HEEEEELLLLPPP!!!....The...the...SPAM!

[Exiguus]

http://www.susogi.net/Exiguus/dendrite_ani.gif Ok, the quiet one speaks up. I have recently been getting a more-than-usual amount of spam/advertisement-mail through my susogi.net e-mail account. Whatsamattah???...What did I do to deserve that?... Well...I suppose until I get more fun things to talk about...ciao! http://www.aota.net/ubb//wink.gif

A boot into your face, the dream that fills your night. Decades later it seems George Orwell might be right!

[This message has been edited by Exiguus (edited 09-23-98).]

[Deb]

Hey Exiguus... might I suggest a BounceEmail program also as a gift to our friends the spammers until a better solution can be found... a good one that I've found useful is called "Bounce Spam Mail" found at www.er.uqam.ca/merlin/fg591543/bsm/ (http://www.er.uqam.ca/merlin/fg591543/bsm/) it's a freeware program that returns a bounce message similar to the type the server would send if it was unreachable...

This is a much better approach to spam then replying with your own 'kind feelings' simply because if you reply to spam and it actually does reach the sender then you are letting them know it's a good email and they'll send you more!!! By sending a bounce msg they tend to assume the email addy is bogus and move you down in the list resulting in less spam...

Just my two cents..
Deb
p.s. if you do use the program..there is one lil catch... where it says to input the spammers email addy make sure you put a diamond around that addy.. e.g. <spammer@spam.com> rather then just inputing spammer@spam.com

[This message has been edited by Deb (edited 09-25-98).]

[Terra]

Hello Exiguus,

Ugggghhhhh is right... I abhor spam as well... I have been carefully watching for "SpamBots" hitting our domain, it seems they change their identifiers daily -- making it next to impossible to stop... Basically they will find a domain and start parsing it completely for email addresses... I have several POP/aliases myself running on Susogi.net watching for such activity... Thusfar, I've been relatively spam-free, except for Debbie getting those #$%$#@#@ 'BullsEye' email marketing letters...

As it stands now -- there are plans to implement 'RBL' into our QMail server, which should help to deter such bogus UCE... Even then, it's not a complete solution to the problem... What FutureQuest has implemented is it's strong stance against our Domain being used as a Spam source and/or Bounce site... Those controls are in place within the QMail MTA server, and work quite well - I might add... I get snagged everytime I test them utilizing over a dozen different _creative_ ways to circumvent the protections...

Another item on my ToDo list is the implementation of 'ProcMail' filters for Full Domains -- I do not know when this functionality will be available to Susogi/Lils accounts as well...

I, among thousands of others, wish we could completely stem the tide of UCE... But as we SysAdmin's on the front lines, are learning that the -enemy- opposition is as creative to getting around these blocks/controls -- as we are in creating them in the first place... So thus the battle rages on... I refuse to surrender...

As a bottom line -- we do NOT keep/sell mailing lists to Spam Houses, and we will decline response to anyone whom asks... Even law enforcement better have a d*mn good reason for asking -- and even then -- they better provide/serve me with a valid subpeona...

--And that's all I gotta say bout that--

Andrew Gillespie
SysAdmin
FutureQuest.net
Susogi.net
Lils.net
AOTA.net

[Exiguus]

Thank you very VERY much...(I *WAS* using Spam Hater...but I think this will do *VERY* nicely...) <Evil Snicker>...

How am I funny?...Am I a clown? Do I amuse you?...How am *I* funny?

[This message has been edited by Exiguus (edited 09-26-98).]

[searcher]

Spam is a lot bigger problem than junk mail in my mailbox.[nbsp][nbsp]My domain was used to relay spam, causing me to be banned from sending e-mail to some domains because of it.[nbsp][nbsp]The solution of paying for programming enabling me to receive e-mail while disallowing anyone, including me, from sending e-mail through my domain was less than ideal.[nbsp][nbsp]When will these security issues be fixed?[nbsp][nbsp]

I've used spam hater for a long time, and it doesn't seem to have helped a bit.[nbsp][nbsp]The same jerk has been sucking addresses from my site for months and months, and the bogus addresses don't have any effect on him.[nbsp][nbsp]

When the spam hater type programs are used, if someone used my domain to relay spam wouldn't the bounced e-mail slam right back to me?[nbsp][nbsp]

[Dan Kaplan]

Wow, here's an old thread that's risen to the top.[nbsp][nbsp]I've been receiving quite a bit of spam recently, and have thought about trying Cliff's Spambot Killer script:

http://www.shavenferret.com/scripts/spam/frame.shtml

Anyone have any experience with it or similar scripts?

My script generates fake (but real looking) e-mail addresses. This means that when the harvester comes, it happily returns a couple thousand e-mail addresses, all of which will bounce. Oh how my heart warms just thinking about that![nbsp][nbsp]:)

Darkside

[Jazz]

Here's something that may help for sites that don't have LOTS of email addresses on them...a free &quot;Email Encoder.&quot; You type in your email address, and they return an email to you with your address made into a string of ASCII code (or whatever it's called). Evidently email harvesters can't read the email address encoded like this (yet!??)

http://www.siteup.com/free_stuff.html

It doesn't make you feel like you're getting revenge on them or anything like &quot;Spambot Killer,&quot; but I think it's a decent preventative. I've never gotten spam at addresses I've done this with. But at a Hotmail address that I use? Whoa...there's another story!

Hey--I just found something else at http://www.mmgco.com/nospam/
Here's a way to prevent the spam scum robots from gleaning your e-mail address from a HTML page -- and maybe even from e-mail publications and newsgroups. When you enter a mailto in a Web page, format it as follows:

mailto:%20yourname@yourdomain.com

It works just fine when someone clicks on it, but when the robots pick it up they end up with an invalid address.
Like I said, it doesn't cut down on stuff you're already getting, but might help in the future.

Jazz
[This message has been edited by Jazz (edited 01-14-00@2:13 pm)]

[Stephen]

here are a couple of links to a short perl script i wrote to convert e-mail addresses into the non-spammable type.

first, the source code:
www.randommouse.com/public/scramble_address.txt (http://www.randommouse.com/public/scramble_address.txt)

second, a demo of it:
www.randommouse.com/cgi-bin/public/scramble_address.cgi (http://www.randommouse.com/cgi-bin/public/scramble_address.cgi)

if you grab the source code, just convert the .txt extension into .cgi (or .pl) and drop it into any cgi bin. then point your browser at it.

hope it's of some use :)

[Tatu]

Wow! That program looked AWESOME! Does it actually work?

I just use to use a program that you would link to something like www.futurequesthostedsite.com/cgi-bin/nospam?fish*sea.com (http://www.futurequesthostedsite.com/cgi-bin/nospam?fish*sea.com) and the cgi script would just replace the &quot;*&quot; with a &quot;@&quot; and put that in a mailto command once clicked. I thought it wouldn't work, but they explained to me that a spam robot rarely follows cgi links. True?

[Justin]

Justin at VDJ dot Net

That is the best way to assure a robot can't get the address (though I could write a robot that would accept that and fix it... :P)

Also... Try this:

for (split (//, $address)) {$fubar .= &quot;&amp;#&quot; . ord ($_) . &quot;;&quot;;}

;)

------------------
Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support