nettime's_intruder_alert on Thu, 13 Feb 2003 20:28:32 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime> spamfree-full digest [arrest x2, guderian, cramer, hwang, jett]


ADV: Enjoy a spam-free inbox
     Spam Arrest <info@spamarrest.com>
     Spam Arrest <info@spamarrest.com>
Re: Okay, that does it -- Armageddon is too good for us
     Carl Guderian <carlg@vermilion-sands.com>
Re: <nettime> Okay, that does it -- Armageddon is too good for us
     Florian Cramer <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Re: admin note/RFC: 'antispam' services and nettime
     Benjamin Geer <ben@beroul.uklinux.net>
     Francis Hwang <sera@fhwang.net>
Re: Okay, that does it -- Armageddon is too good for us
     "N Jett" <njett@hotmail.com>

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From: Spam Arrest <info@spamarrest.com>
To: Announcer <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Subject: ADV: Enjoy a spam-free inbox
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 03:14:44 -0800

You may remember recently sending an email to a Spam Arrest customer, 
 <...>
 
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From: Spam Arrest <info@spamarrest.com>
To: "nettime's_roving_reporter" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>
Subject: ADV: Enjoy a spam-free inbox
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 03:14:44 -0800

You may remember recently sending an email to a Spam Arrest customer, 
 <...>

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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 12:01:19 +0100
From: Carl Guderian <carlg@vermilion-sands.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Okay, that does it -- Armageddon is too good for us

It's the boiler room, squeezed out of meatspace into cyberspace. Telemarketers
used to sell a service to take you of national dial lists, claiming to have
the "kill codes." Spammers are one-person boiler rooms, and they pick up where
the modern boiler operation, studied in Stevenson's "Boiler Rooms and Other
Telephone Scams" (1998) left off.

For all that Extropian prattle over evolving into virtuality, it's the boiler
rooms that have truly achieved it.

Carl

Bruce Sterling wrote:

> *Why am I getting spam from Spam Arrest?
> Is mankind devoid of shame?  -- bruces
 <...>

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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:11:24 +0100
From: Florian Cramer <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Subject: Re: <nettime> admin note/RFC: 'antispam' services and nettime

Am Donnerstag, 13. Februar 2003 um 00:57:02 Uhr (-0500) schrieb
nettime's_janitors:

> thoughts?

Nettimers looking for a working, non-intrusive spam filter should have a
serious look at SpamAssassin <http://spamassassin.org/>, a free software
tool (under the Perl Artistic License) available for Unix-like operating
systems and, in combination with a local POP3 proxy, for Windows
(see <http://mcd.perlmonk.org/pop3proxy/>). For MacOS X installation
instructions, see <http://rhumba.pair.com/ben/docs/sa.html>.

Among network administrators, SpamAssassin is widely considered the only
working solution against spam. As it is written in Perl, it creates
high CPU loads though and is a solution for client PCs rather than for
mail servers themselves.

On Unix-like operating systems, I would recommend using SpamAssassin in
conjunction with procmail, i.e. filter mailing lists through procmail
first and only the rest with SpamAssassin, like:

:0fw
| spamassassin

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
$HOME/Mail/junk

-F
-- 
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~cantsin/homepage/
http://www.complit.fu-berlin.de/institut/lehrpersonal/cramer.html
GnuPG/PGP public key ID 3200C7BA, finger cantsin@mail.zedat.fu-berlin.de

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From: Benjamin Geer <ben@beroul.uklinux.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> admin note/RFC: 'antispam' services and nettime
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 10:10:38 +0000

On Thursday 13 February 2003 5:57 am, nettime's_janitors wrote:
> but a better solution, we think, is to automatically unsubscribe anyone
> subscriber who misconfigures a spam-blocking account. if the person values
> nettime (or any other affected list), then s/he can sort out the problem;
> if not, oh well.

