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Re: Now the idiots at ORBS are probing random dial-ups

  • From: John Payne
  • Date: Tue Aug 22 15:07:00 2000

On Tue, Aug 22, 2000 at 02:37:01PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote:
> 
> On August 21, 2000 at 23:52 [email protected] (John Payne) wrote:
>  > Don't forget - the main purpose of the RBL is not to block spam... its to
>  > educate spam(mers| friendly networks).  If the RBL is blocking lots of mail,
>  > then its failed its primary purpose.
> 
> The problem is, other than hassling the honest this approach just
> doesn't work.

Sure it does.  Who's being hassled in your universe?

> I currently measure around 1,000 open relays PER DAY being used
> against us by spammers.

And if you report them to RSS and use the RSS zone  (note that RSS != ORBS)
then thats 1,000 open relays fewer you and the rest of us have to worry about.

> The problem is several orders of magnitude larger than anything like
> MAPS' approach can hope to make a dent in. It's like trying to stop
> the west nile virus with a flyswatter. Showing the occasional dead
> mosquito doesn't quite prove the method is working.

I disagree.  The combination of DUL and RSS to stop the direct-to-MX and
relay abusers, and RBL to stop/educate the dedicated spamhouse can and
does work, and will only work better with more people following the guidelines
and submitting open relays to RSS, dialup blocks to DUL and nominating to the RBL.

-- 
John Payne      http://www.sackheads.org/jpayne/    [email protected]
http://www.sackheads.org/uce/                    Fax: +44 870 0547954
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