Re: spam

[Peter Pleitner]

Hi Whitworth Heads,
I second Roger's invective. Jim asked to be contacted directly for badges
and you guys aren't following directions. Your "I want one too" messages
are getting as tiring as telemarketing ring-ups". But I suppose there is a
benefit in this case. Its like a cue has formed and its hard to ignore.
Cheers, Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Furneaux [mailto:roger.46tc@virgin.net]
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2000 7:51 AM
To: T-ABCs
Subject: [mg-tabc] That Badge!

It's almost a dead cert that all the listers will want a badge, but why not
tell Jim, and not all the rest of us. I've been deleting a lot of spam
recently...

Roger

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[Geoffrey WHEATLEY]

Re the badge Peter what would you ike us to do.This is a serious
question as I see your point re I WANT ONE ETC.
One thing is clear there is a strong demand for a badge. My suggestion
is: lets back this order process with hard cash. I.e I want a badge who
do I send my money too? and how much including postage

Regards Geoff

[Peter Pleitner]

Hi Geoff,

Fair question. I've been an eGroups user longer. Since the change we lost
the distinction between the "reply" and "reply to all buttons". But Jim did
ask for direct responses to him not the list. This entails slightly more
work. But that shouldn't be a problem for this group otherwise they
wouldn't be driving a T-ABC.

Simply put, you can't blindly use "reply" or "reply to all" because both
bring all of us into the loop. Rather you open a blank message, enter Jim's
e-mail address (SDShade@aol.com) on the "To" line then go at it.

As you'll see from Jim's message posted just before yours, he is collecting
firm commitments. Money is not an issue yet. He needs quantity, which I
presume will have some influence on price (this being a cooperative effort).
Committing without final cost doesn't scare me because badges are not that
unusual of a commodity so I'll put my trust in Jim. I'm grateful he's doing
this. Its going to be a bigger job then when I bought those book sale
bargain MG Sports Car by M. Greene last year for a bunch of you.

Cheers, Peter


-----Original Message-----
From: Geoffrey WHEATLEY [mailto:MDandGI@webtv.net]
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 3:05 PM
To: Peter Pleitner
Cc: Roger Furneaux; T-ABCs
Subject: [mg-tabc] Re: Spam

Re the badge Peter what would you ike us to do.This is a serious
question as I see your point re I WANT ONE ETC.
One thing is clear there is a strong demand for a badge. My suggestion
is: lets back this order process with hard cash. I.e I want a badge who
do I send my money too? and how much including postage

Regards Geoff


------------------------------------------------------------------------

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http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications

[Peter Cole]

Hi there,

I too was inundated with span. More spam than messages. I don't need a
loan, I don't need to remortgage, I don't need to see Britany Spears
naked, and thankfully I don't need Viagra yet. The solution? I
changed my browser from one powered by Microsoft. I now use Mozilla,
which is based on Netscape, and is free at www.mozilla.com. I haven't
seen any spam since. (That's tempting fate I know.) I also have a gut
feeling that it helps to change your e-mail address to one that ends in
something other than 'dot com'.

Interestingly, I read an article in one of our national newspapers
earlier this month on the subject. It suggested that if everyone
forwarded all their spam to their ISP they would soon get fed up and
sort the problem out.

Regards
Peter Cole.

[Chip Old]

On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Peter Cole wrote:

> Interestingly, I read an article in one of our national newspapers
> earlier this month on the subject. It suggested that if everyone
> forwarded all their spam to their ISP they would soon get fed up and
> sort the problem out.

This is way off topic, but as an ISP I feel compelled to correct some
misconceptions here.

If it appears in a newspaper, and if it has anything to do with the
Internet, always do further research before you believe it. I have yet to
see an Internet-related newspaper story that has been carefully
researched. If that story had been researched, the writer would never
have made that suggestion.

It is estimated that about 35% of all e-mail being transmitted on the
Internet at any given time is spam, up from estimated 10% last year and
increasing rapidly. This isn't your ISP's fault, so don't beat up on him
about it.

All reputable ISPs prohibit their customers from sending spam. That does
little good because as soon as an apprehended spammer's account is
cancelled, he just moves on to another ISP. It's estimated that the most
active spammers change ISPs as often as every week.

Unless the spam originated from another of your ISP's customers,
forwarding all the spam you receive to your ISP will just swamp him with
complaints he can't do anything about. Your ISP can stop some of the spam
that originates from outside, but not most of it. As I explained in my
previous message, in most cases there is no accurate way to distinguish
between spam and valid e-mail. If your ISP sets up strict spam filtering
rules, it will stop an unacceptable amount of valid e-mail too. Do you
really want your ISP (or anyone else) to decide what e-mail you should and
should not be able to receive? Probably not, and most ISPs operate under
the assumption that you don't.

Most ISPs do attempt to block spam to some extent. They can block e-mail
from so-called "spam domain" mail servers, mail servers that exist for the
sole purpose of distributing spam. They can block e-mail from specific
e-mail addresses known to be used by spammers. They can block e-mail from
"open relay" mail servers, mail servers that are misconfigured (usually
due to ignorance) in such a way that spammers can use them to distribute
spam. They can block e-mail from other ISPs' IP addresses used for dialup
customers, who have no business sending e-mail directly to mail servers
belonging to an ISP other than their own (a common spammer trick).
Trouble is the spam mail servers, e-mail addresses, open relays, and
dialup IPs are all moving targets. They change so fast that the blocking
mechanisms used today will be useless tomorrow. The result is that a
*lot* of spam still slips through. On my mail system I block an average
of 25,000 messages per day, but many of my customers are still swamped by
spam. There isn't much I can do about it.

