Re: [Exim] Thanks to the list

>> When my messages were failing, they would terminate in "connecting to
>> mailhost..." and then just hang until I manually killed the process.
Is
>> this what happens when messages are rejected because of being
>> blacklisted?
>
>No. When it fails due to blacklisting you will get a error from the
remote
>mail server. Since you failed to make a connection, that suggests that
port
>25 outbound was being filtered on your dialup connections. This is a
common
>practice on large dialup providers to prevent customers from buying
>throwaway accounts to spam through open relays, and sent direct-to-mx
spam.
>
>Likely the only mail server you could have connected to on that dialup
>service was that of your provider.

As I found out recently when trying to provide SMTP services to remote
customers who were using AOL dial-ups (they couldn't get to port 25 on
my server - all such TCP packets are re-directed to AOL SMTP servers).
My initial reaction was that this was a horrible thing to be doing, but
as I gain experience with spamming techniques, I don't fault the ISP's
anymore. I am developing a really serious dislike of spammers. They
are bandwidth thieves. Thanks to the people on this list for (a)
helping me to understand this issue, and (b) for being part of a
pro-active effort to thwart spammers, with discussions of RBL's and
SpamAssassin, and so forth.

Jim Roberts
Punster Productions, Inc.