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Dutch Court: Bothered by SPAM? Get A New Email Address
Brenno de Winter writes: "The earlier mentioned ruling on XS4ALL has been analyzed by Linux Journal in this article. The ruling states that it's easy to change e-mail addresses, so don't worry about SPAM too much. Yeah right! RFC's don't apply to the Direct Marketeers since they were not involved in the standarization. Neither in our consitution, btw .."
i claim this FP in the name of goatse
Are the drug dealers on your street harassing you?
Don't fight, quit complaining, JUST MOVE OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
as much as the next guy. I mean when someone uses bots to collect tons of e-mail addresses and send them porn ads 100 times a day, its just not right. However, I don't get spam. No, I don't use a filtering program. No, I don't sue everyone who spams me. I'm just not careless with my e-mail address. I have a yahoo address I never check which I use on suspicious websites. Otherwise I just doublecheck to make sure when I fill out a form that I have all the checkboxes set to "don't send me crap".
I'd be lying if I said I never got any spam. I got on piece of it a few weeks ago. Before that, I can't remember.
Spammers are bad, but if your mailbox is full of it its more likely your carelesness with your e-mail address than it is spammers out to get you.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.
"I've heard WinXP removed the cmd/command prompt."
No, Microsoft didn't remove the CMD.EXE or COMMAND.COM prompt from Windows XP. But Windows XP has reduced functionality, in many ways, not just in the command line. The command line is a big embarrassment because of its limited capabilities, but at least in Win 95 it worked. With every version since then it has worked less well. (There are two kinds of command prompt, and, according to Microsoft employees, the differences between them are not documented.)
The command line prompt sometimes begins to display short file names. Microsoft employees say that Microsoft has no fix, although someone not connected with Microsoft did make a work-around.
Cutting and pasting into a command line program often puts successive extra spaces before each line. Microsoft employees say that there is no plan to fix this.
The fast paste mode that is in Windows 98 is gone in Windows XP. Microsoft employees say there is no plan to fix this.
When using the command line interface, Windows XP doesn't always update the time. After several hours, the time reported to command line programs can be several hours in error.
There is a DOS program called START.EXE that can be used to start other programs. But it does operate the same way as in other versions of Windows. It starts a program, but cannot be made to return control to the command line program as previous versions did. There is no technical reason for this; it is just one of the shortcomings that are allowed to exist.
People often say that DOS has gone away. But Microsoft still calls the command line interface DOS, and in Windows XP Microsoft has added new programs for configuring the OS that work only under DOS.
Sometimes when you press a key while using Windows XP, it is seconds until there is any response. Apparently there is something wrong with the CPU scheduler in XP, because there are a lot of complaints about this in the forums and MS people have said that they are working on it. On one particular fresh installation of XP, on an Intel motherboard with either a Matrox G550 or an ATI Radeon video adapter, it requires 18 seconds to display a directory listing of 94 items. This is apparently related to a bug in the video software, not the adapter drivers.
Something is wrong with the Alt-Tab display of running programs under Windows XP. If there are a lot of programs, not all of them are displayed. The order jumps around in a seemingly random way.
Although articles often say negative things about Microsoft, I've never seen an article that fully documents how bad the situation really is. Microsoft's management is so bad that the company has become self-destructive. For example, Windows XP is spyware. Here is a list of ways Windows XP connects to Microsoft's servers:
- Application Layer Gateway Service (Requires server rights.)
- Fax Service
- File Signature Verification
- Generic Host Process for Win32 Services (Requires server rights.)
- Microsoft Application Error Reporting
- Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer
- Microsoft Direct Play Voice Test
- Microsoft Help and Support Center
- Microsoft Help Center Hosting Server (Wants server rights.)
- Microsoft Management Console
- Microsoft Media Player (tells Microsoft the music you like)
- Microsoft Network Availability Test
- Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service
- MS DTC Console program
- Run DLL as an app
- Services and Controller app
- Time Service, sets the time on your computer from Microsoft's computer.
- Microsoft Office keeps a number in each file you create that identifies
your computer. Microsoft has never said why.
