Heads-up: AT&T apparently going to whitelist-only inbound mail

Tue Oct 21 21:39:01 UTC 2003

On Tuesday, 2003-10-21 at 17:24 AST, Jeff Wasilko <jeffw at smoe.org> wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message -----
> What AT&T is asking is for you to help AT&T to restrict incoming mail
> to just our known and trusted sources (e.g., business partners, clients
> and customers).  Therefore, we need to know which IP address(es) are
> used by your outbound e-mail service so we can selectively permit them.
> Please send this information to the following e-mail address
> (rm-antiattspam at ems.att.com).
> 
> ----- Original Message (Sent Monday, 10/20/03) -----
> AT&T has an urgent situation with our anti-spam list. In order to
> continue to allow email to AT&T you need to provide the IP addresses of
> all your outbound email gateways. If you do not respond immediately,
> your access may not continue. The required information should be sent
> to rm-antiattspam at ems.att.com.
> ----- End forwarded message -----

It sure looks to me that they are referring to outbound (from the 
customer, through AT&T, to the Internet) mail only.

Presumably this means they are going to either block all 25/tcp from their 
customers except from those addresses on their list.  Alternatively they 
might be routing all outbound customer mail from non-whitelisted machines 
through a transparent proxy; possibly the proxy would rate limit the 
amount of mail being allowed.

Tony Rall