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

Wed Oct 22 19:33:34 UTC 2003

At 2:43 PM -0400 10/22/03, Steve Bellovin wrote:
>Customers who received e-mail bulletins from AT&T Monday and Tuesday
>requesting specific information are advised to disregard those
>messages.  They were inadvertently sent out in error and we apologize
>for any confusion or inconvenience they may have caused.

That reminds me of the time the new head of security at Apollo 
announced that they were going to be saving money by turning off the 
power and locking the buildings on weekends. That afternoon on the 
way out there were fliers that sounded almost exactly like that 
paragraph.  It was just a misunderstanding.

However, what AT&T was trying to do, however clumsily, isn't that 
different from what companies like AOL and MSN do, where certain IP 
addresses get red carpet treatment through the mail servers, while 
others are more closely examined.  It doesn't surprise me that 
non-ISP companies are starting to look at the same kind of things.
-- 
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/         Next Generation Spam Defense
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/  Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.