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Manual - Spam E-Mail
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The Ten Commandments of Computer
Ethics
- Accessing Your Email
Why AlterCom does not allow relaying through
our mail servers
How can I as an AlterCom user still send E-mail remotely?
Why AlterCom does not allow
relaying through our mail servers:
One of the newest tactics used by “Spammers” (bulk e-mail advertisers) is known
as “relaying”. Relaying means hijacking someone else’s mail server to
deliver vast numbers of messages.
Spammers use relaying for several reasons:
The Spammer’s own Internet provider may prohibit
mass mailing through its own equipment.
The Spammer can conceal the true origin of e-mail
messages by using someone else’s mail server, thus evading responsibility for
undeliverable messages or user complaints.
The Spammer incurs no cost to himself by using
someone else’s mail services. Instead, the cost of bulk e-mail is borne by those
whose services are hijacked to deliver the mail.
How is this type of attack possible?
By design, the Internet is intended to allow rather than prevent communication between
machines. Spammers have exploited this philosophy in order to deliver their unwanted
messages. In theory, any individual can connect to any mail server on the Internet, and
get that mail server to deliver an e-mail message to its destination. So long as people
used this ability fairly and responsibly, there isn’t a problem. In practice, this
capability is being abused by Spammers at a rapidly increasing rate. This type of e-mail
abuse was almost unknown as little as one year ago.
Now, however, Spammers are methodically prowling the
net looking for unguarded servers to deliver their mail. The abuse continues until the
Spammer is caught or the server is secured. There is no agreed upon protocol in the
original design specifications for Internet e-mail to secure your mail server against
relaying. As this type of net abuse spreads, however, system administrators have taken
steps to stop their mail servers from delivering messages that do not appear to be
destined directly to or from their own users.
Turning off relaying eliminates the majority of e-mail abuse. However, it can cause
inconvenience to some AlterCom users who are connecting to AlterCom' mail servers from
another location on the net (they will get a relaying denied message when trying to send
E-Mail via our SMTP server). Users connecting directly to AlterCom will not see this
problem at all.
How can I as an AlterCom user
still send E-mail remotely?
AlterCom can however allow relaying from specific domains and IP numbers so if you use
that domain a lot and wish to send E-mail via our SMTP server you can by finding the IP
number(s) or the domain name and sending them to support@altercom.com
. Alternatively you can set your outgoing server (SMTP) to the SMTP server of the provider
you are connecting with, your POP server will of course still be altercom.com. Or you can
use our Web Based Mail Interface
to send and receive E-Mail from anywhere on the net as it is password secured for both
sending and receiving i.e relaying is not an issue.
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