Re: Abuse mail boxese (was Re: Lazy network operators)

[Steve Atkins <steve () blighty com>]

On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 09:03:38PM +0100, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:

> > According to the Washington Post
> >
> >    America Online says it has seen a dramatic decline in spam over the
> >    past month, due to improved filtering techniques and fear of
> >    litigation under a new U.S. law. In a one-month period ending March
> >    20, customer complaints about spam nearly halved to 6.8 million per
> >    day, the Time Warner Inc. unit said.
> >
> > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3300-2004Apr11.html
>
> Presumably the 6.8m figure is how many users click the 'spam' button in the AOL 
> mail client and not how many abuse complaints are sent in?

Probably, yes.

AOL isn't a huge source of abuse compared to most DSL/cable providers,
so probably aren't seeing a huge number of incoming legitimate abuse
complaints. Their users are a great source of complaints, via the
"this is spam" button, though, many of which are legitimate and most
of which are well targeted.

> I'd assume the former would be mostly automated and the latter ought to be 
> looked at some how as it will include compromised host reports, spam sending etc

High four figures / day is as high as we usually see at big broadband
ISPs, though it can spike to five or ten times that occasionally.

Cheers,
  Steve
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