On Fri, 30 May 2003, John C Klensin wrote:
--On Friday, 30 May, 2003 16:01 -0400 Dean Anderson
<dean(_at_)av8(_dot_)com> wrote:
I haven't repeatedly (or at all) defamed anyone.
You have repeatedly made public statements about what I don't
know, what experience I lack, etc.
You have made incorrect claims about the difficulty of tracing an IP
address. This suggests a lack of operational experience in tracing IP
addresses. But I concede I don't know your full resume and I could be
wrong about your operational experience tracing abusers. Writing RFC's,
inventing protocols, and chairing standards bodies, and managing large
groups of people, and high level talks with the FBI does not seem to be
relevent experience. So far, you haven't sent anything (despite a very
impressive resume) that seems to be relevant experience in tracking
abusers.
But whatever direct experience you do have doing such things, you are
_still_ *wrong* about the *difficulty and expense* of doing them. If you
do have experience tracking criminal abusers, where you found it was
expensive, I would say that perhaps you were doing something wrong, and
making it more difficult than it needs to be.
In any case, arguing about what your experience is deflects attention from
the question of whether it is expensive to track down an IP address, and
is irrelevant to the question of whether an open relay allows a user to
send anonymous email.
I have questioned the facts you report, but have not made any public
claims that you lack sufficient background to know what you are talking
about.
You've questioned them, but only to say they are wrong and the go into
irrelevant detail about Asian ISPs and such.
And I also would like to initiate a formal complaint.
Oh, goodie. In the interesting of getting resolution, and to
preserve everyone's sanity in the interim, I'm going to make no
further postings on these threads until Harald, or someone else,
indicate how he (or they) intend to sort this out.
OK by me. I will do the same.
You haven't answered the question. The answer you gave was
irrelevant to the question, and doesn't support your wrong
assertion that open relays allow one to send anonymous email
without the IP address of the sender.
What I told you, at some length if I recall, in a private note,
is that
You didn't say (except for the very last) the things below in any private
message to me. I will be happy to post them on the web, so that people can
see what you wrote off list. What you wrote is rather condencending, while
I have be respectful, if direct.
Some of your claims below are true statements, but are irrelevant to the
question of whether an open relay alters the property of a users'
anonymity.
* Only the IP address recorded in a Received field by the SMTP
server that last accepts the message for delivery to you can
generally be considered reliable and trustworthy.
This is not so. All Recieved headers inserted *after* the spammer has
released the message are trustworthy, since the spammer can only insert
false headers, but cannot modify anything after they send the message.
* Received fields --other than, again, the one that you own
server inserts-- are routinely faked in some varieties of spam.
No. again, modification isn't possible *after* the spammer sends the
message. See above.
* While it is not easy when a multiple-transaction TCP-based
protocol like SMTP is involved, IP addresses can be faked.
Faking TCP connections is difficult, and not relevant to the question of
whether Open relay allows anonymous email. If IP addresses are faked,
they are faked regardless of whether open relays are used. Nothing is
altered by open relays.
* Obtaining the IP address of a client does not permit
identifying a specific user, unless the owner/provider of that
This may be true in some (few) situations, such as the Asian ISP you
mentioned. But, this is *still irrelevant* to the question of open relay
allows anonymous email. As I pointed out, previously. You are just
repeating canards, rather than addressing the issue of relevance.