Conference 7.286::digital

Junk mail perhaps but at least you wern't told you won $1,000,000.00
and you don't have to send in $89.95 to register for your new FREE
information.

Distributed control is the answer.

If everyone who gets a copy of this trash sends a reply
telling the sender why this is not acceptable behaviour, 
maybe he'll get the point.  Especially if he has to
pay for connect time.

A friend of mine in California (formerly a DECcie) told me that bookstores out
there are now carrying something called the "Internet White Pages", and
apparently I, as well as other DEC employees, are listed in it -- with Internet
addresses of the two major places I read News from.  It seems that the authors
trolled such things as Usenet News postings and such and built up a database of
people, and are selling the result as the first "phone book" for the Information
Superhighway (gad I hate that term).

I've not actually seen the thing; has anyone else?   Thoughts?


John

re .-1

So, does it tell the world precisely *which* Usenet news
groups you're interested in?      :-)

    Re: .3
    
    Yes, I've seen it.  I'm in it - twice.
    
    Re: .4
    
    No.
    
    				Steve

Prominantly displayed in your local Barnes and Noble bookstore.

Internet is rife with junk mail, get rich quick schemes, etc.

Chris

>So, does it tell the world precisely *which* Usenet news
>groups you're interested in?      :-)
    
    The Sunday Houston Chronicle had an article about the Internet in the
    business section. It mentioned that even X-rated material is out there,
    but that there's also a "Top 50 Horny Geeks" list that shows the names
    of the users that are in there most. :-)
    
    Harry
    

I'd also wonder if that controls WHICH junk mail you get based on whether
your address came from comp.os.vms or alt.sex.beastiality.hampster.duct-tape ?

Scott :)

    -.1
    
    I never use duct-tape, as it tends to get soggy when wet and...OH, GOD! 
    This is the wrong notesfile!  I'm so embarassed!
    
    					Sethi Sunil

Re: .7

The 'top 50' list on that server mentioned nodenames, not user names.
If a company uses a gateway node then that would be the node shown in the
list.

Lee

    Re .10 Hmm, and how would you know that? ;-) ;-) ;-)
    
    Harry
    

    re .9:  I'm still laughing and now wonder who I'll have to explain
    my outburst to....?  Not that I'm warped, mind you ;^), but any humor
    is soo welcome!
    
    this notes file is a great outlet, even for those of us who rarely
    write to it.
    
    sue
    

Every-recipient-replies-to-junk-mail-sender = email-bomb

What a wonderful idea!! (evil chuckle) And all it takes is a polite "Dear
sender, please do not blindly distribute this type of material".

That's a little like sending used kitty litter back in the business-reply
envelope for all those "low-interest" credit card bulk mailings I get.

I tried forwarding the mail back to the sender, but got a canned response.
If you want to have the message seen, use "comment@enlow.com" instead.

				Steve

    
    why are you spending all the time, using bandwidth up. just take the 
    message for whats it is worth and trash it. you guys keep complaining
    and DEC will take the access away from us all together. 
     remember we almost lost the notes file for stuff like this.
    
    bc
    .
    .

    I once complained about the "junk" mail that I was receiving from
    inside the company.  A wise person (he musta been 'cause he's 2 levels
    above me:-)) pointed out to me that "Everyone has a 'D' key, use it".
    
    Mark

    may be becuase people enjoy complaining more than just use the delete
    key?
    
    we humans by nature are a born complainers, you dont have to go far to
    find this out, look at us , we DECeeeees in this note file, 99% of our
    notes are complaints notes about something or the other!
    
    lets all promise not to write complaints notes in here for one day and
    write only positive, up lifiting, progressive thinking notes about
    DEC, the environemnts, our lifes , jobs, and loved ones.
    
    lets give it a try.
    
    thanks,
    
    \bye
    \nasser
    

    I couldn't agree with you more on this one.  Another part of 
    being human is to form habit patterns in our thinking and to 
    interpret our perceptions so as to conform to those patterns.

    If we practice negativity and complaining, we'll find support for 
    that way of thinking.  If, on the other hand, we look for the
    "good stuff" and voice our appreciation, we'll discover more and
    more ways to make a positive difference.

    It sounds like magic ...



    ... and maybe it is.

    Terry

On the other hand, taking a few moments now to try and put a stop to
this kind of stuff may save each of us many moments later on having
to plow through it and decide whether or not it should be deleted.

It also helps to establish etiquette and conventions of usage. If people
begin to see the Internet and all the systems connected via gateways
as channels for passing around junk mail, pretty soon that's all that
will be traveling on it, and there won't be bandwidth left to do anything
useful. Did you ever get so many phone calls from telemarketers that you
considered removing your phone? That was the original reason why I got
an answering machine, so I could screen out the junk calls.

There will always be some level of unwelcome trash floating around in
any communications medium (although someone thought it was worth 
initiating). The thing to do is make sure it does not begin to 
dominate the medium. Will you still subscribe to cable when it
has 500 channels, 298 of which are home shopping and 198 of which
are infomercials?

Speaking of junk mail, two lawyers in Arizona posted a dire warning to
*every* news group this morning. Something about the next green card
lottery being the last. At the very end you find out that 'oh bye the
way, we're "immigration attorneys" send us your name'

    This stuff is usually self-correcting.  Everyone that's honked usually
    starts sending text copies of "War and Peace", binary images of Heather
    Locklear, etc.  Why sweat it?

    
    I believe we should get rid of the junk mail on our own systems before
    we start to try to stop it on others, so far today I have gotten 16
    messages that have nothing to do with my job or even the group I belong
    to, as a matter of fact 6 of them do not have anything to do with DEC
    at all.
    
    

Re: .20

They're even hitting mailing lists out on the Internet... got my copy
of the SCUM this morning.

Lee

RE: .21

	Can I get one of those Heather Locklear images?

						mike

    Re .21 Hey, me too! ;-)
    
    Harry
    

    Ya know, I just GOTTA start watchin' my verbal illustrations here...

.24>	Can I get one of those Heather Locklear images?
    
    Nope. She's standing in front of a weather map...

re: .24, .25

...how about a Cheryl Ladd?

Ray

For great images, check out the FEMALE PINUP (and MALE PINUP for
you gals) software libraries on America Online. See how fast
you can fill your hard disk with GIFs! All images, while 
probably not entirely tasteful to all, must meet AOL's
modesty requirements, so you won't see anything more shocking
than the ads you see in PEOPLE magazine.

    I didn't think ANYONE could check out anything on AOL.  Pile-up on the
    information highway on-ramp, and all that.
    
    						Tex

    
    before you get to excited for these gifs ou had better look at the 
    orange book first.  People have been let go for this specific reason.
    
    

    The access on AOL is getting MUCH better. They just increased their CPU
    power by 50% and have been fine tuning their software. I hardly ever
    have a problem signing on these days.
    
    Harry
    

    Thanks...I've got a loaner pack but I haven't tried it due to the bad
    press.

For what it's worth, those lawyers (who, although they gave an Arizona 
address, apparently are members of the bar in Tennessee) in effect got run 
off the road on the information highway.

The uproar on the Internet over their posting to nearly every newsgroup in 
existence resulted in so much email volume that their Internet access 
provider pulled their account the next day.  The lawyers reportedly are 
threatening to sue to get their net access back.  They made the mistake of 
listing their fax number, and some on the Internet are organizing a 
fax-bombing campaign, now that they can't bomb them by e-mail any more.  
Also, there have been postings giving the 800 number for the Tennessee Bar 
Association, inviting people to complain.

I've seen stinks made about improper blanket postings before, but never 
anything this vicious.

--PSW

    Good.  Fry 'em.  String 'em up.  Rip out their toenails.
    
    I get ratty enough when I read "this note cross-posted in VMSNOTES,
    ALPHANOTES, and HACKERS".  It is just plain rude to carpet-bomb with
    notes.   It means you think that your time is more valuable than other
    peoples.
    
     

I heard (maybe on All Things Considered -- don't recall) about 'the
internet ganging up on AOL' users who are slobbering all over the
internet.

Are these the guys they're referring to?

Pete

I think it seems to be that AOL users aren't too 'Internet savy'. I have
seen posts in newsgroups to the effect of "Please add me to the list.
Thanks, gergos@aol.com". Sort of like putting a similar message into a
notesfile.

Lee

re: .34

>I've seen stinks made about improper blanket postings before, but never 
>anything this vicious.

 * They're lawyers.
 * They're lawyers who advertise.
 * They're lawyers who make a living finding loopholes in immigration law.

How many more excuses do you need? The only other people who might even
come close are used car salesmen and I don't think they've learned about
Internet yet.

    Is anything being done about junk mail on a corporate or gateway level?
    I'd like to have anything from cyberpromo.com and certain other domains
    filtered out.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

I would too, though cyberpromo.com is not a major offender in my inbox.  In
fact, I don't think I get more than two or three from the same domain (and
those are just multiple copies of the same message - more often than not
teasers for some XXX site.)

I don't think there's even a "90% solution" for this.

				Steve

There have been discussions of this topic going on in recent RISKS digests.

-Chris

Re .39:

>    Is anything being done about junk mail on a corporate or gateway level?

Got something against Multi-Level Marketing?


>    I'd like to have anything from cyberpromo.com and certain other domains
>    filtered out.

The line forms to the rear.  The last time I tried to get node-specific blocking
instituted on our mail gateways was 8-May-96.  Here's my dialogue with Digital's
postmaster:

"
>>>I just received the following spam (probably at amartin@denton.zko.dec.com).
>>>
>>>Since they claim to be their own ISP, would you be willing to protect
>>>Digital's resources by just setting our corporate gateways to refuse connects
>>>entirely from the lostvegas.com domain?
>>>
>>>I don't know if it's technically feasible or politically correct, but I don't
>>>think these people should profit from us in any way.
>>
>>There is nothing we can do about this sort of thing. You can complain to the
>>sender but that's about all. Its the same as getting junk mail from the
>>post office.
>
>I'm surprised that we lack the technical means to bounce packets from a
>domain.  I thought I read via Risks Digest about at least one ISP who does
>this as a matter of course.

