North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Is the .to (Tonga) domain completely rogue an
With all due respect, I think your management of the .to domain is a hazard to the internet and should be ceased immediately. By your gross negligence you are providing safe haven to criminals. As of this minute, about 2:30PM EDT 10/1/98, the domain-hijacker spammers have a web address in the .to domain and are spamming/domain-forging to advertise this, as they have been doing for weeks. -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | [email protected] | http://www.world.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo* On October 1, 1998 at 07:04 [email protected] (Eric Gullichsen) wrote: > > > Mr. Shein: > > I am the hostmaster and Administrative, Technical and Zone Contact at Tonic, the top level domain name registration authority for the .TO country code. (http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois?to5-dom). > > Since June 1997, our automated domain name registry at http://www.tonic.to has been facilitating the registration of .TO names as a service to the global Internet community. (Neither Tonic nor IANA policy requires the registered owner of a .TO name to be physically situated in the Kingdom of Tonga.) > > >We've been having increasing problems with one or more porn sites in the > >.to domain promoting itself by massive spamming of > >AOL customers using one of our domains in their From: header thus causing > >both complaints to us and thousands of bounces > >from AOL due to bad AOL addresses in their spam lists. > > We are sorry to hear that you have been having problem with SPAM involving a .TO domain, and wish to draw your attention to the fact that .TO is the *only* top level domain we know of with an explicit antispam policy. We at Tonic feel strongly about spam, and believe it to be theft of service, and a very bad thing for the net in general. > > It is our policy to terminate the registration of a domain name involved in spam, after warning the domain name holder to cease unsolicited bulk mailings that involve a .TO name. > > >From our FAQ (at http://www.tonic.to/faq.htm): > > Q: I'm a spammer. Is a .TO domain something I should use? > > Tonic feels very strongly that the sending of unsolicited bulk email ("spamming") constitutes theft of service, and we do not condone the > use of .TO domain names for this purpose. > > If we receive complaints that a .TO domain name has been used for this purpose, we will advise the domain owner of the complaint and > request that they desist from this activity. Tonic reserves the right > to remove any .TO name registration if a name is used as a source of spam, > or an address to which to reply to such bulk mail solicitations > > We have had to delete a number of .TO domains for egregious SPAM and will continue to do so in the cases where a stern warning fails to solve the problem. Please send a copy of any SPAM involving a .TO domain name to: [email protected] and we will warn the spammer and/or terminate the domain name registration. > > >Looking at the .to domain I can't help but notice it's heavily laden with > >what appear to be porn sites (sexonline.to, come.to, > >xxxhardcore.to, etc.) > > The .COM domain is no less "heavily laden" with porn sites. You will note that sexonline.com and xxxhardcore.com are names registered with the InterNIC. The come.to site is a free web redirection site supporting more than 100,000 customers. Furthermore, Tonic is a domain name registry, not a content censor. > >In support of this assertion I want to show you an SMTP conversation with > >what claims to be the Consulate of the > >Government of Tonga in San Francisco (This San Francisco office is listed > >as an official Tongan contact point for visas etc by > >the US State Dept): > > > >world% telnet sfconsulate.gov.to 25 > > > >Trying 209.24.51.169... > >Connected to sfconsulate.gov.to. > >Escape character is '^]'. > >220 colo.to SMTP ready, Who are you gonna pretend to be today? VRFY > postmaster > >500 Bloody Amateur! Proper forging of mail requires recognizable SMTP > >commands! > > The primary nameserver for .TO is physically located at the Consulate of Tonga in San Francisco. On all our machines, we run the Obtuse smtpd/smtpfwdd SMTP store and forward proxy (http://www.obtuse.com/smtpd.html) to secure our port 25 and thereby prevent third party mail relaying, so our server cannot itself be used > as a spam relay. > > Your reasoning as to why its responses to incorrect SMTP commands constitutes > evidence that the .TO domain is "negligent", "mismanaged" and "an attractive resource for criminal activities" is ironically incorrect. In fact, having an *unsecured* port 25 open to mail relaying would be negligent. > > [Our thanks to the many participants in this thread who have presented views balancing those of Barry Shein.] > > Best regards, > > - Eric Gullichsen > Tonic Corporation > Kingdom of Tonga Network Information Center > http://www.tonic.to > Email: [email protected] > > > > > ----- > See the original message at http://www.egroups.com/list/nanog/?start=1308 > -- > Free e-mail group hosting at http://www.eGroups.com/
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