On Fri, 30 May 2003, John C Klensin wrote: > --On Friday, 30 May, 2003 16:01 -0400 Dean Anderson > <dean@av8.com> wrote: > > > I haven't repeatedly (or at all) defamed anyone. > > You have repeatedly made public statements about what I don't > know, what experience I lack, etc. You have made incorrect claims about the difficulty of tracing an IP address. This suggests a lack of operational experience in tracing IP addresses. But I concede I don't know your full resume and I could be wrong about your operational experience tracing abusers. Writing RFC's, inventing protocols, and chairing standards bodies, and managing large groups of people, and high level talks with the FBI does not seem to be relevent experience. So far, you haven't sent anything (despite a very impressive resume) that seems to be relevant experience in tracking abusers. But whatever direct experience you do have doing such things, you are _still_ *wrong* about the *difficulty and expense* of doing them. If you do have experience tracking criminal abusers, where you found it was expensive, I would say that perhaps you were doing something wrong, and making it more difficult than it needs to be. In any case, arguing about what your experience is deflects attention from the question of whether it is expensive to track down an IP address, and is irrelevant to the question of whether an open relay allows a user to send anonymous email. > I have questioned the facts you report, but have not made any public > claims that you lack sufficient background to know what you are talking > about. You've questioned them, but only to say they are wrong and the go into irrelevant detail about Asian ISPs and such. > > And I also would like to initiate a formal complaint. > > Oh, goodie. In the interesting of getting resolution, and to > preserve everyone's sanity in the interim, I'm going to make no > further postings on these threads until Harald, or someone else, > indicate how he (or they) intend to sort this out. OK by me. I will do the same. > > You haven't answered the question. The answer you gave was > > irrelevant to the question, and doesn't support your wrong > > assertion that open relays allow one to send anonymous email > > without the IP address of the sender. > > What I told you, at some length if I recall, in a private note, > is that You didn't say (except for the very last) the things below in any private message to me. I will be happy to post them on the web, so that people can see what you wrote off list. What you wrote is rather condencending, while I have be respectful, if direct. Some of your claims below are true statements, but are irrelevant to the question of whether an open relay alters the property of a users' anonymity. > * Only the IP address recorded in a Received field by the SMTP > server that last accepts the message for delivery to you can > generally be considered reliable and trustworthy. This is not so. All Recieved headers inserted *after* the spammer has released the message are trustworthy, since the spammer can only insert false headers, but cannot modify anything after they send the message. > * Received fields --other than, again, the one that you own > server inserts-- are routinely faked in some varieties of spam. No. again, modification isn't possible *after* the spammer sends the message. See above. > * While it is not easy when a multiple-transaction TCP-based > protocol like SMTP is involved, IP addresses can be faked. Faking TCP connections is difficult, and not relevant to the question of whether Open relay allows anonymous email. If IP addresses are faked, they are faked regardless of whether open relays are used. Nothing is altered by open relays. > * Obtaining the IP address of a client does not permit > identifying a specific user, unless the owner/provider of that This may be true in some (few) situations, such as the Asian ISP you mentioned. But, this is *still irrelevant* to the question of open relay allows anonymous email. As I pointed out, previously. You are just repeating canards, rather than addressing the issue of relevance.