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[FYI] (Fwd) FC: City of Battle Creek wants to imprison an anti-spam activist
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- Subject: [FYI] (Fwd) FC: City of Battle Creek wants to imprison an anti-spam activist
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>
- Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 19:36:12 +0100
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------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 11:49:00 -0500
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: politech@politechbot.com
Subject: FC: City of Battle Creek wants to imprison an anti-spam activist
Send reply to: declan@well.com
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51218,00.html
Spam Showdown at Battle Creek
By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
2:00 a.m. March 21, 2002 PST
WASHINGTON -- The small city of Battle Creek, Michigan, wants to
lock up an anti-spam activist who it believes crashed its mail
server.
Never mind that the town government was using a buggy version of
the Lotus Domino e-mail server, and that newer releases have fixed
the problem. And never mind that anti-spammers may have been
conducting a routine scan for possible sources of bulk e-mail.
Battle Creek, a town of 54,000 best known as the headquarters of
the Kellogg's cereal company, is on the warpath.
Robert Drewry, a Battle Creek detective, said on Wednesday he was
hoping to file felony charges of computer intrusion against the
person at the Orbz anti-spam service who contacted the Domino
server, and caused e-mail to crash for 24 hours. "If we can
identify the person responsible, yes, we will prosecute," Drewry
said.
This new Battle of Battle Creek -- the first one in 1824 pitted
local Indians against surveyors -- began when an Orbz computer
allegedly connected to the town's mail server to see if it might be
an anti-spammer bugaboo: A relay point for bulk e-mailers.
It wasn't. But it was running an old Lotus Domino version, and what
would normally have been a routine test by Orbz allegedly caused
the server to mail-bomb itself into a tizzy.
Cindy Hale, a systems administrator for the town, said she was the
one who had to deal with the crash.
"We had to get with our Cisco expert and get into our firewall and
make some changes in there and make some changes to our (Lotus)
server to not accept any mail from Orbz," Hale said.
Then Hale did what has incited a feeding frenzy this week in the
online communities devoted to canning spam: She called the cops. "I
just called our police department and asked if they wanted to
investigate any further and there we are," Hale said.
[...]
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