7/25/97

7/25/97
Mail Server Taken Down by (ex) TurboNet Customer

The following message was sent to all TurboNet customers on 7/25/97:

At 11:51 a.m. we received notice from AOL that one of our customers was trying to spam AOL using a program called "E-mail Blaster 2.5". Unlike a legitimate list server, which sends one message to many people, this program sends a different copy of the message to each person.

AOL blocked all mail coming from this individual, and as a result, all of the outgoing mail, tens of thousands of messages, piled up on our server until the mail server finally died from lack of resources.

Tony had to take the mail server off-line, wipe its hard drive clean, reinstall Windows NT 4.0 Server, reinstall the DNS server, reinstall the mail server, along with 1400 e-mail addresses and passwords. Finally, he had to restore all of your unread mail. This whole process took several hours to complete. He had everything up and running again by 7:30 p.m.

Although the mail server is now running, it looks like a dissected cadaver, spread all over Tony's workbench. (You can actually see the processor fan whirling at the heart of the machine.) Saturday morning, he's going to have to reassemble it and stuff it back in the Internet closet where it belongs, so there will be an additional interruption in mail service - about fifteen minutes - on Saturday.

If you have any notion of making money in the junk e-mail business, please don't. It's expensive for us and inconvenient for all of your co-turboneters.

We're very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.

-- Tony and Monica

The Internet Service Sign-up Sheet which everyone signs (and almost nobody reads) says, in part:

Loss of Service: If your actions result in the loss or denial of Internet service to Cactus International, Inc. and/or its customers including the loss of access to the Internet, newsgroups and news services, IRC servers, and so forth, then you will reimburse Cactus International, Inc. for all costs, expenses and lost income arising from your actions including reasonable attorneys' fees. ...
Term: ... Cactus International, Inc. may cancel your service at any time and without notice. ...

When I came in to work this morning (7/26/97) several messages in response to the e-mailing were waiting for me. Here are some of them:

I sincerely hope you kicked the (expletive deleted) off the server. We get enough of that junk already.

and

As an interested customer, I'd like to request that you make your right to revoke accounts at your discretion part of your terms and conditions, and then revoke this jerk's account.

Here's one we particularly treasure:

You two are amazing! Thanks for the quick fix, the thoughtful explanation, and just generally great service. If this had been MSN, there would have been no explanation, it would have been down for days, and it would have been days longer for all the queued mail to be parcelled back in.

The most creative of the messages I received mentioned the rack, thumbscrews and red hot iron tongs. When we looked at the message log this morning, it was full of returned spam (over 45,000 messages), so we did exercise our option and terminate his account. We're considering whether to send him a bill for the damages or not. We've never done it before, but ...

-- Monica

7/25/97 Mail Server Taken Down by (ex) TurboNet Customer

7/25/97
Mail Server Taken Down by (ex) TurboNet Customer