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Spammers Land Optusnet On spews.org Blacklist
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."
Umm, why those blacklists are implemented on public backbones (like above.net, etc) ?
It's not like one of those anti-spam guys filters all connections to his personal machine,. If I pay to my ISPs and they pay to backbone, aren't they supposed to provide me with all the bandwith I want without filtering it ? How come someone on ISP could decide which mail I want to receive ? I'm paying for Internet, not for a part of Internet, and if I want to filter out spam, I would do so myself w/o anyone's help.
There was a recent case when macromedia.com wasn't accessible because some idiot mistaken it for a spam house - but WFT public backbone started using it ?
Shouldn't OpusNet be able to sue whatever ISP was doing filtering for breach of contract ? I presume contract does not say "any psycho could censor all IP packets if he thinks one of the name servers is might be used by spammer", so ISPs that do this filtering should be open for a lawsuit, at least from their users.
Obama 2012: our incompetent asshole is slightly less of an incompetent asshole than the other incompetent asshole !
They can change their TOS. They can forbid spam-support services from using their networks. They can refuse to renew their contracts with spammers.
Anti-Spam people often seem to be so wrapped up in their cause, they often don't realise they are doing more harm than good, i.e. blocking half of Australia's email.
Well, Optus got listed because they failed to respond to spam complaints. For this past month, I've been getting more spam volume than the volume from my Bugtraq subscription. About a quarter of that was connected to Optus in one way or another. In other words, Optus has been filling my mailbox with crap. I lose nothing by blocking them, and it makes my life easier.
The one response I've had from Optus that wasn't an autoack amounted to "Screw you. Hosting spammers is legal." If their customers consider that to be acceptable net behavior, then they don't need to email me. There is no legal right to send email, anywhere in any Constitution in any nation at all. Or any legal need for me to accept it.
Optus didnt "fail to respond to spam complaints", they chose not to act on the complaints of a few millitant anti-spam types who think that everyone associated with whatever they decide is "spam" should be blackballed from the Internet. It's boycott blacklisting, and it's a blackmail tool, pure and simple.
They are, in effect, saying to Optus 'You cannot have this person as a client, or anyone else that we decide is involved with spam, or we will blacklist you to force you to accept our demands'. It's complete BS. Who died and appointed spews.org the spam police? It's organised extortion, and good for Optus for not backing down. Hopefully they will sue spews.org and put them out of business.
http://www.spamhaus.org/top10.lasso
Now that I know of your policies, I'll be making sure to take my business elsewhere in the future.