Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 02:59:53 -0500 (CDT) From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Craig Critchley" <cac@fuzzer.com> Cc: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>, <cwaiken@telerama.com> Subject: Re: AOL's mail policy (Was: Sendmail / mutt errors) Message-ID: <14773.63865.875649.687910@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <067c01c017d4$1b400560$0201010a@craigc> References: <14773.59796.326575.505048@guru.mired.org> <067c01c017d4$1b400560$0201010a@craigc>
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Craig Critchley writes: > From: "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> > Rejecting incoming mail from dialups (and/or DHCP-assigned addresses) has > been debated at grotesque length on news.admin.net-abuse.email. While there > are (as in your case) legitimate reasons to do it, the unpleasant fact is > that the vast majority of mail sent directly from a dialup to the > recipient's server (as opposed to relaying through the dialup provider) is > spam. After all, almost all end-user mail software uses a fixed SMTP relay > to do the actual work. Blocking dialups is therefore easy, effective, and > relatively free of downsides (to the ISP). Easy? Yes. Then again, every hard problem has an easy solution that doesn't work. Effective? Depends on the point. If it's supposed to make people do extra work and break functional mail systems, it'll certainly do that. If it's supposed to cut back on spam, it'll probably have the same effect as MAPS and ORBS currently does, which is to low to measure. Downsides for the ISP? Nope, none at all. In fact, it forces users like me to pay for more expensive services, which is an upside for them. > More and more domains are blocking dialups for incoming mail for this > reason. Until spam goes away this'll only get worse. In other words, the internet is being run for idiots, and apparently by idiots, and will continue to be run that way until it is utterly useless. There are well-known technics for fingerprinting spam. Don't any of these people have the brains to actually *use* those, and only apply such technics to things that are spam, rather than throwing out the baby, bathwater and basin? > The least unpleasant solution, if you have to do a lot of ISP-roaming, is > probably to see if one of your numerous ISP's has a mail server that will do > SMTP AUTH-based relay, and relay your mail through that one. Actually, one of my ISPs runs an open relay. They're bright enough to both realize that these are useful things, and keep it hidden from the control freaks and spammers. However, I don't like sending mail through it if I don't have to, to avoid possible SMTP-header sniffers run by spammers. And, just to keep this vaguely on topic, what's the point of running any of the spiffy network software that FreeBSD makes available if you have to connect to a least-common-denominator internet? Seems sort of like getting a US$20,000 home theatre system to watch colorized Gilligans Island reruns... "The Internet. It used to be a nice neighborhood." <mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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