Spews and registrars
I found an interesting document at DNS Made Easy. It’s essentially a rant about Spews.
I don’t agree with everything they say. But they have a very interesting point. It’s something that we as spam hunters should take more seriously. More pressure needs to be applied.
Neither Spews nor anyone else is going after registrars as spam supporters. Because the sad fact is that they often are. Think about Moniker’s sending on complaints to the spammer instead of terminating domains? That’s spam support, plain and simple.
Anyway, the point DME is making, is that when a spammer gets caught (for e-mail spam), every service except registrars will get grief from that. Blacklistings etc. Apparently DME has been on the receiving end of quite a bit of blacklistings.
And that is fine, if the provider is a spam supporter. But DME’s main point is that the only thing they control, is if their DNS servers allow the domains to be served. They can (and say they will) terminate service to spamvertized domains. BUT, they are unable to remove their DNS servers from the whois records of the spamvertized domains, because that can only be done by the domain owner or the registrar. So the domains are quite often stuck pointing to DNS servers that won’t resolve the domain. But Spews will punish DME for something they are unable to control. And Spews won’t go after the registrar.
For us, as spamfighters, the point isn’t Spews nor DME. The point is that most registrars are spam supporters. What can we do about that? Most of us have at one time or another rammed our head into that collective wall, to no avail. I think I’ve gotten fewer than 5 domains terminated total, and that’s not for lack of trying! ESTdomains (ESThost’s registrar) actually terminated some domains. GoDaddy was TOTALLY insensitive. And I thought GoDaddy was one of the good guys? Shakes head…
What we need, is some way to compel the registrars to actually terminate spammer’s domains.
I don’t know how, but somehow, something needs to be done. I’m thinking legislation or political pressure?