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Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 15:55:34 +0800
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Kelly=20Duffy?= <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Spam Legalities
Hi all,
This is slightly off topic however I remember a while
back where a spammer from a "Biomedic Therapies"
business harvested the groups email addresses. I also
remember a few people on the list were researching
spam and working towards finding ways to prevent it
and all that. I c
SNIP
ather addresses and what can be
done, legal issues that the company could face and
things like that. Its something I'd like to do
something about.
Thanks for bothering with my rant.
Kelly
Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 16:24:32 +0800
From: Mark Secker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Spam Legalities
Hi all,
This is slightly off topic however I remember a while
back where a spammer from a "Biomedic Therapies"
OK... if these are the same as we've been receiving then they are
probably been sent via a worm similar to so-big.
the addresses in the from field are not the people sending them just
people you have a degree or two of separation from - so there's no
point sending the e-mail back to them because it's not only not them
that sending it but it's not even there machine that's infected with
the e-mail worm.
NEVER -EVER click on the unsubscribe or opt out -you will end up
with more spam because this is 99% of the time used to ensure that
the hashed or guessed address (yours) is real and there for it's like
the computer says "hey we have a live one" and this address will be
flagged for more spam.
They had on one of the ABC national shows an interview with some spam
research people who set up a mail server with some dummy accounts
that were never used (never sent mail never received mail) and with
in days these mailboxes were been flood with spam, when they
contacted the spammer (a known spammer who sends about 80 _million_
spam emails a day) he swore scouts honor that each and every single
one of the account's users had signed up or "opted in" to receive
these messages. When the researchers used the dummy accounts to
select the "opt out" option they simply ended up with a massive
increase in spam rather than a decrease.
I use Spamfire (Matterform Media), and it collects up all the
usual rubbish for me to see (if I want to) and I then have three
options, delete without reference, find the web bugs and send them a
sanitised response every few seconds for as long as I have IE running
or just bounce. In this respect Mark is not quite correct, the two
degree sep messages don't get bounced but about 60 -70% actually do.
But in the end I suspect all I am getting is a good feeling.
Indeed, there is a menu item "Revenge".
Now my own question is that with the huge volume of "Re Your Details"
etc traffic, is there not something common to all those messages
that ISPs could detect and kill before they get through? Does a .PIF
file have any useful purpose?
Bill
--
Dr Bill Parker
RENEW - Scientific and Technical writing & editing in energy and resources.
Box 322 Mt Lawley WA 6929
08 9371 6373 0403 583 676
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
web: www.iinet.net.au/~renew
