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AOL Blocks Telstra Bigpond Mail 192

Posted by timothy from the you're-not-on-the-a-list dept.
frodmann writes "Australian IT reports here that AOL has been blocking email from Telstra bigpond mail accounts. This is possibly attributed to AOL's new white list policy as reported earlier on Slashdot. Although this article is a few days old I can verify that this is still happening. (For those outside of Australia, Telstra is one of our largest ISPs.)"
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AOL Blocks Telstra Bigpond Mail More

AOL Blocks Telstra Bigpond Mail

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  • And in other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by lewko ( 195646 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:40AM (#5823196) Homepage
    Australian ISPs block all mail from AOL, and NO ONE cares!
    • That was modded funny, but it's true...

      AOL might be chagrined to learn how little most Australians would care about their block. I've been blocking all AOL mail since 1998 on a whitelist basis. (I'm not with Large Puddle.) Guess how many AOL-ers have made it on to that whitelist?

      None. Not one.

  • Telstra BigPond is crap!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:43AM (#5823207)
    Typically the service offered from Tesltra is Australia is terrible, but due to lack of competition in Australia they have been able to get away with shoddy service and gerneral non-compliance for years.

    • Why is this a Troll? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Michael's a Jerk! ( 668185 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:51AM (#5823231) Homepage Journal
      I'm Australian, and this comment hits the nail right on the head. Telstra is a govenment approved monopoly - they can and do get away with anything.

      We have tiny amounts of bandwidth given to us - nevermind more bandwidth costs them almost nothing. A typical plan is one gigabyte a month. I cry when I here people from other countires casually mentioning they downloaded a few .ISO's.

      • Re:Why is this a Troll? (Score:5, Informative)

        by munro ( 265830 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:13AM (#5823273)
        Maybe it costs you more because of the
        asymmetric nature of internet interconnection [isoc.org]. Telstra probably has much higher expenses than ISPs in the US and Europe.

        • Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:43AM (#5823334) Homepage Journal
          Why not build some of their own sea lines, then? I'd bet a private AU company could probably afford, and profit from a huge pipe to Japan, or even the US. But would they be allowed to make money with Telstra around?

          Also, wouldn't it make sense for them to allow unlimited in-country bandwidth while capping international traffic? At my school they have an outbound cap at 200 megs a day, but you can send as much as you want on campus.
          • Why not build some of their own sea lines, then? I'd bet a private AU company could probably afford, and profit from a huge pipe to Japan, or even the US. But would they be allowed to make money with Telstra around?

            Because they still have to pay to get the data *into* the pipe at the other end. That's where the cost is - the prices US ISPs extort from the rest of the world for data originating within the US.

            Also, wouldn't it make sense for them to allow unlimited in-country bandwidth while capping inter

          • Why not build some of their own sea lines, then? I'd bet a private AU company could probably afford, and profit from a huge pipe to Japan, or even the US. But would they be allowed to make money with Telstra around?

            Its not the cost of the pipe through to another country. Sure this is a cost that is going to increase the cost of trans-pacific IP. Its the peering arrangement with the major US ISPs. I once worked for a large .au website. We had an upload:download ration of 8:1, for both international a

      • Re:Why is this a Troll? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by p00ya ( 579445 )
        I think saying that Telstra is a government approved monopoly is a bit harsh. Apart from the whole existence of the ACCC (for what it's worth), the monopolistic state of Telstra atm isn't really approved by the government so much as tolerated (what are they going to do about it that would be in both the shareholders and the people of Australia's interests). After all, its been better since the telco industry was opened up (remember when telecom australia was a true state monopoly?).

        Personally I'm in favo

        • Re:Why is this a Troll? (Score:4, Informative)

          by evil_roy ( 241455 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @05:40AM (#5823436)
          Wrong. It is not a bit harsh - it is a massive understatemenmt to say that Telstra is a government approved monopoly. It is a government OWNED monolopoly. Then see who has their claws in deepest for the 49% that has been sold off - media monolpolies that our government drops their strides for every time they are asked.

          I'm also in favour of government retaining the infrastructure (ie the cables & exchanges or power grid) and charging whoever wants to pay for a licence access. This is not what has happened. The guts are sold lock,stock and barrel. In the case of Telstra this has not been allowed to happen for a few reasons, the main one being the decimation that would occur in the false free market that exists in Aussie telcos right now.
      • By gov't approved you mean "gov't enforced."

        'net access is hardly a natural monopoly.

      • We have tiny amounts of bandwidth given to us - nevermind more bandwidth costs them almost nothing.

