[ On Friday, November 3, 2000 at 13:01:42 (-0600), Peter Seebach wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: printer supplies 
>
> "illegal" is not quite the right word.  Some people run their own mail
> servers legitimately.  We may be forced to cede that ground, but not all
> port 25 connections from dialups are bad.

Any such connection that's not explicitly authorised is in fact a theft
of service, which is probably illegal in most jurisdictions (even though
it's often not possible to prosecute).

Every dail-up provider worth using in the first place offers a proper
outbound mail relay host that explicitly authorises only his own dial-up
ports for this very reason.  Every e-mail-only ISP, along with those who
provide roaming services which make them essentially e-mail-only from
some user's point of view, has by now either learned to use some form of
authenticated SMTP for their users, or has already been banned from
sending e-mail to most sane networks.

Anyone not using their provider's authorised outbound mail relay has a
serious configuration problem that they should fix sooner rather than
later.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>