heh. yeah. I can't tell you how many bogus abuse complaints I get. The other day, I got a spam complaint; the 'spam' contained within was an abuse report sent by one of my customers.
Another time I showed someone on a mailing list how to look up the owners of IPv6 addresses. he included that with his abuse report to the owner, and the owner of the IP block (who happened to be an upstream of an upstream of mine) forwarded the message back to me, as if I was somehow involved.
In both these cases, I responded to all involved. in both these cases, I didn't hear anything back from anyone.
I can only imagine that most abuse desks are either understaffed or poorly automated. The thing is, handling abuse is important, but it's not easy. It's not easy to send a good abuse report, and it's not easy to parse it, to weigh the rights of all involved, and to do the right thing on the other end. An abuse desk person needs to be part lawyer and part network admin. Add to that the fact that most ISPs put the least effort they can into abuse, without getting put on blacklists, and you have a job that is usually done poorly.
Another time I showed someone on a mailing list how to look up the owners of IPv6 addresses. he included that with his abuse report to the owner, and the owner of the IP block (who happened to be an upstream of an upstream of mine) forwarded the message back to me, as if I was somehow involved.
In both these cases, I responded to all involved. in both these cases, I didn't hear anything back from anyone.
I can only imagine that most abuse desks are either understaffed or poorly automated. The thing is, handling abuse is important, but it's not easy. It's not easy to send a good abuse report, and it's not easy to parse it, to weigh the rights of all involved, and to do the right thing on the other end. An abuse desk person needs to be part lawyer and part network admin. Add to that the fact that most ISPs put the least effort they can into abuse, without getting put on blacklists, and you have a job that is usually done poorly.