On Fri, 2004-02-06 at 09:57, Bill Cole wrote:If you can handle the incredible noise levels, the news.admin.net-abuse.email Usenet group and the SPAM-L mailing list (http://www.claws-and-paws.com/spam-l/index.html) have a useful amount of good information. I still read NANAE, but have given up on SPAM-L because the volume, the need for filtering which is somewhat less good in Eudora than in my newsreader, and and my time availability didn't make a good fit. I would think that any mailing list focused on a serious MTA would also carry a lot of good info specific to that MTA.
Bill, have you ever been joe-jobbed or otherwise harassed as a result of your postings on NANAE?
I can't lay anything directly at posting there. I have had some minor (VERY minor) joe-jobs, a few direct mailbombs, and more forged-subscription attacks thatn I can keep track of, but there's a lot behind that. I report a significant amount of spam and do what I can to make those reports useful for ISP's and to get them to enforce their policies. I spent some time working for the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) back when they were a serious nuisance to spammers. I was somewhat engaged in the mid-90's resistance to the Church of Scientology attacks on their critics online. My participation in the fight to keep Usenet from being totally overrun with spammers and kooks earned me a place on the "Netscum List" and its offshoots. All of those things have had some clear counter-attacks, but simply posting to NANAE has not in itself triggered anything in particular that I am aware of. Given that the CoS has pretty much retreated from the net and the major Usenet nutjobs and spammers have stopped trying to do battle with the basic operation of the net, I doubt that anyone who doesn't beg to be targeted by taunting spammers or building something hugely effective (see Steve Linford) is taking much of a risk by simply trying to make productive use of NANAE.
The one caveat: I get a LOT of Swen. Even with religious blacklisting of every new source since late September, I have almost 4,000 copies of it which have gotten through. Swen harvests addresses from Usenet, and from NANAE in particular.
Some posters don't seem to take contradiction or differing opinions lightly.
True, but there's not a lot of point in dealing with people who refuse to listen to differing opinions. I only keep up there with the help of a killfile that includes about half of the 10 most prolific posters and in some cases kills off any thread devolving from their posts. It is not an easy forum to pick the worthwhile stuff out of, but it can be done.
Quite a few have complained of being joe-jobbed, mailbombed (almost the same thing) or mass subscribed to lists as a result of their posting to the group.
That makes me very unsure about posting there.
I think that anyone who believes they have been targeted simply for their posting to NANAE in this century is overestimating their own importance and the importance of NANAE. One CAN and WILL be targeted as a result of making spam reports to the wrong abuse desks, not because any serious ISP intentionally does so but because many ISP's are careless enough to simply hand off complaints to customers who they should not be trusting. I also am of the opinion that many of the people who end up getting blowback from complaints get it because they lose control in writing spam reports and write tirades about the evils of spam and the worthlessness of spammers, and when those get handed to some spammers they trigger aggressive responses.
--
Bill Cole
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
############################################################# This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the INDEX mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
