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Followups set to off-topic.geek
In lugnet.general, Eric Joslin writes:
> In lugnet.general, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> > What are the defining attributes of spam? If there is some universally
> > agreed upon definition, feel free to just point me to that.
>
> I used to know of a couple of online resources, but I don't know offhand where
> they are or if they still exist, so I'll try to sum up:
>
> There are several different kinds of things that fall into the heading of
> "Spam". One of these things is Unsolicted Commercial Email, or UCE. I think
> you're pretty much famiiar with what it means, but UCE is basically exactly
> what the name says- an email that is sent to your address advertising
> something.
>
> Pretty much any post to a Usenet group that isn't on-topic is considered to be
> Spam. Whether it's something relatively innocuous, like someone posting to
> the wrong group, or more purposeful, like someone posting multiple copies of
> an ad to various newsgroups generally determines people's reaction. Obviously
> someone posting to the wrong group is probably just lost, while a 'bot posting
> to every rec.music.* group about "Great deals for musicians!!1!" is a
> purposeful spammer.
OK everything Eric says here is true but I just wanted to referance a book I
have on the subject (Yes there is a book on it)
Book:
Stopping SPAM
By Alan Schwartz & Simson Garfinkel
Publisher O'Reilly
Here is a link on Amazon (You will probably have to cut and paste it).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156592388X/lugnet/qid=970005719/sr=8-1/r
ef=aps_sr_b_1_3/103-8941985-1703832
Anyway without quoting the book verbatum, it defines SPAM thusly...
E-Mail Spam
1. Unsolicied Commercial E-mail (UCE) - Eric hit this one pretty good.
2. Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE) - refers to E-mail messages that are sent in
bulk to thousands (or millions) of recipients.
3. Make Money Fast (MMF) messages, chain letters, pyramid schemes etc.
4. Reputation Attacks - messages that appear to be sent from one person or
organization, but are actually sent from another with the purpose of making the
recipient angry at the apparent sender.
Usenet Spam
1. Excessive Multi-Posting (EMP) - Eric hit this one.
2. Excessive Cross-posting (ECP) - Eric hit this one.
3. "Spew" - Occurs when a misconfigured news program posts the same article to
the same newsgroup repeatedly.
4. Off-Topic Posting - Eric hit this one.
5. "Binaries" - News articles that contain encoded binary files like image
files.
6. Commercial Postings - Eric hit this one.
I know I probably seem like a geek for having a book about SPAM but what can I
say... I'm a geek. And I hate Spam.
>
> > Why is it that there is a positive correlation between the degree of net
> > savvyness and spite toward spam?
>
> Because Spam threatens the integrity and usefulness of the internet.
>
> Yeah, ok, I know that sounds alarmist, but follow along with me here:
>
> Let's say that I want to sell widgets. I like my widgets, and I think you
> will, too. So I want to get the word out to as many people as possible. So I
> harvest 10,000 email addresses (or buy them from someone who does harvest them
> [1]) and send out mail to everyone.
>
> Let's assume your name is on that list. So you get a copy of it. Ok, you
> don't want widgets, because you're allergic and frankly, they make your hips
> look big, so you delete the email and read the other 10 emails you got from
> your friends.
>
> Now, imagine I'm not the only one who sent you a UCE email. Imagine 9 other
> people get the same idea. Now you hae 50% mail you want, and 50% you don't.
>
> Now imagine that 99 other people send you mail. Ten percent mail you want.
>
> And the numbers can keep going up. Yeah, it seems extreme to assume the
> numbers I'm talking about, but if Spam were left unchecked, the numbers would
> probably actually be much higher. After all, 'bots sending out UCE
> automatically for pennies per thousands of overhead. To marketing types, that
> seems like a panacea.
>
> It's better to react strongly to keep Spam in check then to wait for it to get
> bad and then try to fix it.
I agree totally with Eric and am a believer in the threat that SPAM poses to
the internet. It is real and it is a threat and I for one don't think it
should be taken lightly. I even used to report spammers but because many of
them use faked Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo addresses usually you can't get anything
done about it without a lot of excess work.
I have been fortunate with my current E-mail address and have been successful
in keeping it nearly SPAM free although I use a good service (Pair Networks
www.pair.com ) that has a very strong SPAM stance and does a lot to block
obvious SPAM from ever being delivered to me and provides me with additional
filters to block some of the rest.
Eric Kingsley (SPAM hater)
The New England LEGO Users Group
http://www.nelug.org/
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Sale announcements (Was Beware more SPAM...)
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| (...) Amazon.com URL-hacking tip: You can safely delete the qid= and sr= stuff as well as the session-ID at the end. "qid=" stands for (I think) "query ID" and the "ref=" is the referring category on their website (not a referring associate ID or (...) (24 years ago, 26-Sep-00, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
| | | Re: Sale announcements (Was Beware more SPAM...)
|
| In lugnet.general, Eric Kingsley writes about stopping SPAM It can be easy to report abuse. I regularly get the tiny satisfaction of a reply from Excite or Yahoo that they cancelled the reply-to account. Use Spamcop.net and all you have to do is (...) (24 years ago, 27-Sep-00, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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