[aus: Slashdot, 13. Juli 2001] Last Month for Free MAPS The Internet Posted by jamie on Friday July 13, @02:55AM from the stuff-to-pay-for-and-then-not-read dept. MAPS has posted that it will be requiring a subscription fee starting in August. The note hasn't shown up on its PR page yet, but the readers of news.admin.net-abuse.email and SPAM-L are already finding it very interesting. I've included a copy below, along with selected commentary from those two forums. Anyone know more? Path: ...!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.isc.org!not-for-mail From: Margie Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email Subject: MAPS Subscription Policy Changes Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:45:11 -0700 Organization: Internet Software Consortium Message-ID: Effective Midnight 7/31/2001, all non-subscription access to MAPS services will cease. Anyone wishing to transfer or query MAPS data must have a signed contract with MAPS, and have access enabled in our ACL. There are several reasons for this change: 1) The data in the MAPS files belongs to MAPS and is copyrighted. MAPS, RBL, RBL+, DUL and RSS are all service marks of MAPS. MAPS must have the ability to protect its assets from unauthorized use or disclosure by third parties. 2) As MAPS popularity grew, the demand on our resources grew. We have continually upgraded systems, software, and added servers where necessary. The end result is our systems and connectivity are sufficient enough that providers have no incentive to pay for zone transfer subscriptions. When MAPS began to offer paid subscriptions, we believed that allowing access based on the ability to pay would allow the largest percentage of the net to access the services, while permitting MAPS to sustain itself with subscriptions from the large users of the services. What we have found instead is that we are our own worst "competition". 3) The economic conditions in the industry have hit everyone, including MAPS. MAPS' purpose is to stop spam on the internet. That purpose can only be achieved as long as MAPS can maintain itself as a corporation. Like any corporation, that takes income. There is very little debate about the effectiveness of the MAPS lists. This effectiveness saves its users time, bandwidth and other resources as well as giving them an added value to their customers by reducing the amount of spam the customer sees in their inbox. MAPS can simply no longer afford to foot the bill for the bulk of the internet community. It is not our intent to put the use of the MAPS lists out of reach of the individual or hobby site. We will still offer some reduced fee or free query contracts under limited circumstances. As usual, please direct requests for contracts to subscription-request@mail-abuse.org, questions and comments to margie@mail-abuse.org and flames to dev/null. ;) -- Margie Arbon Mail Abuse Prevention System, LLC Manager, Market and Business Development margie@mail-abuse.org http://mail-abuse.org Here are excerpted reader comments from SPAM-L and nanae which I found interesting: "...people can no longer pass the buck when it comes to effectively blocking unwanted crap; they will have to now assume the responsibility for handling their own E-mail. I actually think that this is going to be a good thing for the long term." (Sam Varshavchik) "...and so dies MAPS. You've just cut your own throats. The effectiveness of MAPS always depended on the number of users, which is now going to be a fraction of a percentage of what it was before." (John Oliver) "I was under the impression that MAPS want a big number of subscribers, in order to have some force behind them when they educate and negotiate with spammers. Isn't that the reason big spamhausen like UUNet were not blacklisted, since many subscribers would stop using MAPS's tools because of too much collateral damage? Now MAPS is reducing its customer base. But perhaps we can now get eBay, UUnet and Qwest blacklisted, since only a small number of administrators will use MAPS tools..." (Karl-Henry Martinsson) "...if the RBL listees think the RBL is a bitch, let them see what happens when they get dropped into who knows how many individual filters that won't get reviewed for removals until Hell freezes over. I think there is some serious potential for us to ALL gain from this move." (Jim Higgins) "Anyway, now that the MAPS RBL user base has been reduced by at least a factor of 10, the mainsleaze spambags are not going to even CARE about MAPS. ... So the mainsleaze spambags are going to let loose on the remaining 92-96%. ... The way I look at it, Joe Sixpack is now going to see more spam than he's ever