Forums > Social Discussion > Spam

Posted: 13th Apr 2004
spam is business, and we like business. It's what keeps things moving in our capitalist society. If people from other countries are dumb enough to buy our products, then that's more money for our country. If i was a government, would I really want to get rid of it?



It's not just governments who like spam and have the power to remove it, but also major ISPs and other organisations like the IETF. Most of the spam in the US comes from one ISP over one link. How to immediately put a stop to it all? Just remove the global routing table entry for that ISP. But we like spam, it uses loads of bandwidth, and we like bandwidth, its how major ISPs/telecom companies make money, selling it. Sure, some ISPs have 'filtering software', but its a pretty half arsed attempt at stopping it.
EDITED_BY: flid (1081903006)

Posted: 13th Apr 2004
i seem to recall some recent discussions, what it miscrosoft?, on implimenting a email fee [like 1 cent per mail]. do you think this is

a) practical
b) likely reduce the spam

what do you think?
incidently, my flatmate is nigerian, and i alway print out my nigerian emails and slip then under his door. he sees the humourous side.

personally i havent been getting much spam recently - but alot of viruses

"Here kitty kitty...." - Schroedinger.

Posted: 14th Apr 2004
I have been getting bucketloads of viruses as well...but only on Hotmail which thankfully checks them automatically anyway.

I got one from Jenna Jameson yesterday..

Posted: 14th Apr 2004
Me too!! Virus's suck ass...even more than spam. They should both be electronically castrated!

Let's relight this forum

Posted: 14th Apr 2004
Spam, though ever increasingly annoying, is even easier to avoid.

Take any e-mail address and stick "nospam" after the @ symbole and you prevent macro programs from taking your email addy and sticking it on a gloabal list.

burz@nospamyahoo.com for example.

any person who wants to get in touch with you has the brains to delete the nospam part of the addy.

Spam blocking programs exist on almost all free email and ISP email accounts, they are faily self explanitory but if assistance is needed you can always contact your ISP or even a member of the staff of the free email provider.

Also on web forums, like this one, select to keep your email private.

Dont visit pornographic sites, they can leave cookies on your computer that dectet email addys. Actually any site can, but pornographic sites are the most common.


So there are a few things that you can do untill the laws are passed.

As far as enforcing goes, they can set up, like with the Do not call list, a hotline or email account that will handle any such unwarrented spam letters.

The computer is a wonderful invention, you can do or simulate anything that you put your mind to. It just takes time and know how

Posted: 14th Apr 2004

Quote:

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any person who wants to get in touch with you has the brains to delete the nospam part of the addy.

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interesting idea.... however i have too much experience dealing with technologically inept people who wouldnt hanve the brains to do that.

"Here kitty kitty...." - Schroedinger.

Posted: 14th Apr 2004
Dentrassi: I find it less confusing to the computer illiterate to do it this way:

ryanmoray AT cox DOT net

Posted: 15th Apr 2004
I agree that disguising e-mails as me@nospammyserver.com, or any of the variations on this, are going to be confusing for many.

It just shows what a total pain in the a**e spam is, that we have to worry about whether people are tech enough to understand our coded e-mail addresses.

Spam itself is the natural internet version of the pre-existing 'in your face' marketing that is so rife in our culture that we are barely aware of it anymore.

Examples include the fact that, if I pay to see a film, I first have to endure 20 minutes of ads pushing cars that I have no interest whatsoever in buying, magazines whose content is 30% advertising rubbish and, more recently, some of Sheffields electronic street billboards are now pumping out music! (which means it's only an matter of time before they start talking to you as you pass by).

Marketing in general, and spam in particular, exist because, however outlandish the things they're pushing, a small portion of the recievers are dumb enough to believe them and send their cash.

There's unlikely to be a viable fix to the problem in the near future, but I believe that the only real solution is for us to start to acknowledge that marketing/spam/advertising is insulting, degrading and unwanted. to become aware of how insiduously rooted it is in our culture and, ultimately, to put pressure on those who perpetuate it by hitting them where it hurts- refuse to buy marketed products (and start campaigns to spread the philosophy and make it clear to all companies that marketing their products will lead to loss of sales).

I don't need anyone to tell me that the above is unrealistic, however, it's a lovely dream, and, if enough of us did share it, a possible vision of the future.

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the Bastard work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32


Educate your self in the Hazards of Fire Breathing STAY SAFE!

Posted: 25th Apr 2004
ahh..the beauty of the "bulk mail" folder in yahoo mail... You can just delete it all without having to deal with any of it. Hooray!

"I know a good deal more than a boiled carrot."
"Fire!" "Where?" "Nowhere, I was just illustrating the misuse of free speech."

