Len Budney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes on 27 January 1999 at
11:59:00 -0500
> Jeff Hayward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, Len Budney wrote:
> >
> > True, but even factually-based prejudice, when based on _correlation_
> > rather than _causation_, is mighty risky business.
> >
> > It isn't prejudice, it is prevention.
>
> Prejudice is defined, in part, as "a leaning toward one side of a
> question from other considerations than those belonging to it".
>
> Modems neither cause nor result from spam--modems and spam merely
> correlate.
It's an unusual step for a dial-up user to make direct SMTP
connections from his system. Examining why they occur, there seem to
be 3 cases:
1. Misconfiguration. They really should be going through their ISP's
mailserver.
2. Spamming -- they're doing something they don't want to be visible
to their ISP.
3. Playing -- situations like home Linux boxes where people want to
make the connections direct because they can.
There may be other reasons I've missed, as well.
Note that in cases 1 and 3, where there is no evil intent, a simple
reconfiguration, to go through their ISP for mail sending, will
resolve the problem.
So it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me to block SMTP from dialup
pools. The legitemate users appear to have perfectly reasonable
options, and it stops one way of injecting spam.
--
David Dyer-Bennet [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.ddb.com/~ddb (photos, sf) Minicon: http://www.mnstf.org/minicon
http://ouroboros.demesne.com/ The Ouroboros Bookworms
Join the 20th century before it's too late!