It is not a question of technical means. It's more a question of policy.
"
				/AHM

    Take a look at http://spam.abuse.net/spam/ for some ideas about
    this problem.
    
    Even if we can't/won't do something on a corporate level, I think
    one can use Microsoft Exchange's filters to selectively direct mail 
    from specific addresses to the recycle bin so it never appears in 
    the inbox. This isn't an ideal solution, as the addresses of spammers
    tend to keep changing, but it might help in come cases.

    
    >but it might help in come cases.
    
    	Yes, but what if it isn't pornographic in nature?
    

    That kind of response is typical of what are now called "spam friendly"
    ISPs on the net. Of course, that was a year ago. The techniques are now
    well documented and the volume of this crap is going up.
    
    The most egregious and open bulk emailer (Cyberpromo) has essentially
    set themselves up with enough bandwidth and backbone arrangements that
    he is a) has absolutely no reason to listen to complaints and b) able
    to distribute mail nearly at will.
    
    I've been deluged again with this crap over the last month and I'm
    getting a little tired at tilting at the big windmills. But I'm more
    than willing to tilt at our own little windmill. Who's the right person
    to contact to get this stopped at *our* gateway?
    
    Digital has policies about inappropriate use of electronic resources by
    its employees. It should be willing to take steps to stop external
    entities from doing the same thing.

    We've seen a major increase in junk email in the past few weeks,
    largely from Cyberpromo (various cooked headers lead back to
    Cyberpromo, so you may be getting junk from them and not realizing that
    they are the source), Quantum Communications, and what appear to be
    various porno web sites that all trace back to a Las Vegas site
    redrove.com.  It's gotten to the point where I waste about 15 minutes a
    day myself getting rid of this crap and complaining to postmasters in
    a feeble attempt to stop it.  I think Dec should filter this on a
    corporate level or the productivity hit is going to be substantial.
    

The domain that seems to send me the most junk mail is ix.netcom.com.

				Steve

    I just lamented about this in the INTERNET_TOOLS notesfile.
    
    The amount of junk mail seems to be increasing exponentially. Until a
    few months ago, it was infrequent enough to me only a minor nuisance;
    it won't take long until it's a major one.
    
    

    Steve, if you get junk from a netcom user, you should forward the
    message (including the -entire- header) to abuse@netcom.com.
    

    Here's what just showed up in my inbox from cyberpromo, basically
    it says, "Suck eggs."  However, I'm told by a Dec mail guru that
    although currently a corporate wide filter isn't technically possible,
    they are working on it.
    
    
    Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 14:15:04 -0400 (EDT)
    X-Web:  Visit it now!  http://www.cyberpromo.com
    Message-Id: <199704161815.OAA26529@199704161815.OAA26529>
    Mime-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
    From: abuse@c-y-b-e-r-p-r-o-m-o.com (Mail AutoResponder)
    Errors-To: autoinvalids@ISP-am.net
    To: kolling@pa.dec.com
    Subject: Response from Cyber Promotions
    
    Dear Sir/Madam,
    
    Thank you for taking the time to write to Cyber Promotions with your
    concerns.
    
    Please be aware that this mailbox (abuse@cyberpromo.com) is read by
    many
    people in our company, including our senior management. The fact that
    your
    message garners e-mail from an auto-responder is to insure a timely
    response.
    It should not be an indication of a lack of consideration or concern.
    
    CYBER PROMOTIONS' POSITION ON ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY FOR INTERNET
    CONTENT
    Cyber provides email services to a large number of customers, whom
    are supporting thousands of end users.
    
    It is our position that the Internet is an open marketplace, where
    commerce of any and all kinds may take place in accordance with public
    demand.  We do not believe censorship is the responsibility of an
    Internet
    service provider.  It is not our place to censor customers' content or
    legitimate business practices.  Messages originating from customer
    sites
    reflect the opinions of our customers and not necessarily those of
    Cyber Promotions.
    
    SUGGESTIONS
    Cyber is a pro-active organization with goals of delivering the highest
    quality email solutions.  Since we believe in continuous improvement,
    we
    will re-evaluate our position in light of the any new regulatory
    developments.
    
    We appreciate that our position may not be agreeable to everyone. 
    Further,
    we understand your interest in seeking a solution.  With that in mind,
    may
    we suggest the following options:
    
    - END-USERs - A variety of e-mail and filtering software packages are
    available on the Internet for end-users.  For example, Eudora and
    procmail
    offer sufficient protection from e-mail of your undesired Internet
    sites.
    Or you can use the latest in filtering software, e-Filter, sold on
    Cyber's own web page at... http://www.cyberpromo.com
    
    - ISPs - Your mail servers and/or router systems can be set to reject
    incoming spam or filter out offensive sites at the IP level.  Sendmail
    and
    ccmail are a few examples of good systems which perform these
    functions.
    
    Again, we would like to thank you for your valuable input, and wish you
    continued success in your Internet experience.
    
    Best Regards,
    
            The Cyber Promotions Staff
    
    
    
    (Many of Cyber's policies regarding these issues have been adopted from
    our
    own backbone providers.)
    
    
    

    
    	What happens if you give them a taste of their own medicine?
    
    	I could envision a .COM file that runs every hour ... no, make
    	that every minute, and sends a copy of the US Constitution [or
    	the NYC telephone directory] to that particular address.
    
    	Suggestion:  turn off your copy_self first.  8^)
    

>	I could envision a .COM file that runs every hour ... no, make
    
I'm sure Digital would just love for you to use up their network sending
out such mail.  I know of a case where someone did such a thing and was
fired.

                                    August G. Reinig

>>    	I could envision a .COM file that runs every hour ... no, make
>>    	that every minute, and sends a copy of the US Constitution [or
>>    	the NYC telephone directory] to that particular address.

Don't.  People have been fired for such things.

						Brian

    Returning unsolicited email basically has two problems for any "smart"
    spammer: the return address may be forged, difficult to determine, or
    already disabled and the return address may get you an autoresponse. In
    either case, whatever you send ends up in the bitbucket and you get
    bounced back at least as many messages as you send. This is also not
    advisable from a Digtial account as it could easily be considered
    inappropriate use and you could in turn be the subject of a complaint
    from the spammer or from another ISP along the way that may or may not
    be in bed with the spammer. Also, it is a bit hypocritical to spam the
    spammers if you believe that what they are doing is wrong.

    I agree that Digital as a whole ought to be able to filter out mail
    from specific sources known to be offenders.
    
    The software to do this exists.  I am reliably informed that PMDF
    DELIVER is one that can do it.  I am also reliably informed that there
    are relatively easy solutions to do it at the gateway level (there must
    be a gateway beteween internal and external mail at Digital).
    
    The question is is it worth it to have whoever is in charge of
    administering the gateway do it.  I believe the answer is yes.  I
    apparently have not received as much junk mail as some of the other
    people posting here, but if even a small fraction of Digital employees
    have to deal with one junk mail a week, the total cost in lost
    productivity is enough to more than justify having someone do the work
    to put in the filter.  And in some specific cases, such as Cyberpromo,
    it makes sense to do it on a corporate level rather than having to have
    each individual do it.
    
    I believe, based on what I have seen from various sources, that
    Cyberpromo is about to become a MAJOR menace.  The time to block them
    is now.
    
    If the company can't or won't block them on a corporate basis, then
    perhaps someone within the company who knows how to set up PMDF and use
    the deliver facility to block specific sources could post a cook-book
    guide so we can all set it up for ourselves.  (I've looked a little at
    the help file and I have some idea of how it works, but not enough to
    really set it up myself without doing more research).
    
    As for bombing Cyberpromo back, it's probably not a good idea, at least
    as suggested by the previous note.  It could be seen as harrassment,
    and make Digital liable.  HOWEVER: there is a big difference between
    one person sending 1000 complaints and 1000 people sending one
    complaint each.  If everyone who doesn't like Cyberpromo sent back a
    long complaint for every offense (which could be automated), it would
    be a legitimate response.
    

    Re: .55
    
    >...HOWEVER: there is a big difference between
    >one person sending 1000 complaints and 1000 people sending one
    >complaint each.  If everyone who doesn't like Cyberpromo sent back a
    >long complaint for every offense (which could be automated), it would
    >be a legitimate response.
    
    There would be no difference in this case and all it would do is
    confirm 1000 good email addresses that Cyberpromo would turn around and
    sell. I've been tilting at this windmill for a while--they have no
    reason to respond to any complaints from recipients.

    
    	Harassment?
    
    	Asking Cyberpromo to remove you from a distribution list that you
    	didn't ask to be placed on in the first place, only to have them
    	refuse to remove you AND continue to send future messages, ISN'T 
    	harassment?
    

    Another one is where they give you instructions on how to be removed
    fro the list, but give an invalid address for the remove target?
    
    I forget who it was, this was 3 or 4 weeks ago though.
    
    Bill
    

    Re .58
    
    This happens more often than not.  I have received numerous junk mail
    messages on AOL that read, "If you wished to be removed from our lists,
    reply to this message and include the word "Remove" in the subject
    line."  Whenever I do this, I almost invariably receive an
    "Undeliverable, invalid address" notice from the AOL postmaster.
    
    M

    Don't bother sending "remove me" messages.  Cyberpromo just uses them
    to validate your e-mail address.
    
    I keep track of spam that I get at home... over 70 in the last 3 months
    from Cyberpromo alone.  And I've sent just as many "remove" messages...
    but not to actually get removed (as I said, it doesn't work), but so
    that I have a documented record of having asked to be removed.  The
    junk fax law -could- be interpreted to cover junk e-mail as well, but
    so far it hasn't made it to court.  Any cases where a spamee has sued
    the spamor claiming monetary compensation outlined in the junk fax law
    have been settled out of court.
    
    The FTC is has is currently soliciting comments on "Unsolcited
    Commercial E-mail" and the effects on internet users as part of the
    Public Workshop on Consumer Information Privacy.
    
