MAPS: A Project Worthy of your Notice
February 23rd, 1998
Like most heavy Internet users, Debian developers have been plagued by e-mailspam. Recently, spammers have been even been posting messages to our online bug-reporting system. Sales messages have been popping up in between the bug reports.
Because of this, the Debian servers have joined MAPS, the Mail Abuse Protection System. This is a network of system administrators that agree to voluntarily refuse e-mail from sites that support spammers or have poor anti-spam policies. Their web site is at http://www.vix.com/. MAPS operates the Realtime Blackhole List. This is a system that allows them to update the list of systems we refuse mail from instantly, and that gives them the power to stop a spam in progress. Because so many systems are participating, MAPS can get the attention of the offending sites and can persuade them to reform their spam policies. MAPS also operates the Transport Security Initiative, a program to educate innocent sites that are used as relays by spammers in how to block spam.
MAPS has improved the entire Internet, and it's worthy of your support. We are working on improvements to the Debian mail programs so that Debian users will be able join MAPS with a single command. If you want to join now, you can do so using the instructions at the MAPS web site: http://maps.vix.com/rbl/usage.html.