        International traffic costs _shitloads_.

        A typical plan is one gigabyte a month.

        A typical cable plan is around 3G/month and most of those are holdovers from previous eras. there is no shortage of "unlimited" plans on the market now, both those that define "umlimited" as just "lots and lots" and those that really do mean "unlimited".

    • Re:Telstra BigPond is crap!!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by k-0s ( 237787 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:28AM (#5823306) Homepage
      Typically the service offered from Tesltra is Australia is terrible, but due to lack of competition in Australia they have been able to get away with shoddy service and gerneral non-compliance for years.

      So you're basically saying that Telstra BigPond is the Australian version of AOL then? Maybe thats why AOL is blocking them, their customer service is worse the AOLs and AOL prides itself at being the worst at customer service.
      • Actually, it more likely that someone from Tesltra sent spam mail to SEVERAL of AOL's users and those users REPORTED THE EMAIL(S) as spam and had them blocked. AOL has given it's users easier ways to report and block spam.
        If AOL is blocking email from them, it's probably because someone their is sending spam. Perhaps even the original submitter was an Australian spammer. Did anybody consider that some of these people who submitted these stories may be sending unsolocited emails?
    • Are they like the UK where tesltra control the last mile and as such other ISP have to use it or are just there no other broadband ISP's? However in the UK the telco (BT) is moderated by Oftel which sort of keeps them in check.

      Rus

      • Re:Telstra BigPond is crap!!! (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Telstra was the government owned telco in Australia. They have been partly privitised and other telcos have been introduced to the market. Unfortunately Telstra still owns all of the major telecommunications infrastructure in Australia so there is almost no way for consumers or other telcos to avoid them.

        Optus (the second largest telco, now owned by Singtel) started to do a roll out of cable in the metro areas but it was unfeasable.

        Telstra still think like a government owned monopoly who couldn't care les
    • But maybe the competition don't spend as much on marketing. I find that bigpond is taken up by people who don't do any research of their own about the best ISP for them.

      On the other hand Telstra is still choking the broadband adsl market all by itself. It is getting more difficult for it to get away with that. Everyone has to go thru Telstra one way or another for ADSL, but nearly every other ISP still manages to offer a better deal and better service even though they have to purchase thru Telstra. E

  • Blocking spam is good... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WegianWarrior ( 649800 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:44AM (#5823209) Journal

    ..but this sort of action is a hurting inocent third part (ie; the other, legitimate users of mailservers in question).

    It would be like stopping to deliver snailmail from another city / nation, just because someone living there sends junkmail to your city / nation. Is this something we want?

    • Re:Blocking spam is good... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ieshan ( 409693 ) <ieshan@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:49AM (#5823227) Homepage Journal
      I can't figure out why AOL doesn't stop developing new useless content and start developing email filters that really work. They have the largest collection of junk-mail EVER to run statistical analysis on. If all they can come up with is "block mail from X server", they suck. =P

      • Re:Blocking spam is good... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gonz ( 13914 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @05:47AM (#5823449)
        E-mail is an outdated system, and spam is only one symptom of a larger condition which includes forged headers, open relays, viruses, etc. These are not social problems, they are technical ones.

        More sophisticated spam filters are NOT the answer! More legislation is NOT the answer!

        The solution to spam is a technical one, involving distributed validation of digital certificates. If you think about it, this could be done while still preserving people's privacy, but it would require a few extensions to SMTP. It would also require a little self-regulation by the administrators (similar to relay blacklists). This is not a new idea; it's been suggested many times.

        The problem is adoption. It's the same chicken-and-egg problem seen with many other great technologies. For example, I installed PGP once, but it was useless because nobody I know uses it (and most people haven't even heard of it).

        So here's my point: Huge providers like Hotmail, AOL, Telstra, etc. are in a unique position to improve the situation. They have the power to solve the chicken-and-egg problem. If a just few of them implemented these superior technologies, the rest of the world would be encouraged to follow. PGP is a great start, but cryptographic sender validation would be even better. It would eliminate the problems of address forgery and spam more effectively than any lawsuit or heuristic or FBI raid.

        -Gonz
        • The solution to spam is a technical one, involving distributed validation of digital certificates. If you think about it, this could be done while still preserving people's privacy

          This is the same as having a national ID. If we implemented this crazy plan, web sites would require you to validate your identity before you could read the news, comment on politics, or listen to music. Federal regulations would make it a felony to forge your identity. The government would require service providers to log id

      • Re:Blocking spam is good... (Score:4, Informative)

        by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Monday April 28, 2003 @06:59AM (#5823580)
        AOL block 780 Million messages a day. This is 100 Million messages more than are actually delivered.

