trapdoor.merit.edu and other impatient Postfix mailers everywhere (fwd)

John A. Tamplin jat at liveonthenet.com
Fri Aug 3 00:08:08 UTC 2001


On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Larry Sheldon wrote:

> > I understand they have a problem notifying everyone since they don't 
> > know contact information for the people using the service, but I would
> > have expected to see an announcement here, for example.
> 
> Lemesee if I got this right...Paul Vixie doesn't know anybody that can
> pull my IP addresses out of their logs, look them up on ARIN, send me email.

Yes, you can lookup contact information for IP blocks.  However, we all
know how up-to-date that is, and the person listed there may or may not
be involved with the mail server.

If there had been a notice here, would you have been as unhappy?  Remember
this was a free service.  If I decided I could no longer make chess endgame
databases available for free, I would not feel inclined to look up everyone
who had been using them and notify them.

> > How do you think those references got there?  Could it be that enough 
> > people requested it and asked how to do it with older versions of 
> > sendmail that it was made an optional part of the standard configuration?
> 
> Probably not.
> 
> Can you say "bait and switch", boys and girls.
> 
> Right out of Mad Man Muntz's handbook.

As I recall, the first modifications to use RBL in sendmail were done
elsewhere, eventually a link was included on the sendmail site, and then
it was part of the configuration.

I can see you are bitter about the impact on your mailservers.  I am not
happy about the way it was done as well, but assuming it was malacious
seems excessive.

John A. Tamplin					jat at jaet.org
770/436-5387 HOME				4116 Manson Ave
770/431-9459 FAX		 		Smyrna, GA  30082-3723




More information about the NANOG mailing list