I am old. I remember when the TV networks tried this when big dishes became popular. They claimed that anyone receiving their programming was stealing. The courts decided that since the networks were broadcasting the signals, it was up to them to protect their programming. I don't see how this is any different. If the owner of the access point did not want his system to be used, he is the one responsible to protect it from unauthorized use. Any other use is implicitly granted. The guy who was arrested should turn around and sue the operator of the access point for allowing that network to intrude on his computer regardless of whether he then used it or not!
I won't be doing business with ISPs that try pulling stunts like that.
...and another clueless spammer is born. Honestly, reading the comments here is illuminating in a Jekle and Hyde sort of way. It seems everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. Block everyone else who might send spam out - but don't stop me!
It is irresponsible to not block outgoing SMTP connections from dynamically assigned IP addresses UNLESS they are routed through the ISPs SMTP relay. That does not block ANY outgoing messages, except possibly spam, viruses, or other messages with mailcious content. Is that what you are afraid of piranha(jpl)? At the very least, it gives the ISP a much shorter time between identification and correction of compromised systems.
Hi Chmarr. I agree. When taken out of the context of generating a bounce, issuing a failure code to the connecting MTA does usually drop the connection sooner and eliminate the issues with bounces. However, I have also noted a significant number of spamming MTAs that fail to properly close the session after receiving a failure code. This means that the session must time out before the MTA closes the connection. It has become necessary to firewall some of these jerks off completely.
In the context of the original post which you replied to, we had a subscriber who was forging 'user unknown' bounces to spammers. The results of his efforts have already been covered. He eventually discovered on his own that this was ineffective and move on to other methods. His choice.
Anyway. thanks for the discorse. Spam blocking is a complex subject for which I have not as yet seen a solution. I do not believe legislation will be effective. Years ago when I was getting two or three spams a week, I remember thinking that the lack of a way to control spam would be the achilles heel of the Internet making email all but unusable. Time has not proven me wrong. I await the day the magic bullet is developed. That will be a good day for the Internet.
Hi Chmarr. I don't know if you will get this but if you do, here is the answer.
If you are running your own mail server and are not relaying through your upstream ISP, great; bounce messages to your hearts content. Just be aware that nine out of ten bounces will not be going to the spammer and may be going to an innocent third party for whom it will be more spam. And you would then, in essence, be the spammer. This wasted bandwidthand and server resources causing further loss of Internet resources due to spam.
For the remaining one in ten, nine times out of ten the sender's servers will block connections or the message will be quietly thrown away. If you have to relay through an ISP or upstream provider and the spammer's servers are blocked, the message will queue up on the upstream server until it is removed or times out after many days and delivery attempts. The operators of these upstream servers do not like this. I know I don't.
That leaves one in one hundred that actually gets back to the sender. It has been my experience that this one percent (or less) is not spam in the strictest sense of the word. There is legitimate marketing material sent to persons who have an existing business relationship with the sender. Some of these businesses are clueless or evil and do not provide their customers with a way to "opt out" of their mailling lists. This small fraction of the one percent are the ones for whom the 'bouce' might be effective.
Spammers often operating in violation of their ISPs use policies and do not want to lose any time processing returns. They have a finite amount of time before they are discovered and booted off the network. For those professional spammers operating with a nod and a wink from their ISPs, they do not process incoming email because it leaves them vulnerable to outside attacks or bounce floods from DNS or other black lists. They aquire and validate their mailling list using other methods.
I think you're mistaken. When he says 'bounce spam' he doesn't mean composing a new message and sending it to the 'envelope from'.
He means ensuring the spam message gets a 550 code, or something similiar, rather than 'accepting' it and trashing it later.
Who's mod'ing this stuff. This is not insightful. Hasn't anybody learned yet that spammers lie! None of the 'from' addresses are likely to be legitimate. So where does the 'bounced' message go? Either to (1) someone who did not send the message or (2) (most likely) a non-existent email address where it is AGAIN bounced wasting additional bandwidth or server resources or (3) (least likely) back to the spammer where it is thrown away. Do you really think spammers take the time to look at bounced messages and throw away 'bad' addresses. No! They want their servers to spend 100 percent of available processing power spewing out their garbage, not processing incoming rejects.
The ZDNet article addressed survivability, not security. The "counter" article on Internet Week completely ingored the survivability aspect and countered instead the security concerns of a monolithic computing environment. Both are correct.
To condense and paraphrase the articles, the ZDNet article said "do not put all your eggs in one basket" while the Internet Week article said "keep it simple stupid." And according to Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook all truth comes from hackneyed sayings. Ergo, we know that both are correct.
