Anti-spam activists Friday came to the defense of MSN Hotmail, after Microsoft’s Web-based
e-mail service was criticized for the unauthorized blocking of some outgoing
as well as incoming messages in its fight against junk email.
Like many Internet service providers, Hotmail subscribes to the Realtime Blackhole List(RBL), a spam
filtering service provided by the non-profit Mail Abuse Prevention Systems(MAPS).
But Hotmail is accused of being too heavy-handed in its use of the RBL by
Peacefire, an anti-censorship site.
Peacefire founder Bennett Haselton issued a press release Thursday
announcing his discovery that Hotmail users have been unable to send or
receive email to or from Peacefire for the past five months — ever since
its Web hosting firm, Massachusetts-based Media3 Technologies, had over 1,500 of its
IP addresses, including Peacefire’s, placed on the MAPS blacklist.
Media3 earned a place on the RBL in June because, according to MAPS, it
hosts a number of companies that sell software for sending junk email.
Media3 sued MAPS in December to get its block of IP addresses removed from
the RBL. The lawsuit is still pending.
According to Peacefire’s Haselton, the Hotmail incident illustrates that the
RBL is doing more harm than good.
“Most people would rather delete nine junk emails than have one legitimate
email get lost. Fighting spam is not the be-all end-all of the Internet,”
said Haselton, who reports that dozens of upset Hotmail users have contacted
him after learning about the blockade. Some threatened to switch to a new
Web-mail provider.
But some anti-spam activists Friday accused Peacefire of intentionally
putting itself in the line of fire between Media3 and MAPS. Steve Linford,
co-owner of the London-based Web design and hosting firm Ultradesign and operator of the Spamhaus Project, said Haselton was well
aware that Media3 is considered the Internet’s biggest spam
service host, and that by staying with the ISP, Haselton is falsely trying
to paint himself as an unwitting victim of the spam wars.
“People have offered Peacefire alternative hosting for free, and Media3
could move Peacefire in under three minutes by changing their DNS. But
Bennett won’t do that,” said Linford, who noted that the Peacefire site was
placed into the group of blacklisted Media3 IP addresses after MAPS added
the company to the RBL.
Joe Hayes, Media3 co-owner, confirmed Friday that Haselton had not asked to
be moved out of the blocked IP range. But Hayes said that’s because such a
move would disrupt the Peacefire site.
“If he wants to be moved off that machine we’ll certainly accommodate him.
But I don’t think he’s purposely staying there because he wants to make this
an agenda. If there was spam on our network, he’d be the first to complain
because he doesn’t believe in spam,” said Hayes.
According to Hayes, Media3 has a tough acceptable use policy and
kicks companies off its network all the time for sending spam. But Hayes
said his clients who sell bulk emailing software are not violating those
terms.
“We don’t have a billboard on our site that says, ‘If you spam, come here.’
Our AUP forbids it. Every hosting company has customers who send out spam.
It’s how you react to it. If I get complaints, there’s justification for
removing the accounts,” said Hayes.
But John Levine, a member of the Coalition
Against Unsolicited Commercial Email and operator of the Abuse.net site, said Med
ia3 is infamous
among anti-spammers for its hosting of spam software sellers.
“I’m disappointed that Peacefire, which has a long history of coming up with
responsible technical ways to get around blocking software that they don’t
agree with, hasn’t taken simple technical means to get around this
accidental block at MAPS. I see no advantage to Bennett to continue claiming
he’s a victim by being associated with spamware vendors with whom he has no
sympathy,” said Levine.
While most ISPs use the RBL to block incoming connections to their mail
servers from blacklisted IP addresses, it appears that Hotmail may have gone
further and was using a router-based option MAPS calls BGP mode. Under that
system, Hotmail users were prevented not only from receiving email from
blacklisted sites, but also from sending messages to them. Hotmail officials
were not immediately available for comment.
According to Haselton, after he complained Hotmail eventually enabled its
subscribers to send mail to @peacefire.org addresses, although the outgoing
block on other blacklisted IPs is still in place.
Hayes of Media3 said incidents like the one at Hotmail will cause support
for MAPS among ISPs to erode, as they realize the anti-spam service is
holding companies hostage.
“If people look at the whole story, they will really begin to understand
that MAPS is testing the waters out there to see how much they can get away
with, and they don’t care who they hurt in the process,” said Hayes.
Linford noted that ISPs are entitled to use the RBL however they see fit,
but he conceded that he would be reluctant to block his users’ outgoing
mail. But Linford said Hotmail has an unusual spam problem, which required
it to take unusual steps to protect its users.
“It all sounds terrible — if I were an ordinary user reading that MAPS was
binning my email, I’d be livid. But on the other hand, nobody wants spam.
And the vast majority of Hotmail users would be thankful, because everyone
has been screaming at Hotmail to stop the spam.”
