On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 08:57:09 -0500 Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx> allegedly wrote: > A lot of spam blacklists don't actually work by receiving spam mail > via smtp. Instead they look for a wide variety of activity that they > think is related to a compromised computer, and then assume that > computer will soon be sending spam mail as well. Unfortunately, that > approach makes the wrong decision for Tor exit relays. > > You might ask your provider for a copy of the complaint, to get more > hints? Maybe somebody is scribbling on some web forum through your > relay, and spamcop is jumping to conclusions. I would avoid "saying > categorically that tor usage cannot be responsible" -- first you > should try to figure out what the complaint (and evidence) actually > is, and then you can help your ISP understand what's going on. Roger (and Christian too) Thanks for the quick response and useful tips. I asked my ISP for a copy of the report and they sent me the sample "spam" they got from spamcop. It contained this: "X-Originating-IP: [195.234.10.45]" and the rest of the email headers made it obvious that the mail went through a "freemail" service. So spamcop are being dumb and blaming my exit node based on a header added by a web mail system. I've sent an explanatory email to my provider and I'm waiting to see what they want me to do. If I have to close that node, I'll go somewhere else (I've just bought another VM anyway....) > Also check out http://paulgraham.com/spamhausblacklist.html if you > want to get more angry at the overall approach of spam blacklists -- > pretty much all of them follow this pattern. :( Their tactics can get > pretty ugly. One of the future steps in the arms race could even be > listing your neighbors as spammers, even if they're perfectly > innocent, to force the neighbors to force you to stop your behavior. Yep - seen that. I agree. Cheers Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this? Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------
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