That sounds on balance a fair answer, Ian. Thanks for the effort.
I don't pretend to have a ready answer for the day-to-day realities of ISPs
with re to all the spam and outrageous scams going around (and worse), but
at some juncture _someone_ has got to take a stand. I would also think
that, just for example, an effort to fraudulently pass yourself off as a
representative of that particular ISP organization itself might excite some
interest. In the case I cited (quite recent, by the way) re Earthlink, for
all I know my notice as well as others might have indeed excited such
interest at a level invisible to me. What I know for sure is that I
received no reply to my query.
I also wrote to advice these people that there's no way to even attach an
offending email in order to forward same to Earthlink security for perusal.
Since then a function has been added to Earthlink's webmail page to "Flag"
a message, whatever that means. (I checked "Help" and no explanation was
available.)
Re MS: Steve Gibson (Gibson Research), to name just one, has tried to raise
a storm over the open sockets issue in newer Windows installations (what,
going back three or four years now?) and all he's received for his effort
at the hands of MS (and some other industry leaders as well, not all,
though) is a virtual black eye.
Again, there has to be accountability somewhere, and I just don't see it
happening.
Frankly, it seems to me we live in an age where people not only don't give
a damn anymore, and when someone pipes up to complain about this it is then
_he_ who is shouted down.
A sad story.
Tris
At 02:19 PM 2/27/2004 +1100, you wrote:
>Hi Tris
>
> >itself! but apparently without sparking the least interest (to judge by the
> >feedback, zero, I've received from Earthlink).
>
>Working for an ISP, we use standard return form emails as we receive
>anywere from 50 to 1000 of these emails from cust daily, some days
>though, with the volume of emails telling us we are pricks/infected/stop
>spamming them etc, we can have upto 10000 emails, such as the outbreak
>of the Blaster and other MS based worms & virus, we just dont have the
>capacity to reply, so 3 times in the past 14 months we have simply powered
>through the emails deleting most, so we can answer the people who have
>real tech support issues.
>
>I believe that at least one ISP here in Australia, in January, simply deleted
>two weeks worth of emails as they topped over 300,000 ! They didnt even
>try to wean out the tech support/customer service ones.
>
>You think this list generates a lot of email !
>
> >Go figure. I wonder how much Mr. and Mrs. Smith lose annually to these
> >schemes. I also wonder what exactly is going on "out there' these days, why
> >"no one" seems to care very much one way or the other, and what this
> >portends for tomorrow.
>
>We also use to try to warn people of the latest threats, and still do via our
>website but joe average user doesnt seem to be bothered to check. If we
>email a warning out, you would be amazed at the junk returns/replys that
>we receive back, we also found out the hardway that people receiving
>these warnings from us, expected us to fix the problem, take the other
>party to court, etc, but to put it simply, we are not the sender, or the
>receiver, or the company involved in the scam, just the posty.
>
> >An ill wind blows and all that.
>
>Due to the inherent security problems of MS software, and the stupidity
>of the programmers of Outlook/Express, it is really a Microsoft problem
>for the majority of problems, the PPal, and other scam emails like the banking
>ones are what is called social engineered scam's, the banks have notices
>and regularly issue warnings to customers but it is amazing how many
>customers simply ignore the warnings UNTIL they ring the bank up
>complaining that there account is missing 4999AU$
>
>ISP's could also filter this material out but an ISP has to be careful so
>as not to act as the 'censor', most ISP's do have this facility but once
>more, it is up to the user to enable it.
>
>Would you give your postman permission to decide what mail he can
>deliver to you, and what mail to simply dispose of ?
>
>An ISP is the provider of network connectivity, and that is the extent also
>of thier support services, helping a customer with other issues apart
>from simply connecting to the network now opens up a legal minefield
>of liability etc, can, and has, backfired on an ISP with litigation.
>
>Cheers
>Ian Manners
>http://www.comkal.net/photo/
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