seen before. I think that a lot of Joe Sixpacks are going to get seriously pissed, and a fair amount of them are going to explore ways to effectively spamproof their INBOXes. This is a GOOD thing." ("Sam") My own prediction: in the long run, this has no big effect on spam either way. Two things will reduce the hassle of spam, more legislation, or supplanting SMTP with a non-broken mail protocol. Costs have to be attached to sending mail to strangers, either micropayments or risk of jail. As long as mail's dirt-cheap to send, spam will be vying for our attention, scurrying-around clean-up crews notwithstanding. Until SMTP is replaced, the great spam fight is a bunch of Libertarians trying to solve the tragedy of the commons. A pay-per-view clique seems like a suboptimal solution to me. < Space Stations That Suck | Wireless Network Auditor > Slashdot Login Nickname: ____________________ Password: ____________________ userlogin Don't have an account yet? Go Create One. A user account will allow you to customize all these nutty little boxes, tailor the stories you see, as well as remember your comment viewing preferences. Related Links the tragedy of the commons MAPS PR page More on The Internet Also by jamie 'Last Month for Free MAPS' | Login/Create an Account | 86 comments | Search Discussion Threshold: [1: 58 comments.] [Threaded...][Oldest First.................] Change Reply The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. Slashdot is not responsible for what they say. Did MAPS have an effect (Score:4, Interesting) by q-soe (username@.nospam.coldmail.com) on Friday July 13, @03:01AM EST (#2) (User #466472 Info) I think the question i would like to answer is did MAPS have an effect ? i mean the level of spam does not seem to have decreased at all and i think it has grown - the major ISP and web services providers - @home, Yahoo etc dont want to know about it - they may block email accounts of bulk mailers but in my expereince they dont. The other side of the coin in this message is that MAPS have costs as well, the maintenance of servers, databases and net bandwidth costs require money and staffing and that inevitable means costs. They have obviously now found it neccesary to continue and try and recoup them with the subscritption method. I personally find it a usefull tool and will likely pay for access under the subscription plan but others wont, thats a choice thing. After all they are a company and as such as they say they need to pay the bills. Support them with subcriptions if you want to help combat spam or dont use the service - i think its a fair comment - not everything can be free as life costs money Thats my 2 cents anyway i'm not waving, i'm drowning damnit !! [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Come back ORBS, all is fogiven by cyberformer (Score:1) Friday July 13, @03:18AM EST + Re:Come back ORBS, all is fogiven by bartlett's (Score:1) Friday July 13, @03:45AM EST * We never know... by simpleguy (Score:2) Friday July 13, @03:20AM EST + Re:We never know... by stesch (Score:1) Friday July 13, @04:01AM EST + Re:We never know... by Rogain (Score:1) Friday July 13, @04:45AM EST * Re:Did MAPS have an effect by squiggleslash (Score:1) Friday July 13, @06:18AM EST + Re:Did MAPS have an effect by Skapare (Score:2) Friday July 13, @06:31AM EST And this is what happens when competition dies. (Score:2) by arcade (ar-RemoveThis-cade@kvinesdal.com) on Friday July 13, @03:06AM EST (#3) (User #16638 Info) http://arcade.kvinesdal.com Hmf, I read SPAML, but I've got a bit of backlog and haven't seen this. I think I need to catch up. In any case - this seems to be the end of the road for MAPS then. I won't pay a penny for MAPS. For that, the process of getting domains blacklisted is not good enough. For servers to get listed in the RSS - spam already has to be relayed through an open relay. This would not have happened had ORBS still existed. ORBS was a creat tool for detecting spam - as you had lists of ALL open relays there. Now, I wonder what I'm going to do. Using MAPS' payment service is out of the question. Well .. maybe one of those ORBS-clones that are coming up may provide the correct solution. Harumpfh. -- "Rune Kristian Viken" - http://arcade.kvinesdal.com - arcade@efnet [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. So how will I be able to find things (Score:1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13, @03:06AM EST (#5) if MAPS aren't free? I could be lost... and broke... and never find my way home. