[SURBL-Discuss] Revised DMOZ data, got Wikipedia domains too

[Jeff Chan]

On Friday, October 8, 2004, 11:37:03 PM, Alex Broens wrote:
> tripod and geocities have given spammers a home for many years... and
> there's many other freehosters who have become "victims" as well.

> if not permitted to blacklist, at least treat as 2nd level tld so we can 
> get rid of the spam coming from them

That's possible, but not something we've done so far.  I don't
see shared domain hosting as a major spam destination.  Maybe
they are a minor annoyance, but nothing like the pill spammers
hosted in China, Korea, Brazil, etc.

The difference is that geocities, tripod, angelfire, etc. ought
to have some incentive to get rid of these minor abusers since
they make so little money from them.  The pill/mortgage/warez/etc.
spam hosters probably make a lot more money from their spamming
customers, so they have an incentive too keep them.

In the case where there is some legitimate company like Yahoo
or Lycos (parents of geocities, tripod, etc) to police their
customers and enforce their AUPs, then spam victims should
report them and let them do the enforcing.  Since these
companies are mostly legitimate and probably do spend some
resources dealing with abuse, they have an incentive to
reduce abuse since it probably costs them more money than
it gains them.

One of the main reasons for doing SURBLs was to be able to
do something about the hosting companies who don't have AUPs
against spam or don't enforce them.

Bottom line is that tripod, etc. are mostly irrelevant compared
to the professional spam gangs who send a lot more spam.  SURBLs
are for listing the domains of the bigger fish who have found
spam-friendly hosts, regardless of where those hosts are.

Jeff C.
--
"If it appears in hams, then don't list it."