Off Topic, But List Related -- Tired of Getting Spammed Via

[Peter F. Ferris]

Hi Sean, et al;

Me again! ;-)

Please keep reading...

: >: public lists lead to spam.  You get used to it or you try to
: >: control it coming
: >: in.  Changing this list won't help.
: >
: > "Get used to it"?!?!? You're kidding...
: >
: 
: no, I am not.  I get over 600 mails a day, the ten or so that are spam
are

Wowzers.  You sure got me beat there!  Between work and home, personally
& professionally, I only get around 200-300 a day, depending on how many
flame wars I've started, whether the boss is on vacation, etc. :-) I'd
guesstimate that of 200 messages, ~0 are typically spam.  Thus I found
it particularly irksome that upon joining this list, my spam intake has
suddenly accelerated!

: meaningless.  My mail gets filtered by mailing list and a few other
: criterion
: so the spam lands in my inbox and is immediately recognizable.  I just
: highlight it a few at a time and *poof* gone.  Just like i do the
paper
: spam
: that gets mailed to me every day.

I also do some filtering & rules to treat the lists I subscribe to, so I
can deal with it as time & priority dictate.  I wonder what it would
cost to mail a first class letter if there weren't 'paper spam' - I
won't even mention the ecological savings (ooops!).   

But I'm not really interested in debating this point at all.  I'm just
wanted to let folks know the technology already exists and is easy to
come by & deploy with relatively little effort. You CAN control to a
very high degree just how much spam you ingest.  Many seem to be
resigned to be spam victims.  No thank-you, NOT me!

: > I beg to differ.  Perhaps you didn't read about Shibboleth.  Clear
text
: > addresses do not appear anywhere in the messages unless the (l)user
: writes
: > it in the message body.
: >
: 
: as Oleg points out this only reduces the chances and does nothing to
stop
: people who subscribe to reap addresses.  The more you try to stop
spammers
: the
: smarter they get.

For the third (and final! ;-) )  time, perhaps you should read the white
paper.  I've supplied the URL twice.  The only addresses that would be
gleaned would be those typed in the message body by the user.  List
subscribers know this and seldom forget or 'slip'.  Especially if it's
their own address. ;-)  Signature lines are easily edited to included
addresses like:
"someaddress AT somedomain DOT com".  Inbound messages from a
non-subscriber (spammer, ex-member, etc.) will bounce.

I guess this really isn't as big an issue to some people that don't care
about SPAM/UCE.  The biggest problem I have (aside from any
moral/ethical debate about spam) is it never seems to quit once an
address is compromised. One spammer after another churns the address.
So once the address has fallen into the hands of spammers, I usually
build a filter to trash any incoming messages.  Just wanted folks here
to know they had a choice and to understand that on a properly secure
and administered list, incidents of spamming are extremely nil.  As
said, not once in several years of subscribing to a list using
Shibboleth has the list or me been spammed that I am aware of.  That's a
fact. The software exists.  We can debate the philosophy of spam 'til
the cows come home, but that won't make it quit.  Hitting the "Delete"
key is easy enough I guess, but I say "Why invite/permit spam to your PC
to begin with?"  Permitting spam merely begets more spam. 

Again, I just wanted the folks that run and use this list to know they
don't HAVE to be spammed just because they subscribe to a given list.
And, by the way, if the list is mirrored to a public newsgroup, that's
fine.  If e-mail addresses didn't make to the list in a spammer friendly
format, they wouldn't make it to the newsgroup either. I won't explain
it all here. RTWP.  Read The White Paper.

My apologies for diverting the topics a bit.  It seemed appropriate at
the time.  Have a great weekend all.

Cordially,

--Pete