- Microsoft mouse software has reduced functionality until you let it connect
to Microsoft computers.
These are just the ones I know. There may be others.So, if you use Windows XP, your computer is dependent on Microsoft computers. That's bad, not only because you lose control over your possession, but because Microsoft produces buggy software and doesn't patch bugs quickly. For example, as of July 7, 2002, there are 18 unpatched security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer. This is a terrible record for a company that has $40 billion in the bank. Obviously, with that kind of money, Microsoft could fix the bugs if it wanted to fix them. Since the bugs are very public and Microsoft has the money, it seems reasonable to suppose that top management at Microsoft has deliberately decided that the bugs should remain, at least for now.
It seems possible that there is a connection between all the bugs and the U.S. government's friendly treatment of Microsoft's law-breaking. The U.S. government's CIA and FBI and NSA departments spy on the entire world, and unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft software help spies.
Windows XP, and all current Windows operating systems, have a file called the registry in which configuration information is written. If this one (large, often fragmented) file becomes corrupted, the only way of recovering may be to re-format the hard drive, re-install the operating system, and then re-install and re-configure all the applications. The registry file is a single, very vulnerable, point of failure. Microsoft apparently designed it this way to provide copy protection. Since most entries in the registry are poorly documented or not documented, the registry effectively prevents control by the user.
Note that Microsoft does not support making functional complete backups under Windows XP. Look at Microsoft's policy about this: Q314828 Microsoft Policy on Disk Duplication of Windows XP Installation. Only those who work with Microsoft software will understand the true meaning of Microsoft's policy. Since almost all programs use the registry operating system file, if you cannot make a functional copy of the operating system you cannot make a functional copy of all your application installations and configurations. There are other software companies that try to fix this, but they don't work well, and Microsoft can, of course, break their implementations, as they have often done with other kinds of competitors.
Because the configuration information for the motherboard and the configuration information for the are mixed together in the registry file, the registry tends to prevent you from moving a hard drive to a computer with a different motherboard. That's another implication of the above Microsoft policy. So, if you have a motherboard failure, and a good complete backup, you may not be able to recover unless you have a spare computer with the same motherboard.
Note that Windows XP Professional can support only ten simultaneous incoming network connections. If you want more than that, you must use Windows 2000 server, and pay much, much more. (There is no Windows XP server yet.) Many businesses have very light network traffic; they just move files from staff member to staff member; they really don't need a dedicated server computer. The staff computers could easily handle the load except for this artificial limitation.
Apparently because the Windows XP GUI comes from Windows 98, Windows XP has the same problem with desktop icons that Windows 98 has. The icons sometimes flicker. Sometimes they move themselves around, particularly after the user switches monitor resolutions. Also, sometimes the taskbar settings un-configure themselves, as they do in Windows 98.
Only technically knowledgeable people know how to avoid signing up for a Microsoft Passport account during initial use of Windows XP. The name Passport gives an indication of Microsoft's thinking. A passport is a document issued by a sovereign nation. Without it, the nation's citizens cannot travel, and, if they leave, won't be allowed back in their own country. In Microsoft's corporate thinking, the company seems to be moving in the direction of believing that they own the user's computer. Most people are both honest and intimidated. Apparently about 95% do whatever they are asked on the screen. They give their personal information to Microsoft. They don't realize that, if they feel forced to get a Passport account, they should enter almost completely fictitious information, since the real question is not "What is your name and address", but "Can we invade your privacy". The honest answer to this is "No, you cannot invade my privacy", and the only effective way to communicate that is to give completely fictitious information. Since it is the educated people who have computers, Microsoft is building a database of the personal lives of educated people. Microsoft knows when they connect and from what IP address (which tends to show the area), what kind of help they ask, and information about what they are doing with their computers, including what music they like. It is not known, and there is no way to know, how much Microsoft or other organizations make use of this information, or their plans for future use.
