At 9:54 PM -0400 5/31/03, Bill Cole wrote:
They added an entire class B address range for Flashcom DSL to the DUL while I was using Flashcom. All non-portable, many with rDNS entries. Getting them to treat me as anything but a scummy spammer was difficult. I discussed it on this list here: http://mail.stalker.com/Lists/SIMS/Message/10242.html
I'm actually somewhat familiar with that case, and I know for a fact that Flashcom, incompetents that they were, asked for that listing.
Not allowed it, not ignored it, ASKED FOR IT. The MAPS policy at the time was to believe what the registered owners of address space told them in regards to suitability for the DUL.
(I have the right to call Flashcom incompetents because of my direct experience with them as a customer. They deserved to die as they did.)
My experience with them was not wonderful, either. I kept them through a move. Talk about pain and suffering. The story that they went bust because they lost their billing records for six months and didn't know who they should bill seems very plausible.
They never charged me for over a year. They sent 2 letters during that time assuring me that they would eventually figure out how to charge the card, so I should be expecting it. Never happened. I still have the router I got for a 1-year commitment.
I have since heard from an ex-employee that their problem had to do with write-once logic in some externally developed billing database. Once they had a record in, they couldn't change it, and that included adding billing info. Apparently they had a stack of paper waiting to be input for over a year.
I don't fault MAPS for adding the range at the owner's request. I felt that I was treated with hostility and suspicion when I complained. It didn't help that I never got an explanation from MAPS or Flashcom, the problem just suddenly went away.
It certainly seemed to me at the time to be a case of "guilty until proven innocent, then we'll see..."
That I later found out that it was Flashcom's incompetence (from you, IIRC) that led to MAPS rudeness was probably what made me lighten up on the concept of RBLs, if not on MAPS.
I can't defend MAPS on the end-user responsiveness problem. For the DUL, I think the issue was that they got a number of complaints from real spammers posing as innocent users. At one point there were multiple spammers running dual T1's into their homes: one as an incoming data link and the other as 24 analog lines for dialups. They'd buy dialup accounts in volume and run through them, expecting to have them cancelled for spamming. When an ISP told MAPS that a range of theirs was DUL-fodder, it often meant that they knew it was infested with spammers.
That's an explanation for the suspicious response, not an excuse. MAPS has a long list of inexcusables that together explain why they are less relevant today than they were 3 years ago.
--
Bill Cole
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