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List:       inet-access
Subject:    Re: about ORBS
From:       johnl () iecc ! com (John R !  Levine)
Date:       1999-05-29 3:17:32
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>An open relay is a problem because, unless it's fixed, it WILL (eventually)
>be used to relay spam.

Don't be silly.  Look at the number of hosts in ORBS, versus the
number of actual spam relay hosts.  ORBS probably lists a hundred
non-spamming hosts for every spamming one.  The vast majority of ORBS
entries have never and will never relay anything.

I entirely agree that open relays should be closed, but ORBS' approach
of saying "we've blacklisted you until you play by our rules" is so
obnoxious that it's counterproductive.  Almost nobody uses ORBS.  My
main server was in ORBS for several months and I got maybe one piece
of bounced mail a week with an ORBS notice.

As far as system administrators playing games, that probably means me.
I did some mail hacks to show how easily spoofed ORBS tests are.
Sure, you can spoof your own servers into the list, which isn't very
interesting, but you can equally well spoof into ORBS any host on
which you have an account that can forward mail.  An ill-mannered ISP
could easily sign up for an account on a competitor's system and use
that to spoof it into ORBS or any ORBS-like system.  Maybe they do,
ORBS takes nominations from anywhere.

Mr. ORBS decided that I was "playing silly buggers" so he manually
listed my server for months after I stopped the forwarding exercise
and it was not in fact relaying any third-party mail from him or
anyone else.  Draw your own conclusions.

As I noted in a previous message, I've been working with Al Iverson's
RRSS that only lists open relays that have actually sent spam, based
on nominations from identified people that Al knows.  That's a much
more reasonable approach to relay blocking, and it appears to block
nearly as much spam as ORBS does.






-- 
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
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