Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 02:02:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Donald Burr <dburr@POBoxes.com> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, bsampley@bsampley.vip.best.com Subject: RE: questions-digest V3 #479 Message-ID: <XFMail.971023021054.dburr@POBoxes.com> In-Reply-To: <199710150343.UAA11386@hub.freebsd.org>
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- My secret spy satellite informs me that on 15-Oct-97, owner-questions-digest@FreeBSD.ORG wrote: > [... how to get rid of Spam? ...] >That seems like a major waste of computing resources. Is there a better >way (short of cutting the phone line to my modem and closing my account)? One thing you can do is tell Best to have their SMTP (mail servers) set up. There are several packages out there that will implement rules-based filtering of all incoming messages, BEFORE they are downloaded to your machine. But probably the simplest thing to do is to have best.com filter out any mail that does not come from a registered domain. Many spammers use "fake" addresses in their e-mail (e.g. "From: info@make.money.fast.com" -- "make.money.fast.com" really does not exist). So, a properly configured mail server will reject mail from this "fake" domain, while still preserving mail coming from legitimate domains. (e.g. freebsd.org) Obviously this won't filter out 100% of the spam, since there are some spammers that actually have "real" domains (e.g. xxx@cyberpromo.com -- cyberpromo.com exists), but it will get rid of a good percentage of it. >Is there anyway to hide my username and hostname while using internet >resources? Do I have to remove my email address from my .sig file and >stop sending questions to FBSD? Did you ever wonder how spammers get your address in the first place? There are many ways. 1. They run special scanning programs that scan all usenet (news) messages, and often many mailing lists, collecting e-mail addresses from 'From:" headers. 2. YOu know those Web sites that make you register? Some of them are somewhat slimy in their practices, and will sell out lists of e-mail addresses. 3. The same for anonymous FTP servers (you have to enter your e-mail address as the password). 4. Unfortunately, there's no real way to totally hide from these foul heathens and still get real work done on the Internet. But there are a few things you can do. For one, you can "munge" the e-mail address that's set up in your mail and news programs. Add some "bogus" characters to it. For example,m y real e-mail address is "dburr@poboxes.com" If I were to do this, I would change this to something like "dburr@NOSPAM.poboxes.com" or "*dburr@POboxes.com" The idea here is that the spammers' automatic e-mail address scanning programs will pick up the wrong address (an invalid one). Then, somewhere in your message (in .signature perhaps) put a message to the effect of "Remove the "nospam" from my address if you want to reply." This way, real users who want to replyto your message will take the trouble and "fix" the address before they send their reply. This works well because usually spammers don't hand-read the messages, and machine programs aren't smart enough to defeat this trick yet. - --- Donald Burr <dburr@POBoxes.com> - Ask me for my PGP key | PGP: Your WWW HomePage: http://DonaldBurr.base.org/ ICQ #1347455 | right to Address: P.O. Box 91212, Santa Barbara, CA 93190-1212 | 'Net privacy. Phone: (805) 957-9666 FAX: (800) 492-5954 | USE IT. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNE8UnPjpixuAwagxAQF2GwP9ERo4G0Ys9frcFFfuhlgdSYwl66uE8Q5x eL+iB7lRMBNimVzLaTclyxzddCGZxnTeBnLXrcCRMKd2fW/AzvSHgCasN6JOFY+p lCGBYsv1soFNatDphFLYnETybdAR7Pf4FaAkld0or3PGGV7a4tksWb28DVr4pPP7 4ul3R2j2NH0= =7FpQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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