Slashdot Mirror
Spam Bits
Let's mush a few things together into a nice pink rectangular solid: ipandithurts writes "The FTC Chair Timothy Muris doubts the ability of the "CAN SPAM" law to stop SPAM." ElementCDN writes "The Ottawa Citizen has a story on Bernard Balan the King of Spam. Bernard has closed up shop and moved to cottage country near Huntsville, Ontario." CactusMan writes "CTV (among others) is reporting that a Ontario trio has been named in a suit filed by Yahoo under the new CAN-SPAM legislation. Yahoo is claiming that the father and two sons were 'responsible for sending millions of unsolicited messages to users of the company's e-mail service.'" ilsa writes "According to this AP article, as much as 19% of e-mail sent by commercial entities never reaches its destination. 'Promotions and greeting cards were the types of messages most likely to disappear, the study found.' Although this study may have been intended to be alarming, forgive me for thinking this may not be a bad thing." Reader chrisbtoo responds to an earlier spam story: "In today's story about Spam solutions, monstroyer challenged people to crack the Spam Interceptor Captcha. Turns out it was pretty easy." Finally, we can't fail to mention an attempt at making the world's largest spam musubi.
the world's largest spam musubi
Did anyone else read that as "the world's largest spam mueslix"?
Mmm... nothing like the taste of mechanically separated meat product in your breakfast cereal.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
"nearly 800 cups of rice, more than 1,300 slices of the canned lunchmeat and almost 600 feet of seaweed wrap" anyone else feel a little sick after reading that ? ;p
I run a small publishing firm that relies on email to sent updates to our materials. Every email we send to customers has at least 10% bounce (sometimes as high as 30%); many of which worked a week before or a week after. However, I think the 19% number mimics my personal mail as well: messages allll the time get lost in the shuffle!!
e-mail recipients risk losing newsletters and promotions they've requested.
Who with an ounce of sense would request any sort of e-mail promotion, given the tendency those things have to multiply of those accord? Don't answer that.
The coolest voice ever.
I hang out in various anti-spam communities (news.admin.net-abuse.email and some IRC channesl) and most of us (tinu) agrees that (I) Can Spam is pretty clueless. Now, I'd like to hear comments from someone who's not an anti-spam zealot. Is there anyone who thinks Can Spam is worth the paper it's written on? (Anyone not associated with Direct Marketing).
The AP/ReturnPath story is interesting, in that the actual number of messages that never see their intended recipients is probably even higher than 19%.
This wouldn't even begin to account for the number of messages filtered by larger companies, universities, and other entities that maintain their own spam-filtering and spam-blocking systems. It also wouldn't account for the growing number of individual end-users who are installing and using commercial or free spam-blocking software on their local machines. Anti-spam software isn't just for geeks anymore. According to download.com, the top 25 results for a search on "anti-spam" have been downloaded 2,493,051 times, in aggregate.
Well isn't that a good thing?
If you are an end user, and missing a message doesn't matter that much to you, then no. If you are a company using E-mail to communicate with your customers, but you aren't sending anything critical, then no.
If you miss the electronic notification from your bank, credit-card, or student loan company that your last payment is late, or the notification from your airline that your flight was cancelled, then it does matter.
And if your one of the,"oh, it can't be more than five or ten", companies in the world that is using E-mail as part of your business processes, whether for sales, marketing, customer service, CRM, purchase or account notifications, etc... well then, hell yeah it matters.
Things are probably going to get worse before they get better, but E-mail for business has so much potential that I can't but hope that we will solve this problem.
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
You should be hung by the nads until dead, spammer.
No entry found for rectagonal.
Did you mean octagonal?
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Is there some example somewhere of a CAPTCHA nobody's been able to break yet with mere brute programming?
I mean, I realize there's technically some way around any CAPTCHA setup, just curious if one is currently deemed King Of The Hill...
-----------------------
You are what you think.
So we have a name, of Bernard Balan, and it looks like he's living in the Muskoka regions of Ontario, Canada. How long before he gets Ralskyed?
And shame on the Ottawa Citizen for even trying to portray a bandwidth/storage space thief in a positive light. Neutral at most, and negative more appropriate.
Also, the Challenge Response bit, an interesting solution but slowly you'll start making the tradeoffs between "hard for computer" and "some people can't do this, their vision is poor or they are colourblind."
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
2971 lines in my Junk Senders file and growing.
But that, and about 20 rules filtering out Viagra and various misspellings, cans about 80% of the spam I get. It's almost enough for me.
Now if I could figure out how to get Outlook to hide the mail envelope in the taskbar for messages automatically deleted, I'd be laughing.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
So Bernard Balan claims to be the (ex) king of spam and "one of the best programmers around"? Oh wait, spammer rule #1.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Summary of the verdict: An ISP can demand that a spammer stops (ab)using the computer systems of the ISP for sending unsollicited email to its customers. If he continues after that, the spammer is infringing the ISP's rights.
