A spokeswoman for BigPond -- Australia's largest Internet service provider, with around 1.5 million users -- said it had revised its terms and conditions and acceptable use policies for cable and ADSL users "to crack down on recalcitrant spammers".
The key changes -- posted on the BigPond Web site -- include the tightening of provisions governing monitoring of BigPond usage to ensure users are complying with BigPond acceptable use policies and tightening its definition of spam to allow the provider to act against smaller distributions of messages sent within tighter timeframes.
Whereas previously BigPond had to have tangible evidence a customer was spamming before it could act, it now has the right to monitor services to ensure customers are complying with the acceptable use policy.
Telstra has also tightened the definition of spam from the distribution of around 400 messages in a 15-minute period to the distribution of 20 messages over a 10 minute consecutive period. It is understood that the carrier does not plan to tackle the distribution of legitimate messages within that period -- rather, the tightening of the definition is designed to strengthen the carrier's hand when tackling genuine spammers.
BigPond members may also now not benefit commercially from the distribution of spam.
The conditions come into effect immediately for new signups to the BigPond service, while they would come into effect for existing users from Boxing Day.
The rationalisation comes as the U.S. and Australian parliaments move on legislation to combat spam, which is compromising the effectiveness and efficiency of e-mail to the point many accounts are becoming unuseable.
The U.S. Senate this week voted to approve an anti-spam bill in a move hailed by both sides of politics there as an historic compromise designed to strike a heavy blow to spammers, while tough anti-spam legislation is also making its way through the local parliament.
Telstra moved to downplay the privacy implications of its increased monitoring of BigPond usage, saying on its Web site: "Please note, this does not mean we will be reading customer e-mails," the carrier said.
"We will only monitor the size and quantity of e-mails being sent from an account that we suspect is the source of abnormally high traffic levels which breaches the AUP (The exception to this rule is when we are required by a law to monitor an account by a law enforcement agency)".
Telstra is in the process of upgrading its BigPond infrastructure to provide additional headroom after its network was compromised two months ago by a service "brown-out" blamed on a welter of spam e-mails generated by a virus. BigPond users were forced to wait weeks to receive some e-mails caught in the logjam.
Telstra's chief executive officer, Ziggy Switkowski, said recently the carrier was spending around AU$100 million to boost BigPond's infrastructure , including implementing a new e-mail platform, augmenting specialist help-desk resources, improving call-centre resources and introducing a new browser-based customer information service.
Other improvements include simplified and easier billing processes and engines, rationalised technology design and "faster progress towards true carrier grade Internet service".
We deliver a specialised Anti-Virus and Spam service for the SME Market and use RBL's (Real Time Blacklists) quite extensively.
bigpond.com customers unfortunately are blacklisted by a majority of the RBL sites because of Telstra's own lack of knowledge and inability to lock down their mail servers from being used as open relay agents by spammers.
It makes me laugh when I hear about this because Telstra customers download limits are being affected by the amount of spam they receive.
Having anti-spam software on your PC still doesn't control the real issue. The fact that the ISP did nothing about this and then had the hide to charge the customer for allowing the spam into their own network is the real issue.
ISP's get your act together and cleanup your own backyard first. Do not expect the poor end user to wear the cost.
Service Providers like MicroThin and Message Labs are doing something about it.
The fight goes on.