[ale] spam

[Greg]

I get maybe 2-3 spams every 4-6 months.  How do I do this ? easy - I do the
following

	* Never ever give out the primary or one of the primary email addresses to
anyone unless you want and expect to get email from them.

	* See previous for your business cards too.  The "free gym tryout" or fish
bowls of business cards for free lunches at restaurants or some such at
conventions are used to harvest email addresses.

	* Feel free to use fake emails and names and such.  In fact, my dog just
ordered a free book (it is on .NET and from the MS Dominion so I do feel
some shame at using him). And as a bonus I had it sent to my work address
Let them handle the junk email that may follow. <using the Jedi mindtrick or
the Bene Gesserit voice> "You don't need Greg's address".

	* Expect any business to sell your email address - so be choosy.

	* Read any and all privacy & use agreements on websites.  The devil is in
the details and so is the law(yers).

	* If you have to give it out on a website, look for the "opt out"
checkboxes.  They are ALWAYS at the bottom and ALWAYS checked.

	* Get a "throw away" address.  Either Hotmail (last resort to use only
once) or use one of the many your ISP gives you.  I set one up anytime I
need one for a project (i.e.. getting mortgage quotes.) Once the project is
over, change it or get rid of it so that any spam stops at the ISP.

	* Turn off JavaScript, cookies, referrer logging, all types of scripting,
etc on your browser.

	* Remember that anywhere you go, so does your IP address.

	* User filter(s).  For the email client, the email server and/or the ISP's
filters. Speedfactory uses a pretty good one.  It has come into play about
once every 4 months for me.

	* Never send a return email to the "OPT OUT" address after you have gotten
a spam unless it is a semi-reputable company where you are on their
newsletter or some such list where you are sure that 1) it will be honored
and 2)it is a somewhat reputable firm. (i.e.. Oracle - well it is late and I
cannot think of any reputable ones. oh, "Suse").  IT IS TOO LATE TO RUN. -
if you send to the opt out address all you are doing is confirming that the
email address is "real" one - and hence is 5 times more valuable one the
market than a "possible" email address.

	* Never use "return receipts" unless you have to. Know what they are and
how to manage them.

	* Use your mail clients "junk email" feature.

	* Investigate new technologies - like spamd from the OpenBSD folks. It came
from the founder and project head himself.  It makes the spammers servers
work their little chips off trying to get the mail through.

	* Sign up for the mail and telemarketing "opt-out" lists - these are used
by many advertisers to better increase the odds or the focus of their
marketing and some will use them to "clean out" their lists. It serves
(probably the real reason) as some sort of appeasement of advertisers to the
state's secretary of state to help quell public dissension so I guess it is
effective.

	* Last and not least - try to attend ALE meetings that are on spam
prevention (like the one at KSU awhile back).

Greg


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-admin at ale.org [mailto:ale-admin at ale.org]On Behalf Of Marvin
> Dickens
> Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 12:13 AM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: [ale] spam
>
>
> All the talk about spam made me look at the email statistics for my
> business (A small technology business) as well as for me personally.
> Now, I've not given spam any real thought for about 4 years (I suppose
> that's because I've used spam protection for so long it has not been an
> issue for me...). FWIW, spam was the 3rd largest category out of 8
> categories that I use to classify my email. Assuming that I am at
> somewhere between middle and high end of typical users of email (At
> least as far as quantities of email per week), this amount of spam is
> ridiculous. This has got to be costing everybody a mint (You, me, them,
> those people over there and etc...)
>
> My email statistics for 5 days beginning Monday and ending tonight at
> 11:41PM:
>
> Categories	Quantity
>
> business   	109
> linux_general   325
> linux_spca   	9
> linux_video   	28
> news   		15
> personal   	24
> spam   		78 <--------<<<
> sql_ledger   	27
>
> I have no idea how 98% of these slugs got my email address(s) other than
> harvesting them from mailing lists or by other dubious means unknown to
> me. It seems to me that if you want to stop spam, white lists, Bayesian
> statistics and such treat only the symptoms and are not an effective
> deterrent against the real problem: The spam itself. Even the new
> earthlink thing is defeatable (At least it seems to me that it is...)
>
> Further, it appears to me that using a technology to make it impossible
> for the email addresses to harvested (Don't ask me how. I don't know...)
> and/or making the monetary cost of sending spam so high as to make the
> act of spamming prohibitive: Something like a spam fine or tax that is
> payable to the IRS (Lying to the IRS about how much spam you sent in a
> year could land you in the Grey Bar Hilton and Resort. This ought to
> have an impact...). Now, I'm not a big fan of bigger government. At the
> same time I'm not a fan of high taxes. With that said, I look at this
> not so much as a tax, but as an incentive *NOT* to be in the spamming
> business. OTOH, something like this could be the first step in an email
> tax which I *TOTALLY* oppose. Regardless, something has got to be done
> to make the act of spamming as a profession go the way of streaking...
>
>
> Best
>
> M. Dickens
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>

_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale