know that they're wasting their time? Does anyone have information on this?
Furthermore has anyone even _heard_ of someone that bought something because of SPAM?
Are these people just the deranged/hopeful side of the net?
if the UDP has the desired effect, then it's an example of anarchism actually working
the UDP FAQ certainly claims a large number of successes, among them:
Erols.com had been a thorn in the side of usenet for a long time. With a change in policy after discussion of a UDP against them, they now have a very high reputation among both the usenet and email community.
Bell Atlantic, near the end of July, 1997, was a major spamhaus. Word got to them that they were being considered for a UDP. Spam dropped dramatically almost instantly, to their credit. No UDP was necessary.
UUnet, which was the largest single spam producer around the beginning of August, 1997, [...]announced and apparently instituted a much tougher AUP against spamming, and nuked a couple of the most persistent spammers that usenet has ever seen. Numbers again have fallen dramatically, and we all hope that UUnet continues with this policy.
October, 1997, Compuserve
In December, 1997, TIAC appeared absolutely unwilling to deal with any of their ongoing spam [...] UDP was announced with the 5 business day waiting period before institution. Although their owner continued to make excuses and argue about their culpability as well as bluster and threaten legal action, by the time the deadline had arrived, they had "cleaned up their act" to the point that the UDP was no longer necessary, and the deadline was extended for another 5 days to watch the numbers. After that additional 5 day period, the stats had stayed low, and the UDP deadline was lifted.
About 10 others between these dates.
In December of 1999, a simultaneous UDP of VSNL and SILNET, the two main carriers in India, was instituted for their failure to even begin to control the usenet terrorist who calls himself "HipCrime" and who forges, cancels, floods, and supercedes thousands of articles on a nearly daily basis in an attempt to blackmail the entire world into doing things his way - his way being a usenet without spam cancels. Currently, VNSL and SILET have enabled port 119 (news)blocks on all outgoing connections from their services with the exception of their own servers.
So, it looks like there is good evidence that this will work, given the past history of success.
My Mum told me to hit them!
I used to work for @Home. One of my duties was reading mail sent to news@home.com and handling requests/complaints/whatnot. Anyone who proclaims that @Home is being *lazy* about fixing their problems is _just plain wrong_. @Home employees work their asses off to deal with the problems associated with being a large ISP. Unfortunately, there are just not enough @Home employees. When I worked there, every UNIX admin was spread thin. We all wore a million different "hats" and there never was enough time to deal with everything. @Home is a magnitude larger than it was when I was there and I'm pretty sure things have not improved.
:-)
As for the spam problem, the people at blame are the corporate types. This is a management issue, not a technical issue. This problem could be fixed by blocking inbound packets to customer IPs on port 119/TCP. Unfortunately, port blocking is more involved than just making changes to routers. Policies have to be re-written which, when you are @Home, necessitates lawyers, meetings, and the like. @Home has bigger fish to fry. Like what, you say? Customers who crack government machines, e-mail spammers (who generate a larger backlash than usenet spam), smurfers, script kiddies, irc abuse, customer-to-customer abuse, people who host commercial sites on their cable modems, people who put porn sites on members.home.net (their homepage server), etc., etc. It's only to be expected that USENET complaints are near their bottom of their abuse priority list. If you could only see the volume of mail that abuse@corp.home.net generates, you'd understand.
Chris
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
From the UDP FAQ:
[...]
11.So if you cancel everything from the UDP site, don't legitimate people get canceled, too?
Yes. One of the driving forces behind forcing compliance with generally accepted guidelines is that the ISP's own legitimate users (if any) can bring pressure to bear on their rogue ISP. Remember, the UDP is a near-last-resort measure.
[...]
This is so fucking unacceptable. Well here's my new manifesto. I'm going to FUCK OVER anyone who cancels my posts. I never bothered you (cabal members) or canceled your posts. Now *you* are attacking *me* personally by cancelling *my* posts for *actions I did not committ*. Well, I will scour the cmsg cancel messages from other locations outside the UDP zone and keep track of names, then retalliate by cancelling articles posted by these individuals. When they complain, which I expect they will, I will show them the log of cancels they hit me with. I was being peaceful, enjoying freedom whilst not preventing others from doing the same, but if you force this jihad on me, I'll have no choice but to oblige you.
I used to be a system operator of a dial-up BBS (bulletin board system), back when FidoNet was pretty much the only way to get online to any kind of WAN in places like back-woods New Hampshire, USA, where I live.
One of the things I've always liked about FidoNet over UseNet was that people were held accountable.
If you broke an echo's rules (an echo is like a newsgroup), the moderator of that echo could ban you from the echo. (Fido moderators are more like IRC channel operators then UseNet moderators).
If you got banned enough times, most system operators would simply ban you from the echos entirely.
But it got better. If a system's operator was unresponsive, or a system was a continual source of twits, the FidoNet feed to that system could be cut.
If other systems in the area kept refeeding him any, that entire network (local geographical area) would be cut.
Seems a little heavy-handed if you are used to Internet anarchy. But I think UseNet's system of waiting until things have deteriorated to the point of uselessness doesn't work, and a system that doesn't work isn't a good system. FidoNet preemptively cut off the garbage-makers. It was all run by the lose organization of system operators, was very grass-roots, and generally operated on concenus. It worked pretty well.
In a way, FidoNet has a cabal, and was better for it, IMNSHO.
Of course, the big-time (the Internet) has pretty much killed it off these days, so we'll never know how it would have scaled compared to Usenet.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
The @Home newsfeed is practically useless anyway. The amount of articles and the retention time in some groups (rec.music.makers.guitar for example) pales in comparison to what you can get from a Remarq NNTP server. Example - I have a Remarq subscription, but I sometimes retrieve articles from @Home's servers just to see if they've improved. @Home will return ~800 headers for certain groups vs. ~3000 from Remarq for the same group. Pathetic.
[Note: this is a repost due to moderation problems] Posted to: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet news.admin.net-abuse.policy news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins news.admin.announce Mailed to: abuse@ameritech.net hostmaster@ameritech.net support@amertech.net questions@ameritech.net Over the past year, Ameritech.net has been the source of vast quantities of Usenet spam. Despite countless complaints, reports, and phone calls, Ameritech.net shows no inclination towards stopping it. The data included in the following articles shows a trend of persistent and increasing abuse, and currently there is still a huge volume of spam originating from nntp0.chicago.il.ameritech.net.POSTED and nntp0.detroit.mi.ameritech.net.POSTED: Because of this lack of response to a serious problem, even when it has been pointed out repeatedly, a full active Usenet Death Penalty will go into effect at the close of business, 17:00 PST, on Friday November 12. This action will affect all traffic from nntp*.*.*.ameritech.net.POSTED. It is sincerely hoped that Amertech Corp. will take appropriate measures to stem the flow of abuse from their system before this time, and any assistance which they may require will be gladly provided. Should this action become unavoidable, sites not wishing to participate may alias out the pseudosite !ameritechudp!. Sites not wanting to participate in any active UDPs may alias out the pseudosite !udpcancel!. -- Douglas Mackall
This site seems a tad (heh) out of date. Are there any similar sources for information that keep up to date?
I want to refuse all and any kind of article coming from the UDP perpetrators. How can I go about doing this?
--Small Usenet Admin.
Since you're speaking for dn...
You guys aren't seriously gonna start asking for subscription $$ to read news are you?
And, I know you probably don't have much to do with this, but if you're gonna throw all those ads on the pages please, please eliminate the animated ones.
I don't think your "ignore then and they'll stop" quite fits in this case. Its more like give them and ultimatum and they'll stop or completely shut them out and then they will stop. For most organizations it usually takes more than a slap on the hand to make them stop anything, especially spam. I think what UDP is doing is good though it will make @home take them seriously and actually make ammends. I was just wondering though who actually uses USENET anymore I mean the internet has evolved more into an e-commmerce type of phenomena and the older vestiges of the internet such as USENET are (it seems) rapidly decaying into extinction. In fact, I don't recall within the last year that I have even looked at USENET. I think its a thing of the past myself. Not that it had its time and place. I think that eventually we will see the internet evolve into more e-commerce but with a whole lot more content and bandwidth. I mean think if you could pay online and then quickly download a movie from blockbuster in DVD format instead of having to run over to the local Blockbuster Video to rent one. That is the future of the internet... if you ask me.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
"Get your domain name for only $45"
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
The point is that @home has not been supportive in helping to identify or block the 1% of their users that are screwing it up. This lack of support is why @home is getting the UDP.
IMHO I think that the same problem is with gun control and gun manufacturers but I am not going to ramble on.
I encourage all @Home users (such as myself) to send comments to: customer.care@tci.net I told them I would discontinue service if this happens.
way OT ... the other UDP :)
...
... great for game communication ... foolhardy for everything else
:)
... boy am I glad to stumble upon the motherload of geek/nerd which is /. .... lots of people interested in the dorky things that I have interest in ....
Agree that UDP is highly unreliable, with flimsy checksum as semblance of data confirmation
but in case of game data (admitted a limited application) we really don't need uber hand-shaking at TCP/IP level for continuous broadcast of position delta baseline difference.
UDP is the minimalist approach to small packet (high data to header ratio) sending
I am coding to UDP right now, and am perfectly happy, though I am not maintaining life threatening data across the universe
P.S. Even more OT
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
Adding "=dnc" gives you the much more readable 'DejaNews Classic' version.
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp? AN=571636137
--
All Glory To The Hypnotoad!
What is ironic is that I set my moderation setting way too high and AC posts get filtered out ...
... maybe I shouldn't post then since I can't possibly make the time to read - 1 posts upward ...
my apologies that I probably don't have time to read posts under 3 or 4
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
Tell the nice spammers to post all commercial and non commercial spam messages to alt.spam. Then just don't read alt.spam unless you're interested in seeing spam. Of course, no spammer would agree to that because no one would sit there and read alt.spam because it is all bullshit. So why can't they get it across their god damned thick skulls that NOBODY WANTS TO SEE YOUR SPAM!?
all the docs indicate that the MTU's must be set to 1500
runnin 1426 here, ipmasq works great
you know reading the docs can makes things much easier
Huzzah and kudos! i applaud you sir!
That's not a valid counter-arguement, because of the warnings to @Home. If a system has open mail relays that spammers are using and I notify the admins, I would expect the admins to shut the open relays. That's basic courtesy, not to mention something that saves wear and tear on your system. Any admin worth their job should appreciate this concept - ignoring requests by others to fix a problem such as this is insulting and isolationist. The UDP is (partly) the apparent desired end result of @Home's actions - they ignore the rest of the internet and the rest of the internet ignores them. Finally, it is trivial for @Home to close these mail relays, and pressue from @Home's customers to end this UDP should encourage @Home to take the necessary actions.
itachi the incoherent
Wrong, UDP's are not lightly administered, @Home has refused to do anything about the problem, therefore the News admins have to do the next best thing. to use your own analogy the Gunmakers have done absolutley nothing to stop the guns falling into the wrong hands, even after baeing asked to do so repeatedly. The aim is not to hurt the regular users, it's to force @home to do something about the problem, once they do the UDP will be lifted.
You got a point, but it's terribly hard to deal in absolutes. For the moment, can't we just agree that spam is bad? =)
It's a difference of degree. I agree with you that *some* porn is unhealthy, but so are cigarettes. It's like this.
