Success with Sending email without a SMTP Server!!!!

kee nethery kee at kagi.com
Mon Jan 31 03:13:24 EST 2005


On Jan 30, 2005, at 10:19 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> But doesn't this mean that all any spammer has to do is use the same 
> trick to send spam to a recipient on the recipient's own SMTP server?

This is exactly what spammers do.

The only reason a spammer would use a relay (someone else's SMTP mail 
server) is that the mail server will immediately accept the email and 
then try to deliver it for many days. The typical spammer going direct 
to your server will only try once and then move on.

The other thing a spammer will do is to disguise the mail headers so as 
to disguise the machine they are sending from. But, fortunately, the 
SMTP spec requires the receiving mail server to add information about 
the sender.

So another way to disguise is to use a proxy relay. The proxy just 
mimics the commands given by the spammer so that for all practical 
purposes, the spammer is driving the proxy. It that way, the SMTP 
server does not see the IP address used by the spammer and instead sees 
just the proxy IP address.

Kee Nethery



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