Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?
Che Guevara
As it may be known that Demon does not block spam and seems to happily
accept the trash from any tom, dick, or harry server...I presume the
spammers focus their attention on the likes of demon in a desperate
attempt to get us to lengthen our penises, take out UK loans, see some
birds taking their clothes off, and meet us tomorrow/today/Saturday to
discuss some important issue such as a new mortgage rate, a contract,
customer service et bloody al.
When oh when will Demon do summat about the trash; stopping spam would
reduce email loads and help we mere punters. Yes, I know we can help
ourselves, and I've got spam traps, but a lot of spam now by-passes them
(and/or copies itself; i.e. in some cases, the same spam goes into my
traps *and* into my bona fide mail box).
che
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk
wrote:
The technology to trap spam without false positives does not exist.
Bayesian and neural network spam traps only work well on an individual
basis. Some black lists are out of control. One black list service I
had a fight with was rejecting anything from Demon, Freeserve,
Fujitsu, Hotmail and Yahoo. I had to send a letter on paper in an
envelope!
How do you expect Demon to know what you don't want to receive? How
would you feel if some "clever" service intercepted a message that you
really needed? What if your outgoing messages were badly filtered and
just got deleted in transit?
Generalised spam traps cause more problems than spam itself. Spam
traps must be controlled by the recipient not the service.
Steve
--
EasyNN-plus. The easy way to build neural networks.
Build networks from numeric, text and image files.
http://www.easynn.com
Phil Thompson
>Spam
>traps must be controlled by the recipient not the service.
I think we would agree with that, but it isn't a reason for Demon to
not offer anything. Providing a tool for users to build filters that
operate at server level (as u-net did) is one example of how both
camps can be satisifed - you can receive everything and I could set
some filters up.
Phil
Peter Galbavy
> I think we would agree with that, but it isn't a reason for Demon to
> not offer anything. Providing a tool for users to build filters that
> operate at server level (as u-net did) is one example of how both
> camps can be satisifed - you can receive everything and I could set
> some filters up.
Setting up server side spam detection and tagging takes resources;
installation, maintenance, education and support. The return to the ISP is
minimal - keeps some nerds happy, and doesn't reduce the load of incoming
SPAM at all. In fact, the increase in machine resource for scanning every
incoming (and outgoing ?) e-mail increases the hardware requirements for
mail servers.
I agree with the other who say SPAM is, sadly, the problem of the recipient.
Peter
Don Moody
<pe...@wonderland.org> writes
>
>I agree with the other who say SPAM is, sadly, the problem of the recipient.
Bullshit. It is the problem of those who supply email services. And it
is inevitable that law will be made to force them to accept it as their
problem. When, magically, it will be solved. Without losing a single
solitary wanted personal legitimate communication.
If ISPs wanted to achieve this they could start doing it today and have
the problem substantially sorted in a few months. It would involve no
new technology, apart from some trivial keyboarding, and would make the
game so impossibly expensive for spammers that they'd give up.
The real issue is lack of lateral thinking, lack of balls to do what
must be done, and - the brutal truth - that too many of those involved
in decision-making actually want child pornography and other forms of
crookedness. If they objected to such perversions, they'd stop them.
Forthwith. Since they won't do it voluntarily, they'll have to be made
to do it by law. That is why law is inevitable (and in early stages of
preparation).
Don
--
Dr D P Moody, Ashwood, Exeter Cross, Liverton, Newton Abbot, Devon,
England TQ12 6EY
Tel: +44(0) 1626 821725 Fax: +44(0) 1626 824912
John Hall
Che Guevara <uf...@Cuba.CubedRum> writes:
>As it may be known that Demon does not block spam and seems to happily
>accept the trash from any tom, dick, or harry server...I presume the
>spammers focus their attention on the likes of demon in a desperate
>attempt to get us to lengthen our penises, take out UK loans, see some
>birds taking their clothes off, and meet us tomorrow/today/Saturday to
>discuss some important issue such as a new mortgage rate, a contract,
>customer service et bloody al.
I think that your presumption that they focus on Demon is wrong. I very
much doubt that spammers have any idea of the policies of the ISPs
through which their spam is being routed. They simply get hold of as
many email addresses as they can, without even bothering to check
whether they are genuine, and send their spam to them all. They know
that, regardless of ISP policies, only a small proportion of their
messages are likely to arrive in anyone's mailbox. If the ISP doesn't
block them then most of those sent to valid email addresses will still
probably be bounced or filtered by the targeted users.
--
John Hall
You can divide people into two categories:
those who divide people into two categories and those who don't
Al
> accept the trash from any tom, dick, or harry server...
Correct. I'm happy with that. Plenty of ways to deal with spam, assuming
that you can even connect to the POP3 server in the first place of course.
> When oh when will Demon do summat about the trash; stopping spam would
> reduce email loads and help we mere punters. Yes, I know we can help
> ourselves, and I've got spam traps, but a lot of spam now by-passes them
> (and/or copies itself; i.e. in some cases, the same spam goes into my
> traps *and* into my bona fide mail box).
You can get your email? Actually see it? The headers? The body? Wow! I
wouldn't complain if I were you. Some of us have been losing business as we
can't see fsck all.
I've given up, there's only so many times I can see the 'server too busy'
error message.
Demon RIP. I *suspect* that my customers *might* migrate to another ISP
also ;-)
Demon - Get your arse in gear. We're all utterly sick and tired of your
endless EXCUSES. Get the cheque book out an get some decent kit in. Today.
I used to run my business on your system, now it's not possibe as I can't
receive email during the day. Nor can my customers. Come back Cliff, at
least I could get somewhere talking to you :-(
End of rant. Next contestant please.
Al.
Phil Thompson
<pe...@wonderland.org> wrote:
>The return to the ISP is
>minimal
given the current mail situation and the lower level of services I'll
be changing ISP when ADSL arrives in a couple of months. This decision
is reinforced by the fact that I can't pre-order with Demon and they
don't do managed ISDN to ADSL transition.
The financial return on improved services may be hard to see but will
be in a reduced number of defectors and avoiding loss of revenue.
Meantime I shall leave a 3rd party server accessing Demon's pop3
server frequently and deleting crap - how efficient is that?
Phil
Jeremy C B Nicoll
Peter Galbavy <pe...@wonderland.org> wrote:
> Setting up server side spam detection and tagging takes resources;
> installation, maintenance, education and support. The return to the ISP
> is minimal - keeps some nerds happy, and doesn't reduce the load of
> incoming SPAM at all.
If a spammer sends a 200K spam to more than one Demon user, surely
Demon's system ends up storing umpteen copies of that spam until the
users delete or retrieve them?
Doesn't that waste Demon's disk space and also bandwidth moving all the
crap around?
I can understand that it might be hard to detect and delete *every* spam
in the system, but surely the common ones (nigerian accountants, MS
patches etc) can be detected easily and thrown away?
--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.
Michael Lefevre
> In article <3eccee1c$0$13734$afc3...@news.easynet.co.uk>,
> Peter Galbavy <pe...@wonderland.org> wrote:
>
>> Setting up server side spam detection and tagging takes resources;
>> installation, maintenance, education and support. The return to the ISP
>> is minimal - keeps some nerds happy, and doesn't reduce the load of
>> incoming SPAM at all.
>
> If a spammer sends a 200K spam to more than one Demon user, surely
> Demon's system ends up storing umpteen copies of that spam until the
> users delete or retrieve them?
yes
> Doesn't that waste Demon's disk space and also bandwidth moving all the
> crap around?
yes
> I can understand that it might be hard to detect and delete *every* spam
> in the system, but surely the common ones (nigerian accountants, MS
> patches etc) can be detected easily and thrown away?
easy to catch most spam, the problem is more that if you do it, you will
inevitably get false positives.
it's possible to catch a reasonable proportion of spam and viruses with
very little risk of catching anything that someone might want. but there
is still a small risk - someone might be sending, for example, a sample of
a virus, or forwarding one of the spoof nigerian scams, which looks very
similar to the real thing, but is a joke. one can also out email sent from
open proxies, of which there are lists - open proxies almost never
transmit legitimate email, as they are generally not machines which run
mail servers, but there would still be a small risk.
one either has to do some blanket filtering and insist that customers
accept a small risk of false positives, or one has to allow customers to
customise the blocking, which reduces the benefit in terms of not
processing the unwanted email on Demon's side, or to invest more money in
storing and trasmitting all the crap email... Demon seem to be choosing
the latter option - most ISPs choose one (or both) of the others.
--
Michael
Olaf Leimann
two-finger typed:
>In message <3eccee1c$0$13734$afc3...@news.easynet.co.uk>, Peter Galbavy
><pe...@wonderland.org> writes
>>
>>I agree with the other who say SPAM is, sadly, the problem of the recipient.
>
>Bullshit. It is the problem of those who supply email services.
Wrong. It's a problem for ISPs that provide internet access to spammers.
The problem is not the e-mail service brought to you, but with the people
that abuse their internet access by using it to send unsollicited
commercial e-mail (UCE, the official term for spam) to you and millions of
others.
Which is why you should report each and every spammer with full headers to
the ISP that the spammer is using (not that I do that, mind you, I only
delete the few SPAM mails I get, but then again, I'm not broadcasting my
main e-mail address to the internet anywhere, not even in this posting).
Unfortunately, currently there are still ISPs that do not kick spammers off
their systems, fortunately Demon is not one of them (as far as I know).
I don't see why you would want to treat the symptoms (you getting spam)
instead of the root of the problem (the spammer sending it). If everybody
would think that way, the problem of spamming with respect to the overload
of the internet would never be resolved, because you are only
(unsuccessfully) filtering at the end point.
>And it
>is inevitable that law will be made to force them to accept it as their
>problem. When, magically, it will be solved. Without losing a single
>solitary wanted personal legitimate communication.
<I moved the following bit up here, since it seems to fit better with your
reasoning>
>It would involve no
>new technology, apart from some trivial keyboarding, and would make the
>game so impossibly expensive for spammers that they'd give up.
This is utter nonsense and can even be disproved.
Let's assume you have a spam block service.
That service uses certain rules for the headers to filter out e-mail you
may not want (without checking the body - to keep this fast):
1) Your e-mail address in the To:, BCC: or CC: header, and not more than
ten other recipients in there either. Larger mailing lists need to use To
and BCC to get through.
2) Certain characters or keywords in the Subject line.
3) You may have a whitelist which lists From: addresses that
should always arrive in your mailbox. These would include your friends and
family, as well as the mailing lists you subscribe to.
4) More strict: the From: address is being checked to be a legitimate
e-mail address (apart from pattern recognition, this could be rather
network intensive).
