[PLUG-TALK] A Semi-Rhetorical Question

[Rich Shepard]

On Sun, 17 Oct 2010, Daniel Pittman wrote:

> Outbound bandwidth use can reduce the cost for the ISP, FWIW.

   Doesn't seem logical, but I'll take your word for it.

> It could also be that this is the compromised system of a client who
> legitimately sent large volumes of email, or any number of other scenarios
> where it isn't so trivial to deal with.

   I assume these are all from compromised systems. However, sending several
thousand messages to a single recipient does not seem like a legitimate
large volume of mail. Yes, some businesses have mail lists of thousands of
clients, but they send each one only a single copy of a message.

> Generally not, although responsible ISPs do operate a functional abuse@
> address, and do monitor for blacklisting of systems under their control.

   The ones that amuse me are those whose abuse@ address rejects spam sent to
them to be handled by their appropriate use policies.

> (Also, you better define "low threshold" well here: we recently did a
> corporate survey that had us sending ~ 6K invitations to their single
> inbound MX, throttled to 500 a minute at their request, and we are a
> relatively low volume sender in the big scheme of things.)

   My definition of "low threshold" is one message per intended recipient.
When I check the mail log to get a broad idea of the messages they're all
addressed to a single recipient: me. I find that excessive and unwanted.

Rich