RE: fix.your.open.relay.or.die.net

die.net is not the only proactive anti-spam vigilante out there...

AOL also actively tries to relay mail through smtp servers that send email
to AOL.com.  If they find that your SMTP server will relay mail, then they
flag your domain as a 'spammer domain'...  Then any mail sent to AOL from
that domain is simply accepted and trashed.  No errors, no way of knowing
that there was no attempt to deliver to the final recipient.

I went through over 2 weeks of AOL h@ll because my CEO has an email account
on AOL, and all email sent from our internal Exchange server never reached
him.  BTW - AOL Tech support never did figure it out...  I had to go through
the registrars for aol.com before I found someone who new about the practice
and how to fix it...

I personally like their approach better than AOL's.  I would rather have my
victimization (by the spammers) brought to light than let it continue while
email mysteriously disappears....

My 2cents,
David

PS - If you are a spammer, I have turned off relaying now...  :)

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Rehm [mailto:javadisciple@earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 10:56 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: fix.your.open.relay.or.die.net


On Tuesday 20 November 2001 10:09 am, Joe Pluta wrote:
> David, I don't think the folks at die.net are directly doing anything to

Well, it appears they are doing something. As the addresses for die.net are
false (planted) and would only be used by spammers, it appears that what
die.net does is slow down the SMTP transaction process causing the sending
machine to hang there either with resends or whatever. I haven't looked
over the source code, but did seem to be the gist of the message on their
site.

Their instructions for a cure outline how to quit trying to send emails to
their false email addresses, and then also discuss closing an open relay if
that exists.

Their point is that they do not initiate such contact with the mired
machine. No machine _should_ be using those email addresses. So, if your
machine is being victimized it really isn't their fault.

All in all I agree with you. I like their approach, but I don't think it
would make me happy if I had the machine being relayed.

> Joe

--
Chris Rehm
javadisciple@earthlink.net

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart...
...Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other
commandment greater than these. Mark 12:30-31
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