[SpamCop-List] Re: spamcop@imaphost.com

[David 1]

Mike Easter wrote:
> Jay Marble (394041) wrote:
> 
>>Who is this third party and where can I find information on them.
> 
> 
> imaphost = cyveillance
> 
> I don't know if Graeme Leith is here right now, so I'll try to stand in
> for him.  His sig sez:
> 
> <snip>
> Evidence shows Cyveillance abuse internet resources.
> I recommend unchecking their box in SpamCop reports.
> Cyveillance are part of the problem.
> They are not part of the solution.
> </snip>
> 
> As a consequence of that sig, the question frequently arises about why
> he sez that.  In response to that question, he has answered:
> 
> <snip>
> Cyveillance have a robot that trawls through web sites looking for
> stolen intellectual property.  The robot ignores the robots.txt
> exclusion protocol, originates from IP addresses that don't reverse
> lookup to Cyveillance and tries to look like an ordinary user by
> spoofing its user agent.
> 
> The robots.txt (defacto) standard is used amongst other purposes to stop
> robots getting stuck in dynamic pages and to stop robots generating
> costs for people who pay for their web services by the amount of data
> they transfer.  By ignoring it, Cyveillance are seeking to make a profit
> by exploiting resources that other people pay for, much like spammers
> do.
> 
> Cyveillance could avoid abusing peoples servers by sending people to
> look at pages that robots are banned from.  Of course this would
> increase their costs, just like spammers costs would increase by using
> ethical mailing practices.  Cyveillance, like spammers, choose to ignore
> peoples wishes in order to make their money.
> 
> If you run a web site, you may want to grep your logs for visits from
> 63. 148.99.224/27 & 65.118.41.192/27. You may also want to firewall
> those addresses if you find that they have been abusing your resources
> for their profit.
> 
> If you look back to the June and July 2003 archives for the main SpamCop
> newsgroup, you'll see quite a bit of discussion on the matter.
> http://news.spamcop.net/pipermail/spamcop-list/
> 
> There are more ethical companies that perform the same service, such as
> NameProtect, who identify their bot and obey the robots.txt protocol.
> Their robot is perfectly welcome on my sites.  Cyveillance are
> firewalled whenever I find them.
> 
> Julian (as is his right) has decided that Cyveillance are a good thing.
> Quite a few people think otherwise and there is no warning on the
> SpamCop site as to the abuses Cyveillance get up to.  So I just leave
> the sig there in an attempt to warn any newbies who drop by the
> newsgroups.
> </snip>
> 
>>I'm interested to know why they collect the spam information from
>>SpamCop.net.
> 
> 
> Cyveillance is in the business of figuring out ways to profit from
> information they get wherever they get it.  They must feel that it is in
> the best interests of them and their clients to be sniffing in the tons
> of spam which SC reporters report and permit them to 3rd party.
> 
> Cyveillance and Julian have been 'challenged' or questioned on the
> issue, and many do not think that the imaphost is a good 3rd party to be
> checking, and those people may elect to configure to leave 3rd parties
> unchecked by default instead of checked.
> 
> Cyveillance didn't do a good job here of responding to the questions
> which they were asked.
> 
Thank you for sending this, I just this minute changed my settings, 
actually I had kind of quit using SC, didn't see the point but I guess 
I'm back to using it again. Heck I got 20 megs I paid for <G>
David 1