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Why Are Canadian Sympatico Users Being Banned On EFNet?

Posted by Cliff on from the one-bad-apple-spoils-the-bunch dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "After being away from IRC for over a year, changing ISPs and moving my physical self to another apartment, tonight I tried to get back on EFnet. With a brand new IP, and a brand new computer, I discovered that all over EFnet, all channels related to Linux are banning all Canadian Sympatico users, this includes high speed customers, dial up users, and business users. In fact, the ban is quite severe and bans the entire sympatico.ca domain. I've tried to message several operators in #linux, #linuxhelp, and #slackware, but nobody is responding. What's going on?"

4 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Canada is infamous for its script-kiddies. by arcade · · Score: 4, Informative

    Canada is infamous for its scriptkiddies. As long as its impossible to positively ID a particular person due to IP-jumping, ident-changing and so forth, the only solution is to set an ISP-wide or country-wide ban.

    Blame it on the kiddies. If it gets too noisy due to a single country/ISP, then the only logical solution is to ban that country/ISP.

    In addition, EFNet#linux and other EFNet channels are infamous for beeing non-friendly and not very helpfull. You would do much better using Openprojectsnet or whatever its named right now. Much more friendly.

    --
    "Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
  2. The biggest offenders: .ro, .ca, .no and .mx by pvera · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't just blame draconian ops, it is more of an act of desperation. In undernet we take so much crap from kiddies that 99% of the time happen to be coming from .ro, simpatico.ca (its so bad we call them simpaticrap, go figure), .no and .mx . I have personally banned .mx and .ro temporarily a few times from #asp on undernet because once a kiddie puts his/her mind into making you miserable it will take minutes to max out the ban list. Only reason we cannot ban .no and .ca is that too many innocent people will get hit.

    --
    Pedro
    ----
    The Insomniac Coder
  3. Same on DALnet by iamplasma · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm not a sympatico user, I'm a DALnet user and channel operator instead. While I've never set such a broad ban myself, I know of many channels which have banned sympatico. Apparrently there was an extremely major spammer on sympatico, who kept jumping IPs, simply to the point that operators were forced to ban the entire domain.

    So there is a reason for it, though I do agree it is a bit severe.

  4. Change ISPs. by Guspaz · · Score: 3, Informative

    People might say it's not that easy, but it really is. There are several ISPs that operate EVERYWHERE that Sympatico does, and offers their services at a SUBSTANTIALLY lower cost. I switched over to iStop (http://www.istop.com) a few months ago, and I'm loving it.

    I suggest you inquire in the newsgroup can.internet.highspeed about a good ISP in your area, I'm sure Bob Carrick will point you towards his excellent ISP website.

    If you're wondering why iStop doesn't offer 3.5mbit residential atm, it's because Bell raised the price for all new lines, and iStop decided they'd rather stop offering the service for new customers than charge old customers way less than what they charge new customers. Ralph Doncaster, owner of iStop, has said that he fully expects Bell Nexxia to once again offer the lower prices for 3.5mbit lines, so he'll be able to offer it again in the future.