October 8th, 2008
Cynthia Harris | There’s wrong. Then there’s Army wrong.10 comments
October 1st, 2008
You Can’t Spell “Obsession” Without The O. | A new way to spark reader interest: Distribute a DVD that PO’s subscribers.15 comments
September 24th, 2008
Multnomah County Assessment & Taxation | Squeezing blood from a cucumber.13 comments
September 17th, 2008
David Powell7 comments
September 10th, 2008
John Nelsen | Truth in advertising?6 comments
September 3rd, 2008
Mayor Tom Potter | Fool me twice.8 comments
August 27th, 2008
Sue Castner | Serious Party Foul.28 comments
August 20th, 2008
Vladimir Putin | Georgia on our mind10 comments
August 13th, 2008
Clear Channel Outdoor | Company shows signs of cowardice.12 comments
August 6th, 2008
Senate Republicans | Thanks for nothing.2 comments
![]() |
[August 23rd, 2006] Comcast and AT&T earn this week's Rogue honors for their increased use of spam blockers to push smaller, local competitors out of the Internet service provider business.
Smaller ISPs say Comcast and AT&T maintain huge databases of email servers that send out spam, so they can stop spam messages from reaching their users' mailboxes. Problem is, their system for adding a server to the "blacklist" is a mystery and often marks non-offending servers as spammers.
Once an ISP's email servers get added to a blacklist, none of its customers can send email to any of Comcast's 9 million or AT&T's 7.4 million subscribers.
Jon Newell, president and CEO of local internet provider IPNS, says one of his 22 employees must watch the blacklists every day, at a cost of thousands of dollars annually. He says it often can take months to get off the list. All the while, Newell's non-spamming customers complain that they can't send emails to their clients.
And Ken Perkin, tech support manager at another local ISP, Sterling Communications, says his company had recently gotten off the AT&T blacklist, only to learn it got added again to that list last week.
Perkin and Newell both agree that spam is a problem (who doesn't?), but they say big ISPs' response is overboard because their smaller, managed networks can prevent huge spam bombardments from originating on their servers.
AT&T didn't return WW's calls, but Comcast spokeswoman Theressa Davis says Comcast has reduced spam by 70 percent since ratcheting up its spam-blocking last year.
"This isn't really for competitive reasons," Davis says."This is about fighting spam for everyone on the Internet."
But Newell says the effect is to encroach unfairly on his business.
"If you're Comcast and you want some of my 4,000 domains," Newell says, "this is a good way to get 'em."
advertisement
RECENT COMMENTS ON “Comcast and AT&T”
I am an AT&T customer in the San Francisco Bay Area. My mother in Austin, TX can't e-mail me. She uses Road Runner, which is blocked. My wife (in the next room) can’t e-mail me. She uses NetIdentity, ...
Having unfortunately done business in the past with Mr. Newell and IPNS, I find it surprising that he spent any money at all on spam protection. I got 10 time more spam from his mail server than my y...
On the other hand, ATT still runs off some old Prodigy servers, which they do not secure well. As a result ATT address 71.131.216.170 is blacklisted by Sorbs and Cube.
The backside ...
I think that att is in breach of contract to their customers for providing the email services that are being paid for. At this point, I would gladly join a class action suit to recover payments for u...









