At 9:35 PM -0400 4/29/01, murr rhame is rumored to have typed:
> On Sun, 29 Apr 2001, Adam Bailey wrote:
>
> > ... A single forged spam run of several million pieces could
> > knock an innocent party off of the Internet when AOL floods
> > them in bounces. Thus, AOL just drops it.
>
> If someone is running an open relay that's being hijacked by
> spammers, they aren't exactly what I would call innocent.
> Perhaps they're not malicious but at the very least they are
> negligent. I doubt AOL is dropping bounces out of kindness.
But that's not what would happen. Most spam messages have a phony
Return-Path, such as:
Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Received: from bdchol.hol.net.pk ([203.135.41.210])
by ns.oldradio.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA05298;
Thu, 26 Apr 2001 20:59:54 -0400
...so in this case, even though the spam message came through
203.135.41.210, the bounce would end up slamming into hotmail.com, which
would have to deal with the bounce. Regardless what you or I might think
about hotmail, in this case they _are_ innocent, and should not be blasted by
AOL sending them bounces. (Remember that AOL is accepting the mail and
closing the SMTP connection with the relay _before_ checking the mail, and
only bouncing the message later.)
As Adam explained earlier today:
> John's right. Because of how AOL's mail system works, messages don't fail
> during the SMTP transaction. A 550 error is sent back to the envelope
> sender in email form.
So much as I'd rather get a bounce if they start rejecting my list email,
at the same time I certainly wouldn't want them to bounce in my direction a
1-Million AOL address spam run that used my domain in the envelope as a
joe-job. I have but one little machine on the Net, and I can guarantee that
would knock the puppy down right fast.
Charlie