5) A blacklist of legitimate e-mail addresses from where spam was sent.
The problem:
The smarter spammers know this. They will start abiding to these rules to
get their spam through (good From: address - even if it's not theirs, nice
legitimate looking subject line, etc.).
They will get themselves another e-mail address on some webmail service to
bypass the blacklists, and use special software that sends e-mail through
that webmail interface.
They may even make a list of large official mailing lists, and make their
spam look like it came from there, and then put the real response e-mail
address into the Reply-To: header or even inside the e-mail.
Then send each mailing ten times (as if from ten different mailing lists)
to the same recipient.
You see: there is no way to stop absolutely all spam except by stopping the
spammers themselves.
And this is where The Law comes in: to force ISPs to take spammers out of
their network (basically refusing them internet service).
>If ISPs wanted to achieve this they could start doing it today and have
>the problem substantially sorted in a few months.
Unfortunately new spammers appear all the time, so this has to be an
ongoing solution until nobody in their right mind would ever think that
sending unsolicitated e-mail is acceptable. Not powerfull corporations, not
the idiot neighbour, not the kids that just got their first computer to
play with. Like an eleventh commandment for the christians among you.
Well, you know how good the human race is as following commandments/laws...
One ongoing solution would be to keep a global blacklist of persons who
have been proven to have spammed (a list with their true identities, kept
by the ISPs). This list should keep them from the internet for large trial
periods (one year at very least) wherever they may go.
1st offence: 1 year no internet service (by the way, identification in
internet cafés would need to be required).
2nd offence: 5 years no internet access: "get to learn to use your phone
and snailmail again, buster".
3rd offense: back to the cave or get yourself a new identity through the
mob, no internet access ever again for your original/real identity.
Simply put: a spammer without internet access cannot spam.
>The real issue is lack of lateral thinking, lack of balls to do what
>must be done, and - the brutal truth - that too many of those involved
>in decision-making actually want child pornography and other forms of
>crookedness. If they objected to such perversions, they'd stop them.
>Forthwith. Since they won't do it voluntarily, they'll have to be made
>to do it by law. That is why law is inevitable (and in early stages of
>preparation).
Get your balls in hand and use software that can help you in identifying
spam from the headers (so the e-mail can be deleted at the server side
without needing to be downloaded), find the ISP that was used to send it in
the first place, and possibly even send the notice about the spam to the
originating ISP for you.
In the first stage this should kill any open e-mail relays, in the second
stage finding the origin and the responsible person/ISP becomes possible.
Or is that too much work for you ?
Start preaching to yourself about lateral thinking and having balls to do
what's neccessary.
This way you have full control over what you consider spam, and what you do
want to receive (like e-mail from subscribed mailing lists) as long as
spammers still gain internet access.
Also, the responsibility of loosing genuine e-mail is in your hands and you
can't blame the ISP for that ;^)
>Don
Good luck in your fight with UCE,
Olaf.
David Morris
>In message <3eccee1c$0$13734$afc3...@news.easynet.co.uk>, Peter
>Galbavy <pe...@wonderland.org> writes
>>
>>I agree with the other who say SPAM is, sadly, the problem of the recipient.
>
>Bullshit. It is the problem of those who supply email services. And it
>is inevitable that law will be made to force them to accept it as their
>problem. When, magically, it will be solved. Without losing a single
>solitary wanted personal legitimate communication.
The situation would be made considerably better if hosting ISPs adopted
a sensible policy of probing for open relay mail servers.
What did that article on todays BBC site say? Two million broadband
users? That's a lot of potential mail relays.
--
David Morris
Peter Hague
Michael Lefevre wrote:
>
>
>
>one either has to do some blanket filtering and insist that customers
>accept a small risk of false positives, or one has to allow customers to
>customise the blocking, which reduces the benefit in terms of not
>processing the unwanted email on Demon's side, or to invest more money in
>storing and trasmitting all the crap email... Demon seem to be choosing
>the latter option - most ISPs choose one (or both) of the others.
>
>
>
How long will it be before this upgrade becomes overwhelmed, and at what
point will the policy of "store more crap and shift it faster" break down?
I'd be quite happy to run the risk of losing mail if I could define my
own rules. I suffer very little spam compared to some of the stories I
read here, for me Apples Mail program works exceptionally well, some
spam gets through, but no false positives as yet. But of course I still
have to download the stuff. If I could make these decisions on the other
side, it would be beneficial for me, maybe for Demon as well?
And of course, it should be an opt-in system, so the spam hobbyists stay
happy.
news
<d...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk> writes
>Bullshit. It is the problem of those who supply email services. And it is
>inevitable that law will be made to force them to accept it as their problem.
There is a precedent: the laws that force Royal Mail throw away every
scrap of junk mail.
All they had to do was ask everyone to provide a list of wanted mail,
including potential messages from people and organisations receivers had
never heard of. Millions of these lists were stuck up in sorting offices
next to every address, with sub-lists for people within each address.
Posties also now have to open all mail to check whether it is junk,
otherwise they would be sued for intercepting legitimate messages.
But we have been more than happy to accept the delays, loss of
privacy, potential errors and enormous costs. After all, it is *such* an
effort to chuck it in a bin next to the front door.
--
David Lawson
Olaf Leimann
>> As it may be known that Demon does not block spam and seems to happily
>> accept the trash from any tom, dick, or harry server...
>
>Correct. I'm happy with that. Plenty of ways to deal with spam, assuming
>that you can even connect to the POP3 server in the first place of course.
>
>> When oh when will Demon do summat about the trash; stopping spam would
>> reduce email loads and help we mere punters. Yes, I know we can help
>> ourselves, and I've got spam traps, but a lot of spam now by-passes them
>> (and/or copies itself; i.e. in some cases, the same spam goes into my
>> traps *and* into my bona fide mail box).
>
>You can get your email? Actually see it? The headers? The body? Wow! I
>wouldn't complain if I were you. Some of us have been losing business as we
>can't see fsck all.
I think this is a problem for Demon UK ?
I'm a customer of Demon NL and have had no big problems.
And Demon NL does not filter spam either.
>I've given up, there's only so many times I can see the 'server too busy'
>error message.
>
>Demon RIP. I *suspect* that my customers *might* migrate to another ISP
>also ;-)
And how do you expect your new ISP to protect itself from spam targeted to
them ? You are only shifting the problem along. As soon as you have used
your new e-mail address and advertised it in usenet or on your web, you're
back to square one.
>Demon - Get your arse in gear. We're all utterly sick and tired of your
>endless EXCUSES. Get the cheque book out an get some decent kit in. Today.
>I used to run my business on your system, now it's not possibe as I can't
>receive email during the day. Nor can my customers. Come back Cliff, at
>least I could get somewhere talking to you :-(
>
>End of rant. Next contestant please.
>
>Al.
If I got this right, the spam overload comes from a few specific source,
right ? Has any of you tried to find the origin of the spams and reported
the spammers to their internet providers ?
Be proactive, people !
Olaf.
Jeremy C B Nicoll
news <ne...@davidlawson.co.uk> wrote:
> There is a precedent: the laws that force Royal Mail throw away every
> scrap of junk mail.
This is a bad analogy; Royal Mail are paid to transport junk mail around
and are therefore less interested in ditching it.
Che Guevara
<alne...@hotmail.com> writes
>> As it may be known that Demon does not block spam and seems to happily
>> accept the trash from any tom, dick, or harry server...
>
>Correct. I'm happy with that. Plenty of ways to deal with spam, assuming
>that you can even connect to the POP3 server in the first place of course.
>
>> When oh when will Demon do summat about the trash; stopping spam would
>> reduce email loads and help we mere punters. Yes, I know we can help
>> ourselves, and I've got spam traps, but a lot of spam now by-passes them
>> (and/or copies itself; i.e. in some cases, the same spam goes into my
>> traps *and* into my bona fide mail box).
>
>You can get your email? Actually see it? The headers? The body? Wow! I
>wouldn't complain if I were you. Some of us have been losing business as we
>can't see fsck all.
i use SMTP not pop3, and i'm on Connect Plus. Does being on that
guarantee a better service, or is it just SMP that does that?
but i will continue to complain and when i go on holiday i will use CIX,
not Demon, for quicker mail collection and management, because of the
vast amount of spam i get using Demon. if all goes well i will consider
a permanent switch from Demon to CIX.
che
Andy
<pe...@peter-hague.co.uk.invalid> wrote
[
>How long will it be before this upgrade becomes overwhelmed, and at
>what point will the policy of "store more crap and shift it faster"
>break down?
>
--
Andy
For Austria & its philately, Lupus, & much else visit
<URL:http://www.kitzbuhel.demon.co.uk/>
Jim Howes
>
> How do you expect Demon to know what you don't want to receive? How
> would you feel if some "clever" service intercepted a message that you
> really needed? What if your outgoing messages were badly filtered and
> just got deleted in transit?
Personally, I think the following:
If Demon established one or more additional inbound mail clusters,
such as use-spews.mail.demon.net, use-sbl.mail.demon.net, etc.
and allowed customers to change their MX records to point at the
MX cluster of their choice, then Demon could atleast rid their
customers of the mail that originates from known spamhausen, or
in the case of SPEWS, customers of less-than-satisfactory ISP's.
The existing mail cluster would continue to receive mail for
those customers that hadn't opted to filter their mail. The
new clusters would filter inbound connections through their
appropriate list(s).
I think the SpamHaus SBL is certainly one list worth implementing
for those users that want it. SPEWS may be too exteme for some
because it DOES, and WILL CONTINUE to generate false positives,
however, given the choice, I'd jump on the SPEWS bandwagon any
day, and anyone who really does need to contact me ought to know
that there are better ways.
Ok, filtering by IP won't get all the spam, especially after the
clueless morons who run open relays, open proxies, or proxies
opened by recent virii (Sobig.A and Palyh.A), but it would involve
little more processing than a DNS lookup (against a DNS zone that
Demon could mirror themselves) which the mail system already does
to generate Received: headers.
Users don't want to know about MX records, but they shouldn't need
to. Perhaps Demon could also offer the ability to set your MX to
your own host, for the benefit of those customers who leave their
systems up 24x365, however some work would need to be done to cope
with customers who do that, and then inexplicably don't leave their
machines up.
Ok, that's enough thinking, especially for a Friday. I'm off up
the pub.
Jim
Graham Walter
That is a bad analogy - the sender has to pay for junk mail, whereas
the incremental cost of sending junk email is miniscule. That cost
keeps down the volumes of junk mail.
Cheers
Graham
--
Isn't it wonderful to think that one day this tiny acorn will grow into a mighty ash.
