Telstra claimed yesterday that it was not its own mail servers, but those of customers - who had unwittingly set them up as open-relay servers - that had been hijacked to dole out spam and were therefore to blame for the blacklistings.
Telstra also claimed that it had been taken off the notorious blacklists, of which it had only been aware of for a -matter of days".
The telco giant's stance has spurred a barrage of criticism from its customers, with many refuting the claim that fault lies with the customer.
One ZDNet Australia reader, who wished to remain anonymous, provided information that shows Telstra's mail server "juicer13.bigpond.com" has a record on both the www.mail-abuse.org and www.orbz.org blacklists.
-I find it disgraceful as a customer of Telstra's to hear that Telstra are blaming their customers for something which is quite clearly not the fault of their customers," he said.
However, the telco heavyweight claims that Telstra servers are -secondary relay" servers in the process and not the actual customer mail servers from which the spam was distributed - however they're blacklisted all the same.
Simon Wright of www.whirlpool.net.au supports the view that the fault lies at the feet of the customer, rather than Telstra. -The big question is was the open relay Telstra's fault or a customers? The answer as far as I can see, is that it's customers," he said. According to Wright, when browsing the spam on file at blacklisted sites the first -received from" lines appear to have BigPond broadband subscriber IP addresses, which means the spam was sent using an open relay on a subscriber's machine, not Telstra's.
Wherever the fault lies, Telstra has been lambasted for saying it was only aware of blacklisted for a -matter of days" and that it was -confident" it was no longer blacklisted.
One ZDNet reader claims to have contacted Bigpond Technical Support a month ago informing them of the problem. -They sounded startled at best, and said that they'd do their best to get the problem sorted out as quick as possible. We rang them every three to four days after that for about two weeks to see how it was going, only to see zero improvement."
An email from another reader revealed that an undeliverable message, traced back to server juicer02.bigpond.com, was blocked by dorkslayers blacklist as late as this morning. -I do believe this [juicer02.bigpond.com] is a Telstra server," he said.
Telstra representative Stuart Gray admitted it can take up to 48 hours to get off a subsidiary blacklist, such as dorkslaysers, but said it was confident to be off the main blacklists. juicer02.bigpond.com is a secondary relay server, according to Gray
-The problem is these self-appointed groups don't inform companies they've been blacklisted and it creates a problem when we only find out when customers contact us," Gray said.
I too agree with the claim that the issue does lie with open relay servers on the customers end. Many times the customer is not even aware of what open relaying actually means, let alone how to stop thier servers from doing it. Whether it is due to lack of knowledge or out right stubborn headedness,that they absolutely refuse to employ/contract the services of skilled and trained IT personnel I do not know. But they Do not seem to be prepared to accept responsibility. I am employed by another IT solution provider and we (the Company) are forever getting the blame for giving them virus's and God knows what else. If you can't handle the risks involved with the internet, then Stay off and be safe. Otherwise educate yourselves and give yourself the power to prepare for the electronic world, instead of doing the all to typical"aussie" WINGE. hmmm ...Maybe there should be a licencing system to get users on line.... Like Vehicle licences... IGNORANCE IS "NO" EXCUSE !! :Op