The administrators of M-Net are planning to terminate support of outgoing
email on or about the first of November (a week from today). The
termination of outgoing email is intended to deal with the problem of
phishing, M-Net being used as a spam source, and the construction of
websites which fraudulently involve paypal. (See M-Net's "Policy"
conference, item 421.)
Complaints in response to the spamming et cetera have begun to threaten
M-Net's free colo situation to the degree that M-Net's administrators deem
that action of some kind must be taken.
I realize that it's not likely that the same unknown perpetrators that are
causing Grex to be offline, are the same ones who are forcing M-Net to
relinquish one of its most valuable assets (i.e. the outgoing email
program), but on the outside chance that they are the same, might it not
behoove knowledgeable Grex personnel to lend some advice to M-Net regarding
alternative measures in dealing with the aforementioned problem short of
M-Net having to terminate its outgoing email.
Once the perpetrators are done victimizing M-Net, what is to stop them
from targeting Grex? Is Grex any less vulnerable to phishing and being
used as a spam source than M-Net?
Regarding a comparison of Grex and M-Net with regard to spamming et
cetera, one poster in item 421 of M-Net's Policy conference is quoted as
follows:
I do wonder how grex deals with this issue.
[excerpt, M-Net Policy conf., Item 421, #116 (casper) Sat, Oct 22, 2005
(04:27)]
Advice to M-Net regarding the identification rigor which Grex requires
before permitting the privilege of outbound telnetting, might be eminently
useful in this regard.
The world wide community of public access Unix based systems is not so
large and powerful that an attack of this magnitude on any one can be
ignored by the rest.
12 responses total.
Grex restricts outgoing telnet access to members. Members pay $6 per month, and must submit some form of ID. That can be a personal check, copy of a drivers license, or any other ID which meets the criteria in ~aruba/idpolicy. Or, if people would rather not identify themselves to Grex, they may go through Paypal's verification process, and then pay Grex through Paypal. That counts as verification for Grex too.
However, that has nothing to do with M-Net's email problems. Nothing stops someone from coming to grex, building a paypal phishing site, and then emailing thousands of people.
;aedophile
I disagree that outgoing e-mail is one of M-Net's most valuable assets. E-mail providers are a dime a dozen on the Internet. M-Net is a community based system. Internet provisioning has more to do with inbound service for interaction with said community.
If incoming e-mail is not terminated also, M-Net just becomes a spam-bucket.
Someone was confused. Outgoing email will not cease, only inbound.
Umm.. no, we're stopping outbound email. Except for mail forwarded by a .forward file. re 5 - it already is a spam bucket. I delete all mail on m-net that doesn't come from another m-net account. Same here on grex.
I forward grex and m-net mail to gmail and let them sort it out.
tod uses the same superior method as myself.
There may be a stay of judgment regarding the termination of outbound email at M-Net. The following responses appeared on Wednesday in M-Net's Policy conference, item 421: >#154 Life is Jenga (casper) Wed, Nov 2, 2005 (13:07): >The new tentative date is 12/1. > >#155 The Gorilla Did It (casper) Wed, Nov 2, 2005 (13:54): >I guess
it probably means they just haven't had time to do it.
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
You have several choices: