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OT: At least some government officials admit mistakes!

RaySun2Be

Lifer
City Apologizes to Orbz blacklist Owner

Even though their attempt to go after the owner of the ORBZ blacklist site was idiotic and mis-informed, they at least realized that they had mistakenly accused him of being a hacker. of course had they bothered to talk with him first, they could have avoided the charges and his shutting down alltogether.

Too bad Georgia's Thurbert & co. couldn't recognize a non-hacker when they see one, or at least be stand-up enough to admit their mistake.
 
I wonder about government employees somtimes.......


A lot of them are not as competant as they shoudl be, but can't be fired like an incompetant worker would be in the private business world....
 
Our experience with Orbz was terrible. My company is a fulfillment house for networks like A&E, History Channel, Discovery Channel, a bunch of PBS stations, etc. We duplicate and distribute videos, take orders in our call center and over the web, and ship all from our location here in Vermont. We also send out email order confirmations and shipment confirmations. Well, some hacker discovered that we had left relaying open on our Novell server, and took advantage of that to start sending out all kinds of span. We quickly got on Orbz's list, and many of our emails were blocked from being delivered. Getting off their list was a pain in the ass. They were quick to close us down, but when we tried to get any information from them, they were arrogent, rude and accused us of being spammers. We finally got them to try our servers again and got off their list, but it was a very unpleasant experience. You know what they say about absolute power....

Geoff
 


<< You know what they say about absolute power.... >>



You mean besides "I want it?" 😀
 
I forwarded the links to my network admin.. the guy that had to deal with Orbz... this was his response...

That pimple faced, chicken necked, string of puke geek!! I hope he doesn't reopen his site and slips into an irreversible state of depression that lands him in the gutter living as a lowly street person!!

Gives you a feel for how negative an experience it was dealing with Orbz... 🙂

Geoff
 
While it is apparent that the operator of the Orbz site (Ian) was operating in a "gray" area to begin with at least they did not go down the road Georgia did as Russ said. I saw this early this morning and had even sent an e-mail to both parties passing my congratulations to both Ian and Michelle (The City Manager) for the situation being handled correctly and wisely.

Hopefully the publicity of my case might have had some affect that the "Officials" in this situation thought twice before they proceeded in the wrong manner.

Also if Ian does restart his "service" hopefully he will only have it as something that people "subscribe" to, not an automatic list that he has "absolute power" over as seemed the case before.

David McOwen
 
I wonder about government employees somtimes.......

Hey - I resemble that remark! :Q

Fortunatately, I'm fairly competent in my own humble opinion. 😉
 
I have to agree with Geoffs and more importantly with his network admin:

That pimple faced, chicken necked, string of puke geek!! I hope he doesn't reopen his site and slips into an irreversible state of depression that lands him in the gutter living as a lowly street person!!

Adding "and die of the complications caused by a combination simultaneous infection of all venereal diseases known to man". 😉

I too have been having very stressful interactions with the "anti-spammers". These idiots think that just because they go out, abuse your email server (test your server) and then report that abuse to SPEWS, SPAMCOP, ORBZ, ORBS, ORBD etc... that they are fighting spam.

Then there are all the clueless email admins out there who blindly tie their systems into the pimply faced blacklist operators in such a way that when one of them fails (who would expect that) their system is compromised!!!

Case in point: my mail server is on a list because one of their retard tests involves seeing if you have a http proxy email service.
If you do then they list you. No actual spam need be involved. They don't send an email to abuse@yourdomain or anything, they just list you.
It just so happens that I (used to) allow web access to email over an http proxy port.
Ok, so about ten days ago I closed it (sorry customers, I have to do this to get off this f*cking list).
I try to send the retest message from the server, this is the way they say they will take me off the list.
They are blocking my mail server, so they can't receive the retest request!!!! I try over and over all week.
Ok, so finally today I see on the list there is a place in Australia that did this to me so I send them a request to retest -
who knows how long they will take?

This is blatent restraint of trade, I do no spam, I allow no spam. I fight against spam on a daily basis.

Another case:
When the data center I use hosted a spammer domain all netblocks at the center got listed at SPEWS.
One IP address was involved, but at least several hundred were blocked.
I did the research, I convinced the data center to kick out their customer (with no clear violation of their AUP)
and I got the IP's delisted.

There is an answer to spam, and these RBL's is not it.
What it is going to take is a rethink of the email system itself. We need better software.

Many people use devices on their telephones to 'block' incoming calls, now there are things available to 'zap' your number out of marketing databases.

There are email systems being developed that will do the same kind of thing.