Spam FORCES its way onto users. People are CONVINCED to seek out porn.
So you see, to stop spam, we have to stop it from arriving. But to stop the addictive nature of unhealthy things, we have to stop the CONVINCING. Banning cigarettes (or alcohol, or porn) is not the way to control smoking. Attacking the source of the brainwashing (the companies), is.
Porn is especially sensitive because sex is a natural instinct. It's hard to draw the line at what people wouldn't naturally crave in the absence of the porn industry. Given, people wouldn't naturally crave cigarettes if they had never been under the effects of nicotine. But people are going to seek out sex (and probably sexually explicit materials) unless they are convinced *against* it. See what I mean? =)
I hope that made some sense. I think it did, but since I know what I mean already, I have an unfair advantage.
According to item 11 on the UDP faq, all posts from the UDP target are actively being cancelled. This is a DOS attack against individual users and is illegal. To simply not carry articles originating from @home is one thing, to actively set out to nuke all posts from @home is quite another. Am I wrong?
the people who answer those emails are a group called KANA(i think the name may have changed recently), and i work pretty closely with them.
thier job is pretty much the same as mine; acct maintanence, billing, troubleshooting, etc.
these guys are AT&T employees, not @Home employees, and have absolutly NO control over abuse issues. the most we can do is refer it to abuse@home.com
so, knowing this, please do not email the good people at that address.
thanks
The ISP's could be thought of as members of the UN (maybe Usenet Nations?)... they do occasionally agree to do things, such as economic sanctions and what not. That doesn't seem like anarchism to me. There is a semblence of organization.
cheese_wallet
This is amazing, I speak the truth yet I get moderated down as a troll. Talk about censorship.
Every member ISP chips in some money into a common fund. Then at the designated hour of the UDP, employees of the offending ISP are stalked by skinheads with ax handles and then the employees are beaten senseless. The money in the common fund is used to pay the skinheads. It is not really necessary to kill the offenders, just scare the bejesus out of them, while leaving your "mark".
They sent money to a spam-friendly ISP. Without those millions of customers' revenue, the ISP would not be able to support the spammers' terrorism.
If you do business with scum, you're going to get a little dirty. That's why I don't pity the Windoze users when they BSOD. (Or at least I try not to show any compassion.) They put money into Microsoft's pockets instead of hiring good people. They brought it all onto themselves, and made the world a slightly darker place for the rest of us too. Fuck 'em.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
How embarassing.
--
Wage Slave Journal
yes
You didn't read this guy's message. The UDP is put into effect because there isn't any realiable way for usenet to block a single spammer, because they don't provide that spammer's access. The only option open to usenet is to ask nicely for the ISP to stop the spammer. There is then *NOTHING* else usenet can do to stop the spamming, except stop *all* messages from that site.
If they could reliably stop spammers by targeting individual spammers, they would. But unfortunately, there isn't any effective way to do this. There are many, many ways to get around all kinds of blocking, except UDP's, and the "problem" spammers know them all.
This is exactly why cable should not be a monopoly. In Canada @home has a grip on the whole cable market (there are CRTC proposals in place that are trying to fix that, but nothing's happening for now), so every cable subscriber in canada will be affected pretty much (with the exception of smaller ones in private cable areas, like dccNet here Delta BC). If people had options, they could be using another ISP that gives 2 shakes about nettiquite and would not be affected.
Ha - another spammer defeated and pissed about it.
Hello, just thought I'd like to mention, if you're in Canada, a very good alternative to @home is Bell's Sympatico High Speed service, it uses the Nortel 1Meg xDSL modems and I've had very good service for a reasonable cost ($39.95).
But who does the UDP attack. And it is an attack. It it not a "boycott" as so many seem to say. All posts originating from within @home are to be ACTIVELY CANCELLED. From the UDP FAQ:
11.So if you cancel everything from the UDP site, don't legitimate people get canceled, too?
Yes. One of the driving forces behind forcing compliance with generally accepted guidelines is that the ISP's own legitimate users (if any) can bring pressure to bear on their rogue ISP. Remember, the UDP is a near-last-resort measure.
If the UDP were a passive, mass refusal to carry traffic from @home, I would support it. But active seek and destroy to all news posts originating from @home? That's a DOS attack on the (mostly) innocent users of @home. It is wrong.
Someone please moderate the above post up.
The above author UNDERSTANDS the situtation.
Maybe the lower price is because @home has real competition here. You can get DSL service starting at $445 a year ($38/month CDN, ie. $26/month US)
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
If you have a problem with spammers then you go after the spammers, not their ISP.
The first thing you should do before you continue with this rant is to get all the facts together, and take a read of the Usenet Death Penalty FAQ and maybe you wouldn't go shooting yourself in the foot with your obviously uninformed opinion.
Then maybe you would SEE that all other avenues have been exhasted.
Thats whats wrong with today's world, too many idiots prepared to shoot first and ask questions later.. now grow up..
Or maybe YOU are a spamming mongrel yourself.
Hi there. Let's pretend that I administer a server. My bosses know what spam is; they chew me out when I get some. They tell me my job is to prevent spam from reaching them. So, I implement UDPs when they come out. I tell my bosses I'm stopping spam. They commend me. They own the server. Who are you to tell me what to do? Who are you to tell me I'm wrong for abiding by my contract and doing what the boss tells me?
Take that and multiply it by however many servers carry news feeds, and you've got the UDP. This isn't a central authority. This is lots of individual sysadmins who don't want to deal with posts from a domain, so they block that domain on the servers that they have a legal, ethical, and moral right and obligation to administer.
To be an illegal DOS attack they'd have to trick a server into canceling the articles against the wishes of the operator of the SERVER. Canceling messages against the wishes of the originator of the MESSAGE is fair game - because the operator of the SERVER is not required to carry the messages. The cancel requests themselves are advisory, not mandatory (though their processing is automatic, so the server operators must accept or reject them by policy rules rather than manually).
The cancel messages are formed in such a way that the operators of the servers can easily chose (by configuration options) to accept or ignore them.
Even better, the operators of the servers can selectively accpet or reject cancels from a particular instance of the UDP, certain classes of them, or UDPs in general (without regard to the policy on non-UDP cancel messages).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Is there a nice site that allows people to share their killfiles and spam filters? It'd be nice for me to be able to head to rec.arts.poetry or similar, and have a killfile maintained by the community (in the same way that Waldherr's Junkbuster has a community maintained blocklist.
Perhaps as an extension to NNTP, an FAQ, Killfile, and other info links would be available in the info for the group (as meta fields), allowing people to not have to wait for the FAQ to be posted, etc.
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
UUNET was UDPed about a year and a half ago. Right now, their spam levels are barely a tenth of what they used to be before the UDP.
The last four times a UDP was called, it never actually went into place, after the waiting period. The recalcitrant provider always figured out how to get their collective sh*t together, and the UDP was called off.
--
I haven't read Usenet on a regular basis in several years. I just got tired of wading through all the noise to get to anything useful. One day I just got tired of updating my killfile... Now, I just go to Deja whenever I'm looking for specific information on a topic.
/. has developed a decent model that makes it relatively easy to find the few gems that are posted. I don't always have the time to read every post. I just think it's a better model than Usenet (even if I have to put up with a few creative trolls). In some ways it reminds me more of the old BBS days.
/. that cater to other tastes?
However, I find the community oriented web sites to be more useful --
So, what other sites are out there? I know that I'm a nerd, but there is more to life than geek news and Natalie Portman. Are there any other community oriented web sites like
"He was a wise man who invented beer." -- Plato
Firts of all... I notice several people mention that they know how many people are on their WAN. How dod you check for something like that?
:)
I'm an unhappy @home user. I was happy when I got it about 1.5 yrs ago but now it's too damn slow. I get 15K from most sites during the day and thats just too damn slow.
Is there any way to optimize linux for @home? Any TCP/IP stack options you recommend for setting? MTU maybe?
Anyone else from *.slnt1.on.wave.home.com?
Nick
--
GroundAndPound.com News and info for martial artists of all styles.
> how the bloody hell can you pretend that kiddy
> porn, or any pornography at all, isn't bad?
The WORST thing that has EVER happend when an otherwise mentally stable individual has downloaded or otherwise VEIWED ANY sort of
pornography, is quite simply that they had to
clean up a sticky mess from masturbating.
Downloading, viewing, and exchanging porn is
fine in my eyes.
> pornography is a sick capitolist industry
> praying on human frailty and weakness.
> Porno=materialism, plain and simple. It chains
> you to a meaningless material world, much the
> same as money etc.
I can certainly sympathise with yout hatred of
capitalism. It *IS* one of the most destructive
systems I can think of. However, all porn does
is give a person visual material with which to
fantasise. Fantasy is perfectly natural, and is
a healthy part of sexual expression.
> It kills off the intellectual sect of the mind
> and prays upon the strictly animalistic side of
> it.
Humans ARE animals. I, personally, think that
embracing and satifing "animal instincts" is
an important part of leading a balanced life.
To do any less is to deny our animal nature and
in the end to live in a world of self-delusion.
> sn't the spam simply another form of "free
> information"?
While free flow of information is fine with me
and ism in and of itself, a good thing. It is
not an end that justifies all means. Just as sex
is a beautiful thing, forcing sex on another
person (ie rape) is an ugly thing. Spammers
steal network resources to advance their own
capitalist interests.
> Honestly, who here hasn't ever accidentally
> come across pornography?
Here I agree with you. Yes, the techniques that
are used to advertise porn is just as bad as
spammers. Their use of incorrect descriptions is
distastefull at best.
However, underhanded buisness practices are not
pornography. It is their buisness practices that
are wrong, not their "wares". I, personally,
refuse to do buisness with ANY company, no matter
what they are peddling, that engages in these
practices.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
> Gotta a problem with the spammers? Go after THEM, you lazy
> bastards. Don't fuck everyone else over on the premise that
> the site is responsible for all traffic it forwards.
HOW? My ISP has rules against spamming built right into the contract by which I get my service from them. If I violate their anti-spam rules they charge me a whole bunch of money and then cancel my account. There's not a whole lot I can do about it if they do, because those are the terms of my contract, and they're right there in black and white, and if I don't like it I can find another ISP. So far so good.
But what happens if a guy who subscribes to another ISP spams me or mail bombs me? One time I got mail bombed by some ass with an account at Southwest Nell. So I emailed SWBell's abuse department and sent them copies of all the emails with which he jammed up my pop in-box. Since SWBell is a reputable company and my bomber was in violation of their terms of service, they cancelled his account. But keep in mind that MY ISP couldn't do a damn thing to this guy, since what he did, while obnoxious, is not illegal.
Now there were spammers running out of @Home accounts, right? People from all over were complaining to @Home, but @Home took no action. Again, since there was no violation of the law, @Home was not exactly required to do anything to the spammers. If @Home values the spammers's business more than it values the cooperation that is necessary to make Usenet work, or if they are too understaffed or lazy to enforce their terms of service, that's their privilege. It is also MY ISP's privilege to not copy posts from their news server into my ISP's news server.
You say "Go after THEM," "THEM" being the spammers, but unless they do something legally actionable (such as broadcasting death threats, etc.) no one can touch them. The only people who could restrain spammers with @Home accounts are the management of @Home, and the one and only reason @Home can do anything to stop the spammers is because those spammers are in a contractual relationship with @Home.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Actively sending out cancel messages to destroy articles originating from @home (wherever they be) is a DOS attack against the @home user eho is not spamming.
