Re: And so it begins... -- MIDRANGE-L

Joe,

No offense to you but your setup is the classic spammer setup. It is also why Comcast (it's customers really) is the number one source of spam. Get a DSL, set up an smtp server and pound away. Then drop the service and move on before you are caught. I would expect that it will not be long before most ISPs make you send your mail through there servers. We already set up most customers to block outbound port 25 except from production mail servers. This stops spammers and viri from blasting away. It can be amazing how many hits those firewall rules get too!! Of course we are then armed with data to go find the offending(ed?) PC.

These are all stop gap measures until there is some type of authentication added to smtp. I suspect some sort of third party verification will be in there too so that a verisign or thawte can validate that the sender is who they say they are before the receiver accepts the mail. The pain is going to be the time during which some servers have it and some don't. The issue is that smtp is just way to open and trusting and we're adding duct tape to tie it down.

By the way, today is the anniversary of the first spam email message. And (go figure) it came from a law firm.

  - Larry

Joe Pluto wrote:

Okay, here's a new twist on the blacklist/whitelist concept.

I just sent an email to someone.  It didn't get through because the
recipient's ISP blocked it.  Why?  Because it didn't recognize me as an
ISP.  That is, this service no longer accepts mail from "end user"
accounts, which pretty much includes anybody running their own SMTP
server over a DSL line.  They give you a number of options, including
rerouting your mail through your ISP, or getting your ISP to change the
PTR record for your DSL address.  Otherwise, the user has to turn off
spam filtering.  As far as I can tell, this is purely a blacklist
approach, with no ability to whitelist a domain.  So any small business
running their own SMTP server over a DSL line is subject to this kind of
blacklisting.

Is this a sign of things to come?

Joe

More info: http://www.korax.net/info/mail_reject.phtml

-- Larry Bolhuis IBM eServer Certified Systems Expert: Vice President iSeries Technical Solutions V5R3 Arbor Solutions, Inc. iSeries LPAR Technical Solutions V5R3 1345 Monroe NW Suite 259 iSeries Linux Technical Solutions V5R3 Grand Rapids, MI 49505 iSeries Windows Integration Technical Solutions V5R3 IBM eServer Certified Systems Specialist (616) 451-2500 iSeries System Administrator for OS/400 V5R3 (616) 451-2571 - Fax AS/400 RPG IV Developer (616) 260-4746 - Cell iSeries System Command Operations V5R2

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