Re: @home: Is *anyone* really home there???

[tmolina () HOME COM (Thomas Molina)]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2000, Philip R. Moyer wrote:

> Jim Littlefield writes:
> > Unless @Home gets lots of complaints regarding a particular user, they do
> > very little, if anything. Spam and open NNTP servers are the only
> > complaints that they appear to act on.
> >
> > I am an @Home customer and was getting repeated entire port range scans
> > from another @Home customer located in the next town. I blasted off a
> > complaint and received nothing in return. A telephone call to @Home and
> > multiple conversations with a number of "supervisors" resulted in very
> > little being done. IMHO, @Home's network is poorly managed and their
> > support is next to useless. Unfortunately for me, DSL is not an option at
> > this time.
>
> I find it interesting and discouraging that @home apparently feels free
> to harbor hackers and other criminals, but will not offer services
> to security professionals.  I guess we just have to mark them down as
> "bad guys" until they learn to play nice on the Net.

I find it interesting that my experience has been so different than what
is being reported here.  I've reported a number of @home customers for
portscanning and other problematic behaviour.  True, I seldom get any
feedback other than the automated acknowledgement of my report, but it
does happen.

I know of two people who had their service turned off because of my
report, one directly and one indirectly.  The first was a friend who had
just gotten his service turned on the previous week and started some
questionable activity.  When I reported the activity directed against me
I hadn't realized who it was; I only found out later.

It's obvious there are a lot of clueless people on the @home service.
Putting the interface my cable modem is plugged into in promiscuous mode
reveals a lot.

The one time I did have a chance to call and speak with a technician was
the day they started scanning for people who'd set up unauthorized
servers.  The person I talked with was able to anser my questions and
seemed to have a clue.  Maybe I got lucky; maybe the service varies
depending on who the local provider is.