UCE (Spam) Control Measures at WebTV Networks

WebTV Networks tries to protect its customers from being deluged by Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE or spam). At present, we do this by blocking email access to our mail servers from machines on the Internet which have sent UCE to our customers or which are known to function as "open" email relays (meaning that anyone on the internet can connect to that machine and use it to send email to anyone else on the Internet.) WebTV Networks maintains lists of blocked individuals, systems and domains which have sent UCE to our customers. If any of your machines are listed in our lists, they will be unable to transfer email to WebTV Networks. 

When WebTV Networks rejects a mail transfer, it returns the other system a 443 status code. This tells the sending system that the rejection may be a temporary condition. Although the response of the sending system is up to the operators of that system, this will frequently result in the other system continuing to attempt delivery of all of the rejected mail for up to five days after it is sent. This gives WebTV Networks and the operators of the blocked site time to come to an agreement and possibly to remove the block before any mail is actually returned to the sender.

The fact that WebTV Networks is blocking any site is not a statement that the operators of such sites are directly engaged in any wrongdoing. It is very possible that such a site has been unfairly exploited by the external actions of spammers taking advantage of the email configuration of that site. Currently, blocking is the only effective mechanism that enables us to protect our customers, even though it may result in the failure to deliver legitimate messages.

One common way that spammers exploit your mailserver is if youhave it misconfigured so that it is an 'open relay'. For helpon how to secure your webserver from third-party abuse,look here.

Select your ippaddress, fill out the form, and your request willbe looked at. Remember, if your site is an open relay, the current businessrule is to block your ipaddress/domain until you fix the problem.

Last updated Sun May 5 00:59:01 2002

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