OT: spammers are using my domain again

[Matthew Miller]

On Fri, Oct 08, 2004 at 03:45:38PM -0300, Trevor Smith wrote:
> provider certainly knows and can keep track of the address of the smtp server 
> it runs for me -- AND any and all SMTP servers that my telco (when I'm at 
> home) might run and allow me to use. Now, I have no idea how many of those 
> servers there are or  what their addresses are. Certainly I have no hope of 
> getting the telco to report that information whenever it might change to 
> either me or my web/mail hosting company so that my web/mail hosting company 
> can update their SPF records accordingly.

Well, if they don't tell you, you won't know to change your mail to be sent
through another server, so your mail will stop working, so you'll probably
notice that. :)

The catch is that the mail may get passed on a little within the company
itself (from the server you submit it to to another one for outgoing), or
the machine may simply have a different outgoing address from the incoming
one. For example, a quick glance at your headers shows that the mail appears
to be coming from root.azhosting.biz -- which is one of what appears to be
a bazillion names attached to the same address as mail.haligonian.com.

> UNLESS -- SPF only needs simple records (not IP addresses) like:
> mail.haligonian.com
> smtp1.ns.sympatico.ca
> which may change over time, but not often and since there are only 2, I could 
> manage the reporting of such changes to my hosting provider (assuming I 
> convinced them to set up SPF).

Basically, this one.


> So I guess my question is, which scenario is it? Should I pester my hoster or 
> not? And what about the reports that Microsoft's patents (pending) make the 
> whole system suspect?

Every aspect of all software is patented by someone; they just haven't
realized it yet. In this case, Microsoft has stated that their pending
patent doesn't cover what SPF does.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>