From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Aug 10 10:16:10 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E89E737B401 for ; Sat, 10 Aug 2002 10:16:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rutger.owt.com (rutger.owt.com [204.118.6.16]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7173743E3B for ; Sat, 10 Aug 2002 10:16:04 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from kstewart@owt.com) Received: from owt.com (owt-207-41-94-232.owt.com [207.41.94.232]) by rutger.owt.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA07848; Sat, 10 Aug 2002 10:15:59 -0700 Message-ID: <3D554A4F.1020807@owt.com> Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 10:15:59 -0700 From: Kent Stewart User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.4.1) Gecko/20020314 Netscape6/6.2.2 X-Accept-Language: en-us, es-mx MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Warren Block Cc: William Palfreman , questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Email address harvesting from the FreeBSD archive References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Warren Block wrote: > On Sat, 10 Aug 2002, William Palfreman wrote: > > >>I've noticed since I started participating a bit on FreeBSD mailinglist >>I seem to be getting a lot more spam. Looking though the archive I see >>that no attempt is make to disguise participants email addresses. So >>really, sending emails to this list is an guaranty of steadily >>increasing amounts of spam, all the way up to hotmail and aol >>proportions. And really, while email addresses are undisguised in the >>archive, I'd have to be crazy to keep posting to the list, wouldn't I? >> > > Name one way to be on the internet and *not* be subject to increasing > amounts of spam. I will filter and remove incoming spam, but I will not > filter the stuff I write to avoid it. I feel the same way. I liked the attitude on http://spam.abuse.net/. They had a thing about fighting back on SPAM, which is something I feel is important. If someone SPAMs -questions and all 30,000 of us wrote their ISP's email drop, funny things would happen. I think it would get around that FreeBSD users don't fool around and as if something magic happened, SPAMing the list would quit. I find that being nice and ignoring SPAM doesn't work. They know they have a valid email because they don't get bounces back. I have one email address that get 100's of SPAM emails. This account I followed the "100% fight back policy" and I get a couple a day. I find that even the Koreans take care of their problems if you find the right address. They may have quit or lost their account but I don't care as long as they quit SPAMing me. If I get several a day from the same site, I write their ISP contact from doing a "whois" and claim harassment and that I am holding them responsible for taking care of the problem. I know that both email addresses were harvested from the FreeBSD lists. Now, I fight back and you can normally obtain an 80% cancellation of accounts. In Washington State you can sue for damages for you and your ISP. The rules are kind of narrow right now but people are successfully doing it. I decided that SPAM is like shoplifting in a store. It costs more to prosecute but they have to prosecute 100%. I consider SPAM a theft of services because the time it takes to track them down is stolen from my life; however, I track every SPAM down. Kent > > Many people use accounts at the free mail ISPs for this kind of purpose. -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message