From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Nov 13 20: 4:28 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from monorchid.lemis.com (monorchid.lemis.com [192.109.197.75]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0323537B41B for ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 20:04:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from sydney.worldwide.lemis.com (sydney.worldwide.lemis.com [192.109.197.89]) by monorchid.lemis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9EF15786E3 for ; Wed, 14 Nov 2001 14:34:15 +1030 (CST) Received: (from grog@localhost) by sydney.worldwide.lemis.com (8.11.6/8.9.3) id fADAQ2w34437; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 18:26:02 +0800 (SGT) (envelope-from grog) Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 10:26:02 +0000 From: Greg Lehey To: Bill Moran Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Request for opinions: what is spam Message-ID: <20011113102601.H34244@sydney.worldwide.lemis.com> References: <3BE81422.7080304@potentialtech.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <3BE81422.7080304@potentialtech.com>; from wmoran@potentialtech.com on Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 11:47:30AM -0500 Organization: The FreeBSD Project Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tuesday, 6 November 2001 at 11:47:30 -0500, Bill Moran wrote: (sorry, I've been travelling, and haven't had time to look at this before). > I've been having a tough couple of months and I just had some > things happen today that are causing me to re-evaluate some of > my beliefs. > > One thing, central to this, is where do you draw the line > between promotion and spam? > > I'll give the example that really got me thinking: > > Got an email today through the "moreinfo@" address for my > company, which is listed on the web site on the contact > page. The email stated that "I got your email from a > list server". > Now, technically this is a lie, because the "moreinfo@" address > is _never_ used to _send_ mail, so it would never appear on > any list server. That depends on whether the mail sender got the name from a From: line, or whether he found it in the body of some other message, as you go on to say. A priori I'd say this could be correct. > I can see what _might_ have been done, however. Notice my > sig below. Now, that'll be on list servers for any list I post > to and this guy may have stopped by the web site, checked out > the contact page for the address, and sent me the mail. > > So my first question is: "Is this spam?" You haven't said what the message was. If I get the intention correctly, your moreinfo@ address is for asking questions. If this was a (even marginally relevant) question, then it was a valid use of the address. If it was advertising of any kind, then it probably wasn't. If it was sent indiscriminately to a large list, it's spam. Note that this doesn't have very much to do with where they got the address from. > An example is that I recently posted to the jobs@freebsd.com list an > announcement about my company and that we're seeking new customers. > To me, that's what that particular list is for. I would never have > posted such an announcement to questions@ or any other FreeBSD list. > I received one complaint that it was an inapprorpiate posting, and > while I don't know how many people subscribe to that list, I'm > assuming that that's a pretty low percentage that I offended. Given the amount of completely untargetted spam around, I think that "even marginally relevant" is a reasonable criterion. I didn't see the message, but if it's offering some kind of service, I can't see any reason to distinguish between employment and other ways of offering this service. Certainly people looking for the service would have less interest in the distinction. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message