back to article Dutch ISP calls the cops after Spamhaus blacklists it

Dutch ISP A2B Internet has filed a complaint with the police after it claimed to have been "blackmailed" by London-based anti-spam outfit Spamhaus. A2B managing director Erik Bais told Webwereld (report in Dutch) that Spamhaus "has gone too far". The Spamhaus Project is an international organisation, founded by Steve Linford …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

  1. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Comparing Spamhaus to credit scoring agencies

    While both can (disingenuously) claim "we don't block your email/credit" they are both responsible for sourcing the information that does. With credit rating companies, we all have a right to access the information they hold about us and have it corrected if it's wrong. With Spamhous we have no rights, no means of getting incorrect information put right and we aren't even judged on our own behaviour.

    In human rights terms collective punishments are illegal. You cannot punish a group of people for the wrongdoings of one, whom you suspect of being in that group. Yet this is precisely what happens with Spamhous. What's worse is that you, as an individual, have no rights to have information that Spamhous publish about the IP address you are using updated. While you could argue that with dynamic IP allocation it's not practical, that doesn't excuse the behaviour, which is simply a poor implementation which addresses the wrong problem.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Spamhaus punish nobody, they publish a list and do not enforce that list.

      If you want to query someone, why not ask those who are blocking you.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Boo Hoo

    Failure to follow piracy laws and court rulings will land you in deep crap.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To those who are angry with this and have the power:

    Put up some tests of your own to check whether someone uses Spamhaus. When their e-mail hits your server, bounce it and tell them why.

  4. Chris 228

    Spamhaus is good IMO

    They report the scum of the internet to help the majority not the criminals. That works for me. TPB is the one who got convicted not Spamhaus.

  5. Alan Brown Silver badge
    FAIL

    Spammers and spam supporters

    The whole article reads like it was written by a spanked spammer.

    For starters, Spamhaus don't care about TPB or other p2p networks, legal or not. All they care about is spam (and only email spam. IM or other spam is outside their remit)

    I'm not particularly surprised by this. TheRegister has a long history of trashtalking DNSBLs at every opportunity.

    At least this time the author didn't pretend he'd attempted to contact Spamhaus for a right of reply. (Hint: Leaving 2 minutes between sending such email and publishing the story isn't exactly ingenous)

    I've found Steve and most other spamfighters perfectly reasonable to deal with even when we've had miscreants on our network. More importantly I've seen multiple instances of ISPs ignoring complaints until networks were blacklisted as a last resort, then trying to go on the offensive via the media.

    If you pitch up to any volunteer organisation(*) acting like an asshat, don't be surprised if you get treated like something the cat dragged in. Trying to launch secret court action won't help either: After past incidents many BLs and BL observers have deadman switches designed to kick in upon such an action (aka "When the canary stops singing, it's time to get worried")

    (*) Yes, spamhaus charges for bulk data access. Server hosting costs money - lots of it at the kind of data volumes involved.

    If admins thought Spamhaus was ineffective then they wouldn't use it. If spamfighters like Spamhaus didn't exist email would have been dead a long time ago - ISPs, etc would have shut down their mail spools like most of them did with Usenet after it turned into 99% spam (I know it's recovered a bit now, but Usenet used to be a backbone service, now it's a minor niche most people have never heard of, like Gopher)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The sign on my bathroom door reads "Beware of the flying pink pigs!"

      > If spamfighters like Spamhaus didn't exist email would have been dead a long time ago

      Bollocks!

      When I stop leaving yellow patches in the snow on my front lawn while rolling around pissing my frilly lace knickers with laughter I might make a serious comment.

      Until then - Bwaaaahahhaaaaahhhaaaaahhaaaaaahh!

  6. LarsG

    SIMPLE SOLUTION

    Anyone who has lost business or had business losses due to the direct action of Spamhaus should get together find a no win no fee legal representative and begin a class action. If 4000 people claim €2000 each it could become expensive.

    Spamhaus is not a legal entity, they do not have the right to accuse and convict and demand, which may be a breach under the Human rights act pertaining to a persons freedom.

    3 or 4 class actions and spamhaus would be out of business just defending the cases.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Talking thru your arse

      Ever heard of frivolous lawsuits? Many courts award significant punitive damages in addition to ALL costs for defense. You might want to brush-up on lawsuits while searching for a siren chaser.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That would not be a class action. That would be a spam action...

  7. Mongo 1

    Blocked for what?

    Mongo found the SBL record!

    http://www.spamhaus.org:80/sbl/sbl.lasso?query=SBL99505

    and

    http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=cb3rob.net

    Senderbase getting cold feet too.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kiwis are so full of shite, they can't fly!

    History shows that anti-spammers have collectively caused more disruption of legitimate business than the spammers from whom they claim they are protecting us.

    Amateur anti-spammers who turn professional inevitably become festering pimples on the arsecheeks of the Internet - ego tripping wankers, one and all.

    Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that's just the way it is.

  9. Inachu

    The idea nd methodology of spamhaus is worthy and honorable.

    If peoples emails were added without asking to be added to spamhaus then there

    should be a complain but If spamhaus only adds emails and ip address by request

    then this is not any fault of the spammer at all nor the fault of spamhaus.

    Clients who want to be added so their customers do not get spam should be awarded.

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.