Sweep away every other objection I or anyone else has ever made about these "open relay" attacks on spam and you're still left with one basic problem: They don't work. Oh they might block a bit of spam here or there but mostly they harass honest people until they close the barn door now that the horse (and a thousand others from other barns) has run through your yard and is headed off into the sunset. It doesn't work. It doesn't work often enough to make any difference and it's certainly not worth the time and effort people spend discussing how to fine tune it. The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand: 'If this were only cleared away,' They said, 'it would be grand!' 'If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year. Do you suppose,' the Walrus said, 'That they could get it clear?' I doubt it,' said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear. It's a hangover from a long-gone era when you could control behavior on the internet by some form of banishment, and lacking control over the end-user you threaten whomever they rely on for access. But these spammers don't rely on anyone and are not answerable to anyone as things stand, they just create throwaway dial-up accounts and exploit a new open-relay every hour and probably just laugh their asses off at the way they cause honest people to fight with each other over their mess. Meanwhile the spam streams more or less unabated. We need a fresh approach, probably not a technical approach. That's part of the absurdity, watching well-meaning techies try to cure social problems with yet another patch to the code. It's the flip side of people who try to destroy all of western civilization with a PC virus. But the first step is agreeing we have a problem and that these approaches just do not work (by "not work" I mean wouldn't stand up to even the most superficial cost/benefit analysis.) Part of the problem is we have quite a cheering section of individuals who hang out on these lists, are quite technical, but are not ISPs or anything like ISPs. They're the equivalent of limousine liberals who will tell you with great stridency and authority how to fix urban problems but have never gone near the city. And that's one reason they tend to get verbally vicious when you question their sacred cows, so you're distracted (or disgusted) from noting that they're just armchair quarterbacks. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | http://www.world.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*