Slashdot Mirror

Give me software which allows me to set my email receiving/reading tools to only receive/read email which I have solicited, all others get bounced back or thrown in the bitbucket. Call it a spam firewall or whatever.

I have CF13 handle all my incoming email. I'm getting unwanted file attachments that are likely brand-spanking-new malware but haven't been detected yet by the antivirus programs as malware (just released into the wild). So these suspect file attachments sit as 'text files' on my hard disk drive waiting to be scanned and identified as malware--a likely possiblility.

I use Outpost Firewall to keep malware out at the Internet data transport level. Using both give me peace of mind after my run-in with Klez a year or so ago....

About two years ago I download a shareware program from a particular website.

After that, my PC acted sluggishly after I installed the program and whenever I when online.

I finally found out my PC had picked up the Klez virus and that a bunch of .exe files were infected with it.

After this incident, after disinfecting my PC, I took PC security very seriously!

I found the URLs below very helpful to keep my PC free of all malware:

The 'Home User Self Defense Guides' at http://www.uksecurityonline.com
(Thanks to spammers/crackers/blackhats, you have get a free account with a valid email address in order to access the Guides.)

AVG antivirus by Grisoft.
Sysclean by Trend Micro
Outpost Firewall by Agnitum.

My program CF13 keeps malware out of my PC by treating all email file attachments as 'text files'. This renders any malware in them inert and also makes it safe to scan said files for malware or otherwise handle them--even delete them.

The only way the botnets will continue to survive is through user inertia/apathy or, worse yet, trusted firewall/antivirus programs become silently compromised and used widely.

Read the post here.

If you were using my program CF13, all your spam would have been funneled into two files for ease of perusal and deletion and all spam attachments (which are likely virus laden) would have been rendered 'harmless' and clearly labeled making it easy to delete them.

I have also programmed a 'spamblaster' version of CF13 to delete spam at the server level whenever possible but that would inevitably lead to a 'false positive' and a non-spam email being deleted as a result. It's advantage is that 'spams are counted but not logged and stored'. Since you are drowning in spam, my program could possibly help you.

A better fix would be to mark all astroturf submissions "denied".

Then Slashdot would have to shut down on principle....

astroturf/free ad: 100GB, 9.5mm thick HD from Toshiba

astroturf/free ad: VIA Announces Lead-Free Motherboard

astroturf/free ad: Delorean Time Machine Replica Up For Auction

astroturf/free ad: DSPAM v2.10 Released

iamcf13's Recent Submissions
Title Datestamp
Entertainment news: Jack Valenti retires (& expensive 9-figure movies) Thursday March 25, @12:10PM Rejected
astroturf/free ad: A bold, new approach to fighting spam.... Thursday March 11, @11:51PM Rejected

Toshiba got free advertising on Slashdot.

VIA got free advertising on Slashdot.

The person selling the BTTF Delorean Time Machine Replica got free advertising on Slashdot.

The DSPAM creator(s) got free advertising on Slashdot.

Jack Valenti retires!
Sounded like news to me so I pass the URL on to Slashdot.
Rejected.

Hey everybody, I wrote 'the mother of all email spam filters' after months of research, thought, and programming.
I pass the URL on to Slashdot so others can know about it.
Rejected.

It would appear Slashdot's editorial policy is inconsistent....

What does it take to get a story on Slashdot?

I submitted a genuine, non-astroturf story about outgoing MPAA president Jack Valenti and expensive Hollywood movies and got rejected. Can't be a bandwith issue--surely Slashdot cannot slashdot the BBC's website, can they? So then why was this story rejected after I (haphazardly) summarized it (along with some parting thoughts) rather than simply give them a sentence or two along with the URL?

My retail software product is, at face value no different from the other items for sale mentioned above. Why the apparent bias that appears to favor big companies or 'big ticket items' offered for sale by private citizens?

Then there's DSPAM and CF13, two email spam filters.

One is open source.

