RamblingsRamblings
www.spikynorman.net is a non-commercial domain and nether sells or promotes any commercial products or services.
Those domain steeling scum are back again. This time its is pimping home loans. I just had to clean up about 80-90 email bounces from various servers round the net that mistakenly though that <random_charcters>@spikynorman.net had sent out some spam. Some of the guilty sites being spamvertized are www.mortgagelf.com, www.go-funding.com, www.mortgage-lowsz.com, www.funding-talk.com, www.funding-live.com, www.lendingxid.com. Some of these sites share the domain name server at nsx.your-mort.com and some at HOSTALL4YOU.COM. According to whois I see a certain Fred Willard holds the registrations. Well Fred possibly of Centreport NY Zipcode 11721 may you suffer the plague of a 100,000 telemarketing phone calls each and every day.
A: Drug dealers, pimps, Stock pump 'N dumpers, loan sharks, grifters and The freemasonstore.com.
So not much change there then, the usual street corner crowd; scary how they are right inside your house now. Just about all legitimate business has fled back to banner ads and direct contact. The good news is that the practice of direct domain name theft reported in Sept 2003 has stopped for me. It can still be seen in use by the email viruses and spyware that inbed themselves into home PCs. The other good news is seeing some spamers getting felony jail time and bankrupted by law suits from Microsoft. Savor such sweet justice as "AOL Gives Away Porsche Seized From Spamer" in March 2004 this is not just not seen often enough.
That old rogue Sanford Wallace (prove. Cyber Promotions Inc) was back in the news last fall 04, caught pushing spyware to promote sales of spyware clean-up tools. "The complaint, filed by the FTC in the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire, alleges that Rochester, N.H.-based Seismic Entertainment Productions Inc., Richboro, Pa.-based Smartbot.Net, and Sanford Wallace, the president and owner of both companies, operated a series of Web sites that automatically and secretly downloaded spyware programs onto the computers of Internet users who visited the sites." Just how much hate and loathing can one persons cyber karma stand ?
--- UPDATE On 2006-03-22 the FTC filed a suit again against Wallace and SmartBOT for practices similar to the 2004 suit. This time Wallace and his co-defendands were ordered to pay $4,089,550.48 in fines.
Still some way to go on stopping email spam but there has been progress in other areas. Over the years since '92 when this sblog (very slow blog) was started the USA has introduced Junk fax laws, a DoNotCall registry to prevent telemarketing calls and the CanSpam act all aimed at reducing the number of unsolicited commercial communicatons. Keep on trying lads those pesky marketers are still one step ahead.
Hi
This is a notice to let you know that some ugly spammer scum has been using random address within the Spikynorman.net domain as a from/return address. Non-delivery bounces came started to come in from aol dated from
Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2003 00:49:24 -0100
Using these addresses as spoofed from and reply-to addresses
Reply-To: "Derek Hess" <hprjwpqwqo@spikyXnorman.net>
Reply-To: "Alejandra Cisneros" <fkakndd@spikyXnorman.net>
Reply-To: "Eugenio Ziegler" <3pvdmtmqu@spikyXnorman.net>
Reply-To: "Kenya Odell" <wypmxj6@spikyXnorman.net>
Reply-To: "Yong Norwood" <jin90gzd@spikyXnorman.net>
Reply-To: "Odis Whitney" <ww5kostqbq@spikyXnorman.net>
Reply-To: "Avis Eddy" <yvf4zesh@spikyXnorman.net>
Reply-To: "Doris Bishop" <26wuczyjv@spikyXnorman.net>
Reply-To: "Ivory Payton" <126sympkh@spikyXnorman.net>
Please remove the X from the address to get the exact address used. This notice will be on a website and I really don't want these address scraped and reused.
I have control over all email addresses in the spikynorman.net domain and none of the above addresses exit. They appear to be randomly generated.