Paul Terry
<gwalter+$UsenetPost$@gwalter.demon.co.uk> writes
>That is a bad analogy - the sender has to pay for junk mail, whereas
>the incremental cost of sending junk email is miniscule. That cost
>keeps down the volumes of junk mail.
On the other hand, the amount of junk that drops through my letter box
each day causes me very much more trouble than spam. There are at least
20-30 items most days - pizza leaflets, estate agents' newspapers,
various magazines and brochures, Chinese food menus, and so on, in
addition to all the junk delivered by Royal Mail. Local re-cycling
policies mean that envelopes have to be separated from their contents,
polythene wrappers have to be disposed of separately from the junk they
contain, and that the endless free newspapers have to be stored for
re-cycling day.
All of that takes several minutes a day, whereas deleting the few bits
of email spam that aren't bounced automatically takes only a couple of
seconds.
--
Paul Terry
Mark Browne
<{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
If you subscribe to the postal preference service, as I have done, you
should receive very little (after some delay to allow it to kick in). It
is much easier to deal with snail mail junk than UCE, because the costs
of sending from abroad, coupled with the law saying that the preferences
must be observed by UK companies, combine to sort it out for me.
--
Mark Browne
If replying by email, please use the "Reply-To" address, as the
"From" address will be rejected
news
<olei...@hotmail.com> writes
>If I got this right, the spam overload comes from a few specific source,
>right ? Has any of you tried to find the origin of the spams and reported
>the spammers to their internet providers ?
>
In the last nine months I have used up my subscription allocation of
25Mb from Spamcop, which sends reports back to ISP rather than forged
headers. Result? Nil. Meanwhile, a trickle of spam has grown to the
torrent which has destroyed Demon's system.
As 90% of this junk comes from Chinese and Brazilian open relays and
proxies, I assume you have worked out how your wonderful solution will
tackle these sources. The rest comes from major US services which allow
one-off accounts to be started [and closed]. I presume you would demand
that China, Brazil and much of the US should be blocked off from the
rest of the world.
>Be proactive, people !
Yeah. Sure. While you are coming up with clever solutions, could you
also spare a moment to solve world hunger and bring peace and prosperity
to all?
--
David Lawson
Che Guevara
<an...@kitzbuhel.demon.co.uk> writes
>In message <3ECD4F67...@peter-hague.co.uk.invalid>, Peter Hague
><pe...@peter-hague.co.uk.invalid> wrote
>[
>>How long will it be before this upgrade becomes overwhelmed, and at
>>what point will the policy of "store more crap and shift it faster"
>>break down?
>>
>Surely Moore's Law applies?
Moore's Law will slip a bit, i read.
--
che
news
<Jer...@omba.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <pL9edNfh...@artful.demon.co.uk>,
> news <ne...@davidlawson.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> There is a precedent: the laws that force Royal Mail throw away every
>> scrap of junk mail.
>
>This is a bad analogy; Royal Mail are paid to transport junk mail around
>and are therefore less interested in ditching it.
>
And ISPs are paid to provide a service which is crumbling. If they lose
customers, they will make the effort - as many have done - to filter.
But that brings big problems. I was reading yesterday about students
unable to research particular books because imposed filters bounce
messages which contain titles that are considered suspicious word
combinations.
I'm not daft enough to offer an analogy which ignores the well-known
fact that mail carriers are paid to deliver junk but to show the
difficulties of filtering compared with leaving it to recipients.
--
David Lawson
Paul Terry
<ne...@kafana.demon.co.uk> writes
>In message <dykWbmCS...@main.machine>, Paul Terry
><{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
>>On the other hand, the amount of junk that drops through my letter box
>>each day causes me very much more trouble than spam. There are at
>>least 20-30 items most days - pizza leaflets, estate agents'
>>newspapers, various magazines and brochures, Chinese food menus, and
>>so on,
>If you subscribe to the postal preference service, as I have done, you
>should receive very little
Really? Notice that none of the items I have listed are delivered by
post.
Are you saying that this preference service will stop the free local
papers, the pizza leaflets, the Chinese food menus ... etc ... ?
--
Paul Terry
Mark Browne
>In message <MPpGJXbz...@kafana.demon.co.uk>, Mark Browne
><ne...@kafana.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>>In message <dykWbmCS...@main.machine>, Paul Terry
>><{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>>>On the other hand, the amount of junk that drops through my letter
>>>box each day causes me very much more trouble than spam. There are at
>>>least 20-30 items most days - pizza leaflets, estate agents'
>>>newspapers, various magazines and brochures, Chinese food menus, and so on,
>
>>If you subscribe to the postal preference service, as I have done, you
>>should receive very little
>
>Really? Notice that none of the items I have listed are delivered by
>post.
>
>Are you saying that this preference service will stop the free local
>papers, the pizza leaflets, the Chinese food menus ... etc ... ?
True, and I missed the distinction. 20-30 items seems a hell of a lot.
Che Guevara
nix.demon.co.uk> writes
move to a spam-free geographic zone : )
--
che
Paul Terry
<ne...@kafana.demon.co.uk> writes
>In message <WRRkDbCE...@main.machine>, Paul Terry
><{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
>>Are you saying that this preference service will stop the free local
>>papers, the pizza leaflets, the Chinese food menus ... etc ... ?
>True, and I missed the distinction. 20-30 items seems a hell of a lot.
You should see what its like on coming back from a holiday - it is often
difficult to get the front door open. 20-30 per day is no exaggeration -
I guess it comes from living in a densely populated part of London.
--
Paul Terry
Paul Terry
Morrison <sc...@fenrir.org.uk> writes
>On Thu, 22 May 2003 17:45:31 +0100, in article
><H+x0Cxtr...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk> Don Moody
><d...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk> wrote:
(snip)
>Which version of cloud cuckoo land do you live in?
A Google Groups search on "Don Moody" +troll
will tell you.
>[snip]
>> The real issue is lack of lateral thinking, lack of balls to do what
>> must be done, and - the brutal truth - that too many of those involved
>> in decision-making actually want child pornography and other forms of
>> crookedness. If they objected to such perversions, they'd stop them.
>Right, well that is certainly verging on a libellous statement I would
>have thought, so don't say you weren't warned if you repeat it in a more
>specific fashion.
Don't worry, he will - part of his usual trolling technique is a strange
obsession with equating spam and child pornography. He will then go out
of his way to be seriously offensive to anyone who disagrees with his
loopy and totally ill-considered ideas. See, for instance, his
disgusting imputations in ...
http://www.google.co.uk/groups?selm=t4mpIydsdZe%2BEwHG%40hyperpeople.demon.co.uk
He never withdrew those grotesquely offensive remarks AFAICS.
--
Paul Terry
Al
> targeted to them ?
Did you actually read what I wrote regarding spam? I suspect not. Read it
again. My problem is that I can't get ANY email.
> If I got this right, the spam overload comes from a few specific
> source, right ?
Read what I wrote.
> Be proactive, people !
I am being proactive. I'm suggesting that Demon should get their arses in
gear and make POP3 email work. Nothing to do with spam. I've been proactive
- I've moved my email servers elsewhere.
Al.
David Gibson
<demon.service>, on Thu, 22 May 2003
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk writes
>Generalised spam traps cause more problems than spam itself.
So you say. Can we not have the opportunity to find out for ourselves?
--
David Gibson
Spam-cloaked message: The Reply-to address *is* valid.
David Gibson
<demon.service>, on Thu, 22 May 2003
>I agree with the other who say SPAM is, sadly, the problem of the recipient.
Take two otherwise identical ISPs. One offers a not-quite-perfect spam
filter; the other insists it is the problem of the recipient.
Market forces will demonstrate where the customers think the problem
lies!
David Gibson
Paul Terry <{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
> whereas deleting the few bits
>of email spam that aren't bounced automatically takes only a couple of
>seconds.
Rubbish! You try logging on via Webmail and trying to see the few
legitimate messages amongst 300 spams! And then trying to delete them!
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk
wrote:
>In article "Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?" in
><demon.service>, on Thu, 22 May 2003
>st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk writes
>
>>Generalised spam traps cause more problems than spam itself.
>
>So you say. Can we not have the opportunity to find out for ourselves?
I have had trouble with my users antispam systems so I would not want
to use one myself. Some of my support messages sent to my customers
are rejected by antispam applications and services. They are then
followed by complaints that my support is useless. I can still cover
gaps in support with phone calls and responses by post but it's
getting to be quite a lot of work.
Steve
--
EasyNN-plus. The easy way to build neural networks.
Build networks from numeric, text and image files.
http://www.easynn.com
Rex M F Smith
<ne...@kafana.demon.co.uk> writes
>>the amount of junk that drops through my letter box each day causes me
>>very much more trouble than spam.
>
>If you subscribe to the postal preference service, as I have done, you
>should receive very little (after some delay to allow it to kick in).
Won't affect things hand-delivered by agents of local traders
I found my local authority sold electronic copies of the Electoral
Register - they now don't do this - result, almost no junk mail
After a European Court ruling, your LA must give you the option of
opting your data out of any list they sell ... I have not only the
confirmation letter from mine that they were -aware- of this court
ruling but also the result; some weeks I get no mail at all
--
Rex M F Smith
Gordon Hodgson
<{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
>http://www.google.co.uk/groups?selm=t4mpIydsdZe%2BEwHG%40hyperpeople.dem
It seems like it's time he looked for an ISP that comes out and admits
it doesn't approve of child pornography, unlike Demon, which by its
silence, not only proves it is in favour, but proves that it is in
favour because of the huge profitability such an opinion would provide
for it.
<legal> Ok, so that was a joke </legal>
--
Gordon Hodgson
(news)(at)(rockmuppet)(dot)(co)(dot)(uk)
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/ is not a debt consolidation site
Guess what, neither is http://www.debtlinks.org/
If you wish to reply, make sure to take out the rubbish
Bill Pullen
<pe...@wonderland.org> writes
>
>Setting up server side spam detection and tagging takes resources;
>installation, maintenance, education and support. The return to the ISP is
>minimal - keeps some nerds happy, and doesn't reduce the load of incoming
>SPAM at all. In fact, the increase in machine resource for scanning every
>incoming (and outgoing ?) e-mail increases the hardware requirements for
>mail servers.
>
>I agree with the other who say SPAM is, sadly, the problem of the recipient.
>
The sheer volume of SPAM is a major problem to ISP's, because it
propagates into poor e-mail service, which then creates a separate
problem for users. You cannot just keep plugging in more disk to store
the ever increasing volume of e-mails.
I would suggest that you meant to say that the recipient must
have 'responsibility' for how SPAM is treated. Like many, I have my own
filtering rules which are about 80% successful. I am happy to stay at
that level without any false positives, which might happen if I were to
tighten the rules.
