« Links Roundup | Main | Links Roundup »
July 20, 2005
ISPs Versus Zombies
This news.com article on the FTC, Zombies, and ISPs doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know about the putrid state of affairs on many ISP networks. It does, however, contain an interesting graphic suggesting that AOL is the most infected network, even worse than Comcast.
This should show that if ISPs cared about keeping their spam problem inside their own network, as AOL seems to, instead of inflicting it on the rest of the world, as Charter and Comcast and Road Runner and Verizon and Bellsouth do, and the list goes on, they could. Instead, we see that Comcast thinks it would be too expensive to stop the problem in its tracks. AOL publishes a list of their consumer subscriber netblocks, so anyone can block traffic from them if they choose, and also blocks port 25 outbound. Granted, it's not perfect; they still manage to spew a lot of outscatter, but they tell you where it will come from. As of a few months ago, they had not yet closed all the spam/abuse leakage on their network, but a recent check shows that we haven't received any 419/advance fee fraud spam from AOL in at least 60 days.
Would that Hotmail, Tiscali, go.com, tin.it, erasmas.net, iol.cz, inode.at, go2.pl, ofir.com, atlas.cz, spray.net et al could claim the same.
Posted by schampeo at July 20, 2005 11:29 AM