This "god" is obsolete and outdated and needs to be cast into the dumpster.
This is an opt-out database. This is the very thing the spam-fighters are trying to fight against.I'd be more impressed if they used an opt-in option, like NoCeM.
As a news admin, I'm sure you realize there are a large number of news sites, rightly or wrongly, running on auto-pilot, with no one paying attention to them unless the disk fills up. Choosing to honor the UDP isn't a choice on their part, and it's nothing their users are aware of.
Is that true? I would think that the aliasing technique discussed in the FAQ would cause such message to not be propagated by the news server in question, because it thought it had already passed them on...
Bob
--
Robert Snyder rsnyder@toontown.erial.nj.us
ICQ #20900813
Government is NOT inherently bad. Bad government is bad. This is a tired old line from government to excuse their poor performance. Regan decried big government while it grew under his terms. These are all off the mark, as is your remark I feel. Are guns inherently bad, even it it saves your life? A malfuntioning gov may be what you say but not any gov just by its existence. "Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so"
However, if you go and try to put duct tape over someone else's mouth because you don't want to hear their words, then it is you who are doinf wrong and must be suppressed.
Boycott @home by refusing to propagate their traffic and I will support you.
Actively send out cancel messages to suppress their free speech and I will oppose you.
If everyone simply drops @home's traffic, no one will hear them and they will (most likely) change their ways. This requires most other sites to agree with the boycott, i.e., community support. Actively attempting to suppress traffic from @home says to me that you aren't interested in community support and are a rogue vigilante carrying out your own personal crusade, irrespective of common opinion, against @home. For this *you* too should be UDP'd.
I really have to ask, does anyone know is SPAM profitable? Are these just un-informed idiots that really don't know that they're wasting their time? Does anyone have information on this?
Furthermore has anyone even _heard_ of someone that bought something because of SPAM?
I've received SPAM that I believe to be quite profitable and which probably attracts a large number of users to the sites being advertised. My e-mail address is listed on several business brokerage sites, and every day I get e-mail advertising new sites. I don't visit them because SPAMMers must die ehm, I mean, I don't support their use of that advertising medium, but I bet lots of other people whose e-mails are up on similar sites would. This is targeted SPAM and not quite the random stuff you're talking about, but....
It seems that there is always someone out the complain or beat up on @home. Here is a company that is giving everybody what they want - high speed broadband. Why are so many people surprised that all this shit comes from @home... because they got the bandwidth. It is changing alot of things. and it will change our internet society dramatically. They just want to do the right thing (they are just a company making money) and have no clue (in many cases) what to do that is politically correct. If you point it out to their investor relations people (that will get their attention fast).. also spell it out in simple language without acronyms that it is a serious problem. Why is your attitude "if they respond "? Maybe the way you write doesn't warrant a response. If you wrote a professionally written letter and sent it out to them. they would respond. I've complained about their service and it got fixed real real fast..and no problems. stop bitching on /. , cool off, write a well written letter to PR, or investor realations (even if your not an investor) and mail it.
...for those companies whose business it is to spam for OTHER companies. How many spams have you seen that are like "MILLIONS OF EMAIL ADDRESSES" etc? No doubt there are direct-(e-)mail companies out there, who sign up businesses to their customer rolls, and send out spam for them. These are the ones with the tricky bastards working for them, who know the tricks of hacking email headers, using unprotected relays, etc. Your average Mom & Pop Spammer wouldn't last long in the waters, methinks. Basically, most spammers are spamming for other people, not themselves... and these are the bastards to go after. You may want to pick up the phone and call up whatever number is on a spam to get "100% herbal viagra" or whatever - but instead of screaming "You fucking spammers!!!" at these people... maybe try and clue them in on what they signed up for. The fewer people who buy into the BS that spamming companies feed to them, the quicker said companies will go out of business. THAT'S a good way to fight spam :)
The RBL isn't forced on anyone -- individuals and companies adopt it by choice. They have the legal right to choose to refuse to do business with anyone who refuses to do anything about spammers.
If you're affected by this, you chose to do business with someone who doesn't do anything about spammers. That's your choice.
One thing I have noticed while working with the modems on Rogers@Home, is that the modem itself has an IP address in the 10.x.x.x block. Anyone else seen this? They aren't accessable from outside the @Home network though... And BTW, i'm in Vancouver, and I pay $40 a month. I've moved around a lot lately and I haven't noticed a lag in bandwidth...
that you're only added to the RBL if any of those things happen AND YOU DO NOTHING.
If you're a spammer yourself, if you stop spamming, you won't be on the RBL.
If spammers use your services, then if you change your policies to prohibit spammers and take some steps to enforce that policy, you're not on the RBL.
You get on the RBL if the mail abuse people tell you your service aids or abets spam and you tell them 'why is this my problem?'
Sending out cancels only supports a weak "UDP" that does not enjoy widespread support among the world's newsadmins, and hence needs active offensive action to carry out the UDP. An honest UDP can succeed on passive actions along, because everyone will agree not to forward the UDP'd sites traffic.
Do you really have the support you think you have?
Good riddance. @home has very quickly become the aol of high-speed access. Their admins are apathetic, their script kiddies run about on their network uncontrolled, and their users are habitual problems anywhere they're found. The proverbial type of "Damn, I can't take you ANYWHERE" people. Glad somebody is finally doing something.
I can't say whether or not he works for @home or not, but he's certainly not @home's only satisfied customer. I know several people who use @home, and I use it as well. We are all satisfied with it. There is a bit of packet loss to some sites, but it's easy enough to find a good quake server outside the @home network.
If the UDP were a passive, mass refusal to carry traffic from @home, I would support it. But active seek and destroy to all news posts originating from @home? That's a DOS attack on the (mostly) innocent users of @home. It is wrong
Actually, the way I understand it is that administrators only send @home posts to the bit bucket as they come into their own systems. This prevents all downstream servers from getting them but still allow other admins that don't honor the UDP to pass them along on their merry way. So some people will still be getting the posts. I don't think that anyone is actually wiping the posts off of servers that they don't control.
As you can see by my email address above, I'm one of the users that will be affected by this, but I'm in full support of this action. I plan on letting @home know that I am not pleased with their lack of action on this matter and will be urging other users to also express their opinions. All in a polite, non-flammable way of course.
Do this don't do that Can't you redesign.
I completely agree. I am an @home cable user and I'm disgusted by both the spammers and the blockers. Does anyone know if its possible for me to provide my exact host@domain and have it excluded from the UDP? If not, then I guess I'll just give up on Usenet (Slashdot's a better forum anyways).
My 2(where'd the cents symbol go?),
Anonymous Coward
off your hard drive. Oh shit, then your finger is the client.
Sludge wrote:
As I hinted above, servers are against the rules with @home.
Actually... You should go pull up the service agreement and read it again. It seems they've amended it recently. I was looking at it over the weekend, and all I could find was a section in "Service Characteristics" subsection "b" that basicly says "If you run a http or ftp server, someone may hack your box. Don't blame us." This surprised me, because it used to say "No servers of any kind. Period!". I'd post my SLA/AUP but it specificly restricts me doing this.
Your service agreement may read differently. In my area, @Home has lots of bandwidth. I've hit 550Kb/sec. on ftp downloads. (There's like 3 of us on the segment... :-) There's a 128k upload cap, which may account for the server restriction being removed. YMMV.
Temkin
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1 005-200-335915.html?tag=
Choosing to honor the UDP isn't a choice on their part, and it's nothing their users are aware of.
Aren't they making the choice by choosing to run whatever certain news server or set of scripts to handle these control messages? The articles said @Home averaged 11,000 cancel messages a day. That would take what, 6-10 employees every day to look up the articles, read them, and decide if they should be cancelled? Even then, they can auto-pilot those, and forward important control messages (like an UDP) to an admin for manual control.
Anyway users pretty much choose with their money whether they accept an ISP's behavior/decisions. If my little town of 15,000 can have 3-5 modem ISPs, I'd guess it's that way in much of the US.
>I am coding to UDP right now, and am perfectly happy
hm... lending a hand for a known project or experimental stuff for future ones?
admitted, Im overly curious...
In _your_ opinion, not others.
Doin a little brown-nosin', eh?
As for the packet loss issue you have mentioned... I have come up with a solution to get @home back into gear...
In October, I have created a shellscript to keep log of ping requests (every few seconds) to the @home gateway and DNS servers. This would then give me a total downtime in minutes for the month.
The month of October has shown an @home downtime of 2206 minutes on my server (logs are available)
After calling to complain at the end of the month, they gave me a measly $2.40 credit (or something like that)..
The Month of November improved slightly and gave me a downtime of only 1906 minutes (about 15% downtime). Still extremely poor.. I called and complained. Spoke with a supervisor this time. He was kind enough to give me a free month.
Then comes around the month of December. After speaking with people from the Rogers@home users association and informing them of the program I made to get people to use it (back in October)... I have noticed a significant improvement in downtime and packet loss.. Downtime has improved to just over 200 minutes (close to 0% !!).. A Lot Better.. As for January, so far I only have about 100 minutes of downtime which is very good relative to a few months ago.
If anybody would like some more info on this cheap shellscript I made, or in yelling @ supervisors to get free months (apparently they can give you 1 month credit for every 3 months of non-stable connections), feel free to email me.
Take out the 'no.spammers-xyz' in my e-mail and you've got my address..
I'll be happy to send out this shellscript I created for linux as long as I get credit for the creation..
Of course, they forge-approved it to two newsgroups that I moderate, and my 'bots cancelled it.
Aah, well, I reposted it in news.admin.net-abuse.policy. Enjoy, folks.
- Tim Skirvin (tskirvin@killfile.org)
Its not in deja.com yet, and I didn't want to reproduce it here to avoid possible copyright issues, so here is a link to it.
After my complaint email was sent, I received an automated reply stating:
a)that I would likely not ever hear anything from them regarding this matter, and
b)that they would take no action unless I included my system logfiles and other detailed information.
As a comparison point, I offer my experiences with Pacific Bell Internet Services (pbi.net), @Home's largest competitor in my area (San Jose, CA):
After a similar incident, PBI sent me an automated response, followed by a hand-written email (oxymoronic?) indicating that the user had been contacted and warned that further attempts would violate his service agreement and be grounds for termination of service. A few days later, I received a second personalized email including an explanation of the incident and an apology from the attacker (who explained that this was an accident - he was trying to test his own security and didn't realize his tools were running against a wider range of IPs).
While I don't expect this high level of service as a rule, it made me feel good about my choice of ISP.
The next thing will be spam that posts to message boards...or Slashdot spammer.
SPAMMING SHOULD COME W/ the REAL DEATH PENALTY
You see no real problem with software piracy? Excuse me, but as a software developer I would ensure that anyone who pirates my software is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I have reported employers, companies and sites to the SPA for software piracy, and shall continue to do so until there are no more WaReZ vermin around.
What's illegal about it? I own a network. I don't want packets from your network to enter mine. It's for me to determine. I have no contract with you to carry your packets. Allowing your packets to go into my network is a PRIVILEGE that I give you that can be taken away at my whim. All of it legal, since I own the pipes that carry your packets.