However, if an ISP were to provide...
1. A little extra processing power.
2. A program to allow upload/entry/maintenance of filter rules.
3. A program to apply these rules for each user as mail is received into
the ISP.
...Then the volume of e-mail stored, and therefore trying to be accessed
by users would be GREATLY reduced. Some users have already admitted to
thousands of unread e-mails.
I can't see how this would require much maintenance by the ISP,
apart from having to protect the user's rules. The reduction of both
storage used, and load on any available bandwidth between servers and
remote users would surely be to the benefit of the ISP, and maybe (if it
works as I think it could) get many thousands of disgruntled users off
their backs as well a stopping the flow of people moving to other ISP's.
Surely someone at Demon is thinking... 'I wish there was
something we could do, so that we don't have to put up with customers
who leave thousands of e-mails on the servers, or have to wait for them
to download, or delete, their mail.'
I wonder how many e-mails are on Demon's servers, on average, at
any time? Most (non business) SMTP users have no performance problem,
despite the predominance of SPAM, but it appears that POP3 users (either
through choice or ADSL restrictions) suffer most from the performance
impact. Spammers do not seek out POP3 users, so they have no more SPAM
than us SMTP users. They just suffer when trying to access their mail.
Bill.
PS. As many of you will have noticed, the complete wipe-out of Demon for
a while (Friday pm/Sat am) meant that at 1.35 am Sat, I stormed through
the spam so damned quick... 'cos the rest of you were in bed.
Peter G. Hancock
>>>>> steve wrote (on Fri, 23 May 2003 at 22:37):
> I have had trouble with my users antispam systems so I would not want
> to use one myself. Some of my support messages sent to my customers
> are rejected by antispam applications and services. They are then
> followed by complaints that my support is useless. I can still cover
> gaps in support with phone calls and responses by post but it's
> getting to be quite a lot of work.
You are a victim of spam. The cost of spam isn't just that of the
hardware needed to transport it, store it, and filter it out but the
loss of messages from friends, customers, and genuine new
correspondents. It's incalculable, because it isn't just money.
It sounds almost as if you are blaming your customers.
Peter Hancock
Paul Terry
<david-4@[127.0.0.1]> writes
>In article "Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?" in
><demon.service>, on Fri, 23 May 2003
>Paul Terry <{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
>> whereas deleting the few bits
>>of email spam that aren't bounced automatically takes only a couple of
>>seconds.
>Rubbish! You try logging on via Webmail and trying to see the few
>legitimate messages amongst 300 spams! And then trying to delete them!
Why on earth would I want to waste my time using Webmail?
It would be an appalling way of dealing with spam!
--
Paul Terry
Phil Thompson
news:utgtcvk7ll7hl5fj5...@4ax.com:
> Why do you think laws are revised every so often...
>
so that politiicans think they have achieved something.
Phil
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk
wrote:
>
>You are a victim of spam. The cost of spam isn't just that of the
>hardware needed to transport it, store it, and filter it out but the
>loss of messages from friends, customers, and genuine new
>correspondents. It's incalculable, because it isn't just money.
>
>It sounds almost as if you are blaming your customers.
>
No, some of my customers are blaming me for something they have done.
I'm not using crude antispam methods, they are.
Richard Clayton
<ne...@nospam.demon.co.uk> writes
>It seems like it's time he looked for an ISP that comes out and admits
>it doesn't approve of child pornography, unlike Demon,
perhaps you failed to read this:
http://www.demon.net/pressreleases/2001/pr2001-02-20a.shtml
> which by its
>silence, not only proves it is in favour, but proves that it is in
>favour because of the huge profitability such an opinion would provide
>for it.
>
><legal> Ok, so that was a joke </legal>
no, it was an offensive and entirely inaccurate statement, which you may
now wish to reconsider :(
--
richard writing to inform and not as company policy
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM
Chris Lawrence
> I'm not daft enough to offer an analogy which ignores the well-known
> fact that mail carriers are paid to deliver junk but to show the
> difficulties of filtering compared with leaving it to recipients.
The only way which seems to work is to leave it to the recipients but
educate them about it and empower them with tools to do something about
it. They can range from pre-configured rejection 'profiles' to
web/client software. The point is that people don't care about MXs and
pattern matching even if they are suffering from unwanted mail. All
they care about, and rightly so, is not getting any more of that email
they don't want. It's up to the ISPs to offer assistance and tools and
clearly communicate the consequences and responsibilities of doing so.
--
Chris
Chris Lawrence
> Are you saying that this preference service will stop the free local
> papers, the pizza leaflets, the Chinese food menus ... etc ... ?
If you collected them for a month, separated them into envelopes and
posted them with no postage back to the companies who had sent them,
would they have to pay the postage on receipt?
--
Chris
Jeremy C B Nicoll
More! The last time I received a letter with no stamp it came with a
bill for 70 or 80p attached to it.
--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.
Olaf Leimann
<cynical_...@hotmail.com> two-finger typed:
No, nonononooo....
They don't like passing new laws too often.
To feel they achieved something they revise the tax system every year in
some way or another (usually because they only get so far with shuffling
monetary resources without actually killing off the military expense).
>
>Phil
Paul C. Dickie
nix.demon.co.uk> writes
>On the other hand, the amount of junk that drops through my letter box
>each day causes me very much more trouble than spam. There are at least
>20-30 items most days - pizza leaflets, estate agents' newspapers,
>addition to all the junk delivered by Royal Mail. Local re-cycling
>policies mean that envelopes have to be separated from their contents,
>polythene wrappers have to be disposed of separately from the junk they
>contain, and that the endless free newspapers have to be stored for
>re-cycling day.
So get *creative*. Find the junk mail that contain(s) a reply-paid
envelope, put the other junk mail into that and send it back.
--
< Paul >
Paul C. Dickie
<olei...@hotmail.com> writes
>On Thu, 22 May 2003 17:45:31 +0100, Don Moody <d...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk>
>two-finger typed:
>>The real issue is lack of lateral thinking, lack of balls to do what
>>must be done, and - the brutal truth - that too many of those involved
>>in decision-making actually want child pornography and other forms of
>>crookedness. If they objected to such perversions, they'd stop them.
>>to do it by law. That is why law is inevitable (and in early stages of
>>preparation).
>
>Get your balls in hand
^^^^^
ORBS? o-)
--
< Paul >
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk
<p...@bozzie.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>So get *creative*. Find the junk mail that contain(s) a reply-paid
>envelope, put the other junk mail into that and send it back.
That's the method I've used for years. It doesn't reduce the junk but
it is perversely satisfying. A similar technique can be used for some
spam but it's a bit like hard work.
Paul Terry
<p...@bozzie.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <dykWbmCS...@main.machine>, Paul Terry <{$news_03$}@muso
>nix.demon.co.uk> writes
>>On the other hand, the amount of junk that drops through my letter box
>>each day causes me very much more trouble than spam. There are at least
>>20-30 items most days - pizza leaflets, estate agents' newspapers,
>>various magazines and brochures, Chinese food menus, and so on
>So get *creative*. Find the junk mail that contain(s) a reply-paid
>envelope, put the other junk mail into that and send it back.
Eh? What on earth are you on about?
Do you really think that any of twelve pizza leaflets, eleven Indian
takeaway menus, ten Chinese dinner lists, nine flyers for house
cleaning, eight ads for Spanish baby-sitters with "parfeck Inglish end
ethelent riferances", seven estate-agent brochures ("we want more houses
like yours"), six photocopied leaflets for freelance ironers, five ads
for Irish roofers (all recently struck-off from the Federation of Master
Builders), four (false) claims that window cleaners are available for
work, three brochures for hand-made chocolates, two local "free
newspapers" and a council leaflet about yet another controlled parking
zone actually contain a "reply-paid" envelope?
Do you know NOTHING about spam? The only ruddy envelope in the whole
towering mess is one in which to put Christian Aid donations - not that
anyone ever bothers to collect it.
Well, rant over - thanks for supporting my point that all this chunk
which drops through the letterbox is hugely more time-consuming than
spam. At least with spam I don't have to look for reply-paid envelopes
which I then have to spend time taking to the postbox !!
--
Paul Terry
Neil Rothwell
wrote:
>Well, rant over - thanks for supporting my point that all this chunk
>which drops through the letterbox is hugely more time-consuming than
>spam. At least with spam I don't have to look for reply-paid envelopes
>which I then have to spend time taking to the postbox !!
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/mpsR/html/default.asp
It works suprsingly well, and while your at it:
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/fpsR/html/default.asp
http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/TpsR/html/default.asp
--
-------------------------------------------------
Neil Rothwell
Freelance Mechanical Design Engineer
E-Mail: ne...@rothers.demon.co.uk
Home Page: http://www.rothers.demon.co.uk
-------------------------------------------------
Julian Barker
Mark Browne <ne...@kafana.demon.co.uk> wrote
>
>If you subscribe to the postal preference service, as I have done, you
>should receive very little (after some delay to allow it to kick in). It is
>much easier to deal with snail mail junk than UCE, because the costs of
>sending from abroad, coupled with the law saying that the preferences
>must be observed by UK companies, combine to sort it out for me.
I am quite impressed with this. Since using UCE virtually everything but
loan offers from organisations I have financial dealings with have
stopped. The mail exceptions are US based evangelical organisations (and
I know the bastard who thinks I need to be saved!) and postings to a
voluntary organisation that uses this address and seems to be a
potential customer for all sorts of incredible services!
--
Julian Barker
There is a coherent plan in the universe,
though I don't know what it is a plan for.
- Sir Fred Hoyle 1915-2001
Julian Barker
Paul Terry <{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> wrote
>
>
>You should see what its like on coming back from a holiday - it is often
>difficult to get the front door open. 20-30 per day is no exaggeration - I
>guess it comes from living in a densely populated part of London.
>
We get about 30 a week in suburban South London, and almost all go,
completely unexamined, straight into the gerbil cage.
Julian Barker
David Gibson <david-4@[127.0.0.1]> wrote
>In article "Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?" in
><demon.service>, on Thu, 22 May 2003
>st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk writes
>
>>Generalised spam traps cause more problems than spam itself.
>
>So you say. Can we not have the opportunity to find out for ourselves?
>
I have full experience than k you very much. have you any idea how
frustrating it is for an innocent party to find that their mail is being
bounced by a spam filter, most of which are configured to suggest it is
the innocent party's problem that without their knowledge, and with
nothing they can do about it, their ISP has been blocklisted, often for
no sensible reason.
As a person offering services on the Internet, it is a great way to lose
business.
