Slashdot Mirror
AOL Blocking Spammers' Web Sites
Nuclear Elephant writes "According to this article, AOL has decided to take a fresh approach to fighting spam and is now blocking the spammer's web address. The philosophy is, if the customers can't visit spammers sites, spammers will not be able to make any money. On a side note, I suggested this concept about six months ago but nobody thought ISPs would adopt it. Now perhaps we can get a group like NANOG interested in sponsoring a blacklist for spammer addresses?"
I've been doing this for the past year. Every so often I get a call from a user that needs to get to a sight that is associated with a spammer. For example, a local television station's site is hosted on the same machine as a spammer's site. I got calls from users wanting to visit that station's site so I had to unblock it. This is a never-ending job since spammers many time host their "web sites" on virus-infected broadband home PCs. Since I only have to work with 1000 or so users, it's not a big deal. If I had billions like AOL. Gads. I'd rather not think about it. And that's not taking into account those people that truly want to visit the spammer's sites. Who is AOL to deny them the ability to go to the websites they want.
There are just too many pitfalls in this. I don't think all large ISPs will go this route.
But why is the rum gone?
I too am concerned about the potential for abuse of a web site black list. I'm also concerned that AOL did not inform members of this change. Any ISP that implements a web site black list should redirect browsers to an HTML page that explains that the web site address is associated with known spammer. The user should then be given the choice to procede to the site or abandon the attempt. The black list should also be transparently available to the Internet community. Last, but not least, there has to be a clear policy for appealing a listing to allow for reporting of incorrect listings or other abuses of the blacklist.
I'm sure AOL won't block any joe-jobbed targets but only bulletproof servers hosted at Chinanet, Telecom Malaysia, Procergs.com.br etc. which have been spamvertised by known spam gangs.
This is *really* a good idea - Alan Ralsky uses several "throw-away" domains per spam run, but only a handful of different servers to host his crap. Null route these and Ralsky can enlarge his own penis.
I've got mixed feelings about that.
First of all, are all spammers bad? I mean, there ARE some people that buy crap advertised in spam. And is it all bad, or a ripoff? There was an link on Fark a week ago to an article about some guy that actually looks forwards to receiving spam, and had bought a lot of things from spam mails. Weird things, like a carpet cleaner, but things.
On the other hand, do people want AOL to shelter them from the web, from the real world? I can't mail some friends on another ISP because their ISP has blacklisted Roadrunner Email. We already have a government 'sheltering' us from things, such as the real truth behind assassinations, aliens, and the disappearance of Elvis.
Finally, the more things AOL blocks, the more reason for people to take the red pill, wake up to the monopoly, and get on a real ISP. Then those stupid CDs will stop showing up in my mailbox.
I want to see the web, the whole web, the whole glorious ugly sex-ridden spam-filled seething mass of crap, and naught else.
This is real funny. I've been trying to install some new sendmail milter programs on my mail server in an attempt to cut down on the amount of spam I receive. As a result, I've been taking a closer look at my mail logs.
I'm getting a lot of mail addressed to accounts that don't exist from systems with names like omr-m14.mx.aol.com. Are these legitimate MTAs or open relays?
If AOL wants to cut down on SPAM, they should start with what gets sent by their servers.