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Spammers Land Optusnet On spews.org Blacklist

Posted by timothy on from the anger-is-good-use-the-force dept.

downundarob writes: "In Australia there are essentially only two major backbone suppliers; eventually all traffic either rides on Telstra (Part govt. owned) or OptusNet (part of C&W Optus). According to this page OptusNet has gotten itself on spews.com blacklist, potentially causing issues for a large percentage of Australian Internet users." Update: 09/30 12:01 GMT by T :DanielS writes: "Looks like Optus did indeed back down; according to the SPEWS listing & delisting info page, Optus were removed after shutting down the DNS service."

5 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. huh? by dcardamo · · Score: 5, Informative

    spews.com is a porn site for sale.... spews.org on the other hand. Might want to change that link before 18 year olds go to it.

  2. Removed already by cdraus · · Score: 5, Informative

    from www.spews.org:

    Optusnet.com.au, reports they have shut down the dynamic-DNS spam service run by the Dean Westbury gang on their network. In response, the SPEWS listed network addresses were removed from the list.

  3. Story errors by kimba · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. OptusNet is owned by Optus which is owned by Singapore's SingTel. Cable and Wireless sold Optus some time ago.

    2. Optus and Telstra aren't the only backbone providers in Australia, to say that all traffic in .au ultimately goes through them is a lie. For example, UUNet is a very large backbone provide in Australia. (Probably bigger than Optus)

    I think we can mark downundarob down as +1 Troll.

  4. Overblow, over-hyped. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    A few minor facts.
    #1. Spews has very minor penetration. Going via
    the optusnet mailservers I can't find anywhere
    that actually bounced my mail while the block
    was in place.

    Consequence of which is that basically no-one
    would have noticed the spews block.

    #2. 'half of australia's traffic is unmitigated
    nonsense. 'Optusnet' is the dial-up arm of
    Optus and it currently ranked as the #3 (or #4
    depending on who's counting) ISP in australia.
    Their market share is nothing like 50%. 10% maybe.

    #3. 'won't be able to reach large parts
    of Europe and the US' is sheer junk. As mentioned
    about, the number of sites that use spews appears
    to be near zero. Does anyone know a major site
    that actually _uses_ spews? I couldn't find one.

    1. Re:Overblow, over-hyped. by richard-parker · · Score: 5, Informative

      Does anyone know a major site that actually _uses_ spews? I couldn't find one.

      I couldn't find any statements (definitive or otherwise) from any big players saying that they are using SPEWS. However, by looking at the reports in news.admin.net-abuse.email and the bounce messages that I asked to be forwarded to me I think the two largest users of SPEWS are:

      Pacific Bell - a large telecom on the US west coast.

      Outblaze - a mailbox outsource company which handles mail for such sites as Mail.Com (a free mailbox provider).