[vox-tech] smtp question - blocked ip

[Ted Deppner]

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 05:38:15PM -0800, Joel Baumert wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 05:30:49PM -0800, Ted Deppner wrote:
> This is fine if you have a choice of vendors.  In some places, if you
> want broadband you only have one choice.  If communicating with some 
> people is not possible through that broadband provider, you have no
> choices and no real option.  I guess you could move :-)...

Capitialism (like life) will find a way.  :)

> Where do you complain?  PacBell? Not... The PUC?  No that isn't going
> to work... DSL is a premium service.  AT&T?  Hmmm.... They will
> contact you when broadband is available in your area.  WinFirst?
> Doh... They are out of money.  Wireless?  Last time I looked I needed
> a 30' antenna and that would violate my CCNRs... etc, etc, etc...

FYI, WinFirst was purchased by SureWest Communications (disclaimer,
they're my employer).  So they were out of money, but they aren't any
longer.  They're presently "re-tooling" to be more cost effective and will
be pursuing new customers in the near future.

> > that you have linux?  Why would you want to be on an ISP that is spam
> > friendly?
> 
> Because you don't want a dialup connection or you signed a long term
> contract with someone that looked ok and now is by someones estimation
> spam friendly...

Yes, this can sometimes be sticky.  However, if you have IP, you can
always VPN your SMTP traffic somewhere else, get your friend at a better
ISP to allow you to use them as a smarthost, etc.  Use -L on ssh to give
yourself new connectivity options to anywhere you have an ssh account.
Indiviually challenging yes, but not overly significant for a community.

> > I too think whitelists will become ubiquitous at some point... probably
> > the next killer app.
> 
> Yep... A little cryptography and this could be slick.  Though you still
> end up with what amounts to a key distribution problem.

Not in all cases.  TMDA (http://tmda.net/) make this very transparent.
You can send email from short term addresses, new people sending to you
not on your whitelist can be asked to agree to a contract before their
mail is let through, and of course the usual white/black lists.

TMDA is cryptographically secure in its pads and hashes, but it does not
offer message encryption.

-- 
Ted Deppner
http://www.psyber.com/~ted/