Some system administrators use the RBL to filter incoming mail. Depending on their configuration, systems using a blackhole list will often block e-mail originating from servers that are classified as known sources of spam.
In this case, it is unlikely that legitimate BigPond users will be blocked because the IP address added to the list is the secondary, non-default address.
A Telstra spokesman said the company has launched an investigation focusing on how it wound up on the list in the first place.
"That's what's being investigated," he said.
Other negative listings have also affected the telco. A Telstra Bigpond user's page has been posted on spamsites.org because it advertises bulk e-mail software. Spamsites.org will list any site that attempts to -sell spamming resources to gullible newcomers". The user page has been listed for 47 days, which has lead to the Bigpond e-mail server (both IP addresses) being identified by Osirusoft, another anti-spam group, as being associated with a spam tools site.
This comes at a bad time for Telstra, which is still recovering after the global newsgroup community threatened it with a -sudden death" black-list penalty in March due to the high volume of newsgroup spam originating from its network.
Australia will soon introduce tough anti-spam legislation that could result in criminal charges, heavy fines, and even jail time for offenders. This follows the release of a report by the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) which recommended the laws be introduced.
Soon after the release of the report, the office of Senator Richard Alston, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, published a statement confirming its support of NOIE's findings.
-Spam is clogging the arteries of the Internet, polluting the medium with pornography and scams and stealing bandwidth from ordinary Australians," it said. -The [NOIE] report provides a blueprint for government, industry and users to start making inroads against the problem".
Proposed legislation will be submitted for review in coming months.
T(H)elstra tries bluster to shrug off these claims. I've had my E-mails to friends returned via the postmaster because the ADSL Broadband E-mail server is the Blacklisted source. What does
T(H)elstra say when you complain? Well they fob your problem off by claiming it is the action of a 3rd party & claim they can't do anything to correct the problem. I don't even bother trying to get T(H)elstra to accept their responsibility anymore. Its a total waste of time. I just avoid using my ADSL E-mail account when I know this problem exists. That means of course, I have to have multiple E-mail accounts, just because
T(H)elstra behaves like a monolithic monopoly who thinks it can do NO WRONG !!!!!