Re: Now the idiots at ORBS are probing random dial-ups

[johnl () iecc com (John R. Levine)]

> Once upon a time, Barry Shein <bzs () world std com> said:
> > Is there any reasonable way to tell these ORBS and MAPS losers
> > "possibly good intentions, but so badly run that: no thanks" from the
> > net administrator community.
>
> MAPS people are not "losers" IMHO.  They don't actively scan for problem
> hosts; they only check a host _after_ a supposed spam has been relayed
> through a host.

Quite right.  MAPS also runs the very useful MAPS DUL that lists address
ranges used for dynamic dialups.  The RSS (the open relay thing) won't
even test addresses in the DUL.

The DUL is a very effective anti-spam filter with very few false
positives, since hardly anyone other than spammers sends mail directly
from dialups without relaying through their own ISP's mail server.  I
get the occasional whine from Linux users who think their sendmail
setup is so cool they don't want to dirty it with a smarthost line,
but they're easy to ignore.



-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl () iecc com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, 
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail