Open relays and open proxies

Fri Apr 25 14:20:41 UTC 2003

On Fri, 25 Apr 2003, Jack Bates wrote:

:
:Christopher J. Wolff wrote:
:> 
:> Therefore, am I just as 'guilty' if I host A.B.C. Homes website, if they
:> choose to advertise new homes in this clearly illegal manner?  The
:> A-Frame signs are a nuisance and use up professional time to remove,
:> just like spam.
:> 
:> There has to be a line drawn somewhere, wouldn't you think?
:> 
:
:A) many spam emails use html links to pull graphics from the 
:spamvertised site. By continuing to let the site run, even more 
:bandwidth is being utilized (especially with todays broken MUAs).
:
:B) most spammers make their money using their websites and not the spam 
:itself. So long as the website exists, there will be a way for the 
:spammer to propogate spam. Remember, it doesn't matter if the emailing 
:account gets cancelled. Once the damage is done, the spammer can sit 
:back and collect revenue via the website that was just adverted. 
:However, if you cancel the website, the company ceases to generate 
:revenue from the spam and is effectly shut down until they can bring the 
:website back up *and* generate another spam run.
:
:C) there are rarely good real world analogies for problems that exist on 
:the 'net. Not only does the 'net afford us speed and convenience in our 
:ability to communicate, it also allows for abuse to be at increased 
:speeds, volume and convenience. If different A-frame signs showed up 
:each and every day in large quantities throughout the city, the city 
:would not just confiscate the signs. They would file charges, and if the 
:owner of the real estate is aware of such activity, the owner would be 
:held liable, or city ordinances would be changed to allow the owner to 
:be held liable.

As much as I'd normally hate to append an example, the following is a real
gem.

>From abuse-noverbose at ssc.net Fri Apr 25 10:16:21 2003
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 00:19:14 +0200
From: SSC Networks / Abusedesk <abuse-noverbose at ssc.net>
To: Brian Wallingford <brian at meganet.net>
Cc: abuse-noverbose at ssc.net
Subject: Re: Wow!, I added 3+ |nches   mjlxd31k69 (fwd)

Dear Sir

We are sorry to hear that your company recieves UCE. We are unable to help
very much in your case, as we are only hosting the website mentioned in
the
UCE.

Do whatever you feel you need to do, but it will not stop the spam which
are
not caused, originated or relayed thru us.
On the other hand, it might cause many complaints from your end-users. We
are not exactly happy for these (vanity)filterings because of the third
party complaints we recieve when they cannot reach the website.  Please
make
sure your users knows that they need to contact Meganet to solve the issue
and not us if you are really going to do this.

Sincerly,

SSC Internet Security
Operator #14

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Wallingford" <brian at meganet.net>
To: <abuse at rr.com>
Cc: <abuse at ssc.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 11:33 PM
Subject: Wow!, I added 3+ |nches mjlxd31k69 (fwd)

>
> This is my 5th complaint in less than 24 hours about a site on ssc's
> netblock.  Additional messages will result in the filtering of
> 193.231.248.0/24 at our borders.

-- 
___________________________________
        Brian Wallingford
  Director, Network Operations
MegaNet Communications, TCIX, Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~