[Forrest]

Last night's spam attack was pretty brutal. I wondered if someone would take the time to sift through the mess and clean it up.

[sangheeta]

Yep, thank you.

[xiamenese]

I would just like to point out that the new spam attack from chinaxmsink looks from that name as if it comes from Xiamen where I live. It is nothing whatsoever to do with me; I haven't even followed up the link to see if it is from here. If I am right, then it is probably coming through Fujian Telecom, and if Fujian Telecom were to be black-listed as a result, I for one would be blocked.

We have no choice of ISPs here ... my options are Fujian Telecom broadband, or Fujian Telecom dial-up. Although there is at least one other broadband network, I think they have to lease lines off China Telecom, of which Fujian Telecom is the local arm.

The educational network is different, but I don't live on campus, and if I did I would still not be able to use it, as the network administrators install a .exe on your system, presumably for user validation, and have no intention of setting up a validation system that works with OS-X.

Mark
(whose screen name is markxm on a number of systems)

[Brian]

Originally Posted by xiamenese

if Fujian Telecom were to be black-listed as a result, I for one would be blocked.

We ban the specific accounts that post, but don't do anything broader.

[xiamenese]

Originally Posted by Brian

We ban the specific accounts that post, but don't do anything broader.

Thanks Brian, I seem to have posted in a wrong thread. There was a thread in which someone, if I understood it correctly, was calling for a broader system and another poster pointed out a similar problem. In view of the recent attacks from Chinese spammers, I thought I would point this out as a specific case in that context.
I have in fact suffered from such black-listing in the past—about 5 to 6 years ago—as it happens by OmniGroup's mail system referencing a central black-list which blocked all mails passing through Fujian Telecom. I had to find a way round that in order to get crash-reports in to you!

Mark

[Forrest]

Yeah, that was my other thread. I just wanted it looked at as sometimes it is effective. Obviously in this case, it wouldn't be. I wouldn't want a valued user such as yourself to get blocked. There are some circumstances where certain blocks of IPs are used only for spamming and those can get blocked. I have found this works on a forum I admin.