On 19 Jan 1999 16:05:32 -0800, Russ Allbery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Racer X <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>>> Of course there is. Blocking port 25 for all their dialup lines is a
>>> simple router configuration. Re-enabling it on a customer-by-customer
>>> basis on dynamic dialups requires software to interact with the
>>> terminal authentication server that they'd probably have to write
>>> themselves.
>
>> Wrong. It simply requires you to use Radius and network equipment that
>> allows you to send back filters in your Radius authentication.
>
>Good, I'm glad to hear that it's improved. (It certainly used to be the
>case that this was hard.) So how many ISPs are going to be willing to do
>this? The cost that I was talking about is not only programming effort
>(thankfully apparently not an issue) but also administrative overhead.
>(See below.)
FWIW we have one customer with a number of standard dial-up accounts for
their employees. At their request we use this method to filter their access
even though they have dynamic IP addresses. We'd probably do what has been
suggested (disallow port 25 access then re-enable for those few that really
need it), but we don't see much direct spamming from dial-ups here. Maybe
it is because of per-minute charging on local calls in the UK, maybe it is
because most of our customers are business rather than domestic, I do not
know.
The point is, this isn't too difficult and there isn't too much
administrative overhead. However I agree with you that it isn't maybe the
best solution.
>The only *real* solution is to provide sufficient economic or legal
>disincentive (because that's the only thing people actually listen to) to
>stop spamming in the first place. Cleanup charges, laws that allow people
>to collect damages... that's what's going to make it go away. But in a
>world where ISPs routinely give out free trial accounts and certain large
>ISPs refuse as a matter of policy to even check credit card numbers to see
>if they belong to people who were previously kicked off for spamming,
>trying to do anything *real* about spam is almost a lost cause.
I agree. But it's difficult to put this kind of thing in place. It needs a
lot of co-operation between ISPs. I agree it needs to happen, but getting
there might be difficult. ;-)
--
Andy J. Smith ... <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ... <http://www.strugglers.net/andy>
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