Jim Jackson wrote:
Because as a BT customer, his IP address will be in various blacklists and much of his email will be refused if an attempt is made to deliver it directly.
I can confirm that this is only too true! By the way, BT do not seem to be all that concerned about being on blacklists. Response received to a complaint about blocking in Aug 2003:
"BT has no obligation to remove its addresses from these lists and if customers are having problems it is their responsibility to advise the would be recipient to unsubscribe or to find another route for communication.
However I have requested to Distributed Server Boycott List (DSBL) to remove this IP address from the blacklist. The advise I received was, as long as further spam does not go through this server then it will be removed within twenty five hours(25 hours)."
Indeed, and some would say (for domestic subscribers), that if we are to control spam on the internet then have a duty not to remove IP adds from these blacklist blocks. They should however provide a reliable, well advertised mail smarthost for email sending - which they do not.
They should have different conditions for business connections that give one an IP outside of such blocks, along with conditions of use.
I can see every justification for allowing dynamically assigned addresses to be blacklisted, unless there are some controls in place to limit what subscribers can do - one area where ISPs could be 'good netizens'. Where a subscriber has a fixed address, then it should be a matter of whether they meet the criteria to be added or removed from the blacklists.
The obvious solution, but it requires thought and effort so don't expect most of the ISPs to support it, is for 'normal' customers to be restricted from direct sending of mail and use the smarthosts which almost every ISP provides. This would not affect (at a guess) well over 90% of net users but would prevent compromised machines from being used for spamming (because the outgoing connections simply wouldn't be possible). It would also stop the 'sign up, spam, f**k off' abuse of instantly available dial-up accounts.
The flip side of this is that the ISP needs to provide a mechanism for customers with needs like the OP to be transferred to a different user group where the outgoing mail restrictions are lifted. Since this would have to be on application, and presumably after correspondence with the customer, it would exclude the automated spamming systems, and it would also allow some checks (such as "Do you know how to secure your machine against open relaying ?").
If every ISP did this sort of thing, then spam would be reduced, and the life of spammers would be made harder as there would be far less compromisable machines for them to use.
Time to wake up, it's a dream and it aint going to happen :-(
Simon