The subject lines of the emails that were bounced were
Subject: RE:Order Prescription Drugs- Save icaw sq pnz
Subject: RE:Your Best Source For Prescriptions Online Is Here vmipjzpz
Subject: RE:Online PharmacySOMA,VIAGRA,MUCH MORE gqiwqeni l cntyh
Subject: RE:Phentermine, Viagra, Xenical, Ultram, Adipex mbinhzbg
Subject: Online PharmacyFioricet,SOMA,MUCH MORE fm s r
Subject: Fwd:Shipment information radudh
Subject: Fwd:SOMA - Viagra - Phentermine - Ultram - Ambien - Diflucan Free Overnight Fedex rfoesdztjd kzty nqm
Subject: RE:prescription medications online slvyu
The real origin of the emails are the usual selection of email relays in .edu and .forign spaces This theft and missuse of the spikynorman.net domain name has been going on for over a year now.
These appear to be the very familer prescription medicine scam emails. The spikynorman domain, as can be seen from the website www.spikynorman.net has nothing to do with such scams. The spikynorman.net site is wholy non-comercial containing information about a number of topics none of which is anyway related to the sale, or promotion of prescription medicines.
The owner and operator of the spikynorman.net domain hates email spam and its perpitrators. Spikynorman.net supports organisations that campaign against email spam and internet fraud.
For more infomation about email spam and frauds on the internet please see
www.cauce.org and www.fraud.org.
Cheers
Gannett
P.S. This type of illegal domain-name "borrowing" for spam has also seen by other domains such as www.linux.org as described here.
I moved to a software company and have been there for over four years now. We deal on a daily basis with 100s of customer by phone, email, ftp and www site assistance. I managed to keep the new work email address hidden from spammers for about a year. The address did leek out after a technical posting sent to what I thought was a private email list. The posting was archived on a web page. After tracking down the web page (thanks be to Google) and discussing with the admin he did blank out the address. Of course it was too late by then. See the Spamdemic diagram for information on how addresses are passed between spammers.
Microsoft Outlook is specified at work and for that there is now a spam solution. The saviour is Cloudmark This company is in first release of a plug-in for MS outlook that uses peer-to-peer sharing of email checksums to classify inbox messages and move spam messages to a separate folder. This is such a great idea and with 300,000+ (May 2003) users so far, it is nailing about 9/10 inbound spams. For the 1/10 that it misses just hit the "Block" button and the spam is removed from sight and a note is sent to other cloudmark users that this message is spam. This works very well given the global 24 nature of the internet; europe marks overnight USA spam and visa versa.
Spamvertizing - The strip mining of email addresses from web pages, usenet, DNS records, and other spammers lists then sending 2 or 3 spams a day for the usual junk. There is the glimmer of an opt-out link but this is a waste of time. No sooner have you opted out from E-mailSavings aka link2buy.com you start getting email from ConsumerDirect aka link2buy.com and on and on and on. They are scum along with their partners at Discover cards who shamelessly use their services. This LOL reply was in a recent complaint "Discover Card is very selective about the advertising methods of our company. " Phone them up and tell them what you think next time you get such spam
My advice is only try to opt out of email from companies that have a working phone number and real mail address on their web site.
Spam Read receipts disguised in HTML email. Spammers embed code in their emails that in combination with a web site script acts as a read-receipt. Using this method they can see which address are "live" and therefore worth selling on to other spammers. The code works like this, An .html format email is sent with a coded request to a web site for an image. The image request is passed to a script that records the request code but always delivers the same image. As your email address is embedded in (or recorded against) the coded request for the image the spammer knows who has read or previewed the email. This covert read-receipt is triggered even if you just preview the message on-line and trash it immediately. Here is what the code looks like, it is an image request to a jsp script page passing the code "MO01234_20020945_3652"
<img src="http://xxxxmate.com/c/i.jsp?MO01234_20020945_3652;2103867038=h" alt="xxxxmate.com">
To protect against this read your email off-line or pre-screen your email by subject and sender without the preview pane on. Alternatively have your spam filter move the junk to a non-preview spam folder for later checking and binning.
