On Mon, 19 Jun 2017 21:03:37 +0000 (UTC) denis walker <ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Hi Andre
Hi Dennis,
I have just read this whole thread (one day I will get a life). I would like to make an observation and a suggestion. First the observation. You seem to be making the same point many, many times. You believe that Twitter is a spammer and no one will do anything about it. I think that sums up this thread. There have been a few comments (partially) supporting some of your arguments. There have been many comments expressing some doubt.
Yes, for many (even abuse administrators) it is difficult to believe that the very thing which many of us like, enjoy, support and maybe even use multiple times each day, is in fact evil. For others, who do not directly work with spam abuse (I do not know if Twitter abuses their own users or user accounts, I think not - judging from the reactions) - Twitter does send unsolicited bulk emails to accounts that are not Twitter users, have never been Twitter Users and never asked for any emails. This distinction - That Twitter is in fact an evil spammer Is important. When the penny drops people react differently. But it does not change the fact that many multinationals, not only Twitter, are in fact spammers. And that some of these multinationals are actually pure evil.
Now the suggestion. Do you have any proposal for moving forward and addressing this issue? Some people have suggested that individuals
People need to wake up to the reality of things. Including people on this list. There are multiple levels of abuse: Firstly, there is cyber crime - When multinationals start working with criminals, - as thye have common goals, this is a line that should not be crossed - and at least three multinationas are crossing this line. So, for law enforcement - investigate, build cases and make the multinationals aware of this - maybe this will be enough to turn some of these corporate cultures, and tip it in the direction of 'good' - for example, Google is frequently on the tipping edge between good and evil - currently imnsho, Google is 'good' - but as little as a year ago, Google was 'evil' - There are thousands of staff at these multinationals - the decisions these individuals make - led by the corporate culture - is what leads to outcomes that we see in our statistics. Secondly, the 'users' of some of these multinationals are addicted (addicts) and are "products" and not "consumers" Society, as Ronald has said, needs education, but on multiple levels. Our children and our people need help, they need the same counselling as drug addicts or alcoholics. Right now the vast majority do not even understand that there is a problem, never mind that anyone is in trouble. This Internet Abuse, of actually allowing social media to proceed with no legislation, research and oversight is one of the greatest failures of our modern civilization and societies worldwide. anyway, yeah, my agenda re Twitter abuse is simply to promote discussion. to motivate people to look at their own data. to motivate people to truly be honest with themselves and to reflect on their own truth. We all have our own truth. I strongly believe that because I know that what I see in my traps and in my fake identities and on my tor servers, that others will see the same thing, if they bother to take a closer look. Andre
who believe they are being spammed by Twitter (and others) can set up their own email filter and take a small step to solve the problem. If this is a sensible course of action then it is a question of educating ordinary internet users that this action is available and explain how to do it. As most end users have never heard of the RIPE NCC it is not an education role for them. Most users only know who their service provider is. These are probably all RIPE NCC members (in this region). So maybe it would help if these service providers could publish information on their web sites about tackling this issue on an individual basis. If that would help then maybe either you, or a group of people from this anti-abuse community, could produce some standard information on how to set up these filters in the different technology circumstances of end users. Or maybe you have some other proposals for action to solve this issue? I have a Twitter account. I have never tweeted anything in my life, but I follow a few RIPE and APNIC tweets. Apart from some daily notifications (which I have requested) I have never been spammed by Twitter. Same for Facebook. But Ebay is a different story for me. Twice someone has created an account using my email address. Ebay does not verify users email addresses. I was hit by hundreds of emails a day from these people's (most probably illegal) purchases. I complained to Ebay's abuse email address and was ignored. I even found an abuse address in the RIPE Database and complained, but still ignored. In the end I solved the problem another way.
cheersdenis
From: ox <andre@ox.co.za> To: Volker Greimann <vgreimann@key-systems.net> Cc: anti-abuse-wg@ripe.net Sent: Monday, 19 June 2017, 17:30 Subject: Re: [anti-abuse-wg] Abuse: Too big to fail
On Mon, 19 Jun 2017 17:15:35 +0200 Volker Greimann <vgreimann@key-systems.net> wrote:
Hi Volker :)
It seems there is a definition issue here. I am sure Twitter does not intentionally spam its users, but many users that receive messages from Twitter think of these as spam.
Not to be pedantic, but as Twitter is aware of their abuse and does not do anything to stop it - Twitter does intentionally spam and enable criminals.
The emails are sent from Twitter infrastructure, so therefore = Twitter.
As Twitter ignores and refuses abuse reports, this indicates non willingness to cease abuse, investigate abuse and stop enabling criminals.
And Twitter abuse is ongoing...
They are multiple repeat offenders that are 'special' spammers.
What is probably true:
- Real spammers may be abusing the infrastructure offered by Twitter to spam and Twitter is unable/unwilling to take action to stop this
Twitter are 'real' spammers :)
and yes, their infrastructure enables many other nefarious creatures.
- Twitter account holders have their settings set up that they receive too many notifications that they do not really want. Solving the second is easy: Just change your notification settings.
none of the thousands of abuse I see are from any real people... so, non relevant, in my case :)
personally I do have a Twitter account and have nothing personal against or for Twitter. I have no agenda or anything other than to simply state that there are multinationals that are evil and to point out that playing fields are not level...
Volker
PS: It may be helpful to say exactly which messages you consider spam instead of opening up with the big guns right away but without sufficient detail to verify your claims.
Emails to trusted spamtraps - are spam
Emails to stolen data - is criminal activity & also spam
Emails to non existent people at non existent email addresses - is spam/abuse
Emails continuing after requests to stop - is spam/abuse
Forever 'confirmation emails' (as in more than 10) - is spam/abuse
Andre
Am 19.06.2017 um 17:08 schrieb ox:
If I do actually look at the abuse lists that list the spammer, Twitter - they are sorbs, etc and have a reputation for ethical behavior..
What is interesting is how you & michele defend the spammer
One has to wonder whether it is because the fact that Twitter is an evil spammer hurts you guys personally?
Or if you are products (have twitter etc) accounts and the truth hurts?
If you love the Twitter spammer that much, why do you not try to get the spammer to change their evil ways? Instead of trying to make it about a quarter of all the rbl's being useless, etc.
or just plain stupid and obviously false claims that Twitter never sends spam.
Andre
On Mon, 19 Jun 2017 14:53:07 +0000 Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
On 19/06/17, 8:20 PM, "anti-abuse-wg on behalf of ox" <anti-abuse-wg-bounces@ripe.net on behalf of andre@ox.co.za> wrote:
And, apart from the fact that 25% of all spam lists does in fact list Twitter as a spammer
Sturgeon’s law manifests itself all the time. eg: the number of weird and wonderful blocklists used by maybe two men and their dog, the population of cranks on the Internet…
--srs