On Sat, 26 Jan 2002 wojtek@chylonia.3miasto.net wrote:

> i (think) i understand.
> that anyone can send mail as for example wojtek@3miasto.net and it will
> forward it.

Yes, this is quite undesirable isn't it? Especially when half a million
complaints arrive to _you_. After all, the receiver can only reliably
verify where they got the mail from, and that place will be your server
(probably along with false claims about you being the sending user).
 
> imap for SENDING mails?

I was under the impression it worked both ways, but I have never used
it so I may well be wrong.
 
> and a lot of normal mail.

I'm not sure if this is true. If a large user-base notice that they can't
send mail because their domain was black-listed, they tend to bug their
system administrator to make it not black-listed, which in this case would
necessarily mean closing down an open relay, which is a Good Thing(tm).

> the only way of controlling spam is to eliminate the source.

..and for all the rest of the world knows, you will be the only reliably
identifiable source of the spam. 

> so if anyone will query me who at this&that time send mail as somebody do
> somebody it's easy to identify source IP address of spam

..and it will turn out to be quite an anonymous dialup account, or a
cracked account or... and by the time you get the responsible sysadmin's
poor arse on the phone, the actual spammer will have moved on to a dozen
other accounts and the damage is already done anyway. Closing down that
account won't help.

Forgive me for being pessimistic, but I've seen this over and over and
over again. We can never get to the actual spammers unless we shut down
every single open relay on earth first. Unless politicians get a clue
and outlaw spam altogether, but I haven't seen any flying pigs lately
in my own country at least.

-- 
/ali
:wq