[26703] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Fw: Administrivia: ORBS
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Shawn McMahon)
Thu Jan 13 20:22:33 2000
Message-Id: <4.3.0.29.0.20000113201026.00a77530@george.he.net>
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 20:19:32 -0500
To: "Edward S. Marshall" <emarshal@logic.net>
From: Shawn McMahon <smcmahon@eiv.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0001131857470.10392-100000@labyrinth>
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<sigh>
If you're a supporter, why the hell aren't you familiar with their
policies, and why are you responding to messages you haven't read, or at
least haven't read closely enough to retain?
It is not necessary to spam anyone to test an open relay. If you don't
understand how to test a mail server for open relaying without spamming
anyone, then you don't know enough about SMTP to participate in this
conversation.
Once it's proven you've blocked them to hide open relays, you go into a
manual block.
No automated probes get moved anywhere, that's very specific in their FAQ,
don't know where in the hell you got that idea. Once you're in a manual
block you stay there until you convince somebody it's worth bothering to
check you again.
My original statement stands; listing somebody's entire address range just
because they block you is wrong.
Listing their mail servers because they blocked you and you verified that
one or more was still open is *NOT* wrong.
The former is lazy and results in blocking folks who don't deserve it.
The latter doesn't scale well. You want your spam fix to be completely
automatic? Tough shit, the world doesn't work that way.
If you can't keep up with the necessary load to test all the sites that are
trying to fool ORBS, then you deal with that problem. There are lots of
solutions, I can think of two just right off the top of my head.
Can you?
P.S. I couldn't conceivably care less what NANOG archives have to say about
the matter. Most of the posts on the subject are by people who are
wrong. People who actually USE the service usually don't see emails from
those folks.
At 07:08 PM 1/13/2000 -0600, you wrote:
>Ah. That scales wonderfully, and makes them the equivilent of roaming
>spammers. Great idea. I'm sure Alan and company will act on that right
>away.
>
>You honestly think moving the automated probes from network to network is
>a good idea?
>
> > Perhaps you should read their FAQ before asking questions about their
> > service.
>
>Actually, I'm extremely familiar with their service; I'm a long-time
>supporter of ORBS.
>
>Perhaps you should go back and read the NANOG archives for the multitude
>of times this subject has come up in the past.
>
> > The only way you can prevent them from having any means of testing you is:
> >
> > Close your relay.
>
>I wholeheartedly agree. What does this have to do with your original
>statement that ORBS has gone too far by manually listing address ranges
>which specifically block the relay probes?
