Thoughts on Spam messages.

[Guest The Ancient Brit]

S

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

Denis,I am not sure if your message is a spam spam, virus spam or freedom of speach spam. :-lol All I do know is that thank god AVSIM's email system automatically deletes spam and virus' (to the extent that any server can). Where I used to get 30-40 spam a day, I now *might* get 2. What our server misses, my "I hate Spam" Outlook add-on program gets the rest. And it also has a "kill file" where some selected individual's email never see the light of day. Life is good. :)

[John_Cillis 2,406]

The fact that the EU and US Congress is looking into this is good, but it won't stop the problem. And I don't see the problem as one of getting the spam--my filters, plus where I post my various email addresses and which ones I use, handle that. The problem is one of bandwidth and web traffic. The EU and Congress is powerless to stop offshore servers in obsure countries from being involved in a large part of the spam flooding our networks. And rotten as spam is, it is a political can of worms for us to go after someone in a nation where jobs are sparse, and that person is just barely making a living by serving as a spam conduit. Only way we'll kill spam is through education:-Don't open the messages if the sender is unknown-Don't "unsubscribe", you may be removed from one mailing list, but you're joining ten others.-Don't post your real email address in the usenet-Keep a "public" email address and a private one. My hotmail address goes out to businesses, and for my freeware work. No one outside of my family and close friends has ever seen my private email address. I have never received spam on it...never.-Let family and friends know up front not to include you in the "forward this to everyone you know" messages. Many of those scams originate from spammers, collecting email addresses. Most of my friends know that they'll be former friends if they disregard my privacy that way. And most respect me for letting them know about the consequences of such scams, except for the ones naive enough to believe that they'll be ten times lucky if they wear a green hat and forward a message to everyone in the world to do the same :)

[Guest The Ancient Brit]

Well Tom,When a man of your importance has taken the time and trouble to respond to my message I can feel justified in having posted it.John,I just loved the idea of becoming lucky by persuading everyone in the world to wear a green hat; it had me falling about. Still, we must not mock the afflicted, must we?Denis. The Ancient Brit.

[Guest TIngalls]

Considering that UCE (unsolicated commercial email) is already illegal in a few european countries, it would be interesting to find out what recourse one has when an email address is 'sold' starting the downward spiral.>-Don't "unsubscribe", you may be removed from one mailing list, but> you're joining ten others.This practice really peeves me. At one point, I'd subscribed to a network security newsletter from a, what I thought to be, reputible company. After about 8 months of advertising and very littel real editorial content I unsubscribed from the list... setting off a chain which has caused the account used to now recieve an average of 60 emails a day.>-Keep a "public" email address and a private one. My hotmail> address goes out to businesses, and for my freeware work. No one> outside of my family and close friends has ever seen my private> email address. I have never received spam on it...never.>-Let family and friends know up front not to include you in> the "forward this to everyone you know" messages. Many of those> scams originate from spammers, collecting email addresses. Most> of my friends know that they'll be former friends if they> disregard my privacy that way.Here, here... this is very much my modus operandi. Sadly my account is also the 'postmaster' account for the mailserver... meaning I get any of the mail destined for our server which is sent to unknown addresses. Thankfully, this can be filtered for...I truly wish a legal case could set precendance that publishers of Broadcast email are liable for damages due to reduced or unavailable resources at the recipients end. The big corps or the world would then be able to sue the solicitors for connection fees making the propogation of UCE no longer such a lucrative business.To think, we could send advertising via the postal service for free... as our taxes constitute the 'connection fee' to the carrier. [table][tr][td]http://www.avsim.com/other/usaribbon.gif[/td][td]Todd IngallsMember of [link:www.grid.org/services/teams/team.htm?id=5E79C613-0A60-4A3B-BDC1-F9EE49F2D4FE]Join the AVSIM Team Fight Against Cancer!][/td][/tr][/table.----BEGIN FS CODE BLOCK----G:EDDM(DE) a R- FS++ F+ P U+ X C+ H+>++ O+ V-- A+(++) SP?>+++-----END FS CODE BLOCK-----

[RandallR 444]

I don't know if any of you have tried MailWasher, but I highly recommend it. Filters have limited effect, as you probably know. Though MailWasher includes excellent filtering capabilities, it's real power is in the way it handles message-previewing.MailWasher goes online and previews all messages before they come down from your provider. Comparing the senders and their domains for any that may be listed on International Blacklist databases, it immediately marks for bouncing and deleting all known spammers. Next it marks those that are probable spam for your perusal - you can add spammers to your own blacklist with a mouse-click. Friends (and friendly domains) can be quickly added to your friends list. After a quick perusal (you can also preview the messages online) and editing, you click "Process". All messages that are marked for bouncing and/or deleting are processed as such, then your mail program opens and down comes just the mail you want."Bouncing" is an interesting process: unwanted mail is returned to the spammer from the provider mail server (not from you). The end result is the spammer gets his message back and is told that you do not exist. Over time, I have seen the amount of spam diminish somewhat, as some senders have noted the "undeliverable" messages and actually removed my addresses. I now receive NO SPAM in my mailboxes, as it is quickly reviewed and deleted before it can come down.As a webmaster and postmaster with two of my e-mail addresses published on the web, this has been a godsend for me!

[Guest]

An anti-spam law won't do a thing to stop it.Spoofing email headers on emails sent to that country/state is already illegal in many countries and US states yet it's standard practice among spammers.Hijacking someone's mailserver is a crime in itself, yet spammers do it all the time.As to 40% of email sent over the net being spam, I wish it were...At the moment (not counting a few high-volume legitimate mailing lists) the percentage of email that I get that I identify as spam is nearer 75% (that is, including those that my filters block which amount to some 200 a week).

[Guest The Ancient Brit]

RandallI have heard of MailWasher and from your description of it, it sounds like an attractive proposition. With my ISP blocking most Spam and another filtering company I use blocking the few Spams that get past my ISP I am not bothered by receiving Spams. What attracts me is the idea of returning Spam to the senders. There is poetic justice in that which I find attractive.Jwenting,What you say about laws failing to stop Spam is so true. Look at the number of laws against crime and yet crime is still with us.Denis. The Ancient Brit.

[RandallR 444]

Yup - love the "bounce" bit! On occassion, a bounce will fail, simply because the header data has been falsified and the original sender can't be located. In that case, MW will notify you and simply delete it. I must say that most of the blacklisted spam has been bounced successfully.

[Guest ba747heavy]

Speaking of spamming the spammers, that would be great! But take it a step further than MW apparently does....start sending immense quantities of garbage there way ;-)I can wish eh? :D

[Guest Matt Johnson]

It's happened already. Alan Ralsky, spammeister extraordinaire, has been drowning under several sackfuls of snailmail (i.e. paper-post) daily!http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend6_20021206.htm covers the rather amusing story. Seems like these spammers are the classic bullies; they can't take what they dish out. Aww, shame. :-wink2--M

[Guest ba747heavy]

For shame, for shame. :-wink2I really feel for him. :-erks And, guess what, he is suing the anti-spammers....:-roll