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-
- I'm not sure about c'punk relevance, but that doesn't seem to make
- much difference these days. Anyone interested in the previous message
- is likely interested in this.
-
- Here's (most) of a note I sent to Mark Frauenfelder.
-
- -------------------------------- snip --------------------------------
- From: C Matthew Curtin <cmcurtin@research.megasoft.com>
- To: mark@wired.com
- Subject: MadSpams...SpamLibs... uh... yeah
- Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 08:43:58 EDT
-
- *chuckle* ... that's pretty good.
-
- * Message split, to be continued *
- --- ifmail v.2.10-tx8.2
- * Origin: Edmonton FreeNet, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (1:340/13@fidonet)
-
- ─ ALT.2600.MODERATED (1:340/26) ─────────────────────────── ALT.2600.MODERATED ─
- Msg : 12 of 17
- From : real@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca 1:340/13 17 Jun 97 20:25:06
- To : All 19 Jun 97 01:20:50
- Subj : [part 2] SPAM
- ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
- .RFC-Message-ID: <5o7kei$9hk$4@news.sas.ab.ca>
- From: real@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca ()
- Approved: ab756@freenet.toronto.on.ca
- * Continuation 1 of a split message *
-
-
- Some of my favorite activities with regard to spammers:
- * giving them a nice call on the telephone. Call collect, and then
- say that you've got something to sell them. Read them back their
- own spam if you can get that far.
- * calling their 800 number and reading them their own spam
- * calling them to ask if they have any idea what they're doing to the
- Internet. The answer is invariably "no." (Of course not, these
- are clueless parasites.)
- * signing up one spammer's autoresponder to another spammer's
- autoresponder.
- * collecting a list of technical and administrative contacts for
- zones that are notorious about originating spam, the people who
- sell and give out their spam software, etc. Then, every time spam
- comes in, simply bounce it to that alias, and the spammers all spam
- each other.
- * sending mail back that's politely insulting. My favorite
- one-liner:
- "You're not a very smart man, are you?"
- * My favorite for sex-related spam: hinting that I became aware of
- their spam after my 9 year old daughter with an email address asked
- me what "hardcore anal sex" is. Doing this over the phone is
- great, because I can yell hysterically. Through email is even better,
- since I can copy their ISP's contact, and that one... all the way
- to the backbone.
- * Sometimes my mail relay seems to choke on spam, and sends back a
- packet with a MSG_OOB bit sent to the host that originated the
- spam. Gee, dunno how that happened. Sometimes if the host stays
- up after that, it's followed by an oversized ping. Shucks, that's
- too bad when that happens. Maybe one day I'll track down that, uh,
- bug and ... fix it.
-
- Of course, I always complain about every spam that hits me. The
- administrative contact of the site that is as far back as I can trace
- the message, the administrative contact of the site's ISP, and that
- site's ISP, all the way up to a backbone provider, or a well-known,
- responsible organization. I have a form letter for doing this, and
- I've got another completely-ready-to-go letter that just needs me to
- slap in the To: addresses:
- wallace@cyberpromo.com, postmaster@cyberpromo.com, postmaster@agis.net
-
- You can guess what that one's for.
-
- In all seriousness, I'm working on a paper for filtering spam. I
- think I've found a way to almost completely eliminate it through a
- combination of router access control lists, spam-aware mail transfer
- agents (MTAs), and filtering local delivery agents. Individuals who
- wish to filter beyond that can also put on filters of their own with
- programs like Z-mail, Eudora, and procmail. I'm hoping that I'll be
- able to get enough people filtering the stuff out that it simply won't
- work. If it won't work, economics will dictate that the spammers go
- out of business and go back to assembling chilitos at Taco Bell.
-
- Maybe a good thing to do would be to provide a program to users for
- the spam that does slip through, sort of an automated spamlib, that
- parses the headers and knows where to send it... :-)
-
- ------------------------------- unsnip -------------------------------
-
- --
- Matt Curtin Chief Scientist Megasoft Online cmcurtin@research.megasoft.com
- http://www.research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/ I speak only for myself
- Pull AGIS.NET's plug! Crack DES NOW! http://www.frii.com/~rcv/deschall.htm
-