Running a site with free hosting / email
I'm working on a site that will offer free hosting / e-mail services primary to businesses, with some accounts to a limited consumer market (US / Canada only). The site that this is a part of is very main stream and is related to the pet care industry.
I would of course follow best practices for our e-mail setup, including imposing rate limiting and low quotas on all e-mail accounts. Written TOS, zero tolerance for SPAM, etc.
I've owned and operated an ISP in the past, so I full understand how to promptly handle abuse complaints. However, when I last owned as ISP, we had our own connections coming into our building over fiber. We never once even heard from out ISP's and just dealt with abuse complaints directly.
Having direct hands on experience as an ISP, I know that it is not possible to avoid all SPAM and network abuse and that all you can do is have a good technical setup (rate limits,etc) and promptly enforce your TOS.
Even with my target market being one that is much less likely to SPAM or cause network abuse than many kinds of clients, I'd be naive to this I am immune to the problem.
I strongly suspect, that even with the best setup and policies in place on my end that due to the nature of a VPS setup that complaints may come to linode instead of to me.
How does Linode View / Handle complaints in a situation like this, are they simply forwarded to the customer to deal with, as long as linode is confident that the customer is properly managing abuse complaints?
Thanks
Jamie
6 Replies
@jamiedolan:
How does Linode View / Handle complaints in a situation like this, are they simply forwarded to the customer to deal with, as long as linode is confident that the customer is properly managing abuse complaints?
I too would appreciate an answer to this as I'm in the process of running a web hosting site.
I have forwarded complaints to linode in the past, and my impression is that unless the problem is highly disruptive they will first try to contact you and give you a chance to deal with the issue. Linode is generally a bunch of pretty intelligent people who will deal with the situation as it presents itself. If your server starts DOSing all its neighbors linode will shut you down first and ask questions later. If you appear to be running a legitimate service that generates the occasional complaint, but you respond quickly and constructively when linode brings it to your attention, then I think you will be fine.
I think it will really come down to the severity and frequency of the complaints your server produces.
@melancthon:
If people complain that spam is coming from your domain, I think it'd be you that gets the complaints. If it's an IP, then I think the Linode chaps would deal with it appropriately …
If the complaint is related to an IP, then it will go to you (if the complainer checks your DNS SOA) or to Linode's upstream provider (if the complainer uses the ASN for the offending IP). Linode won't get involved unless the problem is severe enough to cause their connectivity provider to complain.
Jamie