It's up to the individual ISPs to choose whether they process Usenet Cancel messages or not. If an ISP would be against this embargo against @home Usenet messages, they would simply change their software to ignore the cancel messages and still propagate the @home spam (this is if they are accepting Cancel messages in the first place).
As a single user, you have no idea how much bandwidth and space this spam takes up. We're talking gigabytes and terrabytes of wasted space on a DAILY basis.
You're probably ready to cry out: "But the Internet is based on mutual exchange of packets! If an ISP blocks packets from another ISP, it goes agains everything the Internet stands for and was built for!" Not really. Their needs to be a degree of respect between ISPs. @home disrepects other ISPs by flooding their networks with spam, even after multiple requests to fix the situation. Why respect someone who not only doesn't respect you, but spits in your face and causes you harm in doing so?
"But this hurts the little guy who uses @home who uses usenet". Look at the big picture. This hurts the little guy everywhere. The surgeance of spam has been flooding bandwidth everywhere. ISPs need to upgrade their pipes so that legitimate traffic can flow thru with little lag. When an ISP needs to install a few extra OC3s, not because of growth within their network but because of spam (which gives them no extra revenue), prices go up. As with most companies, most ISPs will not absorb the cost. They'll pass it on to their customers who in turn pass it on to average Joe User who dials up on a modem.
And one last thing. Who gives a flying $$#@# if a few million people can't use Usenet for a few days? How will they be hurt? By not being able to continue their flame war over baked avocados? Will people die or suffer physical harm because they can't post for a few days? Hell no. So who cares if they can't post for a while (if it gets to that point). It's not going to change my world (other than not having to wade thru so much SPAM, which is going to be quite nice for a change). At most some newsgroups will be dead because they are moderated and the moderator sits on the @home network. No big deal. It won't stop the people of this world to stop breathing, eating, sleeping (ok, some addicts may suffer from lack of sleep) or living. So those who are up in arms about this, calm the hell down and think how this really impacts you and the world: It doesn't. And if you think it does, then you might want to step away from the computer and try living in the real world for a while to get your priorities straight.
It's better to burn out than to fade away!
If it were so legal, why is MicroSoft now facing a corporate split-up?
I have @Home for about 6 months now and I think its great compared to a dial-up. Hands-down, no doubts about it. Have had no problems whatsoever. BTW, I don't work for them
And you personally witnessed these events over the past 5,000 years?
I just double checked the SLA/AUP available externally on @Home's website, and it still includes the server restriction. The one available from my house via "http://www" does not contain the server restriction. YMMV!
Temkin
Dude thats exactly what they are doing! The only people who have the power to go after these spammers is @HOME! @Home has not done this. The have a poorly set up network setup which has lots of loop holes for spammers.
... Lets not even get itno the gun shows issue.
If your an @Home customer and you want to send mail go to dejanews.com
Moderators take this message (and my reply down).
John
PS They are suing gun companies as they are negligent in allowing people access to guns. They intentionally make guns that can easily be made full automatics,
As seen on athome.announce:
Many of you have been posting your questions and concerns
in reference to the proposed Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) which
would block the @Home Network from posting to USENET. I have attached
our official response to the Usenet community and the press here but
wanted to bring attention to a couple of points that are raised here:
- This afternoon we began a network wide scan targeting open proxy
servers.
- If an open server is identified, the customer associated will be
blocked from posting to Usenet until such time we are assured that
the proxy software is secured.
------------------------------
To the USENET community:
In response to the recent UDP call for @Home Network to be removed
from interacting on the USENET, we are submitting an official
response
with a proposal of short term and long term news spam prevention
initiatives. Excite@Home is very committed to participating
respectfully on the Internet, and we have taken previous requests for
action seriously.
We have found that the primary source of our excessive USENET posting
history comes from subscribers who have installed proxy software
incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the customer, this mis-configuration has
allowed outside access to the @Home news servers, and has resulted in
our subscribers becoming spam relays. Because these various IP
addresses create holes in our network, spammers have taken advantage
of this mis-configuration, and have posted thousands of newsgroup
messages through our news machines.
As of today, we are stepping up our involvement and taking more
aggressive action by performing frequent network wide scans of our
customer base to target proxy servers. Once these customers are
identified, we are suspending their news service immediately.
Re-enabling will not occur until we are assured that their machines
are secure. We feel that this proactive effort will dramatically
decrease the amount of extraneous news traffic originating from
home.com.
We are committed to promoting better Excite@Home participation on
the
USENET, and we are in the process of modifying our current news
product and news architecture. We are also implementing more user
education as a parallel initiative.
With these new tactics in place, we are asking for an extension to
our
USENET access beyond the 18th of January and we are confident that
the
USENET community will see positive news statistics coming in the next
few days.
David Jackson
Manager, Network Policy Management
Excite@Home
Carol
Newsgroup Policy Specialist
Excite@Home
The following was posted to the @Home newsgroup athome.discussion-athomesvc by a representative of @Home.
Many of you have been posting your questions and concerns
in reference to the proposed Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) which
would block the @Home Network from posting to USENET. I have attached
our official response to the Usenet community and the press here but
wanted to bring attention to a couple of points that are raised here:
- This afternoon we began a network wide scan targeting open proxy
servers.
- If an open server is identified, the customer associated will be
blocked from posting to Usenet until such time we are assured that
the proxy software is secured.
------------------------------
To the USENET community:
In response to the recent UDP call for @Home Network to be removed
from interacting on the USENET, we are submitting an official response
with a proposal of short term and long term news spam prevention
initiatives. Excite@Home is very committed to participating
respectfully on the Internet, and we have taken previous requests for
action seriously.
We have found that the primary source of our excessive USENET posting
history comes from subscribers who have installed proxy software
incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the customer, this mis-configuration has
allowed outside access to the @Home news servers, and has resulted in
our subscribers becoming spam relays. Because these various IP
addresses create holes in our network, spammers have taken advantage
of this mis-configuration, and have posted thousands of newsgroup
messages through our news machines.
As of today, we are stepping up our involvement and taking more
aggressive action by performing frequent network wide scans of our
customer base to target proxy servers. Once these customers are
identified, we are suspending their news service immediately.
Re-enabling will not occur until we are assured that their machines
are secure. We feel that this proactive effort will dramatically
decrease the amount of extraneous news traffic originating from
home.com.
We are committed to promoting better Excite@Home participation on the
USENET, and we are in the process of modifying our current news
product and news architecture. We are also implementing more user
education as a parallel initiative.
With these new tactics in place, we are asking for an extension to our
USENET access beyond the 18th of January and we are confident that the
USENET community will see positive news statistics coming in the next
few days.
David Jackson
Manager, Network Policy Management
Excite@Home
Carol
Newsgroup Policy Specialist
Excite@Home
Especially in the binary groups. Binary posts are almost never complete, at least on the server local to me. Other servers in the @home network are almost as bad, but they limit the bandwidth to any other server but your local server. And the retention times are laughable compared to Super Zippo^W^WExtra Newsguy.
@home has not done it jobs to the Usenet community and should be punished, why should @home get all of this pity because their users wouldn't have Usenet access. Maybe the users should have thought about how bad @home's spam policy was when they signed up, then they could have expected this and could only blame themselfs. Or they could sue @home for not providing a service they payed for...I would if my ISP got a death sentence( or at least drop my account)
"Ignorance is Strength" --1984 *Ajax*
I've been an @Home subscriber for several years. I was one of the first half-dozen or so in my part of the Metro Area to get the service: I'd been anticipating it for months, excited by the enormous potential of broadband Internet access. In some ways, @Home delivered on their promises. However, there were, and are, glaring examples of neglect and incompetence. @Home's Usenet feed has been at the top of the list since day 1.
@Home's usenet philosophy has always been single-pronged: speed is the one and only aspect of Usenet that @Home has administered effectively and, on regular occasions, they've failed in this respect. As far as I can tell, @Home could care less about any Usenet issue beyond that single one. Many of @Home's servers have pathetic retention. Incomplete capture of multipart messages is a problem on most, if not all, of @Home's servers. Occasional outtages leave Usenet users high and dry. Lack of communication and/or response on the part of @Home tech support regarding Usenet issues is another principle complaint. @Home's lack of interest in usenet extends to the inclusion of new groups: in my experience, @Home only adds new groups if those groups are specifically requested by @Home subscribers. Most other major ISPs I've used have had enough motivation to regularly update their groups.
I was not aware of the @Home-Spam connection, but it doesn't surprise me in the least: it's completely in keeping with my observations of @Home's Usenet (mis)management.
OT.
... am coding to 3D game engine project after Unreal-engine-Duke Nukem Forever.
....
:) )
Since you are not an anon coward
Not too experimental, had all the R&D fun now, am knee deep in nitty gritty of rounding implementation of "all the other stuff"
though still all by my (happy) lonesome
(above post would make no sense to most people, don't ask
Corrinne Yu
3D Game Engine Programmer
I've used @Home with Cox in San Diego for something like 2 years at this point. Outside of the #%^#^ 128Kb outbound cap (vs. 400KBs pre-cap), the service has been good - I've had one or two outages over that entire period, maybe 10 hours total - you won't get a contract specifying that kind of uptime with a dedicated line without a LOT of money & effort! While I don't often see >1.1MB/s transfers, that's more the remote server than anything else; I frequently see 800KB/s+ agregate. I've never had a setup problem in spite of the fact that it's only been the last 2 months that I've had a computer in my house running a supported OS.
This system is restricted solely to Road Runner authorized personnel for legitimate business purposes only. The actual or attempted unauthorized access, use or modification of this system is strictly prohibited.
And then somebody posted the URL on Slashdot. Bet their server logs'll look interesting tomorrow!
From: Newsgroup Policy Specialiste .discussion-secur\
Subject: Usenet UDP - Excite@Home Response
Newsgroups: athome.announce,athome.discussion-athomesvc,athom
ity,athome.discussion-general
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 01:31:26 GMT
Organization: @Home Network
Reply-To: athome-news@corp.home.net
Many of you have been posting your questions and concerns
in reference to the proposed Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) which
would block the @Home Network from posting to USENET. I have attached
our official response to the Usenet community and the press here but
wanted to bring attention to a couple of points that are raised here:
- This afternoon we began a network wide scan targeting open proxy
servers.
- If an open server is identified, the customer associated will be
blocked from posting to Usenet until such time we are assured that
the proxy software is secured.
------------------------------
To the USENET community:
In response to the recent UDP call for @Home Network to be removed
from interacting on the USENET, we are submitting an official response
with a proposal of short term and long term news spam prevention
initiatives. Excite@Home is very committed to participating
respectfully on the Internet, and we have taken previous requests for
action seriously.
We have found that the primary source of our excessive USENET posting
history comes from subscribers who have installed proxy software
incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the customer, this mis-configuration has
allowed outside access to the @Home news servers, and has resulted in
our subscribers becoming spam relays. Because these various IP
addresses create holes in our network, spammers have taken advantage
of this mis-configuration, and have posted thousands of newsgroup
messages through our news machines.
As of today, we are stepping up our involvement and taking more
aggressive action by performing frequent network wide scans of our
customer base to target proxy servers. Once these customers are
identified, we are suspending their news service immediately.
