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Grex > Coop13 > #376: The problems with Grex, e-mail and spam | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 480 responses total. |
cmcgee
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response 61 of 480:
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Nov 17 13:01 UTC 2006 |
Yikes! Changing your email address every time you get a spoofed email!
I'd go crazy trying to keep business cards and stationery up to date, to say
nothing of notifying friends. How would people I gave my email address to
last week get in touch with me? That's like saying I should change my phone
number every time I get a marketing call.
And, no I do not want to pay google, or ATT or anyone else to send emails!
Perhaps someone could offer a spam-free premium email service, that people
like Rane and Sindi could subcribe to and pay for. For me, prudent use of
my email on the net keeps most of my emails clean.
As for the rest, the delete key works. It takes just a few seconds.
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blaise
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response 62 of 480:
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Nov 17 14:11 UTC 2006 |
Rane, the problem is that when you receive a message spoofed to appear
to be from C (who is not in your OK file), you will send C a challenge.
If 100 messages were sent purporting to be from C, C receives 100
challenges (from 100 different users). That is the huge flaw with
challenge/response systems.
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krj
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response 63 of 480:
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Nov 17 16:58 UTC 2006 |
Rane in #57:
> Re #55: I would think that spoofed e-mail is the minority, but I may be
> wrong. Do you have data to show it is the majority?
I don't have data, but I handle spam complaints as part of my job,
and my experience is that the amount of spam with spoofed "From:"
addresses is, for a first cut approximation, 100%. Forging the
"From:" address is trivial, if you know SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol). The protocol has no requirement that the FROM: field
have any relationship to the actual sender of the message.
Spammers stopped using their own From: addresses
long ago, as soon as pushback from the spam recipients started
coming back at them.
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keesan
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response 64 of 480:
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Nov 17 17:23 UTC 2006 |
Most mail providers use a spam filter by default. Some (AOL?) use continuous
feedback from users to tune the filter. Grex and sdf are exceptions.
Today no spam slipped through my filter.
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rcurl
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response 65 of 480:
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Nov 17 18:58 UTC 2006 |
This situation, and the responses here opposed to apparently all "cures" for
spam reminds me of the acceptance of the 40,000 annual deaths in auto
accidents, because of the inconveniences that would result from any attempt
to decrease the number of deaths.
I'm guilty of this too. I find it "cheap" to just delete the spam - so far.
But I don't argue, as others seem to here, against all proposals to eliminate
spam, without coming up with workable alternatives. If you don't like my
(probably partial) solutions, what are yours? (Ask the same about auto
accident deaths.)
There occurs interesting evolutions in the nature of spam. The Nigerian frauds
are way down and now it is investments - which, incidentally, don't seem to
provide any way to respond even if you wanted to. They don't even ask you to
do anything.
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mcnally
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response 66 of 480:
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Nov 17 19:42 UTC 2006 |
re #65: The thing is, that smarter people than you, ones who actually know
how e-mail works, understand the issues, and aren't making wildly incorrect
guesses about the nature and quantity of spam, have been trying for years
to solve this problem. It's a hard problem: it combines technological,
economic, and sociological challenges, and that's just for starters.
If some of us seem a little jaded and unenthusiastic about your suggestions
it's not because we're not open to the idea of a solution -- for some of us
whose work involves combatting the problem very little could please us more.
It's because we've long ago considered and rejected as flawed all the easy
solutions and some which are not so easy. The countermeasures we've tried
to adopt have worked, to varying degrees, for limited times, until the
adversaries in the spam-sending world figured out ways to circumvent them.
You're an accomplished expert in your own field. Most of us recognize that.
Give us a little benefit of the doubt, too, and don't assume that a half our
of uninformed theorizing on your part is going to revolutionize the fight
against spam..
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rcurl
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response 67 of 480:
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Nov 17 19:51 UTC 2006 |
I agree, I'm a e-mail system dummy. But it is still my duty as a citizen
to raise the issue in any way I can, even by offering unworkable
solutions. It is better to be part of the outcry against spam than to just
sit back and suffer from it. Nothing I do will *revolutionize* the fight
against spam, but it might raise more advocacy against it. The
"professionals" at least appear to be too complacent. Maybe we need to get
a better crop of "professionals" that better appreciate the waste of time
and other resources engendered by spam.
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krj
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response 68 of 480:
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Nov 17 20:56 UTC 2006 |
Here's a background article discussing a recent group of "spambots"
which are behind the recent surge in spam activity:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2060235,00.asp
Headline:
"Pump-and-Dump" Spam Surge Linked to Russian Bot Herders"
(pump-and-dump is a type of stock market scam)
Ultimately the current spam problem is Bill Gates' fault, because
the vast majority of Windows 2000 and XP computers are not properly
secured -- and cannot be secured given the skill levels of their
owners. (That's not a joke; I recall articles in the trade press
predicting that the release of Windows 2000 was going to be a disaster
for network security.) There was a fundamental assumption when
the Internet e-mail protocols were designed: nearly every computer
on the network would have a benign and competent administrator.
