I got some interesting feedback from “Try” to my LayeredTech ranting. Try holds exactly the opposite point of view to me, in that I think Layered Technologies are too heavy handed in their handling of abuse whilst Try feels they don’t do enough.
In http://hotpot.se/guest-book-spammers.htm Try highlights two address ranges that are the source of much Guest-Book spam. It seems odd to me that spammers would choose a service like LayeredTech who only offer static IP addresses from two address ranges. This makes them ludicrously easy to filter which is something spammers rarely desire. I raised this argument with Layered Tech as a defence to my Tor abuse complaints but it never held any weight with them as their AUP’s are ill equipped to deal with real-world issues. Probably more a fault of US legislation (such as the DMCA) rather than Layered Tech incompetence.
I guess it all comes down to a question of balance. How much responsibility does the recipient have for blocking that which they don’t wish to receive? Conversely, how much responsibility falls on the sender to not abuse recipients? IMO if a service operates from a single IP address and is not participating in any kind of DoS attack, then it’s not too much to expect the recipient to just filter the source rather than firing off abuse complaints. Other people take a higher moral ground and feel spam is evil and must be thwarted.
Im glad you got shut down by layered tech. Unfortunately you are not the only irresponsible person they host a site for. Their whole IP range should be blocked from sending any mail and blocked by default in any firewall.
Foo, this is a perfect example of the previous comment I made on the subject. If you feel their IP subnet should be blocked, then block it! Nobody forces you to receive anything from LayeredTech. I don’t know if you’re a home user or a sysadmin, but if you don’t understand how to block traffic originating from a single subnet then perhaps you should learn.