Virus distribution. The distribution of computer virus by bulk email is nothing new, with infected attachments being the favoured route. The tricks used to induce the recipient to open and activate the attachment are various but include Discusing the documents as a celebrity picture and using the recipients address book as the onward distribution list in a way similar to a worm. One recent wrinkle is to disguise the email and attachement as a security update from Microsoft.
Some friends of mine had decided to climb on the net and get email accounts. Just for fun I printed out one of the many generous offers from business contacts at the NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION who may or may not be related to Mrs. Marian Abacha, the widow of late Gen. Sani Abacha to send through my bank account Thirty-Eight Million, Six Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (US$38,600,000.00). Much to my surprise one of my friends, a retired accountant of about 65, said that he had seen such scam letters going round the financial institutions of London over 15 years ago! Sigh, the best scams are the oldest. Click here for more official details of these dangerous 419 scam aka Advanced fee fraud. Do your duty, tell newbies about this one.
There are various proposals, the main ones are
And all you have to do is just send your contact details over to these lads, along with your bank account details and they will just send you the money, yeah, yeah in your dreams. What really happens is you will be asked to send first a small amount then larger and larger amounts of "Advanced fees" to them. You may even be invited to a foreign country so that you can be held for ransom or blackmailed, up close and in person.
I was getting two or three a week all year, some of these tabulated by a perl scipt, listed by date here. There is lots of information about this type of crime on the net just put 419 into google, one of the better site sites is http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/Business/nigerian.htm
Take care out there .....
Older stuff below this line
I signed up at the website www.cauce.org as I whole heartily support the aims and the objective of ridding cyberspace of UCE.
As I read the material and FAQ on the site a couple of points came to mind that you might like to consider.
The arguments contend that UCE generates large amount of internet traffic and reduce available bandwidth on the net. Whilst this is true and UCE can/has blown away various mail servers on the net I feel that the point is not strong or compelling for the following reasons
I feel that arguments against UCE based on the content of that UCE is a waste of time because one persons porno is anothers Art, one persons political truth is anothers vile propaganda, one persons special offer is anothers shopping opportunity. Its the messenger we want to slay not the message. UCE is bad because of the *way* it is sent not what is sent. UCE from the Girl Guides advertising the "cookie website" would be just as bad.
A major problem with the "remove" process, which you rightly stated is deeply flawed, is that in larger corporate environment the mechanics don't work. From many companies the news posting host is different from the internet mail dispatch host. So even though inbound UCE is routed from the news host you can't reply to it from that machine, only the mail dispatch host. With this and the fact that the address to which the USE is sent is often hidden in the headers means that the spammer, if he should be so inclined to honour the remove, won't have the news posting host address in the remove mail only the mail dispatch host address. I personally don't trust big remove database because many of the sleazier sites that do UCE will just download the remove list and mail to it knowing that it has a very high valid mail address hit rate.
I feel that the one of the strongest argument against the USE is that it breaks the implied freedom "Not to hear your free speech" If you get paper junk mail you can bin it without reading. In most countries you don't have to go to church or political rallies if you don't want to hear what is said. You are free to close the door on salesmen and door step campaigners but you can't get away from UCE. UCE stifles free speech in a way that would never be tolerated IRL. If you have a town meeting or public discussion forum, stand up and make a point you don't expect to have the next speaker try to sell the crowd on some MMF scam or spout some political/religious tract. By bombarding the mailboxes of people who post to comp.technology.widgets with off-topic UCE mail people are put off from contributing to USENET and this stifles real free speech. It's harassment. I am supprised that the subscribers of AOL/compuserv/.... have not filled a class action suit against the worst offenders. $5 per head into a campaign pot would buy a lot of lawyer power.
The other strong argument that I feel was not covered well on the site was the Data protection principal. In some countries there exists the principal in law that computer data collected may only be used for the purpose that it was given. By attaching your address to a post you are saying that "You may reply to me about the *content* of this post by follow up or email" You are not saying that "You can mail me with any old message that you want" because the act of posting to a limited news group signals only your intent to converse only on the topic of the group. UCE breaks that principal just as badly as a utility company starting a credit card and junk mailing all its captive subscribers without first asking the opt-in question.
