From: "Charles Gregory" <cgreg...@hwcn.org>
Sent: Monday, 2009/December/14 12:35
On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Michael Hutchinson wrote:
If everyone could ignore the taunting, and just carry on, there wouldn't
be an issue.
The taunting *is* the issue. The rest of the arguments, about design and
defaults, are carried on by numerous individuals in a quite civilized
manner. But when someone starts throwing arond stupid accusations, then
the person attacked focuses their efforts on 'defending' themselves,
rather than on a fair unbiased review of what *should* be the 'issue'.
Three points:
1) It is known this list is read by spammers to learn what we are
doing. I've verified this with "challenge/response" tactics including
taunting more than once. Once I taunted a spam I received for not
making it to 100. "The guy didn't try hard enough." Within two days
a small number of spams reaching well over 100 came through. I consider
that as confirmation of common-sense. Spammers read this list.
2) On several occasions now Richard has tried to torpedo valid attempts
to scuttle spam. (I've STILL not seen a spam get through that has the
HABEAS tag. I am lower volume than you guys. So that's simply my own
verification of other people's data sets indicating HABEAS has a very
low but not zero false alarm rate.) I see this effort as something of
high profit to spammers. So it seemed rational to remind people that
this list is basically anonymous, spammers read it and can post just
as can non-spammers.
3) Coincidence or not, since I posted that "taunt" to Richard and his
response personal spam to this account has increased sharply.
I am making no conclusion here. I'm presenting facts. Call me out on
the facts not the "taunt" lest you damage your argument.
It is possible to claim coincidence on 1 and 3. I suspect that's a
low probability coincidence. It is possible, though, particularly
for 3. Spam does seem to come in "waves". And I haven't particularly
noticed any newly prominent "type" of spam yet, which is a good
indicator of spam from one master source.
(Item 1 was a well known drug spammer who had a very well established
"pattern" and sat on the ROKSO top ten. His response was amusing,
probably for him as much as for me. I respect his abilities as I
deplore his ethics and morals.)
{^_^}
