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Grex > Oldcoop > #376: The problems with Grex, e-mail and spam | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 480 responses total. |
keesan
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response 36 of 480:
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Nov 14 14:38 UTC 2006 |
Denise, I can edit the procmailrc file for you if you can manage to copy it
to your own directory. Let me know. cp ~keesan/procmail.denise .procmailrc
and then cp ~keesan/.forward . but you have to be at a prompt to do this,
not a menu.
I wish someone in staff would set up a filter that people can use who don't
know how to edit, by just typing change and following instructions. I am
still getting floods of debora and also est* and akst* .
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mary
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response 37 of 480:
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Nov 14 16:47 UTC 2006 |
Oh, I'll still be his friend. I just won't be reading re-floods.
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slynne
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response 38 of 480:
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Nov 14 16:55 UTC 2006 |
resp:35 I think that some people do use the threat of filtering in a
bossy way but I also think it is something of a courtesy to let people
know you are considering filtering them. In fact, I generally dont tell
people when I stop paying attention to them because I dont care enough
about them to give them that courtesy. I suppose some people might
actually believe that they are so important that it will come as a real
blow to others to hear that they are being filtered. But mostly, I
think people tell others when they do it to give others the opportunity
to change their behavior if they wish to.
I dont tell people because I am mean and I dont care if the socially
retarded figure stuff out. Anyways, I guess what I find is funny is
that you are calling a certain behavior childish which suggests that
you think its opposite (i.e. NOT telling someone when they are going to
be filtered) is a particularly mature behavior. It is funny because I
engage in just that behavior but motivated not by any "taking the high
road" sense. My motivation is pure and utter indifference to the
feelings of certain others. It is unkind and has nothing to do with
maturity at all.
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denise
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response 39 of 480:
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Nov 14 23:20 UTC 2006 |
Re: 30 Thanks, Mary! :-)
Re:36 Sindi, I do use the menu options, so I don't know how to get the other
prompts that I would probably need to copy and such. Thanks for offering to
help, though.
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keesan
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response 40 of 480:
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Nov 15 00:12 UTC 2006 |
Could someone who uses the menu explain how to get to a prompt that lets
someone copy files? It would really help people like denise if there were
a simple command in the menu that would set up a spam filter.
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kingjon
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response 41 of 480:
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Nov 15 01:55 UTC 2006 |
The "R)un a UNIX Program" option could be used for this, I suppose. (For a
sequence of commands, give a shell like bash as the program to run.)
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tsty
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response 42 of 480:
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Nov 15 08:34 UTC 2006 |
re #32 ................................again ?????????????????????????
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ball
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response 43 of 480:
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Nov 15 09:14 UTC 2006 |
Does "!/bin/sh" work from the menu prompt?
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remmers
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response 44 of 480:
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Nov 15 12:21 UTC 2006 |
Yes.
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ball
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response 45 of 480:
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Nov 15 15:42 UTC 2006 |
Tidy :-)
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denise
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response 46 of 480:
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Nov 16 08:37 UTC 2006 |
Would all this spam mail go away if one was to get a new account [and never
using email to begin with]?
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keesan
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response 47 of 480:
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Nov 16 16:07 UTC 2006 |
If you got a new account and were a paying member, and never gave anyone
except trusted friends your email address, you could send mail to them, and
probably also receive mail without getting spam. If you are not a paying
member you would be a new user and could not send mail except locally from
a new account. And your old account would continue to receive spam for at
least three months until it got deleted. But sometimes worms get hold of your
email address in other people's address books - can spammers find you that
way?
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ball
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response 48 of 480:
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Nov 16 17:43 UTC 2006 |
Yes they can, not least because worms can report back to
spammers and other criminals. It may help a little to create
a username that is not an ordinary English word, since
spammers are likely to try {dictionary}@cyberspace.org
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rcurl
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response 49 of 480:
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Nov 16 20:57 UTC 2006 |
I have seen e-mail systems where recipients of e-mail must authorize accepting
e-mail from all correspondents. This is, of course, only a filter on from
addresses, but it should drastically cut down spam from major lists. Is this
implementable here?
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blaise
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response 50 of 480:
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Nov 16 21:13 UTC 2006 |
Challenge-response systems are a bad idea; they produce what is known as
"outscatter". (A spammer sends an email posing as a user of a large
system; the c/r system sends a challenge to that user. That challenge
is unsolicited bulk email being sent to that innocent user whose email
address has been fraudulently used without his/her knowledge.)
