someone is using my email address to spam, is there a way to stop this ?

[Robert Brockway]

On Sat, 9 Aug 2008, James Knott wrote:

I wrote:
>> Destination ports tcp/25 and tcp/587.  It occured to me the little routers
>> could default to blocking and allow people to open the access if they want.
>> Not sure I'm totally happy with this though, from a philosophical POV.
>
> Wouldn't blocking those port prevent people from sending mail?

Sure would.  That's the point :)

> Firewall/routers should already block incoming ports.  As I understand 
> it, the problem is caused by malware generating the spam on hijacked 
> computers. How would a firewall tell the difference from legitimate mail 
> from a user, if only filtering port 25.

It wouldn't.  I was thinking out loud a bit but it occured to me that most 
people are using webmail these days but their local MS-Win boxes can still 
send outbound email which is probably a lot more likely to be used by a 
Trojan than for legit email.  So perhaps blocking the ability to send 
outbound SMTP from home systems by default might be an interesting idea to 
explore.  It somewhat goes against the concept of net neutrality but it 
could be unblocked easily enough.

Rob

-- 
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine..."
 	-- RFC 1925 "The Twelve Networking Truths"
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