Dear Peter,
Thank you for your post on EarthLink and spamming. First, I start by saying that this continues to have a very high priority within EarthLink at all levels within the company.
The person you referenced, Nick Christensen, is our Chief Technologist. He has spent a significant amount of his personal time fighting this battle and does so even at risk of his personal health (many of his posts might be in the middle of the night). His efforts related to SPAM take away from working on critical issues like our next generation electronic mail architecture or evaluation of other key equipment for our data center operations. Saying this, however, he is not the only resource dedicated to this activity.
EarthLink has an network abuse administrator that interfaces with many of the external organizations on reseaching instances of potential abuse. Over the past year, EarthLink has consistently cancelled 25-50 accounts per week for network abuse, most of which represent spamming. We have implemented automated traps to prevent known spammers from registering new accounts. Most importantly, this function, works closely with our network providers to capture "red handed" spam's in progress.
Our legal department, in conjunction with outside cousel, has gotten the first (to our knowledge) permanent injunction against Cyberpromotion. This effort alone, has cost EarthLink over $100K in legal expenses. Additionally, EarthLink has sent other "cease and desist" notices to known spammers.
Our IT staff has spent much effort in preventing "relay" messages and other work continues. Our VP of Information Technology and our Chief Software Developer are both actively involved in our spam eradication efforts as are many other resources within IT.
I have personally been in contact with the top management of PSiNet and UUNET about the issue of spam and have their support to help create automated ways of dealing with these issues. With UUNET this issue has almost been completely addressed and we have been promised a solution from PSiNet over the next couple of months.
As is evidenced by your post, you are a experienced usenet user. The professional spammers are technically very competent. Each time EarthLink closes a loop hole, they jump to a new one. I can't promise a time frame by which all spam will be eradicated but I can say that we will continue our efforts diligently to minimize any negative effect on our membership and the Internet at large.
You are welcome to post my reply .. no address please :-)
cgb |