        AOL spam filtering is a LOT more complex than 'block mail from X server', and it's good at it's job - but like any system it's not infallible.

        As many providers have found out, if you make it *really* effective, it starts getting false positives and that irritates some customers far more. As an example, Apple's .mac mail used to be _really_ good at filtering mail, but some users complained and they loosed up Brightmail it seems - and now it's noticeably less effective.
      • They have something called AOL Communicator which could do the job. It's a standalone mail client, much like OE or Moz mail which contains bayesian spam filtering capabilities, filters, folders and more.

    • Re:Blocking spam is good... (Score:5, Funny)

      by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:13AM (#5823272) Homepage
      There once was a extreme case of blocking where a US company recived on piece of spam from a .uk. As such they blocked the entire country. It was only when they realised they also owned a .co.uk domain they decided to unblock it as staff couldn't email each other

      Rus
    • Just a quick question. Not a troll, but a comparison of real work tactics that are similar. Is everyone in Syria or Cuba bad? Does everyone support communism or harbor terrorist cells? So why does everyone get an embargo against them? It's the same thing. It forces the government (ISP) to clean up their act by affecting their citizens (users). Maybe Telstra will start policing their users better to prevent spamming? Who knows.
    • Much as I think it looks like Telstra needs a swift kick in the b**locks to force it to sort it's security/spam issues out, I'm not sure that AOL is doing this just to block spam and make it's users' lives easier.

      Being cynical I might see this as just another slightly shady business practice in order to gain competitive advantage - AOL might not own the internet but it always seems to act as though it does.
    • It would be like stopping to deliver snailmail from another city / nation, just because someone living there sends junkmail to your city / nation. Is this something we want?

      While I don't think it's something we want in an ideal world, it's actually something quite a few people do already.

      A lot of email coming from the APNIC area, particularly Taiwan, Vietnam & Korea (etc.), is filtered completely by quite a number of admins, simply because of the ownership information on the originating IP addresses.

    • Pizza deliveries don't go to the bad part of town, nor do taxis.

      Consider this, a town next to your house sends frequent visitors. 99% of these visitors vandalise your town, break windows and steal. How do you stop your house being abused? Banning all people from that town is reasonable. If you do know someone there you can always give them permission on an individual basis.

      Telstra are well known for not acting on abuse reports, not caring about open proxies, hosting a lot of spammers, including Dean Wes

      • scripsit blowdart:

        Consider this, a town next to your house sends frequent visitors. 99% of these visitors vandalise your town, break windows and steal. How do you stop your house being abused? Banning all people from that town is reasonable.

        Sounds like English football fans. Didn't they get England banned a while back?

  • That's logical! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Corporate Troll ( 537873 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:44AM (#5823212) Homepage Journal
    I mean, it is well known that Australia is a haven for Spammers. My mailbox is full of "enlarge your crocodile" and "hot young koala's" and of course the classic "kangooroo's herbal viagra".

    I mean I'm glad that the internet (AOL is the internet, right?), finally did something against these annoying aussies!

  • More and more, people are realizing that E-Mail and 'The Internet' are not services offered by AOL. They're realizing that AOL does not "own" the internet, and they're realizing that most companies don't pay AOL to host their content.

    It's tough to explain to people what the internet is. AOL was a great simplification tool, in the "early days" of public access - you connect, and everything's set up for you.

    Now, millions who use the internet do so from work, with their work providing the connection and their work providing their email address. What's going to happen when AOL customers get told that they can't communicate with the "outside" anymore? Easy - they shut off their AOL subscription, because it becomes meaningless. Instead of simplifying their lives, it starts hampering them.

    I find it funny that AOL has adopted this policy, only because their market share has so dramatically decreaesd in the last few years. Sure, lots of people use AOL instant messenger, but if AOL starts charging for that, people will switch - I guarrentee it.

    These millions of people using Kazaa, etc.? They all realize that AOL isn't providing that content. Blocking (whitelisting) email makes the fact that AOL doesn't provide the internet *extremely salient* to AOL customers: Which is, imho, a horrible, horrible business move.

    America Online: So easy to overlook, no wonder it's gone bankrupt.

    • Re:AOL is just going to strangle itself... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by analog_line ( 465182 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @08:25AM (#5823878)
      You bring up points, and while they're valid on their face, they don't actually apply to AOL.

