ONLINE-ADS>> Leeching criminal spammers

Ryan Scott (rscott_at_netcreations.com)
Fri, 28 Mar 1997 12:59:42 +0000

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Just a fyi for everyone regarding the spam issue.

I've discovered that at least 2 companies have sent or are sending
spam THROUGH our server. Someone sent a porn site announcement to
AOL users from a no-name front in Las Vegas, the other was an
apparently legitimate company who shall remain nameless until we're
done investigating this.

The way this works is they open an SMTP connection to our server and
send mail to other servers through it. It puts OUR domain name in
the header (I'm not talking here about the visible block header we
put on all our messages, but in the delivery headers you normally do
not see)

We're not exactly getting blamed for the mail, instead I get mail at
postmaster_at_netcreations.com saying one of our 'clients' is spamming.
In fact we have no clients like that, we're not an ISP.

Unfortunately there is no way to prevent the SMTP server from
accepting the messages. There's been a big discussion in the
technical groups about this for some time. However we're going to
try to prevent the delivery of those same messages. Having to
deal with this at all is a burden on both our time and our server's
processing power. I consider it an attack on our machines and I
think the law would also.

If you've ever received, or ever do receive mail that in the
expanded headers says 'netcreations.com', but does not have our
normal 4 line clearly visible block header, it is NOT from us and
we're trying everything to prevent that from happening.

This is to let you know what spammers are up to. Absolutely no sense
of what's right and wrong.

In my opinion, using our server to delivery someone else's mail
without our express permission is a criminal activity.

Btw: if you are running a server, you are open to this attack.

______________________________________________________________________
Ryan Scott - rscott_at_netcreations.com - 718 522 1531
- Reinventing Direct Marketing on the Net -
NetCreations, Inc - http://www.netcreations.com/
- Targeted 100% OPT IN Email -
PostMaster Direct Response - http://www.postmasterdirect.com/
*be sure to quote me in your reply*

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