[ILUG] Eircom -v- IOL, or just Eircom practicing the best of spam management, and blacklisting themselves.

Kevin O' Riordan kor at compsoc.com
Tue Apr 27 12:43:42 IST 2004


> That is, 193.120.142.80 (hub01.mail.iol.ie) is refusing to deliver mail
> received from 159.134.118.23 (mail07.svc.cra.dublin.eircom.net) because
> of a Spamcop report about it.

Yep, looked like that.  The following page:

    http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=blcheck&ip=159.134.118.23

in addition to listing the stats you quoted in your mail also said:

    159.134.118.23 not listed in bl.spamcop.net
    
and gave further historical info:

    Since SpamCop started counting, this system has been reported about 20
    times by less than 10 users. It has been sending mail consistently for
    at least 182.5 days. In the past 129.8 days, it has been listed 3 times
    for a total of 39 hours

which is 1.25% of it's total sending time - so it doesn't look like it's
been just pointlessly blacklisted for a long period of time.  A link on
the above page gives more helpful data:

    http://www.senderbase.org/?searchBy=ipaddress&sb=1&searchString=159.134.118.23

which /suggests/ that that particular mailserver, and one or two others
of eircom's outgoing relays, have increased their output notably
recently - so maybe there has been some abuse of the server(s).

I wouldn't jump to condemning Eircom, IOL, or SpamCop based on the
sketchy details we know.

-kev

-- 
    In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
    intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption
    from the cares of office.
        -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary



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