The other is closed source but open algorithm. There is enough information available at the CF13 homepage for a knowledgeable programmer to write their own version of CF13 if they wanted to. In fact, I took GREAT PAINS to make sure the algorithms used by CF13 wouldn't wind up patented and out of play for the next twenty years!

Doesn't that sound like something newsworthy?

Does Slashdot's editorial policy boil down to:

If there is money involved, size matters. If not, it has to be free and open source.

If it does, it should be changed for the better to something more impartial than what is in place now....

A better fix would be to mark all astroturf submissions "denied".

Then Slashdot would have to shut down on principle....

astroturf/free ad: 100GB, 9.5mm thick HD from Toshiba

astroturf/free ad: VIA Announces Lead-Free Motherboard

astroturf/free ad: Delorean Time Machine Replica Up For Auction

astroturf/free ad: DSPAM v2.10 Released

iamcf13's Recent Submissions
Title Datestamp
Entertainment news: Jack Valenti retires (& expensive 9-figure movies) Thursday March 25, @12:10PM Rejected
astroturf/free ad: A bold, new approach to fighting spam.... Thursday March 11, @11:51PM Rejected

Toshiba got free advertising on Slashdot.

VIA got free advertising on Slashdot.

The person selling the BTTF Delorean Time Machine Replica got free advertising on Slashdot.

The DSPAM creator(s) got free advertising on Slashdot.

Jack Valenti retires!
Sounded like news to me so I pass the URL on to Slashdot.
Rejected.

Hey everybody, I wrote 'the mother of all email spam filters' after months of research, thought, and programming.
I pass the URL on to Slashdot so others can know about it.
Rejected.

It would appear Slashdot's editorial policy is inconsistent....

What does it take to get a story on Slashdot?

I submitted a genuine, non-astroturf story about outgoing MPAA president Jack Valenti and expensive Hollywood movies and got rejected. Can't be a bandwith issue--surely Slashdot cannot slashdot the BBC's website, can they? So then why was this story rejected after I (haphazardly) summarized it (along with some parting thoughts) rather than simply give them a sentence or two along with the URL?

My retail software product is, at face value no different from the other items for sale mentioned above. Why the apparent bias that appears to favor big companies or 'big ticket items' offered for sale by private citizens?

Then there's DSPAM and CF13, two email spam filters.

One is open source.

The other is closed source but open algorithm. There is enough information available at the CF13 homepage for a knowledgeable programmer to write their own version of CF13 if they wanted to. In fact, I took GREAT PAINS to make sure the algorithms used by CF13 wouldn't wind up patented and out of play for the next twenty years!

Doesn't that sound like something newsworthy?

Does Slashdot's editorial policy boil down to:

If there is money involved, size matters. If not, it has to be free and open source.

If it does, it should be changed for the better to something more impartial than what is in place now....

Read the post here.

If you were using my program CF13, all your spam would have been funneled into two files for ease of perusal and deletion and all spam attachments (which are likely virus laden) would have been rendered 'harmless' and clearly labeled making it easy to delete them.

I could have programmed CF13 to delete spam at the server level whenever possible but that would inevitably lead to a 'false positive' and a non-spam email being deleted as a result.

If you'd like to use a 'spamblaster' version of CF13 (with the risk of real email deleted as a 'false positive') contact me here.

"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We
categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material
into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one
has a right to press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the
outer boundary of every person's domain."
-- Chief Justice Warren Berger, U.S. Supreme Court

Because Slashdot wasn't when I submitted my site as a newsworthy article some time ago.

In a nutshell, my program, CF13 uses a number of simple, non-mathematic, pattern-matching tests to make it virtually impossible to get English language spam past it. These tests do not require the overhead associated with Bayesian Filtering and its ilk.

I think the key feature to it is to treat as spam all email from unapproved senders that contain more than 'spaces' and alphabetic charaters.

