Re: post.office

Jeffrey Betts ( (no email) )
Sun, 23 Mar 1997 19:42:50 -0800

Well I have been reading the postings about
Post Office "Glad I don't use it" :) And have
been reading replies from Lee such as below.
I think the bottom line is that the problem be
fixed with a patch and this patch be ditributed
to all Post Office owners "For Free". Lets have less
of the excuses as bellow.

Ex. Well we followed the IETF for MTA don't
blame us.

Sound more like the federal government then
a software company..

Jeff Betts
Jbetts@ccaccess.net

----------
> From: Lee Levitt <Lee.Levitt@software.com>
> To: ntisp@emerald.iea.com
> Subject: Re: post.office
> Date: Sunday, March 23, 1997 5:16 PM
>
> At 06:57 PM 3/23/97 -0600, Daryl Banttari wrote:
> >Hi Everyone,
> >
> >I've been following this post.office spammer thread with some interest.
> >Here's an idea:
> >
> >Set up a machine as a mail forwarder (only), and point MX to it. Use
> >only a hosts file for name resolution (disable DNS) so that the only
> >machine the forwarder can look up by name is the "real" mail server.
> >Make sure the hosts file includes an entry for the domain itself that
> >points to the real mail server. Any SMTP for your system goes through
> >through the forwarder to the real mail host, and any mail hitting that
> >"inbound" mail server for other mail servers dies as undeliverable.
> >Then block tcp:25 in to your "real" mail server. It's kludgy but it may
> >work for some of you with a spare machine and a few hours of time.
> >
> >It does nothing to actually fix the core problem, i.e. buggy software
> >and poor support, but I'm offering this suggestion for those of you
> >pushed against the wall by this.
>
> So lets see, we build a product that adheres to the IETF standard for MTA
> relaying, and you call it "buggy" as a result? I don't think that's fair.
>
> I understand your pain WRT spam, but the problem is *not* a bug, it's
> adherence to the spec that defines how our product interoperates across
the
> Internet. And *any* mailserver that conforms to the IETF spec is
> susceptible to being used as a spam relay.
>
> What we're working on is a workaround to the problem, one that doesn't
> corrupt the spec we must adhere to.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lee
> *************************************************************
> Lee Levitt, Director, Business Development
> Lee.Levitt@software.com
> Software.com - The Internet Infrastructure Company (tm)
> Publishers of Post.Office and InterMail
> 91 Hartwell Avenue http://www.software.com
> Lexington, MA 02173
> Phone: 617-274-7000 x 229 Fax: 617-674-1080
> *************************************************************
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> NTISP Mailing List listserver@emerald.iea.com