...and AOL wonders why they are hated by so many!!!

We might as well call you MS-AOL!  Because AOL is doing what so many
accuse MS of doing...forcing everyone to "it" their way.  But I hear
many, many more people complain about AOL than MS.  

Maybe AOL should use their "deep pockets" to:
1. Lobby for stricter laws.  Which they do and I applaud them for it!
2. Work to change the RFCs to require this naming standard.  Then the
ISPs would be forced to change how they do it.  As it stands, many of
the ISPs stand behind the fact the RFCs don't require a particular
naming convention, just that it exist.

This is another example of AOL-Time Warner giving less while charging
more.

Todd Holt
Xidix Technologies, Inc
Las Vegas, NV  USA
www.xidix.com


-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Joshua
Levitsky
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 11:18 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] OT: AOL's got nerve



> From: "R. Scott Perry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Organization: Computerized Horizons
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 13:57:30 -0400
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] OT: AOL's got nerve
> 
> But, in many cases, individuals do not have control over whether or
not
> their mailserver will block legitimate E-mail, and many
> companies/organizations don't have the ability to have a vanity
reverse DNS
> entry.
> 
> So in this case, it's more like a law saying that you can't go into
any
> house in your town, unless you are wearing a $500 pair of shoes.
> 

I don't know. It is more like you own a brand of shoes that won't let
you
untie them to take them off. Honestly if you could see how much horrific
spam comes through the AOL gateways you would see that there are so few
options to stop it all.

Look at it this way... Many spammers use dialup, DSL, and cable. If a
spammer asks their ISP to change their rDNS then the ISP will wonder
what
that customer is up to. If they are a legit business then the ISP should
let
them change it. On the other hand you have zombies and open gateways all
over the internet hanging off dialup, DSL, and cable where the machine
just
sits and spams constantly. The filtering AOL is doing on rDNS stops
-all- of
that spam because those zombies and open relays that are just machines
setup
without much thought won't have rDNS set to something other than the
default. 

Now also think about viruses that are mass mailers. AOL stops those dead
by
this filtering. They can't get in because they have the default rDNS
that
has cable, dsl, or dialup in it. That works for us even when a virus is
brand new and in the wild. You can't beat that kind of blocking.

So now the only spam coming in to AOL is from machines where rDNS has
been
setup and one can assume it is a business of some sort. These people we
can
take legal action against and stop their spam. These are about the only
people we actually can hunt down and slap a lawsuit on.

The spam / virus front is hard when you scale it to millions of
customers.
This solution is a smart one IMHO even if it does hurt some non-spammers
at
first. If your provider allows you to run a server and they don't let
you
change rDNS when you explain that AOL is blocking all servers with
certain
keywords in rDNS then your ISP is doing a serious dis-service to you and
you
should complain all the way up the support tree until you hit management
at
the ISP and calmly argue your point.

-Josh


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