This simple but powerful feature makes it IMPOSSIBLE to conveniently spell email addresses, URLs, postal addresses, prices, and phone numbers. These items are neccessary for e-commerce to take place. Without them, e-commerce is IMPOSSIBLE or at least extremely difficult to conduct. It also treats as spam email containing 'non-ASCII' characters. I have gotten quite a few such emails at another email address I use infrequently--all spam (sales pitches in foreign languages).

As an added benefit, CF13 makes it 100% IMPOSSIBLE to accidentally run malware sent by email provided a particular registry setting has not been compromised. It does this by treating all email and file attachments as 'text files' that can be scanned for malware and handeled safely. Thus, one's PC CANNOT be compromised by a malicious malware HTML webpage or worm/virus/trojan email file attachment.

It also detects 'mailbombing' and handles it a manner that makes it easy to clean up afterwards.

It is probably best to fight spam at the SMTP server level but I have heard it is best to fight spam at the end user level. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages so this issue appears to me to be a toss-up for the time being....

CF13 does this by simply comparing all the 'words' in the subject line and body of an email against Grady Ward's Moby single word list and a second, smaller 'spamword' word list derived from the first word list by the user. Both word lists will deem email containing misspelled words or 'spammy' words as spam. Thus....

One more avenue to spam is denied usage by spammers.

By attacking this type of spam technique in this manner, all the overhead associated with Bayesian filtering is 100% completely unecessary.

The program I wrote and use, CF13 archives all email from unapproved senders as spam (for easy subsequent perusal and deletion) that uses more than 'space' characters and alphabetic characters. Since spammers needs @, ., :, and / to spell out email addresses and urls properly, it is impossible for them to communicate. < and > are 'suppressed' as well making HTML impossible for spammers to send. If such spam eludes my program's header analysis heuristics, the above content heuristic will catch such messages and deem them as spam.

If you want people to find out about your program, you'd be well advised to post the link, or even just the name of the program, in the actual body of your post.

(see link below, I've named the program CF13. One other feature of the program is that all spam it detects is funneled into 2 files for easy perusal/deletion. This also includes legitimate email from unapproved senders that violates the program's 'email policy' that makes it virtually impossible to spam.)

Me: http://www.cf13.com/ Slashdot: Not newsworthy. You decide. PS: Read first before emailing me.

World Leader's post addresses the core issue that drives spam: Desparation borne out of a insatiable desire to make a quick buck.

I, on the other hand, have decided to 'take the high road' and not resort to spamming in order to promote my solution to the spam problem (see sig).

I belive I have 'invented the better mousetrap' to deal with email spam and I have, for example, limited myself to sending clearly identified small emails for my online product press release to potentially interested parties in the media at large.

If my efforts above are construed as spamming, and an (internet) ad campaign is beyond my budget, and outright spamming (or any other such unsolicited email contact) is out of the question, then what can I do to tell large numbers of other people about my product?

Please do not suggest venture capitalism as a possible solution as I would then be subject to a Wall Street 'the profit is all' mentality. That is to say I've found a real need via firsthand experience and crafted an effective solution to that need to the best of my abilities. I leave it up to the public at large to decide for themselves if that is the case.

World Leader's post addresses the core issue that drives spam: Desparation borne out of a insatiable desire to make a quick buck.

I, on the other hand, have decided to 'take the high road' and not resort to spamming in order to promote my solution to the spam problem (see sig).

I belive I have 'invented the better mousetrap' to deal with email spam and I have, for example, limited myself to sending clearly identified small emails for my online product press release to potentially interested parties in the media at large.

If my efforts above are construed as spamming, and an (internet) ad campaign is beyond my budget, and outright spamming (or any other such unsolicited email contact) is out of the question, then what can I do to tell large numbers of other people about my product?

Please do not suggest venture capitalism as a possible solution as I would then be subject to a Wall Street 'the profit is all' mentality. That is to say I've found a real need via firsthand experience and crafted an effective solution to that need to the best of my abilities. I leave it up to the public at large to decide for themselves if that is the case.