Brian Keefer said: >> Why do you feel that way? Are you aware that the spam problem has forced >> many to block _all_ mail coming from dynamic IP addresses - regardless of >> whether they've ever sent spam or not. Using your ISP's mail server >> (assuming they are as responsible as they sound) will result in fewer >> blocked messages for you. > > Well, I sense that this will quickly degenerate into a pitched > ideological battle, but I figured I would share the other side of the > story.
Oh no, not another pitched ideological battle! :) > It used to be that everyone connected to the Internet was a "peer". All > nodes has equal rights and each could run whatever services they > pleased. With the advent of the mythical "IPv4 address shortage" and > the invention of NAT, the idea of "peers" was changed from "each host > can reach all others equally" to "each border can reach all other > borders". Traffic was filtered through gateways, so there was no way > for end-users to offer services without the permission of their gateway > manager, and with special rules on their gateway. To quote a former US President, "I feel your pain". And in principle, I agree with everything you said. The Internet has not developed into the Camelot of free communication that some of its founders envisioned - I regret that as much as anyone. But now back off to a point about 100 miles above the earth, and look down at this exchange of communication between you and me. We are complete strangers communicating in a forum set up for "packet filtering". Packet filtering... packet filtering, as in some packets are bad, harmful or undesirable, and should be filtered from the stream; much like industrial sludge and particulate matter is filtered from our drinking water. It strikes me as ironic that you've chosen this particular forum to make your point, but I think it's a good point and worthy of discussion. I think we can have this discussion without getting into ideologies, although those are fine, too. Anyway, from your point 100 miles up consider for just a moment the fact that this communication is taking place. This transaction offers powerful testimony to the value of the Internet. The Internet is not perfect, but it is wonderful; and it's worthy of protection to keep it viable. Pimps, shills and lowlife are among us. They have access to the same services as the rest of us, and are also subject to the limitations of their finances. We can't make them go away - they apparently regard it within their rights to deliver messages to our inboxes that promote Viagra-by-mail-order, enlarged penii, Paris Hilton's escapades, and even mundane items such as toner cartridges. They feel they have the right to do this, and repeatedly demonstrate that they will escalate their aggression to whatever extent available to deliver their payload and collect their fees. What's regretful about this behavior is not that the Internet gives them the freedom to deliver their scummy payloads - the regretful thing is that they are either desparate or unprincipled enough to abuse this freedom. These abuses are costly to the abused. The degree of abuse varies - in my case, I have an email address that I have used in my business since 1994 (not this one :). For many reasons, I want to continue to use this email address, but if it were not for "filtering" I would be forced to discard my address of nearly 10 years. I just counted how many spam messages I received yesterday (or would have if I hadn't filtered them): # zcat /var/log/maillog.0.gz | grep -c 'reject=553' 2045 Two thousand and forty-five (2045) messages were rejected or filtered by the dnsbl's used by my mail server; about a dozen more made it through, and I received a total of 4 "legitimate" messages. In addition, the 4900 addresses in my spamd table redirected a total of 311 attempted connections to my tarpit :) So, in at least one case - mine, well over 500 spam messages are (would be) received for each legitimate message. I know I'm not alone, but probably I am an extreme example - likely due to the relatively old age of my email address. I can also say that since my spam problem started two or three years ago, dealing with it has become quite expensive. It's expensive to accept all messages in my inbox, and manually cull the spam on the basis of sender or subject. Alternatively, it's expensive to maintain and configure a mail server that does filtering automatically. Perhaps the greatest expense is the occasional legitimate message that gets filtered with the spam; I've lost business, and probably offended a few people because of this. It's difficult to make someone who's never lived with high volumes of spam understand how debilitating it can be. Receiving this much spam has given me an opportunity to study it in perhaps greater detail than some. A couple of things I have noticed: 1) much spam now includes inocuous text inserted for the sole purpose of confusing Bayesian filters 2) most spam comes from dynamically-assigned ip addresses. I regret that some abuse the Internet, creating problems for many others. I regret that ISPs are, for the most part, run as shabby little businesses based on low profit margins, owned by people who really don't care about the "service" part, and who will never understand what the Internet was supposed to be. I regret that the Internet is not a perfect place. But I still think it's a "good thing", and from 100 miles up it looks like a pretty reasonable tradeoff to require all hosts using dynamic IP addresses to send their email through a relay. I believe Mr. Micakovic's ISP deserves a gold-plated "atta' boy" for imposing this requirement. I hope that they disclosed this restriction to Mr. Micakovic before he signed up, but in any case their policy will reduce the amount of spam on the Internet. And while Mr. Micakovic may not appreciate it now, it benefits him as well. The following example illustrates how and why: My own ISP - BelchSouth (close enough) does not filter outbound connections to tcp port 25, and consequently has developed a reputation as a "spam sponsor". BelchSouth offers access services with both fixed and dynamic address assignments; of course they charge substantially more for fixed addresses. Since I wanted to run my own servers, I pay the big bucks for the fixed addresses. To my dismay, I've learned that due to BelchSouth's refusal to cooperate in the fight against spam, and their piss-poor reputation as an ISP, the static ip addresses they have assigned to me are listed on some dnsbls. The result (talk about irony) is that I can't send mail to my mail host from any of my other fixed-ip-address hosts because they are on one of the dnsbls I use to protect my mail server from spam! So - be grateful for an ISP that cares about its reputation; I wish I had one that did. I hope I've made my point without drifting too far off into ideology. Best Rgds, Jay Moore
