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Censorship Your Rights Online

Verizon vs. Europe 63

Posted by Hemos from the who-knows-the-truth dept.
mikrorechner writes "The Register has a story about Verizon blocking all incoming email from Europe since 22 December. Why? To reduce spam. I know that some providers block countries like South Korea by default, but I was not aware that Europe was seen as a major spam source. Well, it seems Verizon knows better..."
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Verizon vs. Europe More

Verizon vs. Europe

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  • Are you sure they didn't mis-spell China?

  • Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iainl ( 136759 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @08:07AM (#11384361)
    I was considering blocking the entire IP range for the US, since I never get anything other than spam from there.

  • lets just (Score:2, Funny)

    by jago25_98 ( 566531 )
    block everywhere

    well, it would be useful to have source country flagged up

    is the uk included I wonder hehe
    • Yes, the UK is included in the block - The Reg mention that they themselves are getting their emails to Verizon customers blocked, for example.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Since Europe doesn't bend over [fsf.org] as easily as certain other continents, I believe that Verizon should just learn to respect citizens, for it has no other choice if it is going to survive in a truly free society or face serious consequences (trade sanctions, anyone?). This is how capitalism is meant to work, but Verizon might have some trouble to understand it having been living under the pro-corporation anti-individual government umbrella for so long. This is nothing new, a lot of corporations had to change t

  • Native language spam (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GtKincaid ( 820642 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @08:22AM (#11384447)
    Living in europe , and having several difrent european email address , i cant recall one bit of spam that came from the EU .. im not saying it dosnt exist but logicaly since i have a .de email address (germany)
    why is all my spam in American english (im not german i only live here) but everyone i talk to around here gets a vast marjority of the spam from companys in the USA........anyway...

    Verizons policy seems to be the equvilent of chopping off your legs because you have a rash on you right big toe!
    • i cant recall one bit of spam that came from the EU

      I think the issue is about zombies; internet-connected home computers with a trojan that sends spam with a different From address. Trace the IP addresses in the headers and see whether they really don't come from within the EU. (Spamcop.net can do this job for you, and detect forged headers)

      • That's a load of BS. If that truly was the case then they would be doing the world a big favour of blocking entire subnets of comcast and aol blocks. Maybe that one or two european ISPs aren't willing to cooperate to shutdown rogue accounts but the large part of western-european ISP's *shut down accounts too fast* (see ffii-europe newsletters).
      • I have read repeatedly here and elsewhere that most spam comes from "spam zombie" machines "pwned" via the machinations of malicious virus writers. Ergo, a machine spewing viruses via email is (a) a spam source in training and (b) attempting to create other zombies/spam sources. It therefore seems logical that any ISP serious about fighting spam would welcome reports of subscribers spewing viruses, whereby to notify the subscriber of the infection and/or suspend the account until the problem is fixed. On t
        • I feel like pulling out the form why your solution combatting spam won't work, though i'll spare everyone from that. Do you know that 99% of the ISPs never reply to anything sent to abuse@*? To be honest, in most cases they don't have the infrastructure for that, but the fact is a fact, they aren't replying. And even if they would reply, would they do anything? ISPs need to change first by enforcing stricter rules on them.
          • "ISPs need to change first by enforcing stricter rules on them."

            I agree wholeheartedly.

            The TOS should state:

            If you sign up with us and we learn you are spamming from our servers, you agree to pay us $10 for each spam email.

            You must present proof of identity to get a broadband account (makes it it easier to find/presecute/sue spammers).

            Non-commercial accounts are limited to 100 outgoing emails per 24-hour period. If you have a legitimate need to send more than 100 emails daily, contact our Commercial Ac
        • If you want to upset the market forces that push ISPs toward ignoring spammers, launch a DoS against their customer service desk. Get on IRC and start recruiting a cadre of 15 year olds whose parents don't pay close attention to the phone bill and have them repeatedly call the ISP with bogus questions -- or just keep calling to say "The machine on your network with IP ###.###.###.### is spewing viruses. Please blackhole it now."
    • "why is all my spam in American english "

      I can think of at least a couple of possibilities:

      - A lot of Americans have a lot of disposable income.
      - While the Internet is international, it did start primarily in American English.

