[103755] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Problems sending mail to yahoo?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Raymond L. Corbin)
Sun Apr 13 20:23:00 2008
From: "Raymond L. Corbin" <rcorbin@hostmysite.com>
To: "nanog@merit.edu" <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:18:57 -0400
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0804131607140.25801@shell2.speakeasy.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
I agree that they aren't completely useless. From our environment the abuse=
desks can be somewhat overwhelmed though. If you setup feedback loops for =
networks size of
1x /16
2x /17
2x /18
1x /19
to receive abuse complaints on dedicated / collocated customers you do get =
a some good complaints. Some of the time it is from compromised scripts, so=
metimes actual spammers, but most of the time it is from forwarded spam. Th=
is makes the abuse desk full of thousands and thousands of complaints. You =
can look in the headers of the spam complaints and see that it is forwarded=
spam, but it is still overhead. So signing up for a feedback loop for the =
entire network with something like Yahoo! can be burdensome and make abuse@=
full of useless complaints. This isn't the problem I suppose in most envir=
onments, but it is in mine. Yahoo! blocking entire /24's are not necessaril=
y a large problem, the larger problem is
A. they don't tell you when it is blocked (I don't believe it would be hard=
to email the abuse@ contact of the IP address range..)
B. their 'Bulk Mail Advocates' say they cannot tell what IP's are generatin=
g the /24 block once it is in place (perhaps it can be prior to the block?)=
.
C. They offer no way to exempt certain IP addresses to be exempted from the=
/24 'de-prioritization'. This means the smaller companies who send maybe 3=
or 4 emails to Yahoo a day are having difficulty and there's nothing you c=
an do until the issue with the entire /24 is solved.
Administrators who actually find ways to get in touch with Yahoo to resolve=
issues are hindered by Yahoo's stance of 'It's coming from your network, y=
ou should be able to monitor it and figure it out'. In a dedicated/colo env=
ironment I don't think it is really reasonable to expect companies login to=
each server in a /24 to see who is sending mail to Yahoo. And even if they=
are sending mail to Yahoo were not psychic so we cannot tell what their us=
ers are marking as spam and what's not. I suppose the feedback loop would s=
ay that but...then abuse@ is flooded with complaints that are mostly mutual=
customers fault. Chances are if a server is sending spam to Yahoo they are=
sending it to quite a few other places as well which do actively report it=
.
-Ray
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Dav=
e Dennis
Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 7:16 PM
To: Geo.
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Problems sending mail to yahoo?
On Sun, 13 Apr 2008, Geo. wrote:
>
>
> > of abuse might be useful for large providers, but since we can't even
> > get many domains even to set up the already-specified abuse@ address, m=
uch
> > less read the mail we send to it,
>
> When someone like AOL offloads their user complaints of spams to all the
> abuse@ addresses instead of verifying that they actually are spams before
> sending off complaints, is it any surprise that everyone else is refusing=
to
> do their jobs for them?
>
> The reason abuse@ addresses are useless is because what is being sent to
> them is useless.
As one that works for a company that makes full use of complaints sent to i=
t,
abuse@ addresses are not useless, far from it. Please don't get the idea t=
hat
because some think they're useless, it therefore is universal. We also get
100s of AOL feedbacks a day, which are filtered separately. Also not usele=
ss.
And we've also reported incidents to other companies' abuse functions, and =
had
them be resolved same-day because of it. Also, far from useless.
How about if you're not actively in an abuse function, you hold off on decl=
aring
the function useless, cause the meme could catch on that it is, even if it'=
s
not, and I've yet to see an automated filtering/blocking system fully repla=
ce or
completely obsolete a good trained network operator who understands what is=
and
is not abuse on the network.
-Dave D
