Information about Open Mail Relay
An open mail relay is an SMTP (e-mail) server configured in such a way that it allows anyone on the Internet to relay (i.e. send) e-mail through it.
Nowadays, e-mail transfer by "relaying," or pass-along methods, is almost forgotten. Backbone networks and Internet switches make it cost effective and expeditious for end-user PCs or even cellphones to send mail directly to the target host, without need for relaying through a "middleman" site. The underlying communication methods of the Internet already provide end-to-end connectivity via a pass-along method.
This trend reduced the percentage of mail senders that were open relays from over 90% down to well under 1% over several years. This led to spammers adopting other techniques, such as the use of botnets of zombie computers to send spam. Although open relays are no longer widely used to send spam, many sites continue to refuse mail traffic from them.
One consequence of the new unacceptability of open relays was an inconvenience for some end users and certain internet service providers. To allow customers to use their e-mail addresses at Internet locations other than the company's systems (such as at school or work), many mail sites explicitly allowed open relaying so that customers could read and send e-mail via the ISP from any location. Once open relay became unacceptable due to abuse (and unusable due to blocking of open relays) ISPs and other sites had to adopt new protocols to allow remote users to send mail. These include smart hosts, SMTP-AUTH, POP before SMTP, and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs).
The Can Spam Act of 2003 makes it illegal to send spam through an open relay, but makes no provision regarding sending personal e-mail through them or regarding their operation.
Gilmore contends he has a right to configure his computer however he pleases, and others have the right to configure their computers to ignore him. However, since open-relay blacklisting is most commonly done at the ISP level, many end users have this decision made for them without their explicit request. Many ISPs have been unwilling to remove the blacklists that prevent his e-mails from reaching recipients on the ISP's network or implement any other method (such as a whitelist) to allow his e-mail through. As a result, he is unable to communicate by e-mail with many of his friends and business partners.
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History and technology
Until the 1990s this was the normal configuration for a mail server and was often the default on UNIX systems at installation. This was due, in part, to the traditional method in which e-mail (through and beyond the Internet) was passed from computer to computer via modems on telephone lines, often never touching the small Internet of the time. It was cheaper and simpler for e-mail to be passed from computer to computer until it reached its destination than to connect directly to the target computer (e.g. via modem) and log in to transfer the mail. For many early networks, such as UUCPNET, FidoNet and BITNET, lists of machines that were open relays were a core part of those networks. Filtering and speed of e-mail delivery were not priorities at that time and in any case the government and educational servers with which the Internet was started were covered by a federal edict forbidding the transfer of commercial messages.Nowadays, e-mail transfer by "relaying," or pass-along methods, is almost forgotten. Backbone networks and Internet switches make it cost effective and expeditious for end-user PCs or even cellphones to send mail directly to the target host, without need for relaying through a "middleman" site. The underlying communication methods of the Internet already provide end-to-end connectivity via a pass-along method.
Abuse by spammers
In the mid-1990s, with the rise in popularity (and commercial adoption) of the Internet, it quickly attracted mass-marketers, in this domain known as spammers. As spam soon became widely unpopular, especially among e-mail server administrators who had to deal with the increased unsolicited traffic, spammers resorted to re-routing their e-mail through third party e-mail servers to avoid detection. After this practice became widespread, the practice of operating an open relay e-mail server came to be frowned upon among the majority of Internet server administrators and other prominent users, many of whom were veterans of the Internet's non-commercial era.Anti-spam efforts against open relays
Many ISPs use DNSBLs (DNS-based Blocking Lists) to disallow mail from open relays. Once a mail server is detected or reported that allows third parties to send mail through them, they will be added to one or more such lists, and other e-mail servers using those lists will reject any mail coming from those sites.This trend reduced the percentage of mail senders that were open relays from over 90% down to well under 1% over several years. This led to spammers adopting other techniques, such as the use of botnets of zombie computers to send spam. Although open relays are no longer widely used to send spam, many sites continue to refuse mail traffic from them.
One consequence of the new unacceptability of open relays was an inconvenience for some end users and certain internet service providers. To allow customers to use their e-mail addresses at Internet locations other than the company's systems (such as at school or work), many mail sites explicitly allowed open relaying so that customers could read and send e-mail via the ISP from any location. Once open relay became unacceptable due to abuse (and unusable due to blocking of open relays) ISPs and other sites had to adopt new protocols to allow remote users to send mail. These include smart hosts, SMTP-AUTH, POP before SMTP, and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs).