      AOL is doing this precisely because of customer demand. Not demand of the high end user, but the demand from parents and other ease-of-use types. The people that own most of the companies I do consulting for also will have me set up their home networks, and almost all of them subscribe to AOL, because they're the best of a bad bunch in effectively filtering porn spam before it gets to the e-mail box of their little kids' AOL screen name. That's the single biggest request I get, is looking for software that will stop their kids from getting porn spam e-mail.

      They don't care about Kazaa (their kids probably do, but they're not paying for the connection). They don't care if AOL owns the Internet. They just want some kind of relatively safe way for their kids to have an e-mail address they can give to their friends and have grandma and the family e-mail without having to delete all the porn spam themselves, by hand, before letting their kids sit in front of the computer.

      These are not luddites. They may be technophobes themselves, but they want their kids to learn this stuff. However, they realize that the Internet is NOT a happy go lucky friendly place. Smart parents don't let their kids play in the street, and letting your kids play on an unmonitored, unfiltered cable/DSL connection is pretty much the equivalent. Parents want a nice neighborhood. They WANT AOL to work right. Yeah, it sucks a lot, but in most of their minds, it's a lot better than the alternative, and they're probably right. These people don't have the time to learn all the technology and skills needed to filter the raw Internet on their own. Most of the time AOL does the job well enough for their needs, and that's why I tend to recommend it for them.

      Whitelisting is the ONLY way AOL and anyone else, for that matter, is ever going to get a handle on the spam problem without chucking SMTP altogether. It may make things harder, and may mean I have to start moving my clients away from AOL if they can't e-mail their kids from work if AOL just permablocks their work mail servers for the gods know what reason, but the practice of whitelisting is a GOOD THING. I can only hope more and more people start following AOL's example. Trust is the ONLY commodity in information security, whether in encryption, perimeter defenses, or spam prevention. Allowing people whom you do not trust to message you with the same freedom as those you do trust means you're going to be getting a lot of crap you don't want.

  • What is the purpose? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cdf12345 ( 412812 ) * on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:47AM (#5823217) Homepage Journal
    I understand that spam is a problem for AOL. But I fail to see how preventing people from sending mail to AOL customers is a smart business move.

    What do they hope to gain? Are they really going to save that much money by stopping some spam?

    Or, more likely they will annoy non-customers and current customers which is a lot worse than spam.

    It takes 5 minutes to lose a customer and a lifetime to win them back.

    No wonder AOL/Time Warner is having such problems, with flawed logic like this, I wouldn't doubt AOL soon stops accepting any internet e-mail traffic.

    • Yes, but the same also applies to Telstra. If you're a business in Australia and you're doing business with a company in the US that uses AOL for email (and many do), you're going to bitch and moan that you can't contact a client of yours or contact a supplier of yours. The object of your bitching and moaning will be Telstra.

      Email blacklists serve one real purpose: to pressure ISPs to drop spammers. They accomplish this by making enough collateral damage that the customers of said ISP make noise.

  • Not surprising (Score:5, Informative)

    by The Original Yama ( 454111 ) <lists.sridhar @ d h a n apalan.com> on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:48AM (#5823222) Homepage
    " For those outside of Australia, Telstra is one of our largest ISPs. "

    Telstra is Australia's largest ISP.

    I'm not particularly surprised that this happened, seeing as how Telstra was almost blocked from Usenet [slashdot.org] not long ago. Fortunately for Telstra users, it seems to be trying to do something about it [whirlpool.net.au].

    • Re:Not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:24AM (#5823296)
      I'm not particularly surprised that this happened, seeing as how Telstra was almost blocked from Usenet not long ago. Fortunately for Telstra users, it seems to be trying to do something about it.

      Their only observable action was to remove the abuse@bigpond.com complaints address. The sooner Telstra gets seriously LARTed, the better.

  • Blocking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:48AM (#5823223) Homepage
    While I applaud AOL for trying to stop spam, cuting off a large ISP is just a bit overkill. I mean there are better ways such as tagging email though of as spam and letting the end user deleting them if wanted and only dumping them only if you are sure its spam.

    Some IP blocks are nothing but spam so they are fine to block but you shouldn't use a sledgehammer to crack a nut

    Rus
    • Back when the MAPS Open Relay Blackhole List stuff was new, they blacklisted Netcom, which was my ISP (I forget it they were still Netcom or if they'd been eaten by Mindspring or Earthlink by then.) I found out about it when some of my email started bouncing, but at least the MAPS blocking produced human-readable error messages, which was one of the main objectives of the blacklist.

