Internet Vigilante Justice, SPAM, and Copyrights

pdw writes "An interesting article about how vigilante justice on the Internet by anti-spam advocates can be just as threatening to the Internet as those proposed for copyright advocates."

Comments

I don't get it...

[Rhubarb Crumble]

This guy's gripe is about being misidentified as an open relay. But either I'm missing something or he's full of crap:

How had it gained access to my mail server? Simple. It had forged the headers on its email to convince my mail server that the email it sent was from a permitted user.

One word: Authentification.

You see, my mail servers were set up to pass mail only from a domain name of which I am the only user. It blocks everything else. That's not an open relay. Unless you're a user in my domain, you can't use it.

Uh, it may not be a totally open relay in the literal sense of the word, but surely that still means it can be used to send spam, as long as the spammer figures out who to identify himself as - and if the Danes could do it, then it can't be that hard?

Any spam-block that relies entirely on the "from:" header is broken by design. What, spammers disguise their identities? Never!