"Zero Tolerance for Spam" Policy
We don't tolerate spam, and support the MAPS
Project efforts to eliminate spam. Our MTA is not an open relay. We use
the MAPS RBL to reject mail to or from
known spam-friendly sites.
- Thursday, June 18, 1998
- Our domain was attacked by a spammer who used a forged "From:"
header listing this domain (specifically "informationsys@tech.org") as the
sender. The mail did NOT originate on or pass through a tech.org server.
It was relayed through an open relay in Japan. Because we were listed in the
"From:" header, all the bounce messages for invalid e-mail addresses came
here, over our leased line (for which we pay money), and get logged on our
disk (for which we pay money).
- Thursday, July 9, 1998
- Still going, this time through an open relay in Denmark. The relay in
question didn't even log the IP address of the machine that sent it the mail,
and was RBL'd. The complaints trickle
in, and the bounces pour in - probably in the neighborhood of 50,000 or so
by now.
- Thursday, July 16, 1998
- Maybe there's a pattern to these dates? Anyway, the spam sent out this
run was through an open relay in Japan that actually logged the IP address
of the originating host! I traced the address to an ISP in NY, who told me that they had shut down the spammer's account this morning. The bounce messages
continue to pour in from the relay and beyond, but maybe the spammer will get
the clue that forgery is BAD.