[21786] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Lawsuit threat against RBL users
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven J. Sobol)
Thu Nov 19 20:21:00 1998
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 19:17:01 -0500
From: "Steven J. Sobol" <sjsobol@nacs.net>
To: BrandonButterworth <brandon@rd.bbc.co.uk>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <25664.199811190926@sunf10.rd.bbc.co.uk>; from BrandonButterworth on Thu, Nov 19, 1998 at 09:26:01AM +0000
On Thu, Nov 19, 1998 at 09:26:01AM +0000, BrandonButterworth wrote:
> Some people don't know where to draw the line though, is it just the ISP
> that hosts the site or all sites linked to that site and so
> on until there isn't a net?
The answer, IMHO... in all of these cases Provider X should shut down
the dialup account.
Case 1. If it's a spam on Provider X advertising a website hosted by
Provider X, Provider X should shut down the website, thus removing the
spammer's reason to spam.
Case 2. If it's a spam on Provider X advertising a site hosted on Provider
Y, Provider Y should shut down the website, thus removing the spammer's
reason to spam.
Case 3. If it's a spam on Provider X advertising a site hosted on Provider Y
that clicks through to a site on Provider Z, Providers Y and Z should
shut down the offending web sites IF AND ONLY IF it is obvious that the Y
page exists to try to shield the site hosted on Z from people who aren't
paying attention.
This is as far as it should ever go, and you have to be extremely careful
with Case 3.
> This isn't hypothetical as we've been in that position, a spammers
> site had a link to ours (and attached a copy of that page to a spam)
> so one spamee decided we must be spammers too and filtered us.
>
> As an innocent 3rd party who has no control over who links to our site
> (or mentions it in spam) it becomes a simple DOS (lets make a site that
> links to the top 100 web sites and make up a spam)
Yes, if you're just filtering blindly because you see something linked
to a spamvertized site, it does end up becoming a major problem.
--
Steve Sobol [sjsobol@nacs.net]
Part-time Support Droid [support@nacs.net]
NACS Spaminator [abuse@nacs.net]
Spotted on a bumper sticker: "Possum. The other white meat."