RFC ahead.... This idea is lobbed the air for general discussion. One possible solution to the USE question would be to use the existing DNS service to allow administrators to display the UCE policy of the domain. If you had a campaign to get all admins of domains to put up a host/mail address called nouce@domain or ucepolicy@domain that would indicate that UCE should not be sent or that you have to mail the responder ucepolicy@domain to get the domain UCE policy. The policy document could be of the form topic flag modifier{,flag modifier} where topic would follow the USEnet groups hierarchy eg rec. comp. biz. alt. and flag would be a=Allowed, b=ByRequest, g=goviahost mailhost@domain, f=feeis $nnn, r=returnaddressmust be valid. By publishing that you will charge Email spamers to use your equipment to advertise, at say $10 a message, then follow up with an invoice and writ to both the originator and the carrier, you should see some effect.
Kindest regards
Also posted to news.admin.net-abuse.email without much response.
Jessie
I read with interest "Wham Bamb stomping out Spam" which failed to mention an important free speech issue. By collecting and abusing Email address from web pages and Usenet postings UCE is stifling public discussion in a way similar to a shouting drunk at a town meeting. We have the right not listen to their free speech. It not just the commercial adverts UCE is used to promote www sites and, insult to injury, Bulk email packages.
The idea that "remove lists" could help is farcical, firstly if you need to send a remove request you have already been hit, Secondly a remove list is a big list of valid Email addresses and Email list abuse is what these people do. The fact that one of the mass Email sending products, advertised by the sending of UCE, is called "Stealth Bomber" should indicate that this is not a product conducive to the public good.
To solve this problem in a way that provides a place for legitimate internet marketing the following is proposed.
Mark your territory, its common practise IRL to put up a "Trespassers will be prosecuted" board so put up a policy file on your www server that states your policy on unsolicited mail. I suggest a file www.YOURDOMAIN.NAME/ucenote.txt and an autoresponder mail address ucenote@YOURDOMAIN.NAME
Sample policy can be along the lines of any of the following
"1.0 The owner/operator of internet YOURDOMAIN.NAME domain asserts that unsolicited Email costs us time and effort to deal with and we reserve the right to recover from the sender, or their service provider, the costs of our wasted time at the rate of $100 per message." or "2.0 The owner/operator of internet YOURDOMAIN.NAME domain asserts that unsolicited Email costs time and effort to deal with and is rejected by some mail users in this do main. All unsolicited Email for users in this domain must be sent to uehost.YOURDOMAIN.NAME to allow us to apply filters at the mailbox owners request." or "3.0 The owner/operator of internet YOURDOMAIN.NAME domain is happy to provide a full message service. In the light of this co-operation please send a single copy of your messages for wide distribution to ue4all@YOURDOMAIN.NAME" or "4.0 There are no restrictions on unsolicited Email to YOURDOMAIN.NAME internet domain."
You can also add any of the following policy riders to the end of the file
All Email to this domain must have a valid return address. List owners if you are sending more than 20 messages to this domain at once use uehost.YOURDOMAIN.NAME Mailsizelimit=nnnnn bytes UCEMarkerstring=x-advert UEMarkerstring=x-uemail subject_type_here ReqMarkerstring=x-req subject_type_here
To encourage the most persistent offenders and their suppliers how about starting a class action lawsuit to recover the total costs incurred by us all in processing their messages. Persistent offenders will be deterred by a few heavy hitting invoices and "junk fax" type regulations.
Don't for get to put DomainIsPosted See http://www.YOURDOMAIN.NAME/ucenote.txt before sending Mail or DomainIsPosted EMail ucenote@YOURDOMAIN.NAME to your Signature file.