    -Steve
    
                                                    

    I complained officially to the real "gurus" who run our mail gateways
    for the corporation.  The response from them was basically 
    
    	"we have no policy to permit blanket domain screening" 
    
    Boy, I'd like them to receive just half the crap I receive from
    quantum.com and then see how quickly an appropriate policy could be
    
    I agree with previous noters : "REMOVE" requests seem to confirm that
    you are a live e-mail address and I have the impression the the volume
    of crap has increased since I requested to be removed - certainly when
    you count the non-delivery messages for the "remove" requests.
    
    If the gateway folks won't/can't help us, I'm off to look at what
    smarts my client can perform on my behalf - the problem has become a
    real nuisance in the last month or so.
    
    /Chris/

    The trouble is that what is spam to you is not spam to me.  While I'm
    not about to send cash into some pyramid scheme, I certainly don't want
    somebody saying that nothing from some domain or email address will
    even come through the firewall.  That is censorship.
    
    				-John

    Re: .62 censorship
    
    Dec's internal network is not the public airwaves.  It has a
    complete legal right to restrict incoming traffic as it pleases.
    Esp. when that traffic adversely impacts the productivity of its
    employees and its computer resources.
    

    I'm getting some, but not alot (yet).  Is the FTC Public Workshop
    mentioned previously available online?  If not, is there an address or
    FAX?  In my recent experience, the traffic level is similar to the
    telephone solicitation I receive - but I don't respond at all, which
    may or may not account for the limited number of incoming spams I
    get...
    
    

	I had over 5 of these stupid emails in my inbox this morning.

	This is getting ridiculous.

							mike

I picked this up somewhere on the net -- I can't confirm that it is correct, 
but this might be viewed as a way to make DIGITAL profitable.  <grin>

    By  US Code Title 47, Sec.227(a)(2)(B), a computer/modem/printer meets
    the definition of a telephone fax machine.  By Sec.227(b)(1)(C), it is
    unlawful  to send any unsolicited advertisement to such equipment.  By
    Sec.227(b)(3)(C),  a  violation  of  the  aforementioned  Section   is
    punishable  by  action  to  recover  actual  monetary  loss,  or $500,
    whichever is greater, for each violation.  

    Computers do not generally meet the fax machine definition in 47 USC
    227.  If they did, it would be illegal to send electronic mail without
    including your name and telephone number at the top of every page.  By
    a technical reading of the law, one can assert that a computer with a
    modem and printer can operate as a fax machine, receiving and printing
    fax messages, but no court is going to agree that is what the law
    intended.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    	Actually, I'm pretty fast with the delete key on incoming mail and
    actually find some of the junk mail rather entertaining...but as you
    know, I'm a little strange. A few weeks ago, I received one that REALLY
    grabbed my attention. The subject line was in all caps:
    
    	ATTENTION SUFFERER OF PREMATURE EJACULATION!!!
    
    I thought, "Hey, is my ex-wife giving away my secrets again?" Then I
    breathed a sigh of relief when I realized it had just been sent to a
    distribution list and I hadn't been singled out. Phew.

And I got a message yesterday that invited me to visit the home page
www.impotence-away.com

Do I detect a new trend, guys?

Paul

    
>And I got a message yesterday that invited me to visit the home page
>www.impotence-away.com
    
    
    	Let me guess ... you tried to connect to the page, but it wasn't
    	up?
    

I've been using the ELM filter on UNIX (Digital and others) for many years. This
allows you to filter incoming mail into separate mailboxes (especially useful
for mailing lists and automated build/test/cron mail) or to delete the message
*before* you ever see it. It never actually makes in into your inbox, if that's
what you desire. You can tailor your filtering requirements to suit your needs.

Digital UNIX has slocal (see man slocal). All you need to do is add a ~/.forward
file with this:

       "| /usr/lib/mh/slocal -user username"

and then edit a ~/.maildelivery file such has this:

# Get rid of cyberpromo mail
From             cyberpromo.com   destroy A               -
# Right now, these would just fill up my mail folders.
Subject         "please ignore"   destroy A               -


For non-UNIX users, there are several mailers that allow mail filtering.
Netscape Communicator V4.0, for example should have this feature.


We have the technology to just say no.

-Jeff

    DELIVER can also be set to junk mail for you. It's available free.
    Unfortunately, however, it requires mailshr to be installed with
    a couple privs and since V7.0 ovms, mailshr doesn't turn off its
    privs for things like spawn. That means deliver is fine on your
    workstation (presuming you have privs anyhow) but not on, say,
    star or evms.
    
    I consider this sad, since DELIVER does a whole lot more if you
    want it to. However, on workstations it can be used. I have a copy
    on one of mine if anyone needs it (in source of course).
    
    

Some Intenet spammers obtain e-mail addresses through Usenet newgroup 
postings.  These can be fooled by changing your e-mail address in your 
newsreader to a bogus address.  For example, 
	
nospam-jacobi@star.enet.dec.com.  

Automatic mailers will reply to the bogus address, but you can include 
instructions in you signature file for a human to decode your true address.


							-Paul

    I don't have control over the OpenVMS account that is being filled with
    crap and Exchange doesn't seem to be able to block out a range of
    Internet addresses even if I felt like continually adding spammers to
    my Personal Address Book. The only option that makes sense is filtering
    at the gateway. Anyone know who the right people to speak to on this are?

    re .73
    
    You might also consider putting the nospam component elsewhere in
    the address, such as jacobi@star.enet.dec.skipthis.com -- this way the
    spam gets turned back before it starts clogging up DEC's internet
    networks.                                         
    
    I assume it's only a matter of time before the spammers start using
    syntax analyzers to pick apart the obvious address modifications,
    though.

    Re .75:
    
    > I assume it's only a matter of time before the spammers start using
    > syntax analyzers to pick apart the obvious address modifications,
    > though.
    
    It is happening already.  One correspondent to the Risks Digest
    reported they had seen part of a mailing list containing two addresses,
    one like "user@nospamallowed.domain.com" and the other like
    "user@allowed.domain.com".  The hypothesis is that somebody used the
    former address in Usenet, and the spammer's software automatically
    changed it into the latter form.
    
    That was an unsuccessful change, but clearly the attack has begun.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    The challange of counter-countermeasures -- aimed at something more
    useful than blowing up airplanes. :)
    

Isn't it wonderful that the solution is to modify your email address in such a 
way that causes everyone who wants to mail you to have to modify it back again, 
if their client software allows it.

I saw a posting yesterday from name@aaa.com with the signature saying "I've 
changed ISP from aaa to bbb: a human will know how to edit my mail address".

PJDM

    I only participate, infrequently, in one newsgroup (rec.antiques for
    the curious). Nevertheless, I receive at least 1 junk mail daily, and
    often several. Most seem to be to "Dear friend", and exhorting me to go
    to their web site and pass over hard cash for some seedy porn. The rest
    are get-rich-quick schemes, or religious cranks. I'm really fed up of
    it.
    
    Cheers, Laurie.

    A goodly percentage of the junk mail I receive invites me to become a
    spammer ("Over 1 million Internet addresses!").  Many more have
    get-rich-in-your-spare-time lures, and a third category urges me to
    visit sites whose URLs end in "hotgrrlz.com".
    
    No ROI in any of these, methink...
    
    M       

It's pretty clear that MOST of my junk mail comes from my former participation
in newsgroups.  95% of all mail comes to fisher@skylab.enet.dec.com which I used
as my return address in newsgroups.  Now I am noticing a few that come back as
fisher@skylab.zko.dec.com, even though I have never used this address in
newsgroups.  I don't know where they are getting it from, especially since I
have not gotten ANY junk mail over my ISP address.

Grrr.

Burns

    Re: snarfing up email addresses not used in newsgroups
    
    All they have to do is find a site with readable syslogs, which
    contain records of email addresses of genuine mail that's passed
    thru that site recently (vs. newsgroup postings) and they can
    snarf up addresses.  Note that this includes intermediate sites,
    not just the sender's and receipient's site.
    

    Concentrated Attack Disrupts Service at Big Internet Provider
    
    Apex Global Information Services, an Internet-service
    provider that offers on-line access to dozens of other ISPs
    across the country, said it suffered "a concentrated and
    systematic attack" on its network Thursday afternoon.
    
    The company, known as AGIS, said in a statement posted on
    its Web page http://www.agis.net at 1:40 p.m. EDT Thursday
    that it had been attacked and that a federal investigation
    was under way.
    
    AGIS said it couldn't comment further, but an AGIS customer,
    Pennsylvania bulk e-mailer Cyber Promotions, said that the
    service disruption began at 2 a.m. EDT Thursday and
    continued until 4 p.m.
    
    AGIS, of Dearborn, Mich., is one of a number of
    Internet-service providers occupying an important niche in
    the overall workings of the Internet. It has "peering"
    rights on the Net, meaning it may exchange data with other
    companies with such rights at a number of central hubs
    connecting the far-flung networks that make up the Internet.
    
    Word of the incident spread quickly Thursday on a number of
    Usenet newsgroups dedicated to network-administration
    issues. A number of posters said the assault on AGIS was a
    "denial-of-service attack," an assault conducted over a
    network that is designed to overwhelm, rather than disable,
    an ISP.
    
    For example, in one common form of a denial-of-service
    attack, a site's servers are deluged with requests for
    network connections from fake Internet Protocol addresses.
    The servers check each address and generate an error message
    when no computer is found residing there, tying up server
    capacity and denying legitimate users access.
    
    AGIS has been the object of considerable ire among Internet
    users for some time because of the perception -- spread
    bitterly across a number of newsgroups -- that the company
    was not vigilant in responding to complaints about
    unsolicited e-mail sent by companies using AGIS as their
    Internet-service provider.
    
    AGIS customer Cyber Promotions has tangled with such on-line
    service providers as CompuServe Corp.  and America Online
    Inc. in legal battles and become notorious in cyberspace for
    unsolicited mailings. A number of posters noted -- some
    triumphantly -- that Cyber Promotions was down Thursday
    afternoon.
    
    Cyber Promotion's Sanford Wallace said Friday morning that
    "it would certainly be very logical" that the attack on AGIS
    was made by someone angry at Cyber Promotions, adding that
    "we get mail-bombed and threatened every day."
    
