Its more pernicious. I've discussed the technical details on other lists, just to demonstrate necessity. Suffice it to say there are good reasons that the _default_ relay behavior was changed instead of removing relay capability altogether. And I'm not the only one who operates relays. I'm just the only one dumb enough to try to explain to the junior anti-spammer league why relays are necessary, which is how we became listed in ORBS. I admit that was a mistake. Prior to that, we had no relay problems in the previous 4 years of relay operation. Most spammers don't have the resources to scan a large chunk of the net without detection. They depend on someone else to tell them where the relays are. Now I'm saddled with having to shut down ORBS to stop people from abusing our servers. It could get expensive. But I don't have a choice now. --Dean Around 11:22 PM 1/8/2000 -0000, rumor has it that fischer@sacred.net said:

I for one am curious why it is impossible to close them down as relays. There are solutions although sometimes they can inconvenience your users -- I'm thinking of the cases where you have to provide mail service to customers that are coming in from arbitrary networks -- is that it? Or is it something more pernicious? If the former, an extension to qmail modifies a list of allowed networks, once they've used pop to check their mail. That's the inconvenient part (they have to pop before they can send). Homegrown solutions abound, I am sure.

I understand that ORBs think they are doing a service by publishing these exploitable sites, and that they are doing a diservice as well. I have no idea how it balances out, but that's irrelevant. Maybe someone here has a fix for this fellow's problem? What, exactly, *is* the reason that you are stuck with open relays?

Randy Fischer

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Plain Aviation, Inc dean@av8.com LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP http://www.av8.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++