Should Spammers Lose Their Domains?
Tonight I received a "Spamcop-generated" user complaint addressed to postmaster@biztld.net. After I scoured the headers of the offending spam it became apparent that this spam had *absolutely nothing* to do with our network. Not a single IP belonged to us. There were no references to any domain hosted on our network...nothing.
The (anonymous) accuser apparently saw this in the Spamcop generated analysis of the spam:
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.60 (1.212-2003-09-23-exp) on blade6
X-Spam-Level: *********************************
X-Spam-Status: hits=33.3 tests=BIZ_TLD,DATE_IN_PAST_03_06,DATE_SPAMWARE_Y2K,
FORGED_IMS_HTML,FORGED_IMS_TAGS,FORGED_MUA_IMS,GUARANTEED_100_PERCENT,
HTML_FONTCOLOR_RED,HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_02,HTML_MESSAGE,
HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG,HTML_TAG_BALANCE_BODY,MIME_HTML_ONLY,
MIME_HTML_ONLY_MULTI,MISSING_MIMEOLE,MISSING_OUTLOOK_NAME,
OBFUSCATING_COMMENT,OPT_OUT_CAPS,PENIS_ENLARGE,PENIS_ENLARGE2,
USERPASS version=2.60
You'll notice the very first thing they saw was BIZ_TLD.
Yes, there does seem to be an inordinate amount of spam generated from or about domains on the .BIZ top level domain. Our accuser seemed to deduce that:
1. biztld.net was the legitimate registry for .BIZ domains
and
2. that the domain registry should be held in some way responsible for the spams referencing second level domains it delegates.
This is not the first spam complaint about a .BIZ domain which we have received under similar thinking.
It was just more remarkable because of the association with Spamcop.
Yet the domain biztld.net is no longer the registry for the .BIZ top level domain. The website now documents the history of the .BIZ top level domain. For those who are unfamiliar with the saga it's an interesting read about how the original .BIZ domain was ignored by ICANN and later awarded to NeuLevel. All of the original .BIZ domain names have since expired.
Were the accuser and/or Spamcop correct in assuming that this was the registry or registrar for .biz domain names, does this mean that it's coming to be a common practice to hold the registry responsible for spam generated from or about a second level domain they may delegate or allow to be registered?
If it's valid to send the spam complaint to the perceived registry, then does that mean we should all send our spam complaints for spams which reference .com or .net to VeriSign? Then the spam complaints referencing .BIZ domains would be sent to NeuLevel. Originally the very thought of this made me laugh.
On the other hand...it would indeed be a novel approach for a domain name to be deactivated because it's registrant went to the "dark side." There may even be something in the registrar agreement which might support this.
As I have no intention of spending all my time fielding spam complaints about .BIZ domains that are totally unrelated to us, I wrote to Spamcop for a solution...We'll see what they say.
I remember the original .BIZ top level domain. We got no spam from those at all.........
1:29:43 AM 
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