FTC vs. Open SMTP Relays

HighOrbit writes "Cnet reports on news.com.com that The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, several state Attorneys General, and Australia, Canada and Japan are sending this letter (pdf) to operators of open relay mail servers to educate them on the dangers of open relays and how they help spread spam. Although the letter does not threaten direct law enforcement action, it does let open relayers know that they have been noticed and warned. The threat of being blacklisted has not worked yet, so will this finally convince mail server admins to shut down those open relays?"

Comments

Re:Education is the key

[Angry White Guy]

This just means I don't have to test all my servers. Someone will let me know. Man, andministrating my home network just got easier!

Re:Some simple logic in order?

[jdreed1024]

So to relate this to the article, I'd say that a letter from the FTC that doesn't threaten *legal* action will provide no more incentive to these system administrators to close the relays; thus the letters become little more than a waste of paper...

I agree, it's a terrible waste of paper. I think instead the FTC should send out mass e-mails about this and... uh.... wait a minute...