Google Named No. 3 Spam Provider - Blocking Spam (
Page 2 of 2 )
Spammers and other abusers are constantly attacking and testing networks. If
an ISP's abuse team is unwilling to listen to outside complaints and take them
seriously, then testing will be missed and perhaps develop into full-scale
abuse, perhaps a botnet. Now that's expensive for an ISP.
The flip side of port 25 blocking is the Spamhaus PBL or Policy Block List.
Absent special arrangements between a user and a service, the user ranges at
consumer ISPs can be said not to be legitimate sources for SMTP traffic. The
PBL is a list of such ranges that recipients can block wholesale, and then put
in exceptions as warranted.
And it's not just spam that gets ISPs on lists like this. The Spamhaus Top
10 also reflects hosting of spam URLs, fast-flux DNS servers and other abusive
practices. Look at the Spamhaus
complaint list for Google, for example, and you'll see more than one
incident related to hosting of spam URLs on blogspot.com. There are also many
complaints about docs.google.com being used as a spam redirector.
And since this is a chance to take a dig at it, I'll note that my own ISP,
verizon.com, is listed at No. 9 and is the source for
the infamous Gevalia coffee spam.
I actually think the spam abuse flood currently sweeping over Google caught
the company by surprise, as it did Yahoo and Microsoft in their day. Think of
the work it must have taken for Microsoft and Comcast to dig themselves out of
this hole. Of course, Microsoft may be No. 11 and I wouldn't know, but Cox said
Comcast, in recent years, has become "an impressively proactive ISP and
they stomp out a lot of abuse as soon as their people are aware of it."
So ISPs really can turn it around if they're willing to do the right thing.
There's no doubt in my mind that the work an ISP does to eliminate this sort of
abuse from its network will also improve the quality of experience and support
for users, especially its own, but also outsiders.
Security Center
Editor Larry Seltzer
has worked in and written about the computer industry since 1983.
For insights on security coverage around the Web, take
a look at eWEEK.com Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer's blog Cheap Hack.
/ 6 
IT Security & Network Security News & Reviews News & Reviews 
