[antispam-f] Re: What have they got against Deborah anyway?
- From: Stuart Painting <stuart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: antispam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2006 00:23:12 GMT
Jeremy C B Nicoll <Jeremy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> In article <55138e8b4e.stuart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Stuart Painting <stuart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Jeremy C B Nicoll <Jeremy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> > I really don't understand why so many people think that BCC means
>> > spam.
>
>> Because, apart from the "mailing lists" case mentioned above, it *is*
>> overwhelmingly likely to be spam.
>
> Not in everyone's case. The reason I counter statements like yours is
> that it's too easy for someone who understands this less to assume that
> for them too, BCC will equal spam.
People have to make their own minds up on this matter. We could argue
the toss over practically *any* filter someone came up with, on the
(correct) grounds that it won't be suitable for everybody.
Perhaps you are of the view that we shouldn't be discussing filters at
all. If that is the case I'm inclined to agree with you, but probably
not for the reason you're thinking.
> Perhaps you never get any legitimate BCCed mail from businesses?
You're right. I don't. Next question?
>> A BCC from anyone on my whitelist would get through.
>
> The problem with that is that unless you've got a tiny group of people
> who email you, is that the whitelist is not likely to be uptodate.
That's true of whitelists, and probably a lot of other rules as well.
Filtering email is inherently risky, and anyone who loses sight of
that is going to have problems.
> After all when a friend changes their email address and emails you &
> all their other friends (using BCC of course) to say so, what's the
> chance that that email got deleted by your rule that BCC means spam?
> Their new address won't yet be in your whitelist.
I *hate* BCCs. All my friends know that. And besides there's this
marvellous invention called the telephone you may have heard of.
>> No, I don't. If I were so moved to send out something to multiple
>> recipients where I didn't want any risk of anyone knowing who else
>> had received it, I'd send it in separate emails to each recipient in
>> turn.
>
> Really? That's not very practical is it? Would you really take all
> that extra trouble, or would you just leave the addresses visible? The
> way you answered kind of suggests you aren't in the habit of doing this
> often - or ever - and I wonder why?
Because the situation never arises in practice. If I am sending a
message to multiple recipients I'm either emailing a close-knit group
of friends who all know each other, or I'm writing to mailing lists
(such as this one) where I have no knowledge of the full subscriber
list. In neither case would an explicit BCC at my end be of any use.
As always, Your Mileage May Vary.
>> I have seen too many cases where a supposedly "BCC'd" email managed
>> to disclose the full list of recipients (by means of additional
>> headers that the sender presumably didn't realise were there).
>
> But *your* email client [Messenger-Pro/3.29] isn't broken, or is it?
In at least one of the cases I saw, the additional headers were
inserted by an intermediate server (Exim 4.12, if you're interested),
not the email client.
> I was simply saying that I thought your supposition that this happens
> "accidentally" is probably wrong. There's an excellent reason for a
> spammer to assume that generating <surname><firstname> addresses will
> find some genuine recipients.
But *my* surname and *my* first name? Never anybody else's surname or
first name? When they hit the bullseye 100% of the time I'm inclined
to think they've got outside help. Like from an email address book on
someone's PC, for example.
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