Stupid Spammers

December 21, 2003

While United Colo's liberal acceptable use policy means we won't get booted for using naughty language, it means we also run the risk of getting penalized by the behavior of other machines on our subnet. On the other hand, it looks like spam might be prohibited. At the very least, it's certainly discouraged. Here's the relevant portions of their acceptable use policy:

(v) Utilize the Services to (A) forge the signature or other identifying mark or code of any other person, (B) impersonate or assume the identity or any other person, or (C) engage in any other activity (including "spoofing") to attempt to deceive or mislead other persons regarding the true identity of the User (excluding the use of anonymous remailer or Internet nicknames).

...

(viii) Utilize the Services to distribute, advertise or promote software or services that have the primary purpose of encouraging or facilitating unsolicited commercial e-mail or spam.

(ix) Utilize the Services to solicit or collect, or distribute, advertise or promote, e-mail address lists for the purpose of encouraging or facilitating unsolicited commercial e-mail or spam.

So, they don't explicitly prohibit mass-mailing, but they do prohibit spoofing, services and software that encourage spam, and using their servers to distribute addresses for spamming. Whether or not that's good enough to reduce the Spamhaus ban from a /24 to a /32 remains to be seen.