    Mr. Wallace said AGIS had aroused some netizens' anger by
    not dealing with complaints about unsolicited e-mail in ways
    that Internet veterans are accustomed to.
    
    "The problem that anti-spammers are having is that in the
    past they've always been able to complain to ISPs, who turn
    off the accounts of the solicitors," he said. "AGIS has
    taken a stand: 'We're going to follow the law, we're not
    going to follow complaints.' "
    
    Mr. Wallace called the service disruption "an
    inconvenience," adding that AGIS is one of three providers
    used by the company. He said that Cyber Promotions' Web
    pages hosted by AGIS could not be accessed during the
    disruption, but added that the attack did not affect Cyber
    Promotion's ability to send e-mail.
    
    Mr. Wallace said Cyber Promotions and AGIS planned to meet
    next week "to see what can be done about these issues."
    George Kelly of AGIS said that the company would make a
    formal announcement about unsolicited bulk e-mail (known as
    spam in Net parlance) next week.
    
    AGIS, founded in 1994, says its customers include local
    telephone companies, ISPs, content providers and large
    corporations.
    

    
    	RE: .83
    
    	It wasn't me ... honest!!
    

    Recently I received a spam mail with the (apparent) sender
    yyyy@juno.com.
    
    I'm not an expert in reading the full headers (though it was rather
    apparent that the mail didn't actually originate at juno), but I sent a
    mail to postmaster@juno.com anyway.
    
    I got a fairly quick response with an individual analysis of the
    headers (and an explanation to which postmaster I should complain) 
    and an offer to help if the problem persists.
    
    

>    The company, known as AGIS, said in a statement posted on
>    its Web page http://www.agis.net at 1:40 p.m. EDT Thursday
>    that it had been attacked and that a federal investigation
>    was under way.

Is there anything illegal about disabling them in the way described later in
this post? Sounds like a simple case of let the punishment fit the crime to me.
They probably would like to make a Federal case out of it. Can they?

    Re: .83
    
    This should have been no great surprise to anyone that reads
    ...abuse.email (I forget the entire newsgroup name). Although
    going through with it probably explains why I didn't get any
    spam from Cyberpromo yesterday.
    
    Unfortunately this is another case of spamming the spammers and
    reflects the general impotence that end-users have against this 
    crap. Two or three hundred motivated individuals can call up AGIS
    and tell them that they won't do business with any of the ISPs
    that they provide backbone support to [I did; Sorry, Ultranet.] 
    and write letters to their congressmen but the only option within
    DIGITAL as it is for many customers of spam-hating ISPs is to 
    get domain level filtering implemented. Or put up with the crap.
    On the other hand, an otherwise respected company with resources can 
    pursue a Federal investigation of the couple of dozen (if that) 
    juveniles who performed this little bit electronic vandalism.      

re: .85
>    I got a fairly quick response with an individual analysis of the
>    headers (and an explanation to which postmaster I should complain) 
>    and an offer to help if the problem persists.

this is nice to hear, but just last week, *@juno.com was banned from one of the
mailing lists I'm on because the administrators wouldn't help in controlling one
of their spammers.
 
steve.

    re .88: Maybe they were so cooperative because the spam didn't
    originate there...
    

    Another load of garbage arrived this weekend, and it seems worse: 
    Arriving from diverse domains, all of it without the bulk precedence
    tag or anything else to automatically filter it.  Even domain filtering
    at the gateway won't stop this stuff.  Maybe we need to design
    something to detect mail being sent to hundreds of addresses within the
    corporation -- it should be shunted aside, to be sent on only if it
    passes manual inspection.  That way, only one employee has to deal with
    this instead of tens of thousands.
    
    I would like to ask all the gateways NOT to remove ANY mail headers. 
    Much of this stuff is arriving with little in the way of identifying
    information.  That's especially true on the stuff I receive on the VMS
    system, but I wouldn't expect it on the Unix system.
    
    Do Digital's gateways strip any information?  Whom do I ask about this?
                                      
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.
                                                      

You can ask in HUMANE::GATEWAYS, but from what I can tell, all headers are
passed on, even for messages I receive on VMS.

				Steve

>    It has "peering"
>    rights on the Net, meaning it may exchange data with other
>    companies with such rights at a number of central hubs
>    connecting the far-flung networks that make up the Internet.

This sentence is entirely content free. What are "peering" rights?

PJDM

Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 15:54:16 -0700
From: Martin Minow <minow@apple.com>
Subject: Law Review Article on Spam

http://server.Berkeley.EDU/BTLJ/articles/11-2/carroll.html

contains a long article on legal issues surrounding spam that might
be interesting to some afflicted readers.

Summary: "This article considers the recognized means to avoid the
tragedy of the commons--self-regulation, regulation by market forces,
and government regulation--and concludes that some government regulation
of unsolicited commercial solicitations in a unified medium is likely
to be necessary and will be permissible under the prevailing
interpretation of the First Amendment."

Martin.

    I read in the paper today that Nevada was looking to outlaw
    unsolicited email's. 
    
    -Bruce 

    Oh great. If you send email to the governor of Nevada protesting the
    law (after it's enacted) you can be arrested because he didn't ask
    you to send mail?
    
    I imagine the wording is a bit more specific (e.g. unsolicited bulk
    email?)...

    Actually, most folks are trying hardest to prohibit / regulate
    unsolicited COMMERCIAL e-mail.  Restricting political or religious
    e-mail is a bit more problematic due to higher scrutiny usually
    involved.
    
    I'm hoping for a solution more in line with the "junk fax" rules. Those
    laws are based on cost-shifting and denial of service arguments and are
    thus independant of content.

I just returned from a 12 day business trip.

There were 75 messages from the internet in my unread mail.

*Fifty* of them were spam.

Grrrrrrrr.

/john

    
    	RE: .97
    
    	Bloody vikings!!
    

One Birrell Walsh discusses spamming under the heading "The Privilege Of
Isolation" a bit down the page from
http://www.microtimes.com/159/soapbox.html#_31 . He concludes his spamming
remarks by opining:

         A case could be made that this mail is harassment, forbidden
         under the CDA. If the Communications Decency Act survives the
         courts (God forbid!), the silver lining may be that we will
         be able to bring suit against those who spam us. ...

    
    	So we have filters for spam ... does PAN have a filter for snarfs?
    
    	8^)
    

You may want to check out Jesse Berst's article today at:

http://www5.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_856.html

gc

    Re: .102
    
    Let me see...it says: Spam is inevitable. Everyone hates spam. Spammers
    spam anyway. Install filters if you don't like spam [and are able to].
    Spammers might go away if you ignore the spam. Spammers are [according
    to a non-lawyer] protected by law.
    
    Nothing new here. What would be new is if the responsible parties here
    at Digital install appropriate technology.
    
    I caught up with my AOL account last night. In the last two weeks, I've
    gotten 63 pieces of crap at this Digital account. On my AOL account:
    two. I don't know exactly how many were filtered out but all but one of
    the ones I received here would have been seen there.

|              <<< Note 2986.71 by DECC::SULLIVAN "Jeff Sullivan" >>>
|                 -< Mail filters are essential (See man slocal) >-
| 
| Digital UNIX has slocal (see man slocal). All you need to do is add a ~/.forward
| file with this:
| 
|        "| /usr/lib/mh/slocal -user username"
| 
| and then edit a ~/.maildelivery file such has this:
| 
| # Get rid of cyberpromo mail
| From             cyberpromo.com   destroy A               -
| # Right now, these would just fill up my mail folders.
| Subject         "please ignore"   destroy A               -
| 
    Does anyone know how to do the equivalent of this with PMDF DELIVER?
    
    I've looked at the help files, but they don't give a good example, and
    I haven't found anything in the PMFD Notes File (which isn't an
    official support channel anyway).
    

Date:	23-APR-1997 15:51:56.13
From:	SMTP%"abuse@support.tiac.net"
Subj:	Re: Unsolicited commercial e-mail
To:	Steve Lionel <lionel@quark.zko.dec.com>


Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention.  We have
spoken to the user in question and will take appropriate action
to ensure that this does not happen again.

If you do see any futher problems, please let us know.

Misty K. Dean
 TIAC - The Internet Access Co., Inc.



On Wed, 23 Apr 1997, Steve Lionel wrote:

> I received the following unsolicited commercial e-mail which appears as if it
> was sent from a user of your service.  If this is a violation of your
> subscribers' terms of service (as I feel it should be), please take 
> appropriate action.  I would appreciate acknowledgement of this request.
> 
> 				Steve Lionel
> 				Digital Equipment Corporation
> 
> 
> From:	QUARK::US2RMC::"randy@valueweb.net" "CNI"   23-APR-1997 14:57:42.29
> To:	you@mailrelay.tiac.net
> CC:	
> Subj:	Long Distance 9.9 cents/min. - Internet Access $12.95/mo.
> 

[snip]

    Re: .102 [part 2]
    
    Jesse Berst's commentary (cited in .102) on ZDnet tells readers
    (vaugely) about how bad spam is and how to block it. But on PCWEEK
    Online, he writes about how it's okay to spam for marketing purposes,
    while waiting for push technology, of course.
    
    http://www.pcweek.com/opinion/0421/21berst.html

    
    How about verbal spam? Yesterday I got a call, at my desk...t'was
    AT+T wanting to offer me these great long-distance rates. When
    I told them that this was a business line the caller apologized
    saying that they were calling residential numbers only.
    
    Today, I got another call, person asked for me by name as above,
    only this time it was either CompUSA or Compuserve..when I heard
    that it was spam I increased their receiver volume to the point
    that they hung up immediately. Too, I've noticed an increase lately
    in the amount of voicemail hangups....more crap, perhaps? 
    
    Nothing like being interrupted in the middle of troubleshooting
    a customer call only to have some idiot trying to sell you
    something! (having sick kids mean that I will answer my personal
    line) If this was my home number, I'd do the usual and ask if they
    can wait a minute...at which point I put the phone down and leave :)
    
    DAP
     
    

The telemarketers use autodialers which just go through an exchange in sequence.
If you pick up, they then signal an "operator" who has to pick up.  Federal
law (so I have read) requires that a human be on the other end, so the
dialers hang up if no operator answers quickly enough.  This is the most
frequent cause of "hangups".

