tlug: Mass mailings and promiscuous mailers

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

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tlug note from "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>
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I've been getting a lot of mass-mail recently.  It seems that the
latest generation of mass mailers works by opening an SMTP connection
to some random unprotected server, and letting them do the dirty work
of distribution.  A couple of the sys admins I've corresponded with
indicate that this is a real problem, and that they don't have a quick 
fix.

To my chagrin, I discovered that my system permits the same thing.
I'm pretty low bandwidth to the big markets so Cyberblowme and
Quantcom and Bigfoot are probably not going to attack.  (Although
Bigfoot bounced their mail from London off a Linux :-( site in
Australia.)  Better to close the barn door before the horse gets out.

I'm using Smail 1.3.29.1, and the docs don't say anything about
preventing your mailer from becoming a koshu-benjo.  Anybody know
anything about this?

I'd rather not switch to sendmail, but I will if I must.

A couple of the junk mails I've gotten have been filtered through
Linux systems :-(

TIA

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com
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