Subject: Suggestion for an RFC.

From: [email-masked] (Peter Seebach)
Date: Mon, 03 May 1999 14:46:05 -0500

>>RFC 3000 (mandatory)
>>      A host owned by or run on behalf of Real Networks, Inc., MUST NOT
>>      be connected to the internet.  All other hosts MUST reject all traffic
>>      from such a host.

I understand they spammed you; perhaps circulating this document around
to a few people would help them understand?  I bet you could get Cisco to
implement it.

-s

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From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 08:39:36 -0600 (MDT)

> From: [email-masked]

> ...
> Umm.. it's quite possibly an (unintentional) variant on a common
> denial-of-service attack.  Although the [email-masked] is a mailing
> list and thus unable using present technologies, to download anything,
> there is an incredible tendency for webservers to believe that
> any old junk typed into a form field labelled "e-mail address"
> is, in fact, a valid address owned by the person typing into the form.
>
> The *real* fix, is, of course, for them to do the following:
>
> a) check how they *really* got the address and clear up the problem
> (possibly by re-educating a Web user who needs it).
>
> b) use an OK-cookie of some sort to verify addresses off html forms.
> Of course, this still probes the mailing list.  Maybe there's room
> for an IETF WG on the verification of Web form data. ;)

Maybe so, or maybe not.

For years, many people have complained in many places about what appears
to them to be ordinary unsolicited bulk advertising promoting RealPlayer.
For much of this year there have been many such complaints in the newsgroup
news.admin.net-abuse.email.  For years, ending early last year, I watched
the main firewall of a large outfit, where undesired email about RealPlayer
was a continuing problem.  I was absolutely certain some of the addresses
that received the stuff had never downloaded RealPlayer nor otherwise
communicated with RealNetworks (or whatever they were called then).

The least objectionable explanation I can see is that they collect email
addresses from a variety of legitimate and semi-legitimate sources,
including but *not* limited to questions during downloads of RealPlayer,
then modify those addresses by removing sub-domains, possibly also
transforming [email-masked] to [email-masked] and
[email-masked], and then regardless of complaints or requests
to stop, continuing to send junk to all of those addresses.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

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From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 08:39:36 -0600 (MDT)

Maybe so, or maybe not.

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From: "Robert G. Ferrell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 10:58:18 -0500 (CDT)

> If every spam email ever sent to [email-masked] provokes this sort of
> long thread in response, we're going to drown in our own 
> self-importance. And our own traffic. 

My personal fix for this sort of thing is [Delete].  Doesn't address the root 
problem, but sure saves time and bandwidth.  We (myself included) just add to 
the problem by talking at length about it; now it's not just a (intentional or 
otherwise) DoS, it's also a MoIR (Monopolizer of Intellectual Resources).

RGF

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From: "Robert G. Ferrell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 10:58:18 -0500 (CDT)

RGF