On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 15:44:06 -0000, Dylan Smith
wrote:

In article , Bob
Noel wrote:
In article , Dylan Smith
wrote:

Or stop being a skinflint and get a proper business
DSL connection that supports servers

Your assumption regarding whether or not I'm being cheap is incorrect.

Your assumption that only business accounts can properly run servers is
incorrect.

But my assumption that 99.9% of mail directly from a dynamic IP address
is spam/malware is entirely correct. I'm not going through all that crap

I'm not sure if it is quite that high, but the figure is staggering.
Given a cable network with thousands of users, it only takes a few
infected machines, and or a few actual spammers to really tie things
up.

I've said it before, but not just the average user, but most are
absolutely clueless. They do not know how to, or care to bother
practice safe computing. They enable HTML e-mail instead of setting
it to plain text. They have their address books set to automatically
take any new addresses to which they send e-mail. They open
attachments as they know "their" friends would never send them a
virus. They have their systems set to automatically run macros. and
on and on and on... They do not use fire walls or virus checkers and
then when something happens they blame the operating system. Never
mind that had all the defaults been turned off they would have turned
them back on.

The spammers have discovered that the best way to get addresses now is
to infect the machine so it sends out the contents of their address
book. This has given them a whole new set of addresses that are never
put up on the net.

just because one geek refuses to get a static IP address for their
mail server. Just like if you come from North Korea, you need a visa to
visit the US, if you want your mail to be delivered to my users, you
must use an IP address which is not strongly identified with machines
running malware.

And the static IP for the mail server is easy to get. All you do is
use your ISPs mail service rather than creating your own server on a
dial up. Or sign up for one of the free ones.


If you're not being cheap, what exactly are your reasons to send mail
directly from your dynamic IP address instead of ponying up for a VPS or
a static IP address?

It doesn't cost me a cent extra to use my IPSs mail server (static
IP), or in this case, my own (which is static) although the host is
located at the ISPs rather than here. It's much faster.

The point is there is no real reason for the end user to use dynamic
e-mail addressing.

I will make a prediction. It won't be long and ALL e-mail will have
to have a valid return address. There will be no more legal anonymous
addressing, or posting.

Even with the "do not call" list, I still receive more telemarketing
calls than spam. (political campaigns, special interest groups,
charities, religious organizations... they are by definition exempt
from that law)

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com