Re: [exim] AOL Scomp Technology

Dean Brooks wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 09, 2006 at 03:16:04PM -0700, Marc Perkel wrote:
>
>>What I was thinking was that if I could notify people that there's a
>>server that's been hackd or a virus infected machine then a lot of
>>spam could be stopped at the source.
>

Not 'a lot'.

The owners of such boxes are already proven clueless, careless,
oblivious, malicious, or soem combination of these.

>
> Sorry, but that is an awful idea.
>

Probably of high value between and among staff of the top ten
'legitimate' ISP operators, even if major competitors otherwise.

The payoff of keeping traffic flowing smoothly between their
huge user bases in near-real-time has serious benefits in
reducing complaints alone.

For anyone smaller, they probably find their own automatic
security and white/black listing tools (plus perhaps selective
use of public RBL's) good enough - and far less work.

> I know that our policies as an ISP would be to blocklist all mail from
> your servers if you were to send those kinds of notices to us unsolicited.
>
> It's perfectly reasonable to offer such a service on an opt-in basis
> (as AOL does), but if you send unsolicited notices you are no better
> than the spammers, your contact information would be sketchy at best,
> and ultimately the majority of your notices would be ignored anyway.
>
> --
> Dean Brooks
> dean@???
>

Even if such could reliably reach the screen of a cooperative
person, there are further barriers, especially their willingness
and ability to determine what action to take and apply it, even
if you look up their mx software, ID the settings needed, and
spell it out for them in detail.

i.e. dumb enough to be compromised = too dumb to recognize or
fix it.
JMO,

Bill Hacker