[pchelpers] Re: Mountains of spam

Hi Scott

> EGlnl> Well, it's only public to those on the list, which is why i reacted to

i of course meant "so quickly"

> EGlnl> quickly to the spammer we had as a member a while ago. On the website,
> EGlnl> the addresses are obscured as eric.furman@xxxxxxxx, for example.
> 
> Ekhart, the problem is the spammers who do NOT post to the list, but
> instead just lurk and collect messages and thus email addresses for
> later use doe direct mail efforts. Also, messages may be forwarded by
> list members to other people and public locations. All of this happens
> without any obvious indication on the list itself. In short, you
> should assume that it's public, one way or another.

Professional spammers do not waste their time signing up on mailing 
lists to collect addresses. I've posted on this list for more than 2 
years, and i've only received very little spam, and even this probably 
came through other sources. Manual work is poison for people interested 
in get-rich-quick schemes such as spamming. The sort of amateur we had 
on the list a while ago proved that he was an amateur by not lurking and 
making himself very obvious through very clumsy behavior.

> Any mailing list, any newsgroup, many forums, probably places like
> eBay, etc., are all public.

Almost all of my spam is the result of posting on Microsoft newsgroups 
many years ago. I could easily stop getting it by canceling that old 
address, but i actually enjoy getting it so that i can test 
Thunderbird's spam filter, which catches more than 99%.

> EGlnl> Another big problem is people who put addresses into the "To"
> EGlnl> or "CC" fields when sending several copies of an e-mail instead
> EGlnl> of using Bcc.
> 
> I think ISPs and/or email programs should explain this more, and make
> it a default field, and in fact possibly even make it easier to use
> BCC: than CC:.

Yes, i tried suggesting that a while ago to my ISP, but they're as lazy 
as most in that industry. I will write a letter to the editor of some 
major US and Finnish papers.


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