North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Verizon is easily fooled by spamming zombies

  • From: Patrick W. Gilmore
  • Date: Wed Jun 01 13:41:14 2005 
On Jun 1, 2005, at 12:35 PM, Gadi Evron wrote:


The example given in this thread proves you wrong.  My friend had a
vanity domain, did not have her own mail server.
Okay, and why does she need to use Verizon's servers to send email from
her own vanity domain?
Unless I am missing something and Verizon gets paid for this?
Yes, $50/month.



But that's OK, we should tell people one thing (use your ISP's server
to send mail) and do another (block them from sending mail through
their ISP's server).
I believe you are exaggerating, like I usually like to do. My point is
the the vast.. vast.. clueless majority is a direct threat to Internet
survivability (ooh, big words). The 100s of thousands of clued users who
has a vanity domains can definitely find an easy way to send mail,
without using the provider's servers.
No, 100s of 1000s of not-so-clued users have vanity domains. Have you checked how many domains are registered on a daily basis these days?


The cost of allowing these servers to stay "open" is extremely high, and
we are paying the price every day.
Who said "open"? There are lots of ways to keep spam from your network down.

If you have a mail server and allow it to send mail, it can be abused. All you can do is try to make it harder to abuse. One of the ways we (the collective "we" who run the Internet) have decided to do this is by forcing people to send outbound mail through their ISP's mail server, not through random open relays.

If the ISP wants to use SMTP AUTH or other mechanisms to lower abuse, that's fine. But to say "only allow ISP.net from addresses - but allow them from anywhere on the 'Net" is kinda ... silly.


That's the point, the clueless, vast, vast, majority is happy. They
don't care. They don't know there are 40 Trojan horses and 400 spyware
components installed on their quiet green desktop. All they know is that
their email account works. I know that they are threatening the
Internet. Clear and simple.
The solution presented here is not only not a solution, it is also a problem.

--
TTFN,
patrick