Re-enabling will not occur until we are assured that their machines
are secure. We feel that this proactive effort will dramatically
decrease the amount of extraneous news traffic originating from
home.com.
We are committed to promoting better Excite@Home participation on the
USENET, and we are in the process of modifying our current news
product and news architecture. We are also implementing more user
education as a parallel initiative.
With these new tactics in place, we are asking for an extension to our
USENET access beyond the 18th of January and we are confident that the
USENET community will see positive news statistics coming in the next
few days.
David Jackson
Manager, Network Policy Management
Excite@Home
Carol
Newsgroup Policy Specialist
Excite@Home
Depending on your software, the implementation varies, but the mechanism is the same. UDP cancels are posted such that they look like they came from a site called udpcancel. You need to set up your software to reject articles with "udpcancel" in the Path: header.
The faq mentions somehting about this towards the bottom, but it's not really obvious.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
The UDP _IS_ what you say, you simply take words too literally. A passive approach (by the definition of the pepople who wrote the UDP FAQ) is the search-and-destroy that you are describing.
An ACTIVE UDP on the other hand is when the administrators simply stop forwarding the mail. They refuse to spend their money on extra disk space and bandwidth to accomodate those spammers. They do not actively seek and destroy the posts, and other news feeds can carry them if they wish (although this really is a joke and not completely true if you know how usenet work... a bunch of servers stopping traffic and not forwarding it can cause a smaller server that relies on it as its single news feed to not have this choice)
So i guess you support it now since you said you would if it was a passive thing that simply didn't forward the posts? That's what it is.
E.
How the hell did I get moderated up on that Linux Certification thing?!?
I'm on an @home cable modem, and I say good! If @home won't be good neighbours, then they shouldn't be allowed into Fred's backyard for beer and BBQ.
I'll be calling and emailing tech support telling them to clean up their act, be assured of that.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
maybe we should implement a self-filtering :) seems :)
:)
system for slashdot and all its
"haha...i rewl..first post!" or maybe
its kinda like the +b in every irc room
for the ip (*!*@*.ipt.aol.com)?
to work quite well for irc..heh although
i think this is kinda wierd to kill soo many
users..kinda like telling Sprint that they
cant make any more telemarketing calls (ya..
i get those all the time too
nuf said
Evan..
aka the mouse..
or maybe just mitemous..
take your pick..
but i'll shutup now..
bye..
what are you reading this for?
Buy a server. Buy a USENET feed. Refuse to process cancel requests. Sell the service to like minded individuals. If there are enough of you, eventually, the UDP won't mean a thing. You're free to specify what messages you accept on your own hardware. As are others.
Usenet has been around a lot longer than DNS
(back when people only used a hosts file) and
the surge of email and the need for blocking of
that spam thru tightened rules and MAPS/RBL/ORBS
stuff.
For us old farts when they announce an active
UDP after a year(365 days) of trying to get
@home to get their excreta together that means
Usenet as a community/group has had enough.
Participation in a UDP is voluntary but generally
unanimous. This is not about censorship but about
"Until you can put your affairs in order we will
leave you alone, to let you work this out. When
you are ready to be part of the community again
we will welcome you with open arms".
A UDP is really a serious indication that the ISP hasnt tried or was/is unwilling to try and fix the
problem. And that every attempt was made to help
them and alert them to this problem that was
affecting everyone else.
Would it take you a year to fix a bug in your
system?
Forget that arguement. Try this. By carrying usenet posts you are actually publishing them. @HOME can not force you to publish something anymore then they can force any private newspaper to publish anything. Oh BY THE WAY. The 1st protects you from the government. It protects you Yanks from YOUR government. MY server is outside the US. It's not run by your government. The 1st doesn't mean a damn thing here. Well unless you send the 1st Infantry-)
>You've never adminned a news server, have you?
I was going to post the same. I guess it's obvious.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
>activity, I have no problem contacting law enforcement to resolve the issue.
Oh yeah, they'll be all over that puppy.
"Don't worry about a thing, sir. Me and my partner, Officer Krupke, will take care of things. Let's see, first we'll secure the crime scene. Hey, Scott -- er, I mean, Officer Krupke, do me a favor and bring up a shell on the router. Let's bring down some services and quiet things down in here. Sir, could you turn down that Xamp over there? Thanks."
"All right, people, I've got root here now. Anybody needs a whole in the firewall will have to go through me. I'm gonna start my investigation now. Let's see here, what does the syslog say?..."
Yeah, that makes sense.
RP
...that's still no reason to abuse their good humor.
Somewhere in the past, I recall reading a thread about this very topic. The thread included some posts from the folks in charge at Hormel. The overall tone of their remarks was lighthearted and humorous. They were amused that their "trademark" had been appropriated. They commented on how many emails they had gotten on the subjsect and so forth...
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
This is what *should* happen ro rogue ISP's. If they allow spam, make sure they can't spread it. This company has done a lot of things for the Net business, most of them wrong.
A former employee posted earlier, talking about how @Hone's employees were spread too thin to handle the abuse. The way I read that, it sounds more like the execs got greedy. They expanded the company more quickly than it could realistically handle, which is why the employees were so overloaded. The bosses called a bad tune, now it's time to pay the piper. I have no sympathy for a business that gambles like that and gets burned. I do feel sorry for the employees, but that's another matter entirely.
Besides which, I don't expect this UDP to last very long. Either @Home will clean up its act, or it'll wither under the stigma of being UDP'd. Either way, their fate is in their own hands. They can bouce back, or they can screw themselves royally, but either way they will do it. No one else. I have a lot of trouble with people who are told again and again that there will be consequences for doing bad stuff, but then when those consequences finally do come about people say it's unfair. It is unfair for the legitimate @Home customers, who are going to get screwed. @Home should have realized that sooner, because they face the possibility of a class-action suit if the UDP goes into effect. Even if there's no suit, people will simply leave (and thus not be hurt by the UDP anymore, which is why I'm still supporting it; the ligitimate customers can get away from the UDP's adverse effects).
And it is an attack. It it not a "boycott" as so many seem to say
Umm, maybe i just fell down the stairs a few too many times when i was a kid but how can this possibly be a DOS attack? Usenet doesn't work like email in that messages don't get bounced, they just don't get propagated - so you won't see bouncemail flooding back to @home (ironically, they probably have the bandwidth to handle it.)
Secondly, it is not possible for a news daemon to actively delete posts off another server - that would be what we hardcore "31337 h4x0rz" like to call a "gaping security hole."
The UDP is simply an active agreement between SA's stating that we won't pass spam from one network onto another.
If the UDP were a passive, mass refusal to carry traffic from @home, I would support it.
So...you support it then?!
--FluX
What's tiny, yellow, and VERY, VERY dangerous?
a canary with the super user password
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Well I'm masquerading just fine. The only problem is the damn random disconnects. Things will work fine for a month and then the connection will drop.
<FLAME>
I'm very sick of hearing about that. It's one of those things that all the whiny technophobe pissants say whenever they feel threatened. It's them puffung up their feathers whilst nerveously looking behind them for the backing of their mob of average upstanding citizens, only to see they they've all gone home to play videogames and drink beer. Sorry, somebody's gonna get his head kicked in. Better run to mommy 'cuz you're afraid of the big bad boogey man.
</FLAME>
Seriously though. I think that people who do make these claims are getting things a little out of porportion. Most breakins are never noticed, because the person who was entering the system was polite and just needed a jumping off place to go to another network. As for the crimes against property argument, that may be so, but i see two problems with this.
One, i think the amounts that get thrown around in these cases are usually overstated by a factor of about 100 to 1000 in the media, and espescially by law enforcement. Why? To get up a good lynch mob. If they used the real values, nobody would give a damn.
Two, i think that crimes against property are overpunished, and crimes against people are underpunished. You're likely to serve more time for stealing a car than for beating your wife. Do you suppose a couple of password crackers really belong in with hardened criminals?
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
They will recieve twice as many complaints from customers demanding that they do something to have the UDP overturned.
If they ignore that, the complaints will gradually tail off as people switch to xDSL.
I'm taking a wait and see attitude for now. Let's see what they do if anything. I would expect some sort of a response from someone in the next few days.
or, how about just using deja?
Gunmakers have done absolutley nothing to stop the guns falling into the wrong hands, even after baeing asked to do so repeatedly.
To clarify one teensy point: the arms manufacturers sell to federally-licensed dealers, not directly to the public. It is a violation of Federal law for a manufacturer to sell directly to the public. Therefore, it is illogical to ask the manufacturers to stop selling into the "wrong hands". By law, they can only sell to BATF-approved and licensed dealers.
If the BATF is licensing dealers who repeatedly sell to bad guys, then it is the duty and responsibility of the BATF and the federal court system to deal with the irresponsible dealers.
Hopefully this UDP will give them a slap in the face and wake them up. They are stupid enough to route 192.168.0.x and many other internal IP address through the router. To make things worse, recently the amount of SPAMS in email has increased as well, some are generated using sequential email address generator, others just generated on their mail server.
Come on Rogers, WAKE UP!
- Etam
I spoke to a tech for Shaw@Home and he read off a "press statement" to me. It went "blah blah blah... @Home is aware... taking action... to prevent... no interruption to user service... blah blah". I asked for an copy of the "press statement" but he said that it was an confidential memo (that he was allowed to read to me?).
if at first you don't succeed, shoot the consultant who suggested you try in the first place...
Then simply alias out @home and do not take or pass on their traffic.
Ummm, isn't that was a UDP *is* basically?
That is precisely, almost verbatim from the FAQ, what a Usenet Death Penalty IS.
Maybe you should read up on the subject before you attack; it saves you face, and reduces my stress level, thus reducing the amount of coffee I drink at work, thus increasing my life expectancy and saving my company money! WOW! *grin*
I wonder how long it will be before ORBS probes somebody (without his consent, of course) who, as it turns out, has to take his site's security very seriously, and he gets ORBS kicked off it's ISP?
Seriously, if ORBS isn't careful, it could end up looking for a new ISP. I can see how they could easly get kicked-off for DOS attacks and attempted computer break-ins.
My @home service has been great and largely trouble-free. I use it on Linux and have been very happy. Of course, I hope the UDP wakes the @home folks to their lax security.
--
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
Keep up the good work then Corrinne, I'm looking forward to it.
.plan file about an orthogonal basis function, right? I just grinned because that's not usually what you see in those. ;)
I have thought, for the past couple of years, that a new protocol should be outlined especially for game packet transfer - something compact that can be more tailored to a gaming environment's needs. Or is UDP serving you alright?
Also, if I remember right, you were the person who once wrote the delightfully excited
Take care,
Many of you have been posting your questions and concerns in reference to the proposed
Usenet Death Penalty (UDP) which would block the @Home Network from posting to USENET. I
have attached our official response to the Usenet community and the press here but wanted
to bring attention to a couple of points that are raised here:
- This afternoon we began a network wide scan targeting open proxy servers.
- If an open server is identified, the customer associated will be blocked from posting
to Usenet until such time we are assured that the proxy software is secured.
------------------------------
To the USENET community:
In response to the recent UDP call for @Home Network to be removed from interacting on
the USENET, we are submitting an official response with a proposal of short term and long
term news spam prevention initiatives. Excite@Home is very committed to participating
respectfully on the nternet, and we have taken previous requests for
action seriously.
