OK. Here is a good summary of how to fight spam. I have several messages informing me that abuser accounts were suspended or terminated. Only one apologized. Others have foolishly tried revenge. I'll put my email address anywhere I want. I won't cede my rights or territory to the spammers. Look at my method. If enough people would use it, the spammers would leave the internet and go back to telemarketing.
On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, Christian Hudon wrote: > On Jun 18, Bruce Perens wrote > > It looks as if someone is trolling the Debian mailing lists and spamming > > their subscribers. The spammer may be getting them via the news gateway. > > Hmm. But wasn't the news gateway taken down a few monts ago? All I have to do is subscribe to a bunch of lists with a name like [EMAIL PROTECTED] and use fetchmail/procmail to put them in one folder so I don't have to read them at all. Then run them through a simple perl script to add newly found addresses to a database and delete the messages when done. There are so many lists available that it could keep a machine very busy. Many list archives are also available via ftp. Someone could pick up addresses more efficiently by downloading an entire month of traffic in a gunzipped file. To fight spam, visit http://www.abuse.net and start using their system. It helps build their database of addresses to complain to. For domains which are actually spam providers or unresponsive/unreachable, they 'climb the traceroute ladder'. I have gotten acknowledgement from mci.net when I actually complained about another domain because of this strategy. They also have some sample scripts for decoding headers and such. When I get spam, I save it to folder spam.new in pine. I usually get up very early and while I drink my first cup of coffee, I go through this folder. I use another virtual console to traceroute and then file the complaints. I always complain to the access and mailserver providers. If mail servers are open to relaying, they should keep logs so that they can verify that a message was accepted from an IP(i.e. modem) and delivered to another system. Any network that delivers unwanted mail to me has an obligation to investigate and notify the dialup ISP that their customer is spamming and trying to hide behind another network's mail server. Any network that provides dedicated or dialup access has an obligation to maintain logs that will show which account used the IP at a particular time. These logs should be kept for enough time to investigate complaints (a month would be fine). Reporting is easy in pine: Make sure full headers is on and the pine option to include them in replies. Reply change the To: header to something like: ([EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED]) Read in a standard complaint file at the top of the body. Send it. This works. Tip - Whenever you get porno spam change the complaint to: 'This unsolicited email was received by several accounts in my domains, including minor schoolchildren.' The ISP's seem to be sensitive to this wording. +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Paul Wade Greenbush Technologies Corporation + + mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.greenbush.com/ + +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ + http://www.greenbush.com/cds.html Special Linux CD offer + +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
