The FTC, joined by law enforcement officials from several US states, Japan, Australia, Canada and Chile, signed a letter this week that was sent to the administrators of 1,000 email servers that are configured to be open relays.
Open relays allow any user to bounce email through them without authentication, and are therefore used extensively by spammers who can’t find ISPs to accommodate their bandwidth needs. Various organizations maintain block lists of these relays.
[Spam] creates problems for consumers worldwide, for law enforcement and for your organization, the FTC letter reads, before enumerating the risks. Fixing your open relay mail server will help you protect your system from being misused.The letters, translated into 11 languages and sent to administrators in 16 or more countries, point the user to a new FTC web site that condemns open relays and contains links to instructions on how to reconfigure them.
The letter was also signed by the attorneys general of five US states, several local government departments, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Industry Canada, the Chilean Servicio Nacional del Consumidor and the Japanese Delegation to the OECD Committee on Consumer Policy.
Source: Computerwire