Not only has Windows XP definitely gone further in the direction of allowing the user less control over his or her own machine, but with Palladium, Microsoft apparently intends to finish the job: Microsoft will have ultimate control over the user's computer and therefore all his or her data. Even now, under Windows XP, a recent security patch requires that the user agree to a contract that gives Microsoft administrator privileges over the user's computer. The contract says that if a user wants to patch his or her system against a bug which would allow an attack over the Internet, he or she must give Microsoft legal control over the computer. See this article also: Microsoft's Digital Rights Management-- A Little Deeper. You may need to be a lawyer to take apart the crucial sentence. "These security related updates may disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and [my emphasis] use other software on your computer" legally includes this meaning: "These updates may disable your ability to use other software on your computer." Note that the term "security related updates" is meaningless to the user because the updates have no relation to user security. So, the sentence effectively means that Microsoft can control the user's computer without notice and whenever it wants. That kind of sentence is known in psychology as "testing the limits". If there is no strong public complaint about this, expect to see more and stronger language like this.
This Register article shows the direction Microsoft is going: MS Palladium protects IT vendors, not you. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Microsoft is well down that road. See this ZDNet article, also: MS: Why we can't trust your 'trustworthy' OS.
Microsoft's self-destructiveness does not mean that the user should be self-destructive. There is no need to apologize for using Microsoft software. The correct solution to abuse is persuading the abuser to stop being abusive. Once I posted to a Slashdot story a link to an article on a web site of mine. By far the majority of visitors from the Slashdot story used Microsoft operating systems. Rather than feel embarrassed because Microsoft is abusive, action needs to be taken to prevent the abuse. If you are against Microsoft abuse, you are not against Microsoft; you are more pro-Microsoft than Bill Gates.
These Microsoft policies mean that any government which wants to be independent of the United States government, and any government which represents itself as controlled by the people, cannot use Microsoft operating systems, or other Microsoft proprietary systems.
- posted by poopbot: providing truth in a deceitful world
V3P3RqgnHa Post #498
yeah right.
/.) that mailmy my passwd etc when I forget...
let me see I've on 12 mailing lists that I know of right now (plus others that mail less han one a month).
Plus all those register sites(like
Not to mention all my 'internet' buddies that drop a line once a year or so, to check if I'm still alive...
no it's not easy to change addr's for people that actually rely on email quite heavily like I do..
Like virus's, put the solution where the problem is . For virus's it's the windows desktop so you need a solution there beside gateways etc. For spammers it's the 'sender'. There needs to be a body that has legal powers to track them down and prosecute - a UN agency for policing the internet perhaps?
Right now I'm trapping approx 50% of all incoming email at work with my anti-spam tools. Now thats just a small company with 200 email addresses, God only knows the length and resoources the IBM's of this world must be apply to the problem.
Could someone please post the email addresses of the judge(s) responsible? I understand that there is a great untapped market among Dutch jurists for at-home college degrees and penis enlargment machines, and these would be helpful to mining that.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Bob Mossberg reviewed ChoiceMail from DigiPortal in a recent column, and said his spam dropped to zero as a result of using the product. It's a permissions-based e-mail software package. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting.
"One empirical experiment is worth a thousand expert opinions." --Bill Nye, the Science Guy
I'd rather waste my time trying to smart-up the crawling little obscenities that sent the SPAM in the first place, claiming (groundless) threats of filing a lawsuit, etc... Besides... how many of us can actually get a new address (other than Hotmail) on a whim? I know I can't... at least not until my linux mail server is running under the domain name I just purchased....
On Slashdot, we don't say "thank you." We say "that's enough..." -_-;
All (some of) you people sit here and moan and bitch about patent legislation, addendums to the copyright laws (like the DMCA), the FCC adding no-copy flags to TV broadcasts, and region coding. But when it comes to spam you all scream "Legislation!" "Put and end to spam!" "I can't take another spam e-mail!" "Spam isn't freedom of speech, it's abuse of network resources!" "I have to pay for this shit!" Many of you would be entirely happy to see spammers behind bars. Am I the only one who sees how hypocritical this bullshit is? Folks, there are technological solutions to this technological problem. Let's not sink down to the RIAA's level, please.
Got friends?
6 times and has that stopped spam? NO! The only thing that it has done is slowed it down a bit and the more filters I put on my email account the less email I can recieve from people that are actually sending me real emails!
