Mail servers changes (INFO)

From: Jay West <west_at_tseinc.com>
Date: Thu Feb 24 06:47:18 2000

Greetings;

We have recently made changes to our mail servers here that may possibly
affect some list users. In our ongoing effort to limit SPAM, our mail
servers were recently configured to utilitize the MAPS RBL, DUL, and RSS
databases (see www.mail-abuse.org for details).

Entities that send spam typically make use of mail servers that are
improperly configured in such a way as to allow relaying (ie. they are "open
relays"). This means that these problem mail servers are often used to
bounce mail off of and redistribute spam. Our mail servers have been
configured to properly reject mail that is neither from or to a "local"
address for many years. However, if our users (or any domains we host,
including classiccmp.org) are on the spammers mailing list we have not been
able to reject that spam in the past because the target address was both
valid and local. By utilizing MAPS, any inbound mail is checked to see if it
originated from a system or network that is known to be an open relay - if
so, the message is rejected. Thus not only are we not an open relay, but we
will refuse to accept or send mail that is from or to any system that is an
open relay. That is the function of RBL and RSS; DUL is a blacklist of
non-open relays that are however known originators of spam.

You can check the above URL for details, but the basic gist is that when
anyone on the internet receives junk mail via an open relay, they can submit
the open relay's IP address to the MAPS database. The MAPS folks will test
the server and if problematic they'll contact the administrator for that
system and ask them to fix their open relay. If they do not fix the system
within 5 days, they are added to the maps database. Once the administrator
fixes the open relay their system is retested by MAPS and if compliant it is
removed from the database. Our mail servers will not accept mail from or
deliver mail to any system in the MAPS database. You can tell if you've
encountered this by your message being returned to you with a note clearly
stating that your message was rejected due to RBL, DUL, or open-relays.

As you may gather, this does open the possibility of "throwing the baby out
with the bath water". If your ISP has an open relay, we will not accept your
mail. In this case you need to call your ISP and ask them to fix their mail
server security deficiency. If one of your ISP's other customers is a source
of spam, it is somewhat possible your ISP will be blocked (which albeit
unfairly blocks you). This generally isn't much of a problem because most
ISP's are very responsive to requests from MAPS. After weighing these issues
we decided that there's no reason that our servers should have to converse
with other servers that are known to be insecure or frequent sources of
spam. We really really really dislike spam, and feel that this action is
wholly appropriate.

Regards,

Jay West
Received on Thu Feb 24 2000 - 06:47:18 GMT