We have found that the primary source of our excessive USENET posting history comes from
subscribers who have installed proxy software incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the customer,
this mis-configuration has allowed outside access to the @Home news servers, and has
resulted in our subscribers becoming spam relays. Because these various IP
addresses create holes in our network, spammers have taken advantage of this
mis-configuration, and have posted thousands of newsgroup messages through our news
machines.
As of today, we are stepping up our involvement and taking more
aggressive action by performing frequent network wide scans of our
customer base to target proxy servers. Once these customers are
identified, we are suspending their news service immediately.
Re-enabling will not occur until we are assured that their machines
are secure. We feel that this proactive effort will dramatically
decrease the amount of extraneous news traffic originating from
home.com.
We are committed to promoting better Excite@Home participation on the
USENET, and we are in the process of modifying our current news
product and news architecture. We are also implementing more user
education as a parallel initiative.
With these new tactics in place, we are asking for an extension to our
USENET access beyond the 18th of January and we are confident that the
USENET community will see positive news statistics coming in the next
few days.
David Jackson
Manager, Network Policy Management
Excite@Home
Carol
Newsgroup Policy Specialist
Excite@Home
I'm one of the users who is going to be hit by this UDP. I can tell you that I absolutely wholeheartedly support the action even though I'm gonna get screwed. I have not given my @home email address to a single soul on the planet. The only mail it gets is spam, and lots of it. @home needs to control thier servers and also needs to stop allowing people to scarf their user's addresses unless they specifically request it.
most people who are spamming do it through servers
that are open in some way or anonymously, so
how will cutting off a whole server accomplish
anything ?
LET'S HEAR IT FOR ANARCHY!!!
THE SYSTEM WORKS!!!
Parents are legally responsible for the acts of their minor children. Jr. abuses the @Home account, Dad (or Mom) pays. It's called responsibility, folks.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
@Home is not an ISP. @Home is a brand. My ISP is Shaw(.ca), yet I'm part of @home.
I shall make no comments as to shaws position on spam, I don't know what it is, because to me it has not been an issue. But, I believe it is a serious injustice to cut off home.com when it is an umbrela for what are really a large number of independant ISP's with an agreement on content. Even the AUP is not entirly consistant between ISPs.
Any attempt to block home.com news is inappropriate and should rather be done on a specific ISP basis.
I've found even the modified search forms (there are several floating around) hard to use given Deja's current breakage. The real lifesaver for me is dejasearch, a command line utility. Throw it a search and it saves the result set to a file which you can then browse. Find it here at Freshmeat.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
How are you doing with your services?
;)
Im currently on GTE dsl. Im getting 756kbit/s downstream and 128kbit/s upstream.
Other than the fact that it's expensive and used to suffer from frequent outtages (this seems to have been resolved), i'm satisfied enough with the service. It could be better.
They offer dynamic ip, which makes me pretty dependent on dynamic dns, but the upside is that i can have as many ip's as i need.
Supposedly there's some kind of frame relay/ quality of service system that ensures that i get the proper amount of bandwidth (no more, no less)
and it seems to work ok.
Tech support is... well tech support
Expect to get charged service fees here and there if you request small changes. Expect to get bounced around alot. But if you're persistant, you'll get it completed. Their infrastructure seems kind of new, but it's slowly improving.
Oh, and sometimes my network latency gets up to 100ms but that's about it.
Altogether I'd recommend gte dsl to everyone.
USENET eats more resources than any other protocol alive. I believe that the kind of resources used in netcasting RealVideo are lower than what the backbone USENET servers use.
Dunno. I'd say the US embargo against Cuba has valid reasons. It certainly isn't pretty, but I support it.
Your analogy is sickening. Ninty-nine percent of the people using Windows do not have the technical ability, knowledge of other OSes at the time they purchased, or the option of choosing another OS (like in companies). You can be upset with company IT people that choose Windows. I *personally* hate anyone with an IT position who chose Windows for their company. It is, however, unacceptable for you to be upset with the users at home that don't have the knowledge or skills necessary to use another OS, or the corporate workers whose OS is dictated by tyrannical IT people. It is not their fault, and they already suffer.
BeOS could solve a lot of this if it would get more popular...OS X needs maturity, and Linux isn't gonna be a consumer OS for years to come.
Laws *still* aren't designed to suit the Internet well. End of story.
That's why I don't pity the Windoze users when they BSOD. (Or at least I try not to show any compassion.) They put money into Microsoft's pockets instead of hiring good people.
Yeh, but what about all us software pirates?
"Suble Mind control? why do html buttons say submit?",
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The true problem with 'kiddie porn' or porn with (often VERY) underaged children is that, unless we're talking 16-17 year old here, children are not mentaly or physicaly ready for sex. A lot of underaged porn is created for the european pedofile market and much of the time it involves kidnapping and coercing (often raping) children to have sex. Drugs are also quite often used to.
The truth is that underaged pornography destroys the very real lives of very real people. If your looking at under 14s most of them didn't have a choice in the matter. When you're checking out Hustler, Playboy, one of the many European hardcore porn mags, you're seeing people who were payed to be photographed. When you look at child pornography, you're usually looking at someone who didn't know better or who was threatened and beaten to do what they're doing.
Jay
Oh no, the RBL is much more powerful and deadly than that. It stands for Realtime Blackhole List, and as I understand it, the 'Blackhole' part really means what it says: all packets, and I mean ALL packets, from the blackholed host(s), including their routers, are sent DIRECTLY to hell (/dev/null) by ALL routers which subscribe to said list. This means that the guilty hosts are _completely_ dead as far as the Net is concerned. :)))))))
Because of its power, the folks who maintain the RBL insist on very, very stringent rules before they'll blackhole anyone, remembering that spammers are an example of the breed of demihuman we call 'unsociable', and who are therefore quite likely to try to blackhole, for example, anybody who's voluntarily taking part in a UDP against them. They are the dirtiest fighters out there, and spam is an example of their tactics. If they could use chemical or biological weapons against us white hats, they would do it in a heartbeat.
To learn more, go here:
http://maps.vix.com/rbl/
White hats have great power as long as we stick together against the bullies, just like we used to do in the playground!
Join the UDP if you can!!! It will bring @home back into the fold faster if you do, and any _innocent_ users of theirs will therefore be relieved sooner.
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
How does your reasoning work on spam for porn?
And exactly what harm is coming to the subscribers? They can't get their alt.sex.stories feed for a few days? How's about we look at the harm caused to countless ISPs who host news servers around the world. Spam has been estimated to account for approximately 15% of the total traffic on the internet. When that spam is posted on Usenet, it is being copied to thousands of computers. The amount of space that spam takes up on news servers alone, not even counting email, just news, can be measured in terrabytes. This causes ISPs to have to upgrade their servers and bandwidth to levels far higher than would otherwise be necessary.
Of course, who cares about a bunch of ISPs being financially harmed, suffering very real losses to their business, when @Home subscribers are being inconvenienced and may have to resort to using Deja.com to read Usenet messages? As an end user, I care ! Who do you think gets passed the cost of the otherwise unnecessasary upgrades? Who do you think suffers a degradation in connection quality due to the massive spam traffic going through the Internet? Who do you think gets a reduced Usenet feed because the FIFO (first in, first out) nature of most news servers causes spam to expire legitimate traffic sooner than it should. We, the collective users of the Internet, do! And I'm one of the lucky ones; I don't have to pay for the amount of time that I'm connected. But many people do, and they are forced to remain online for much longer than necessary because their news reader or email reader doesn't know spam from any other message and downloads it all.
Spammers force us all to pay for their advertising; they are far, far worse than pickpockets, because pickpockets are far less widespread and don't steal from millions of people at a time. And the only people that can do anything about the massive onslaught of spam coming from @Home users is @Home; I can't stop them, you can't stop them, the collective readership of Usenet can't stop them. Only @Home can do anything about it, and if they choose to turn a blind eye and let hundreds of people steal from me and every other user of Usenet then fuck em, their business can go straight into the toilet, and the faster the better, because every day that they are connected to the Internet, they are allowing hundreds of scumbags to steal money directly from backbone providers, ISPs and end users. The average @Home user has to use another news service for a while until @Home pulls their heads out and gets with the program. I'll take the lesser of two evils and support the UDP.
Deosyne
> The WORST thing that has EVER happend when an otherwise mentally stable individual has downloaded or otherwise VEIWED ANY sort of pornography, is quite simply that they had to clean up a sticky mess from masturbating. Downloading, viewing, and exchanging porn is fine in my eyes.
You're ignoring the fact that for child porn to be produced, a child has to be abused. And often hurt badly (physically and/or mentally) in the process. "So what's wrong with redistributing stuff that's already been produced?" you ask...
1. Its an invasion of the child's privacy. They didn't ask for their picture to be taken in sexual situations, and I'm sure they don't want millions of people observing them in these situations. Once they get old enough to understand, the fact that pornography of them is widely available has got to be disturbing. Not to mention the fact that it makes them a target for further abuse - a kid who doesn't tell about one time is less likely to tell if it happens again.
This also applies to adult porn produced non-consensually.
2. Increased demand leads to increased production. Which leads to more kids getting victimized.
Not to mention you're assuming that the people who view porn are otherwise mentally stable. In many cases this may be true. But in some cases it is going to lead to further problems. Probably moreso in the case of child pornography, since people who view child pornography are probably much more likely to have further problems. After all, to have a child pornography habit, they have to already A. be attracted to children, and B. Have either the lack of willpower to ignore their impulse to view pictures of children being abused, despite what their conscience tells them, or they don't have a moral problem with it to begin with.
Consensual adult pornography is a different story. While I still have problems with it (many of the women involved have been raped/abused in the past, or are feeding a drug addiction, or otherwise have low self worth which is being taken advantage of), it is *their choice* to have their picture available.
This really pisses me off. I notice no more spam from @home than anywhere else. Spam is simply here to stay anyway. As an @home user and frequent poster to various discussion groups I'm a bit irked to say the least. I've noticed a lot of other posters from @home in those groups also. We don't spam and we simply discuss on topic things. Before this guy gets his UDP thing done, I think someone should figure out the spam to non spam ratio of @Home usenet posts. Also, in case a lot of people don't know, @home is a cable internet provider and many of us have static ips. I have a hard time believing that @home is the originator of so much spam that it would cause someone to take action when any post i make could be traced back to me and me alone very easily, or any other @home user. I find that I hold myself even more accountable than I would otherwise because of this. If someone took the time to figure this out before jumping out and making rash decisions, I bet they'd see a huge growth in the amount of @home users which I'd warrant would account for increased spam, if there even is legitimately such an @home spam problem. I don't think the ratio would be any higher than for any other providor. N
Golly gee, and here I was thinking that telnet was a client. Guess not.
Find a particular server? How is it any differnt from email? Should every ISP just automatically allow anyone, free of charge, to have an email acount on their server?
Well, there *is* the fact that the UDP doesn't exist in the email world...
The server your ISP has doesn't have all the groups you want? That is your ISP (or whoeevr runs the server) fault. Complain to them. I know that here where I work, we are willing to add any group to our feed that is requested by a user.
Betcha you aren't willing to add alt.binaries.mp3s or whatever NG carries mp3s on usenet if you don't have it already.
Open Proxies are not open usenet servers. An open proxie is a proxie server that ANYONE can connect to. This allows ANYONE on the net to "Hide" their real adress by connecting to the proxie and having the proxie connect for them.