A friend of mine in Seattle has an ISP which uses Blocklists. He has had
to get his ISP to stop filtering his mail. This is because despite being
retired and only using the internet for keeping in touch with friends
and relatives, he found the frequent blocklisting by various ORBs
successors of people who clearly are not spammers, and the damage it did
his personal relationships when people discovered their messages were
returned was unacceptable. He found that people discovering that finding
their message was assumed to be spam was incredibly insulting, and even
close friends directed their irritation and anger at him. It was not
their fault for choosing an ISP that a blocklist chose to target, it was
his fault for choosing an ISP that chose to filter mail.
I confess some affinity with this naive position. Not least because the
action to filter is one the receiver takes and the sender cannot be held
responsible for it. On the receiver can choose the means by which he
chooses to filter mail.
I am afraid I can only see a solution to this when spam becomes
universally unacceptable. The problem will never go away completely, but
currently huge volumes of pornographic mail can be stopped by legal
means. Once enough countries adopt anti-spam laws and start enforcing
them, we can start filtering out mail that comes from countries that
condone spam.
Richard Clayton
4@[127.0.0.1]> writes
>In article "Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?" in
><demon.service>, on Thu, 22 May 2003
>st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk writes
>
>>Generalised spam traps cause more problems than spam itself.
>
>So you say. Can we not have the opportunity to find out for ourselves?
just read how much fun it can be...
<URL:http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?
articleID=10100109>
Colin
> In message <dOOSXxBv...@bozzie.demon.co.uk>, Paul C. Dickie
> <p...@bozzie.demon.co.uk> writes
[...]
>>So get *creative*. Find the junk mail that contain(s) a reply-paid
>>envelope, put the other junk mail into that and send it back.
>
> Eh? What on earth are you on about?
>
> Do you really think that any of twelve pizza leaflets, eleven Indian
> takeaway menus, ten Chinese dinner lists, nine flyers for house
> cleaning, eight ads for Spanish baby-sitters with "parfeck Inglish end
> ethelent riferances", seven estate-agent brochures ("we want more houses
> like yours"), six photocopied leaflets for freelance ironers, five ads
> for Irish roofers (all recently struck-off from the Federation of Master
> Builders), four (false) claims that window cleaners are available for
> work, three brochures for hand-made chocolates, two local "free
> newspapers" and a council leaflet about yet another controlled parking
> zone actually contain a "reply-paid" envelope?
[...]
On the other hand, 'bouncing' junk snail-mail, by writing "not known at
this address - return to sender" on the envelope and dropping it back in
the post box *does* stop the stuff coming, after a while:
After my last change of address, I was receiving large amounts of junk mail
addressed to the previous occupants and had no forwarding address for them.
The above tactic reduced the flow rapidly over a couple of months until
now, I see maybe one a week.
I do the same for mail addressed to me, if I am satisfied it is junk mail,
and on the whole I recieve little postal advertising these days, aside from
'customer information' from my bank et al, which I'm generally prepared to
tolerate - dropped in the composter with a sprinkling of Garotte and banana
peel, the stuff rots down beautifully [1].
Regards, Colin.
[1] If only I could recycle all the extraneous bits and bytes that get
filtered into my spam folders into a more useful form of shit, too, then my
gladioli would be shoulder high by now.
--
"They went on looking. He cracked. Practically anyone will crack
before a sheep cracks. They haven't got much that's crackable."
Terry Pratchett, 'The Last Continent'.
Colin
> In message <WRRkDbCE...@main.machine>, Paul Terry
> <{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
[...]
>>Really? Notice that none of the items I have listed are delivered by
>>post.
>>
>>Are you saying that this preference service will stop the free local
>>papers, the pizza leaflets, the Chinese food menus ... etc ... ?
>
> True, and I missed the distinction. 20-30 items seems a hell of a lot.
As did I in the reply I just posted. However, just about anything sans
address, or addressed to 'the occupier' which drops onto my doormat goes
straight to the composter without passing 'Go' and definitely without
collecting two-hundred pounds.
Regards, Colin.
Paul Terry
<ne...@rothers.demon.co.uk> writes
>http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/mpsR/html/default.asp
>
>It works suprsingly well,
This has already been suggested by someone else who didn't read the
thread!
How will the *MAILING* preference service you suggest manage to stop
people delivering pizza leaflets, estate agents brochures and the like.
They don't come through the post you know!
The information you have pointed me to says ...
MPS cannot stop unaddressed leaflets, items addressed to "The
Occupier", "The Householder" or a business, nor free newspapers
and inserts in magazines and bills. Some local mailings may also
not be stopped.
It is precisely these items that the MPS says it cannot stop that I am
complaining about!
>and while your at it:
>
>http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/fpsR/html/default.asp
And how is a fax preference service (to which I already subscribe in any
case) going to stop all the junk coming through my letterbox?
>http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/TpsR/html/default.asp
You think a telephone preference service will stop all the free
newspapers, restaurant menus and estate agents brochures being pushed
through my letterbox?
I think you've rather missed the point, Neil :(
--
Paul Terry
Chris Hedley
> I am afraid I can only see a solution to this when spam becomes
> universally unacceptable. The problem will never go away completely, but
> currently huge volumes of pornographic mail can be stopped by legal
> means. Once enough countries adopt anti-spam laws and start enforcing
> them, we can start filtering out mail that comes from countries that
> condone spam.
You mean like China, Korea and assorted South American Meatpacking
Gliterati (oops, too much Pink Floyd lately :) I'm not sure if the
situation now vs then regarding this lot is likely to change much,
if at all.
Chris.
--
"If the world was an orange it would be like much too small, y'know?" Neil, '84
Currently playing: Ultravox - "Ultravox!"
http://www.chrishedley.com - assorted stuff, inc my genealogy. Gan canny!
mark
>In article "Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?" in
>>of email spam that aren't bounced automatically takes only a couple of
>>seconds.
>
>Rubbish! You try logging on via Webmail and trying to see the few
>legitimate messages amongst 300 spams! And then trying to delete them!
>
My main worry too.
Don't have a huge amount of email but the stuff I do get is usually
fairly important.
Scope for someone to write a program that would sort out email with some
sort of unique identifier (provided by the recipient to the genuine
sender) separately to the stuff that does not possess the unique
identifier?
I'm aware that my addy has been trotted round usenet for a few years and
so is on a lot of spammers lists. If I give my expected senders the
identifier in private e mail surely the spammers will be unable to find
it out?
--
Mark
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk
<mark_r...@martem.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Scope for someone to write a program that would sort out email with some
>sort of unique identifier (provided by the recipient to the genuine
>sender) separately to the stuff that does not possess the unique
>identifier?
>
You don't need to send unique identifiers. Just use the addresses of
the genuine senders in your watch filters.
I kill filter almost all unsolicited e-mail sent to my "public"
address. I have higher priority watch filters on lists of senders I
need to see. The watch filters also file the e-mails into separate
folders.
I don't use Turnpike but it should be able to do that sort of
filtering. You probably don't need any extra programs.
Andy
<Jer...@omba.demon.co.uk> wrote
[
>More! The last time I received a letter with no stamp it came with a
>bill for 70 or 80p attached to it.
>
between the actual franking and the correct second class postage. Except
that you won't actually get the letter, only the bill, to which you
attach stamps, then repost it or take it to the sorting office.
Email does have advantages sometimes :)
--
Andy
For Austria & its philately, Lupus, & much else visit
<URL:http://www.kitzbuhel.demon.co.uk/>
mark
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk writes
>On Sun, 25 May 2003 11:46:59 +0100, mark
><mark_r...@martem.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>Scope for someone to write a program that would sort out email with some
>>sort of unique identifier (provided by the recipient to the genuine
>>sender) separately to the stuff that does not possess the unique
>>identifier?
>>
>
>
>You don't need to send unique identifiers. Just use the addresses of
>the genuine senders in your watch filters.
>
>I kill filter almost all unsolicited e-mail sent to my "public"
>address. I have higher priority watch filters on lists of senders I
>need to see. The watch filters also file the e-mails into separate
>folders.
>
>I don't use Turnpike but it should be able to do that sort of
>filtering. You probably don't need any extra programs.
>
failures and lost e-mails before I got it to work properly. Not a fault
of turnpikes, rather an inability (more like unwillingness in the face
of time constraints) of a non techy like me to work it all out.
Next reinstall (win98) I just didn't bother. Now if there was an extra
header which could be easily filled in by the sender with an identifier
provided by the recipient; I can see more people using it.
Perhaps other e mail programs are more non techy user friendly?
I do enjoy turnpikes relative obscurity and the resulting safety from
Outlook type nasties though.
--
Mark
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk
<mark_r...@martem.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In message <9981dv8tucpi3t204...@4ax.com>,
>st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk writes
>>
>>I don't use Turnpike but it should be able to do that sort of
>>filtering. You probably don't need any extra programs.
>>
>Hmm. Yes, ok. I have set this up in the past. It took quite a lot of
>failures and lost e-mails before I got it to work properly. Not a fault
>of turnpikes, rather an inability (more like unwillingness in the face
>of time constraints) of a non techy like me to work it all out.
>Next reinstall (win98) I just didn't bother. Now if there was an extra
>header which could be easily filled in by the sender with an identifier
>provided by the recipient; I can see more people using it.
>
I doubt you would get many people to add extra header line even if was
easy.
>Perhaps other e mail programs are more non techy user friendly?
>I do enjoy turnpikes relative obscurity and the resulting safety from
>Outlook type nasties though.
I don't use Outlook either. I've bought a copy of Agent when was first
produced in 1995 and I'm too set in my ways to use anything else. It's
also safe from html and auto-execute nasties. To do what you want I
just press Ctlr & w to set up a watch filter.
Paul Terry
<inval...@bluehill.demon.co.uk> writes
>On the other hand, 'bouncing' junk snail-mail, by writing "not known at
>this address - return to sender" on the envelope and dropping it back in
>the post box *does* stop the stuff coming, after a while:
>
>After my last change of address, I was receiving large amounts of junk mail
>addressed to the previous occupants and had no forwarding address for them.
>The above tactic reduced the flow rapidly over a couple of months until
>now, I see maybe one a week.
>
>I do the same for mail addressed to me, if I am satisfied it is junk mail,
>and on the whole I recieve little postal advertising these days, aside from
>'customer information' from my bank et al, which I'm generally prepared to
>tolerate - dropped in the composter with a sprinkling of Garotte and banana
>peel, the stuff rots down beautifully [1].
What do you do about the stuff that I was complaining about? The dozens
of pizza leaflets, free newspapers, estate agents brochures, etc ... ?
--
Paul Terry
Michael McConnell
<{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>What do you do about the stuff that I was complaining about? The dozens
>of pizza leaflets, free newspapers, estate agents brochures, etc ... ?