As the bulk mailers are so good a slurping usenet postings Announce your domain policy to news.admin.net-abuse.bulletins as "mail policy for *@YOURDOMAIN.NAME"
For a follow up discussion see newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email to which this will be posted as "Bulk mail .. State your policy"
Regards
It all gets very serious on the frontline of the Email Spam wars. On the one side you have Millions of irate mailbox owners, who quite rightly, resent the interruptions and offence brought by the daily torrent of unsolicited adverts for phone cards, MakeLoadsofMoney scams and sleazy webshows. On the other you have the hundred or so electronic fly posters, casting into cyberspace email flyers, ducking and diving from volleys of revenge mail bombs, hoping and praying for just 0.01% payback. In the middle you have the Internet service providers, struggling with highjacked email servers and machines overloaded with ballooning news and mail storage areas.
Email addresses are automatically scooped from both Web pages, Internet News posting and worst of all "Remove me from your list" email replies. A single posting to some news groups, notably news.admin.net-abuse.email, can result in a scream of adverts, hate mail and just plain Email garbage. Once your Email address has been discovered it is never forgotten. It is not uncommon for academic computer accounts that have been dormant for years to crust up with megabytes of email. It is somewhat ironic that a large percentage of that junk email is trying to sell you the tools of the bulk email trade. With promises of free nearly advertising and staggering returns, packages with names like "Stealth Bomber" and "Floodgates" are offered for sale with CDs of millions of addresses. Truly a nightmare for most people struggling under the barrage of interruptions from phone, fax and Windows general protection faults.
The big players in the Bulk Email industry, barely legitimate in the light of its favourite products and a ban on Junk faxing, have clubbed together to offer a global remove service to users and list filtering for the trade. The Internet Email Mail Marketing Corp (http://www.iemmc.org but don't go there) operates under a cloud of suspicion. Exploring the rather thin Iemmc web site reveals complex way of adding an email address to the supposedly global mail filter. Its not an easy feeling offering up a virgin Email address to the very group people that have been hassling you for months taking no notice of protests or remove requests. As it happens the Iemmc filter process leaks, its coverage is patchy but worst of all if you complain to admin@iemmc.org by email from another address you find that address is harvested and passed around.
Hiding under phrases like "Its free speech protected by the constitution" and "Its not illegal yet." the truth is that bulk mailers don't really care about those that reject their messages, why should they ? It is that fraction of a % positive response that they are searching for. You can slam the door on hawkers and refuse to buy The Watchtower but those interruptions happen just one a week or so. How would you handle a queue of uninvited callers knocking down your door every morning ? Meanwhile software (ro)'bots war over newsgroups pushing global posting and cancel rates to unprecedented highs. What ever happened to the right not to listen to someone else's free speech ?
It gets pretty ugly sometimes, on the sending side it is common practice to bounce bulk email of someone else's email server, which is about as honest as using the office franking machine after hours to send out the club newsletter you just photocopied for free. To avoid vengeful mailbomb retaliation and "illegal use of account" terminations senders often disguise the return address and routing headers. It is kind of weird to get mail from addresses all over the globe only to find that it is the same old tired messages you have seen countless times before. The practice of phoning up the advertised freephone numbers, just to have an argument about marketing methods, and thus run up a bit of their phone bill is widespread but if done cross border will cost you money. Gangs of annoyed system administrators gang up on other service providers that fail to enforce any kind of reasonable acceptable use policy by blacking out areas of the internet.
Its worth fighting, like graffiti and broken glass in a kids playground, its a problem of the modern age that tarnishes the promise of a better lifestyle. For more information and http://www.cauce.org/
Regards
Foot solider in the Spam wars.
It is quite easy to have some fun at the bulk mailers expense, and it doesn't cost money to make them look stupid. It may even may help to slow down the bulk mailing operations by watering down the lists. The lifeblood of bulk mail operations is fresh new addresses and reusing the old ones; well give them something to chew on. Hey they don't have to be real addresses, in fact that would only encourage the pests, go on be creative. Add a page or section to your website with some random text dotted with loads of made up but real looking mailto address tags. godfather@maffia.org, elvis@hideout.net, corvett@shed.garden.com are a few for starters. Sign off your news postings with a selection of address only one of which is obviously correct. If you are fred@mailman.isp.net sign off with derf@mailwoman.isp.net, fred.the.hat@milkman.isp.net, fredx@maddog.isp.net as well as your real address. Dont forget to mangle the return address in your news posting software and give a clue which is the real address in the text. When you do get nuked in the spamwars, just think of all that chaff blown away to bit-bucket haven on the winds of cyberspace.