      It worked - there was lots of yelling and screaming, but in a month or so Netcom had closed their open email relays and gotte

  • Compuserve, too (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IronBlade ( 60118 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:49AM (#5823229) Homepage
    I know for a fact that CompuServe Pacific has also blocked Telstra Bigpond email.
    For those not in the know, AOL owns CompuServe, and I suspect they use the same anti-spam filters.
    A close friend works on the CompuServe Pacific tech-support line and has been flat out answering complaining users about this problem.
    Let's hope it gets cleared up soon!
    • Actually, it's not even a case of "AOL owns CompuServe", but rather AOL bought Compuserve, and now they are one and the same. Even down to calling the same modem pool, (yes, the AOL and CS phone numbers for a particular locality are the same, and sharing the same individual account information. If a user has both an AOL acct and a CS acct, he cannot use both at the same time, even from different PC's and different sub screennames.

      All that is different is a somewhat different GUI. CS has basically ceased to

  • They Should Be Blocked (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:53AM (#5823234)
    BigPond was most vulnerable to users running their own open relay mail servers via connections to the ISP

    These days open relay mail servers are just plain irresponsible. Maybe 99% of the users are responsible people, but the remaining 1% are a plague on what is otherwise a wonderful achievement. We just can't afford these open relays and if it takes major ISP's like AOL to start blocking large swaths of them to end this, more power to them!

    • "We just can't afford these open relays and if it takes major ISP's like AOL to start blocking large swaths of them to end this, more power to them!"

      Close enough. Years ago I had an open relay that was discovered. I would have considered it favor to have blocked it. Instead I cured the problem.
      I cured it by making my open relay effectively filter spam. then I ASKED to be listed (by ORBS) - might as well let the spammers send relay spam to a black hole, eh?

      Still works. jackpot.uk.net

      It's really ver

  • Good (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mattygfunk1 ( 596840 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:55AM (#5823239)
    I hope this turns off a few of Telstra's clients. Despite being a majority government owned monopoly, people still sign up for their overpriced, under-performing network.

    Have a quick look at whirlpool broadband news [whirlpool.net.au] and the number of "telstra is down" stories and anti-telstra sentiment in the comments. Remind you of anywhere else ;)

    __
    cheap web site hosting from $3 [cheap-web-...ing.com.au]

  • Thanks for the update (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...be sure to tell us about it again, three days from now. ...not...
  • Telstra was terrible about policing spammers a year ago, but they seem to be getting better, now. Most of what I see is now coming from China and Brazil.

    Speaking of China, what were the names of some of those subversive groups that all the Chinese spammers belong to? I know the Falun Gong is one, but what are the others?

    • Falun Gong (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      From http://www.falundafa.org/eng/faq.htm [falundafa.org]

      Q: What is Falun Dafa, or Falun Gong?
      A: Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is an ancient practice for mind and body, originating in pre-historic China. The practice involves some slow, gentle movements and a meditation...

      It's being cracked down on by China because of its spiritual nature.

      It has absolutely nothing to do with spamming.
      • Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is an ancient practice for mind and body, originating in pre-historic China. The practice involves some slow, gentle movements and a meditation...

        If by 'ancient' you mean '1985'

        • Re:Bleh (Score:2)

          by Uri ( 51845 )
          If by 'ancient' you mean '1985'

          Not really. Although Falun Gong [wikipedia.org] was popularized in 1992 (accompanied by semi-founded accusations of cultism), it is essentially a form of Qigong [wikipedia.org], an ancient Chinese medical technique.
      • It has absolutely nothing to do with spamming.

        It has everything to do with spamming. You get a Chinese spam, don't bother forwarding to abuse@ - Chinese ISPs are spamhausen through and through. Instead, reply to the spammer saying 'Thank you for the information on Falun Gong' or 'My donation to the Free Tibet movement is on its way' or just good old 'Down with dictatorship, long live the democratic revolution'.

        Hopefully, that will get the spammer into some trouble. Maybe even trouble of the kind deliver

  • An Alexandrian Solution... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by geekwench ( 644364 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @03:59AM (#5823246)
    ...to a Gordian problem, indeed.
    Given that one out of every three spams that clogged up my Hotmail account for a while at least purported to be from BigPond, I can see the rationale behind the ban. However, I'm not happy with any ISP - especially AOL - deciding for me what e-mails I shall and shall not recieve. This is why I maintain my own set of filters.

