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Usability - Productivity - Business - The web - Singapore & Twins

Hello Singnet, ever heard of RFC2142?


There is a document called RFC2142. This RFC defines some standard email addresses every provider is supposed to implement monitor and attend to. Names like hostmaster, abuse etc. You would expect, that a very big provider would implement them to be a good net-citizen. Not so here:


Dear Stephan H. Wissel,

Emails sent directly to our mailbox are no longer attended to with
immediate effect. Please use the online form at
to submit your
Internet Abuse Incident Report.

For more information on Internet Security, please visit our website at


We wish you a pleasant day ahead!


Yours sincerely,
SingNet Internet Security Team
(this is a system automated reply)

SingNet Homepage -
Internet Security -

<rant> !@#$%^&
So when you just forward a virus message nicely with all headers, so they can notify the poor soul and rescue it, you get told: no we won't help unless you accommodate our process, that is in violation of internet standards. Hhm. Time for the ICT regulators to step forward and have a nice roster of fines for negligence. An ISP should be held responsible for maleware traffic leaving their network. </rant>

Posted by on 26 March 2006 | Comments (2) | categories: Singapore

Comments

  1. posted by Kapali on Tuesday 28 March 2006 AD:
    Maybe I am missing something here, but:

    If the SLA / response time for the online query is same as the email route, it doesn't make any difference isn't it? It may even get routed to the Postmaster/abuse mailbox if they consider the request to be the right fit?

    I am not sayig they are right/ have not violated the RFC rules, which is pretty explicit about it, but, its difficult to comment without knowing why they have implemented it that way and if it's done without any loss on SLA part.

    Maybe, I didn't get what you are trying to say ?
  2. posted by Stephan H. Wissel on Tuesday 28 March 2006 AD:
    Hi Kapali,

    yes you are missing a critical part. I hit "forward with eMail headers" and send a message to abuse. Then I expect that someone acts on it. The message bounces back --- at this time I have moved on, deleted the virus and can't be bothered to fill an online form.
    From an internal point of viel the SLA is kept: anything (much less I would guess) that comes through the web form is processed. However when you count the number of incidents that get dropped since they NEVER make it to the web form, then the numbers look pretty bad. Of course nobody counts that since it would screw the metrics and make the webform-only approach a miserable failure.
    The RFC is in place to ensure people can turn to known places for help. So while one can argue an auto-responder is good enough, in reality it is poor customer service.
    My 2c
    Emoticon smile.gif stw