I find the green recycle bin dead handy for that. ;)
--
-- Michael "Soruk" McConnell
Eridani Linux -- http://www.eridani.co.uk -- Linux Distros on CD-ROM
MailStripper -- http://www.eridani.co.uk/MailStripper -- strips out spam
** A tachyon: A gluon that isn't dry yet. **
David Gibson
Richard Clayton <ric...@highwayman.com> writes
>>>Generalised spam traps cause more problems than spam itself.
>>
>>So you say. Can we not have the opportunity to find out for ourselves?
>
>just read how much fun it can be...
>
><URL:http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?
>articleID=10100109>
Well, ... OK,... but Im not going to let that sway me :-)
--
David Gibson
Spam-cloaked message: The Reply-to address *is* valid.
David Gibson
Paul Terry <{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
> You try logging on via Webmail and trying to see the few
>>legitimate messages amongst 300 spams! And then trying to delete them!
>
>Why on earth would I want to waste my time using Webmail?
>It would be an appalling way of dealing with spam!
You dont understand - if Im away from my office, and only have access to
"public" web browsers, how else to I access my account?
Gordon Hodgson
<david-4@[127.0.0.1]> writes
>In article "Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?" in
><demon.service>, on Sat, 24 May 2003
>Paul Terry <{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
>
>> You try logging on via Webmail and trying to see the few
>>>legitimate messages amongst 300 spams! And then trying to delete them!
>>
>>Why on earth would I want to waste my time using Webmail?
>>It would be an appalling way of dealing with spam!
>
>You dont understand - if Im away from my office, and only have access to
>"public" web browsers, how else to I access my account?
You could use the POP3 features of a webmail service like yahoo. This
can either involve leaving mail on the server, or you can keep it in the
yahoo account, and then download it onto a computer of your choice, also
by POP3.
--
Gordon Hodgson
(news)(at)(rockmuppet)(dot)(co)(dot)(uk)
http://www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk/ is not a debt consolidation site
Guess what, neither is http://www.debtlinks.org/
If you wish to reply, make sure to take out the rubbish
Paul Terry
McConnell <so...@bitbucket.eridani.co.uk> writes
>On Mon, 26 May 2003 15:25:57 +0100, Paul Terry
><{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>What do you do about the stuff that I was complaining about? The dozens
>>of pizza leaflets, free newspapers, estate agents brochures, etc ... ?
>I find the green recycle bin dead handy for that. ;)
Congratulations! You have at last taken us back to the point I have been
making throughout this thread:
dealing with email spam: 5 seconds per day
dealing with the green recycling bin: 3 minutes per day
--
Paul Terry
Paul Terry
>> You try logging on via Webmail and trying to see the few legitimate
>>messages amongst 300 spams! And then trying to delete them!
me:
>>Why on earth would I want to waste my time using Webmail?
>>It would be an appalling way of dealing with spam!
>You dont understand -
I think I do. You invited *me* to try logging on to webmail. I have no
need.
>if Im away from my office, and only have access to
>"public" web browsers, how else to I access my account?
That's your problem. I'm often away for a week or more at a time. I
still wouldn't bother to use Webmail. Do you go to the wrong Internet
cafes, perchance? ;-)
(Actually I often just pop into the local library wherever I am and use
OE - this ain't rocket science, you know - although passwords need care)
--
Paul Terry
mark
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk writes
>I doubt you would get many people to add extra header line even if was
>easy.
:-/ You may be right..........
>>I do enjoy turnpikes relative obscurity and the resulting safety from
>>Outlook type nasties though.
>
>I don't use Outlook either. I've bought a copy of Agent when was first
>produced in 1995 and I'm too set in my ways to use anything else. It's
>also safe from html and auto-execute nasties. To do what you want I
>just press Ctlr & w to set up a watch filter.
I've tried free agent and for a reason I can't remember didn't actually
like it (it was a very long time ago though).
--
Mark
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk
Free Agent didn't handle e-mail at all so that could be what you
didn't like. Free Agent and Agent were different products. Agent is
now "try before you buy". Free Agent is no longer developed.
Chris Lawrence
> Congratulations! You have at last taken us back to the point I have been
> making throughout this thread:
>
> dealing with email spam: 5 seconds per day
> dealing with the green recycling bin: 3 minutes per day
For you. For someone with a handy green recycling bin and a mobile
device things may be very different.
--
Chris
Mark Browne
<c...@ieya.co.REMOVE_THIS.uk> writes
>You mean like China, Korea and assorted South American Meatpacking
Latin :)
>Gliterati (oops, too much Pink Floyd lately :)
--
Mark Browne
The one thing that they REALLY couldn't stand... was a smartarse
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Phil Thompson
<olei...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>They don't like passing new laws too often.
rubbish, our parliamentary timetable is clogged with new laws being
introduced and there are many others that time prevents them getting
round to.
Phil
Alan Frame
> In article "Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?" in
> <demon.service>, on Thu, 22 May 2003
> Peter Galbavy <pe...@wonderland.org> writes
>
> >I agree with the other who say SPAM is, sadly, the problem of the recipient.
>
> Take two otherwise identical ISPs. One offers a not-quite-perfect spam
> filter; the other insists it is the problem of the recipient.
> Market forces will demonstrate where the customers think the problem
> lies!
Cluefull[0] customers will take a third 'ISP-independent' option and run
their own mail server where they can drop whatever traffic they consider
unwanted at the SMTP-connect phase[1].
Spam is *not* an ISP problem - it's a problem for(/that can be solved
by) those that host machine that MX records point to.
HTH, Alan
[0] And, yes, tracking spam made me cluefull anough in mail routing to
Get Paid To Do It.
[1] Remember, the issue is consent, not content, so body-scanning is
irrelevent.
--
99 Ducati 748BP, 95 Ducati 600SS, 81 Guzzi Monza, 74 MV Agusta 350
"Ride to Work, Work to Ride" SI# 7.067 DoD#1930 PGP Key 0xBDED56C5
David Gibson
Gordon Hodgson <ne...@nospam.demon.co.uk> writes
>>> You try logging on via Webmail and trying to see the few
>>>>legitimate messages amongst 300 spams! And then trying to delete them!
>>>
>>>Why on earth would I want to waste my time using Webmail?
>>>It would be an appalling way of dealing with spam!
>>
>>You dont understand - if Im away from my office, and only have access to
>>"public" web browsers, how else to I access my account?
>
>You could use the POP3 features of a webmail service like yahoo. This
>can either involve leaving mail on the server, or you can keep it in the
>yahoo account, and then download it onto a computer of your choice, also
>by POP3.
I cant see why this point seems to be so difficult to get across!!!
If I access my mail using any sort of web-based service, remote from my
PC, it is utterly swamped by the number of spam messages in the mailbox.
I do not want to wade through a listing of hundreds to find the ones I
need to read. This is why I was saying that a filter that removed them
from the server would be a good idea IMO, YMMV.
David Gibson
Julian Barker <Jul...@rodent.demon.co.uk> writes
>>>Generalised spam traps cause more problems than spam itself.
>>
>>So you say. Can we not have the opportunity to find out for ourselves?
>>
>
>I have full experience thank you very much.
Fine. Id still like the opportunity to find out for myself :-)
Graham Murray
> It is an ISP problem when they won't supply SMTP for aDSL users :(
If you use your own domain then you should be able to set your system
as the primary MX record and therefore received mail by SMTP.
Neale D. Hind
<ne...@nospam.demon.co.uk> writes
>In message <rZt8gUAkxk0+EwFA@[127.0.0.1]>, David Gibson
><david-4@[127.0.0.1]> writes
>>In article "Spam - Demon heaping problems on itself and us?" in
>><demon.service>, on Sat, 24 May 2003
>>Paul Terry <{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
>>
>>> You try logging on via Webmail and trying to see the few
>>>>legitimate messages amongst 300 spams! And then trying to delete them!
>>>
>>>Why on earth would I want to waste my time using Webmail?
>>>It would be an appalling way of dealing with spam!
>>
>>You dont understand - if Im away from my office, and only have access to
>>"public" web browsers, how else to I access my account?
>
>You could use the POP3 features of a webmail service like yahoo. This
>can either involve leaving mail on the server, or you can keep it in
>the yahoo account, and then download it onto a computer of your choice,
>also by POP3.
Several clients I work at now block POP3 access through their firewalls.
This leaves the web front-end the only access method. It can take me an
hour to get demon's web mail to display my messages and then to try and
find real messages among the junk.
I'm quite sick of seeing the 'your session has expired please login'
message.
--
Neale Hind
http://www.easton.demon.co.uk
Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your children
Paul Terry
<david-4@[127.0.0.1]> writes
>I cant see why this point seems to be so difficult to get across!!!
Perhaps some of us don't understand why you must use a web interface
rather than a proper POP3 client. I'm sure there's a good reason, but
may be it hasn't come across yet?
>If I access my mail using any sort of web-based service, remote from my
>PC, it is utterly swamped by the number of spam messages in the mailbox.
>I do not want to wade through a listing of hundreds to find the ones I
>need to read.
I can understand that. I tried Demon's webmail thing when it first came
out - it was hopeless. I gather it has got worse since then. When I'm
away I use a POP3 email client - even (I confess) OE on occasion - but I
certainly don't faff around using webmail.
--
Paul Terry
Alan Frame
> On Wed, 28 May 2003 22:29:29 +0100, Alan Frame used
> <1fvowmd.7e3de314wh39aN%alan....@acm.org> to say...
>
> >Spam is *not* an ISP problem - it's a problem for(/that can be solved
> >by) those that host machine that MX records point to.
>
> It is an ISP problem when they won't supply SMTP for aDSL users :(
Sort-of - but in Demon's case, even if they deliver to us punters by
SMTP, the initial connection is made to *their* MX boxen - where there
is no option to drop spamish connections ;-(
rgds, Alan
Tim Levy
<ne...@musonix.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> ...
> Perhaps some of us don't understand why you must use a web interface
> rather than a proper POP3 client. I'm sure there's a good reason, but
> may be it hasn't come across yet?
> ...
OK, here's one reason.
Out here in the real world, some of us often have to work at clients'
premises where, commonly:
1. it is not permitted (or not good etiquette) to plug one's own lap-top
(or whatever) into the client's network;
2. it is not permitted (or not good etiquette) to make changes to software
settings on the clients' computers or to install one's own software on
clients' computers; and sometimes
3. it is not permitted to power-up cellular radio telephones and/or the
cellular signal doesn't penetrate the installation, so Internet access via
mobile 'phone is not an option (as opposed to being possible but,
generally, painful).
Sometimes the clients' computers do, however, have web browser access to
the outside world: in which cases webmail (generically) can be pretty
handy.
