Ann Elisabeth's blog

Spam my blog and I report your site to Google for banning. You've been warned!

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January 14, 2005

My letter to abuse at verio-hosting dot com

UPDATE:

I got this e-mail today:

Hello,

Thank you for informing us about this. Sending unsolicited e-mail or
making inappropriate commercial newsgroup or blog posts from our web
servers is strictly forbidden. It is also forbidden to promote web sites
hosted on our servers in such mailings or postings. You may see our
Acceptable Use Policy here:

http://home.verio.net/company/policies/aup.cfm

We are currently looking into the matter and gathering the information
needed to take appropriate action. Please let us know if you have any
questions.

Regards,
Jessica
Abuse Team
Verio Web Hosting

----------

This is my e-mail to the people colocating the spam box:

I'm complaining about a server I think is colocated with you. The owners of websites on it have been referral spamming my blog. They've also been trying to comment spam it (but it's blocked). They've succeeded on other blogs.

I'll write about this case, including any action or inaction from you on:
http://www.annelisabeth.com/blog/

The IP number is:
161.58.59.8

DIG names that server:
blackjack-123.com

While a ping of blackjack-123.com give this IP number:
64.234.220.141
Which is at another provider now.

But 161.58.59.8 is at your place

What I normally find, is that the root (www) of the domains I get spammed with have a message saying the site has been closed for TOS violations. But it's fake. There will be several subdomains for each domain that are active and actively spamvertized.

Here are examples from my log, and I've omitted the comment spam attempts here:

(log entries snipped. There were LOTS of them!)

Don't get hung up on the different IP numbers. Those are zombies or open proxies used to hide the real IP number of the spammer, and maximize the chances of getting some spam through (especially comment spamming, which is often done at the same time)

Do a search for 8gold.com on Google, and you'll see lots of spammed sites. Most of them already cleaned up, but you should see the spam in the cache.

Please, remove that whole box from your service for TOS violations,
since it's obviously run by spammers!

Regards
Ann Elisabeth

------------

Their stock response:

Greetings from the Verio Abuse Team,

This is an automated reply to inform you that we have received your e-mail
regarding an alleged violation of our Acceptable Use Policy by a customer

of Verio.

If your issue involves unsolicited commercial e-mail, please reply to us
with the entire unsolicited e-mail with complete headers if you have not
already done so. Please limit your e-mail to essential information that
would help us with investigating the incident. Personal commentary may
delay the processing of your request.

Please be advised that Verio can only address abuse issues regarding Verio
customers. Spam and/or abuse issues involving non-Verio customers need to
be reported to the Abuse address of the originating domain or service
provider for proper handling and disposition. Please be aware that it is
common for spam and Usenet abuse to be generated with false or manipulated
return addresses, thus the issue may not involve Verio or its customers.
Please look at the full header information, including the received lines,
to determine the true origin of the e-mail. For Usenet, you can use the
'NNTP posting host' IP address or hostname.

We appreciate the time you have taken to report the alleged abuse, however
due to the volume of e-mails we receive, we are not able to respond
personally to each complaint received.

If you have additional information regarding this same matter, please
reply to this message and maintain the subject line.

Regards,
abuse at verio-hosting dot com

-----------

Ann Elisabeth:

It's not like this machine has been newly moved to Verio. Here are complaints about the very same machine:
September 2004
October 2004 number 1
October 2004 number 2
November 2004
December 2004

And some new ones:
Gary Shewan
Wampum

Posted by Ann at January 14, 2005 04:11 PM

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Comments

Posted by: ady at January 14, 2005 11:57 PM