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. they have to pay the rent, but... (Score:2) by janpod66 on Friday July 13, @03:11AM EST (#6) (User #323734 Info) They have to pay for servers and bandwidth, so it's understandable that they want to charge. However, it would be really nice if we could come up with true peer-to-peer collaborative filtering for E-mail. It's a harder problem, but it could obviate MAPS both as a bandwidth bottleneck and as a single point of legal attack. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Passing the buck (Score:2, Insightful) by papertech (ncozby at earthlink dot com) on Friday July 13, @03:12AM EST (#8) (User #467382 Info) If MAPS makes ISP's pay to use their services, those costs could simply be passed on to the "willing" consumers. I would be willing to pay $24.99 instead of $19.99 if the ISP could guarantee that I wouldn't get a bunch of crapflood spammers hammering my Inbox everyday. On the other hand, I can see ISP's dropping MAPS altogether, since the average uninterested Joe Netizen generally shops for the cheapest monthly ISP rate instead of looking at QOS. If you wait for perfect conditions, you'll never get anything done. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:Passing the buck by Skapare (Score:2) Friday July 13, @06:38AM EST Spam baby! (Score:3, Funny) by Traxton1 (Traxton1@yahoo.com) on Friday July 13, @03:13AM EST (#9) (User #154182 Info) http://members.aol.com/traxton1/myhomepage/index.html It's been rumored that if you don't continue to pay your subscription fee MAPS will put your site on the list. And send you emails until you do! I only watch pornography for the articles. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:Spam baby! by argent (Score:1) Friday July 13, @06:51AM EST * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. They think they're so damn cute... (Score:1) by Supa Mentat on Friday July 13, @03:16AM EST (#10) (User #415750 Info) Ok, it is sorta cute I guess, Mail Abuse Provention System = MAPS. It's also Spam backwards, that can't be coincidence, can it? "A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:They think they're so damn cute... by Supa Mentat (Score:1) Friday July 13, @03:18AM EST Prices and Opinions (Score:3, Insightful) by bl968 on Friday July 13, @03:18AM EST (#14) (User #190792 Info) From the maps website i found the following interesting information. How much does it cost? In query mode, the cost is US$1,500 per year for sites with up to 1,000 users; each additional 500 users will be priced at US$750 per year. Larger or overseas sites will probably prefer transfer mode, in which you transfer a copy of the DNS zone to your local nameserver. The cost for this is US$1,250 per year per nameserver, plus US$50 per 1,000 users -- around half a cent per user each month. Educational institutions, non-profits, and members of selected ISP trade associatons may (at our sole discretion) be eligible for discounts; please contact us with a proposal. I can see charging ISPs on a per user basis for the query mode lookups. However, the charges per user for zone transfer makes no sense as the MAPS service bears no additional load or bandwidth charges from the extra users as the zones are stored on the ISPs name servers locally. -- When I'm good I'm very good, when I'm bad I'm better, But when I'm evil you better run :P [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:Prices and Opinions by mpe (Score:2) Friday July 13, @03:57AM EST * Re:Prices and Opinions by /dev/kev (Score:2) Friday July 13, @04:31AM EST + Re:Prices and Opinions by Skapare (Score:2) Friday July 13, @06:43AM EST o 1 reply beneath your current threshold. And there we have it... (Score:2) by Erik Hensema on Friday July 13, @03:20AM EST (#15) (User #12898 Info) http://www.xs4all.nl/~hensema We, the recipients of spam, now actually have to pay to NOT receive spam. Thank you very much spammers, and die. This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Friday 13th: Part1 by billybob2001 (Score:2) Friday July 13, @05:38AM EST vigilantes (Score:1) by drteknikal on Friday July 13, @03:20AM EST (#17) (User #67280 Info) Having been periodically (and erroneously) blacklisted, it's fine by me if they all die. Fix the problem, and stop bitching about open relays. My server isn't an open relay, but enough detection methods out there are useless enough to think it is. I'm still fighting Earthlink to unblock us. BTW, this is NOT something legislation will fix. This is something that will be fixed by a) a decent replacement for SMTP that's universally accepted, and b) competent administration. My site's just fine. We don't route spam. Leave me the hell alone. