RFC 2505 (rfc2505) - Page 3 of 24

Anti-Spam Recommendations for SMTP MTAs

RFC 2505               Anti-Spam Recommendations           February 1999


       requested" when you never asked for it, and generally do
       everything they can without regard to honesty or ethics, to try
       to get a few more people to look at their message.

       In fact some of the spam-programs take a pride in adding false
       info that will "make the ISPs scratch their heads".

       It is usually the case that people who send in protests (often
       according to the instructions in the mail) find their mail
       addresses added to more lists and sold to other parties.

   o   It is quite common practice to make use of third party hosts as
       relays to get the spam mail sent out to the receivers. This theft
       of service is illegal in most - if not all - countries (at least
       in the US spammers have been successfully sued).  However, with
       the original sender in the US, the (innocent) relay in Sweden and
       the list of receivers back in the US, the legal process of
       getting damages from the spammers becomes extremely difficult.

1.2. Scope

   This memo has no intention of being the final solution to the spam
   problem.

   If, however, enough Internet MTAs did implement enough of the rules
   described below (especially the Non-Relay rules), we would get the
   spammers out in the open, where they could be taken care of. Either
   pure legal actions would help, or we can block them technically using
   other rules described below (since the Non-Relay rules now make them
   appear openly, with their own hosts and domains, we can apply various
   access filters against them). In reality, a combination of legal and
   technical methods is likely to give the best result.

   This way, the spam problem could be reduced enough to allow the
   Internet community to design and deploy a real and general solution.

   But, please note:

       The Non-Relay rules are not in themselves enough to stop spam.
       Even if 99% of the SMTP MTAs implemented them from Day 1,
       spammers would still find the remaining 1% and use them. Or
       spammers would just switch gear and connect directly to each and
       every recipient host; that will be to a higher cost for the
       spammer, but is still quite likely.

   Even though IPv6 deployment may be near, the spam problem is here
   already and thus this memo restricts itself to the current IPv4.




Lindberg                 Best Current Practice