"RelayFinder" Anyone else seen this? (erols, fnord, oneill may be interested)

Wed Jun 24 17:16:34 UTC 1998

On 24 Jun 1998 11:29:22 -0400, Ryan K. Brooks <ryan at inc.net> wrote:
|Had a new box on the net for all of two hours, and this pops up on in my
|maillog:

|It looks to me like someone on the host at erols tried to relay through
|me, and then mail the potential results to themselves at fnord.net
|(relayed via oneill.net).
|
|Is someone attempting to perform a community service here and scan the
|entire Internet for relays, or are they collecting relays for evil
|purposes?  I can see it now;  buy "10 million relay sites on a cdrom for
|$9.99".

You know the phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"?  Well,
guilty as charged.  The original intent was to scan the net for relays to
try to get some data on how many open relays were still out there.  I got
almost all of 204.0.0.0/8 scanned, but I've stopped scanning due to the
volume of complaints and the few legal threats I've gotten.  I have _no_
intention of doing any more scanning.  Overall, people's responses have been
positive once I explained what the intent was, but the legal threats have
given me sufficent motive to cease any further scanning.[1]

FWIW, I'd like to publicly apologize to everyone that's seen this for the
trouble, I've caused.  If anyone has any questions about this, please feel
free to mail me.

1. I won't be doing any more scanning.  Really.