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:vigilantes by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Friday July 13, @04:02AM EST + Re:vigilantes by pjrc (Score:3) Friday July 13, @05:59AM EST o Re:vigilantes by Skapare (Score:2) Friday July 13, @06:55AM EST o Re:vigilantes by lpp (Score:1) Friday July 13, @07:04AM EST o 1 reply beneath your current threshold. + 1 reply beneath your current threshold. * Re:vigilantes by www.sorehands.com (Score:1) Friday July 13, @04:16AM EST * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. MAKE MONEY FAST!!!!! 8--)))) (Score:4, Funny) by leuk_he on Friday July 13, @03:22AM EST (#19) (User #194174 Info) From: Margie "margie@mail-abuse.org" Effective Midnight 7/31/2001, all non-subscription access to MAPS services will cease. Anyone wishing to transfer or query internet data must read the rest of this mail. Send us and the following 6 people on the ACL list 1 DOLLAR. Then add your name to the ACL list and send it to everyone you know. you get rich in a few days day and receive no more spam at the same time! Some testimony of users : "i did not pay ...and so dies . You've just cut your own throats. The effectiveness of MAPS always depended on the number of users, which is going to be paid out now. If you do not pay MAPS and the world arroudn will die (John Oliver) , "MAPS want a big number of subscribers....aministrators will use MAPS ..." (Karl-Henry Martinsson) "This is a GOOD thing." (Sam) Margie "mail" Arbon. Abuse Prevention System, TM Manager, Market and MAKE MONEY FAST Development. [ Reply to This | Parent ] I can just see it now... (Score:4, Funny) by TWX_the_Linux_Zealot (oliver.clozoff@usa.net) on Friday July 13, @03:25AM EST (#20) (User #227666 Info) ... MAPS will start sending out email to random people, explaining how their services can reduce the spam problem on their email servers. It'll probably be almost as bad as when the emails for "system security" clog up and crash the mail server... IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS, And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss... [ Reply to This | Parent ] One small thing seems to be missing... (Score:1) by Zocalo on Friday July 13, @03:27AM EST (#21) (User #252965 Info) http://www.zocalo.uk.com How much do subscription services actually cost? The information does not appear to be readily available on MAPS' website and if ISPs etc. that do use MAPS are going to have to start paying for it, then they are going to need to get a purchase order raised, despatched and cleared in, let's see, 18 days and counting. That process often can't even start until the bottom line is known. I think Paul Vixie et al have no experience with the snail like pace of corporate finance if they are expecting to pull this off with this kind of notice. Unless they want MAPS to wither on the vine, of course. Time to check out the alternatives again, I guess. :-( UNIX? They're probably not even circumcised! Savages! [ Reply to This | Parent ] I don't get it (Score:5, Informative) by Aceticon on Friday July 13, @03:30AM EST (#23) (User #140883 Info) I've been around the Net for some time now, and i've seen it go from purely academic to (almost) purely commercial (yep, when AOL gave their costumers access to the Internet it was the beginning of the end). I've seen the fall of Usenet (information to noise ratio is now about 1-10 in most groups) and the raise of spamming... Do i get spam on my e-mail account? - Nope. How? I have three e-mail accounts: * One for my friends and my informal humor mailing lists and official stuff (note: subscriptions to banana-girls-with-big-breasts.com sort of sites does not count as official). I never put this address in any public forum (that includes /.). Number of spams per-month = zero * The other one is at work. I only use it for work related stuff. When i change companies this one changes but my friends can always get me through the other one (for all the other ones, well - if you don't have my personal e-mail that means i don't want to hear from you again). I never publish this one in public forums. Number of spams per-month = zero * The last one is my public e-mail. I'll look at it maybe once a week. I'll use it publicly (although i still refrain myself from using it "as is" in Usenet - beter transform it so that humans can understand the real one but not e-mail address collection programs). Registration to any moderatly crappy site involves using this one. For extra crappy sites i just create a new one in Hotmail. Number of spams per-month = about 10 to 20 So, after all my gloating about my own cunningness, what's the conclusion: Levels of privacy!!! Set up e-mail accounts the same way as you set up your life: friends; work; everybody else It