Slashdot Mirror
AOL Blocks Telstra Bigpond Mail
frodmann writes "Australian IT reports here that AOL has been blocking email from Telstra bigpond mail accounts. This is possibly attributed to AOL's new white list policy as reported earlier on Slashdot.
Although this article is a few days old I can verify that this is still happening.
(For those outside of Australia, Telstra is one of our largest ISPs.)"
I know for a fact that CompuServe Pacific has also blocked Telstra Bigpond email.
For those not in the know, AOL owns CompuServe, and I suspect they use the same anti-spam filters.
A close friend works on the CompuServe Pacific tech-support line and has been flat out answering complaining users about this problem.
Let's hope it gets cleared up soon!
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I'm Australian, and this comment hits the nail right on the head. Telstra is a govenment approved monopoly - they can and do get away with anything.
.ISO's.
We have tiny amounts of bandwidth given to us - nevermind more bandwidth costs them almost nothing. A typical plan is one gigabyte a month. I cry when I here people from other countires casually mentioning they downloaded a few
I'm not Seth.
Have a quick look at whirlpool broadband news and the number of "telstra is down" stories and anti-telstra sentiment in the comments. Remind you of anywhere else ;)
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Given that one out of every three spams that clogged up my Hotmail account for a while at least purported to be from BigPond, I can see the rationale behind the ban. However, I'm not happy with any ISP - especially AOL - deciding for me what e-mails I shall and shall not recieve. This is why I maintain my own set of filters.
Should BigPond tighten up the open relays, and go after offenders themselves? You betcha. Will they, especially after this? Hopefully. The solution to spam originating from BigPond (or anywhere else) should not involve the ISP playing Big Brother. Difficult as it might be to believe, BigPond (or Hotmail, or Yahoo) does have legitamate users who are innocent of broadcasting spam detailing how to enlarge body parts that you might not possess.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
Telia, Sweden's largest ISP and the defacto telecoms monopoly (it was previously known as Televerket, the state monopoly telco, before it was "privatized"), was blocked by AOL a few months ago.
Personally, I think it wasn't all that bad. Apparently, the reason for the blocking was Telia's excessively poor abuse handling. This was very much due to Telia being the largest - and most arrogant - of the telcos in Sweden, and the realization that they weren't the biggest fish in the pond struck hard. Needless to say, their abuse management has improved significantly afterwards.
This only brings up the question, when will AOL realise that their pond is quite a lot bigger than they think? AOL is playing the very same arrogant I'm Holier Than Thou-game that Telia used to play on its local market. And, big as AOL might be, the Internet is a lot, lot larger.
I'm in NZ where we have the same thing. There's a finite amount of bandwidth so we get charged by the MB. Southern Cross cable. Under the water. I think they used standard telephone cable. Scary thing is that DSL here is fast as hell so you can go through your 1 GB/month in a couple of hours with no problem.
E-mail is an outdated system, and spam is only one symptom of a larger condition which includes forged headers, open relays, viruses, etc. These are not social problems, they are technical ones.
More sophisticated spam filters are NOT the answer! More legislation is NOT the answer!
The solution to spam is a technical one, involving distributed validation of digital certificates. If you think about it, this could be done while still preserving people's privacy, but it would require a few extensions to SMTP. It would also require a little self-regulation by the administrators (similar to relay blacklists). This is not a new idea; it's been suggested many times.
The problem is adoption. It's the same chicken-and-egg problem seen with many other great technologies. For example, I installed PGP once, but it was useless because nobody I know uses it (and most people haven't even heard of it).
So here's my point: Huge providers like Hotmail, AOL, Telstra, etc. are in a unique position to improve the situation. They have the power to solve the chicken-and-egg problem. If a just few of them implemented these superior technologies, the rest of the world would be encouraged to follow. PGP is a great start, but cryptographic sender validation would be even better. It would eliminate the problems of address forgery and spam more effectively than any lawsuit or heuristic or FBI raid.
-Gonz
Much as I think it looks like Telstra needs a swift kick in the b**locks to force it to sort it's security/spam issues out, I'm not sure that AOL is doing this just to block spam and make it's users' lives easier.
Being cynical I might see this as just another slightly shady business practice in order to gain competitive advantage - AOL might not own the internet but it always seems to act as though it does.
The practice of automatically branding everyone having a dynamic IP and sending email via their own domains. Using non-ISP email servers is not a crime.
I own several domains, a few of them for almost 9 years. In that time I have used seven or eight IPs. Only for a year or so did I have a fixed IP. I don't send spam, my servers are not open relays, but I am penalized now because I can not get a fixed IP from Verizon.
First, Osirus starts using the wirelist to block dynamic IPs, now AOL is blocking dynamic IP.
Why should I be restricted to sending mail from a verizon address? I am a business owner who has domains representing my business. Why is it wrong to want my emails to come from _my_ domain and not from Verizon?
Don't even start with the pompous BS about doing SSH tunneling, or expecting business class service for consumer prices. I don't want to hear it. I'm paying business prices for my service. So sod off. Not everyone is in a position to physically host their own on-site server or afford their own OC-3.
Is any of this blocking really going to affect the spam situation? I don't think so. Spam is economically viable because consumers continue to shop from businesses that use spam as a marketing tool. Consumers continue to buy spammed products.
Spam is not a problem that will be solved by refucing email from entire IP blocks. Spam is a consumer education problem.
If people were as quick to boycott spammed product as they have been to pour french wine in the gutter, spam would be a thing of the past.
See Subject line.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Most people say AOL is a monolithic shit-for-brains company that everyone with more than half-an-hour of experience on the net hates, cool. I have little if anything to do with them...
..but, to Australians, Telstra invokes a similar reaction. Many Americans would be surprised to see what this monopolistic company charges for local calls, mobile phone calls, internet access and cable tv (with foxtel).
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/ more4you.htm
Look at their internet broadband rates:
http://www.bigpond.com/broadband/access/ADSL/plan
Are you kidding me?
Just as bad are the costs of mobiles, text messages and calls:
http://www.telstra.com.au/mobilenet/price_options
25c a text message!? Wtf?
Australians might want to support Australian businesses, but this company doesn't deserve loyalty. I welcome any negative action against Telstra - especially from giant US corporations. Oh please - won't some US telco come in to Australia and NOT play by telstra's rules?!