Should You Trust MAPS?

patrick42 asks: "Recently, my co-location facility was hit by a massive blacklist by an over-zealous 'investigator' at MAPS. 180,210 IP addresses in total are included in the blacklist -- and all because of a few spam complaints that weren't dealt with quickly enough. To make matters worse, they put this in effect either late Friday night, or early Saturday morning -- hours during which MAPS is not available for contact! (Mon-Fri, 9-5 only) How do people deal with MAPS and other RBL services who will not cooperate or be reasonable? And on a broader front, are you really prepared to trust a company like Kelkea, Inc. (owners of MAPS) to decide what emails gets to you without really knowing how they operate and deal with resolution processes?"

"I spent all weekend long trying to get a hold of the people at MAPS, as they don't bother telling you when they are open. When I finally got a hold of someone on Monday morning (not an easy task, mind you!), they told me that they are not open on the weekend, so it would have been *impossible* to resolve this issue quickly. And because I was only a customer of the company who owns these IPs, they would not unblock my subset of IPs. Despite the problem originating from a handful of IP addresses, MAPS saw it appropriate to block over 180,000 IP addresses just before the weekend! I had already made several phone calls and emails to my co-location facility, and they told me they were doing their best to get a hold of someone there. Several emails had been sent, and just as I first experienced, they could not reach anyone at MAPS by phone. When I finally talked to someone at MAPS, he told me that he would not be proactive in the matter by actually phoning my co-locator to work this out.

These people at MAPS thinks themselves quite high and holy, and in some ways they are: many ISPs and the like will bounce emails just because MAPS tells them to. (I've since removed MAPS from my list of RBL servers to check.) As a small-business owner, MAPS can be very hurtful to a business and very uncooperative in helping resolve the issue. I gave them a couple subnets of mine to unblock, but they would not, even though my IPs were not involved in the original complaint.

This experience has certainly made me think twice about who I trust to decide the fate of my incoming email."

Comments

A sword that cuts both ways

[Space cowboy]

Whereas I have sympathy for the innocent bystander (as the poster appears to be), and whereas I agree that uncompromising behaviour can be frustrating, the SPAM black hole servers are somewhere between a rock and a hard place...

They can't just block small sections of netblocks (because a spam-happy ISP will just allocate new IP's to their paying spammer customer) - the only way they can police the offence is to ban the block.

They can't just add people back in when they've been blocked either - there has to have been some resolution of the problem, and that has to come from the ISP, at least IMHO. A customer running a website will say anything (especially if they're a scum-of-the-earth-spammer-type customer) to get back online. AN ISP who lies knows their next block will be more permanent...

OTOH, Being unavailable out of hours is ... frustrating. In the end, that will reduce the value of the service, and perhaps MAPS will be overtaken by someone who perhaps charges a fee, but is in some what accredited and responsible for their actions.

The real problem though isn't MAPS and their attitude, it's the spammers. Get rid of the spammers and you get rid of the need for MAPS. These lowlife internet-scum are where any ire ought to be directed, again IMHO.

A Sony NDA I once signed said that in the event of disclosure of anything under NDA, Sony would seek damages, and that financial reparation may not be sufficient penalty. The point being that the penalty *ought* to have teeth, and atm, the spam penalties do not. If you want less spam on the 'net, you're going to have to accept more regulation of the 'net. Another double-edged sword...

Simon

Re:A sword that cuts both ways

[killjoe]

I run a mail server at home to service a few domains I have. I subscribe to multiple RBLs and they help an immensely to cut down on the spam.

Honestly I don't care it you are an "innocent victim" of an RBL. My use of RBLs is completely voluntary. If you send me mail and I don't get it I don't see how it harms you at all. I am presuming of course that your email was so great and useful that it caused me tons of money not to have read it.

BTW my mail server has a bounce message that says you were in a blackhole. If you know me then you also know my gmail account and email me there so I can put you on my while list. Hell you could just call me too.

If I sent an email to a business and it bounced I would probably call them and ask them if there were alternative methods.

So sorry, no tears from me. My RBL list blocks hundreds of emails every day for that I am grateful.

Story has valid complaint.

[AtariDatacenter]

1. MAPS finds problem, discovers hosting by co-loc, bans entire co-loc.
2. Very shortly after ban, MAPS is unavailable for contact for 48+ hours.
3. MAPS refuses to unban innocent bystander.
4. MAPS refuses bystander's plea to contact co-loc.

Seems to me that MAPS has several problem. Aside from procedural issues, perceived arrogance, negligence, incompetence. Submitter is right. Overzealous, for sure.

I sure wish they were better. It hurts the users.

Re:No.

[rekoil]

Another time, we deduced that someone else had signed up the person in question (the person's last name was recorded in the database as "Assface").

You obviously didn't have a confirmed opt-in system in place then...if you had, the address in question wouldn't have gotten on the list, he would have gotten one email asking him to confirm his subscription, and nothing else if he didn't reply to it.