Open Letter to D-Link about their NTP vandalism

Tue Apr 11 14:35:35 UTC 2006

On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 23:23:06 -0700 (PDT)
  Matt Ghali <matt at snark.net> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 11 Apr 2006, Simon Lyall wrote:
> 
>> Everyone here runs spam filters. Many times a day you tell a remote MTA
>> you've accepted their email but you delete it instead. Explain the
>> difference?
> 
> Hold on there. What you are describing is evil and bad, and I certainly 
>hope "everyone" does not do that.
> 
> When I do not wish to accept a message, I do not accept it, rejecting with 
>an SMTP permanent delivery failure.
> 
> Don't mean to go off on a tangent, but accepting and then silently 
>discarding mail is a terrible idea.
> 
> matto

Are you suggesting that we configure our e-mail servers to notify
people upon automatic deletion of spam? Frequently, spam cannot be
properly identified until closure of the SMTP conversation and that
final 200 mMESSAGE ACCEPTED...or do you think that TCP/IP connection
should be held open until the message can be scanned for spam and
viruses just so we can give a 550 MESSAGE REJECTED error instead of
silently dropping it?

Because most spam originates from a bogus or stolen sender address,
notification creates an even bigger problem. What's next: asking for
permission to hang up on telemarketers?

matthew black
network services
california state university, long beach