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gull
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response 69 of 480:
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Nov 17 21:23 UTC 2006 |
Re resp:67: If you had spent some time on email lists of groups that
are trying to come up with ways to fight spam, as I have, you'd know
that that's not the case. People aren't complacent about this. They
know the cost is huge. They're desperately searching for solutions.
But there's no simple way to solve it. Many simplistic attempts, like
challenge-response systems, actually ended up making the problem worse.
This is a complicated issue and the way forward is not easy.
Please give other people a little credit, for once.
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rcurl
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response 70 of 480:
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Nov 17 22:17 UTC 2006 |
Show some progress, for once.
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cmcgee
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response 71 of 480:
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Nov 17 22:27 UTC 2006 |
You wouldn't be able to see any progress from your viewpoint. You have no
idea how many spams you didn't get because professionals have been trying out
solutions that worked.
I suspect the fact that I can still use my grex email account that is more
than 10 years old and has fewer than 10 spam messages a day is because
professionals have been making progres.
Would you care to devise an experiment that proves they haven't made any
progress?
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rcurl
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response 72 of 480:
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Nov 17 22:34 UTC 2006 |
I look at my Grex inbox, with ca. 40 spams a day, and I see no progress in
slowing it. Almost all the spam I'm getting now is in the same format, e.g.:
Nov 17 Christa Rhodes (1849) Rhodes message
Why hasn't all of these been filtered out from incoming mail to Grex?
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cmcgee
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response 73 of 480:
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Nov 17 22:38 UTC 2006 |
Because you haven't set up your spam filter?
I don't filter my emails. In spite of the exponential growth in spam, I still
see about the same amount as last year. Seems to me that the rate that spam
is increasing is far higher than the rate that spam fills my mailbox.
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tsty
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response 74 of 480:
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Nov 18 00:01 UTC 2006 |
This response has been erased.
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slynne
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response 75 of 480:
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Nov 18 00:24 UTC 2006 |
Yeah, maybe we should make filtering of tsty the default? No...I am not
seriously suggesting that but Geez-o-peets.
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cyklone
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response 76 of 480:
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Nov 18 00:50 UTC 2006 |
He is becoming a system problem, however. I suppose it's his naive "the
squeaky wheel gets the grease" logic.
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naftee
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response 77 of 480:
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Nov 18 01:24 UTC 2006 |
i think peats has a system problem
i mean tsty
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denise
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response 78 of 480:
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Nov 18 01:36 UTC 2006 |
He's looking for attention; too bad for us he has to be obnoxious about it.
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bru
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response 79 of 480:
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Nov 18 02:33 UTC 2006 |
so why don't you guys complain this much about herasleftnut, who is the
instigator of this.
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cyklone
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response 80 of 480:
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Nov 18 03:05 UTC 2006 |
When is the last time he crapped up the cf? I'm sorry ts has somehow got a
problem blocking messages. Hopefully someone will have some helpful ideas.
I thought some had been posted already.
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bru
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response 81 of 480:
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Nov 18 03:15 UTC 2006 |
yeah, I have a problem blocking messages as well, and staff is unable to tell m
me how to fix it. If they can't fix my conferencing problems, why can't tehy a
do something about people who abuse the system.
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naftee
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response 82 of 480:
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Nov 18 04:24 UTC 2006 |
you type mesg n, bru. just make sure you don't write him back
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bru
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response 83 of 480:
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Nov 19 14:00 UTC 2006 |
can't. it screwz up my whole tel session.
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gull
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response 84 of 480:
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Nov 22 00:52 UTC 2006 |
Re resp:70: This is like asking physicists why they haven't shown some
progress towards unifying General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, or
asking why world hunger hasn't been solved yet. This is a complex
problem. Spammers are constantly changing their techniques to evade
filters, which are trying to block spam without blocking legitimate
messages. Additionally, the volume of spam being sent is continually
growing, so even if filters are effective, they often only slow the
rate of increase.
There's never going to be a complete solution to the spam problem
unless people can be convinced to completely abandon email as it exists
today and use something else. That seems unlikely to happen any time
soon.
For that matter, the problem of junk mail in real mail boxes has been
around even longer, and no one has solved that one yet, either.
Stop assuming that everyone in the world except you is incompetent.
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keesan
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response 85 of 480:
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Nov 22 01:08 UTC 2006 |
It costs money to send paper junk mail, so there is much less of it, and most
of it comes from real and mostly reputable companies, who will take you off
their junk mail lists if you ask, or tell you where they bought their lists
so you can argue with the list supplier about it. Companies will also stop
sending you unwanted emails (don't give them your address when they ask for
it) but spammers will not, and it costs them almost nothing to send out 50
spams per recipient per day.
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