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tod
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response 51 of 480:
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Nov 16 21:35 UTC 2006 |
re #47
Direct Harvest Attacks can guess email addresses through mailserver responses.
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rcurl
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response 52 of 480:
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Nov 16 21:38 UTC 2006 |
True. But first, but what fraction of spam is spoofed e-mail? If it is a small
fraction, then the net result would be a significant reduction in spam
(so long as the recipent's system automatically rejects denied source
addresses).
Then spoofed e-mail would indeed be redirected to an innocent user, but that
e-mail would be from him/her self, which could be flagged for automatic
rejection. Would not being able to send yourself e-mail be a major hardship?
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rcurl
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response 53 of 480:
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Nov 16 21:39 UTC 2006 |
#51 slipped in. #52 responds to #50.
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blaise
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response 54 of 480:
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Nov 16 22:02 UTC 2006 |
Rane, the email would not be from him/herself but from the intended
recipient of the spam. You couldn't block the receipt of challenges
without preventing yourself from being able to send to people who use
c/r systems, but unless you do you open yourself to being the recipient
of floods of challenges when a spammer happens to use your email address
as the alleged sender of a spam.
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ball
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response 55 of 480:
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Nov 17 01:03 UTC 2006 |
It seems to me that the vast majority of spam and UCE has a
spoofed from: address. Not being able to send to myself
would be an inconvenience because I have a poor memory and
frequently email myself notes.
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glenda
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response 56 of 480:
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Nov 17 01:13 UTC 2006 |
To some being unable to send email to themself would be a hardship. I often
do homework at a work or school computer and email it to myself as a backup.
This has often proven to be a lifesaver when I either couldn't use or lost
the media it was saved on, i.e. one time I spent quite a bit of time on an
assignment at work but didn't have time to print it. I saved it to a zip
drive, the work computer didn't have a floppy drive. I went into the lab at
school to print it out (I got there about 10 min before class started) to
discover that not only were the computer science lab computers still using
Win98 (WCC was using WinXP by then), but they had not zip drives. I just
grabbed the copy I sent myself from email, printed it and still had time to
grab a cup of coffee before class started.
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rcurl
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response 57 of 480:
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Nov 17 02:23 UTC 2006 |
Don't your e-mail programs have a "sent mail" file? Certainly the programs
could have a "save copy" option that does not "send" the e-mail. Mine has
a postpone command, which saves the unfinished copy until I retrieve it.
I'm talking here about changing e-mail systems to suppress spam. How they
currently work is not an argument against modifying the systems.
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?
Re #54: Let's keep it straight who is on first and who is on second....
Say, I am "A" and a spoofer sends me mail apparently from "B", who is in
my OK file. I will receive it, recognize it as spam, and write to B to
tell them they have been spoofed and to change their e-mail address and
let me know so I can update my file. Since they have a similar file, they
can inform everyone on it that they have changed their e-mail address.
It would be desirable to have a convenient way to automate this. E-mail
addresses would have to be easily changed.
If B is not in my OK file, they will get a c/r message, and have to jump
through the hoops to contact me and ask me to put them in my OK file.
In any case - there should be more effective and easily employed
strategies invented to halt spam. The current situation appears to be one
where people have given up. I'm only making suggestions, perhaps feeble
ones, because the current situation is untenable.
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keesan
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response 58 of 480:
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Nov 17 03:29 UTC 2006 |
Spamassassin is getting most of my spam, but I have been adding a new filter
every day for stock spam, which mutates a lot.
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rcurl
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response 59 of 480:
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Nov 17 06:28 UTC 2006 |
You should not have to fight spam on a daily basis. There should be a
universal solution - like the idea to charge a small fee for every e-mail
sent, say $0.001, or whatever will make untargeted advertising unprofitable.
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ball
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response 60 of 480:
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Nov 17 07:24 UTC 2006 |
Re #57: I use (and very much like) the Berkeley mail program,
which doesn't have a sent mail folder. Any messages that I
want to keep a copy of, I simply cc to myself. I spend time
every day deleting plenty of UCE with spoofed from: headers.
If you like, I can certainly forward some to you. Spam-
Assassin has helped a lot, but as keesan suggests, the
volume just keeps going up. I may tweak my score setting.
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