[AusNOG] ACMA License renewals and Spam Complaints system - massive issue to be aware of.

[Damien Gardner Jnr]

Thought this one was a large enough issue that I should post to the list.

A coworker called me last night to ask why I'd let one of my Callsigns
expire.  A quick search of my mailbox showed that indeed, I was missing the
3-month-before reminder, the 1-month-before invoice, and the week-after
'hey this just expired' emails.

I called them this morning to find out what on earth happened, and the very
helpful fellow looked through their CRM for me, and said 'oh, you updated
it from rendrag at rendrag.net to <redacted>@pinegap.net in June last year'.
Cue a couple of minutes of absolute confusion from me, until I started
running through how they could even have possibly had THAT particular
email, which hadn't been used for seven years until last year when the
company it was used with had a breach (or sold customer details, they are
heavily denying both) - and then realised that before I redirected that
address to /dev/null on the mailserver, I lodged a spam complaint through
the ACMA site.

After discussing THAT with the fellow a bit, it turns out that the ACMA
maintains a CRM for all clients - which includes all spam complaints via
their website.  AND they cannot hold more than one email address for each
client.  SO - if you go to their spam reporting form, and report a spam
email, and provide your name and mobile number, that will get matched to
your existing client record, and they will UPDATE your email address to
match the one you just reported spam on...

Personally, I'll never be reporting spam via the ACMA again, because that
was almost disastrous. It was VERY close to the 60 days limit after
expiry.  Given how many folks in here hold other forms of licenses and
permits through the ACMA, I thought it was worth highlighting this stupidly
dangerous process. (I've now added Calendar Reminders for each of my
licenses, so that I can chase them up if they don't arrive - since
basically anyone can punch in any ACMA client's name and phone number into
a spam complaint, and trigger a change of their email address in the CRM...)

--DG

-- 

Damien Gardner Jnr
VK2TDG. Dip EE. GradIEAust
rendrag at rendrag.net -  http://www.rendrag.net/
--
We rode on the winds of the rising storm,
 We ran to the sounds of thunder.
We danced among the lightning bolts,
 and tore the world asunder
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20220404/f3f58400/attachment.htm>