Subject: [Asrg] Re: What ISPs do about infected computers?

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 17:11:59 -0400

Although not 100% on point one problem I see from this (ISP) end is
that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that "spamming"
(somewhere along the continuum) is reasonably acceptable behavior and
ISPs who harass them over it are kinda like librarians always going
SHHHH!, self-appointed pointy-headed morality guardians.

Not the Ralsky-type spammer of course, but the more innocuous kind
doing it for himself.

In the past few days I had gotten a couple (two) very credible
complaints about a small commercial customer who I had noticed was
sending out a lot of email (a lot of it was getting stuck in the
queue, you notice...)

So I sent him e-mail telling him that since we're forced to respond to
complaints further complaints would be billed at $50/event, and
excessive complaints would terminate their account with us (hey, it
was only two complaints, but I didn't like the odor.)

Of course he called asking to speak to me and gave me the usual "is it
illegal?", "how do you judge something is spam?" to which I mostly
stuck to my guns and told him I don't really care if it is spam or not
at this point, I just know we're not going to spend our good time
responding to complaints that it is spam, justified or not, for free.

You have to pay your lawyer even if you're innocent, right? Take it or
leave it, that's our position. You sent out the mail which elicited
this, right? If your contention is that you didn't send the mail then
of course I'd relent.

But you can't expect us to just ante-up any arbitrary amount of our
personnel time responding to complaints, justified or not, which arise
from your business activity.

That evoked somewhat of an admission that he'd been scanning (I think
manually) for web sites with mailing lists which seemed related to his
product (pretty vaguely related based on the complaints) and adding
them to his list with an unsubscribe option on their mailing.

I told him THAT'S SPAMMING!

Ask the list administrator if it's ok to send to their list, don't
just send it, you'll get complaints, and I'll bill you and eventually
after several just cut you off entirely.

He seemed pretty angry at me, what right did I have blah blah blah,
the usual nihilistic babble.

His product itself seems to be quite legitimate, a software package
for engineering design which I know has been around for years tho I
think they've never made much money on it. There appear to be several
employees over there.

I said look, if you don't want to curb your behavior, and you resent
paying for our time which you incur out of our control, then in all
honesty I don't want you as a customer.

He made one last smarmy remark and hung up, I could just about hear
him saying "asshole!" just after the call ended.

But in all honesty this is not your typical spammer, not by a long
shot. They put their real name, address and phone number on the
e-mail, for starters, and their business and product is legitimate and
has been around for years.

But that's where we are, kinda stuck in the middle as customers who
aren't exactly axe-murderers figure some behaviors we might call
"spamming" is maybe a good way to drum up some business.

It sucks, all around.

One reason it sucks is that the public, the sort of people who maybe
are rationalizers but not far out of bounds, are convincing themselves
that if they get a 100 come-ons a day in their mailbox for all kinds
of fraud and porn etc then how wrong could it be for their wonderful
and honest product? And boy-o-boy they could use the cheap advertising
what with sales soft and the landlord hounding them for the rent etc.

I think this is another dimension of trouble unless someone can come
up with a super-clean way to just make spam technically impossible;
this sort of violator isn't likely to try to drive through a jersey
barrier, even if he will pass you on the right in the breakdown lane,
if you get my drift.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | [email-masked]           | http://www.TheWorld.com
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