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Re: formatting to FAT32

Cross-posted to 4 groups.

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> To blacklist all 4 million customers of one of the top 3 ISPs in the 
> UK does seem a little strange though.
>
Nah.  Choosing the blanket option happens quite often.  People think 
that it creates incentive, for starters.  "Look, you're going to get 10 
million customers complaining at you.  You'd better dance to my tune."  
And even, just for the sake of exposition, buying M. Metz's naive and 
inexperienced contention that the blacklisting is done as it is claimed 
to be done, and no-one makes any errors, or does things for expediency, 
or tries to hoodwink the UBM senders, it's fairly clear that this sort 
of thing can happen often.  Consider.  Just *one* of those 10 million 
customers happens to hit a honeypot mailbox, sending through Virgin 
Media's SMTP Relay clients, and in response PenTeleData blacklists 
Virgin Media's SMTP Relay client, as that was the source.  If that 
customer were a genuine Unsolicited *Bulk* Mail sender, then of course 
xe'd probably have sent more than one message to more than one honeypot, 
that being the nature of *bulk* mail after all, and probably thereby 
routed mail via several of Virgin Media's SMTP Relay clients, causing 
them all to be blacklisted.  One bulk mail run, by one out of 10 
million, and suddenly an entire ISP's SMTP Relay client bank is blacklisted.

But as I pointed out twice, the truth is unknown.  There's no reason to 
suppose that the published model is the true model.  People aren't 
obliged to tell everyone how they are blacklisting people, nor are they 
obliged to stick to their own blacklisting rules.  Indeed, many people 
would be most upset if they weren't allowed the freedom to blacklist as 
they like, so that they can be flexible in the face of events, even 
though they had a published set of rules.  And the people who are 
already hoodwinking UBM senders with honeypot mailboxes would strongly 
resist the idea that they had to be entirely transparent about what they 
are doing, because, for starters, not telling people about the honeypots 
is the main idea.

Frankly, as the innocent third parties clearly caught in the fallout, M. 
Metz's professionally insulting presumptions notwithstanding, it's not 
our business and not our fight.  Moreover, why should any of us give any 
ISP the satisfaction of using us as clubs to bully our own ISP?  For 
that is exactly what this "tell your postmaster" stuff is all about.  (I 
am, in fact, my own postmaster, in the usual case.  As I said, I know my 
way around SMTP.)  PenTeleData makes (it hopes) 10 million people's 
lives every so slightly more difficult, and then tells them that they 
should complain to Virgin Media about it.  It's using an ISP's customers 
as pawns.  It may well be the only weapon available, the truth of which 
claim is another discussion all in itself, but it doesn't mean that the 
pawns are obliged either to like it or to cooperate.  It's not 
PenTeleData that the pawns have a contract with, for one thing.  If 
someone told you that xe was going to prevent you from talking to 
another person because a third party that neither you even know had done 
something completely unrelated to either of you, would you be inclined 
to cooperation?  You'd probably ask why the heck the two of you are 
being roped in at all.  It's a bizarre idea when presented in the world 
of everyday discourse, but it's normal for the world of SMTP electronic 
mail.

Again, as I said, welcome to the balkanization of SMTP mail.  If you 
look around a bit, you'll see this happening all over.  Just looking at 
PenTeleData one can find reported that it blacklisted GMail 
(72.14.204.xxx) in 2007, Yahoo! (72.14.246.250) in 2007, Comcast 
(76.96.30.48) in 2007, and Orange France (80.12.242.26) in 2009.  One 
can find the same for many other ISPs.  There's a 2006-01-26 article by 
Jack Schofield, computer editor of The Guardian, all about NTL 
blacklisting a whole load of other ISPs, including TescoNET (the running 
of which, as I recall, was outsourced to NTL itself at the time).  To 
reiterate what I said at the start:  The blanket option happens quite 
often.  Those of us with experience are long-since familiar with it and 
the silly dances that ensue.  (-:

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Re: formatting to FAT32 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-03-30 12:36 +0100
  Re: formatting to FAT32 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-03-31 00:49 +0100
    Re: formatting to FAT32 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-03-31 17:04 +0100
      Re: formatting to FAT32 "Trevor Hemsley" <Trevor.Hemsley@mytrousers.ntlworld.com> - 2011-04-01 15:33 -0500
        Re: formatting to FAT32 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-04-02 02:17 +0100
          Re: formatting to FAT32 Spam Guy <Spam@Guy.com> - 2011-04-04 09:20 -0400
      Re: formatting to FAT32 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-04-01 23:57 +0100
        Re: formatting to FAT32 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM> - 2011-04-05 19:12 +0100
  Re: formatting to FAT32 "Mark Dodel" <madodelNOSPAM@ptd.net> - 2011-03-31 15:23 -0500

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