RE: Solved! Re: [cobalt-users] SMTP relays no matter what!

[flash22@xxxxxxx]

On Wed, 9 May 2001, Dan Kriwitsky wrote:

> > You are absolutely right, if it's their network, they can make/enforce
> > whatever rules they want. I'm simply saying its intrusive and annoying
> > as the new Carrie B discovered; and it offers no real advantage to anyone
> > as far as I can see.
> >
> 
> I think I outlined the advantages to the ISP. The ISP doesn't have to worry
> about chasing spammers who sign up for a throwaway account just to do a huge
> spam run via an open relay. I can show you tons of gridnet.com spam sent
> this way. IIRC, UUnet is beginning to require this of all their down
> streams. If I was running a dialup, I'd do exactly the same thing.

Heh...so i'm not the only one seeing grid spam ;0

Part of the issue here that people seem to overlook also, is
identification, if mail.foo.com sends me spam i have a pretty good idea
who sent it, and how to find them to yell at them, if adsl-1-2-3-4.foo.net
sends me spam i have no clue who they are, and often the ISP isn't really
sure either. I tend to agree that dialup blocks are ptobably too anonymous
to be sending mail...there's just no way to trace it.

It doesn't help that ISP's are clueless about naming the address space
either, i like what psi did, their dialups are something.pub-ip.psi.net ,
if i want to refuse access for just dialup and allow their mail server 
access it's trivial. But there is no easy way to do this when they have no
reverse, or use stupuid names like adsl-1-2-3-4.foo.net , if i block
foo.net i end up blocking their mail server as well...grr

The DUL is just a simplification of this, it saves the trouble if figuring
out what the dialup addresses would be named/addressed like for folks who
don't wish to accept email from them, there is no requirement anyone
actually  use them for blocking, it's up to the recieving mail host to
decide policy then. As to intercepting port 25 traffic, i don't think
ISP's have much choice anymore, with no other way to identify outbound
mail, they are having serious problems figuring out who is spewing spam,
and they get all the abuse complaints. the only other option is to packet
log everything, would you prefer knowing your ISP reads all your outbound
traffic?

ok..enough ranting ;0

gsh