[Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

Fri Aug 4 19:54:22 UTC 2006

Oooh! War of attrition!

James approves.

On 8/4/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> 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
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