OT: Political Spam - what can you do about it?

[Nifty Hat Mitch]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 08:23:38AM +0100, Paul Howarth wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-10-28 at 00:02, Nifty Hat Mitch wrote:
> > Blacklisting for an ISP is not a good thing but it can also be used to
> > advantage. 
....
> If you follow this policy, the likely result is that all your nets would
> end up blacklisted anyway. Many of the blacklists would initially list
> only the "problem" net,...

You are correct.  However in this case the initial poster was at a
Public Utility (electricity, phone, and ISP).  I suspect that his
service obligations as a utility might be different than many service
providers. 

Almost all dial-up nets are known and if not blacklisted they are on a
grey list.  i.e.
   RCVD_IN_DYNABLOCK RBL: Sent directly from dynamic IP address

In almost all 'utility' situations there must be a well documented
process to turn off service.  There may also be a public hearing of
changes to varius service agreements.  My thought is that step one is
to identify and isolate the individuals in a way that quality spam
detectors will identify the message as possible spam.

Of interest each day 5-10 fedora messages trigger incoming spam flags
in part because of the senders domain and IP addresses.

In this case there is a real need to not trip on free speach rights.
As a utility the original poster may need to exercise more caution
(process) than a business oriented ISP.

As I scanned the site, there was mostly dialup so a number of other
service (AOL, EarthLink... ) vendor options would be available.

I would make sure that there is a rich help text that covers 
dozens of mail readers and describes how to filter mail from
unwanted senders.   Any complaint should include a pointer to 
this type of help...



-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	May your cup runneth over with goodness and mercy
	and may your buffers never overflow.