[ On Friday, January 14, 2000 at 16:48:51 (-0800), Randy Bush wrote: ]
Subject: Re: Fw: Administrivia: ORBS
(* obviously not every system listed in ORBS has been used to forward actual spam of course -- why even I have a test machine listed in there for test purposes! ;-)
what if there are systems blocked by orbs which are truely not mail relays, for which there has never been evidence of mail relaying, from which spam has never eminated, ...?
Like I said, I have a test machine listed in ORBS for testing purposes only. I got it there by explicitly allowing my mailer to relay the ORBS test (and only the ORBS test! :-). However what of it? Who cares? *I* don't, obviously. And who exactly is going to prove it? If suddenly your machine Randy shows up in ORBS but you really need to send me e-mail from it are you going to show me all your mailer logs and allow me to corroborate them with all of your net-neighbours just to prove it? Who do I believe? Who really cares if there are in fact a few odd-ball vigilantes out there who are abusing the ORBS testing service just to scan for open relays? I'm certainly not going to blame ORBS for the actions of those few bad apples. They are clearly starting to spoil things for the rest of us, but all that really means is we all have to be vigilant and make sure we stop them if we find them and that we don't knowing let them on our networks while at the same time cleaning up all open relays we find ourselves with a diligence that would put such vigilantes to shame. If anyone seriously believes that the stale DB listings published by ORBS are really making the spammers jobs any easier I've got some prime ocean-front swamp^H^H^H^H^Hbeach for sale in Saskatchewan.... It's real cheap at just a cool million dollars (USA $$$, that is!) and you'll just love the weather! You might have to wait a million years or so before it's an active ocean beach again, but that's your problem.... -- Greg A. Woods +1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods> Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>