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I am old. I remember when the TV networks tried this when big dishes became popular. They claimed that anyone receiving their programming was stealing. The courts decided that since the networks were broadcasting the signals, it was up to them to protect their programming. I don't see how this is any different. If the owner of the access point did not want his system to be used, he is the one responsible to protect it from unauthorized use. Any other use is implicitly granted. The guy who was arrested should turn around and sue the operator of the access point for allowing that network to intrude on his computer regardless of whether he then used it or not!
I took a poll and every spammer disagreed. And 89 percent also said that Microsoft ROCKS!
...and another clueless spammer is born. Honestly, reading the comments here is illuminating in a Jekle and Hyde sort of way. It seems everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. Block everyone else who might send spam out - but don't stop me!
It is irresponsible to not block outgoing SMTP connections from dynamically assigned IP addresses UNLESS they are routed through the ISPs SMTP relay. That does not block ANY outgoing messages, except possibly spam, viruses, or other messages with mailcious content. Is that what you are afraid of piranha(jpl)? At the very least, it gives the ISP a much shorter time between identification and correction of compromised systems.
Hi Chmarr. I agree. When taken out of the context of generating a bounce, issuing a failure code to the connecting MTA does usually drop the connection sooner and eliminate the issues with bounces. However, I have also noted a significant number of spamming MTAs that fail to properly close the session after receiving a failure code. This means that the session must time out before the MTA closes the connection. It has become necessary to firewall some of these jerks off completely.
In the context of the original post which you replied to, we had a subscriber who was forging 'user unknown' bounces to spammers. The results of his efforts have already been covered. He eventually discovered on his own that this was ineffective and move on to other methods. His choice.
Anyway. thanks for the discorse. Spam blocking is a complex subject for which I have not as yet seen a solution. I do not believe legislation will be effective. Years ago when I was getting two or three spams a week, I remember thinking that the lack of a way to control spam would be the achilles heel of the Internet making email all but unusable. Time has not proven me wrong. I await the day the magic bullet is developed. That will be a good day for the Internet.
Hi Chmarr. I don't know if you will get this but if you do, here is the answer.
If you are running your own mail server and are not relaying through your upstream ISP, great; bounce messages to your hearts content. Just be aware that nine out of ten bounces will not be going to the spammer and may be going to an innocent third party for whom it will be more spam. And you would then, in essence, be the spammer. This wasted bandwidthand and server resources causing further loss of Internet resources due to spam.
For the remaining one in ten, nine times out of ten the sender's servers will block connections or the message will be quietly thrown away. If you have to relay through an ISP or upstream provider and the spammer's servers are blocked, the message will queue up on the upstream server until it is removed or times out after many days and delivery attempts. The operators of these upstream servers do not like this. I know I don't.
That leaves one in one hundred that actually gets back to the sender. It has been my experience that this one percent (or less) is not spam in the strictest sense of the word. There is legitimate marketing material sent to persons who have an existing business relationship with the sender. Some of these businesses are clueless or evil and do not provide their customers with a way to "opt out" of their mailling lists. This small fraction of the one percent are the ones for whom the 'bouce' might be effective.
Spammers often operating in violation of their ISPs use policies and do not want to lose any time processing returns. They have a finite amount of time before they are discovered and booted off the network. For those professional spammers operating with a nod and a wink from their ISPs, they do not process incoming email because it leaves them vulnerable to outside attacks or bounce floods from DNS or other black lists. They aquire and validate their mailling list using other methods.
I think you're mistaken. When he says 'bounce spam' he doesn't mean composing a new message and sending it to the 'envelope from'.
He means ensuring the spam message gets a 550 code, or something similiar, rather than 'accepting' it and trashing it later.
Who's mod'ing this stuff. This is not insightful. Hasn't anybody learned yet that spammers lie! None of the 'from' addresses are likely to be legitimate. So where does the 'bounced' message go? Either to (1) someone who did not send the message or (2) (most likely) a non-existent email address where it is AGAIN bounced wasting additional bandwidth or server resources or (3) (least likely) back to the spammer where it is thrown away. Do you really think spammers take the time to look at bounced messages and throw away 'bad' addresses. No! They want their servers to spend 100 percent of available processing power spewing out their garbage, not processing incoming rejects.
To condense and paraphrase the articles, the ZDNet article said "do not put all your eggs in one basket" while the Internet Week article said "keep it simple stupid." And according to Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook all truth comes from hackneyed sayings. Ergo, we know that both are correct.