works! [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:I don't get it by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Friday July 13, @04:08AM EST * Re:I don't get it by eddy (Score:1) Friday July 13, @05:00AM EST * Re:I don't get it by Howie (Score:1) Friday July 13, @05:36AM EST * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. More Legislation? (Score:1, Insightful) by bupernfut on Friday July 13, @03:32AM EST (#24) (User #446309 Info) "Two things will reduce the hassle of spam, more legislation ..." Do you really want more legislation implemented by the same government who brought us such goodies as Carnivore and export restrictions on encryption? More legislation gives the government more power, regarless of whether it's to stop SPAM today, or a Microsoft lobbied ban on open source software for the government of tomorrow. I'm not saying the two are related, but it would be one more big boot in the door. Keep the government out of it! I like the replacing the SMTP with a non-broken protocol idea much more. I can feel the force of a new SourceForge project in genesis already :) What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand? [ Reply to This | Parent ] Last Month for Free MAPS - Not (Score:2, Informative) by MargieA on Friday July 13, @03:32AM EST (#25) (User #467389 Info) MAPS has announced that this is the last month for non-subscription access to our lists. As stated in the announcement: "We will still offer some reduced fee or free query contracts under limited circumstances." Individual users and hobbyists can still obtain access to the lists for free. There is simply some paperwork involved. Not for profits, educational institutions, etc., are eligible for substantial discounts. It is not our intent to deny access to our services because of the inability to pay for a subscription. Those that can afford to pay are being required to do so. Incidently, the cost for most ISPs would equate to about $0.05 per user per year . [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:Last Month for Free MAPS - Not by Skapare (Score:2) Friday July 13, @06:23AM EST Coincidence? (Score:2) by cperciva (cperciva@sfu.ca) on Friday July 13, @03:32AM EST (#26) (User #102828 Info) Is it entirely coincidental that MAPS is starting to charge a subscription fee almost immediately after ORBS was shut down? It seems interesting that as soon as they have no competition they start charging a subscription fee. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd prefer not to pay for the priviledge of having email erroneously blocked. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:Coincidence? by Traxton1 (Score:1) Friday July 13, @04:31AM EST What about a tiered system? (Score:2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 13, @03:35AM EST (#27) So, if thousands of users hitting MAPS is an issue (as I can easily see that it would be), then why not stratify the lookup system somehow? I'm basically thinking of something like ntp and it's stratum system. Only x users could talk directly to MAPS. y users could then talk to x, z to y and so on. Distribute the lookups without distributing the data. That way you avoid both the complexities of a peer-to-peer/distributed data system, and the bandwidth issues of one centralized server. Just a random thought. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. MAPS did not block most spam (Score:4, Informative) by Kiwi (kiwi-nody4la@koala.samiam.org) on Friday July 13, @03:48AM EST (#30) (User #5214 Info) http://linux.samiam.org/linux_links.html In my experience with setting up Spam filters, I have found that RBL-filtering email was very ineffective in blocking spam. I have a fairly complicated spam filter set up for my clients, which works something like this: BCC filter -> MAPS rbl filter -> regex filter Until fairly recently, the BCC filter was the most effective filter for getting rid of spam. Lately, with the proliferation of DSL, spammers now have the bandwidth to send out one email per recipient, making the BCC filter less effective. The RBL filter is very ineffective (and yes, it includes the DUL and other lists). Spammers know that a large number of sites use these filters, so they perform "hit and run" spamming, finding open mail relays to rape. The regex filter is becoming the most effective spam filter. Not to mention a software package I wrote. - Sam "Reality is the most perfect vision of God's will" -- Orson Scott Card [ Reply to This | Parent ] An alternative to fighting SPAM (Score:2, Insightful) by GreyPoopon on Friday July 13, @04:03AM EST (#35) (User #411036 Info) Note: This is only half joking. I just realized something. Only half of the junk