AT&T has called me at work many times, and even sent me a $80 check which would
switch my service if I cashed it..  I was tempted.  I tell them each time that
this is a business line - they apologize and say they're not supposed to be
calling businesses.  I got two calls in two days from those idiots.

I've just, reluctantly, changed my newsreader settings to use an "invalid"
sender address, as I'm getting tired of having half my mail being spam.  I
hate having to do this, as it makes it harder for people who have a legitimate
reason to want to send me mail.

				Steve

    
    re -1
    
    What a life, eh? Frankly, that was the first time in 8 years
    here that I got telemarketed and then two days in a row. It's
    a conspiracy! :) I once made the mistake of posting a guitar
    for sale on the net; got so much crap after that I won't be
    doing that again soon....nothing like a mailbox full of spam 
    to start your day. This after a commute through a formerly
    pristine area that is now plastered with "lose weight and get
    rich" posters on seemingly each telephone pole....spam for 
    those without a network connection. Argh!
    
    DAP
     
    

>    I increased their receiver volume to the point

Huh?

PJDM

    
    I gave them my opinion about how I felt about being interrupted
    at work IN A VERY LOUD VOICE!!!! :)
    
    DAP
    

    Here are two more ideas for active filtering at the gateway:
    
    	Trash any mail with non-existence domains in the various
    	address fields (from, sender, et cetera).  If some of the
    	fields are valid, use them to send back an error message
    	explaining they must use valid addresses in all fields.
    
    	Create some fictitious accounts and post from them to
    	Usenet occasionally.  When the gateway receives any mail
    	to those accounts, it should figure it is junk mail and
    	then delete all identical mail to other recipients
    	throughout Digital (except recipients who request
    	otherwise).
    
    The latter idea needs a little work -- we don't want to bother innocent
    readers when posting to Usenet.  Maybe posting to some of the test
    groups would be sufficient.  If not, maybe we can post the message
    while performing some public service, like posting FAQs to groups.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    re .112
    
    2 excellent suggestions - I'd like to see them implemented ASAP
    
    As I've said before in here or in some similar thread - the issue is
    not that the gateway folks are short of ideas nor the technical means
    to implement them but that they are not able to do so without
    appropriate "policy".
    
    I've escalated this formally to my BU CIO - if others do the same then
    we might get this big 'ole machine rolling.
    
    /Chris/

    If you're running sendmail V8.8.0 or later, you can add the following
    ruleset and classes to refuse mail from nonexistant domains and from
    explicitly listed junk mailers. It's crude, but it seems to cover about
    80% of what we're currently getting. Remember to separate left-hand-side,
    right-hand-side, and comments in rules with tabs.

    Sorry. This won't work with the off-the-shelf sendmail on Ultrix or
    Digital UNIX.


In the options section of sendmail.cf:

# database of known spammers
# One user@domain or domain per line
F{abusers}-o /var/adm/sendmailv8/sendmail.abusers

# Domains that won't resolve but that we let in anyway
F{OKdomains}-o /var/adm/sendmailv8/sendmail.OKdomains

# SMTP/DECnet gateway relays
C{decnetgateways}us1rmc.enet.dec.com us2rmc.enet.dec.com us3rmc.enet.dec.com us4rmc.enet.dec.com us5rmc.enet.dec.com us6rmc.enet.dec.com


Just before your mailer definitions:

Scheck_mail

# check for valid domain name (incompatible with DeliveryMode=defer)
R$*			$: $>3 $1		make domain canonical
R$* < @ $=w . >		$>3 $1			...@here -> ... (remove local domains)
R$* < @ $={decnetgateways} . >	$>3 $1		remove other known intermediate relays
R$-			$: $>3 $(dequote $1 $)	dequote "foo"@here
R$*			$: <?> $1		tag all as unprocessed
R<?> $* < @ $+ . > $*	$: <OK> $1 <@$2.> $3	tag resolved names
R<?> $* < @ $={OKdomains} > $*	$: <OK> $1 <@$2> $3	tag unresolved names that are OK
R<?> $* < @ $+ . $={OKdomains} > $*	$: <OK> $1 <@$2.$3> $4	tag unresolved names that are OK
R<?> $* < @ [ $- . $- . $- .$- ] > $*	$: <OK> $1 <@[$2.$3.$4.$5]> $6	Let IP addresses through
# Note that the following (451) causes the message to be deferred
# and retried until the timeout period expires
R<?> $* < @ $+ > $*	$#error $: 451 Sender domain unresolvable
# 571 is a permanent "Delivery not authorized, message refused"
# error instead (see RFC 1893), but may reject legitimate messages if
# your nameserver is temporarily sick.
#R<?> $* < @ $+ > $*	$#error $@ 5.7.1 $: 571 Sender domain unresolvable

# Now check for real domains we do not want
R<OK> $* < @ $={abusers} . > $*		$#error $@ 5.7.1 $: 571 Mail from $2 refused here
R<OK> $* < @ $+ . $={abusers} . > $*	$#error $@ 5.7.1 $: 571 Mail from $3 refused here
# convert back to u@domain (remove the trailing dot)
R<OK> $+		$:$>4 $1
# check for full addresses
R$={abusers}		$#error $@ 5.7.1 $: 571 Mail from $1 refused here
R$* <$={abusers}> $*	$#error $@ 5.7.1 $: 571 Mail from $2 refused here

    	There just *may* be some hope.  While I've been very careful about
    not giving out my name/enet address if at all possible, like others
    here I'm getting hit too.  Several times, before finding this string, I
    asked to be remove.  My guess is some, maybe even a lot, will
    legitimitely remove you.  Others probably do use it for confirmation.
    Anyway, what really gripes me is a few times in my remove messages I
    asked how they got my name.  Most never responded, but one did.  He
    said it got it from an Advertisement on AOL!  He said it must have been
    a typo if I didn't want to receive this kind of thing.  I've never
    subscribed or even talked to anyone at AOL, so what gives them the
    right to give out my name like that?  Does anyone know who I might
    contact about this?


    	Anyway, today I received a mail message from CCS explaining that
    they know about the spamming problem.  I won't recreate the whole
    message here, but just the relevant portion...this gives me *some*
    hope (although note that even CCS is guarded in their statements about
    what can be done).


    Brian



     Mail "spamming" - it is cheap, it is electronic mail, and it is
     bad news!
     ---------------------------------------------------------------
     It is a sad fact that there are always people out there who spoil
     a good thing or take advantage of a situation without worrying
     about the consequences or affect on others! One good example of
     this is with "mail spammers" who are now using the power of the
     Internet to get their message across which others may perceive as
     "junk" mail.

     Sometimes it is a complete mystery as to how someone has obtained
     your electronic mail address. Possibly it could have been a simple
     matter of registering your mail address with an on-line service,
     before copying some software, or perhaps you entered a note into
     an electronic conference system, for example, a newsgroup!

     What can you do? Well unfortunately there does not appear to be
     much that you can do because often it is difficult to determine
     the true mail address of the sender, this can be because they have
     disguised the information.

     What is happening internally - the Corporate Information Security
     group is currently looking into the problem and working with other
     groups in a hope to reduce the problem by blocking some of this
     "junk" mail entering into the corporation.

The "advertisement on AOL" was from someone offering to sell lists of e-mail
addresses, most likely - these names are gathered from newsgroup postings for
the most part.

				Steve

    Yes, AOL itself has responded to each complaint I've sent them about
    junk email.  In fact, I don't recall getting junk email -from- an
    AOL account lately, rather a few cretins have had AOL web
    sites or some such in the text of their messages which I pointed
    AOL at.
    

I also contacted MSN about spam that originated from their service (for real,
the text even gave an MSN address for replies.)  I got their standard but
courteous response indicating that they would investigate and take
appropriate action.  For all the online services, spamming is a violation of
the "terms of service".

					Steve

RE: AOL and junk mail

In AOL if you set up your profile  you will get JUNK mail on AOL.

I have AOL and have 3 usernames 1 each for My wife, my daughter and my self
My daughter and I have set up profiles for our user names and get some JUNK 
mail. My wifes username has never had a profile setup and gets 0 junk mail.

Also AOL is now filtering JUNK mail.

|    <<< Note 2986.118 by QUARK::LIONEL "Free advice is worth every cent" >>>

| appropriate action.  For all the online services, spamming is a violation of
| the "terms of service".
    
    Part of the problem is that this is no longer true.  Apparently, AGIS,
    which is now the ISP through which Cyberpromo operates, has stated that
    their operation is perfectly acceptable and even beneficial.  They
    (AGIS) have, however, blocked entire domains from sending THEM mail, so
    they won't receive any of the complaints people send them.
    

When I said "online service", I meant AOL, CompuServe, MSN, etc.,  not ISPs.
It is against the terms of service of some ISPs, including Ultranet.

				Steve

The Risks Digest brought up a "risk" of setting up automatic spam
blocking and kill-botting based on domains from which spam comes:

The spammers are registering and de-registering domains extremely
fast and furiously.

If a legit company later takes a former spam domain (unknowingly,
one would presume), they may find their mail messages disappearing
into black holes and their use(less)net posts being killed and may
have great difficulty getting the problem straightened out.

/john

    My brother has set a mail filter in Eudora Light that looks for double
    exclamation points ("!!") and dollar signs ("$$") in subject headers
    and automatically trashes those messages.  Won't fix everything, but it
    should cut down the volume of junk mail.
    
    M

The latest multiple spam attack is coming from something called
"videosluts.com".

The mail claims that the pictures are live, and that they will do
whatever you tell them.

/john

    re .122:  Obviously, a good spam filter (e.g. the hoped-for corporate
    filter) should not simply delete spam, but should send back the message
    with a header explaining why it was not delivered and a way to contact
    someone if it was an error.  Possible reasons for rejecting mail might
    be inconsistent address fields or receipt from a "known spam site".
    
