Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu> writes: > > I think among other things it is time that we started treating > > stealing other people's open relays for purposes of forwarding > > commercial email as what it probably is -- a felony. That won't help, > > though, so long as no one attempts to prosecute it. > > nor will it help if open relays are not a significant part of the problem. > most of the spam I see these days (at least, the spam that I take the > trouble to analyze) doesn't seem to be going through open relays. Ah, but the stuff coming directly from the source is actually not so big a problem. The block lists get such spam very fast, and I don't see much of it at all -- perhaps one message every couple of days. You can track such spam down pretty quickly and either get it shut down or blacklist the host/network if you can't. The stuff that leaks through, of which I see more and more every day, is coming through the people playing dirty tricks. (They inevitably play such tricks because the black hole lists work pretty well.) However, I agree with you, merely prosecuting the people hijacking other people's resources will not be sufficient. It might be nice to see a few spammers go to jail, though, for stealing other people's computer resources. -- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com -- "Ask not what your country can force other people to do for you..."