Open relays and open proxies

Fri Apr 25 12:50:02 UTC 2003

At 08:17 AM 4/25/2003, you wrote:

>Christopher J. Wolff wrote:
>>The spamcop complaints that really set me off are the "spamvertised
>>website" complaints.  Just the mere fact that you host a site that was
>>advertised by spam enjoins you in the spamcop chain of causation, even
>>if the spam mail did not originate from your network.
>
>With the exception of Joe-Jobs, spamvertised websites should be terminated.

If a spammer is spamming about stocks, and includes a link to look up that 
stock via cnnfn.com, there's now a spamvertisement issue. Where do you draw 
the line? How do you, reading the spam, know with certainty that any domain 
name mentioned in that spam is in fact there with the permission of the 
domain holder?

>  The theory is that the spammer should not be making money from the spam. 
> Take away their money and perhaps they'll learn not to send spam. Of 
> course, perhaps you enjoy the extra money you make because the customer 
> sent spam to someone and the website generated traffic that directly or 
> indirectly made you money.
>
>Also, SpamCop works with people concerning the reports. If I'm not 
>mistaken, they'll turn off specific types of reports if you ask. 
>Personally, I like to be aware of what my customers are doing when it can 
>cause me problems in the long run.

If you have them turn off address munging, the spamcop user will then 
accuse you of helping your customers "list wash" when what you really 
wanted to do is get to the bottom of spam reports. Just a single spamcop 
report last week cost me about 4 hours of work. Turned out the spamcop user 
had given his email address to the company (a resort, in this case) in 
person, in writing. The resort had sent a note ASKING if the person would 
like to be on a mailing list. Didn't subscribe them, just asked if they'd 
like to subscribe.

Oh, and the guy blocked our entire netblock at the same time as putting in 
the spamcop report, making it impossible for our abuse desk to respond once 
we uncovered the facts. For all I know, they still have us blocked.

This kind of nonsense is at least as expensive as dealing with actual spam. 
And possibly does more damage to legitimate flow of traffic.

Dan