Posted on 30-3-2004

Herald Caught In Anti-spam Crossfire
30.03.2004, By Juha Saarinen

Allegations of spamming made against NZ Herald sister company UBD has
caused email from the media group to be blocked by users of the Spamhaus
Block List (SBL) which protects an estimated 200 million mailboxes
worldwide from spam.

UBD, which provides business information such as mailing lists for direct
marketing purposes, was accused of spamming and selling mailing lists. The
Herald and other New Zealand companies in the APN group share a mail hub
with UBD and were thus collateral damage of the listing, which was entered
into the SBL early on Sunday morning.

Spamhaus is a volunteer anti-spam organisation which collates a real-time
database of IP addresses used for sending spam. These are then published
as the SBL, which is used according to the Spamhaus website by "a number
of the world's [internet] backbones, many large tier-1 providers, and ISPs
in all countries" as well as "a number of US and European Government and
military networks".

Speaking from the UK, a Spamhaus investigator said that the organisation
had received complaints from New Zealanders who had been "blown off by
UBD" when they asked to opt out from spam. He added that "clearly, the
gentle approach wasn't going to cut the coconut in this case", hence the
SBL listing. The investigator said SBL listings were based on a policy
that stated "no bulk email must be sent out without the recipients'
consent".

To get off the SBL, the investigator said that UBD's internet provider
would need to contact Spamhaus and "state categorically that action would
be taken within a reasonable time scale" to cease the spamming.

UBD general manager Peter Batcheler said the spamming arose from a company
using a two-year-old CD ROM with addresses. Batcheler said that in the
past, the registration form used for the contact database included a field
for email addresses. He said that the spamming was "abuse" of the CD-ROM,
and added that UBD would remove the email addresses from the database.

The company identified on the Spamhaus website as having used the UBD
CD-ROM for spamming is IMG Hospitality New Zealand. In the spam, IMG
describes itself as the "official hospitality supplier at major sporting
events in Australia and New Zealand". Its financial controller declined to
be named, but said IMG had bought the UBD CD-ROM under the premises that
it contained "business addressees" that "had given permission to be
contacted". When told about the Spamhaus SBL listing, the financial
controller said it was "no surprise, given the current spam situation". He
added that the mail out would have "made that situation worse in fact" and
that IMG would not attempt future mass emailings without ensuring the
recipients had given permission first.

APN's group communications manager, Drew Collins, said that Spamhaus had
contacted him to say that the listing would be removed within 24 hours, as
UBD and APN had taken the necessary steps to prevent further spamming.

Outbound email to national and international destinations had been
affected, Collins said.