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New He does
He's in charge of it. It's ALL spam to him, he just want to pick and choose what gets through.

As with most of us, where you stand on a subject is greatly influenced by where you sit at the table.

Hi box!

Expand Edited by crazy Sept. 25, 2010, 09:29:40 AM EDT
New sort of
97%+ of all internet messages are spam/phish. If a court stated that I had to deliver everything to the inbox I would be broke in a month. Extend the same rules to wireless your monthly bill would be around $600 per month
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Please
Address THIS specific instance.

Is it spam, or some other type of speech?

Was it asked for?

Did the company making a political decision (ie, someone's gonna hassle them for carrying them) and then acted to suppress these particular messages?
New is the judges ruling narrow or broad?
we will have to see. One way doesnt matter, the other way a nightmare
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Poor dodge
Don't be an asshole.

Was that spam or not?
New nope, wrong question
does the owner of the network own the network or not?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Huh?
Might makes right?
You claim a certain reason to do a certain thing.

Either don't claim, to don't do it.

One more time.

As a person who rents a line from a carrier, if I sign up for ANY messages, then I expect to receive them. If a carrier decides they don't like certain traffic, the carrier EITHER is responsible for all of it or nothing. If all of it, then they can be arrested /sued for not controlling it. If none of it, then they can't be sued for content. NOR CAN THEY CONTROL IT.

Your company may run the pipes, but they do so at the leisure of the US populace via certain spectrum they rent. Access to the spectrum means we get a say in what you do with them. They are NOT yours, your are renting them from me, as a US citizen.

So, no, box, they don't own the network. They are merely sharecroppers, working for me.

Nor do they own the network to the house, they rent right of ways all over the place, and those can be yanked.

Your industry is regulated for a reason, they can be trusted to fuck the rest of us over, 1st chance they get. So I hope they don't get it.
New It is asked for
Customer initiates the request by sending a keyword, company responds based the keyword sent.
New Yeah, as a person in a similar line of work
I can completely see box's point. If we are told we must carry, texting will become useless within weeks if not days.

Don't forget what the eztext folks are asking for... a "must carry" like wired carriers. Considering that many users have to pay for incoming calls, it makes things like telemarketing a little different... and how is one to discriminate among the services that are asked for and the services that are not?

We did some stat gathering this past little while... Box's claim of "97% spam" is in the ballpark.

That said, I've no doubt that it's prompted by the nature of the client. I think T-mobile made a mistake, there... but given what is being asked for, T-mobile has to fight it.
New You know what it comes down to?
The spirit of the law versus the letter of the law. That's the same reason for so many tax schemes. Once you reach that point, be prepared for onerous, complex rules that people will try to get around whilst technically staying within.

Wade.

Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers?
A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
New That is what we currently have
The networks don't seem to have any qualms right now connecting spam and even outright fraudulent callers as I keep getting calls pressing me to extend my car warranty, or stating that I admit owing $mega by listening to their message. By now the originating numbers are well know, but the calls keep coming.

Unless someone complains, the network operators are not in a position to know what is spam or not, unless they listen in on every connection (maybe delegate spam detection to the NSA then?). Only the recipient can make that determination.

In this case, T-Mobile cut off a service that was clearly not spam (by the current going definition of "spam"). If this results in a "must carry" decision, then they only have themselves to blame.

Oh, and the only one who has ever spammed me silly despite several requests to stop was ATT after they bought up my then provider.
New Dude, I don't think you realise
Well, I'm in Canada, so the law here is different, but if I were not allowed to filter incoming traffic everybody's cell phones would be going off every five minutes twenty four hours a day.

It's that bad.
New Give them a whitelist
Boy, that was tough.
New can we give the users your phone number for support?
free of course, just like the rest of the stuff you'all want
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Free? No
But at what cost?

The company is actively fighting, via the courts, the ability to block, without ANY REVIEW WHAT-SO-EVER, of any and all traffic that they choose, without even allowing for appeal for those they damage? And they call it SPAM? Those bastards. How much should it cost? 90% of their corporate earnings.

But, just for you, here: I'll make it almost free:

If the company that has been blocked wants to send to someone, then that someone has to agree to it. That someone has to actively go to a web site, or send an auth code from their phone to a database somewhere. Even BEFORE the 1st one shows up. It will be up to the sending company to hold their hand through the process. If the sending company is unwilling or unable, a secondary service company can help them out on the tech support side, but they will be responsible for paying for it, not the carrier.