Posted: 26th Apr 2004
dad brought home a transcript of a guy who had believed one of those "you have won internet tattslotto" emails. it was so sad reading what he believed.

i would have changed ***** to phallus, and claire to petey Petey

Rougie: but that's what I'm doing here
Arnwyn: what letting me adjust myself in your room?..don't you dare quote that on HoP...

Posted: 26th Apr 2004
i read a thing on the net the other day, about a guy that got a promo letter saying 'you've already win 95000 dollars!! with a check attached. he cashed the check, and somehow it passed the requirements, and it got cashed. the legalites etc that followed are quite humerous.

"beg beg grovel beg grovel"
"master"
--FSA

"There was an arse there, i couldn't help myself"
--Rougie

Posted: 26th Apr 2004
Mike, concerning your example of the Nigerian based email deely. I wouldn't mess with it cause I read about that exact one on BBC a while back. It gave a case study of a business man who lost thousands on it and couldn't believe his stupidity.

They got his account number and asked him to put a few thousand in on more than one occassion and he felt obliged to cause he figured it was his only hope, however slim, of getting any money back.

Shocking really...

I live in a world of infinite possibilities.

Posted: 26th Apr 2004

Quote:

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Spam, though ever increasingly annoying, is even easier to avoid.



Take any e-mail address and stick "nospam" after the @ symbole and you prevent macro programs from taking your email addy and sticking it on a gloabal list.



burz@nospamyahoo.com for example.



any person who wants to get in touch with you has the brains to delete the nospam part of the addy.

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You don't have to be a programming genius (not that most spammers are), to have it filter out common nospam sections. Anything with yahoo and com in it is likely to be yahoo.com isn't it?

Quote:

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Spam blocking programs exist on almost all free email and ISP email accounts, they are faily self explanitory but if assistance is needed you can always contact your ISP or even a member of the staff of the free email provider.

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but generally suck

Quote:

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Also on web forums, like this one, select to keep your email private.

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good tip, but a lot of the time these things don't help. My uni address is on spammers lists because some idiot sold the entire list of uni email addresses a few years ago (probably for a couple of quid), which uni members can see publically.

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Dont visit pornographic sites, they can leave cookies on your computer that dectet email addys. Actually any site can, but pornographic sites are the most common.

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nonsense. Browsers do not willing send email addresses to any sites. They used to for ftp anonymous login, but now ms explorer and others send something like msieuser@host. Cookies have nothing to do with this either, cookies are a very valuable tool for the most part, but you can just stop your browser from accepting them if you beleive the hippy paranoia crap.

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As far as enforcing goes, they can set up, like with the Do not call list, a hotline or email account that will handle any such unwarrented spam letters.

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who are 'they'? your "do no call" thing is already implemented by several ISPs, its called blackholing. But it's not likely to work, as my previous post states, spam is bandwidth and bandwidth is money. There's too many spammers on totally legit/legal connections. Blocking all users on cable modems/dialup from being relays will only stop small time companies like local takeaways.

Posted: 26th Apr 2004
Flid, you cant filter this out using a program for the same reason that when you sign up for hotmail you cant use a progrom to read the little security word.

If you want a good spam blocker, use go.com. You select what message to block and put in your spam bin. Then you delete them at your own leasure.

Dont use a uni address. Tell your friends YOUR e-mail. One that only they would ever know.

Flid, I am sorry that you feel that I am wrong. But contrary to your belief, you can get things like spy ware and other such little cookie-like programs that can and do report e-mail addresses, keyboard strokes and other such information to someone. It isn't hard nor is it uncommon. I personally have 2 such programs on my computer, that for some damn reason I can't delete. One of the programs will keep my home page to this search engine. I can't delete it. I don't know why, but I just can't. Very frustraiting.

Cookies can help you load web pages faster, but they can also be used to do some damage to your computer.


Your last post, practially claimed that the governments make money off of spam. This is a conspiracy thoery that I will shoot down for you.

The govenrments are bigger targets of spam than any other person. Why? Well lets see, e-mails containing viruses, e-mail containing spy ware, e-mails from pissed off constituants, e-mails form various groups seeking various things. Spam costs the government more money than you would think. Now they have to employ IT and NT guys to help keep their lines clean from all the above unwanted e-mails and hackers and what not. Spam hurts them more than you, therefore, how can you say the government likes it?

