[anti-abuse-wg] anti-abuse-wg Digest, Vol 46, Issue 4

In message <48A6D44E0E4B43369169FEE5EB478058 at SuperPC>, 
"Marilson" <marilson.mapa at gmail.com> wrote:

>... But keeping the focus in the domain registrant it is like 
>insisting blindly on a dead-end road.
>...
>{... bad stuff about Enzu snipped...}
>...
>With providers of that kind, spammers is a lesser evil. I understand that 
>the focus should be directed to companies that provide the means and tools 
>for the commission of that crime.

I wish that I understood what any of this had to do with the xortify.com
project.  I do not see ANY connection, either to that project, or to my
questions about it.

Regarding Enzu, yes, they have been on my personal bad list for a very
long time.  But they are hardly alone, and certainly not unique.  There
are many other providers that are just as bad, or worse, when it comes to
harboring spammers and other net-miscreants.  (In at least one case
that I researched, the guy who owned the ISP had set up another, parallel
company, which was itself dedicated to snowshoe spamming... using the
IP address blocks of the "legitimate" ISP operation, of course.  But
beyond that, there are quite certainly companies, located in China,
the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and other places that are quite entirely
happy to allow any and all manner of hacking and other forms of criminality
on their networks.)

Regarding your suggestion that anti-abuse efforts should focus on the
net's many abuse-tolerant providers, rather than on individual spammers
and other kinds of individual naughty fellows, I can only say that I am
in 100% agreement with you on this, and that I have been saying this
exact thing to anyone and everyone who would listen for many years now.
(In particular, I have repeatedly urged various Spamhaus people to use
their domain-based blacklist to blacklist the main domain names of
various bad ISPs/NSPs... as a way of focusing the attention of these
providers on the abundant problems on their respective networks.  But
my requests/suggestions along these lines have fallen on deaf ears.)

Lastly, an important point that I believe you may not have grasped is
that calling for any sort of disiplinary actions directed at ISPs and/or
NSPs is not at all likely to find a receptive audience here, on this
mailing list.  The majority of subscribers to this list are likely to
be executives or employees of exactly such companies, and even if they
believe strongly that their companies are among the good ones, there
is... and always has been... a deep reluctance on the part of the
entire Internet connectivity industry to accept any sort of rules or
regulations, even if they serve the common good, and even if they are
created and promoted from within the industry itself.  The connectivity
industry is still the "Wild West", and nobody in it wants anybody else
telling them what to do, or not do.  This pervasive attitude is certainly
driven by an almost religious faith in laissez-faire everything, but
also, in equal measures, by pride (both personal and in some cases
national), and testosterone.  None of these factors is going away any
time soon.


Regards,
rfg