Happy?

Wanna come up with a new excuse? Gonna tell me the database lookup is too costly or difficult? I'll be happy to help you with that. I'm not Beep, and these are easily addressable problems. They are direct measurable tech issues, and we are tracking all of 20 digits worth or information in this lookup table.

The political issue is the real one (I'm working on it right now, see).

I'll even code the lookup interface to the online database that people use to whitelist any cell number or text message source, plus pay for the 1st 1,000,000 people who register, (meaning support their hardware and bandwidth usage), without even thinking of a revenue stream.

I'll code it for free, and put it into a supported production environment, just for you.

But your company has to use it in order to give people a reason to put the numbers in.

Your company would agree to some minuscule transaction cost each time you do a lookup. This stuff has to be near real time so caching will not help you. A phone user who just authorized a message wants to see it SOON. And when they said, STOP SENDING THOSE, they never want to see it again.

I'll agree to maintain capabilities to support your guaranteed minimum usage, plus allow for on-demand scalability if there are any surges we need to accommodate (someone just did a TV advertisement and now they are all hitting the web site).

All hardware will be COLOed at the location(s) of your choice, under your administrative love and care (if you wish). The design will allow for under 20 second multi-master replication between systems (if you need multiple server across multiple site due to your query requirements), but only if you can guarantee my server to server network traffic (your network).

I'll need to know what your per message current transit time is, and then figure out a minimal intersect point for the lookup. Once we agree to a given per message allowable latency and a min message count required rate, I will maintain the equipment / and or system optimization level required to not drop below (and probably far exceed) the requirements.

I'll treat those numbers as well as CC cards, with full PCI compliance in mind during design and coding. All system to system communication will be via encrypted channels, with IP lockdown and any other security requirements you want to throw at me, assuming they can be implemented on the Linux environment (of your choice).

I just need yum or apt-get, and I'm good.

Someone else here (or I'll track down a real web person near me if no one here wants the gig) has to volunteer (or name your price, or how much of the action you want) for the actual web site interface.

Box: At minimal cost I've solved your dilemma, and you get to advertise your whiz-bang system against the competitors.

Care to start an introduction to your execs for me? I'll dress nice and make sure everything is business appropriate. It'll be fun. If allowed, I'd use you as my sysadmin if it becomes a real business.

And BTW: Thanks for putting me creation mode. The 1st step is finding someone to pay for it. But since I'll be working with a web guy, I can't go into full blown god mode.
Expand Edited by crazy Sept. 27, 2010, 09:08:04 PM EDT
New They have whitelists
The support issues are very real, and costly.
New See above
Also, let me inform you of a very simple term.

Cost of doing business.

If you say you are providing a service, then you have to provide it. Very simple. If you can't afford to provide it based on the cost structure that does not include a mechanism for getting people what they paid for (requested message, not spam), then don't FUCKING PRETEND to provide it.

Tell people you are going to filter their messages based on any content you don't approve of. Very simple. Do it in VERY LARGE TYPE on the contract though, with simple to understand examples.
Expand Edited by crazy Sept. 29, 2010, 06:15:17 PM EDT
New Re: See above
http://www.t-mobile....itions&print=true
We use filters to block spam messages, but we do not guarantee that you will not receive spam or other unsolicited messages, and we are not liable for such messages. Additional blocking options are available at www.my.T-Mobile.com.
snip
"spamming" or engaging in other abusive or unsolicited communications, or any other mass, automated voice or data communication for commercial or marketing purposes;
last sentence covers it and the user had agreed to abide by the term of service.
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Which is it?
The way I read it, there are three types of prohibited messages, any one of which can get you blocked:

1. abusive

2. unsolicited

3. mass, automated voice or data communication for commercial or marketing purposes

In this case the users requested the messages. So it can't be unsolicited. It's theoretically possible someone could see the actual content as abusive, but I doubt it, and certainly haven't heard anyone claim it.

That leaves the third case, which seems to require all of three conditions to apply:

1. mass

2. automated

3. for commercial or marketing purposes

Automated? Yes. Commercial or marketing purposes? Yes. Mass? Not by any definition I can think of. One person requests it, one person gets it.

If I've mis-read the ToS, please show me how.
--

Drew
New Mass, one or more automated messages
no thumbs thumbing involved
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New So... me sending...
Sending My Phone Cron'd messages from my host in Troy, Michigan at specific hours are automated.

