Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/09/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 12:50:21PM -0400, B. D. Colen wrote: > God, if they're going to do all this blocking, why can't they block > Macys.com, WANT A CHEAP MORTGAGE, and Look At These Photos of My Sister and > leave the rest of us alone?!! They can't. SMTP does not support authentication, so I could send millions of messages pretending to be bdcolen@earthlink.net, so he would get all the bounces (and probably have his account suspended by his ISP). Some mail server administrators would block mail from his account, but my next batch of spam would "come" from another address, so that wouldn't bother me in the least. It is possible to block mail based on the sender's envelope address, but that works only for the tiny percentage of spammers who don't fake that address. It is also possible to block SMTP connections from a server or network used by spammers, but I suspect that most of them are relaying spam due to the administrator's stupidity rather than malice. I am now blocking mail from about 1500 servers and 50 networks plus more than 1100 domains. But I can do that because I run what is now my own mail server. I couldn't do that a few months ago when it was still a company server, since I could not be certain that I was not blocking legitimate mail. I hate to say it, but I don't think a solution to the spam problem is possible until SMTP is replaced -- and I don't think that is possible. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html