When Registrars Spam You, What Can You Do?

tregoweth asks: "Today I received a spam that began, 'Register your domain name as a .ST domain too! Just go to: http://www.nic.st.' Normally I use SpamCop to find who to complain to, but...what do you do when a registrar (including NSI) is spamming you? Especially one that's violating its own rules against spamming?"

Here are the headers from tregoweth's SPAM message for those of you interested. It might be a good time to update those procmail filters:

Return-Path: <[e-mail]>
Received: from mate.pobox.com ([208.210.124.44])
by osgood.mail.mindspring.net (Mindspring Mail Service) with
ESMTP id t5i9v5.ukv.30ahi43
for <[e-mail]>; Sun, 7 Jan 2001 21:37:23 -0500 (EST)
Received: from mate.pobox.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by mate.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 595687A192
for <[e-mail]>; Sun, 7 Jan 2001 21:37:23 -0500 (EST)
Received: from fep01-svc.swip.net (fep01.swip.net [130.244.199.129])
by mate.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP
id 5A4AA7A1A3; Sun, 7 Jan 2001 21:37:22 -0500 (EST)
Received: from domain4u.st ([193.15.116.252]) by fep01-svc.swip.net
(InterMail vM.5.01.01.01 201-252-104) with SMTP
id <[e-mail]>;
Mon, 8 Jan 2001 03:37:21 +0100
From: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Lock in your domain name now!
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 03:37:21 +0100

For the record, www.domain4u.st and www.nic.st, the official registrar for Sao Tome, share the same IP address. Something smells fishy here. Is there anything that can be done about it?

MAPS RBL

[Tuck]

Sounds like a candidate for the MAPS RBL [mail-abuse.org].

It would be interesting to see how effective a registry could be if its address space has ended up in a few BGP black-holes. (Is this still done? It's been a while since I checked.) If the .st nameservers became unreachable, then the whole top-level domain could effectively get black-holed....

--

Re:Prevention may be the only cure

[cheeserd00d]

so why don't you just change the e-mail address you gave NSI - sure it takes a while and a its lot of hassle but if spam is that much of a nuisane to you then it would be worth it

Phone call

[danpbrowning]

I've found that the most effectove anti-spam is POTS. Call your spammer/registrar and complain. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Re: When Registrars Spam You, What Can You Do?

[Reedi]

Weapons are your only recourse I'm afraid

My personal choice would be to locate their offices and then apply a liberal coating of napalm.

Hell is too good for these people.

Ian

Sincerity

[false_sense_of_sec]

Was this truly a spam email, or is it actually /. spam, advertising the registrar?

Punishment for Spammers

[fortunetroll]

Make them read, write, and breathe Perl for a set period of time. However, if you wish to reform these individuals, you must carefully monitor their status, lest they become one of the poor souls of the sort that contribute to the Obfuscated Perl contest and code CGI apps all day.

On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks. -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"

Complain Upstream

[scotpurl]

Complain to your upstream provider (the folks that provide that OC3 to your house), or better yet, complain to whomever provides network connectivity to that registrar. Also complain to your registrar about the other company's predatory practices.

You might try registering a complaint with ICANN, but I think they'd think this sort of activity isn't annoying enough.

Prevention may be the only cure

[jqh1]

Registrars don't have any special duty to refrain from sending spam (or letting someone else use their servers to do so, as the case may be). These days, it seems like Network Solutions is the single biggest sender of unwanted email to me, although I'm sure they'll tell you I 'opted in' by getting a domain name through them...

What I've been doing with the new registrars (and others) I've been dealing with is to sign up with a disposable spamgourmet email address (www.spamgourmet.com [spamgourmet.com] free and ad-free), then, after I've received some important email from them, I go back and 'permit' just the important addresses to keep sending me mail. Sure wish I had done this with NSI...