    • why is all my spam in American english

      I received some spam in Turkish back in the day. I was working for a company with many international clients so I went to the trouble of getting it translated by a friend from there. His response was "penis enlargement." :)

    • True, true.

      Actually, you're (maybe) slightly wrong - I get tons of Spanish language spam. But, of course, that isnt necessarily coming from the EU -- it could easily be coming from the dozens of ex-colonial countries in Africa, Central & Southern America which speak Spanish.

      On the other hand, even the Spanish spam is vastly outweighed by the US spam.

      It's nothing but a slew of American mortgages, American "meds" (never heard anybody use the term here, also there is no market because there arent milli

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @08:27AM (#11384475)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • hopefully, your insightful post won't be verizoned down to -1.
    • I've noticed that companies whose name begins with the letter "V" can't be trusted.
      For example, I have had business with about a dozen car dealerships.
      The only two that I had trouble with had names beginning with the letter "V".
      I don't do business any more with companies whose names begin with the letter "V".
      I would advise everyone else to do the same.

      Oh, yeah, and the Van Allen Belt contains radiation that is dangerous or lethal to astronauts.
      Coincidence?
      I think not!

      Also, "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
    • Verizon is also the company that stood up the RIAA to say that a John Doe law suit had to be filed so that a subpoena could be issued to force them to reveal subscriber identities, rather than just handing over the identities of all accused subscribers just because the RIAA asked for them.
    • Subscribers are now sueing Verizon over disabled file transfer via Bluetooth on the Motorola V710 in order to gain more network profit! Now we really have to get information about the capabilities of phones from the wireless operators because their advertisements don't always tell us the complete story.
  • Am I alone in sitting here this morning, reading this story, and refusing to belive that even Verizon would do something so stunningly stupid.

    Yee Gods!

    • Am I alone in ... refusing to belive that even Verizon would do something so stunningly stupid.

      Yeah, pretty much. You must not know verizon so well. This is pretty much par for the course for them.

      This is a company that thought changing its name would make people not realise they were the same company that had such a bad customer service. I always love how a company changes its name and says "we're changing our name to serve you better!" Umm, yeah, there's a great speech about "what's in a name?"

      Anyw

  • They shuld greylist instead, that way at least SOME legit mail would get through.

    http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/ [puremagic.com]

    At the University where i work we cut spam to about 10% of former bulk with Evan Harris' greylisting software 'relaydelay' (thanks Evan!). It let's through all legit mail as long as the sending server follows SMTP-standards and allows for a temporary failure.

    Some problems with mailinglistsoftware that uses different envelope senders for each mail, but you can whitelist those server

    • They shuld greylist instead, that way at least SOME legit mail would get through.

      Given Verizon's reputation, I'm not sure I'd want them to accept e-mail from me, legit or not (yes, I'm a European). I support the basic idea of rejecting all mail from certain networks, countries or even continents based on past experiences of abuse, except I'd never want my ISP to do it for me without me having a say in the matter. I know approximately from where I can expect legit mail; Verizon can't possibly tell the sam

  • How can I block emial from Verizion? I get a lot of spam from the US, particularly them, and I don't know anyone using their mail servers.

    Gmail needs an option to block IP ranges...

  • seems fair (Score:3, Interesting)

    by martin ( 1336 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `cesxam'> on Monday January 17, 2005 @09:48AM (#11385091) Journal
    alot of people block email from verizon (or containing verizon URL's in the body) as they seem to host alot of spammers :-)

    • From yesterdays rejection log:

      2005-01-17 09:08:05 H=wbar18-tmp1-4-10-136-122.tmp1.dsl-verizon.net [4.10.136.122] F= rejected RCPT : 4.10.136.122 is listed at bl.spamcop.net

      My emphasis.