    Should BigPond tighten up the open relays, and go after offenders themselves? You betcha. Will they, especially after this? Hopefully. The solution to spam originating from BigPond (or anywhere else) should not involve the ISP playing Big Brother. Difficult as it might be to believe, BigPond (or Hotmail, or Yahoo) does have legitamate users who are innocent of broadcasting spam detailing how to enlarge body parts that you might not possess.

  • Block email from major ISPs... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...get more users on AIM.

    So in other words, blocking spam creates an opportunity for more ad revenue from the official clients. Go figure.

  • What? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What does this have to do with my rights online? Sounds like it's AOL's right to filter out email from whomever they want, and if their customers don't like it, they don't have to use the service.

  • AOL has done this before... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tigress ( 48157 ) <rot13.fcnzgenc03@8in.net> on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:10AM (#5823266)
    Telia, Sweden's largest ISP and the defacto telecoms monopoly (it was previously known as Televerket, the state monopoly telco, before it was "privatized"), was blocked by AOL a few months ago.

    Personally, I think it wasn't all that bad. Apparently, the reason for the blocking was Telia's excessively poor abuse handling. This was very much due to Telia being the largest - and most arrogant - of the telcos in Sweden, and the realization that they weren't the biggest fish in the pond struck hard. Needless to say, their abuse management has improved significantly afterwards.

    This only brings up the question, when will AOL realise that their pond is quite a lot bigger than they think? AOL is playing the very same arrogant I'm Holier Than Thou-game that Telia used to play on its local market. And, big as AOL might be, the Internet is a lot, lot larger.

  • Not surprised. (Score:2, Informative)

    by ChibiTaryn ( 646855 )
    I'm not surprised, to tell the truth. Two seconds of looking on Whirlpool [whirlpool.net.au] (the Australian Broadband Users' Community) will highlight exactly how bodgy Bigpond can be. I'm sure their own spam procedures have been less than perfect (or even good) for a long time, so I'm not surprised that other ISP's have had to block them out.

    As much as I hate AOL, I'm not sure that this situation is ALL their fault -- if Telstra took the spam problem more seriously themselves, then AOL may not have felt that they need to

  • Whitelist is the only solution (Score:5, Informative)

    by dybdahl ( 80720 ) <infoNO@SPAMdybdahl.dk> on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:19AM (#5823290) Homepage Journal
    Spamkillers like this one are also based on whitelisting e-mail addresses (although with built-in mechanisms to enable automatic whitelisting of non-spammers):

    http://a-s-k.sourceforge.net/

    Since this method works much better than spamassassin, RBL and similar methods, we better get used to whitelisting. Telstra simply has to get onto the whitelist fast.

    • Re:Whitelist is the only solution (Score:4, Insightful)

      by spacefight ( 577141 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @05:07AM (#5823377)
      This tool is crap:
      This program (Active Spam Killer, or ASK for short) takes an "Active" approach in solving the problem: Everytime an email is received, a message is sent back to the sender asking for confirmation. If that sender does not confirm the message, it remains queued for delivery. If the sender confirms, the message is delivered and removed from the queue. The "confirmed" senders will be added to your "whitelist" and will never be sent another confirmation. Messages from these emails will always be delivered immediately . You can also specify an "ignorelist" for emails that should be always ignored and a "blacklist" that will cause a nastygram to be sent back to the sender everytime an email is received.

      So how can automated mailing systems such as airline reservation confirmations and such stuff do this confirmation? My point is: whitelisting does not help at all. What if a spammer uses widely used whitelisted addresses such as newsletter From: addresses? Whitelisting does not help - I do not want people have to send mail back for confirmation - it tripples the traffic for one email by the way.
      • How much would it help if instead of whitelisting addresses (which sucks for a lot of us for reasons you mentioned, and because some of us *need* blind business contacts), it whitelisted servers known NOT to be an open relay?

        I know some spammers use "legit" access, but since the idea here seems to be to punish sloppy ISPs...

        [Personally, I don't want my ISP deciding for me where I can receive mail from, spam or not. So consider the above a technical query.]

    • You can also specify an "ignorelist" for emails that should be always ignored and a "blacklist" that will cause a nastygram to be sent back to the sender everytime an email is received.

      On a different note: please DO NOT send "automatic nastygrams", because in the majority of the cases the return addresses are faked and your nastygram will end up with an innocent third party that is being hit with a lot of bounces... (been there, done that). Nastygrams don't work, contacting their upstream provide abuse t

      • please DO NOT send "automatic nastygrams", because in the majority of the cases the return addresses are faked

        That's why you should complain to the originating or upstream IP, instead.
        I complain to abuse@, admin@, sales@, etc., etc., at the IP's contacts (and the domain's contacts, as well, if the RDNS resolves), along with any domains that the SPAM is pushing, along with whoever is responsible for the IP that a DNS of the domain resolves to, plus the domain that an RDNS of the IP resolves to (if any).

