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Dateline: 4 February 2000 Early Edition Read The Previous Edition A permanent link to this page can be found here
Editorial
Firstly I'd like to thank all those who took the time to send me their
thoughts and comments -- there were simply too many messages to respond
individually.
To summarise -- the vast majority of respondents heaped praise on the work
that ORBS performs in trying to limit the amount of UCE that hits our
mailboxes every day, however there were a few who claim that ORBS is
excessively "heavy handed" and, in their opinion, shoots first and asks
questions later.
Here are some excerpts from both sides of the fence:
The technology used by Alan is first rate, this is not in dispute.
However his assertion that he has the right to test servers is incorrect.
...
In addition to this Alan lists all open relays in his database in a
publicly accessible list, perfect resource for spammers. In my personal
view this makes Orbs a spam support service.
If Alan would work _with_ the community rather than his current approach
which is "I'm right, you're wrong and I've the right to check your
network" then he wouldn't have the problems and we'd have a resource which
is highly useful to the net at large.
Another writer documented the process they encountered when ORBS probed their
mailserver and they found themselves on the blacklist. They commented on
the "polite" email they received and the way ORBS explained how to get off the
list. After closing their mailserver, the writer noted that "complying with
ORBS cut down the traffic on my mail server by more than 30%, giving my users
additional bandwidth and giving me peace of mind."
So as usual -- there is no black and white. As I said in my original article,
ORBS has many friends and some enemies -- this will probably be forever the
case.
The most saddening email I received was from Alan Brown this morning in which
he advises " our suppliers have given ORBS 14 days to remove the tester from
its current location or be disconnected." Alan goes on to say "anyone who'd
like to volunteer a host or 2 to run testers is welcome to contact me for
details of requirements."
An interesting aspect of the email received is that this issue has prompted
many of Aardvark's international readers to send their comments. Over the
past two days there has been a steady stream of responses from as far afield
as Canada, the USA, the UK, Australia and other countries.
I had several requests for the "evidence" that XTRA was running an open mail
relay -- all those who asked should now have received a copy of the email
(complete with headers) I sent as a test.
Aardvark will keep an eye on this situation and report any developments
in coming weeks.
As always, your comments are gladly received.
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Aardvark Daily is a publication of, and is copyright to, Bruce Simpson, all rights reserved
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