[plug] iinet - was Re: [plug] WASP new dialup phone number problem

[Bret Busby]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Bill Kenworthy wrote:
> I doubt iinet "knowingly" spread virii - you have evidence of an iinet support 
> person or staff members account sending a virus?  I take it you have notified them?
> 
> If you meant that iinet should be looking inside customer message
> traffic for 
> offenders, thats a VERY dangerous precedent that I would want to know
> about ...
> 
> And I have yet to see ANY ISP held up as faultless, but it does seem that iinet, 
> despite the last 6 months is STILL better on a cost for service basis than many others.
> 
> Please be fair and try and look at the conditions as they are at the
> moment.
> 
> BillK
> 

Hello, Bill.

Regarding the spreading of viruses by iinet; The day before yesterday, I
received three messages from an address at mail.iinet.net.au, which contained what
was described by the CERT advisory, as the sircam virus. Each message was
forwarded, with full headers, to abuse at iinet.net.au, with a request to take
action to stop the messages. I have still not received either an
acknowledgement of, or, a response to, the messages that I sent to
abuse at iinet.net.au yesterday morning, I received another four of the messages,
from the same source. Yesterday afternoon, I received a further one of the
messages. Each of the messages was forwarded to abuse at iinet.net.au.

The viral messages sent by iinet, were sent to an alias that I use for BCC's,
so therefore, apart from the iinet mail servers, that alias should be unkown
outside this household.

Conclusion; either someone at iinet is deliberately sending the viral emails,
or, the mail server(s) at iinet have been infected with the virus, and iinet
has refused to either acknowledge it, or, to take action about it.

Regarding the service at iinet, when email takes a number of days to travel
through iinet, and, usually a number of hours, with the delays occuring between
servers at iinet (ongoing problem, for the last couple of months); and, no
support is provided by iinet to its customers; when hundreds (as in an estimated
1000-2000) incoming messages are lost by iinet; when incoming email is bounced
by iinet, iinet is simply charging for services that it is not providing, and,
that it has no interest in providing properly.

I have taken the appropriate action, within iinet, to try to have the problems
resolved, and, basically, iinet has fallen in a heap It just got bigger than it
could handle, and, went bad, charging for services that it is unable to
provide, such as a reasonably stable email service, that should transmit email
messages faster than driving or walking the distance (six hours for a message to
get here from Perth, due to delays between the iinet servers, and, a number of
days, for some messages).

To make it all the worse, iinet does not provide support af any value, to its
customers; does not acknowledge messages to its support and abuse addresses,
and, conceals whether messages are received at these addresses, by refusing
return receipt requests at these email addresses, so that, when a customer
sends a message, the message is usually either ignored, or, not received, and,
iinet conceals which is occurring.

No, Bill, iinet is not providing value for money. It is simply charging for
services that it does not provide.

Bret Busby
..................