Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Wed, Jul 18, 2001 at 01:23:36AM -0400, B wrote:
> But in order to do this, they would have to have accurate information
> about everyone on their list. I'd rather filter and delete inappropriate
> spam than have World, Inc. know everything about me. My alternative
> would be to lie to them, which makes for bad list pruning.... It seems
> that most send plain text emails, too, which has to be easier on servers
> than half the number would be if it were in HTML....

Of course, the alternative would be to fine and/or imprison people who
violate your privacy or engage in theft of services, deceit, and the
like. I don't care who spams me. I'll lart them all the way up to
their far upstream provider if I don't get action. I hate spam and
spammers.  I don't care if they are selling something I want to buy
(as opposed to a drivers license so I can buy viagra online to help
mortgage my pyramid scheme that is funding my new college diploma or
that lets me know when my printer will stop printing all those
pictures of barely legal teens because it's out of PRINTER TONER
CARTRIDGES, etc.)

My block lists contain over 20700 IP addresses alone, over 700 domains
of idiots who've spammed me, almost 5000 (usually fake, but occasionally
dropbox) addresses, and that's just the spam I've gotten since 1998.

> I much prefer the end-user solution, helped by Subject lines that
> accurately reflect the contents -- most spam that I've seen does do
> that. Point, click, <Del> just doesn't take all that much time.

The end user solution, according to recent reports from AOL, amounts
for an estimated 30% of all AOL's email traffic. Even assuming that
people on AOL only get maybe ten messages a day, we're talking about
30 million people. For a total of around 90 million messages to AOL
users alone. So, even if it only takes us a second each to delete a
spam message, we're talking about 25,000 man hours a *day* lost to 
"just hit delete". No wonder we're in a recession. Look at all the 
lost productivity.

> Using a valid e-mail alias instead of my "real" email address for any
> purpose that could generate spam lets me purge myself from lists
> periodically; when the spam gets too heavy, I change the alias. I know
> people who do the same thing using yahoo and go addresses.

Yes, but it's silly that we should let criminals determine how we act.
Let them have your addresses, and then report the bastards every time
they spam you. 

> Since I switched to this scheme, and because I never respond to spam,
> the few commercial lists that included my real address have mostly
> dropped it -- I get fewer than 10 spams a day at that address, out of
> 60-100 emails.

So, you're still getting upwards of 10% spam *every day*? And you're
content with the JHD strategy? Is it getting better, or worse?

FWIW, I just wrote (and Webtechniques had the good grace to publish) an
article on how to configure Apache to prevent spambots from harvesting
addresses from your site:

 http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/08/champeon/

I'm really concerned about the future of the Net, now that MAPS has
announced they will begin charging for the RBL, RSS, and DUL; ORBS
has been driven out of business and "replaced" by about a dozen RBL
services of unknown origin, provenance, and effectiveness. Since 
ORBS went belly-up, my spam load has tripled. When we stop using the
MAPS services, I expect it to double again. 

It upsets me more that I get spam for non-existent addresses from HP
and Adobe and companies like that, than it does that some moron using
spamware is sending mail to <#field0# AT hesketh.com>. At least the big
companies should know better. 

And, like Heather, it really yanks my chain when I see local folks
spamming me and/or members of my team, sometimes on the basis of 
previous acquaintance but usually without any thought for whether
or not the employee even works here anymore, and almost always with
no followup on abuse reports or removal requests. If I can take the
time to let you know that <joe AT hesketh.com> hasn't been a valid
address for two years, then by God, you can take the time to remove
it from your idiotic spam address db.

*cough* Fusion *cough*

But, oddly enough, I don't think I got anything from them lately.
Maybe they removed me from their list.

S

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