I think that anyone should have the right to run whatever servers they want to. Of course, they're responsible for the content...
The problem here is that A) 99% of the time this is NOT the intent of the machines owner but a mis-configuration that others are taking advantage of. B) This allows spammers to post spam to email and usenet without ANY audit trail to track them back to their ISP. This means that it APEARS like the person with the relay is sending the spam.
A) This is silly. There are much worse configurations that are put on cable modems (which are the bane of security experts everywhere). Try probing a few cable-modem machines with Samba, various DoS Windows programs or look for open Sendmail machines. They're all over. Cable-modems and uninformed users are a bad match. Cable modems, IMHO, should be banned by the gov'mt. Everything oughta use DSL. Cable modems are such a lousy architecture.
B) Well, then I guess the'll find out it was a bad idea to run the proxy, because their account will get canceled. So what?
You know...if it was JUST the fact that I get an ocasional email advertisment I wouldn't care. However, spammers are much worst than that. Do you know what a spammer can do to an unsuspecting network?
Given what you're responding to, I take it that you're saying "yes, spammers are worse than demons".
First of all I would like to say how happy I am with my @Home service. I am capped at 100kb a second up, and routinely get 250kb+ download even at peak times. I also have noticed no packet loss as I am an avid gamer. Unfortunately these speeds make it easier for people to post large amounts of material on the news servers. That is spam, but I think it is more a result of users taking advantage of their fast connection rather than @Home's deliberate negligence. Hopefully there is a way to keep legitimate satisfied users (like me) on newsgroups. I'd hate to see a few people abusing their service ruin it for the rest of us.
Not Troll, moderators...he caught you on an interesting point. This guy isn't providing us with fact (which would be informative), only his opinion (which, at best, would be interesting; I'd have to side with the AC on this one in that knowing quakeaddict's Usenet habits just aren't that interesting to me). Read the mod FAQ, insert quarter, and try again.
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
@home in canada is notorious however. I have heard how bad it is but you might try thinking that perhaps it is that cut corner isp in Canada, not @home as a whole.
The few times that I had trouble with my connection a person was out from Cox cable that day. The guy was very nice and did some things and replaced my cable modem. A day later when the thing was still happening he figured out from the time of night that it was happening it that it coincided with the dew coming. He went out to the box and noticed that a sleeve on the cable connection was cracked. After fixing it i have had very fast error free service for close to 2 years.
If there is a better ISP than this it must be in someone's dreams only or perhaps in heaven. Every other user of @home around Omaha, Ne, has had similar experiences that I have talked with.
Oh, and if this guy gets this thing through, I'm going to do some research and if I find that lots of spam is coming from primenet.com (his isp according to the post on deja.com that the article refers to) I'll move for a UDP against them. Two can play at his little blanket-udp-like-this-is-1978- and-the-few-hundred-people-who-might-be- spamming-are-representitive-of-100s-of-thousands- who-are-not-Udp-crap.
You just wait, Mr. I can control usenet.
N
I'd axe the cable. The only place cable speeds are going is south, and they cost more than a dialup. You're more secure with a dialup. With a modem, at least you have a guaranteed rate (I never get below 48kbps on my 56k modem, and generally above 50kbps).
DSL beats the snot out of cable...if only availability was wider...sigh.
A couple years ago when I still read USENET, if you wanted a dedicated third-party news server, the best was zippo.com. I don't know if they're still around, but they had a great rep.
Actually, this UDP does NOT affect the ability of @home users to read any messages they want. It's just that the messages they post may get killed before anybody reads them. It's a gag, not an earplug.
I thought I'd point that out. It's entirely ontopic. The other nice thing about Deja is that it doesn't let you crosspost, and doesn't provide Binary access unless you pay them.
Fist Prost-The otherwise friendly first poster who has been rather inactive lately...
I sympathize with @home (and especially for the many users). UCE is a very very difficult problem and if you think it will go away just by banning @home then guess what will happen when everyone dumps 56k and switches to DSL or cable modems? UCP for everyone! Then again, usenet is crap even without the spam
---
ok that was quick. After reading this http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=570620876&fmt=tex t I've decided that this drastic action is in fact justified. It's unfortunate for the innocent users as this kind of service is very expensive and other alternatives may not be available at their location.
---
What I've *never* seen is this famous internet kiddie porn. (though I haven't really looked for it). How come, do you think?
Producing child pornography is illegal almost everywhere. (though some enforce the laws quite losely). Thus there is almost always a case against whoever outs it on the net. Thus you don't want the wrong people (cops) finding it.
Point being, the justice system actually has a case, so it is not really a "internet problem"
"Regular" porn is a completely different story. You and I may dislike it, but IT IS NOT ILLEGAL!!!
You want to ban porn? Fine! start with defining what "porn" is. Picures of intercource? Genitalia? General nudity? Bare legs? Women without a veil?
We can (and ought to) stop porn sites with illlegal (unmoral) business practices, just like spammers, but separate business practice from content. Spamming for a "good cause" is still spamming. Putting intercource videos on a site where it is legal is still legal.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Why not UDP the phone company until they stop drug deals from happening over their wires?
Hrm, interesting. I'd change it to "Why doesn't the phone company UDP people for causing damage to their network".
Oops, hold it, they can and do. If I hook up equitpment to the PSTN that is incompatible with their network, they have the right to suspend my service until such time as I come back into technical complience with the standards.
Usenet is doing something very simliar. The instant that @home comes back into technical complience, they will be allowed back on the net. They need to close some open proxies.
Till then their users can use Daja (the phone booth on the street corner.
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
If you don't like it, get an account with an ISP who plays by the rules.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
OK, so most people here rightly complain against censorship.
And yet here we have hordes of slashdot posters positivly rejoicing that EVERY @home user is going to be censored.
Can you sy "hypocrite", folks?
And before you point out the UDP FAQ, here is the bit you woudl use to defend yourselves -
"No. Firstly, the legal definition of censorship in the USA (where, unfortunately, most of the spammers are, even when they use resources outside the USA) is that it can only be done by the government - private entities can not, by definition, be guilty of censorship. Outside the US, laws are varied.
Secondly, even ignoring that definition, and using the uninformed public's opinion of what censorship is [preventing someone from saying something that they don't like], this does not fall under that criteria, either. The articles being canceled or shunned by pathhost aliasing are not picked and chosen by their content - ALL articles from the offending site are canceled or shunned. It has nothing to do with likes and dislikes - it has to do with abuse by one system of all of the other systems on usenet.
"
Sorry, that is just bullshit. Choosing to redefine "censorship" arbitrarily does not change the FACT that the UDP is censorship, pure and simple.
*sigh* Just another example of the rampant hypocracy around here.
Oh, and no, I am not a spammer, and I woudl personally like to see every spammer publically beheaded (an idea for pay-per-view!). However, I do not accept that you can wage war on large numbers of innocent people in order to defeat a FEW spammers who will simply move to another isp very easily and quickly.
Hey, guess what folks? I got some spam from someone in France - let's UDP all French ISPs, eh? It's exactly the same argument, folks.
http://www.orbs.org/bugtraq.html
If this is the same poster who's posted in a number of other threads, what she (generic pronoun) is objecting to is not path filtering, but third-party cancels. Path filtering alone is known as a passive UDP; what @home is being considered for is an active UDP where ALL posts from @home are being cancelled by spam-cancellers. Part of the reason for the objection is, if I remember correctly, that in an active UDP, news admins who aren't intentionally participating in the UDP will still have @home postings removed, because they haven't configured their news server to restrict third party cancels. This is different from a passive UDP inasmuch as only those news admins who have consciously decided to participate in the UDP will drop the messages.
Personally, I think that any news admins that have a significant feed, that is accepting just any old third-party cancels, is going to have a crippled news feed anyway, due to the actions of cancellers with less "noble" agendas (e.g. Scientologists' various attempts to shut down alt.religion.scientology); so inadvertently participating in UDPs is the least of the problems such a news server has. But the practice of third-party-cancelling posts that aren't spam should be questioned, and the questioner deserves a reasoned and well-thought-out response. Which I'm not really qualified to give.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Pan is nice, rather stable, and going in the right direction, however it lacks several things to be actually usable: a killfile and a search facility. Without that, it's impossible to do anything useful in the crowded Usenet.
slrn supports Grouplens, but apparently this project isn't accessible anymore. They've moved to a commercial (closed source) model, and there does'nt seem to be any kind of public access. But I might be wrong.
That is the problem with a zero variable cost system like email or usenet. You can send as many messages as you like, and if you get just a small percentage response, that can make for a viable business.
Look at phones. Here in Ireland, where there is a charge for local telephone calls, you don't get companies cold-calling you to sell you something. It may make Internet access more costly, but it has one advantage atleast.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
well Actually the gunmakers have done all they can. You can thank the lack of support to the Government. Did you know that in Nevada when they made it easy for people to get a CONCELLED WEAPONS permit the crime rate dropped and is still dropping???? Perhaps while UDP is a good next step a DOS against the spammers directly could be more effective??? who knows.
ORBS is an automated service. If your server is an open relay (the tests ORBS employs are the best around), you will be put into the list automatically. Yes, you will be notified about this. But there is no way to stop or delay this block, unless you fix your servers.
On the Bugtraq issue, read this page
I think this is a very good thing. Over the past years spam and abuse have been on the rise, but the UDP has been on a decline. Back when it first started I would here every week about some network that couldn't control it's users would get a UDP slapped on em, now this is probably the first one I have heard in about 2 years!
I think this is a really good thing, if they can not behave or control their network in a productive manner, they should be "banned" from using (abusing) other servers on the Internet.
I also think it should carrry over more, have a RBL thing that not only blocks news feeds from abusive networks, but also email, web, irc, everything. Just choke out their whole dam 'X' class from moving data over
Then again, their would have to be an honest commitee that thoughly investigates and decides how and who doesn't go into the List...
If they can't control their network in a reasonable way, they should have that privlage taken away. I would also like to see a M(ail)DP put on American Online, have you notice the spam coming from their dial up lines? Look at the next spam you get, 9/10 it will come from one of the AOL dial up lines, those fscking bastards.
On a side offtopic note. AOL has had these spammers (in their words) "hacking" into users dial up accounts and sendout out massive amounts of spam with our domain name in the "From:" header. Needless to say, we have been getting hunderds of spam reports thinking this email came from our site. I contacted AOL many times via email and phone, and one of their postmasters told me "We can not stop this users, they are breaking into user accounts and sending their email from those hacked accounts. You calling up here doesn't help any, send all complaints to abuse@aol.com and we will take it from there. Please don't call back, there is nothing we can do and calling up here only wastes both our times"
It has been over 2-3 months we have been getting spam reports because our domain name is forged in the headers and AOL can NOT do basic spam control on it's own network... sigh
Anyone have any suggestions, I have no money for a lawyer and no legal skills what so ever. Any way to slove this problem on the techinal field?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Nice going, guys... his phone must be ringing off the hook because all I get is voice mail...
excite@home the current administrators of the entire @home systems are 100% worthless at best. I would love to see them kicked out of the system and have the big guys put in place a group that knows the following things...
1. Customers are always right, make them happy at all costs.
2. get off your butt and actually do something.
3. always bend over backwards for the techs in the field instead of whining at them.