What about my Nagios Pages from my monitoring system? I can get HUNDREDS in 15 minutes from it on bad days.

What about Notices I get sent from our notification system...

What about Google sending me notifications about meetings or Facebook sending me SMS on status updates?

Ummm, a little bit more help defining prohibited items... and how come my stuff works, Google's, Facebook's and other? They are all automated... and 3 out of the 4 deliver huge amounts of messages.

Explain it to me better Master Shredder.
New just because the carrier allows you to abuse their TOS
doesnt mean they cannot enforce it later
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New If he pays for the service
of sending and receiving unlimited text, why would getting any amount be an abuse of their TOS?
Sure, understanding today's complex world of the future is a little like having bees live in your head. But...there they are.
New And I do pay for unlimited.
New Re: If he pays for the service
unlimited "non automated" text. Currently they have the bandwidth to carry what he is sending and receiving. If it becomes problematical like ATT they will start lowering the boom
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Selective enforcement...
This is exactly the issue.
New Technical solution that proves this is bogus
They clearly have the ability to flag "automated" messages, which you're (Box, not Greg) now saying is the issue. Just flag them as automated in the queue.

"SELECT * FROM queue ORDER BY flag, timestamp"

Presto, all non-automated messages go before any non-automated messages. Bandwidth problem becomes a non-issue. Buyers and senders of automated messages decide whether the delay makes the service unusable or not.

Choosing specific senders and specific messages to completely block takes them out of safe harbor provisions.
--

Drew
New I don't have a problem with...
reducing priority of the mass of messages...

But he keeps saying they CAN block what the hell ever they want even if the people subscribed to the message service.

Personally, since SMS is still effectively free for transmission for the Cellphone companies... (maybe not handling and queuing)
New whats this free shyte?
http://www.developer...tewayProvComp.asp
to get from a computer to you phone you need a gateway, they are not cheap to buy or run.
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Ok jackass...
I said the handling and queuing. That is indeed where the Gateways are.

Please *READ*.

The transmission costs are ultimately nil.

The costs buy *AND* run them have come down by orders magnitude.

Think back to pagers gateways... one of those... cost a few million dollars for a 64 channel, 120 phone line system, just to get the messages onto the network.

Nowadays the effective cost (based on numbers of message being sent and bandied around as costs for gateways) has dropped to about 0.005% of the cost per message handling from 1999.
New Speaking of Nagios
I've personally blocked quite a few hosts that have poorly configured nagios systems that have sent notifications just as fast as the computer(s) can send them. To be sure, we tend to do so for a short length of time, but they fit the definition mooted above and were completely responsible for denying the use of the service by others because they've attempted to mail us several hundred times a minute.

Are we supposed to not do this, despite the fact that I'm sure the subscriber(s) in question probably became very relieved when their phone stopped ringing every couple of seconds?
New Preventing use of the service by others is covered in ToS
It's a DOS attack. Intentional or not, I don't hear anyone opposed to blocking that.
--

Drew
New We are not using the ...
direct to SMS delivery.

We use the SMTP gateway, which is a "natural" throttle.
New Yes, that is the part of the infrastructure that I run
and it amounted to a DoS attack on it when a Canadian uni had a badly configured set of Nagios boxes run wild last week. Sure, it's a natural throttle, but when the mail server is throttling it, it's throttling everybody else using it as well.
New I'm sorry... I should have said...
*MY* outbound mail server for our nagios system (it delivers it locally to the machine's SMTP Agent) does not do batch mode. It also does *not* send out 150 messages, using 150 connections at the same time to the same MX records. Its purposely setup to do them all serially.

Sure, I sometimes get a few hundred messages in 15 minutes. But every single one of them is sent ... singly and one at a time to the same MX record.

Now, if my nagios server needs to send out messages to a few AT&T recipients, a few Verizon recipients, a few T-Mobile recipients and a few Rogers recipients all at once, there will be multiple mail drops happening at the same time to each MX, but serially for those MX records.

I guess, I thought through this a bit more than others, as I am the recipient of some Denial of Service attacks... I didn't want to be a perp.

Many people don't test and just assume things are good.

I also, once I have an incident... I turn off notifications... until the event is past.

I guess I'm not the norm.
New We only send to those that are supposed to...
And they are definitely responsible for the systems they are notified for.

We use the SMTP gateways to not overwhelm the services. (10digitnum@vtext.com... etc... 1234567890@rogers.com) and we deliver singly, not in batch mode.