ISPs probably niether like or really dislike spam. It is a double edged sword for them. 1 bandwidth makes them money
2 their patrons dont like spam and spam ridden ISPs like cox are loosing people left and right

Posted: 26th Apr 2004
ummm, do you actually know what a cookie is?

visiting a website will not install spyware automatically. If it does, it's illegal using a browser/computer exploit and if so falls into the trojan category.

my university is just an example. People have to use email addresses sometimes for whatever reason, ie workplace etc.

spam doesn't hurt the government. If it did they'd get off their arses and make some non namby pamby/softly softly laws. I doubt any important dov email accounts accept attachments, and there's no such thing as viruses/trojans/spyware that spread through plaintext (not even microsoft are incompetant enough to write a client that bad).

Posted: 27th Apr 2004
Yes my friend I know what a cookie is, not everything about them, but I know what it is and what it does. It is a little file that your browser accepts. Its primary goal is to allow web pages to load faster, it also stores a little bit of data on your computer that allows a web site, such as Home of Poi, to reconise your computer and automatically log you in, without you having to go through the sign on procedures every time you visit the forums.

I am not trying to argue with you, it won't get us anywhere and it is just a stupid thing to try to do on the internet.

However, if you expect me to believe that a government isnt a primary target for any attempts from electronic attacks, and that some of the many tools included are spam that tries to put little viruses and trojan horses on a government computer, then you are very wrong.

Just because the law isnt out yet, doesnt mean that the government isnt trying to do something about it. Very few individuals in any nation are completly aware of everything that goes on in a governing body. I am not one of them, and I am pretty sure you are not either. Rome wasnt built in a day my friend, have some patience, and keep your faith, because without faith a man can be nothing but a hollow empty shell.

Posted: 27th Apr 2004
A cookie isn't even a file. It's just a variable that your browser can choose to accept if it wants when it loads anything from the web (be it a webpage, image, etc), that it will resubmit if it visits another site which matches a given pattern in its address (the browser may choose to store the info in a file if it wishes, as does MSIE). Granted, it can allow you to stay logged-in, by use of a session cookie, normally random generated characters that you store a copy of in the database of the website along with the userid, then send a copy as a cookie. WHen the browser loads a page it sends the variable back and the site will look it up in its session table an find what user you are. Web cookies have nothing to do with spyware, which is generally installed bundled with something else, which when you installed and clicked yes to agreeing with the terms you didn't actually read all of the terms. Granted spyware, once installed could look at your browser cookies and determine which sites you've been to and possibly 'steal' your login info, but technically you agreed to it when you installed the spyware. Spyware is big bussiness, most of it is totally legitimate and your fault that it's on your computer (very little windows software is as 'FREE!' as it makes out). Cookies got a bad rap, mainly from techno idiot journaliss a few years ago because of banner advertising. Companies like doubleclick which serve ads for thousands (millions?) of websites can obviously send a cookie with each image they serve. So, when you visit a site you download a doubleclick ad, your browser sends your doubleclick id and doubleclick know which site you've visited. They can then use that to build a portfolio of which sites served by it you visit, then choose which adverts would be most applicable to you. It's business, as both a programmer and a user of the internet I have no problem with cookies.

I agree, arguing is stupid and i didn't set out to do so . I just try to give another viewpoint if possible about things i know i know a lot about and people giving tips to others (that i know to the best of my knowledge to be incorrect) who may well read it and take it as gospel. I didn't mean to offend you.

I totally agree that a government is a primary target for electronic attacks, but this goes for any large scale network. Every large network has kiddies trying to DoS/script them etc, but admining it is a built in to accepted charge of operating a public network. If were an admin of a sensitive network, a) i wouldn't connect it to the internet, just have a physically seperate network for email b) would bounce any non plaintext email. As for spam filtering, the cost incurred by paying for a few secretaries on minimum wage to sort them is negligable.

As a network programmer/admin, from observing government/police internet technology policy/law/capabilities for many years I can safely conclude that they are either completely blitheringly incompetant, or are incredibly intelligent but want to give the impression of incompetance (which they pull off remarkably well). The true answer is probably somewhere between the 2, but certainly the UK police's attempt at cutting down on illegal internet activity in this country over the past few years has been little short of laughable. And this isn't a situation that i'm happy with, as a legitimate user I see lots of pretty twisted stuff which, as a programmer, I know is easy to trace and shut down.

Posted: 2nd May 2004
Well... what can I say? Just because you can't or have yet to see what your government is doing doesn't mean that they have yet to start on solving the problem at hand. Maybe our inconvienience of spam is low on their list of accomplishments. Weather you agree with it or not, there is a war going on, that could be just one thing preventing any deligation on any or all internet spam laws.

I don't know, I am just throwing out ideas. Though, when I get back to my personal PC I might ask if you can help me get rid of some problem things on my computer that an updated norton and other spyware programs cant seem to get rid of or solve.