more on Massive blocking of incoming e-mail by Verizon

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>
Date: April 25, 2006 9:17:37 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Massive blocking of incoming e-mail by Verizon

(not for IP, I've squawked enough already)

> but expects customers to know the sending
> SMTP hostnames of their correspondents to enter on the form.

I wonder if this is yet another variation on their stupid and
abusive "callback" scheme -- discussed previously on IP, and
thoroughly dissected elsewhere.  If Verizon is trying a new
and more draconian variation of that, then knowledge of where
outgoing MTAs that might be trying to deliver mail there would
have value to them in trying to make it work by reducing false
positives.  But it'd be better if they'd just trash the whole thing:
not only is it an abuse reflector, it readily lends itself to
various forms of DoS/DDoS attacks.

And -- as you point out -- it's silly to think that J. Random
Verizon customer will know that mail from their correspondent
at the  hosted domain fred-flintstone.com is going to come from
mta-relay3.barney-rubble.net.  Doubly so when it could change tomorrow
when no notice to anyone.

> It's interesting that this occurs at the same time as the "AOL
> blocking Gmail" incident, but these events again demonstrate the
> level of disruption that can triggered by ad hoc blocking moves by
> the very large ISPs.

Let me go one step further: *ill-advised* ad hoc blocking moves by the
very large ISPs.  Say what you like about AOL, at least their postmaster
team is at the table conferring with their peers and trying to work out
policies/procedures that make some sense.  Verizon not only isn't there,
they refuse to respond at all.  (The last representative of Verizon on
Spam-L has now been gone for several years -- he left the company.)

And on top of all this, let me add a note of timely irony: as you
read this, there is a discussion thread in NANAE about how Verizon
refuses to accept abuse reports at abuse () verizon net (per RFC 2142
and now nearly-universal practice).

---Rsk


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