If you want filtering more stringent than your ISP can provide, then use a
mail program that has filtering capabilities. The current versions of all
popular PC and Mac e-mail programs have pretty sophisticated filtering
capabilities. Take the time to learn how to use them. Just remember that
the more stringent your spam filtering is, the more valid e-mail will be
blocked along with the spam.

The best solution will be legislation prohibiting spam, but so far all
attempts at passing such legislation at the national level (in the US)
have failed. Some states have passed anti-spam legislation, but it is
largely ineffective. Besides, these days most spam originated from
outside the US, US legislation against spam won't make much difference
unless all countries pass similar legislation. There's not much chance of
that.

If you get an intolerable amount of spam the only guaranteed way to stop
it is to change your e-mail address, and then be *very* careful about how
you spread your new address around.

--
Chip Old (Francis E. Old) E-Mail: fold@bcpl.net
Manager, BCPL Network Services Phone: 410-887-6180
Manager, BCPL.NET Internet Services FAX: 410-887-2091
320 York Road
Towson, MD 21204 USA

[Gene Gillam]

Chip,

Thanks for the information.

If I may make one suggestion. www.cloudmark.com has a free anti-spam
program you can download that is fairly effective. It doesn't catch
everything but it does catch a lot - and the more users there are the
better it will become because it's an interactive site - if spam comes
through you hit a "block" button which reports the spam back to
cloudmark. If enough users mark it, it gets blocked. Between cloudmark
and bellsouth.net's mailguard program my spam count has dropped from
about 75 a day to less than 20 - very manageable. Also, with cloudmark
you can whitelist certain email addresses which will prevent them from
being blocked on your computer.

Gene



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[Joe Gates]

My ISP has been very obliging as it offers a facility named abuse@... to
which I email intrusive emails in a certain fashion so as to include source
addresses etc., and it takes care of the matter from thereon out via some
industry body. Perhaps yours does the same?

Joe Gates
TC8675
Johannesburg, S Africa

[Chip Old]

On Fri, 20 Dec 2002, Joe Gates wrote to Chip Old and MG-TABC:

> My ISP has been very obliging as it offers a facility named abuse@... to
> which I email intrusive emails in a certain fashion so as to include
> source addresses etc., and it takes care of the matter from thereon out
> via some industry body. Perhaps yours does the same?

Many ISPs have an "abuse" address intended for the reporting of spam,
hacking, cracking, and other forms of net abuse. In most cases, though,
it is intended for use by outsiders to report abuse by the ISP's
customers. It's very unusual for an ISP to have enough manpower to
process spam received by its own customers. It's extremely time
consuming. For example, if all of my 10,000 +/- customers sent every
piece of spam they received to my "abuse" address, I'd need a full-time
staff of ten or more people to deal with it all. That just isn't possible
unless I increase our subscription fee to an outrageous level.

More commonly an ISP will encourage customers to report spam to the ISP,
company, university (or whatever) from which it originated. The address
on the "From:" line is almost always phony, so this means turning on "full
header" display in your mail program, examining the "Received:" lines in
the header (what you referred to as the "source addresses"), determining
from them where the spam really cam from, and forwarding it to that
system's "abuse" address. It's not something most people are willing to
spend time learning how to do.

There is no "industry body" that processes spam reports. It's up to the
individual Internet user and/or ISP to figure out where the spam came from
and complain to the administrators of the spammers's ISP.

--
Chip Old (Francis E. Old) E-Mail: fold@bcpl.net
Manager, BCPL Network Services Phone: 410-887-6180
Manager, BCPL.NET Internet Services FAX: 410-887-2091
320 York Road
Towson, MD 21204 USA

[Chip Old]

On Fri, 20 Dec 2002, Mark McCombs wrote to Chip Old:

> I suspect, as well, that the "remove" list at the bottom of the spam is
> actually a running tally of solid emails, added to their list!
> Regards from Ohio-
> Mark TC8126

Yes, that's probably true. Spam will often contain "to be removed"
instructions. Sometimes you are instructed to send "remove" email to a
specific address. Sometimes you are instructed to go to a Web page to be
removed. Don't do it! The general consensus is that if you follow those
instructions, in most cases you are merely showing the spammer that he gas
a good address for you. The result is even more spam.

--
Chip Old (Francis E. Old) E-Mail: fold@bcpl.net
Manager, BCPL Network Services Phone: 410-887-6180
Manager, BCPL.NET Internet Services FAX: 410-887-2091
Baltimore County Public Library
320 York Road
Towson, MD 21204 USA

[mrbadger]

http://astro.temple.edu/~kmr/Chauffe2.mp3

Speaking of SPAM.
At least it's more entertaining than most. Read below then click the link above.


First you'll hear a 10-cylinder, 750 horsepower Asiatech F1
engine being warmed up. Then it performs a rousing version
of "When The Saints Come Marching In", to the delight of
assembled pit staff and journalists.

Here's how the magic was achieved (technical/musical details
via F1 Racing magazine):

As we all know, a V10 engine produces five combustions per
revolution at a frequency per second of 60/(5 x revs per
minute), which equals 12/rpm. Therefore, to work out the
revs you need to hit a particular musical note, you multiply
the note's frequency by 12. To play a 440Hz 'A', for example,
you need 5,280rpm. For 'C', use 3,139rpm, for 'F' 4,191rpm,
and so on.

Asiatech's French technicians (the engine, despite its name,
is derived from a Peugeot design) simply programmed their
engine to run through the various rev/note ranges in the
correct sequence. The result is delightful.

A Merry Christmas to all from the Badger in Kiwiland


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