As someone who administers a lot of lists, I agree completely.  As the number 
of subscribers (and lists) per list admin increases, the list admin simply 
cannot scale well enough to sort out everyone's subscription and mail 
delivery issues for them.  I do my best, particularly when a subscriber 
knows there's a problem, and writes to the admin address to ask for help.  In 
general, though, I think the only practical approach is to remind people to 
heed the advice of RFC 1855 (Netiquette Guidelines) [1] -- 'It is your 
responsibility to learn how the lists work' -- and to unsubscribe them when 
you can't send them email because their Hotmail inbox is full, or when their 
'I'm on vacation' message is spamming everyone who posts to the list, etc.

In practice, someone who cares about receiving mail from nettime will surely 
notice that they haven't received any in a while, and will either suspect 
that their spam filter is at fault, or at least ask the nettime moderators 
for help.

I'd recommend putting something in the 'welcome to nettime' email, in all 
caps with lots of asterisks around it, asking people to make sure that mail 
from nettime will get through their spam filter.

You could even have two addresses for writing to the nettime admins: the 
standard one, which would just send an auto-reply containing a nettime FAQ 
(including the info about spam filters), and another, harder-to-find one for 
people whose question isn't in the FAQ.

Ben

[1] http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html

________________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs SkyScan
service. For more information on a proactive anti-virus service working
around the clock, around the globe, visit http://www.messagelabs.com
________________________________________________________________________

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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:43:47 -0500
From: Francis Hwang <sera@fhwang.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> admin note/RFC: 'antispam' services and nettime

I'm not sure if this sort of solution will catch on, in the 
long-term. I suppose if you're a casual net user who doesn't often 
get contacted by strangers for legit reasons this is fine. But 
anybody who has any significant online presence is bound to get 
contacted by strangers for legit reasons -- hell, it happens to me at 
least once a week -- and it seems really rude to me to tell them 
"prove to me you're a human before I look at your message." If you're 
really worried about it, do the tried-and-true solution of 
maintaining two email addresses: one for people you know, the other 
for the world-at-large. When you get a real email in your public 
inbox, tell them about the private addresses. Easier than maintaining 
a whitelist, that's for sure ...

On the level of list-maintenance, I'm not sure how much of an 
annoyance this is. These verification emails probably get sent to the 
Reply-To or From address -- which on Nettime as on many other lists, 
should be the original poster, not the entire list. Which is Bruce 
Sterling got the verification email for posting something to Nettime. 
The Nettime folks themselves are probably receiving these emails when 
they send out emails to the list directly, making digests or 
announcements, directly.

Is it even technically possible for these businesses to even 
whitelist a mailing-list? It's possible that their code may not have 
accounted for this circumstance. For non-bulk-email, your code's 
going to look at the Reply-To: or From: headers, since that's where 
the interesting data is. But for mailing lists, the interesting info 
is in the To: field, and they probably haven't bothered to account 
for that. Sloppiness is everywhere.

I don't know if I would advise Nettime to unsubscribe people who use 
these services. That's more unnecessary work for the admins. Instead, 
it might be simply more effective to treat these messages as what 
they are: Another form of spam. You don't attack spam personally, you 
filter it. And you tell all your list subscribers how to filter it. 
(If you're posting to a mailing list, you open yourself up to major 
email-address harvesting anyway.)

This spam, luckily enough, will be much easier to filter than most 
spam. It'll have consistent, non-forged headers. Ignoring it should 
be a piece of cake.

Francis

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From: "N Jett" <njett@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Okay, that does it -- Armageddon is too good for us
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:41:12 +0000

Shame has been going out of fashion since at least the Enlightenment; and 
isn't it doubly ironic that their spam has now been shared with all of us on 
nettime? Rather effective at spreading itself...  :) Not that I'm making 
accusations - I was spammed with that Bush/Iraq as Nigerian Banking Scam and 
forwarded it along to my coworkers. Strange days have found us.

njett - http://gogobot.blogspot.com

>*Why am I getting spam from Spam Arrest?
>Is mankind devoid of shame?  -- bruces

 <...>

Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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