Remember.its.is@not against.the@law to.convert.the@whole text.of@a.public.domain text.to.look@like.a.mail address@list and.put@it.up on.your@web.pages Pick up some public domain word and get mangling.
For a more permanent solution sign up with www.cauce.org.
Do you hate junk memos by email ?
Lets try to fix this by putting an update into the employee handbook
I feel that it is important to add a section in the Email bit of the handbook on the appropriate use of Email lists. Something along the lines of .... Email takes employee time and effort so please make sure that your message is both relevant and appropriate to all those on the list. Please don't send binary attachments of gifs or spreadsheets. Make the information available on the WWW or a file server and send only an URL referrence.
Please don't use company wide email for on-going discussions reply only to the sender of the message.
Please don't send global mail about personal hobbies or interests that are not directly related to our business. (If you hate calls from timeshare salesmen you will know what we mean)
Global remailing of jokes and humour whilst fun gets tedious when you have 300 emails to wade through after a week off.
Please don't send "Have you seen Bill ?" messages to everyone in the company. You can contact the reception desks and departmental administrators to achieve this.
Please don't send out the same old message every week, week in, week out to the same people.
Please don't send "I am going to be away next week... " to every one in the company ... that's what voice mail greetings are for. Are you *really* that important that everyone has to know where you are every day.
Please dont send information of a very transient nature many people only read email once a day or less. Global Emails interrupt everyone business -- consider carefully the relevance of your message.
Regards
If you have been on the net for a while you will have seen one of the panic stricken Email Virus warnings about Penpals/Goodtimes/Join the crew. They are of course bogus but insidious in nature and seem to resurface every 6 months or so. Stomp on this newby tat by mailing the following to all those on the distribution list for the copy you received.
Dear Internet user
I have sent you this because you sent or where sent a panic stricken warning about an email virus. Please think for a moment, do some research and consult your service provider/system administrator before acting on similar messages.
The Penpals goodtimes and join the crew email virus warnings are a hoax. These bogus warnings do damage and waste time by being passed on as authentic.
You could say that "The warning is the virus" so dont pass it on.
See Web page http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html for more details on this and other internet hoaxes.
Kind regards
A.N.Internet user
Its not surprizing that all those sad lonely spamers have nothing better do over the holiday break than going round stuffing peoples mail boxes. Notice also the clever and effective marketing ploy of sending the same stuff over and over and over and over again.
This in just one day between Xmas and New Year 97
*162 pii@delphi.com Sat Dec 27 06:15 wiggie woo for free *163 pii@delphi.com Sat Dec 27 06:18 wiggie woo for free *164 friends@whynot.com Sat Dec 27 06:35 Spirit of Christmas in your church! *165 friends@whynot.com Sat Dec 27 06:35 Spirit of Christmas in your church! *166 ree@delphi.com Sat Dec 27 07:23 wiggie woo for free *167 ree@delphi.com Sat Dec 27 07:42 wiggie woo for free *168 friendz@whynot.com Sat Dec 27 08:41 Spirit of Christmas in your church! *169 <aol.com@zeus.newe Sat Dec 27 11:56 $50,000 in 1 to 3 months... $$$ while you sleep *170 <aol.com@zeus.newe Sat Dec 27 11:56 $50,000 in 1 to 3 months... $$$ while you sleep *171 coa@unicall.be Sat Dec 27 13:26 For The Business Minded - Bulk Mail For Profits ! *172 coa@unicall.be Sat Dec 27 13:54 For The Business Minded - Bulk Mail For Profits ! *174 successcanbeyours@ Sat Dec 27 20:36 *******72hr. WARNING NOTICE!!!! ***** *175 12367040@juno.com Sat Dec 27 22:42 WARNING!! DON'T GET SCAMMED !!! *176 12367040@juno.com Sat Dec 27 22:47 WARNING!! DON'T GET SCAMMED !!! *177 97030969@juno.com Sat Dec 27 22:48 WARNING!! DON'T GET SCAMMED !!! *178 97030969@juno.com Sat Dec 27 23:03 WARNING!! DON'T GET SCAMMED !!!
