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Australia's Largest ISP Redefines Spam

Posted by timothy on from the don't-tell-all-your-friends dept.

cpudney writes "According to this article in NEWS.com.au, Telstra BigPond, Australia's largest ISP will monitor its customers' e-mails and suspend the accounts of users suspected of sending spam, viruses or denial-of-service attacks. Under changes to its Acceptable Use Policy, BigPond will investigate cable and ADSL Internet customers sending more than 20 e-mails in a 10-minute period, and BigPond management "may suspend the (user's) account while the customer is contacted" if they are suspected of sending spam. Previously, BigPond's definition of spam was held to be 400 messages sent over a 15-minute period and now it's changed to 20 e-mails over 10 minutes. Internet Society of Australia president Tony Hill said BigPond's new definition of spam was very restrictive and he was concerned the limit had been set too low for legitimate e-mail users."

8 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. They are nuts - what about regular POP clients? by thona · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Never had to answer 20 emails? Great. Just hope you are online all the time and not coming back from a trip or something, where some emails may have acumulated in your outbox. 20 emails is VERY low - I am now going on a three day trip, and I can bet I will have 40-50 outgoing mails in my mailbox when I return, just waiting to hit our email server. So, with their definition I would be in trouble. WHOW.

  2. This won't be good for Bigpond customers... by Kulic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of my uni lecturers uses Bigpond as his ISP. He also has his uni email accounts redirected to his Bigpond address. He had problems a while ago when Bigpond went down. He normally accepts assignments via email, but everything sent to him got delayed a few days. Thankfully he accepted assignments which had been sent to him on time, otherwise a lot of people would have inconvenienced.

    This lecturer also has other responsibilities (I won't go into detail here) which require him to him to send out newsletters to all of the students in our department, plus international committees and a large number of university staff. We are a small department, but still have ~100 students. Sending out a student newsletter would trip the new email limit. I don't know how he's going to get around this from home (obviously he can send it using our uni mail server when he's at work).

    Just another example of Bigpond not being up to scratch these days. I personally use a competing ISP, and have never had a problem. I don't know how Bigpond is going to keep its customers with shit like this.

    1. Re:This won't be good for Bigpond customers... by wrmrxxx · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I don't know how Bigpond is going to keep its customers with shit like this.

      Telstra has all sorts of ways to try keep their customers. For example, misleading advertisements - they were forced to take some of their TV ads off the air by the ACCC. Or abusing their monopoly on the phone lines by lying about the availability of ADSL - they told a customer he was too far from the exchange when he wanted to get ADSL through another ISP, but was close enough for Bigpond. Then they threatened him when he talked!

      I think there is only so far they can slide, however, before even the most uninformed consumers see the light. Their recent run of email brown outs must have been hard for even the most tolerant of users to ignore. This article at whirpool suggests that people are finally starting to wake up.

  3. Re:This does seem a bit restrictive. by Kris_J · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I think that an email with a bunch of addresses in the CC: line is just one email. The more valid example is of people that compose off-line then send messages in a big burst. Except that local phone calls are a fixed price in Australia, so who still does this?

    I hope there are some other triggers for this system, for example: Sending more than 20 email in 10 minutes The first time you log on to a new account would probably be more suspicious.

    (Also, I think the comparison to /.'s two minute wait before posting is a very valid one.)

  4. Re:Oh telstra you dorks by tunah · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sometimes I write emails on my laptop while it's not on the network, and send them when i plug in.

    --
    Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
  5. Road Runner seems to have this by DrMorpheus · · Score: 3, Interesting
    If I send email to more than five people then the mail that was cc'd to someone with a RR account gets bounced. Apparently RR thinks if your mailing more than five people your running a mailing list and they want the person receiving it to verify they agreed to the mailing list to them, (that is, Road Runner).

    I object to this for several reasons:

    • I come from a family of eleven children most of whom have five or more children so if we try to arrange things via email for the holidays we end up having much of our email bounced.
    • Why should I, or anyone else, have to let RR know what email lists we subscribe to? Sorry, this is too big brotherish for me.
    • Finally, there has to be better ways to stop spam. This seems too "designed by a committee" stupid.
    --
    Debunking the "59 Deceits"
  6. Sounds familiar -- and not even bad by llauren · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There was an article, featured on Slashdot, quite some time ago, which could be applied here. The thought was that if an identified spammer tries to send to your SMTP server, the service would be slowed down.

    To protect both the ISP and the innocent, they could implement a feature where after 20 mails in 10 minutes, mails would only be processed at the speed of, say, one mail per 30 seconds, and maybe slowing progressively after each 100 mails. When the mail pipe has been silent for a given amout of time, say ten minutes, the "mail slower" would be reset.

    This wouldn't make much difference for the legit home user but for the spammer (and for a business connection) it would be a tar pit to avoid.

    This could probably be implemented just by installing a crappier mail server ;)

    ~llauren

  7. YAY! this is great! by the_unknown_soldier · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am a bigpond user. and i know that for many users this is a godsend! you see bigpond has very restrivtive and long contracts which cost a lot to buy out of. this gives us the chance to get out of our contract without paying the fee. also... bigpond has the worst spam of any network in the world...simply because they have incompetent staff. this won't stop it.