HTH explain some folk's preoccupation with Demon's largely dysfunctional
(during office hours) webmail.
--
Tim Levy
London, UK
Tim -at- nostromo.demon.co.uk
David Woolley
"Neale D. Hind <nos...@127.0.0.1>" <> wrote:
> Several clients I work at now block POP3 access through their firewalls.
My employers did this from the beginning. They now also have a policy
that web based email systems not be used, which they try to enforce with
technical measures (a site needs to be whitelisted if it is not a web based
mail site and contains "mail" in the domain name). The reasoning is that
web based email bypasses the virus checking that they have in the
official email channels.
> I'm quite sick of seeing the 'your session has expired please login'
> message.
This message can be bogus. E.g., before the ban on web based email,
the site proxy would re-proxy to PSI's proxy. This has multiple
servers on one domain name and the requests would be spread across them.
It looks as though Demon webmail either treats the immediate source IP
address as part of the session ID, or load shares, at least partially,
based on source IP address.
The result is that you can get 'your session has expired...', but repeat
attempts will eventually connect with the server that owns the session and
you can continue, or in my case, more likely I would try for a clean
logout.
It's now completely unusable to me because of the ban, but before that,
it was the only option from the office, even though really frustrating
to use. The old system, on the other hand, worked well over the grossly
overloaded connections in Chinese internet cafe's when Freeserve's
(and, I gather hotmail's etc.) simply stalled.
Al
> my PC, it is utterly swamped by the number of spam messages in the
> mailbox. I do not want to wade through a listing of hundreds to find
> the ones I need to read.
You could pay $30 for a spamcop/cesmail account which would do everything
you want. But it would cost, er, $30.
> This is why I was saying that a filter that
> removed them from the server would be a good idea IMO, YMMV.
Er, no. Filtering by ISP is bad, bad, bad. You'll be asking your postman to
filter your snail-mail next.
Al.
Don Moody
<alne...@hotmail.com> writes
>> If I access my mail using any sort of web-based service, remote from
>> my PC, it is utterly swamped by the number of spam messages in the
>> mailbox. I do not want to wade through a listing of hundreds to find
>> the ones I need to read.
>
>You could pay $30 for a spamcop/cesmail account which would do everything
>you want. But it would cost, er, $30.
>
>> This is why I was saying that a filter that
>> removed them from the server would be a good idea IMO, YMMV.
>
>Er, no. Filtering by ISP is bad, bad, bad.
It'll have to come sooner or later, BY LAW, that ISPs filter at least
that spam which is criminal or invites to crime, as defined in the
jurisdiction where the ISP lives.
> You'll be asking your postman to
>filter your snail-mail next.
That is exactly what I do and have done for years and years. There is in
the UK a thing called the Mailing Preference Service. I expressed my
preference to get no junkmail to my snail-mail address from anybody
marketing anything. I ALWAYS tick the box that says that address is not
to be passed to any organisation for marketing purposes. Net result: no
junkmail and no loss of wanted mail in the process.
A similar scheme operates for fax and for telephone sales calls. I had
one fax marketing company closed down because it ignored my request and
sent me faxes which were not only unwanted but were criminal, and were
dangerous to some members of the public.
All three schemes are positively old. If it can be done in those media
it can be done electronically. The common factor in all four media is
that junkcommunications are one-to-many. The common factor in the first
three media is that wanted one-to-many is not impeded. All three media
have OPT-IN possibilities, which takes care of things like learned
societies sending journals to their members or banks sending statements
to customers. The opt-in has to be verifiable with a signed piece of
paper. The equivalent on the net is PGP signing.
It is ludicrous to assert that ISPs cannot detect one-to-many
communications. By definition, if they can't count the number of copies
they couldn't send a copy to every address listed in CC. It only needs
one glance by one person in an abuse team at one copy to discern whether
the one-to-many is criminal or an invitation to crime as defined in the
jurisdiction in which that person is sitting. It is very easy indeed to
devise a scheme of what should happen then. To give three common
examples applying in the UK (and therefore to Demon) child pornography,
selling medicines without a licence, and pyramid selling are all
criminal.
Turning that on its head, do you, Al, think filtering at ISP is 'bad,
bad, bad' because you are a child pornographer, a seller of dangerous
drugs, and a pyramid scammer? Or do you think it would be good, good,
good to get none of that spam because you are none of those things? It's
a simple binary choice. If you cannot provide a sound, logical and legal
answer as to why filtering by ISP is 'bad, bad, bad', or if you provide
no answer, then you label yourself.
Don
--
Dr D P Moody, Ashwood, Exeter Cross, Liverton, Newton Abbot, Devon,
England TQ12 6EY
Tel: +44(0) 1626 821725 Fax: +44(0) 1626 824912
Paul Terry
<cd...@nostromo.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <z2LdqlI2...@main.machine>, Paul Terry
><ne...@musonix.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> ...
>> Perhaps some of us don't understand why you must use a web interface
>> rather than a proper POP3 client. I'm sure there's a good reason, but
>> may be it hasn't come across yet?
>> ...
>OK, here's one reason.
>
>Out here in the real world, some of us often have to work at clients'
>premises
Yes, so do I from time to time.
>where, commonly:
>
>1. it is not permitted (or not good etiquette) to plug one's own lap-top
>(or whatever) into the client's network;
>
>2. it is not permitted (or not good etiquette) to make changes to software
>settings on the clients' computers or to install one's own software on
>clients' computers; and sometimes
>
>3. it is not permitted to power-up cellular radio telephones and/or the
>cellular signal doesn't penetrate the installation, so Internet access via
>mobile 'phone is not an option (as opposed to being possible but,
>generally, painful).
OK. Thanks for the explanation. I have never come across companies that
are that restrictive. I am always been allowed to use a company
telephone socket in order to connect direct to my ISP. They tend to take
the view that they would rather I use my own machine than risk letting
me use theirs - security, viruses and other reasons come to mind.
>Sometimes the clients' computers do, however, have web browser access to
>the outside world: in which cases webmail (generically) can be pretty
>handy.
I'd be terrified of using such a method - not the slowness, although
that would be bad enough, but the thought of what I would leave behind
in the cache of the company's web browser. Details of emails from their
rivals for whom I work, details of quotes I have given to other
companies. Shudder.
--
Paul Terry
James Coupe
<d...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk> writes:
>It'll have to come sooner or later, BY LAW, that ISPs filter at least
>that spam which is criminal or invites to crime, as defined in the
>jurisdiction where the ISP lives.
And how, precisely, are they going to know that?
Are you going to invent some fascinating new algorithm that can tell the
difference between criminal e-mail, e-mail talking about such crimes in
a legitimate fashion, e-mail where the criminal intent is obfuscated,
perfectly legitimate e-mail, an e-mail which talks about crime entirely
jokingly ("Damn, I'll murder him/her when I get my hands on him!") and
so on?
And are you going to pay for the ISP to employ a whole team of lawyers
to define this? If it's anything which invites a criminal act, there's
*lots* of criminal law out there, and lots of case law regarding such.
They'll be hard pressed to keep up.
Out of interest, how much thought have you put into actually *doing*
this? Like, writing the algorithms with your clearly expert knowledge
of the criminal law and e-mail filtering techniques.
--
James Coupe
PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D
Lucky that my breasts are small and humble, EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2
So you don't confuse them with mountains. 13D7E668C3695D623D5D
Simon Turner
<lOX8uMFk...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk>
d...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk "Don Moody" wrote:
> In message <Xns938BEA36C2B73a...@130.133.1.4>, Al
> <alne...@hotmail.com> writes
> > You'll be asking your postman to
> >filter your snail-mail next.
> That is exactly what I do and have done for years and years.
No, it isn't. Not even close.
> There is in
> the UK a thing called the Mailing Preference Service.
No, that is completely and utterly different. The postman doesn't
filter your snail-mail in accordance with your wishes; it never gets
sent at all, because the people *sending* the unsolicited mail examine
the MPS list and don't send it to people on the list. The same is
true of the Telephone and Fax Preference Services; the calls are never
made in the first place.
It certainly isn't up to your MSP (Mail Service Provider) or TSP
(Telephone Service Provider) to screen you from these unsolicited
mailings, calls or faxes, and it would be totally unworkable if it
were. However, this is what you are claiming that your ISP should do,
while citing the {M,T,F}PS as a supposed example of how this works;
you are insisting that lumps of cheese must be able to write on
blackboards.
> All three schemes are positively old. If it can be done in those media
> it can be done electronically.
Cheddar and blackboards again.
Unsolicited e-mail is quite different from unsolicited mail, telephone
calls or faxes -- amongst other things, because of the cost incurred
by the sender, which is negligible for e-mail, but considerable for the
others. For this reason, almost all unsolicited mail/phone/fax in the
UK is originated by UK companies, who are relatively easy to subject
to UK laws; as I'm sure you are aware, this is not the case at all for
e-mail. The UK and the EU can pass laws making spamming illegal until
they are blue in the face, and it won't even slow the spammers down,
because they cannot be made subject to those laws. How do you propose
that we ensure they all adhere to the E-mail Preference System? Ask
them nicely?
> It is ludicrous to assert that ISPs cannot detect one-to-many
> communications. By definition, if they can't count the number of copies
> they couldn't send a copy to every address listed in CC.
Of course. I don't recall anyone making that assertion.
> It only needs
> one glance by one person in an abuse team at one copy to discern whether
> the one-to-many is criminal or an invitation to crime as defined in the
> jurisdiction in which that person is sitting.
<Boggle>
Are you *really* suggesting that ISPs should employ enough people that
every piece of e-mail arriving at their mail systems which is
addressed to more than N recipients can be individually examined for
traces of spamminess or illegality? How much extra are you prepared
to pay for the hundreds or thousands of extra employees this would
require? And bear in mind that they would all need to be vetted to
the n'th degree, and have to sign an impossibly perfect
globally-agreed universal non-disclosure agreement which would make
the Official Secrets Act look like "scout's honour".
By the way, what value would you set for N in this system of yours?
--
Simon Turner DoD #0461
si...@twoplaces.co.uk
Trust me -- I know what I'm doing! -- Sledge Hammer
Mark Browne
>>filter your snail-mail next.
>That is exactly what I do and have done for years and years. There is
>in the UK a thing called the Mailing Preference Service. I expressed my
>preference to get no junkmail to my snail-mail address from anybody
>marketing anything. I ALWAYS tick the box that says that address is not
>to be passed to any organisation for marketing purposes. Net result: no
>junkmail and no loss of wanted mail in the process.
Your postman does not do this filtering - the mail never gets sent. That
said, I also use this and the other preference services.