If your email server only accepted email from people you know, and quaranteen'ed mail from people you don't know until they gave some kind of human response, then asked you if you wanted to receive mail from that person it might do the trick.
No response in a certain time frame means their mail gets deleted. If their return address does not resolve they get deleted.

We need a better system, that is plain. The Free Wide Open Internet is too insecure in far too many ways.
When the email system was developed one of the rules was to have open relays so that everybody could use everyone elses servers.
We all learned about sharing in kindergarden right?
Well now we know that there are evil people in the world who will take advantage of us and make us all miserable.
We need some protection, apparently not only from the bad guys trying to spam everyone but also from the bad guys who see it as their duty to screw up the honest lawful operations of those of us who actually do anything about spammers on a daily basis.
(the militant anti-spammers)

/whew - soapbox mode OFF
 
Wiz - you hit the nail on the head, the problem is the email system itself.. and a better one will evolve but it may take a long time to get here..

and in the meantime people will use every means available to defend theirselves..

and anybody that thinks Ian or any of the other formal
services are hard to deal with.. monday morning first thing contact
a dozen or so of the thousands(and if you have been listed by one of the main lists there are thousands) of private admins that have you blocked explain your problem and demand that they unblock you 😉 usually the only way off of those lists is when one of their customers demands it, then they might find the time, but more likely it will have to wait for a system reboot which may not come untill the equipment is upgraded which may not come untill the next budget cycle .... and so on

to me it seems like some of you are taking exception to people trying
to defend theirself .... that is human nature(animal also)

interesting how we all find different solutions to the same problem....

all the admins I know use one of their other email accounts (created for just such purposes) to email people about spam problems, primary reason
it is faster and it works 😉

..Dale
 
No, I'm glad to brought it up Ray. It has certainly increased my awareness of the "whole" situation. Thanks to all that posted. As a user and not an administrator this is all unknown territory to me.

This is a good example of hearing only one side of the story and having empathy with that view point. When you hear the other side of the situation, things are much more complicated than they first appeared and your (my) opinion of the event is changed. :Q

It sure sounds like Wiz has a good idea on the way email "should" be handled. I hope something like that will be implemented in the future.
 
Geoff sent me a link to this discussion and I felt compelled to make a comment. I am the network admin he spoke of. My true frustration with ORBZ was NOT being blacklisted. The real frustration was trying to get some information and assitance from them to make my site "clean" in their eyes. The EMail volley that I had with their admin was the most frustrating part of the entire ordeal. The ORBZ admin I EMailed was extremely rude and arrogant. It became very apparent during our conversation that they were not interested in providing any information or assistance to get me of the list. His "screw you" attitude was so completely unprofessional that I came to despise him and everything he stood for.

I was finally able to make some configuration changes after spending several hundred $ discussing the problem with a local consultant that resulted in our site being removed from the ORBZ list.
 
JeffC, that's the picture all around. Those guys should get stuck on the other side for a while doing admin of a real life email system.
Those of us who do admin a system have to be 'spamcop' and email admin, so we already see both sides IMHO.

Many of the lists hide out on foreign soil.
The last credible thing I heard is that SPEWS is located in Russia of all places (funny that Russia is also the location of the source of a great percentage of the spam in the world)

In order to communicate with many of these groups you have to go into the anti-spammers newsgroup and air out your problems there.
Once you post you are instantly barraged with many "screw you - rot in SPEWS" messages from people so clueless and filled with hate they don't even take a moment to read that you are not the spammer but are merely seeking information and trying to educate yourself.
Fortunately there are 2 or 3 people there who actually take the time to read and respond properly, if you have the patience to wade through all the crap and get to the nuggets.

I know of at least one new email system in development now that just possibly might be the answer.
I have agreed to be the first test base of the new system, once it is ready for use. There are some very advanced features regarding the two biggest failures of the current system:

1. Lack of security
most email is sent as plain text, your email is easily intercepted and read by anyone who is properly motivated and has the right tech

2. Abuse
the current system is wide open to abuse, there are few checks and balances (it was built for a more trusting community)

The new system has several other key features that will also make it an easy sale to the public, and to sysadmins - such as compression to reduce overall bandwidth used by email, encryption so you can be really sure your mail is private, and some other goodies.

I'm pretty excited, I might get to start using it by this summer.
 
It's first phase is targeted to satellite email users, this makes use of a small transceiver that you connect up to any computing device and send / receive email globally. This will (hopefully) provide the developer with an influx of cash which he will use to roll out to the broader internet market.
Here is a little bit about it,
(WARNING: he's good at programming a lot of things, but doesn't do much web design)

http://www.secure-sat.com
 
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