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
linking numerous articles in one post, on the off chance that someone *might* read one of them...
but of course, a couple of slashdot readers will click on at least one of those article links, thereby justifying the linking of numerous articles in a single post... about SPAMMING?!
arrrrhg
--
The yesterday, I recieved what had to be the greatest piece of spam mail I've ever seen.
It had to have been 20 pages long from someone calling himself "Lawrence Jesus Christ", and went on about how they were coming back, and specifically mentioned that the document wasn't spam until the Can-Spam act, how keeping this email from people would allow the sender to sue the company for $7000, a bounce-back would invite a lawsuit for denial of service attack, on and on.
Funniest damned thing I've seen in some time. And I've been wondering if that's the deal with the other spam I've been seeing like how "I had a 36 hour erection with v-i.g.r.@ - click here" or "Bob crossed the room to find the school girls getting rich quick".
No, I'm not making that up. Well, a little - but it seems like spammers are now trying to use humor to get their messages through.
As for Lawrence Jesus Christ or whatever, I deleted it anyway. I'm still waiting for my lawsuit.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
1.) SPAM
2.) P2P
3.) Pop ups
4.) Virus
Just when US companies think they have it figured out, some kid in a bedroom will figure out a new way to distribute smarter ones.
For starters, I don't send out spam. But for my regular business emails, I've lost less than 1%. I don't send emails through requests, such as "email this to friend" etc for fear of being spammed. If I do, I usually copy myself so that I know if it's reached me. If it's reached me, then it's most likely reached my party.
I highly doubt that so much email is lost. I think that some of the loss my come into play when dealing with different servers or mailhosts. In this respect I have experienced delays that can last upto hours but not lost email.
Maybe you and the author should just double check your entries before hitting send. Or better if it's a customer you've done business with, use the reply button!
PS. To parent. If you run a small business, don't use AOL for your mail. Or if you use a SMTP don't use a small ISP to do it.
Sorry monstroyer, didn't realise it was your system that you were challenging people on. Guess you'll have some work to do tonight, eh?!
I'd recommend throwing some extra noise in there, and possibly varying the relative darknesses of the background and foreground. If you can distort the characters too it might make it harder to beat.
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
...does anybody know of any photos of these guys?
SolidBlue has 91 members currently. Looks like it's really taken off.
In Soviet Russia lame repetitive jokes make you!
Musubi. Breakfast of champions. =^_^=
This sig no verb.
I am beginning to think we can't ever get rid of spam through legal measures. I am not an expert on the subject... an I admit that I haven't paid that much attention to it. IT just feels like this is gonna be another case where the US or any other country can't control the global internet. We make it illegal and it isn't going to go away... it might go overseas...
I am convinced that the answer lies in spam filtration. If we stay one technological step ahead of the spammers, they will have to find some other way to make money. I suppose the next problem will be that not all email providers will implement the filters.. but having free software out there to do it will surely increase the number of filtered servers out there.
I think that clients with built in filters (see like stuff from mozilla are a good option). If more people would use these type of clients, it would really hurt spammers.
I have an email address that I have been using for a while now and I have not yet recieved ANY spam (thanks to the good admins of that server I am sure). So if more servers were like that one spam could be a thing of the past.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Parent,
Afterall, Dixiesys is probably to blame for your email problems.
If you truely believe "should be hung by the nads until dead", why don't you post with your username? I just find it funny that you make your comment yet hide behind Anonymous Coward user profile. Are you afraid he will get your email address and add you to his list?
And according to the article, he's "just down the road" from a place called "Cow Shit Valley Farms".
Heh. If that's true, I can't think of a better place for a spammer to live.
I wonder if the Bernard Balan in the Ottawa Citizen article is the same Bernard Balan against whom some interesting allegations were raised in this 1996 Google thread from alt.allsysop, and whether there is any substance to the allegations raised against that Bernard Balan (that is, the one in the alt.allsysop thread).
Certainly, the Bernard Balan from the 1996 thread, (who had the email address "glasswords@neon.win.net") appears to have had... an interesting history of spamming USENET advertising dialup pr0n BBSes in 1995. And it's interesting to note that the BBSes in question were in area code 905, which, if I know my area codes, is pretty darn close to Muskoka, which just happens to be the last known whereabouts of the Bernard Balan mentioned in today's article.
I wonder if the two Bernard Balans are the same individual or not.
Google is a truly fascinating resource, is it not?
Pray tell, when will there be the day when people, governments, institutions and lawmakers understand that SPAM, worms, viruses and trojans are coming from ONE single corporation?
