response 225 of 260:

Mar 16 23:50 UTC 2006

Sindi, the realities of the situation are that AOL has little cause
to worry about blocking mail from Grex, just as they don't care
about whether they should be accepting mail from the small ISP I
work for, which also gets blocked periodically.  An unpleasant irony
of Grex's situation is that the phishers who started getting us
blacklisted were logging in to Grex from AOL.  But it would be
irresponsible of us to block mail and telnet from all AOL users --
that's a huge portion of the internet and we'd make many people
unhappy.  The asymmetry in size, however, means that AOL doesn't
have to use similar restraint in blocking Grex.  Well over 99% of
AOL customers have never met and will never try to e-mail anyone
from Grex, so why should AOL care about unblocking us?

Unless / until their own customers start complaining about their
approach and threatening to take their business elsewhere AOL isn't
going to care.  Otherwise the incentives are actually all on AOL's
side -- heck, if people get fed up about not being able to send
mail to their customers they figure that at least some percentage
of those people will switch to AOL just to get their mail through,
which hardly gives them a convincing reason to adopt a more reasonable
spam control policy.

It's not that the Grex staff don't care about the situation.  But,
speaking solely for myself here, I've fought this battle before
(over and over, actually) and I'm tired of losing it.  It's a
complicated, multi-sided problem, with technical, political, and
economic facets, each of which have their own sub-issues.

What you see when you're looking at the current situation is
essentially a very small part of the problem -- only the most recent
symptom and its immediate repercussions.  Some of us who have been
dealing with the issue for years see this as just the latest battle
in a losing campaign.

That said, I think there are staff members who are more than willing
to take reasonable steps to, well, if not *solve* the problem, at
least make it a little better.  But frankly most of the suggestions
which have been offered so far for what we should be doing come from
people with limited technical experience and clearly little or no
idea about what's practical to implement.  Nobody on staff has the 
time to write a whole new component of the mail system to solve this
week's problem, especially when history has shown us that next week
the inexhaustible supply of spammers will simply move on to some other
tactic and we'll be right back at square one..

response 227 of 260:

Mar 17 00:07 UTC 2006

*yawn*

response 229 of 260:

Mar 17 01:53 UTC 2006

Maybe I can ask all users of AOL that want to receive mail from me to set up
a grex mail account, where they can at least get incoming mail.

response 231 of 260:

Mar 17 06:16 UTC 2006

What are staff/officers doing about the AOL situation? It seems to be a "black
mark" on Grex's standing, to be blacklisted. Is this not considered a serious
matter by staff/officers? 

response 233 of 260:

Mar 17 14:42 UTC 2006

Yes, could a staffer write to the people who sell AOL the blacklist?

response 235 of 260:

Mar 17 16:16 UTC 2006

It costs $50 to be de-listed by Sorbs, for each complaint which was 
received.  The $50 has to go to one of the 1 charities listed on Sorbs 
acceptable charities list.  This list includes a defense fund for 
someone in Australia who, apparently, tried to fight against e-mail 
spam and got sued.  (Details are scanty.)

I for one am not interested in paying extortion to this group, even in 
the form of a donation to what they say is a worthwhile charity.  I see 
no reason to believe we won't just be listed again.

response 237 of 260:

Mar 17 17:59 UTC 2006

re #226
There are better options than Grex.  I think that is what we're saying.

response 239 of 260:

Mar 17 19:54 UTC 2006

I guess the point is that tehr is no harm in trying to speak with these people
adn get the blacklist removed.  All they can do is say No.  One has to ask.

response 241 of 260:

Mar 17 19:59 UTC 2006

Why would someone whitelist Grex which allows email abuse?

response 243 of 260:

Mar 17 20:32 UTC 2006

because we do not verify people who log in, and our staff does not take action
to halt abuse in a quick and efficient manner.

response 245 of 260:

Mar 17 20:46 UTC 2006

Grex is going to start (or already is) losing members - *supporting* members
- if it isn't apparent that eveything possible is being done to allow Grex
users access to these blocking ISPs. I have the impression that some users
here just think this funny. I wonder how many donating members do?

response 247 of 260:

Mar 17 21:04 UTC 2006

Your first suggestion has already been adopted as a stopgap measure.

response 249 of 260:

Mar 17 23:54 UTC 2006

When it comes to being a provider of email, grex has some issues. One of
them is that our open door policy has led us to be blacklisted. It might
be true that will lead us to lose some paying members. It is too bad.
But if we were to change our open newuser policy, we would lose members
too. 

However, I think the staff are doing a really find job dealing wtih this
email thing and while it might not get us off blacklists we are
currently on, it might prevent us from being added to more.