Open Relay--Spam

[Computer Hobbyist]

Hi guys,

Could somebody explain something to me.

Late last week I stopped getting my routine e-mail from the local Federal Court. While routine, it is important. It provides me a daily summary of everything filed in all my Federal cases. Because I have a reasonably heavy volume of cases, I noticed the problem right away. So did my paralegal, who stopped getting her copies of same emails at the same time.

We spent part of the day tracking the matter down, and discovered that our email accounts are in order, and the Court's user set up is in order. Emails are being sent but not received, but they are not being received back by the Court. That pointed to my ISP. Since we are not talking about Aunt Martha's cookie receipts, I went straight to the top dog at the ISP. He got on it right away and came back with the report that something called "Spam Cop" is filtering the Court's email because the Court has been listed on their bad site list for having what is called an "open relay," which is apparently being misused by somebody. He also mumbled something about the court not having a postmaster account open and something else concerning an abuse count. I took that information to the Court and they told me that the Federal Court system never makes mistakes, and my ISP's spam filter is probably set to filter automatically generated emails. They told me that my ISP needs to turn off its spam filter. I told my ISP to call the Court's Administrator.

Could somebody tell me the significance of an open relay? I would also like to know what exactly is "Spam Cop?" Finally, what is the significance of not having a postmaster account open to receive kicked back email? Can I solve my problem by changing ISP's or will most ISP's filter out the emails? I'd like to be in a position to evaluate the relative merits of the mutual finger pointing.

CH

[doctorgonzo]

For an explanation of what an open relay is, go to: http://www.ordb.org/

Basically, an open relay allows e-mail to pass through where neither the sender or the recipient is a local user. Spammers use it to send their crap: as you can see, an open relay allows a spammer who is not a local user to basically "hijack" a mail server. Your ISP may be blocking mail from known open relays, and it must think that the federal courts mail server falls under this category. On that website, you can see if the courts mail server is in their database as being an open relay.

[Computer Hobbyist]

I have done some investigating tonight. It's not just an open relay. It is an open relay that is actively being used to relay spam. Apparently somebody has decided to hijack the Federal Court's email server to forward his spam. Hopefully the Administrators will wake up and stop the problem. If any of my clients are harmed by this failure I will be less than happy.

CH