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Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Anti-Spam Service Extortion?

Posted by Unknown on from the with-an-axe dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I work for a European ISP, and lately we're receiving quite a few complaints from customers about not being able to send emails because of UCEProtect's listings. After checking with their site, we found out that our whole AS (!) was blacklisted. Their 'immediate removal policy' asks for money, around 90 euros Per IP for end users and 300 euros for ISPs, and their site has bold statements like 'YOU ARE LOSING YOUR RIGHT TO EXPRESSDELIST YOUR IP IF YOU ARE STUPID AND CLAIMING THIS WOULD BE BLACKMAIL...' Could this be considered extortion-blackmail ? Has anyone else on Slashdot dealt with this service before?"

4 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I always go along and pay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to run the AHBL (for those wondering, I am Andrew Kirch), my advice is this. UCEProtect isn't a protection scheme. They're just people who run a DNSBL and got tired of dealing with spammers lies for free. I am incredibly sympathetic, though I did not go the same route. I've been lied to, threatened, received death threads, etc. Eventually you stop doing it for free, and since I was unwilling to charge, I simply stopped. If you want to be delisted, pay, if you don't, don't. If one of your customers/friends/whatever is using UCEProtect, you can also contact them and ask them to stop. I've used it in the past, but not on a block outright basis. My policy applies only to my mail server though, and not yours.

  2. Re:People still use blacklists??? by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I get my internet through Shaw which, unless you pay extra, uses dynamic IPs. By dynamic, I mean "technically" dynamic, but keep the same IP for at least 6-8 months at a time. Shaw also uses blacklists, one of which is Spamhaus among others. Shaw has a policy where they reject E-Mail if a SINGLE blacklist has you listed for ANY reason. Spamhaus has this annoying feature where they add all dynamic IP addresses to their blacklist. Basically, shaw is auto-blocking their own f*cking customers and nobody in the tech support chain seems to understand this.

  3. Re:People still use blacklists??? by Depili · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The way this is handled in Finland that each isp has one outgoing SMTP-relay server that you have to use, you can't send the mail directly out. You can receive all the mail you want but the outgoing pipe has restrictions to prevent open/miss-configured servers, works great. (I have my own mail server with such arrangement on a static IP)

    If you are a ISP I would suggest a similar arrangement to prevent all your customers sending spam :)

  4. UCEProtect is a spammer. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've had to deal with UCEProtect in my job as a system administrator. Whenever we got listed it was because their spambots (that send mail coming from the droppatrol.de domain) managed to get a bounce out of our system. We allow our users to forward mail offsite and some do to sites that are far far less permissive then us, and when that happens we properly send the bounce.

    I would say that running spam bots, and then asking someone to pay to get off a blacklist that their spambots got you onto, is effectively organized crime type extortion.