On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 06:13:57PM +0200, IDG New Media Support - Andr� Paulsberg
wrote:
> > Forget about ORBS. Anyone using/caring about ORBS should reconsider his decision:
>
> Before giving "judgement" over ORBS, please understand what they are doing
> and the possible effects (both good and bad) for "you" as a mail admin.
>
[snip]
>
> > - ORBS does not notify blocked sites about the blockage
>
> This is not my personal experience nor their written rule,
> as they send E-Mail to either postmaster @ RDNS or IP.
Both, if I recall correctly.
[snip]
> > - ORBS has IMHO too much false positives
That is impossible. ORBS does not list a machine until it has received a
relayed test message. If you know of any false positives, let me know too
and I'd be happy to investigate. I have had several people run to me and
say 'ORBS listed me but I'm not an open relay', and everytime I have been
able to relay through their servers.
> I've yet to see a single false positive,
> not that this means they don't exist.
I don't think they do. The one case mentioned that I see as a possibility
is somebody _responding_ to an open-relay notification by blocking ORBS.
ORBS has no choice other than to keep reporting these machines as open
relays, since it is unable to gather newer info.
> The ongoing "discussion" about ORBS attitude or Alan's personality,
> doesn't seem to come from people who know what ORBS is or does.
> Still they rant about ORBS and it's errors and lack of Internet ethics,
> while failing to give any facts or prove any of their statements.
Yup.
> My personal opinion is that Open Relay server is the number one mail-problem
> on the Internet today, some might say SPAM is but SPAMMERS aren't causing
> a fraction of the possible havoc Open Relay servers COULD create.
> If you don't believe me it's quite simple math to solve the possibility riddle,
> just imagine someone wanting to "knock out" AOL's mailsevers for a few weeks...
Note that I do not use ORBS for blocking on my mailservers. It is my opinion
(which I will not enforce on any of you) that I as an admin should not
enforce ORBS-blocking onto my users. I will eventually allow users to do
ORBS-blocking (and RBL etc.) on a per-account basis, if they want to.
I do encourage the ORBS-project, because it gives people yet another choice
(and nothing more than that). We (Vuurwerk Internet) currently host the ORBS
relay tester, not because of any opinion on relay-blocking but because ORBS
gives people a choice.
Greetz, Peter.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Peter van Dijk [student:developer:madly in love]
