Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 10:15:59 -0700 From: Kent Stewart <kstewart@owt.com> To: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> Cc: William Palfreman <william@palfreman.com>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Email address harvesting from the FreeBSD archive Message-ID: <3D554A4F.1020807@owt.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0208100837210.46032-100000@wonkity.com>
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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
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