On 29 Apr 2001, at 21:07, Russ Allbery wrote:
> murr rhame <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > 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.
>
> I'm not sure you understand the issue. The site getting all of the
> bounces may not be doing anything wrong at all. It's very common now for
> spam software to use some valid domain name in the envelope sender of its
> messages to avoid spam checks for valid domains.
Just to make clear here, in the course of lauding AOL for not bombing
third-parties, keep in mind that this is just a consequence of
*their*own* non-compliant email handling choice, and is _not_ inherent in
"good email handling". Granted, they handle a flood of email that is
unimaginable by almost anyone, still: they [in spirit, if not in letter]
violate the protocol [by SMTP-accepting a message they end up having no
intention of keeping] and then run into the problem that there's then no
good way to after-the-fact reject/bounce the message. If, as do most
ISPs, they dumped the message at the SMTP level there wouldn't be hardly
any problem.
So this isn't their heroic programmers protecting 'third parties' -- it
is a bit of a botch/patch job to compensate for something ELSE they're
doing that's not really cricket [but as 800lb gorillas they will continue
to do anyway]. Two wrongs, in this case, make it STILL be a wrong...
[and a PITA for us'uns who have to send email to them].
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Pearisburg, VA
--> Too many people, too few sheep <--
