Re: [MiNT] Problems with mail service at Magdeburg

[Michael Schwingen <rincewind@discworld.dascon.de>]

On Wed, Jan 05, 2000 at 04:47:22PM +0100, Konrad M. Kokoszkiewicz wrote:
> 
> I have problems sending mails from this account (draco@obta.uw.edu.pl) to
> Frank Naumann. The mails are returned with notification "Service
> unavailable". Here the record follows:
> 
> ... while talking to prinz-atm.cs.uni-magdeburg.de.:
> >>> MAIL From:<draco@obta.uw.edu.pl>
> <<< 550 open relay 193.0.75.165;see:http://www.orbs.org

Yup - I've been hit by that one too.

> I didn't yet manage to look at the page recommended (http://www.orbs.org,
> slow transfer) but I suspect this is a sort of mail filtering service
> which rejects postings incoming from "improper" servers, just because an
> user somewhere inside the filtered domain (*.pl even?) attempted to do
> something considered bad (e.g. a hack attempt). 

You should have read it.

ORBS does not filter based on users, but on lists of IP addresses which
allow open relaying (an thus spamming) of other sites. This means it is easy
for the admin of your mail server to close the hole and get your IP
addresses removed from the blacklist.

> While I don't personally like hackers, I'd like to express my disgust of
> such a sort of massive responsibility, which I am taken under, not being
> guilty.

You don't have a *right* to deliver mail to someone who does not want it.
After all, you are using *their* ressources, and they decide who they want
mail from. In this case, they decided they don't like your mail server's IP
address ;-)

cu
Michael
-- 
Michael Schwingen, Ahornstrasse 36, 52074 Aachen