Vicious attack on degreeinfo by a.e.d spammers

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Chip, Mar 4, 2002.

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  1. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    Folks,

    I just want to clear up what's been going on the past couple of days with Degreeinfo.

    Two things are happening simultaneously:

    1. The interest and demand for the site is growing tremendously (about 20% growth, just since January), so we're having to scale the technology that serves the site. It's not as easy as scaling an ordinary site, because when we serve the site from multiple servers, we still have to access the one database where messages are stored, to ensure everyone sees the same thing. That's a pretty big feat for an organization with no paid staff, no revenue, and one that relies on the spare time of those of us who maintain it. But we're working on it, and we're committed to solving the problem.

    Unfortunately,

    2. The spammers that have ruined the newsgroup alt.education.distance have now turned their sights on degreeinfo. We foresaw this, and began making redundant arrangements. Unfortunately, we did not count on the spammers using MAILBOMBS and DENIAL-OF-SERVICE attacks against our upstream providers. On one day, our primary DNS provider received over 65,000 emails from the a.e.d. spammers... and the "Dan Peters" persona threatened that this was only a drop in the bucket.

    The Peters persona is claiming that Degreeinfo was spamming a.e.d. , encouraging people to use our forum... which, of course, isn't true, and we have messages from the maintainers of the newsgroup FAQ, the closest thing there is to an authority figure for the newsgroup, to back up the claim that we're doing nothing wrong.

    But ISPs don't have the time or inclination to fight these things, or to understand the nuances. Someone who drops into the newsgroup sees dozens of messages from the spammers saying "DEGREEINFO: STOP SPAMMING THIS GROUP" (all posted using anonymizers) and hundreds of messages from our loyal users inviting people to check out these discussions. (nearly all of whom use real names and traceable ISPs.)
    And, of course, the newsgroup FAQ also encourages people to come here. So we're clearly in the right.

    So... long and short of it is, ZoneEdit, our upstream DNS provider, couldn't sustain the attacks and asked us to move. And as soon as we did, the next provider also got threatened and told that we were spamming... so they didn't want to fight it either.

    But we do have more bulletproof solutions in the works. In the meantime, it's possible the site will go down again, but it won't stay down for long.

    I apologize for the inconvenience.

    If anyone has any suggestions/assistance/resources they can provide, we would be delighted for any and all help. Particularly useful would be someone who hosts DNS and is willing to deal with the possibility of threats from the spammers.

    We're doing our best, with not a dime coming in to cover our costs, but we don't plan on giving up simply because a group of spammers don't like the message we're disseminating.

    Thanks for all your continued support, and please bear with us as we work to resolve the problem created by these cyberterror thugs.
     
  2. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    They obviously don't like the truth. They managed to chase real discussion out of aed and now they're trying to silence everyone using DegreeInfo.com. It is sad that they have been able to get away with as as much as they have. It's too bad that running degree mill scams leaves them with so much free time.
     

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