in my Inbox comes from spammers. The other half of the junk comes from clueless friends and family who feel the need to constantly forward those "send this to 6 people ... and earn $$$" messages. Or other various hoaxes. Maybe we should educate them before we go after the spammers. I've got it. We can require a training class before anybody is allowed to use e-mail. Of course, it'll have to be free -- wouldn't want to discriminate based on income. Any volunteer teachers? GreyPoopon -- Don't open your mouth when you look up! [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:An alternative to fighting SPAM by heytal (Score:1) Friday July 13, @04:50AM EST How about enhancing SMTP? (Score:2, Interesting) by YKnot on Friday July 13, @04:09AM EST (#37) (User #181580 Info) I'd like to propose an enhancement to the SMTP protocol: The MTA which receives the mail on behalf of the user should answer to the question "SPAM_OK" with either "Yes, TTL=x" or "No, TTL=x". Not following the answer should be made illegal (high fines or "downtime" attached). Every sender should be required to explain why he thinks his mail is not SPAM - failure to do so or unability to prove an existing business relationship, see above... This is neither an opt-in nor an opt-out situation. Instead, people get to choose wether they want opt-in (Answer: No SPAM) or opt-out (Answer: Yes, SPAM is ok). [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:How about enhancing SMTP? by YKnot (Score:1) Friday July 13, @05:14AM EST + Re:How about enhancing SMTP? by YKnot (Score:1) Friday July 13, @06:09AM EST + 1 reply beneath your current threshold. * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. SMTP is NOT broken (Score:3, Interesting) by jmorris42 (jmorris@SbPeAaMu.org) on Friday July 13, @04:24AM EST (#39) (User #1458 Info) http://www.beau.org/~jmorris I am tired of hearing this drivel about SMTP being somehow 'broken'. Some implementations of the protocol ship with broken config files and some might have actual issues in their implementations, but the protocol is just fine. And hell no, I don't want to pay postage to send email. And neither does anyone else using the Internet so forget that idea. Ain't happening. It is a more stupid idea than the wet dream every 'content provider' seems to have about getting micropayments for every pageview. MAPS is dead because their service can't scale to handle the load without throwing massive money at the problem. Kinda like what is/will be happening with M$ Passport/.NET :) What we need is a decentralized replacement without a central authority. Perhaps a 'web of trust' like PGP where any site can black hole another site on their OWN server, and others will pick up the ban automatically when enough servers they trust do so. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:SMTP is NOT broken by sigwinch (Score:2) Friday July 13, @05:25AM EST Alan Cox predicited this last year (Score:5, Interesting) by Tet (rot13: fgn007 @ nfgenqlar . pb . hx) on Friday July 13, @04:41AM EST (#44) (User #2721 Info) http://www.astradyne.co.uk/tet When above.net were hassling ORBS last year, Alan Cox mentioned that it was looking suspiciously like Vixie was planning to take MAPS commercial. See the July 17th entry in his diary. [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Spammers are getting threatening... (Score:2) by Velox_SwiftFox on Friday July 13, @05:17AM EST (#52) (User #57902 Info) Quote from UCE: "Under U.S. Law (Bill s.1618 Title III passed by the 105th U.S. Congress) you are prohibited from considering this mail Spam because we include contact information and a link for removal from our mailing list. Apparently some spammers feel filters that exclude them are now illegal. I suppose next the subject lines will start exclaiming "You are required by law to read this!" [ Reply to This | Parent ] * Re:Spammers are getting threatening... by thogard (Score:1) Friday July 13, @06:56AM EST * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Oops, this one was my bad (Score:1) by h. simpson on Friday July 13, @05:19AM EST (#53) (User #464174 Info) Is nothing free anymore? Can I not use MAPS for free? Can I not get music for free? Are my parents going to kick me out or force me to pay rent? Will I have to pay for what I eat now? Damn turning 18 sucks. I think I am responsible for everything becoming commercialized as to teach me to stop being a free loader and get a job. My bad. H. Simpson apologizes for the end of the Free Internet Revolution. [ Reply to This | Parent ] Alternatives to MAPS and ORBS (Score:5, Informative) by Skapare (cuvy@vcny.arg.rot13) on Friday July 13, @05:42AM EST (#58) (User #16644 Info) http://linuxhomepage.com/ Here are some up and coming alternatives: * http://www.orbl.org/ * http://www.ordb.org/ * http://www.orbz.org/ * http://relays.osirusoft.com/ * http://orbs.gst-group.co.uk/ I also have my mail server configured to reject mail from other mail servers that do not have their IP addresses correctly configured and/or delegated in the in-addr.arpa reversed DNS zone. Amazingly, this has cut out almost as much spam as MAPS has. For Postfix users, this can be done with: smtpd_client_restrictions = permit_mynetworks reject_unknown_client permit While this does end up rejecting a few "legitimate" servers, the number is very small. I suspect that for the most part this works because open relays tend to be the result of "inadequate administration" which can also be the cause of the lack of reverse DNS. If they can't get one of them right, they probably can't get the other right. never ascribe to incompetence that which can be explained by budget cutting [ Reply to This | Parent ] * 1 reply beneath your current threshold. Opt-in mail (Score:2) by Znork on Friday July 13, @06:27AM EST (#69) (User #31774 Info) I've already moved to opt-in mail. You want to get into my mailbox? Well, since I dont feel a real need of having you there, its up to *you* to figure out how to contact me in some other way to get me to add your mail address to acccepted senders (oh, and I screen calls, and dont answer the door without prior notice). My free time is valuable to me, and I appreciate a mailbox where each and every mail is a mail Im actually interested in recieving. [ Reply to This | Parent ] It's offical folks. (Score:1) by kireK on Friday July 13, @07:01AM EST (#83) (User #254264 Info) The offical notice is now on MAPS. [ Reply to This | Parent ] SMTP "Broken".... (Score:2) by wowbagger (wowbaggeratsierrakilotangocharliedotnovemberechota) on Friday July 13, @07:02AM EST (#85) (User #69688 Info) I've thought of a very simple change to how MTA's work that I believe would correct much of the problem with spam, without requiring any change in how SMTP works. Assume you are sending a message to me (me@example.com). Your ISP's MTA contacts example.com's MTA and begins to send the message. Once example.com's MTA knows where the message purports to be from, it looks up the MTAs for that domain, and verifies that the connection is actually coming from one of the MTAs listed. If not, bu-bye! Now, this doesn't address open relays. I don't claim that it does. Open relays are best addressed with education of the alleged sysadmin (perferably with a Board of Education, +5 LART). What it does address is the growing number of spammers using broadband connections to directly spam users. In effect, this is doing much the same thing as the MAPS DUL, with the following exceptions: 1) It's "opt in" rather than "opt out": a mail sender must take positive action to be able to send mail, rather than their ISP taking action to prevent them. 2) Even if you are on a dynamic IP connection, you can still set yourself up with a domain, and use a dynamic DNS provider to link back to your server. (Whoever, IMHO if you are on dynamic DNS, you really should be going through your ISP's MTA, but....) 3) It allows you to have some idea of who is sending you a message. Now, I agree that many spammers will just register domains and spam away, but it costs more effort to register a domain than it does to simply get a connection, the domain registrar has some record of who owns the domain, and the "JethroBillyBobTrailerTrash" spammers won't be able to handle setting this up. You could even extend this to having a public key stored in a text record of the domain, and require that all mail received by an MTA be coded against a valid key. Back to my example: your MTA would retrieve the key for example.com, and code the message against that key and your key. That way, example.com knows that you are the sender of the message. This also has the happy side effect of making it a lot harder to eavesdrop on the message. You could then have a policy on your MTA of: 1) if sender is an authenticated user of this MTA, accept mail 2) if sending MTA is the MX for the FROM address, and if the sending MTA has a key in the domain, accept. 3) If the sending MTA is the MX, but has no key, accept but tag as possible spam. 4) If the sending MTA isn't the MX, reject with a redirect to a webmail bypass URL. OK, pick it apart guys. Maybe we all can hash together an RFC? Moderating trolls and flames as "Offtopic" is Unfair and will be metamoderated as such. How the trolls attack me now.... [ Reply to This | Parent ] 10 replies beneath your current threshold.