[IP] AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications NOTE DUE TO THEIR REPUTATION djf

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Adam Thornton <adam@io.com>
Date: September 16, 2007 2:01:00 AM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of  
Truthout Communications NOTE DUE TO THEIR REPUTATION djf

[for IP, if you like]


On Sep 15, 2007, at 12:26 PM, David Farber wrote:

> We fight this battle every day.  AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail / MSN are  
> in a league of their own when it comes to policing incoming e- 
> mails, due to the size of their customer bases.  If a “lot” of  
> their customers tell them that they are receiving unwanted e-mail  
> from a sender, that sender’s reputation suffers.  If a sender  
> utilizes IP addresses that are used to send some other sender’s  
> unwanted e-mail, the sender’s reputation suffers.  If a sender  
> sends too much e-mail all at once, the sender’s reputation  
> suffers.  If the sender has “unclean” lists, with lots of bounces,  
> their reputation suffers.  And so on.

This, however, suggests an interesting attack.

Let's say you set policy for a large group, with a well-defined  
political agenda.

Probably, a large number of your members have AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail  
accounts, because, well, a lot of people have those accounts.

So you put out word--in your talking points of the day memo, or  
whatever your organ of frequent communication with the members of  
your group--to your members to please complain to the abuse  
department of their ISP that some group with a different agenda is  
spamming them.

This sort of astroturf campaign is essentially the way the FCC and  
library boards have been gamed in the past, and it would seem that if  
this is not already happening in the overtly political sphere, it's  
overdue.

Adam

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