        I

  • AOL's new mantra... (Score:4, Funny)

    by CPgrower ( 644022 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:30AM (#5823309)
    "You've lost mail"
  • i was receiving spam from bigpond people, but when i looked into it, the person had renamed their box to bigpond.com.au. When i looked closer, the person was using an aol dialup account.

    Irony under any other name?

  • *whitelist*??? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 )
    So, AOL is blocking all mail from ISPs they haven't heard of? That's got to work really well. I can't even imagine a majority of their users wouldn't be at least have one or two people they know blocked by this.

    Why don't they just implement sender-verification? (i.e. if you haven't been 'authenticated' for the user, you'll be asked to reply to an email to prove you're legitimate. And once you do that, you'll never need to do it again).

    It doesn't seem like it would be very much trouble for AOL to imple

    • Re:*whitelist*??? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sabNetwork ( 416076 )
      "Sender verification" is a good idea, but it won't work for most users.

      Not all automated email is bad. A user who has "sender verification" on would not receive an Amazon.com sales receipt, for instance, because there is no way Amazon.com would go through the trouble to "authenticate" just for the AOL user.

  • "view this content without impacting allowance" (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Woah, I just looked at the Telstra BigPond site [bigpond.com] to see advertised special "unmetered sites" which don't "impact your monthly usage allowance". That reminds me of the bad old days of CompuServe 10 years ago where there were a few "basic" services which you weren't charged online time for, but most things (including "the Internet") had an hourly charge. I know in this case it's a ridiculous monthly bandwidth limitation (1GB or something?) but please!

    Hello, Australia??? Why do you put up with this shit? Do t

    • I'm in NZ where we have the same thing. There's a finite amount of bandwidth so we get charged by the MB. Southern Cross cable. Under the water. I think they used standard telephone cable. Scary thing is that DSL here is fast as hell so you can go through your 1 GB/month in a couple of hours with no problem.
      • If DSL is working so fast in NZ, why don't they ease up a little on the b/w restrictions or at least qualify it so that offshore bytes count but local bytes don't?

        In any case, isn't there fibre between you and Oz? Unless the sheep get cable, I can't see that link getting filled too quickly.

  • That's alright... (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Fanta Menace ( 607612 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:54AM (#5823350) Homepage

    ...I've been blocking AOL for years. Only fair for them to reciprocate.

  • what AOL needs is a good booting (Score:4, Funny)

    by the-build-chicken ( 644253 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:57AM (#5823356)
    This is an outrage!

    I'm going to take this all the way to the Prime Minister!

    Hey Mr. Prime Minister!

    Andy!

  • Wouldn't it be easier (Score:3, Funny)

    by kasperd ( 592156 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @04:58AM (#5823357) Homepage Journal
    to just disconnect AOL from the internet?
  • Obviously this is embarrassing to Telstra. While it may inconvenience a few businesses temporarily, it might be worth it if it makes Telstra and other ISPs take a stronger stance against spam. I get a bit of spam from AOL users myself, so I can't say that they are setting a perfect example. But I don't care if it means I'll get less spam.

  • AOL dial in (Score:2, Informative)

    by bernywork ( 57298 )
    I think the funny part is this, I have been led to believe that when AOL setup here in Australia, Telstra provided the dial in for AOL.

    I think the dial-in lines are now being hosted by MCI Worldcom.

  • Since when do you have a right to have your email accepted by the other server?

  • DSL/dialup does not automatically mean spam. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TrentTheThief ( 118302 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @07:21AM (#5823632)
    The practice of automatically branding everyone having a dynamic IP and sending email via their own domains. Using non-ISP email servers is not a crime.

    I own several domains, a few of them for almost 9 years. In that time I have used seven or eight IPs. Only for a year or so did I have a fixed IP. I don't send spam, my servers are not open relays, but I am penalized now because I can not get a fixed IP from Verizon.

    First, Osirus starts using the wirelist to block dynamic IPs, now AOL is blocking dynamic IP.

    Why should I be restricted to sending mail from a verizon address? I am a business owner who has domains representing my business. Why is it wrong to want my emails to come from _my_ domain and not from Verizon?

    Don't even start with the pompous BS about doing SSH tunneling, or expecting business class service for consumer prices. I don't want to hear it. I'm paying business prices for my service. So sod off. Not everyone is in a position to physically host their own on-site server or afford their own OC-3.