Verizon delivers in mere seconds. AT&T delays up to 30 minutes. T-Mobile doesn't delay more than a minute. Rogers is also near instantaneous.

Dunno. But this is not that tough.
New Possible SES?
That's "Shit's Easy Syndrome". You obviously know way more about it than I do, but Box does do this for a living. Easy for you doesn't necessarily mean easy for him, and I don't like making promises on other people's efforts.

However ... I still say if you can prioritize it, and they can, that that's all you need to do. Automated messages always get last priority, problem solved.

Here's my assumption, by the way: Once the hardware and software is in place to do this at all (including the gateway Box mentions), I assume that the incremental cost of each message approaches zero until you reach saturation of some part of the system and have to increase capacity. Is that a valid assumption?
--

Drew
New headcount doesnt approach zero
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Actually, prioritizing automated messages last
would be a terrible idea. Automated messages make up the majority of all legitimate messages we handle... and they are generally considered very important by the customers that use them. We get to hear about it sometimes when they're delayed by ten minutes; some very major Canadian inet services use us to notify their employees of problems.
New Heh
Rogers is the smtp gateway that I actually admin.
New Look at the post where I explained...
My setup to not become a DoS.

http://iwt.mikevital....iwt?postid=36671
New Just did read that
and no, you're not the norm. Well, semi norm? I guess most people have it set up alright, but the ones that don't end up causing us huge problems, so we really get to notice those ones.
New You've missed the other key point
Entry points into a wireless network are neither infinitely available, nor free. To be sure, you can have a LOT of shortcodes available, but they're not infinite. The problem here is that the TOS with the party offering the short codes to third parties explicitly signed a contract saying they needed approval from T-Mobile for any new services they'd offer on one of the short codes they have assigned to them. They did not do so, so T-Mobile cut them off.

I'm not sure why this is a problem here.
New freetards is the problem
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New The problem is box miscategorised it
Which then became the focus point.

Not "freetards".

I don't expect shit for free, I expect to get what I pay for. And in this case, maybe the source of the message is subject to the contract, which in turn means I can't ask for the message via the shortlist code. Fine.

According to box, he should be able to block ANY automated commercial message. Like Facebook's text to your phone to confirm a password reset. Or any other automated list request. And they also want to pick and choose on political speech.

The answer to that is no. And it has nothing to do with wanting something for nothing.
New To put this wreck back on the rails...
This case has *nothing* to do with spam. That is the slippery slope argument Box dragged in to justify the telcos cutting off service at their whim.
New try reading the link
T-Mobile, the company wrote in a filing (.pdf) in New York federal court, “has discretion to require pre-approval for any short-code marketing campaigns run on its network, and to enforce its guidelines by terminating programs for which a content provider failed to obtain the necessary approval.”

Such approval is necessary, T-Mobile added, “to protect the carrier and its customers from potentially illegal, fraudulent, or offensive marketing campaigns conducted on its network.”
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Someone aleady quoted that
They're not claiming it's a problem with bandwidth. They're claiming it's to "protect" people from "illegal, fraudulent, or offensive marketing campaigns". So it's not that they can't carry it, they don't want to. That's the story they're telling, anyway.
--

Drew
New one more time, if the ruling goes against
they will have to carry
"illegal, fraudulent, or offensive marketing campaigns" and so does everyone else. you dont have a problem with that?
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New A pleading doesn't determine the ruling.
"Your honor, if we lose, the world will end. And I will have a sad."

You expect them to argue differently?

Cheers,
Scott.
New if the ruling states they MUST deliver it does exactly that
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New And if wishes were horses ... We'll see.
New Please answer these two simple questions
1. Was the campaign they were trying to block in this story "illegal, fraudulent, or offensive"?

2. Who gets to decide that?
--

Drew
New Re: Please answer these two simple questions
1. they couldnt tell because they were not asked for approval
2. t-mobile as they mentioned in their filing
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 55 years. meep
New Hear that
#1 - You claimed spam.
Now you claim other.

I claim shenanigans.

It's a very simple switch, and it is obviously (to all) that you realized you were full of shit, and then decided to delve back in to the article.

So now that you've admitted you were wrong there, ok I'll answer this too.

The ISP created a spam blast mechanism that they allow some people to use, and not others. There are LOTS of FED vs LOCAL laws, they conflict, and the f'ing ISP is not the expert on them. They are creating an opaque mechanism to slow down and hassle those they don't like.

