Re: botted hosts

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Mon, 4 Apr 2005, Dave Rand wrote:
> But why do you think it is right to shift the burden on the recipient to
> block access, when it could be done at the source.  Yes, it means that
> the people getting the cash from the customer would have to actually support
> said customer by making it non-annoying for them.

Do you want an Internet where your provider decides for you, with whom and
when you are allowed to communicate?  Or do you want to decide for yourself
whether to accept or not accept the communication?

There are always at least two customers to the communications.  The
sender and the recipient.  Both the sender and the recipient are paying
someone.  Both sender and recipient providers are getting "cash."  And if
you believe your argument, both the sender and receiver are engaged in
"cost-shifting."

Blocking the communications a priori also prevents the two parties from
deciding on a call-by-call basis whether or not they want the communications.
If the e-mail is in your bulk mail folder, you can decide what you want.
If the e-mail is blocked by the sender's ISP, you don't have the option
anymore.

A lot of people want to use inexpensive broadband connections, and use
mail servers at their university or company.  For whatever reason, the
university and company mail admins only support port 25.  If the ISP
blocks port 25, the university and company mail admins loose their
choice and have to spend money to upgrade their mail servers to support
port 587 or something else.  So there is lots of "cost-shifting."

Do a google search for universities and mail hosting providers that
aren't supporting port 587 and offer to help them update their
mail servers.  When you are finished, then you can advocate ISPs
block port 25.