I dunno, getting email from Patsy and Edina could be fun, no? :^)
A couple of months ago I signed up for a Road-runner cable connection. At the time I hadn't finished putting my new PC together so I didn't connect for about the first 4 days. Guess what I saw when I did check my road-runner POP account for the first time... ...that's right, two emails offering me the chance of earning a degree, now, based on work-experience. Hmmm.
Needless to say, I've never have, nor will, use that email address. I dread to think how much junk has collected in that inbox so far.
Most people have email addresses assigned by work/school -- firstname.lastname@company.com, fl##@company.com, flastname@company, etc, and they can't change that without changing their name in the courts.
Also, the same theory could apply to changing my phone number to avoid telemarketers. Let's see the general populous react to that.
Likewise, avoiding junk mail by changing snail mail addresses.
Great inconveniences on both changing snail mail and phone numbers. Gotta notify friends, family, work, the state (get new DL for snail mail), the IRS (or other applicable tax collection agency), my bank, etc.
As one person mentioned, what's the judge's email address? I bet it falls into the category of work-assigned addresses.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
All hotmail users complaining about spam will be executed summarily and on the spot. Non-hotmail emailers, proceed commenting.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Now, don't spam them. :)
Fight Spammers!
fuck. No I'm seroius! I met a spammer in person! I reposted "Spamming for Dumbasses" on several spam related stories so do a search if you want some more detail.
Basically from the spammer I saw and met, they completely take the argument of network resources out of the argument. If its on purpose or not, they play completely dumb to the problem of cloggin up mail servers.
Right now, spamming IS and WILL be a legitimate business until proper legislation is made. As the spammer I talked to said, "Spamcop is interferring with my AMERICAN right to do business" Not that I agree with him, I was a sysadmin for 7 years so I know what damage he does to the systems out there. Funny thing is though, he's right! As anoying as it is, as much as I hate to admit it, spamming isn't really illegal anywhere yet.
Another problem is with the laws that are created. One such law states something along the lines of, you must remove someone from your mailing list if they ask you. My spammers way around that was to keep a master list which he never touched, and just remove people from the sub list. I.e.
His company was Company X
He spammed for and from Company Y
He gets a remove from list for company Y, but not X
and the spam just keeps on comin.
I made another +5 post about the Italians deleting that guys web site hosted in america. If we really want to put an end to this problem we would not allow spammers to look for loopholes like the one I explained above. Anyone that tries to find loopholes in the laws has no respect for them at all. Last time I checked all our laws are written in english, I may not have a law degree but I can follow the books well enough. Why does our goverment allow loopholes and circumvention to laws to be legal? Maybe we SHOULD take a hint from italy.
You live somewhere, you follow the laws, simple as that. Be it real world or internet. People that circumvent those laws are scum.
--toq
One solution to this problem is to get your domain name and create a secret "catch all" email account. Then use a different email address for EVERY web account or mailing list. For example, someone might use cmdrtaco-slashdot@slashdot.org for Slashdot, cmdrtaco-amazon@slashdot.org for Amazon orders, and cmdrtaco-anime@slashdot.org for an anime mailing list.
If you later receive spam for penis enlargers at cmdrtaco-amazon@slashdot.org, then you know that Amazon sold your email address to the powerful penis-enlargement lobby. You can then choose to stop using Amazon or choose a new Amazon email address, while creating an email rule to automatically kill email to your old cmdrtaco-amazon@slashdot.org email address.
cpeterso
It's only hypocrisy if you can only see things in a black-and-white view that people must be anarchists or totalitarians to be consistent. Most normal people believe in the concepts of "good legislation" and "bad legislation." You might be surprised to know that most people consider SPAM and copyright to be two completely seperate issues.
Copyright law is about putting limits on ideas and concepts and selling them. I'm not 100% opposed to copyright, but I believe that current trends in legislation are destroying the balance between copyright owners and customers that makes copyright work properly. The issue here is whether or not people can take or do something with works someone else created without compensating them.