    Note, though, that as spam increases, there is also a risk of deleting 
    legitimate messages while weeding out spam.  So it's risky either way.
    Certainly I'll ignore anything from "cyberpromo".
    
    	Enjoy,
    	Larry
    

    Am I the only person who's beginning to view the daily onslaught
    of "Lawnmower Care And Safety" etc. messages from some deranged
    portion of HR as spam...  
    

   re: .126

   You mean you still read that stuff?  As far as other corporate
   mail goes, if it doesn't tell me when/why/how/what right at the
   top it gets filed away.   The only time I bothered to read old stuff
   was to compare what they initially said about bonuses to what is
   said when they finally decided what was going on.

    .124
    
    >The mail claims that the pictures are live, and that they will do
    >whatever you tell them.
    
    "Whatever it takes"
    

    It would nice to see this stuff, most of the field still is not
    on Exchange.

>>    It would nice to see this stuff, most of the field still is not
>>    on Exchange.

People not on Exchange get junk mail, too.

						Brian

    Yes, it would be nice to have net access

Now there's an old joke:

Lady of easy virtue approaches man and says "For 50 bucks I'll do anything you 
want me to". Man hands over $50 and says "Paint my house".

What particularly annoys me about much of this junk mail is that it says things 
like "other Americans like you have enjoyed this" or "As an American...", or 
they offer guaranteed American credit cards. I'm not an American, never have 
been, probably never will be, but why should they care.

PJDM

    re: -.1
    
    I'm sure they don't mean to offend you, Peter ;')
    
    H :')

RE:  .124

Do you have a URL for that site?

I, ummm, want to make sure I avoid it at all costs.  Yeah, that's it.

    A little bit of good news.
    
    According to an article in comp.dcom.telecom under the title
    "Compuserve beats Cyber Promotions", Cyber Promotions is settling it's
    case with CompuServe by agreeing not to send any more unsolicited
    E-mail to CompuServe subscribers; not to allow any of their (Cyber
    Promotions') customers to send such mail, to report such offenses to
    CompuServe, disclose the customers names, revoke their accounts and
    leave them (the customers) open to legal proceedings; to pay CompuServe
    $65,000 in legal fees; and be liable for further payments of damages if
    they disobey the court settlement.
    
    There will be a procedure established where CompuServe customers who do
    want to receive mail from Cyberpromo may register to do so, and there
    are supposed to be checks to see that only those subscribers receive
    mail.
    

   The fellow behind the CyberPromo site -- Sanford Wallace -- was one of
   the key players behind the junk facimile advertising campaigns that
   were rampant a few years back.  (This trivia per a recent article in
   either Time or Newsweek.)

   Sites include a CyberPromo FAQ and a Sanford Wallace web page, at:
	http://www.microcult.com/faq.htm/
	http://www.canismajor.demon.co.uk/antispam/sanford.htm

   Earthlink (a large ISP) is also allegedly involved in some legal action
   with Mr. Wallace, which is interesting given the amount of CyberPromo
   spam that has been appearing recently with the Earthlink.net domain as
   the (alleged) source e-mail address.  (The majority of the spam arriving
   from CyberPromo domains appears to have forged return addresses, too.)

   I'd expect non-ISP corporations might also be considering legal action,
   given the amount of CyberPromo e-mail junk entering most companies from
   the CyberPromo, answerme, savetrees, and the various other associated
   CyberPromo "sites" in the ISPam domain.

From today's Boston Globe

Tech Edge: Spammity spam, horrible spam

By John Dodge, 05/07/97

Nelson Valverde, chief executive of
fast-growing Internet service provider
GreenNet Inc., estimates that half of the
Internet news groups hosted on his servers
is junk. His customers don't want it. He
doesn't want it. This 6 to 7 gigabytes of
cyber-detritus, known as "spam," is nothing
more than a costly nuisance.

Businesses and consumers are mad and aren't
going to take it anymore. So much so,
Congress this summer will take up
legislation to ban spam, which if passed
would put purveyors of this electronic
lunch meat out of business.

``No other kind of advertising costs the
advertiser so little and the recipient so
much,'' asserts www.spam

.abuse.net, one of an increasing number of
antispam sites.

America Online users alone eat up 5,000
hours of connect time per day deleting
spam, according to the site.

Spam also wastes untold amounts of server
disk space and network capacity. Some view
it as an invasion of privacy, and what's
advertised is often not what it appears.

The Coalition Against Unsolicited Junk
E-mail is putting the finishing touches on
a legislative proposal that it hopes would
add spam to an antijunk facsimile law
already on the books. The law says
unrequested solicitations levying a charge
to recipients are illegal. When businesses
got flurries of junk faxes that, for
example, were from office supply stores
asking if you wanted to buy more fax paper,
Congress passed the anti-junk fax law.

``This type of thing really cuts into a
small business's ability to be productive.
They bear the cost for this free ride with
junk e-mail,'' says Ray Everett, a computer
consultant and a lobbyist for the
coalition. The proposed antispam law as
currently written would compensate victims
up to $1,500 per violation.

Valverde, based on the North Shore,
applauds the proposed legislation, but
questions whether it could be enforced. ``
I don't how the [government] would keep
track of everyone who does it. It would
take incredible vigilance.''

Short of banning spam, blockers and e-mail
filters can be used to control it. Homemade
remedies developed by annoyed programmers
abound, with names such as Deadbolt,
Dorkblocker, and NoCeM.

Yet spam has a habit of bouncing back.
``The Internet was designed to deliver
information during nuclear war, so it's not
surprising spammers find sneaky ways to
deliver their product. That's why we need
the law,'' says Everett.

The King of Spam, Sanford Wallace and his
Philadelphia-based Cyber Promotions Inc.,
has, under intense legal pressure, agreed
to limit bulk e-mailings on some on-line
services. The controversial 29-year-old has
reinvented Cyber Promotions as a spam
software and services company rather than
doing the spamming itself.

Cyber Promotions' Web site offers bulk
e-mailing products such as Cyber Bomber and
Web-Gold (``discover how to make obscene
profits''). Some are antidotes to blockers
while others ``harvest'' e-mail addresses.

Wallace says his detractors, who call him
loath some, are just envious. ``We're just
a big violation of [the competition's]
territory,'' he responds, arguing spam
costs recipients next to nothing.

The top spam categories, according to
Everett, are marketing schemes for
everything from low mortgage rates to diet
products. Pornography promos and ads to get
rich by sending junk e-mail fall in the
spam genre.

What should you do if you get spammed?
Notify the closest network administrator,
often your ISP. They have a better shot at
filtering spam than you do. And never state
public ly that you have yet to be spammed.
It will happen 10 minutes later.

John Dodge is editor of PC Week and vice
president of news for Ziff-Davis Inc. He
welcomes e-mail at johndodge@zd.com, but
please, no spam.

This story ran on page d4 of the Boston
Globe on 05/07/97.

    In another Boston Globe story this morning it was reported that
    'hackers' had shut down Cybe Promotions for 20 hours yesterday by
    flooding their system with arp requests.
    
    I dont often look to the government to solve problems, but the junk Fax
    law really must be extended to e-mail, and soon. 

    
    I strongly disagree with .138:
    
    >I dont often look to the government to solve problems, but the junk
    >Fax law really must be extended to e-mail, and soon.
    
    I don't think this is the correct way to solve it.  It can be solved
    technically - after all, that's what software is for (and all about)
    
    I personally find the phrase:
    	If you can't innovate, litigate
    
    An accurate description of the computer industry far too often.

    I completely agree with .138.
    
    We shouldn't need to be spending even more time and resources "solving"
    this problem.  Whether or not it can be solved through software is
    irrelevant.  It shouldn't be my burden, my ISP's burden, or my
    employer's burden to fix it.
    
    It's time to outlaw unsolicited bulk e-mail just like the junk fax. 
    The idea is the same... advertising which shifts the cost directly to
    the consumer without their permission.
    
    -Steve
                                

    > It shouldn't be my burden, my ISP's burden, or my employer's burden 
    > to fix it.
    
    So it should be the government's burden instead?
    
    				-John

    re:
    ---
    >>I dont often look to the government to solve problems, but the junk
    >>Fax law really must be extended to e-mail, and soon.
    
    >I don't think this is the correct way to solve it.  It can be solved
    >technically - after all, that's what software is for (and all about)
    
    and:
    ----
    >>It shouldn't be my burden, my ISP's burden, or my employer's burden 
    >>to fix it.
    
    >So it should be the government's burden instead?
    
    
    This is more "conservative ideology at any cost".  Is not government's
    most important job to protect us?  You may draw the line at protection
    from incoming warheads, and I may draw it at incoming email.  Or you
    can choose to be an anarchist, if you like.
    
    And no, you can't protect a global network with local software.  All
    you can do is provide some relief for yourself -- unless your software
    is agressive enough to do some seek-and-destroy at the source end.
    
    Tony
    
     

>> So it should be the government's burden instead?

> This is more "conservative ideology at any cost".  Is not government's
> most important job to protect us?  You may draw the line at protection
> from incoming warheads, and I may draw it at incoming email.  Or you
> can choose to be an anarchist, if you like.

    Gee, I haven't been called conservative in years...  Heck, I haven't
    voted for a Republican since I voted for Reagan for his first term.
    I vote Democratic 99% of the time.  I've for individual responsibility, 
    freedom of speech, and equality and fairness for everybody.  
    
    Seems to me that if you put a mailbox (at least virtually) on your
    machine, you are asking for incoming mail.  Just like with the mailbox
    on the front of your house.  Throw out (or recycle like I do) the junk
    mail each day.
    
    				-John

    re .143
    
    Sorry if my note sounded personal.  I was referring to the ideas.  It's
    just that there is a limit to what you can do as an individual -- and
    then again, sometimes I'm thankful for that.  
    
    Tony

I hate spam as much as the people from the 19.8% Credit Card Company who call on
the telephone every evening, but is it possible some people like this stuff?

