Just came across this article on CNET - it seems that FTC has been sending
out letters to operators of open relays asking them to shut down the relaying:
http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1001868.html
The FTC site devoted to open relays is located at:
http://www.ftc.gov/openrelay
The question is do open relays matter anymore? According to report IMCR-016
by the Internet Mail Consortium (http://www.imc.org/ube-relay.html) the
following conclusions were reached:
"The results show that fewer than 1% of mail servers that are named in mail
addresses allowed relaying in August 2002, a very sharp reduction from over
6% from a year and a half earlier. In the same 18 months, the amount of
spam a typical Internet users receives has gone up significantly. This
shows that the amount of spam is not related to the number of open relays
available."
---------------snip------------
Some interesting quotes from the article, particularly about advantages of
open relays, legality of operating open relays, and the disadvantages of
shutting them down:
"Federal and state law enforcement agencies pledged to take an aggressive
new approach to fighting spam: identifying "open relay" mail servers that
serve as conduits for massive quantities of junk e-mail. At an event in
Dallas on Thursday, representatives of the agencies said they--in tandem
with officials from Australia, Canada and Japan--had sent letters to
operators of over 1,000 e-mail servers around the globe warning that an
open relay "creates problems for consumers worldwide, for law enforcement
and for your organization".
"Until a few years ago, nearly all Internet mail servers were open relays.
That practice offered some benefits, such as making it much easier to send
e-mail when traveling or when plugging in a laptop on someone else's network."
"Most antispam activists believe that shutting down or blacklisting open
relays must be a top priority. Critics like Internet pioneer and Electronic
Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore have argued, however, that the
costs of prohibiting open relays outweighs the benefits and could
precipitate other restrictions from Internet providers. "
"Groman, the FTC staff attorney, said the agencies were undertaking an
educational campaign--but nothing more--directed at people running open
relays. "It's not illegal to run an open relay," he said. "
--------snip------------------
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Yakov Shafranovich / <research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com>
SolidMatrix Research, a division of SolidMatrix Technologies, Inc.
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"One who watches the wind will never sow, and one who keeps his eyes on
the clouds will never reap" (Ecclesiastes 11:4)
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