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Everything About Spam And More

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

konsept writes: "a quick overview of the problem of unwanted, unsolicited e-mail, a growing threat to the usefulness of the Internet. In most cases this will appear as unwanted commercial e-mail - junk e-mail advertising. In a few cases, users of the Net are unfortunate enough to receive unsolicited religious, racial or sexual messages, a somewhat more serious matter." Somewhat of an entry level piece, but a lot of great advice and coverage of the major relevant legislation on the subject.

6 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. A practical approach by tolan's+my+name · · Score: 4

    Clearly /. readers tend to be fairly savvy about spam protecting their email etc. An additional way to prevent SPAM is to directly get the spam accounts closed. The basic way is by extracting from the email header and a few pings/fingers which computer the SPAM actually came from and then getting its owner to shut down the spam account [there is a full acount of how to do this on Happy Hacker]{grrrh its down at the mo though ;o( }.

    It tends to take about 10 mins per account, and can feel hopeless, but remember that there are more spam victims than perpurtrators, and if everybody on /. did this then......

    Anyway it beats simply moaning about the phenomenom.

    1. Re:A practical approach by Black+Parrot · · Score: 3

      > An additional way to prevent SPAM is to directly get the spam accounts closed. The basic way is by extracting from the email header and a few pings/fingers which computer the SPAM actually came... It tends to take about 10 mins per account...

      I would like to put in a plug for a free automated service that someone mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. Just forward the message to spamcop@spamcop.net, wait for the automated reply, visit the Web link mentioned in the reply, and click the "send" button. They do all the parsing and lookup for you.

      I have found it fairly effective. In particular, Spamcop got me removed from an annoying commercial list which I had fruitlessly sent in multiple complaints about all through the past year. Now you can bust a spammer almost as easily as he can send out his spam, and since it's so convenient you can often get it done within seconds of receiving the message, instead of letting the tedious parsing stack up for a week while the trail grows cold.

      [On the other hand, I've been getting a lot of .tw spam that has not subsided since I started using Spamcop. I rather suspect that the "abuse" handlers at some ISPs are actively involved in the spamming.]

      For more information, visit spamcop.net, and read the instructions carefully. Notice that you have the option of "joining", but you can use the e-mail based service for free.

      I am not associated with Spamcop; just a happy user.

      Ah, there's some now! I hope the spamcop server isn't /.ed when I send in my fresh spam. And I would like to thank them for the service they are providing the public.

      --

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  2. Another howto, slightly more technical by Silas · · Score: 3
    If you're interested in another comprehensive howto document that's slightly more technical and includes more info for sysadmins and organizational policy makers, check out this qmail anti-spam howto .

    Note that a lot of the instructions given in the "death to spam" document can be consolidated and handed off to services like spamcop, which will do all the tracking down stuff for you and just tell you which address to send abuse complaints to. Very handy.

  3. Reply? by sandman935 · · Score: 3

    The article says:

    When you receive unsolicited commercial e-mail, reply to it with a message which states unequivocally that you're not amused.

    I thought the rule was, "Never answer spam. Answering only serves to validate the spammers database."

    --

    Defecation occurs.
  4. Slashdot feature request by Howie · · Score: 5

    Rob/VA/Whoever: Can't you have some sort of macro set up so that when you post the weekly Spam/Napster/Microsoft story, it automatically posts all the standard replies?

    It would save everybody discussing whether my house is like your mailserver, or your gun rack, and whether musicians make money again and again. I expect with the geek-minutes saved in not posting the same long rants over and over, it would be possible to have another really really good X IRC client (with skins, perhaps), or another clock [ae]pplet.

    --
    "don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
  5. Good anti-spam resources by beebware · · Score: 5
    If you hate spam, try visiting spam.abuse.net for help/advice, the alt.spam FAQ for advice on filtering/tracing spam - and many more resources.

    I've also got a collection of reviews about spam filters, Procmail filtering advice, and Windows anti-spam software.


    Richy C.