Mail Spam Necessitates Changes

On October 5, 1997, rpi.edu was subjected to a massive spam attack where our mail machine was used as a relay. Over 130,000 messages were relayed! As a result of the spam, Rensselaer was on several blacklists of "spammers" or "spam sympathizers." Being blacklisted had serious implications because some sites were refusing to send or accept mail from the rpi.edu domain. Consequently, software changes have been made so that mail1.its.rpi.edu and mail2.its.rpi.edu will no longer relay e-mail messages. And because of our efforts in this regard, we have now been removed from all the lists on which we were blacklisted.

An immediate, and unfortunate, side effect of this change is that mail sent via mail1 by users connected through an alternate ISP (Internet Service Provider) is rejected unless the recipient is at Rensselaer (or is in the aliases file). For example, RoadRunner users (rr.com) will have to configure their mail clients to use mail.rr.com (or whatever is appropriate) as their SMTP server while connected via RoadRunner if they want to send mail outside of Rensselaer.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience this has undoubtedly caused some users, but it was important to reestablish our good internet citizenship as soon as possible so that our site was taken off the blacklists. If you have concerns about this change, please contact postmaster@rpi.edu. However, you should contact your ISP for questions about using their mailer.