[Mimedefang] On pinheaded ISP's (sort of OT)

[Lisa Casey]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip Prindeville" <philipp_subx at redfish-solutions.com>
To: <mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 1:56 PM
Subject: [Mimedefang] On pinheaded ISP's that insist on a copy of Spam


> I'm dealing with a lot of idiot ISP's that seem to think that
> it's my responsibility to keep logging on their customers'
> activity.
>
> Simply saying, "One of your customers tried to spam me,
> but I rejected it... here are the logs" isn't enough.  They
> insist that I give them a copy of the message (since they're
> the ones needing the message, you'd think they would
> collect that data themselves... idiots.  And I don't care if
> it means snooping their clients' email and invading their
> privacy... that's their problem, not mine).
>
> So I try to explain to them that there's really no good reason
> why I should disable my highly efficient spam filters just to
> make their jobs easier... at which point they reply, "Well, the
> message might not have originated with us..."
>
> And I'm thinking, "Then what the hell are they doing
> operating an open relay?!?!?"
>
> You can see what I'm up against...

I run an ISP and my customers e-mail is their own private business. it would
be quite wrong of me (in my opinion) to keep copies of my customers email.
If someone says to me that one of my customers is spamming, I'll take that
allegation quite seriously and do everything I can to investigate and get
rid of the customer if it turns out to be true. In order to do that though,
I need copies of the original headers, not the email message itself. Because
yes -- the probability is quite high that the email did NOT originate with
us. Most return addresses on spam is forged (surely you guys all know that).
None of my mail servers are open relays. But if  you come to me with a
complaint of spamming, I will ask you for proof in the form of headers. And
if you can't supply that, well I'm sorry but I don't have the hours it might
take to investigate the complaint otherwise.

Lisa Casey