Date: Wed, 5 Mar 1997 17:40:51 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Cc: terry@lambert.org, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Junk mail from hackers list Message-ID: <199703060040.RAA12621@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199703060021.KAA07654@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Mar 6, 97 10:51:37 am
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> > I have noticed that I am receiving junk mail from AOL's mailing > > list agregator again, now that someone from AOL recently subscribed > > to the list, and was wondering if anyone else had the same experience? > > Is _that_ where it's coming from? My normal response to junk mail is to > turn it around and send it to the postmaster, but I've been getting a lot > of bounces from bogus headers. 8( Did you get the "CREDIT" one? That's the one that set me off, since it didn't say how to get off their list (the ones that let me "REMOVE" in a reply piss me off, but they are *just* below my pain threshold). > > You would think AOL would have enough problems without pissing off > > a lot of highly technically knowledgable people... > > I think that AOL management and technical staff are sufficiently stupid > that they couldn't care less about a market segment that already hates > their guts. It may be time to rewrite the "From:" on the list so a simple reply will fail, instead of leaving the poster's email address out there; this would such, for lots of reasons... the main one is that it would be harder to take a discussion off line. Alternately, AOL response addresses could be rewritten so that a group reply/reply to a posting from AOL wouldn't work. The AOL person would have to be a list member. Worst case: don't allow AOL users to subscribe to the list. This is a terrible thing. I think you are right about whether or not they care: they probably could care less that they agregating email addresses from a list rather than from individuals. It'd probably take a privacy act suit against them in order to make them quit, and even then, you couldn't enforce it, since you couldn't prove where they got your address from. Like I said, I've been on the list before, and I've gotten off it through their "send a comment" www page entry, even though the page entry was damn rude about me wanting to press "send" (see the comment page relevent to an outside user commenting on AOL to see what I mean: http://www.aol.com/comment.html). Something like "If you truly think we can't live without your pithy comments, click 'Submit' now.". Regards, Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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