Re: Stop Spamming Technique? Thoughts?

From: Alan Connor (zzzzzz_at_xxx.yyy)
Date: 09/29/03 

Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2003 15:51:35 GMT

On 29 Sep 2003 15:07:19 GMT, Peter Jones <jonespr@optushome.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> Chuck <chuck@liderbug.com> wrote in
> news:ffLdb.58$lO2.45104@news.uswest.net:
>
>> 1.Filters at the end of the line (our machines).
>
> Yes. These certainly have their uses (spamassassin, for instance, does
> a pretty good job of catching most of it, although I will admit (for
> Alan's benefit, if he's listening) that I've had to actually tweak my
> configuration to catch the current wave of viruses.) There are
> alternatives, of course. Alan will be happy to enlighten you, provided
> you don't ask any negative questions...
>

That's any questions that are designed to mislead people, like the very
statement I am referring to now.

You make an unfair statement like that, designed to piss someone off, then
accuse them of being a bad person because they responded in exactly the
way your statement/question was designed to provoke.

Do I care? Not a bit. The world is full of jerks. One lives with it and
tries to avoid them.

>> 2.Pressure on ISP's to watch for and block viruses.
>
> Yes and no. It seems reasonable to expect our ISPs to "block viruses"
> for us, but think about it for a moment. To allow them to do that, you
> need to grant them permission to specifcally read all your incoming
> email. Furthermore, if you check the fine print of your contract,
> you'll probably find that they don't actually promise to do any such
> thing; filtering all incoming emails for viruses would put a massive
> load on their mail servers, and the customers would no doubt be expected
> to pay for the required upgrades (in increased fees, or whatever.)
>
> And then there's the other issue: how well do you trust your ISP to
> correctly filter mail; do you trust them to start throwing away *some*
> of the mail addressed to you?
>
>> 3.If you have the ability, run something like tcpdump and contact the IP
>> sending/relaying the email/virus that they are and yes it will require
>> work on our part to do that.
>
> I actually tracked down a couple of the people who first sent me a
> Gibe.B worm, and emailed abuse@theirisp to notify of the problem. One
> reply came back, thanking me and saying they had taken care of it; I
> heard nothing from the other -- and two days later I had 1200 worms in
> my inbox. It's just physically impossible to even start trying to track
> down the infected individuals, I was too busy safeguarding my own
> mailbox -- and would *they* even notice one more "You have a virus"
> email in amongst all the crap? I've received several hundred such
> emails, and I *know* I'm not actually infected (I've got the outgoing
> mail logs to prove it!)
>
>> 4.If your ISP will not cooperate – change to a ISP who will. If a ISP
>> finds it's loosing customers for not cooperating.
>
> Not always practical, unfortunately... Perhaps it is in *your* part of
> the world... :-) If you want broadband here in my home town, your
> choices are severely limited (and since the optushome system is already
> painfully overloaded, I'm not sure they'd notice the defection of a few
> individuals...)
>
>> 5.Contact other customers of the ISP, explain what the problem is, ask
>> them to put pressure on the ISP. They are in as much danger as you are.
>> If they blow us off ... we tell them we won't buy their products.
>
> Hehehe. I know for a fact that if I receive an email addressed to half
> a dozen different "@optushome" addresses, I automatically trash it as
> spam. Beating spam by spamming is generally not the way to go...
>
>> 6.Put pressure on your elected officials
>
> Hmm. What exactly can they do? More legislation? The world is
> drowning in legislation as it is...
>

Amen.

>> We can't just block it, we have to go after the root of the problem.
>
> Indeed.
>
> The root of the problem is that it is far too easy to be anonymous on
> the internet -- here is one point on which I find myself in full
> agreement with Alan Connor.
>
> While I feel that there is still a valid place for anonymous
> communication,

Why? For what purpose? And how are you going to make *some* anonymous
communication possible but prevent others?

Bear in mind that when I say "non-anonymous" I am not referring to the
person's name or street address, but just the IP address of their machine.

 I think there needs to be a general tightening of the
> various protocols to eliminate forged "From:" addresses and the like,
> all of which make life easy for the spammers and the virus writers.
> (I've also seen a recommendation for a new mail transport protocol which
> makes email storage the sender's responsibility rather than the
> receiver's -- sounds like a good idea to me!)
>
> Back to anonymity, though; by all means keep the anonymous remailers --
> but they will almost certainly institute their own systems to prevent
> general spamming, the sending of bulk email, anonymously. It's one
> thing to receive an email from a1234321@anonmail.xyz; it's another to
> receive one pretending to be from your ISP, or your bank, or your
> mother...
>
> *shrug*
>
> One can only hope... :-)
>
> Pete.

I've eliminated spam and such from my life. I am sorry that YOU are still
having a problem with it. But YOU choose the tools you use, don't you? 

-- 
Later, Alan C
You can find my email address at the website: 
elrav1.html --> ACKNOWLDEGEMENTS/CONTACT (20k or less, plain text)
take control of your mailbox ----- elrav1 ----- http://tinyurl.com/l55a

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