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Is There Any Reason to Report Spammers to ISPs?
marko_ramius asks: "For years I've been a good netizen and reported spam that I get to the appropriate contacts at various ISPs. In the entire time that I've done this I've gotten (maybe) 5 or 6 responses from those ISPs informing me that they have taken action against the spammer. In recent years however, I haven't gotten any responses. Are the ISP's so overwhelmed with abuse reports that they aren't able to respond to the spam reports? Do they even bother acting on said reports? Is there any real reason to report spammers?"
That may have been back when you worked there, but it's quite obvious that it's not the case now. If ISPs gave a shit, they would block outbound port 25 by default for dynamic IP clients (and maybe ALL IPs). That would stop at LEAST 95% of the spam botnets. This works best with a tool to allow you to open the port if needed (running a mail server.) Running a mail server on a dynamic address at this point is futile as a good portion of servers will block you anyway. MUA's should all be configured to use port 587 for authenticated submission.
ISPs could also install sniffers to watch the rate of outbound off-network port 25 SYN packets, and investigate unusual activity. Oh and don't go saying that this is difficult - just talk to AT&T and the government - they have been sniffing ALL traffic.
But it's VERY VERY rare to find an ISP that does ANYTHING AT ALL to stop outbound spam. Oh sure, they are perfectly willing to install blacklists and filters on inbound, but outbound? Nothing. They don't care. The only way to fix this is to make habitual offenders be financially liable. ISPs also need to make end users liable and start enforcing their TOS, disconnecting grannie and her POS windows box that has no firewall, anti-virus, and is running spambot software.