Organic Pineapple Working Group

[Organic Pineapple Working Group <opwg AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

Title: Memo for CTAHR webmasters ONLY (those with sites on the ctahr server)

Dear Working Group Moderator:

Related to the amount of SPAM generated from the OPWG server, could you please remove my name as one who has authority to approve email messages sent through the server.  An example of the source of the problem is indicated below.  Over half of the emails being rejected as SPAM that come to my mailbox via our Univ. of Hawaii server is generated by the OPWG server.

Thank you for your kind assistance,

Duane

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Memo for CTAHR webmasters ONLY (those with sites on the ctahr server)
Date:	Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:09:28 -1000
From:	Kawahara, Elsie M. <kawaharae AT ctahr.hawaii.edu>
To:	_CTAHR <CTAHR AT ctahr.hawaii.edu>

CTAHR Webmasters:

Due to the increase of SPAM mail being generated from our websites (housed on CTAHR's web server) using scripts (i.e. including  CDONTS), we have stopped all smtp activity to non-ctahr (@ctahr.hawaii.edu) email addresses.  There are indications that the sites which allow the input of email addresses have been targeted and "exploited" by those using external programs to generate mail to non-existent addresses at legitimate sites such as gmail.

In other words, if you have written scripts to allow your website visitors to send email via our webserver to others (for whatever reason, i.e. to publicize your site), the activity has been stopped at our firewall.  Although,  email can still be sent to addresses at ctahr.hawaii.edu, we found it necessary to stop the mail from being sent to non-ctahr addresses to at least decrease the traffic and to avoid being "black-listed".

This is a temporary situation.  We will look for a security module which you will be required to include in your code to validate the source of data before execution.

If you have questions on this, please contact me.

Elsie Kawahara
956-6440
kawaharae AT ctahr.hawaii.edu

-- 
Duane P. Bartholomew
Agronomist emeritus
Dept. of Tropical Plant & Soil Science
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822
Pineapple News at http://tpss.hawaii.edu/pineapple/pineappl.htm