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Re: Junk Mail



No this is not Leigh Palmer, its Doug Craigen. I have set up this
message as I did to make a point which I'll get to later. Please forgive
me Leigh. Actually, I'm late into this thread because I've just gotten
back from a trip to Vancouver. Had I kept up with my email while there I
would have crashed your lunch. ;->

Folks, is it just me or is the galaxy being flooded with junk e-mail?
I don't have a clue how I got so popular, but for the past few weeks I
have been inundated with three or four junk messages per day. None of
the From: addresses are the same.
How often do list members get this junk mail???

I get in the same ballpark.

I have no idea how to stop this. Comments????

Have you tried replying with "remove" in the subject header as they
suggest? I lost count of all my "remove" requests a long time ago.

As with any disease, avoiding infection is better than trying to find a
cure. For those who are not yet on any such lists a couple of pieces of
advice.
1) don't let your email address get listed on any web pages
2) practice safe-hex if you use usenet news groups - protect
your email address something like this
f_off_spammers_dcc@cyberspc.mb.ca
or more politely:
d*%%cc@cyberspc.mb.ca
people who use newsgroups understand what you are doing and
will remove the protective layers if they want to send you email.
This does offer some protection against robots that scan newsgroups
for email addresses.

Now then, why did I make this message "from" Leigh. This is much like
the protection that many bulk emailers use. I have had many people's ISP
cut off their access after they sent me bulk mail. However, more and
more they are using servers devoted to bulk mail, so no help from their
ISP, and they offer no legitimate form of fighting back. The fake return
address is one of their many tactics. Were this a bulk message
advertising a 900 number for some service - you would be stuck to make
any complaints without a lot of work. Flames would go to Leigh, abuse
reports would go to the SFU postmaster, informed abuse reports would
notice that I funneled this through the University of Manitoba and go
there, but I really doubt that I would feel any consequences over here on
my cyberspc account. Not unless someone goes through a lot of work.

This is what bulk mailers do more and more. In fact I think there is a
bit of vengence in the choices they make. I find netcom very good at
cutting off accounts of spammers and they seem to be the favorite false
return address now. Its rather like "ok so you cut off my account after
an abuse report, well lets see you try to do something with all these
abuse reports!"

As with most topics, I have a couple of web pages on this. The first is
http://www.cyberspc.mb.ca/~dcc/junk.html.
This reproduces a message I received advertising complaint free access to
bulk mailing. Using their own figures I estimate that on average one out
of every ten thousand received junk bulk messages results in a person
actually buying anything. In my books this qualifies as a major
nuisance.

The other is http://www.cyberspc.mb.ca/~dcc/spam.shtml.
This is much shorter. It references a source of anti-spam software for
PCs and gives URLs for a couple of sites devoted to fighting spam.