[atlas] Communication with probes' owners

Having individual users contacting other individual users about probe location problems seems like a not very scalable solution to this problem. It both leaves it somewhat random which issues will be caught, and may leave probe owners whose probes look somewhat atypical having to explain their situation over and over again to random people. 

I have a cron job that goes through the entire probe list every few hours and runs the IP addresses against the MaxMind Geolite databases.  MaxMind has its own accuracy issues, but after a bunch of spot checking I decided that trusting the MaxMind answers was better than trusting the owner-reported information for the probes. 

If somebody wants to take a more systematic approach to getting the Atlas location data cleaned up, I’d be happy to share a diff. But I’d suggest that it be done by somebody with access to the database cleaning up things that look wrong, instead of bugging a bunch of individual probe owners. 

-Steve

Steve Gibbard

> On Apr 23, 2019, at 4:10 AM, Ponikierski, Grzegorz <gponikie at akamai.com> wrote:
> 
> I thought about simple web form available only for logged users of RIPE Atlas. In this way all private data are hidden and RIPE can rate limit usage of the form. Message itself can be send to probe's owner via email from RIPE Atlas infra so sender identity also can be hidden. If somebody wants to switch to email communication then form can also be used to exchange email addresses.
>  
> Regards,
> Grzegorz
>  
> From: Martin Boissonneault <ve2mrx at hotmail.com>
> Date: Monday 2019-04-22 at 02:25
> To: Carsten Schiefner <carsten at schiefner.de>
> Cc: "ripe-atlas at ripe.net" <ripe-atlas at ripe.net>
> Subject: Re: [atlas] Communication with probes' owners
>  
> The best might be for RIPE to contact the owner when the records don't match what is detected from the probe? 
>  
> Some method to trigger a check could be added to the probe's profile, and there would not be ANY chance of email abuse by throwaway accounts?
>  
> Allowing users to contact probe owners has to be VERY well made to avoid all sorts of attacks and spam!
>  
> Martin Boissonneault
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On Apr 21, 2019, at 18:14, Carsten Schiefner <carsten at schiefner.de> wrote:
> 
> Am 21.04.2019 um 19:59 schrieb Dave . <gboonie at gmail.com>:
> If this gets implemented, please add a checkbox where one can indicate whether one is a user or also can get things fixed in the AS where your probe is connected.
> Makes sense to me: +1.
>  
> Would then a reminder every 1/2/3 month[s] make sense that this is (still) the case aka. this flag to be set?
>  
> As the probe’s circumstances may change...
>  
> Op vr 19 apr. 2019 om 12:37 schreef Paolo Pozzan <paolo.pozzan at telemar.it>:
> It seems a good idea. I don't think this will be abused and in case it would be easy to point out the spammers.
> Would this be useful also for other kind of messages?
>  
> Paolo
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