There are some things that arrive in my physical mailbox that others might
consider junk mail but that I find interesting.  The e-mail spam, on the other
hand, seems too be 99% hoaxes and porn rather than auto club come-ons or Save
the Whatever brochures.

I'm not in favor of the government banning something just because *I* find it
objectionable.

And I did find myself cheering for the hackers who put Cyber Promotions off the
net for most of a day.

Paul

There is plenty of legel precedent for regulating Spam.
It's just a new media for an old problem, and will in time,
I am sure, be addressed as such.

It's illegal to send unsolicted FAX's.  It's illegal to
solicit cellphones.  It's illegal to persist in sending
hardcopy mail or telephone solicitation to an individual
who requests that the solicitation be stopped.

It'll get fixed, and most likely in record time, thanks to
these precedents.  It's just one of the interesting legal
nuances of a new media, that's all.

Now, intellectual property law, that will be where the
real legal challenges start to crop up soon...this spam
stuff isn't a big deal...

tim

>    Seems to me that if you put a mailbox (at least virtually) on your
>    machine, you are asking for incoming mail.  Just like with the mailbox
>    on the front of your house.  Throw out (or recycle like I do) the junk
>    mail each day.

The rationale behind banning junk faxes and junk email is that the recipient
pays for it.  You don't pay for junk US Mail (except insofar as you pay
for garbage disposal).

    I can see the "cost" of junk faxes.  They tie up a single resource
    that could be doing real work.  It probably borders on telephone
    harassment.
    
    However, the "cost" of junk email is harder to document.  Sure the
    computer spends cycles it could be doing something else, you could be
    tight on disk space, etc.  However, the time to read the mail and throw
    it away is the same for US mail at home (probably faster since you
    don't have to rip open the evelopes :-) ).  US junk mail "costs" me more 
    than just disposal, I have to actually sort through the stuff to decide
    what to keep and what to throw away, just like here at work.
    
    Now perhaps I'm thinking too much from a Digital point-of-view.  Do
    online services charge their customers for emails they receive?  If
    they do, then that is kinda like being forced to accept a collect
    phone call.  If thats the case, then something needs to be changed.
    
    				-John

    Congress will be considering anti-junk-email legislation this summer. 
    More precisely, it was a bill to ban solicitations that transfer the
    solicitation cost from sender to receiver, without permission.
    
    As reported a few notes back, the jerk inspiring the anti-junk-email
    law, Sanford Wallace, is the same jerk who inspired the anti-junk-fax
    law a few years back.  Two acts of Congress!  He's lucky bills of
    attainder are unconstitutional.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    Re: Do online services charge their customers for emails they receive?
    If they do, then that is kinda like being forced to accept a collect
    phone call.  If thats the case, then something needs to be changed.
    
    Netcom charges for disk space over a certain minimum amount.  It keeps
    customers' email, including not yet read email, on the customer's
    disk area.  Such fun to log in every two weeks or so and find a bunch
    of junk email which not only takes my time to delete, but whose disk
    space my account will be billed for.  However, more annoying to me
    personally is that it takes my time.
              

    Does Netcom give you the option of not having an overdraft but instead
    just not receiving mail?  
    
    If my US Mail mailbox becomes full, the postal carrier simply stops
    delivering mail.  If you think of disk space as renting a mailbox
    of a certain size, if you don't empty it before it gets full, you
    don't get anymore mail.
    
    				-John

    Re: .151
    
    What?  You mean they should toss my genuine new email because
    I've gotten a bunch of spam?  I think not :-)
    

Yes, it _does_ cost the user of an online service to receive email.

Connect time costs money, money paid to the online service and money paid
to the phone company.

Some people may have unlimited accounts and unlimited phone usage, but I
don't.

When I call my ISP from my home phone line, I pay for every minute of connect
time to my ISP and every minute of telephone usage to NYNEX.

Fortunately (or not, as the case may be), the address all the spammers seem
to have gotten is "covert@covert.enet.dec.com", not my own email address.
So the spammers cost Digital time in bits of my productivity used to delete
the spam, which arrives day and night, a message ever four hours on the
average.

/john

    I'm slowly just getting tired of this all.
    
    Just a few minutes ago, I got junk mail advertising an almost free
    Caribbean cruise (well, a cruise said to be worth $2,500 for mere
    $600).
    
    If they airlift me from  Munich to Florida first for that money (and
    preferably back also), I guess I might be tempted...the problem is, I
    can't call the 800 number given.
    

    Isn't the whole point that I should have the OPTION of receiving what I
    want in my own mailbox?  Why should someone else have the "right" to
    stuff it with whatever they want?  Why should my mailbox be any more
    "public" than I declare it to be?  I'd like the same option for my
    snail-mailbox, but since third class mail supports the Postal Service,
    I'll probably never get it.  Hopefully, the Feds won't realize that
    they could tax spam before they outlaw it.
    
    Tony

    I just received 13 junk email's in the last 3 minutes.  I usually get
    a few a week.  They are mostly from what seem to be different sources with
    different topics.  One of them said I had to send mail saying "remove"
    if I want them to stop sending me mail.  
    
    @seesaw73.com            porn
    @savetrees.com           get rich quick
    @in2surfin.com           become a marketing rep
    @654651.com              some pyramid scheme 
    @genesisnetwork.com      starch blocker nonsense
    @xxxdoe.net              bulk email software 
    @mail2w-ext.prodigy.net  stuff envelopes for money
    @jun.com                 human phermonies ???
    @quantcom.com            different bulk mail software
    @bigfoot.com             various bulk mail software products
    @moremoneynow,com1       start your own 900 business
    
    Why did I get all this mail delivered at the same time?
    
    -Bruce
    

    Re: .157
    
    Are those actually the systems at the beginning of the received
    header lines, or instead the possibly faked From, Reply-to, systems?
    I think the latter, so you need to look at the headers to see where
    this stuff is actually coming from.
    
    That said, savetrees is CyberPromo, quantcom is Quantum Communications.
    Your other messages may well turn out to be from one of those sites
    as well, but with a forged From or Reply-to, which would explain
    them all being dumped out at once. 
    
    If you actually have a msg from someone on Prodigy, zap a complaint off to
    abuse@prodigy.net and postmaster@prodigy.net and include the message
    and its full header.
    

I agree with Karen that it is a good thing to complain to the
service provider.

The one thing I will NEVER do is to reply, even to say remove.
They get nothing for their efforts from me. I won't even refine
the quality of their mailing lists.

Patrick

Help!  Now _I'm_ getting spammed.  I got the same spam four times in the space
of 40 minutes.  It came to my VMS mail account at WEDOIT::BELKIN.
Here is the top sections:

---------------------------------------------------------
From:   US5RMC::"pctraining@savetrees.com"
To:     pctraining@savetrees.com
CC:
Subj:   Microsoft Office -- How To Train Employees


THE BIGGEST WAVE IN BUSINESS SOFTWARE

Learning to use Microsoft's Office challenges even the most
sophisticated corporation.  Coping with the new interface,
---------------------------------------------------------

yada yada yada...And now the spew and internet trailer at the bottom:

---------------------------------------------------------
When you purchase training, you also purchase the company
behind the training.  We are the leader in network-delivered
training.

Sincerely,

K.D. Lester
Marketing Operations
pctraining@savetrees.com

P.S.  If you do not wish to receive additional information from us,
please reply to this email and enter "remove" in the subject field.

docname: msoff-97
58splt31special

% ====== Internet headers and postmarks ======
% Received: from mail13.digital.com by us5rmc.imc.das.dec.com (5.65/rmc-22feb94)
 id AA07013; Thu, 8 May 97 14:56:48 -0400
% From: pctraining@savetrees.com
% Received: from ispam.net by mail13.digital.com (8.7.5/UNX 1.5/1.0/WV) id OAA28
351; Thu, 8 May 1997 14:44:53 -0400 (EDT)
% Received: from --- CLOAKED! ---
% Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 14:07:41 -0400 (EDT)
% X-1: This email was sent by "Cyber-Bomber" ... Details at 
   http://www.cyberpromo.com
% X-2: This server only relays mail from other sources.
% X-3: To report abuse, please send email to abuse@cyberpromo.com.
% X-4: Coming soon --> Master remove list implementation by I.E.M.M.C.
% To: pctraining@savetrees.com
% Subject: Microsoft Office -- How To Train Employees
% Reply-To: pctraining@savetrees.com
% Comments: Authenticated sender is <pctraining@savetrees.com>
% Received: from savetrees.com (savetrees.com [000.000.000.000]) by
   savetrees.com (0.0.0./0.0.0.) with SMTP id AAA000000 for 
  <pctraining@savetrees.com>; Thu, 8 May 1997 11:4:32 -0500 (EST)
% Message-Id: 0000000000.AAA000@savetrees.com
% X-Uidl: 98213349269414574391763845559766
---------------------------------------------------------

I know enough NOT to reply, cause then will know I am a real live account, 
right?  help! what can I do?  who can I complain to?

 thanks, Josh Belkin

    Re: .160
    
    This appears to be pure CyberPromo rubbish, so all you can do
    is complain to your local admin person that Dec should be blocking
    all CyberPromo junk, or perhaps there is a valid non-CyberPromo
    email address or 800 number in the text of the message (for responses
    to the ad), in which case you can complain to the postmaster at that
    site or call the 800 number and complain.  (Always be polite when 
    complaining to random sites because some of the spammers include perfectly
    innocent bystander sites just to cause mischief. and some of the
    vendors whose 800 numbers are in this stuff are truly clueless about
    spam.)
    

re                  <<< Note 2986.161 by PADC::KOLLING "Karen" >>>

Nope, no phone numbers, and the only email addresses were the ones I 
included in .160.  I do fear replying, though, because I've heard a lot of
stories from friends that once you reply, you can make things worse because
now the spammer knows your account is alive and active.

 - Josh

    Josh,
    
    I suspect you're right.  I rarely reply, just because I'm usually too
    busy to bother.  I doubt that I get 1 spam a day, most days none...but
    I'm on the 'net every day (but 90 % read-only)
    
    tim
    

In fact, I suspect that half the messages are partly for the purpose of
trolling for "verified" addresses to sell to other lists.

