Will New Sendmail Block Remailers?

[Robert A. Hayden]

On Tue, 17 Mar 1998, John Young wrote:

> Markoff in the NYT reports today on the release of a new 
> Sendmail upgrade by author Eric Allman that will block 
> spam by checking the legitimacy of the originating address 
> before delivery.
> 
> The report claims that spam is up to 10% of e-mail worldwide,
> And that Sendmail is used on 75% of the computers that route 
> e-mail, all of which are being fitted with the new program.
> 
> What are the chances that this will affect remailers or other 
> means of eternal anonymity?

Depends on how the remailer is set up.

For example, I own the domain "geek.net".  If I set up a remailer and
messages resolve to "anonymous at geek.net", I suspect it will get through. 
I may need to also have an alias that /dev/nulls messages to
anonymous at geek.net, but that is still a legitimate mailing address. 

I think what they are trying to stop are spammers that have a return
address like "fakename at fakedomain.com" or "your at best.friend".  Those
wouldn't resolve and would just get shitcanned.

IMHO, there's nothing _toooo_ sinister here, yet.  But vigilance is
suggested.
 
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