[Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

Fri Aug 4 16:00:36 UTC 2006

geni wrote:

>On 8/4/06, Nathan Carter <cartmanau at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Is there already a section within the foundation which can deal with this?
>>If not is some form of "abuse reporting" procedure needed?
>>I think the best way to do it is for the foundation itself to do the dirty
>>work so to speak, which should avoid any privacy issues.
>>Cheers,
>>Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)
>>    
>>
>
>While that may be an option in the short term in the long run this is
>likely to become more common and thus it is probably best that there
>to be a way to deal with this below foundation level.
>
>  
>
Most of the ISP's ignore these reports, including DCMA takedown notices 
(they just throw them in the trash). One very effective
method that both works and gets their attention I have used at 
WikiGadugi dissuades 100% of vandals, gets the ISP's attention, and
gets the problem fixed immediately. It is as follows:

1. When I first setup WikiGadugi, I had the distinct pleasure of being 
visited by WillyonWheels from the UK.
2. I tried the whole page move vandal, blocking, blah blah blah, it only 
made him more persistent.
3. I wrote a shim program into IP tables as a MediaWiki addon that does 
WHOIS lookup everytime
the IP address gets used to write a page and saves not only the IP 
address for the write, but the ISP range as well.
4. The shim checks a file not visible where I record IP addresses for 
vandal addresses and autoblocks the entire ISP IP range AT THE FIREWALL
blocking both reading and writing, shutting down all access for that ISP.

I had someone from the UK email me (my email servers are on a separate 
network) from this ISP range. It was
blueyonder.uk and apparently, other universities were studying the 
Cherokee translation and wondered why the site was down. It was not long
before the ISP notified me a certain account was "suspended".

I would suggest creating a banned ISP listing with ranges based on 
persistent vandals, and when they suspend the accounts, you will unblock 
them
at the firewall. It fixed my vandalism problems. I have 0% vandalism at 
the WikiGadugi site and I stuck it to WillyOnWheels.

Jeff