FC: Thanks for your help! Comcast unblocks mail from The Well

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Thanks to everyone who helped persuade Comcast to fix their error. 
Particular thanks should go to the Comcast managers and technicians on 
Politech who replied to me privately and said they were working internally 
to fix the problem.

It's good that Comcast backed down. But not all sites that are wrongly 
blocked by large ISPs are going to be able to get the attention of senior 
managers at the ISP and fix the problem that way.

The Hippocratic Oath requires doctors to pledge not to use their skills to 
harm others. Wouldn't it be wonderful if companies providing mail service 
voluntarily pledged to adhere to a similar set of principles for dealing 
with spam? ("I pledge not to blacklist entire Internet service providers." 
And so on.)

Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04919.html

-Declan

---

Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 14:49:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: WELL Help Desk <helpdesk () well com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: Comcast plugs up The Well, bounces legitimate email
In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030703004315.039a35b0 () mail well com>

I just wanted to let you know that we've gotten email from Comcast telling
us they've unblocked mail from us.

Thanks for your help.

Kathy Branstetter <kathyb>
WELL Helpdesk
helpdesk () well com
(415) 645-9300

---

Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 09:53:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Gail Ann Williams <gail () well com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
cc: politech () politechbot com, <corporate_communications () comcast com>,
   <jim_gordon () cable comcast com>, <calif_press () cable comcast com>,
   <support () well com>
Subject: Re: Comcast plugs up The Well, bounces legitimate email
In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030703004315.039a35b0 () mail well com>

Thanks, Declan.

We've called and emailed Comcast repeatedly, and will continue to do so.
If anyone has a direct phone number to someone ther who has a clue about
email, WELL support would appreciate it!

-Gail

----
Gail Ann Williams
Director of Communities, Salon.com
Home of Table Talk & The WELL
gwilliams () salon com or gail () well com  415-645-9304

---

From: Harry Hochheiser <hsh () cs umd edu>
Organization: U. Maryland., Department of Computer Science
To: declan () well com
Subject: Re: FC: Comcast plugs up The Well, bounces legitimate email
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 11:16:58 -0400

Declan:

Maybe I'm missing something, but I fail to see what's so new about
this. I've known of domains that have been inncoently caught in RBL
or SPEWS blacklists just because they've been hosted by a facility
that also hosts spammers. Maybe AOL and/or Comcast have been getting
lots of spam from the Well, or forged to look like it's from the Well?

The real problem here is not with AOL and/or Comcast, but with
vigilante policing of spam.

-harry

---

Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 02:24:57 -0400
From: Meng Weng Wong <mengwong () dumbo pobox com>
To: declan () well com
Subject: Re: [Fwd: FC: Comcast plugs up The Well, bounces legitimate email]

You're not alone; Comcast is also bouncing pobox.com mail.  We're
holding all mail for about 1300 common customers at comcast.net,
att.net, and attbi.com right now and we're CC'ing it into
mailstore.pobox.com for them to retrieve using their pobox logins.

I contacted Joe O'Brien at Comcast around 8pm EDT about this.  He said
he'd pass on my report to the mail team, but "they may have gone home
for the day."

To think I first posted about this sort of thing more than two years
ago; nothing's changed.

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200104/msg00042.html

---

Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 00:53:01 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Bartley <johnbartley3 () yahoo com>
Reply-To: k7aay () arrl net
Subject: Re: FC: Comcast plugs up The Well, bounces legitimate email
To: declan () well com, politech () politechbot com
Cc: corporate_communications () comcast com, jim_gordon () cable comcast com,
   calif_press () cable comcast com, gail () well com, support () well com
In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030703004315.039a35b0 () mail well com>

Same thing is happening to e-mail from the Americal Radio Relay LEague
(arrl.net) the nonprofit amateur radio society.

---

Date: Thu,  3 Jul 2003 06:01:42 -0500
From: dgowan () tfn net
To: declan () well com
Subject: Fwd: Comcast plugs up The Well, etc

Declan, apparently ComCast is having some bad customer relations problems here
in Tallahassee.  Lots of complaints in town, I wonder if some of their 
problems
may be causing them to be more aggressive about anything like spam eating up
bandwidth?  Comcast engineers here are telling customers that comcast uses the
AT&T backbone...
   A couple of interesting links:
   http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,6518241~root=comcast~mode=flat
   http://www.petitiononline.com/castfsu/petition.html

Dave Gowan

---

Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 09:13:26 -0400
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
From: Neil Schwartzman <neil () peteMOSS com>
Subject: you are not alone: ARRL.NET Traffic Blocked by Comcast

ARRL.NET Traffic Blocked by Comcast
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/07/03/1/?nc=1

NEWINGTON, CT, Jul 3, 2003--League members with Comcast.net Internet 
service are currently having their arrl.net e-mail forwarding service 
blocked by Comcast. As a result of Comcast's recent acquisition of AT&T 
Broadband, those with attbi.com e-mail addresses may also be affected. 
Approximately 5100 League members who are Comcast and AT&T Broadband 
customers are affected.

"At this point, we have not been able to reach representatives of Comcast 
directly," said ARRL Chief Financial Officer Barry Shelley, N1VXY. "This 
situation is, in part, their solution to the Internet-wide problem of spam. 
The ARRL, through the vendor for the arrl.net server, is currently working 
to resolve this matter, but an immediate solution does not appear to be 
imminent. Until the matter is resolved, the League cannot deliver e-mail 
through the arrl.net server to users of the Comcast e-mail services."

Last autumn, e-mail servers at Hotmail.com, MSN.com and Juno.com also 
temporarily blocked arrl.net forwarded e-mails for a few days. Shelley said 
that given past experience, large ISPs are more likely to respond to their 
customers. As this situation is a result of a decision by Comcast, ARRL 
urges its affected members to contact Comcast directly via e-mail at 
abuse () comcast net . Comcast requests that members include their Comcast 
user name in the body of the message. Explain that you do not want your 
arrl.net forwarded e-mail to be blocked.

</fair use>
--
Neil Schwartzman - Editor & Publisher
peteMOSS Publications, Industry & Trade Journals
<http://spamFLAMES.com><http://peteMOSS.com>
spamNEWS is now a daily BLOG & RSS Feed: <http://spamnews.com/blog/>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Internet access providers, companies that engage in the business of
connecting people to the Internet for profit ... assume the role of
Internet censors, arbitrarily closing accounts of those of whom they
disapprove." - Martha (C&S) Siegel
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