>A similar scheme operates for fax and for telephone sales calls. I had
>one fax marketing company closed down because it ignored my request and
>sent me faxes which were not only unwanted but were criminal, and were
>dangerous to some members of the public.
However, this model does not (yet) work for spam. When sending faxes or
mail, or making phone calls, the marginal cost is not negligible, so it
is worth the senders paying attention to the rules. Also, doing these
things from abroad costs quite a lot, so it would not be profitable to
go abroad to escape the law. This is not true of spam.
>It is ludicrous to assert that ISPs cannot detect one-to-many
>communications.
Of course they can. But they cannot tell whether they are legitimate,
in just the same way that the post office cannot tell if the junk mail
that I am receiving is wanted or not. Only I can decide that.
--
Mark Browne
If replying by email, please use the "Reply-To" address, as the
"From" address will be rejected
David Gibson
Paul Terry <{$news_03$}@musonix.demon.co.uk> writes
>>I cant see why this point seems to be so difficult to get across!!!
>
>Perhaps some of us don't understand why you must use a web interface
>rather than a proper POP3 client. I'm sure there's a good reason, but
>may be it hasn't come across yet?
Because the places I go (mainly a library at Leeds University, but other
places too) do not allow me to use anything other than a web interface -
the public terminals do not allow e-mail usage.
>>If I access my mail using any sort of web-based service, remote from my
>>PC, it is utterly swamped by the number of spam messages in the mailbox.
>>I do not want to wade through a listing of hundreds to find the ones I
>>need to read.
>
>I can understand that.
Oh good! :-)
David Gibson
Al <alne...@hotmail.com> writes
>> This is why I was saying that a filter that
>> removed them from the server would be a good idea IMO, YMMV.
>
>Er, no. Filtering by ISP is bad, bad, bad. You'll be asking your postman to
>filter your snail-mail next.
No I wont - why do you suppose that?
I cant believe the arrogance and condescension of some people on this
topic. *I* would like my mail filtered on the server. That is my
preference, which I am expressing, in full knowledge of the
consequences. Why do you have a problem with that?
Terry Pratchett
<si...@twoplaces.co.uk> writes
>
>Are you *really* suggesting that ISPs should employ enough people that
>every piece of e-mail arriving at their mail systems which is
>addressed to more than N recipients can be individually examined for
>traces of spamminess or illegality?
Well, I've got Mailwasher set to delete everything with 'penis'or
'Viagra' in the heading:-)
Sitting here, I'm quite prepared to deal with my own spam. What I would
*like* is a service that didn't require me to tease my mail out of it.
--
Terry Pratchett
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
ne...@musonix.demon.co.uk "Paul Terry" writes:
> In message <pan.2003.05.22....@fenrir.org.uk>, Brian
> Morrison <sc...@fenrir.org.uk> writes
>
> >On Thu, 22 May 2003 17:45:31 +0100, in article
> ><H+x0Cxtr...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk> Don Moody
> ><d...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
> >Which version of cloud cuckoo land do you live in?
>
> A Google Groups search on "Don Moody" +troll
> will tell you.
Quite: I'm surprised that any regular poster to this group hasn't got the
fuckwit in his/her killfile.
--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} b...@dsl.co.uk
"We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would. Yet we are
untrained to mix with our neighbours, or even talk to them".
George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1919
Simon Turner
david-4@[127.0.0.1] "David Gibson" wrote:
> I cant believe the arrogance and condescension of some people on this
> topic. *I* would like my mail filtered on the server. That is my
> preference, which I am expressing, in full knowledge of the
> consequences. Why do you have a problem with that?
Each to his own, of course. You'd like your mail filtered, in full
knowledge of the consequences and the possibility of false positives;
I wouldn't. That's a choice, and I understand people like you who say
that they would like to be able to make that choice for themselves.
(I have a harder time understanding those people who insist that *my*
mail should be filtered, just because they want *theirs* to be; but
fortunately such people are rare.)
My "problem" with the idea of Demon customers being able to filter
their own mail at the Demon end is one of system complexity, and the
likelihood of my mail getting caught in the wheels somewhere. If some
customer mail is fed directly to the mailstore, while mail for other
customers is passed through a filtering system with per-customer
definable rules/thresholds, the complexity of the system as a whole
rises dramatically; complex systems are harder (and more expensive) to
maintain, and the likelihood of system bugs, or good old-fashioned
cockups, producing undesired behaviour is considerably higher.
Do you think Thus would allocate more resources to maintaining the new
more complex mail system, or would it simply expect the existing
people/budget to cope? Demon struggle to keep *any* systems working
as intended: the mail system has been on its knees for ages; the news
system has multiple long-standing issues, including a serious (but
unacknowledged) synchronisation problem between the overview database
and article availability; the new webmail was virtually unusable
*before* the current mail meltdown took hold; the accounts "system" is
laughable; who knows how many other things aren't doing what they are
supposed to do. Do you really think a vastly more complex mail system
would be any different?
I've had Demon change my POP3 password behind my back, when some other
customer wanted his password changed but they changed mine instead;
that wasn't too bad, because no mail was lost (and I normally use SMTP
anyway); but what if that had been a change from the "no filtering"
mail system to the "no spam at all, and damn the consequences" filter
settings? How much mail would I have lost before I realised what had
happened?
If I could be convinced that there was no possibility of
user-selectable mail filtering interfering with the safe unfiltered
passage of my mail, I would probably feel differently; but otherwise,
sorry, but no thanks.
Don Moody
<si...@twoplaces.co.uk> writes
>> It only needs
>> one glance by one person in an abuse team at one copy to discern whether
>> the one-to-many is criminal or an invitation to crime as defined in the
>> jurisdiction in which that person is sitting.
>
><Boggle>
>
>Are you *really* suggesting that ISPs should employ enough people that
>every piece of e-mail arriving at their mail systems which is
>addressed to more than N recipients can be individually examined for
>traces of spamminess or illegality?
ahead of the law and do it voluntarily.
> How much extra are you prepared
>to pay for the hundreds or thousands of extra employees this would
>require?
Don't be bloody stupid. It would take exactly ONE employee no more than
a glance at any one email which 'qualified by number' to ascertain
whether it was criminal or an invitation to crime. I gave three examples
of how simple it would be to do. Allowing a minute per glance plus
hitting suitable control keys to activate response, and allowing time
off, call it as low as 50 emails per hour 'judged'. Say an 8 hour day is
really only 6 hours work. So that is 300 emails 'judged' per day per
employee. MINIMUM. Allow three shifts and a bit of a pick up in speed
and 1000 mass emails could be 'judged' per day. Bear in mind that 1 mass
email is 'judged' just once - however many hundreds of thousands of
copies of it there may be.
Or are you arguing that hundreds of thousands of customers should get an
invitation to child pornography because you want one as a practising
child pornographer? A simple yes or no will do for an answer.
> And bear in mind that they would all need to be vetted to
>the n'th degree, and have to sign an impossibly perfect
>globally-agreed universal non-disclosure agreement which would make
>the Official Secrets Act look like "scout's honour".
Why? You are merely raising spectres. The requirement does not exist. A
pyramid scam is a pyramid scam is a pyramid scam. It needs no vetting
and no non-disclosure and no super-OSA to see and say that a pyramid
scam is what it is.
>
>By the way, what value would you set for N in this system of yours?
>
I set no value. If I were running an ISP I'd start with a value like 25%
of my customer base. Having dealt with those, I'd start lowering the
value as the total spam load dropped and as resources allow. Some of
those resources would come from investment I would not have to be making
in equipment to handle the large and useless flows of spam. If the ISPs
do not get onto this, or some similar scheme, for reducing spam in their
own time, they'll have values prescribed for them by law - without any
regard to proportionality or affordability. Their choice is going to be
self-control of attack on CRIMINAL spam or government control of their
attack on spam. If I were an ISP owner, I'd choose self-control because
I'd know my business needs better than some civil service enforcer knows
them. I'd also be betting that if I, and my fellow-owners of ISPs,
reduced the burden of spam, then the pressure to get legislation on the
topic (and on anything else the government might take the opportunity to
chuck in) would disappear. That would be one lot of admin less.
The notion that no government can legislate against an international
problem is more self-serving crap from pornographers, con artists and
the like. Governments can legislate. They can legislate what companies
domiciled in their jurisdiction will do. ISPs domiciled in the UK can be
told by law what they will do about criminal spam, whether it originates
in the UK or overseas, and they can be told how they will do it. Again
they've got the same choice. Self-control or be controlled. Again, if I
were an ISP owner I'd opt for self-control.
I'd commend those who think the problem is insoluble to look at SARS as
an analogy. That was transmitted by individuals doing their own thing
and without control. Toronto took the liberal view of everything being
alright and letting people get on with their individual lives. So there
has been a second outbreak which has killed people. Singapore took the
situation by the scruff of the neck and got as ruthless as necessary to
stop the disease in its tracks. It succeeded. When a situation has built
up to be as intolerable as the criminal spam situation, and when it is a
contributory cause of so much expense and of so much poor service, then
it has to be dealt with by getting tough.
There is not much time for ISPs to self-control. There are already MPs
sufficiently pissed-off with criminal spam to have started the early
moves towards legislation.
Richard Clayton
<d...@hyperpeople.demon.co.uk> writes
>In message <20030531.17...@twoplaces.co.uk>, Simon Turner
><si...@twoplaces.co.uk> writes
>>Are you *really* suggesting that ISPs should employ enough people that
>>every piece of e-mail arriving at their mail systems which is
>>addressed to more than N recipients can be individually examined for
>>traces of spamminess or illegality?
>Yes. And it will happen because it has to happen if the ISPs don't get
>ahead of the law and do it voluntarily.
it would be significantly ahead of the law.... since there must be some
considerable chance of success of a prosecution under s1(1)(b) of the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
--
richard writing to inform and not as company policy
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM
Brian {Hamilton Kelly}
ne...@musonix.demon.co.uk "Paul Terry" writes:
> Eh? What on earth are you on about?
>
> Do you really think that any of twelve pizza leaflets, eleven Indian
> takeaway menus, ten Chinese dinner lists, nine flyers for house
> cleaning, eight ads for Spanish baby-sitters with "parfeck Inglish end
> ethelent riferances", seven estate-agent brochures ("we want more houses
> like yours"), six photocopied leaflets for freelance ironers, five ads
> for Irish roofers (all recently struck-off from the Federation of Master
> Builders), four (false) claims that window cleaners are available for
> work, three brochures for hand-made chocolates, two local "free
> newspapers" and a council leaflet about yet another controlled parking
> zone actually contain a "reply-paid" envelope?
You forgot the partidge in a pear-tree.