/john

	A A A R R R G G G H H H ! ! !

savetrees.com!

S E V E N T E E N   copies of the latest crap spam.

In just the last hour and a half.

/john

    re .165: I just received the umpteenth mailing savetrees.com saying
    "this is a one-time only mailing, we won't pester you anymore..."
    
    BTW, how easy is it to grab the mail address from Netscape? I recently
    received a mail saying "according to our records, you are interested in
    antique radios and old tubes". As it happens, I _had_ visited a couple
    of antique radio pages a few days earlier. Too much of a concidence?
    

_NINETEEN_ more of the identical messages arrived from savetrees during the
night, for a total of forty-one!

/john

    >_NINETEEN_ more of the identical messages arrived from savetrees during the
>night, for a total of forty-one!

    Just think how many trees they are saving by sending this jusnk via the 
    internet.

    At what point does complaining about the same message here over and
    over become its own form of spam?

RE: .168

Unfortunately, Covert prints out all of his mail.

    Let him complain - misery loves company.  When are the guardians of
    our portals going to punt this stuff...
    

    I seem to get 1 or 2 "spams" a day.  What happened yesterday, though,
    does make one wonder how these folks get our addresses.  I received one
    that was forwarded through my VAX workstation.  Thing is, I use this
    workstation only as a VMS load host for terminal servers and haven't
    used it for EMAIL or USENET access for years.               

I suspect that it is possible for people to sell internal mailing 
lists.

Greg

> I suspect that it is possible for people to sell internal mailing 
> lists.

I strongly suspect that any employee doing so would be in violation
of corporate security policy, in a big way...

tim

    RE: .173, .174
    
    Funny thing is that I noticed that an E-mail address for an old 
    VAXstation that I had used was up on the Web Service Internet Address 
    Finder (WWW.IAF.NET). It even listed my organization as "Digital 
    Equipment Corporation". I have never really used this system to do 
    anything on the Web. 
    
    								-Pete

    Internal email adresses are getting to junk emailers, but it's not from
    anybody selling employee directory information.  I too get junk through
    hardly-used routes.  It's as if somebody is exploring the network
    meticulously.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    Not necessarily meticulously. 
    
    Remember a book called "The Internet White Pages" several years back?
    It listed Internet mail addresses culled from USEnet newsgroup postings
    by brute force searching over a period of a month. This list, or
    another one similar to it, was also available on a CD-ROM at about the
    same time.  Today, the same thing is done with the addition of web
    crawling technology to pull addresses off of Web pages. Ample
    descriptions of the procedures and experimental verification are a
    regular sight on net.admin.net-abuse.email. Once it gets on someone's
    list, someone can will sell it or pass it on. Email addresses are like
    grains of sand. You buy them in bulk by the cubic yard.

    Re .178:
    
    You've missed the point; we're getting email through addresses not used
    on the net outside of Digital and not in Digital directories.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    Re .179:
    
    I misunderstood you, then. But I find it hard to believe that anyone
    would poke through Digital's firewall to come up with valid email
    addresses. (I suppose some one could but why not help themselves to
    more interesting information; yes, I've heard that that's been done.)
    I've only received junk mail on one account whose address has been
    regularly used outside the firewall. There are two other accounts I
    have that have been around for several years and no one has tried to
    drop crap in their mailboxes.
    
    This is a digression, though. The consensus here seems to be that the
    situation is lousy, getting worse for those whose addresses are known
    to the crap shovelers, and the corporation will only issue placating
    words about it.

Hello:
	One thing you can do is set 
your web browser NOT to accept cookies.
(That may or may not help).
Another thing I've seen done is add  anti-spam
characters to your reply-to address in your browser 
mail tool - and put a disclaimer in your signature file
that tells people you do this - so REAL mail can get
through...

for example, sawyert@mail.dec.com.antispam

Just my $0.02 worth

-Travis

    There are reports of mailers that can see through the obvious
    "nospam" mail address modifications -- you should probably be a bit
    more creative, along the lines of
    
    	yourname@mail.dec.skipthis.com	! the string "spam" isn't used
    
    Getting too creative
    
    	yourname@mail.dec.elideme.com
    
    might go over the heads of your intended correspondents, though...

...and that annoys all the legitimate people who want to send you mail.

PJDM

    
 .182>   There are reports of mailers that can see through the obvious
 .182>   "nospam" mail address modifications -- you should probably be a bit
 .182>   more creative, along the lines of
    
    Sure, the logic for a mail list massage program to remove 'obvious' 
    anti spam modifications would not be too hard. But is there any logic 
    to such program to want to do this? Why would they try to piss off a 
    person behind a mail address who consiously took an action to clearly 
    indicate not to want to receive spamns/ads/get_rich_fast mails?
    
    Surely they would use the presence of such 'nospam' string as an
    indication to drop the whole entry from their list?
    Nahhh that'd make too much sense for those morons.
    
    
    Hein.
    
    
    . But the log
    
    

>    Sure, the logic for a mail list massage program to remove 'obvious' 
>    anti spam modifications would not be too hard. But is there any logic 
>    to such program to want to do this? Why would they try to piss off a 
>    person behind a mail address who consiously took an action to clearly 
>    indicate not to want to receive spamns/ads/get_rich_fast mails?
    
    I was relating what someone actually reported seeing, not guessing
    about the possibility. (I'd done that in another context, and the
    report was in response.)
    
    As to why: I'd be willing to bet that some of these bulk mailers get
    paid by the number of deliveries they make ... satisfied mail
    recipients is not THEIR main concern.

They probably figure that SOMEONE will buy something as a result of 
the mailing, so even one extra customer makes it sort of worthwhile.

I received spam apparently from vbemdf.vbe.dec.com, should I forward 
this onto someone, to try and get it stopped?

If millions of people get this they could wrongly assume Digital 
(DEC) are in the spam business!!

Greg

    
    
> I received spam apparently from vbemdf.vbe.dec.com, should I forward 
> this onto someone, to try and get it stopped?

    fwiw, VBEMDF _is_ a registred node from Digital in Valbonne.
	
    Hein.
    
    

    Spam is spam, from internal sources or external sources.  I quite often
    receive junk mail from internal people promoting their own little
    personal pet project.  In one particular case, I complained to the
    sender and was told nothing could be done, the distribution list was a
    "system distribution" and I'd have to track down whom ever managed it,
    with no pointers to whom that might be.  I guess it doesn't surprise me
    that there seems to be any real effort put forth to stop spamming since
    "they" would (or should) have to enforce it internally as well.
    
    .02, Bryan

It's only going to get worse...

This weekend, among about twenty spams, I received a resume -- the first
instance of job-hunting by spam.  That seems really stupid.

I also received a long justification of how wonderful and environmentally
friendly spam is and how I should be supportive of it.

/john

re: .187
>I received spam apparently from vbemdf.vbe.dec.com, should I forward 
>this onto someone, to try and get it stopped?

Apparantly is the operative word here.  VBEMDF is a gateway
between SMTP and our ALL-IN-1/MR mail system.  If a message
has an empty or invalid sender field, the gateway software
(PMDF) substitutes its own local postmaster address to comply
with normal gateway practices (ALL-IN-1/MR require something
in the From field, SMTP doesn't).

If this was more than a one-off, send a sample to me
(kennedy@mail.dec.com) to confirm.

:      <<< Note 2986.136 by XDELTA::HOFFMAN "Steve, OpenVMS Engineering" >>>
:                       -< Sanford Wallace & CyberPromo >-
...
RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Friday 9 May 1997  Volume 19 : Issue 13
...

Date: Fri, 9 May 97 16:11:43 PDT
From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@chiron.csl.sri.com>
Subject: Cyber Promotions slammed, spammed, and dammed

Cyber Promotions, one of the largest conduits for junk e-mail, was hit with
a temporary federal court restraining order in response to Earthlink's
complaint against their electronic ``trespassing''.  They also agreed to pay
CompuServe $65,000 to settle a federal lawsuit, and agreed to stop spamming
CompuServe users.  (They had earlier agreed to a similar settlement with
AOL.)  Also, in the same two-day period, they experienced a 20-hour
retaliatory reverse-spam that flooded their computer system with millions of
requests for hardware identification numbers [which some might call a taste
of their own medicine].  That attack was stopped by filtering out 50 net
addresses.  [Source: an AP item by Jennifer Brown, seen in the *San
Francisco Chronicle*, 9 May 1997, C2]

    I guess that restraining order has expired.  Since the date of that
    notice, May 9, I have received junk through Earthlink that I tracked to
    Cyber Promotions.  For the first time, I have received junk through my
    domain (edp.org), and I am considering suing Cyber Promotions if they
    don't stop.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

I've also received mail from Cyber Promotions that purported to originate from
a CompuServe user (with an invalud UID.)

				Steve

.194:I've also received mail from Cyber Promotions that purported to
.194:originate from a CompuServe user (with an invalud UID.)

   I have seen a number of messages -- apparently originating from
   various CyberPromo clients -- that have apparently contained one
   or more forged IP addresses.

	--

   Here is the CNN URL mentioned in the attached Risks Digest, and
   an associated article:

	http://cnn.com/TECH/9705/21/spam.reut/index.html
	http://cnn.com/TECH/9705/18/internet.email/

	--

   From:
        RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Thursday 22 May 1997
	Volume 19 : Issue 18

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 19:54:53 -0700
From: griffith@netcom.com (Jim Griffith)
Subject: Anti-spam bill introduced in U.S. House

Reuters reports today (via the CNN web page at www.cnn.com) that New Jersey
Republican Representative Chris Smith has introduced the "Netizens
Protection Act of 1997".  Intended to be an effective extension of the 1991
Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which bans unsolicited junk faxes, his
NPA would "ban unsolicited commercial e-mail including get-rich-quick
schemes, unproven medical remedies and similar solicitations that can cost
recipients money by incurring online charges".

As much as I support his actions, I find myself using my favorite anti-CDA
argument against it - in that even if this law is passed (one can only
hope), those who are determined to spam will merely do so from overseas.
But it sounds like a good start.

Jim

------------------------------