[12138] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Spammer Bust
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Russ Haynal)
Fri Sep 5 17:12:42 1997
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 16:57:42 -0400
From: Russ Haynal <russ@navigators.com>
In-reply-to: <Pine.SGI.3.96.970905161243.4170D-100000@helix.nih.gov>
To: Jeremy Elson <jelson@helix.nih.gov>,
Phil Howard <phil@charon.milepost.com>
Cc: Mark E Larson <markl@rust.net>, nanog@merit.edu
At 04:35 PM 9/5/97 -0400, Jeremy Elson wrote:
>I had two very similar incidents of PSI not knowing what was going on.
>I've gotten a lot of spam that originated from PSI dialup users but using
>Earthlink as a mail relay; for example, this one:
Recognize that Earthlink is a "national" provider by virtue of the fact
that its customers are allowed to connect through PSI and UUNEt POPs (and
other ISP's POPs?). Just last week I established an Earthlink dial-up
acount for one of my relatives. Many of the Earthlink POP phone numbers
turned out to be Phone numbers belonging to PSI, UUNET. It was interesting
that the PPP Dial-up logon user ID was of the form: "ELN/userid" The
"ELN/" in front of the userid stands for Earthlink Network, so that
PSI/UUNET knows to which ISP to route the particular dial-up user.
I would suggest that your particular Spammer IS an Earthlink User, (who
happens to dial-in through a PSI POP) In this instance, I guess PSI would
have to be considered "just an innocent carrier" like the local phone
company that also helps the Spammer reach his ISP (Earthlink)
[One alternative thought, (and it's a messy one)... Most ISP's can restrict
their mail gateways to accept their customers only, but I wonder if
Earthlink would be able to configure its mail server to prohibit customers
of PSI's and UUNEt's Dial-up services from using Earthlink's mail server.]
Russ
__________________________________________________________________
Russ Haynal - Internet Consultant, Instructor, Speaker
"Helping organizations gain the most benefit from the Internet"
russ@navigators.com http://navigators.com 703-729-1757
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