Since the first days of 1991 I worked at a supercomputer manufacturer as a software analyst. It was a demanding but enjoyable job running on the bleeding edge of technology with some of the most fiercely demanding customers and kick-ass computers. It was a stressful job in many ways, the expectations of the customer base where as high as the systems where complex. The company being one of the founding internet nodes was wired and uses the net as a support and collaboration tool.
It came as somewhat of a surprise to feel the scum on net backwash so hard. The Email spams started as a trickle in 96 with just a few a month but rapidly grew to the point where I personally received 15 to 20 a day, to a variety of working permutations of my address. I would get the same messages to cne@cray.com, c.england@cray.com, cne@uk.cray.com, c.england@timbuk.cray.com and latterly the same names @sgi.com It did not take long to work out that the remove process was a sham and the messages where entirely scams and irrelevant. A couple of small postings to news.admin.netabuse.email ensured a torrent of revenge mail, sometimes as many as 30 at a time.
Like many people I found the pestering persistence of the spam an annoyance that brought an unreasonable level of stressful anger but I soon felt powerless to prevent the torrents of turdletts that swamped the important messages in my Email box.
It was especially frustrating to realise that because the mail addresses were being ripped from USENET postings we are all getting shafted two ways. The email spam was the obvious one but my favourite discussion groups were dying as fewer and fewer people would put their heads above the parapet to suffer the relentless torrents of spam email. This is the real "Freedom of speech" issue. Those apologists who say that off-topic commercial postings to focused news groups are acceptable are just too dumb to read traffic signs and may very well be seen driving the wrong way up the freeway as a legitimate expression of free choice. If you want a news group talk.freedom.nopostingrestrictionsons then make the group and shut the hell up and stop clouding the real issues. Freedom of speech is indeed a treasure but there is no guarantee anywhere of a free audience. The tatic of news post cancling was also seriously flawed the off-topic posts should just have been moved to appropriate biz. groups. This would have avoided all those bogus freedom of speech claims.
I signed onto a couple of mailing lists for technical news updates, and you can be sure that even "legitimate" mailing lists screw up. Double sends and a removes that don't work are common but that is not spam just normal organisational incompetence that teaches you who not to trust with your stock and money matters.
I did my share of spam hunting. You can reply to fresh modem originated spams with a lot of packets when you have a top-of-the-line Cray hooked to a T1 line. I talked to a loads of service providers and sysadmins from ripped off school and company mail relays, with just a single exception, all the people I spoke with were just as annoyed as I was about the whole spam issue. How little it must really matter to the big internet industry players that this is still a problem for so many.
Wow I did party the night Scamfraud lost his net ( twice ) but why has it taken so long to flush out the rest of the bottom feeders ?
I am on the outside now, since my recent change of company the whole ghastly situation is starting to recede now. I trashed the whole 6 Mbyte, 7500+ message spam collection, when I moved, only wishing I could have burnt some of the senders along with the garbage. No external spam for nearly a quater now and I feel calm. So be prepared to move Email address, it is the best, but least satisfactory way to get out from under.
As for Usenet, history may very well see the death of Usenet in the 90s in the same light as the destruction of the rain forests of Canada and Brazil, global resources destroyed by the greedy and lost for want of effective action.
It is somewhat hearting to see that the FTC in the USA has signed up to the issue with the release of its "Dirty Dozen Spam Scams list" I had hundreads of examples of each along with many other scammy looking posts of medical plans, sports betting, charity pleas and remove list frauds. Don't ya just know that they will be just as effective as the banks are in eliminating credit card fraud and the EPA is in keeping healthy fish in the sea and lakes.
I see that O'Reilly are publishing a book called" Stopping Spam" No doubt it will comprehensivly cover the topic and help progress the cause of Spam reduction.
Regards
Nolonger at cray.com but probably still geting spam at that address.