SPAM is about the ultimate expression of our crass commercial society where businesses now treat people as consumers instead of customers. It's about shoving ads down people's throat and putting the burden of the cost on them. As far as spammers are concerned, we exist just to consume advertisting from them, and we should shut up, pay the costs, and like it. The thing is, they're not providing me with a service that I want in exchange for my added cost of living. The issue here is whether or not someone can create something and force people to have to bear the costs for it when they didn't want it in the first place.
However, copyright protection and spam do share one important thing in common. Technological solutions are all useless without forcing people to adopt them. The question is whether or not we should support the "injured" party in either case. In the case of copyright, I don't believe we should. That's a matter of corporate welfare to protect an industry against technology that makes it obsolete. In the case of spam, I do believe we should. It's a matter of forcing someone to pay costs for a product he didn't want.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If that judge has an email account, spam it. Send lots of faxes. Send lots of snail mail. Show them what it really feels like.
Or at least, mine did. Whether it was "official" or "unofficial" (ie - one of the helpdesk people selling the names for some weed money) doesn't matter to me. Now my email address, which I never give out, gets about 30 spams per day!
here's another one of my own brew (not implemented yet, but would be trivial). let me know what you think of it:
with qmail, you can filter messages that arrive to email 'realname-XXXXXX@domain.com' by a script (XXXXXX does not need to be pre-defined). Have the script analyze XXXXXX and decide upon the time of day and eventually some other properties if the email should be allowed to be passed on to the inbox or not. You could encode a time of day and evt other properties in XXXXXX.
Now, the advantage of this being that each time you give away such an email address (mostly on forms on websites, in newsgroups, ...) you could make that email address reach your inbox only for a certain timeframe. A property could be the valid duration of the email address (for instance, one that is only valid 1 hour, 1 day, 1month or 1 year...). You would have to use a small generator each time you need a new email address. See what i mean?
also, what i'm already using now, is giving up 'realname-thiswebsitesname@domain.com' when i have to enter my email address on a website. Then at least, when spam is sent, you know who the bad guys are the sold your email address to a spamlist!
but, i agree, none of these or other methods fully remove the spam threat...
Spamming is illegal in quite a few places. The problem is that in most of those places, the remedy available to victims is too small for individuals to bother pursuing, and the laws are never used by state AGs to initiate criminal proceedings. In my state I'm entitled to collect $10 for every spam I receive which violates the law (no forged headers, must have valid contact information, must be properly labeled, etc). I get hundreds of such spams every week; if it were really possible to collect any money from the spammers, I'd be retired.
I wish the laws worked. They don't, and I'm not sure that they ever will; even if all 50 states had them, and even if a federal law were enacted. The pro spammers will move (as in physically expatriate) to China, Korea, or any number of other countries where their ill-gotten gains could buy them an extravagant lifestyle, and resume operations outside the reach of spam laws.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
For some things (attachments), it doesn't work unless yer both online. However, the rest? *shrug* I never get any oddness that I'm not expecting and don't want on ICQ.
;P Feh, hosers who can't figure out how to set up a good set of filter rules.
Failing that, remember m*s? Most of the people that absolutely positively might have need to absolutely positively contact me quickly, know what address to telnet into to send me a message.
If broadband gets terribly widespread (As in, everyone leaving ICQ/whatnot open so they can receive files, anytime.).. Well, spam will be the final death of e-mail.
Or not. People seem to whine about how 'inconvenient' mail filtering is.
My ISP, for example, counts e-mail on the server against total 'space availible' for my website and such. (Not that I host my site with 'em ;))..
Yes. After nine years, if I do not check my ISP-given address at least once a month, spam will kill my alotted space. If that happens, blammo - extra charges.
Might as well check it every so often and mass delete it. At the least, you can sometimes find amusement with some pieces of spam.
(I can enlarge my penis and my bust size, at the SAME TIME!!)
Spam really gets bad when spammers decide to hijack your ISP to send email under any account, as well as grab your credit card numbers (even if they are encrypted or hashed, they have to be stored unencrypted in RAM for a short time so they can be encrypted/hashed). Now your ISP has to shut down all of their systems, and restore hundreds of computers from backups (since there is no way to tell exactly which systems were compromised, all because some spammer wanted to make quick money.
