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FTC vs. Open Relays, round 2

Posted by michael on from the drop-in-the-bucket dept.

mbrain writes "PC World is reporting on a new federal program run by the FTC to close relays and proxies that serve as spam gateways. It's called 'Operation Secure Your Server'. The FTC will publicize this program by... sending tens of thousands of emails." I think it's a continuation of this program.

4 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. How many can they find? by digitalvengeance · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have to wonder how many owners they will be able to successfully contact. It has been a long time since I've actually seen a WHOIS record listing a valid email address. Plus, popular registration services like Dotster now offer email masking as a standard part of domain registration.

    I think this is mostly due to the trend of spammers attempting to "steal" domain registrations by doing thousands of WHOIS searches and contacting domain owners.

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  2. I foresee some problems with this... by bc90021 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    People who have open relays (in most instances) are either too stressed or too ignorant to understand what that means, and getting a letter from the FTC won't change that (in most instances.)

    The FTC can only suggest that the relays be closed. Until they have some form of enforcement, there is nothing preventing those with open relays from ignoring the emails (assuming this is the rare situation where the above does not apply).

    This doesn't take into account that some of those relays may be there on purpose, as in ISPs possibly colluding with, and also possibly profiting from, spam.

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    1. Re:I foresee some problems with this... by dev11 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      This doesn't take into account that some of those relays may be there on purpose, as in ISPs possibly colluding with, and also possibly profiting from, spam.

      Just a minor nit. There probably still are ISP's that profit from so called pink contracts, but I don't see a spammer purposely running an open relay. Spammers are more interested in finding open relays and servers than running them. Operating an open relay serves no purpose to a spammer, and would likely draw attention. One of the reasons (aside from free bandwidth) of using an open relay is to hide your identity.

  3. Good news for ISPs by Spazmania · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As a sysadmin at an ISP, this is good news for me. Getting customers to close their open relays has always been a hassle. "We really need you to take care of this; its against our terms of service" is often followed by "Well, maybe we'll just find another ISP."

    "We expect you to take care of this; you're operating in violation of Federal Trade Commission policy" has a much nicer ring to it. One less likely to generate argument.

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