>So?
So to blanket a huge provider that in this has a minority of bad apples
(perhaps due to bad corporate policy as you allude to on AT&T's part -
which is a hallmark of AT&T, and even more so AT&T Canada and it's head,
Ted Rogers), is to willingly block an even more huge amount of legitimate
potential traffic. That's *bound* to come back and bite you. I agree
there's a point where collusion gets so bad that there's more bad apples
than good, and for time's sake you might nuke the whole class B, but I
don't think it serves anyone well to be trigger happy when a person is
contemplating blacklisting the landscape to that degree, and I'm just
keeping the other side of the coin spoken to.
>A few years ago I put every bit of the 7th largest (at the time)
>backbone ISP into my blacklist. So did many other people. They (AGIS)
>were intentionally providing service to the 3 biggest commercial
>spammers, and colluding with them in an address-harvesting scheme
>masquerading as a list removal system. AGIS is now dead, due at least
>in part to that widespread blacklisting.
And rightly so I guess, but as incompetent as AT&T Canada might be here, I
don't think you can make that case here.
>AT&T is one provider who is KNOWN to have written explicitly 'pink'
>contracts in the past. Contracts which provide the customer with an
>exemption from the normal rules against spamming. It looks in some
>cases like they are still doing this.
Sure. The link between AT&T Canada and AT&T US is pretty weak though just
for perspective, and none of us seem to be giving hard stats on much
legitimate traffic is coming from AT&T (on either side of the 49th), which
at least has to be considered.
I've been tempted many times to blacklist AOL too for many reasons. The
high proportion of bad apples from AOL's cross sample give AOL users (and
American's - sorry) a bad name often. And I've been frustrated enough to
be tempted to say that if you're dumb enough to choose or need AOL as your
provider then you're too dumb to be allowed to initiate a conversation
with my web, mail, or list servers. A cooler head generally prevails
though, barely. Instead I put in things like subscription confirmation
steps on listserv's etc as an entrance exam. If a person is too dumb to
get subscribed then I don't have to deal with their idiocy trying to
unsubscribe, etc.
>> You should be able to get good support from their NOC.
>
>Maybe, but their abuse response sucks.
I don't doubt that I guess. Likely comes from being overworked,
underpaid, and under trained. Even their customer support leaves much to
be desired. I wouldn't even use them except that all of the other CLEC
upstream providers in my area (and all but two nationally - AT&T being one
of them) have gone under in the last 6 months in the down turn.
So a person is safer just asking the minimum from them (in my case - just
the fiber).
>However, I've had reasons over the years to put a lot of your network
>neighbors into my local blacklist because of Metronet's incompetence
>(that's the kind interpretation; the less-kind one is that they are
>knowingly and intentionally providing a haven for spammers)
Having seen them through the installation process (having to teach them
how to do their job when they were onsite), deal with their support reps,
and see their management and Chief in particular in the news regularly, I
can assure you it's incompetence for the most part. Their NOC however, as
many/most are, seem up to stuff.
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