If this guy invests in his own T1, and puts his own servers up, and finds a net provider willing let him send advertising email, more power to ya! I'll just filter it out if I don't want it, and he can go down in flames when all the clients foolish enough to use him find out that no-one is listening.
If folks had to bear the cost of their traffic and had to be identifiable (and so prosecutable and filterable), 50% of spam would dry up in the first 3 months (when the internet bill is 60 days past due). The rest would be advertising the finest in adult entertainment, but apparently there's a market for that...
Send the judge an invitation to change his email address to avoid spam.
Then another.
Then another.
Etc.
Quick question: Has anyone here ever bought something because of a piece of spam they got?
/. post that people must be buying stuff. If there was no money in spamming people would switch to a new marketing approach. I know I've never seen anything in my mailbox worth buying.
Someone pointed out on an earlier
Of course they could be making their money by reselling their email lists to other companies/spammers...
Bmilter
Bmilter - Filter program for use with Sendmail
July 5th, 2002
Bmilter is written in C and uses the Sendmail Milter library. Bmilter is intended to be the most capable mail filter for sendmail in existence. Every means I can find that is an effective and sensible method for filtering spam will get plugged into Bmilter. There will be some exceptions naturally...I don't intend to support any perl type of plugin or scripting and I don't intend to weigh down the process in a CPU intensive heuristics or genetic anomaly detection routine.
Until Bmilter reaches a stable production quality with message archiving, Bmilter will remain an advisory filter only. This means that Bmilter will NOT do any actual rejecting or dropping of mails. You may use your email client's built in filtering tools or if you have the option, using procmail. Bmilter inserts headers starting with X-Bmilter. Bmilter will insert a header stating the messages was fully processed by all filter methods only if the message has been scanned by all filters. Sendmail may abort Bmilter at any time, the milter program (Bmilter) has no control over this. This means that the email may have only been scanned partially or not at all.
Example:
* X-Bmilter: Message fully processed with Bmilter version xxx; timestamp
* X-Bmilter: DNSBL=True; Sender IP 200.24.71.150 found at bl.spamcop.net
* X-Bmilter: Failed Sender Verification=True; The mail server for the sender's domain doesn't support the email address that purportedly sent this email.
What Bmilter does so far.
Bmilter database
Bmilter uses SQL (Postgres) to hold all the configuration, referred to from now on as the registry. Since I do everything very simple and standard with SQL, it should be a snap for anyone to add mysql etc. I personally won't do it because I don't have mysql installed and I don't want to. I'll happily apply patches sent to me however.DNS Blacklists
Looks up the IP of the inbound connection against all the DNS blacklists in the Bmilter registrySMTP callback
Verifies the following:
* RFC 821, MAIL FROM:
You are required to support a NULL return path according to RFC 821. Some people disable this either because they think it's cute or because they're trying to disable spam sent with a NULL return path. Irregardless, it's broken.
* RFC 822, RCPT TO:
Sites without Postmaster accounts are simply due to admin laziness or misconfiguration. According to RFC 822, you are required to accept mail for a few specific accounts, this is one of them.
* RCPT TO:
If the sender is unknown on the machine that answers for the domain used by the sender, then either a) the site is misconfigured or b) in all probability this is a spoofed email address and the email content is spam.
Checks for a few random textual strings
Right now Bmilter tests for the California ADV prefix in the Subject line. This is in preparation for regular expression implementations.Prelimiary Statistics
Currently I'm cataloging the number of connections sent to Bmilter, the number of emails processed, and the number of aborts. Stats will develop for each individual filter for pass/fail/undetermined.
User preferences
* Authenticated Sender (key=auth); default action: accept; alternate action: continue;
* DNS Blacklist (key=dnsbl); default action: tag; alternate actions: (remove from rcpt list|bounce);
* SMTP Callback (key=smtpcallback); default action: tag; alternate action: reject;
I cannot confirm nor deny the allegation or allegations you may or may not have just made
Hey pplz, I found soem importand e-mail adresses, They are not from the judge but from the spammimg company abfab...
postmaster@abfab.nl
juliette@abfab.nl