Dear chiark:

[serinde]

Your "blacklist policy" is arrogantly, obnoxiously unhelpful. Yes, we can look in our logs to see that something was sent to you at X time from Y user (though we are talking gigs of logs here, so it's not easy, since YOUR time is apparently far too precious to bother with, oh, any identifying information whatsoever). But that doesn't tell us if the sending user is virused, or spamming, or just fucking well typoed an address. Not to mention the possibility that the user may be acting in perfectly good faith--that some jerkweed put in a known spambait address to cause them trouble. Think it's not likely? It's happened before, dearie. But we can't tell which of the above it is, because you're just too damn special to take a minute of extra effort.

I'm so very happy for you that you have your own little ivory tower where nothing can touch you, and everyone else can go hang. The rest of us are more interested in solving the fucking problem: if there's a virus, get it cleaned up; if it's a spammer, toss him. That's why the rest of us send each other actual data when we think another provider has a user with an issue.

I fully admit and acknowledge you have a right to block whatever hosts it pleases you to block.

I, of course, have a corresponding right to label you "fucknut".

Comments

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

I wonder how idiotic they are; like, will they blacklist a host that sends a bounce to their spamtrap address?

Anyway, it sounds like they did send you all the actual data they had: at time T, mail was sent to spamtrap S from network address A. And that's enough for them to condemn address A to a lake of fire for all eternity.

Finally, look on the bright side: you're getting paid to do other people's jobs that they presumably get paid to fuck up; one can also not get paid to do people's jobs that they get paid to fuck up.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Anyway, it sounds like they did send you all the actual data they had: at time T, mail was sent to spamtrap S from network address A.

Not so. They did not include T or S.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see I misread; you had to extract those fields from the logs. I'm not entirely clear on how that could be done unambiguously, though I suspect the answer is "it was a huge pain in the ass", or similar.

[wednesday]

hey presumably get paid

Well, chiark's a volunteer operation.

[wednesday]

they, even. Whee.

I'm... having deja vu.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

Meh; how did that "presumably" get in? I had in mind a lighter word starting with 'p', like "possibly", or perhaps "often".