Does the name 'Ed Kelleher' ring any bells?

Are you trying to say that when my mail server connects to theirs (or vice versa) and gets a diskfilling denial of service due to spam that causes my system to crash and or become unusable, which takes out service for thousands of my customers, isn't harassment? Of COURSE it is. WRONG - give me an example of this "local convenience". Just take 10 minutes to configure the allowable src/dst and it wont be necessary. So what you are saying is it's ok to create a dangerous situation rather than configure it right to only allow relaying from truely local domains because it's "out of reach". I see two problems with your stance. First, that system MAY be "off the net". But what if a year later it's decided to add it to the net? Or second, what happens if it's configured for open relaying and is behind a firewall, and later some hacker gets around the firewall (read: VPN)? They then have a machine "ready to r0ck dudez!". Just do your JOB in the first place, instead of being LAZY and none of this is an issue. Let me give you an analogy in response. Setting a can of gasoline and an open flame lantern next to eachother on the sidewalk of a busy street is a STUPID idea. But you know what? Setting a can of gasoline and an open flame latern next to eachother in the privacy of your own home, behind locked doors... is *STILL* irresponsible. It's just plain LAZY. setting it up right IS low setup and low maintenance. Setting it up wrong is begging for high cost. More specifically, an admin who takes the route of.. "Oh, I'm just going to allow open relay because it SHOULDNT cause a problem", is someone who is careless and more importantly, leaving a large timebomb waiting for some other admin later (or themselves) to step on. I could ALMOST see your point if configuring the allowable src/dst was a non trivial task. The fact is, it takes just a couple minutes. So sys admins who use that excuse are just plain lazy, and irresponsible. Unfortunately, they are not just putting themselves at peril, they are putting others at peril due to their laziness. Jay --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]