    Is any of this blocking really going to affect the spam situation? I don't think so. Spam is economically viable because consumers continue to shop from businesses that use spam as a marketing tool. Consumers continue to buy spammed products.

    Spam is not a problem that will be solved by refucing email from entire IP blocks. Spam is a consumer education problem.

    If people were as quick to boycott spammed product as they have been to pour french wine in the gutter, spam would be a thing of the past.

    • I own several domains, a few of them for almost 9 years. In that time I have used seven or eight IPs. Only for a year or so did I have a fixed IP. I don't send spam, my servers are not open relays, but I am penalized now because I can not get a fixed IP from Verizon.

      Frankly, I'd think you'd understand the reason behind the MAPS DUL, given your obvious amount of experience on the 'net. If a user is forced to send email through their ISP's SMTP server, this makes it far more difficult to exploit open relay

  • No One Who Will Be Missed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fire-eyes ( 522894 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @07:25AM (#5823646) Homepage
    See Subject line.
  • lately they seem to be blocking everyone who appears to be sending spam. Oxford University (http://www.ox.ac.uk) got blocked for about 6 weeks until AOL pulled their finger out and realised what they'd done.

    Seems the sys-admins on the anti-spam bit are clueless and regularly delete whole domains that have the 'from' section of spam releting to them ,even if it is an obvious forged address.

    Or maybe they are trying to take over the world by only allowing internal emails to flow unobstructed?-)
  • This doesn't appear to be the case, but this is a scary scenario I've often thought could happen.

    Suppose, just suppose, that AOL charged a premium to receive mail from non-AOL members. International e-mail would cost even more. Similarly, "premium" websites (any popular places, cnn.com, wsj.com, etc.) cost a few extra dollars a month.

    Again, I'm not suggesting that AOL is doing this, I'm merely using this to illustrate a fear that I've long had -- having various charges for each website you visit. It'd des
    • Not so farfetched, IMO. I know AOL users who still believe that they can only exchange email with another AOL user. It's a short hop from a common user belief to a common billing practice...

      Much like what someone mentioned above, that many people believe their ISP's portal page has to be set as their home page, or the internet will stop working. What if you had to pay extra for the privilege of setting it somewhere else?

      We'd be back to the days of the closed "online services" and itemized billing in a hel

  • Sysadmins: Block AOL SMTP (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Monday April 28, 2003 @09:14AM (#5824127) Homepage
    Block inbound SMTP from AOL. Set a cutoff date, nofity all of your users, and stand firm. The further they get down this path the more accepted this practice will become. Once this practice becomes accepted, it is entirely likely that other protocols will begin being blocked for other reasons (suppose the RIAA suggests that AOL block all connections to non-commercial HTTP servers to avoid piracy liability).

    It is not unreasonable to see this as the first step in the stratification of the Internet into corporate sanctioned, generally accessible servers and cordoned-off slums. This is every bit as dangerous, if not more so, than government censorship.

    Note: it will anger your users. I know, because it angered my users. The biggest problem was that they did not understand why. I've posted a FAQ [traxel.com] to address their most common questions.

    If we give an inch now, later they will take a yard. Better to endure a little pain now than to try to stand against the tide in a year or two.
  • Most people say AOL is a monolithic shit-for-brains company that everyone with more than half-an-hour of experience on the net hates, cool. I have little if anything to do with them...

    ..but, to Australians, Telstra invokes a similar reaction. Many Americans would be surprised to see what this monopolistic company charges for local calls, mobile phone calls, internet access and cable tv (with foxtel).

    Look at their internet broadband rates:
    http://www.bigpond.com/broadband/access/ADSL/plans / [bigpond.com]

    Are you
    • Don't forget this is in Australian dollars - this morning 1 Aussie dollar was worth just over 61 US cents.

      As for supporting Australian businesses, I'd love to support a Telstra rival - Telstra owns the exchanges that all the other ISP's have to get access to, and charges high rates for access so no other ISP can undercut them with their broadband.
  • Telstra are not loved in Australia.
    However their Broadband service "Big Pond Advance" has been heavily promoted of late and is taking market share from AOL's dial up service. As are the ADSL providers. Fast is good, by the time you factor in local calls, the difference in cost for many is minimal.

    AOL blocks all DSL ISP's and Telstra.
    "Don't go elsewhere kids, you won't be able to email your mates on AOL anymore the world over."

    Where are the watchdogs? Why shouldn't AOL be instructed to lift this rediculous

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