The Can Spam Act of 2003 makes it illegal to send spam through an open relay, but makes no provision regarding sending personal e-mail through them or regarding their operation.
Modern-day proponents
The most famous open mail relay operating today is probably that of John Gilmore, who argues that running an open relay is a free speech issue. His server is included on many open relay blacklists (many of which are generated by "automatic detection", that is, by anti-spam blacklisters sending an (unsolicited) test e-mail to other servers to see if they will be relayed). He has never sent any spam personally, yet these measures cause much of his outgoing e-mail to be blocked. Along with his further deliberate configuration of the server, his open relay enables people to send e-mail without their IP address being directly visible to the recipient and thereby send e-mail anonymously.Gilmore contends he has a right to configure his computer however he pleases, and others have the right to configure their computers to ignore him. However, since open-relay blacklisting is most commonly done at the ISP level, many end users have this decision made for them without their explicit request. Many ISPs have been unwilling to remove the blacklists that prevent his e-mails from reaching recipients on the ISP's network or implement any other method (such as a whitelist) to allow his e-mail through. As a result, he is unable to communicate by e-mail with many of his friends and business partners.
External links
- DSBL.org – Distributed Sender Blackhole List
- SpamHelp – SMTP open relay test
- How to block e-mail relaying – Advice for UNIX administrators
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the de facto standard for e-mail transmissions across the Internet. Formally SMTP is defined in RFC 821 (STD 10) as amended by RFC 1123 (STD 3) chapter 5. The protocol used today is also known as ESMTP and defined in RFC 2821.
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Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government
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E-mail (short for electronic mail; often also abbreviated as e-mail, email or simply mail) is a store and forward method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems.
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For the band, see .
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Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy.
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FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet.
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BITNET was a cooperative U.S. university network founded in 1981 under the aegis of Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University. The first network link was between CUNY and Yale.
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A backbone network provides a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks.[1] A backbone can tie together diverse networks in the same building, in different buildings in a campus environment, or over wide areas.
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protocol is a convention or standard that controls or enables the connection, communication, and data transfer between two computing endpoints. In its simplest form, a protocol can be defined as the rules governing the syntax, semantics, and synchronization of communication.
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Centuries: 19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
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1960s 1970s 1980s - 1990s - 2000s 2010s 2020s
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
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For the band, see .
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Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search
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Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search
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Internet service provider (abbr. ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a business or organization that provides consumers or businesses access to the Internet and related services. In the past, most ISPs were run by the phone companies.
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A DNS Blacklist, or DNSBL (definition below), is a means by which an Internet site may publish a list of IP addresses that some people may want to avoid and in a format which can be easily queried by computer programs on the Internet.
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Botnet is a jargon term for a collection of software robots, or bots, which run autonomously and automatically. They run on groups of "zombie" computers controlled remotely by crackers. This can also refer to the network of computers using distributed computing software.
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zombie computer (often abbreviated zombie) is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a Hacker, a computer virus, or a trojan horse. Generally, a compromised machine is only one of many in a "botnet", and will be used to perform malicious tasks of
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Internet service provider (abbr. ISP, also called Internet access provider or IAP) is a business or organization that provides consumers or businesses access to the Internet and related services. In the past, most ISPs were run by the phone companies.
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A smart host is a type of mail relay server which allows an SMTP server to route e-mail to an intermediate mail server rather than directly to the recipient’s server.
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SMTP-AUTH is an extension of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to include an authentication step through which the client effectively logs in to the mail server during the process of sending mail.
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POP before SMTP or SMTP after POP is a method of authorization used by mail server software which helps allow users the option to send e-mail from any location, as long as they can demonstrably also fetch their mail from the same place.
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virtual private network (VPN) is a communications network tunneled through another network, and dedicated for a specific network. One common application is secure communications through the public Internet, but a VPN need not have explicit security features, such as
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The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 ( 15 U.S.C. 7701, et seq. , Public Law No. 108-187, was S.877 of the 108th Congress), signed into law by President Bush on December 16, 2003, establishes the United States' first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail and requires the
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John Gilmore is one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Cypherpunks mailing list, and Cygnus Solutions. He created the alt.* hierarchy in Usenet and is a major contributor to the GNU project.
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worldwide view of the subject.
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Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ανωνυμία, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, the term typically refers to a person, and often means that the personal identity, or personally identifiable information
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A whitelist is a list of accepted items or persons in a set. This list is inclusionary, confirming that the item being analyzed is acceptable. It is the opposite of a blacklist which confirms that items are not acceptable.
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