On Thu, 11 Jan 2007, Dick St.Peters wrote:
Julian Mehnle writes:
Apart from that, I'd of course agree that any distinction between
originating and forwarding spam is effectively meaningless. (Otherwise
every spammer could just claim to be "forwarding" their spam, and there
would be no way to disprove them.)
Two real-life (i.e., not hypothetical or made-up) cases where the
distinction is not meaningless:
1. When I am acting as a forwarder, some of my forwarding users ask me
not to filter out spam before forwarding.
2. When I am acting as the destination for mail forwarded from other
services, some of my users ask me not to filter out spam that has
been forwarded.
+1 Informative
It is nasty when my users request forwarding to an AOL account.
I have had to remove countless forwards to luser(_at_)aol(_dot_)com because
they
a) opt out of my (highly effective) spam filter
b) report all the spam they get to AOL, causing AOL to block the IP
of their MTA.
Now no one at their company can send mail to AOL. (Not that I blame AOL.)
Fortunately, AOLs reputation system decays in a week or so.
When I have asked them to explain this behaviour, they say, "The spam
filter in AOL is easier to use." Sigh.
My conclusion - forwarders (SRS or not) have to
a) immediately terminate service for customers who abuse their service like that
b) keep spare IPs so that mail can keep flowing for the remaining customers.
(I just relay AOL mail through another MTA I control for a few weeks
after blocking AOL forwards.)
--
Stuart D. Gathman <stuart(_at_)bmsi(_dot_)com>
Business Management Systems Inc. Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.
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