@home has the potential to squash everything.. only if they get excite out of it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
First off, yes, I'm an @Home subscriber. That said, I must further iterate that I'm not an annoyed @Home subscriber. Service has been adequate.
/. discussions, esp. those dealing w/Anonymous Cowards posting in Troll-ish fashion here, that dealt with the responsibility of controling what's allowed to be posted in an open forum. Doesn't deciding what shall NOT be posted make you responsible (legally) for what IS? Again, there was a name for this, but my memory doesn't work so good at this time of day.
I was reading the UDP FAQ, and came to item 6. I no longer remember the title, but it deals with censorship. They choose to define censorship as something only governments can do. However, I seem to recall past
This may escalate the nerd-quotient, but how about a picture of a viking. :)
--- Bizard Legal Fantasy Mode Engaged ---
Frankly, if I were at @home lawyer and a bastard, I'd love it if the UDP were instituted against @home. It would be trivially easy to collect a nice fee from @home for identifying the individuals who are issuing cancels and suing their pants off. I could even imagine a class action suit on the part of @home users against the perpetrators of the UDP, claiming irreparable damage and denial of free speach.
--- End Bizarre Legal Fantasy Mode ---
It's not like usenet wasn't full of spam long before @home existed, folks...
the first spam was done by two married lawyers. They received so many mail bombs their ISP's server went down. I guess that quickly became not a viable solution as hard drive sizes and proliferation of spam increased.
> Doin a little brown-nosin', eh?
No, I just thought the above author seemed to correctly summarize the situation.
I could care less about the author's karma. =P
You got a *friendly* @home rep who actually talked to you?
Do you have her extension?
> You see no real problem with software piracy?
> Excuse me, but as a software developer I would
> ensure that anyone who pirates my software is
> prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I have
> reported employers, companies and sites to the
> SPA for software piracy, and shall continue to
> do so until there are no more WaReZ vermin
> around.
And as a software developer, I do not feel that
I have the right to stop anyone from copying
or using my programs, No matter what the law says.
No amount of copying or use can ever hurt me in
any way shape or form. I have never reported
anyone to the SPA, nor will I ever.
All software which I hold copyright for gets
released under GPL or other Free Software
licence.
Of course...im just plain not a capitalist.
I don't care about the money. Sure I could make
money by writting software and forcing people
under penalty of law to pay for it...but I feel
that is immoral, so I don't do it.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I agree with you tottally. However it is a
completely differnt issue. I do not believe that
that is any sort of reason to regulate the net.
The people who force children into these
situations are horrible and deserve to be
hunted down. However, prohibiting thier warez
does not stop them. They will always be able
to profit.
Whenever you prohibit a product, you increase
its value, and thus perpetuate its market. It
is the dark underbelly of capitalism.
I do not believe that a person who simply views
anything should be persecuted. Go after the
monstors. Kill the root of the problem, not
the symptoms.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
So which alt.binaries group do you frequent?
How is your gigs-a-week posting any better than the spammers that this UDP is set out to curtail?
If the entire alt.binaries heirarchy dropped off my Usenet server, I would not miss it one bit. Chances are your News server's admin wouldn't either. -Every- Usenet server admin I have talked to(3, each from a different ISP) spits in disgust at people like you, posting hundreds of megabytes of porn, warez, mp3's. Bragging and flooding feeds with '0-day' software, cracks, and related 'filez'. One I talked to, said that if he killed alt.binaries.* he would free up -90%- of his news spool. (I have no numbers to back this up with unfortunately.) Now, that's unfair in many ways, due to the intrinsic size difference of a binary post vs textual post, but even just with an article count, the difference is -staggering-.
Yes, I agree with you, that the best method of accelerating the resolution of @home's problems is for users like you to complain to them. Hopefully something additional will come some day, and clean out the alt.binaries groups as well.
Posted anon on purpose, and I'll admint it's flamebait-ish. Last time I spoke my mind about a member of a 'group' in a public forum with my Ident visible, I was DoS'ed for weeks. Heaven forbid a 'group' member might not be considered just and angelic. Posting anon is merely a case of least hassle.
For authenticity, it should include an annoying sound plug-in.
)(:-)
Or, better yet, not.
Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
Mitsubishi ad
We apologize for the inconvenience.
As a customer of @Home, I would like vote with my feet, but since they have the monopoly on cable Internet in my area, there isn't really much I can do.
Speaking as one of their 'innocent' (at least in my eyes) users, I whole-heartedly support the UDP against @Home. If there was something I could do to stop the spam I would. As it is, I'm going to get very noisy on my end about them addressing this UDP with all due haste. It isn't like I've posted to USENET in the last four or five months anyway, but I figure it won't hurt to turn up the heat on them from the inside too.
On the other hand, my firewall is pretty reliable. If I could find some open servers that would allow me posting I'd happily avoid the @Home servers entirely.
-Joe
>Not too experimental, had all the R&D fun now, am knee deep in nitty gritty of rounding implementation of "all the other stuff" .... though still all by my (happy) lonesome
Impressive, Im looking forward to the next 3DRealms engine.
The annoying aspect with that rounding stuff however is that it usually turns out to be the larger part of the work...
Of course you shouldnt underestimate the networking thing, Carmack needed four games to get that right, and Sweeney needed many betas.
Some (possibly redundant) hints for UDP:
- bandwidth is king, for analog modems
- if you overload modem bandwidth, you get some nice +1000 ms ping (queueing, same for ISDN)
- modems tend to "resync" pretty often if they are unsure about connection quality (e.g. the connection regularly is gone for 5 secs, and the queues fill up like hell)
- the 28+2/UDP+PPP byte packet overhead is annoying, again for analog modems
- cable modems often seem to have terrible packet loss (seems to be a "broadcast and hope that it doesnt collide and just drop it if it does" principle)
- dynamic bandwidth estimation is much fun (which perhaps is the reason why Q3 and others let the user set it as a static value). You may want to go for the receivers end if you want to try this.
- pps needs to be constant and independent of fps
- "Power Play" wont give any advantage for non-analog users if the ISP has headroom on his subnet and the server is located in that subnet (except for very minor UDP header compression advantage)
wrong. spammer will have a hard time ever finding an ISP.
I , for one, have tolerated @home user's big flood for too damn long. posting huge, repeated binaries and such. IMHO the UDP comes rather late.
All that a recipient of spam can reliably know is the originating ISP (this is know, because the IP of the remote is known in ths logs and must be correct - this IP would be news.isp.net, probably). If this IP were to be incorrect (spoofing) then no data could have returned to the remote and the protocol would have failed, so no spam in the first place.
It dosn't work at that level. All the receiving MTA knows is the IP address of the machine which connects to it. (It can then find out other things, such as DNS address, if the machine responds to an ident query, etc.)
N.B. if the email was relayed by any relay then the recieving MTA knows only about the relay.
actually, according to the UDP FAQ, UDP cancel's are sent with a header that identifies the cancel as a specific UDP cancel, so server admins can configure their servers to either ignore or implement specific cancels.. i.e. it can ignore "regular" cancels, but act on UDP ones, or ignore UDP and act on "regular" ones, or ignore both, or act on *all* cancels.. etc. The choice still lies with the server admin.
Why don't you try flipping the bill for the extra resources it takes to process the spam? Spam costs ISP's money. ISPs are supposed to have a direct connection to a network. This theoretically should not really cost all that much. All of the various businesses and such don't have metered access and are most likely operating on a monthly fee of some sort at the worst.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Didn't I say that consensual adult porn is an entirely different thing from child porn? While I have problems with it, I'm quite aware that it isn't illegal. And I don't think it should be, either.
However, my point was that the original poster claimed there was nothing wrong with the distribution of *any* porn, child or otherwise.
And yes, its true that it is harder to find child porn (especially when you aren't looking for it). That doesn't mean it doesn't happen (I've seen people spamming child porn sites on IRC, as well as channels that make no effort to hide their contents), or that its not a problem.
>In general I think usenet is just elitist in general. Anyone who wants to post must obtain a client.
Damn them all to hell. Who do these guys think they are, requiring a software program.
USENET if you are listening, make your self available to those of who don't have your so-called "client" or a computer or a monitor or a nearby powersupply!!! Freedom for the people!!!
:)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
One of the big problems with @Home's dealing with abuse is that there are multiple companies involved. There is @Home, which the abuse reports get sent to, and the cable company that the user is a customer of. When @Home receives an abuse report it's not within their authority to shut the customer down as they're not their customer, they're a customer of the cable company, and the cable company must be convinced to shut the person down. From a few things I've heard it seems that the cable company sometimes takes a "Why should we care?" attitude. This extra level of bureaucracy can't help but cause problems.
@Home does, however, control the news servers, so it is within their authority to block someone from accessing the news servers if they are spamming or have an open relay. This seems to be what they are trying to do now that they are faced with the threat of a UDP. I only wonder why they weren't more vigilant with this in the first place.
Some @Home providers, like Shaw and Rogers, run their own abuse departments which seem more effective. Shaw, in particular, seems to be very effective in taking swift action against spammers.
Finally, some people have mentioned @Home and email spam. I can't say I remember ever receiving one spam email that was sent from @Home. 99% of the ones I get seem to come from AOL, PSI.net and UUnet dialup accounts.
Robert Hancock
First of all, SPAM takes up bandwidth. The "direct connection to a network" you refer to is finite in size. If the amount of SPAM increases, the ISP has to increase (read, purchase more full time circuts) their bandwidth in order to provide the same level of service.
Second, the SPAM has to be stored somewhere..did you think that a "direction connection to a network" somehow provided unlimited disk space?
IRC server.
Flame all you want, but try running an irc server on a large network for awhile, and then come back and let me know how you feel about computer crimes. Sometimes legal recourse IS the proper solution.
The damage is real and the cost is real. Yes, sometimes it's small. Other times it disrupts service for hundreds or thousands of other people.
Just because the person breaking into a system is polite doesn't mean he fully understands the system. (If that were true, one might argue that there's no challenge to break in). Because he doesn't know the whole system, there's a good chance that something gets changed or tinkered with that has an unintended effect.
It's a crime because you're messing with something that does not belong to you.
Whether property crimes are overpunished is another issue altogether.
- SEAL
You miss the point. Anyone with enough technical sophistication to firewall @home would most likely have enough brains to not let the world relay through their machine.
If someone is blocking @home but not the world, then they can't claim to have misconfigured their proxy and they can be dealt with individually through the abuse@home.com route.
Nah, a good caning would do.
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
I've taken more from the internet than I will ever give back. If someone wants some of my code they can have it. Maybe I'd feel differently if I was more talented?
"Don't open the gates, who the hell needs a wooden horse that size?"
Flux, do you even know what an active UDP is?
Read the FAQ:
http://www.stopspam.org/usenet/faqs/udp. html
Pathost aliasing is usually associated with passive UDP, and this is explicitly an active UDP.
Yes, messages do indeed get "actively deleted" off other servers.
That's not, as you called it, "a gaping security hole". It's the normal default functionality of most news server software. You have to explicitly remove that functionality for it to not be there, with most commonly-used news servers.
You might want to read this faq, as well:
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/ usenet/cancel-faq/part1/
thanks for clearing that up for me. i was in fact mistaken. however, i do maintain that the UDP is a fair means of erradicating a SPAM problem.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume