From dittrich@cac.washington.edu Wed Dec 17 23:17:14 2003 From: Dave Dittrich To: cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org Subject: (cpx) Re: "Junk E-Mail" Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 23:17:14 +0000 Message-ID: <9511202303.AA23192@red3.cac.washington.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2120135920145650051==" --===============2120135920145650051== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > At 06:47 PM 11/19/95 -0500, you wrote: > > > > Is anyone else getting lots of junk e-mail lately? I'm getting all > >kinds of direct marketing crap to both of my main accounts and I haven't > >posted to usenet in months. > > On a related note, Compuserve had a note on their system last week from > the sysop. Their customers are receiving unwanted e-mail advertisements > from the Internet. Compuserve sysops are attempting to block the spaming > but are finding it difficult because the advertiser is coming in via > different routes. They are also attempting to stop them using the court > system. > > The advertiser, according to the Compuserve sysop, threatened a > mail-bombing if Compuserve tried to block them!!! This would be a just > cause to call in the CSOF (Cypherpunk Soldier of Fortune) for a "measured > response". Yes, I've noticed these as well. One troubling thing I noted with one such spam-handed "attack" was the use of a group of internal email addresses (in the sense that we don't advertise these addresses) as addressees for a message that had an analog sent to www-buyinfo and some other web related addresses. This seems to indicate a way of organizing lists into sets based on location/topic, but doesn't include all other potential addressees in the same domain or organization. I guess it was only a matter of time before someone wrote sophisticated spamming servers that somehow capture/analyze log files, or is this just some idiot front end that lets ad-happy fools spam with a smaller apparent footprint? By the way... One reply I got from an ISP re: one of these drive by spammings indicated that they were charging the idiot for disobeying policy. I've started suggesting to ISPs that they dis-user and charge the offender (in case they haven't thought of this yet). If non-spam policies were more widely used, and these idiots loose their email/access and a few hundred dollars in charges for wasting ISP admin time, perhaps this trend won't continue. -- Dave Dittrich Client Services, Computing & Communications dittrich@cac.washington.edu University of Washington Dave Dittrich / dittrich@cac.washington.edu --===============2120135920145650051==--