Re: AW: Post.Office and spamming

Wayne Jordan ( wjordan@pcl.net )
Tue, 18 Feb 1997 08:41:21 -0600

There is a simple way to limit these spammers. All of our email boxes are
limited to 5MB's of email at a time. In some situations you could reduce
this if it is really bad. Once the mailbox fills up all other mail is
returned automatically. Let's don't jump on the bandwagon of trying to
derail the openness of the internet just because of these bozo's. Although,
I agree they are irritating it isn't enough for me to give up the freedom
and openness of the internet. And you are right this is the response from
Software.Com, but this isn't something I would consider their problem. This
is just the nature of the beast. Like Paul Harvey says: "There is no
self-govenment without self-control", or at least something like that :-)
you get the point. I had one of my customers spamm several list and when I
started getting all of the irrate email sent to me as postmaster I
forwarded every bit of it to him. Within a couple of days he emailed me and
apologized for his stupidity and said he learned his lessson and would
never do it again. To this date he hasn't. Hope this helps.

At 01:52 PM 2/18/97 +0100, you wrote:
>Just to inform you,
>this is from an answer I got from software.com on this problem:
>
>>Peter,
>>
>>Yes, you are correct.
>>
>>Do to the openess of the internet (SMTP) protocols, that we to which we all
>>adhere, making e-mail communications almost effortless, this has become a
>>security concern that is plaguing most of the internet industry. We are
>>currently developing steps to protect you from and prevent these activities
>>from occuring.
>>
>>Hope this helps...
>>Support@Software.com
>>
>
>Hoping they finish it in time, before the spammers hit us :(
>-
>Peter A. Sang
>SANG Computersysteme GmbH * Kruppstr. 82-100 * 45145 Essen * Germany
>T: +49-201-82020-0 * F:-40 * http://sang.net * mailto:pesa@sang.net
>
>>----------
>>Von: Gecker@Oakweb.com[SMTP:Gecker@Oakweb.com]
>>Gesendet: Dienstag, 18. Februar 1997 1:18
>>An: emerald@iea.com
>>Betreff: Post.Office and spamming
>>
>>Hello,
>>
>>Well this is a little off topic but I know there are a number of Emerald
>>users that are using Post.Office as their email program. The other day I
>>noticed that my Post.Office mail server was working pretty hard. As I soon
>>discovered, some mass mailers were redirecting spam to my mail server for
>>distribution. These guys were logging into Earthlink.net and had specified
>>my Post.Office mail server as the mail gateway for their spamming. So they
>>would post a message to Earthlink, earthlink would forward it to me, and my
>>server would mail out spam all over the net with my mail server's address.
>>Boy I was pissed when I found out. I had been handling an extra 5000-10000
>>messages a day for these spammers.
>>
>>But here is where I really got upset. I contacted Software.com asking what
>>I could do to stop this kind of activity. They informed me that
>>Post.Office can NOT filter this stuff out and I'm stuck with these spammers
>>for the time being. So I'm looking at switching to sendmail or something
>>else that can filter out SMTP accepts for message delivery to non local
>>domains. So if you are using Post.Office, you should be aware of this
>>vulnerability to spamming. I suggest you write Software.com and encourage
>>then to come up with a fix before your site gets targeted by spammers.
>>
>>David Edwards
>>System Administrator - Oakweb.com
>>Lake Tahoe's Premier Internet Service Provider
>>1-800-61-TAHOE
>>-
>>Emerald Mailing list (emerald@iea.com)
>>
>-
>Emerald Mailing list (emerald@iea.com)
>
>

==================================================================
Wayne Jordan
wjordan@pcl.net
President
PC Land, Inc.
http://www.pcl.net

"Making Computers Work for You"

(205) 546-8949 Office (205) 546-8940 Fax
==================================================================