  • I really don't understand all of this paranoia over spam--especially on slashdot. You just have to be an intelligent internet user to avoid getting spam. I only get 2-3 a week--these are easily deleted. I don't run any special software or anything. Just don't give your email address to people you don't trust. If there's a form that requires an email address, put in a fake one. It's really pretty easy.
    • "Just don't give your email address to people you don't trust."

      Would that life was so simple.

      If your job requires that people be able to email you and you address is therefore made public, you do not have a lot of options. That's one of the reasons for "paranoia over spam." Dealing with it costs business tons of time, money, and lost productivity.

    • Re:Spam Is No Big Deal (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jpatters ( 883 )
      That's easy for you to say. I get 150 spams sent to my personal email address every day. Of course, I have had the same address since 1992, two years before Canter and Siegel began their usenet barrage. Taking your steps now would be the ultimate example of closing the barn door after the cows have wandered off.
    • Lucky you. Some people get hundreds per day despite their best efforts to keep their address out of the hands of spammers. Giving your email address only to people you trust isn't enough. All it takes is one email virus to harvest addresses from their address book and suddenly you're on spam lists.
    • I really don't understand all of this paranoia over spam--especially on slashdot. You just have to be an intelligent internet user to avoid getting spam. I only get 2-3 a week--these are easily deleted. I don't run any special software or anything. Just don't give your email address to people you don't trust. If there's a form that requires an email address, put in a fake one. It's really pretty easy.

      Specifically the arrogance of some of you "spam isn't so bad, you can deal with it" dudes.

      First of all: W

    • Why put a fake one when a real one will work as well [mailinator.com]? :)
  • "If it's really important you should call"

    It's this excuse that makes me say that email should be given the same priority as postal mail. I was a verizon user and this would not of affected me in the slightest becuase I've always used external IMAP email services and I will when the fiber is ran to my house in a few weeks.

    Email is a value added service and if you truely want email to work dont let verizon handle it just get a gmail account or yahoo. Or even Runbox.com which of course I believe is a euro
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I would love for this to happen. I maintain my own mail server behind my cable modem and have gone to great pains to make sure it isn't an open relay and have never received any indication that it has been abused in any way. I specifically picked an ISP that allowed this (earthlink cable).

      The biggest problem I run into is that my IP address is included in a range that is on some list somewhere as a dynamic address (yes, it is a DHCP non-static address that has changed ONE time in three years), and about o

    • I have never understood why so many ISPs provide dynamic IP addresses on DSL. It made sense with dial-up, allocate an IP address to each dial-in port and use this for the customer who is connecting via that port. But with DSL, is it not easier to also allocate a fixed IP address to each physical DSLAM port and hence to each customer's connection?

      The ISP I use only provides static IP addresses, and welcomes customers using their own incoming and outgoing SMTP servers.
  • El Reg still remains blocked at the time of writing. ... At the time of writing Verizon has not responded to our requests for comment.

    Is it just me... or does this seem like a "Here's your sign" comment to anyone else?

    To those who don't get it: The Register says it remains blocked at the time of writing. Only a sentence later they write that they haven't received any response from Verizon. I'm willing to bet they emailed Verizon (Who is still blocking them) and their request for comments ended up in the
  • My server is blocked too. It's situated in White Plains, NY.

    The ISP, 1&1, is largely a UK/Germany ISP, so perhaps that's why they're on the "Europe" list, but a traceroute shows my machine is not in Europe. See IP addresses don't encode geographic location information, (Verizon - that's you, bozo).

    My server isn't on any of the DNSRBL lists, is pretty tightly run, and publishes SPF records.

    So, my grandpa can't get photos of his great-granddaughter on his e-mail account. Lovely. I'm suggesting he s

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