Spam Originating from Google and Amazon servers

[fbongor]

A new (to me) wrinkle in the war of spam is the recent assault from machines in legitimate web businesses. Several large companies are building large infrastructures to host others... Amazon is one with a large infrastructure with their EC2 (etc) development platform(s). Apparently some people have figured out how to use the Amazon infrastructure to feed spam into the system. However there are lots of legitimate users of those same servers I don't want to block.

Let's take Google as a somewhat different but interesting example. Google now apparently allows people with some gmail account, like xyz[at]gmail.com, to feed that mail through google's servers from their own PC. I only know because the headers show that it was received by google from outside their system and relayed. However this seems to legitimize open email relays. One can make a BOT that creates a gmail ID, feeds a ton of spam through, then moves on to another. The Google example seems like the toughest to thwart at my receiving end, because I don't want to block Google, but they're deliberately acting as open relays. They're such smart guys, it's hard to think they don't see this... don't know what to think or what they may be doing about it.

There are several other big companies making various kinds of big infrastructure that's being co-opted.

I wonder if anyone out there has a solution to any of this?

[Miss Betsy]

The only solution that I see is to 'raise consumer awareness' the way Ralph Nader did. Big companies go for the bottom line at the expense of the environment and the consumer unless there is enough public outcry against their practices.

Miss Betsy

[turetzsr]

...You originally entitled your post as "spam Originating from Google and Amazon servers." "spam" is a trademark of Hormel Corporation, so please do not use it here to refer to unsolicited e-mail (spam). Please see spam and the Internet, especially the third paragraph. Thanks! I have changed the topic title to comply with Hormel's polite request.

[Wazoo]

...You originally entitled your post as "spam Originating from Google and Amazon servers."

And then never quite got around to 'documenting' the allegation. Google's GMail already 'owns' a massive Topic/Discussion that most 'new' associated Topics get merged into .. Yahoo (Groups) has the same circumstance. Previous references that complained about Amazon were about spam from Amazon.

Where are the Tracking URLs that would have provided specific data on these allegations, looking for whatever is different, new, changed that hasn't already been addressed in those previous / massive discussions?