[21781] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Lawsuit threat against RBL users
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Roeland M.J. Meyer)
Thu Nov 19 19:41:34 1998
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:25:25 -0800
To: Sean Finn <seanf@cisco.com>
From: "Roeland M.J. Meyer" <rmeyer@mhsc.com>
Cc: Chris Williams <psion@geekspace.com>, "nanog@merit.edu" <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19981119082642.00dcf230@ntg.cisco.com>
At 08:26 AM 11/19/98 -0800, Sean Finn wrote:
>At 11:39 PM 11/18/98 -0800, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
>>That's right. It stops the practice of using a sacrificial account, from
>>AOL or netcom, to spam for a web-site that is otherwise protected. Does it
>>make a difference that they didn't spam from their own ISP?
>
>Please allow me a moment to ask:
>
>Does it make any difference whether your customer actually originated the
>offending msgs?
>
>Couldn't such a spamset come from one of their competitor?
>
>Or a chat room hacker that got pissed off?
>
>I understand AUP regarding what actually happens on an account.
>
>Unless the "throwaway" account can be tied to your customer,
>then I don't understand the justification for compromising
>service.
Ah, but there's the problem and Karl D. is right. The *real* answer is to
do away with throw-away accounts. Yes, the provider of the throw-away
account knows exactly who the spammer is (I won't go any deeper than that),
they have a CC number. If that data matches our customer, that customer
becomes $1500US poorer and stops being our customer. Tracing a spam to a
particular dail-in port is not easy, but it's do-able. You then know who
the provider is/was.
>(I personally don't find "it's generally true", or "it's too much trouble",
> or "the end justifies the means" to be especially convincing arguments.)
>
I don't either.
___________________________________________________
Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993)
e-mail: <mailto:rmeyer@mhsc.com>rmeyer@mhsc.com
Internet phone: hawk.mhsc.com
Personal web pages: <http://www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer>www.mhsc.com/~rmeyer
Company web-site: <http://www.mhsc.com/>www.mhsc.com/
___________________________________________
Who is John Galt?
"Atlas Shrugged" - Ayn Rand
