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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."

13 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Spews.com is a porn site! by jelwell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How did that porn sneak into the article?

    Someone is not checking the (non) links!
    I highly doubt a porn site that pops up banner ads is a well regarded spammer blacklist site.
    Joseph Elwell.

  2. 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.

  3. A bit over the top by term0r · · Score: 3, Flamebait

    Mr Barry said Optus had been fooled by a simple ruse as the spam gang split its operations, setting up the computer with sites to be spammed in the US and hosting the domain name server at Optus.

    It seems that the server running on the Optus network is only acting as a Domain server for the spamming. I would hope if this is the case, that the server actually doing the Spamming, which is in the states, has also been black listed.

    Plus, as the article says, running a nameserver is not against the Terms and Conditions of Optus, so there is little they can do about this.
    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.

    1. Re:A bit over the top by COAngler · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Plus, as the article says, running a nameserver is not against the Terms and Conditions of Optus, so there is little they can do about this.



      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.

  4. Not *all* optus by sprayNwipe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Note that this is only for people who subscribe to Optus's OptusNet dial-up service. If you use Optus@Home, an account through another provider that uses C&W's bandwidth, or even if you use another Optus dial-up service besides OptusNet (Dingo Blue?), you won't be affected.

  5. 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.

  6. Seems to be fixed already by BlowCat · · Score: 3, Redundant
    From http://spews.org/news.html :
    [29/Sep/01] OptusNet listing removed
    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.
  7. 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.

  8. Re:Contracts ? by seebs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The terms of service never guarantee connectivity, and frankly, not blacklisting spammers means overall worse connectivity than blacklisting spammers.

    It's a "cooperative network". If you don't cooperate, we don't network with you.

    --
    My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
  9. Re:Well maybe they weren't doing their job by bakes · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe optusnet should try and do a better job at bringing joustice to spam throwers

    Yes, I agree that skewering spammers with long pointy sticks is a great idea.

    --
    Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
  10. 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).

  11. Big debate by macdaddy · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's a big debate on the news.admin.new-abuse.email newsgroup about Spews and their policies about not allowing contact from blocked people except for a newsgroup which isn't their own, NANAE. I have mixed views on it. Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, not accepting mail to abuse@ and postmaster@ for a given domain is a blatent violation of the RFCs. I reject around 32k pieces of spam a week. Abuse@ and postmaster@ always accept mail, even from blocked domains. There should be some reliable way of contacting these people if I get listed. My $.02 anyhow. Night all.