From: lcs Remailer Administrator <mix-admin@nym.alias.net>
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:04:26 -0800 (PST)
To: aga <aga@dhp.com>
Subject: Re: WANTED: Tolerant, anonymity-friendly news admins
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970207050959.17740D-100000@dhp.com>
Message-ID: <19970207180418.28980.qmail@anon.lcs.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


aga <aga@dhp.com> writes:

> Who attacked the network and for what reason?

Well, as best I can tell I've gotten caught in the crossfire of a
spam/"anti-spam" spam war.  People are forging articles through
anonymous remailers to solicit spam to non-spamming customers of
"spam-friendly" ISPs, in the hopes of driving those customers away.
In other words, a lot of articles are being posted to groups like
alt.make.money.fast with headers like:

 From: customer@isp.under.attack (My^ISP^spams^I^should^switch)

Then the spam bots collect the addresses, and send lots of mail like

 To: customer@isp.under.attack (My^ISP^spams^I^should^switch)
 Subject: Great opportunity!!!

 My^ISP^spams^I^should^switch,

 I saw your post the other day, and have an oportunity for you that's
 so good you can't miss it...

It would be amusing if it weren't causing me hassles.  Ultimately,
however, the person doing this is clearly trying to get ISPs to set
more restrictive policies about what mail/news customers can send,
while knocking off a few anonymous remailers and mail2news gateways in
the process.

> Well, just who is cutting you off and for what reason?
> And what is their telephone number?

At issue here are a number of complicated high-level administrative
issues.  It's not just that someone is trying to pull the plug on me.
I've been asked by someone who is not the one getting the phone calls
or exerting anti-mail2news pressure if I would stop using MIT news
servers.  The reason is that that person needs to maintain good
relations with the people who are being harassed over the fogery.

I don't really want to go into details.  The point is that this
situation is a lot more subtle than whether the pro-mail2news people
can "out-harrass" the people complaining about forgeries.  Therefore,
I would sincerely appreciate it if you did not try to make any phone
calls or do anything to use up any more of these people's time.  I
fully intend to keep mail2news running, and am just trying to get more
news servers (after having lost one) to maintain reliability and
strengthen my position.

> Just what is your definition of "abuse?"

This got answered in a separate message.