In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"David W. Tamkin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>When Norbert Bollow wrote,
>
>B> If the IMRSS people set up a robot to send out such notifications, then
>B> that would indeed be UBE. But when a human at IMRSS tries to contact
>B> whoever is in charge of any given open mail relay, that is not _bulk_
>B> email.
>
>Ronald Guilmette responded,
>
>G> I can assure you that the question was raised only in the context of some
>G> *automated process* sending out the notifications.
>
>G> The IMRSS Project has already cataloged over 100,000 open relays. We most
>G> definitely DO NOT have anybody who is interested in volunteering to send ou
>t
>G> 100,000 personally composed messages.
>
>We're overlooking something. Automated notifications from IMRSS saying "You
>are running an open relay" are not intended to encourage actions that will
>line IMRSS's pockets in the end. So that in itself distinguishes it from
>spam, which is commercially motivated bulk email.
That may be YOUR definition, but it isn't mine. Nor is it the defintion
used by a lot of other people either.
Spam E-mail for most folks is just bulk unsolicited E-mail. It doesn't
matter if it is ``commercial'' in the sense of trying to directly get your
money or not.
I have gotten spammed by people trying to elected.
I have gotten spammed by people trying to make me a Christian.
I have gotten spammed by people trying to make me a Hindu.
Recently, I have gotten spammed by people trying to tell me what swell
people the Serbs really are.
All this stuff was spam, even though none of it was clearly ``commercial''
in nature.
Likewise, if someone sent you a message saying ``Who is burried in Grant's
Tomb?'' IF I and a million other people got that too, I can assure you
that most people would consider it spam if they had no prior connection
to or relationship with the sender.
Fortunately, there are other ways to let people know they their local
mail server is an open relay that is listed on the IMRSS list of open
relays.
The easiest way is just to block all mail from such servers. Many people
are already doing just that.
Another way is to do what I am now doing here... accept the mail but issue
a 5xx error code *as if* you were rejecting the mail after the end of the
DATA phase of the SMTP transaction. This makes it look to the sender like
the mail bounced, but I still get to read what they sent me.
Another way is to hack Sendmail so that each time it gets a message from
an IMRSS-listed open relay server, it accepts the message but sends what
amounts to an auto-responder response to the original message sender saying
something like ``Hay! Your local mail server is being run in a substantially
stupid and dangerous way! It is listed on the IMRSS list of open relays and
as a result, mail from you may be blocked at many sites in the future. You
should tell you local (lame) mail admin about this right away!''
I will be providing Sendmail patches to implement this one the IMRSS web
site in the near future.
In the meantime, I encourage you all to check the IMRSS web site, specifically:
http://www.imrss.org/query.html
to find out if your favorite local mail server is listed as an open relay
by IMRSS.
If it is, you may want to close it.
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
-- FREE Web Harvester Protection - http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/ - Try it!
-- FREE DynamicIP Spam Filtering - http://www.imrss.org/dssl/ - TELL YOUR ISP!
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
-- FREE Web Harvester Protection - http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/ - Try it!
-- FREE DynamicIP Spam Filtering - http://www.imrss.org/dssl/ - TELL YOUR ISP!