If they have the right to control, then they have the responsibility. Is this an accepted legal issue, or do I need to explain it to you? Safe harbor means that they aren't allowed to filter on content (except for spam, which you've already shown you know this is not), no safe harbor means they HAVE to filter and can be sued for pretty much anything they carry.

Are you telling me that they will be legally responsible for every message that gets through, as well? Meaning suable for fraudulent content.
Expand Edited by crazy Sept. 29, 2010, 06:12:01 PM EDT
     so people should be allowed to spam sms - (boxley) - (62)
         Where do you see spam? - (scoenye) - (57)
             not the point - (boxley) - (56)
                 But this case has nothing to do with spam - (scoenye) - (55)
                     He does - (crazy) - (54)
                         sort of - (boxley) - (53)
                             Please - (crazy) - (52)
                                 is the judges ruling narrow or broad? - (boxley) - (3)
                                     Poor dodge - (crazy) - (2)
                                         nope, wrong question - (boxley) - (1)
                                             Huh? - (crazy)
                                 It is asked for - (scoenye)
                                 Yeah, as a person in a similar line of work - (jake123) - (46)
                                     You know what it comes down to? - (static)
                                     That is what we currently have - (scoenye) - (44)
                                         Dude, I don't think you realise - (jake123) - (43)
                                             Give them a whitelist - (crazy) - (32)
                                                 can we give the users your phone number for support? - (boxley) - (1)
                                                     Free? No - (crazy)
                                                 They have whitelists - (jake123) - (29)
                                                     See above - (crazy) - (28)
                                                         Re: See above - (boxley) - (27)
                                                             Which is it? - (drook) - (26)
                                                                 Mass, one or more automated messages - (boxley) - (22)
                                                                     So... me sending... - (folkert) - (21)
                                                                         just because the carrier allows you to abuse their TOS - (boxley) - (8)
                                                                             If he pays for the service - (beepster) - (2)
                                                                                 And I do pay for unlimited. -NT - (folkert)
                                                                                 Re: If he pays for the service - (boxley)
                                                                             Selective enforcement... - (folkert) - (4)
                                                                                 Technical solution that proves this is bogus - (drook) - (3)
                                                                                     I don't have a problem with... - (folkert) - (2)
                                                                                         whats this free shyte? - (boxley) - (1)
                                                                                             Ok jackass... - (folkert)
                                                                         Speaking of Nagios - (jake123) - (11)
                                                                             Preventing use of the service by others is covered in ToS - (drook) - (3)
                                                                                 We are not using the ... - (folkert) - (2)
                                                                                     Yes, that is the part of the infrastructure that I run - (jake123) - (1)
                                                                                         I'm sorry... I should have said... - (folkert)
                                                                             We only send to those that are supposed to... - (folkert) - (6)
                                                                                 Possible SES? - (drook) - (2)
                                                                                     headcount doesnt approach zero -NT - (boxley)
                                                                                     Actually, prioritizing automated messages last - (jake123)
                                                                                 Heh - (jake123) - (2)
                                                                                     Look at the post where I explained... - (folkert) - (1)
                                                                                         Just did read that - (jake123)
                                                                 You've missed the other key point - (jake123) - (2)
                                                                     freetards is the problem -NT - (boxley)
                                                                     The problem is box miscategorised it - (crazy)
                                             To put this wreck back on the rails... - (scoenye) - (9)
                                                 try reading the link - (boxley) - (8)
                                                     Someone aleady quoted that - (drook) - (7)
                                                         one more time, if the ruling goes against - (boxley) - (6)
                                                             A pleading doesn't determine the ruling. - (Another Scott) - (2)
                                                                 if the ruling states they MUST deliver it does exactly that -NT - (boxley) - (1)
                                                                     And if wishes were horses ... We'll see. -NT - (Another Scott)
                                                             Please answer these two simple questions - (drook) - (2)
                                                                 Re: Please answer these two simple questions - (boxley) - (1)
                                                                     Hear that - (crazy)
         Settled out of court. - (folkert) - (1)
             good, having that albatross going the wrong way would be bad - (boxley)
         So should T-Mobile go to jail for bank robbery now? - (crazy) - (1)
             Freakin' awesome! - (folkert)

His laugh sounds like a balloon deflating into the face of a man who is throwing up and singing at the same time. It is the worst.
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