Let's take a look at some facts:
- ALL trojans that hijack machines run Microsoft operating systems
- ALL webbrowsers that run unwanted executables to hijack machines come from Microssoft
- ALL harmful viruses of the last five years EXCLUSIVELY attack Microsoft programs
- ALL current worms that bring down machines are targetted to infect - you guessed it.
What the hell is this discussion about? Get rid of this crap and the discussion becomes obsolete.
We have been depending on the difficulty computers have recognzing the shapes of obfustacated letters.
Why not make the try to identify things, objects.
There are a substantial number of warping effects that can be applied to a picture, and so long as the users language is known, and they are reasonably congnent, they cold recognize a barn, a duck, etc even if it was warped, twisted, or miscolored to some extent.
(example: there is a picture of a barn in the forground, the question is what is the color of the object in the picture, or what is the object, many questions based on one picture=)
I feel that this is the next generation of captchas. Personaly I like a picture scheme better, it could be easier to decipher than some of theose HORRIBLY degraded captchas I've seen. Plus it relies on a deeper ability to recognize shapes and patterns and colors and resolve them into a recognizeable image in our minds, and computers now cannot hope to recognize a warped human face from a barn.
I feel that this sort of authentication could also be the key to blocking spam all together.
A user could add E-mails to their trused list, and certain sites (ebay, hotmail, etc) could be on there by default, all others will have their message bounced with a captcha included, and an explination of what is happening. When they prove themselves human, they can get added automagically. Put the work on the senders end. If you send an email to someone, add them to the trused list, etc, for ease of use on users.
I feel that computers and spammers will have a hard time with any scheme that does not involve standardized things, like letters.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
If your customers are that valuable in their purchasing habits...why not simply direct them to a web site to pull the information? Then you can stop emailing people and they will read your web site if you are truely competative. For the most part, this avoid 19% loss -> 0% loss.
I think nobody should be using the email protocol for commercial purposes. It's just so much push technology that is waste and bog. "on demand" seems to be much more suitable for volume.
When people sign up "to get periodic updates about our products" they are opting-in for another type of spam, but it's still scatter that seems misguided to me. Why not just ask people to come back? You could email them the address and everything else once, but they usually already have that from a puchase receipt.
peh
I'm not afraid. Go ahead and spam me. My email address is:
abuse@localhost
Read parent's name, see parent's posts, mod parent troll...
We just finished migrating to that!! :)
"No entry found for rectagonal.
Did you mean octagonal?"
recta, from the latin "rectum" and gonal, from the english verb "to go".
there you have it.
I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out a way to prevent emails from colorblind people! Those BASTARDS!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What about the spam-printing of links in a article? Jeez...16 in one!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Dumb ass: I don't send spam, I send a purchased product via email. Think before you type!
Is this a joke? You can make that much money being a spammer?
No offense people, I but I'm seriously looking at switching careers! I make half that in a year!
I could work less than a single single year and retire. Amazing!
Linux O Muerte!
Maybe. However, the amount you receive is about to go up.
I opt in to all mailing lists
I think the SPAM Captcha interceptor could be made better by including with a text message that says something like. Change the letter that is third (random position) to the letter "F" Random letter, or make the letter that is higher (on the page) in lower case. This would pretty much fool most character recognition programs as they would also have to decipher some message that is associated with it. Of course additional text DIRECTIONS would also fool some humans that would think they know better.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Hey.
I submitted the story about the Canadian spammer trio yesterday and it got rejected.
I also submitted an article from The Ottawa Citizen. Interesting bits in it. He claims to be retired, and used to make 140,000$ a week. He sent 30 million messages a day.
Notice how he calls anti SPAM activists "terrorists". Nice moniker there, just like Commie was in the 1950s/1960s.
Perhaps my joking remark about US invading Canada because of all that put off the editors? ;-). I knew that CAN-SPAM had a Canadian sounding name!
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Going offshore won't help, if the banking system is forced to cooperate. The credit card system can collect chargebacks from faraway merchants without much trouble.
Case in point: I just made a single attempt, thought the word was "fruit", and no, it was "apple". I'm not convinced there are any apples in the first picture. Peppers, tomatoes and cauliflowers, yes, but...
Bernard Balan the King of Spam. Bernard has closed up shop and moved to cottage country near Huntsville, Ontario
Only 1 1/2 hours drive for me! Whos coming?!
The results: legitimate companies do not sell my e-mail address. Never. None of them.
I say BS, email is a fine tool and makes up for crappy browsers and OS that need to be wiped and reloaded all the time with 100% information loss.
I have about 100 email addresses I havested the old fashion way, by telephone. Each one of these people asked me to send them info, so I do. Yes, selling computer hardware to resellers is a legitimate business.
You see, legitmate businesses give a shit. I really will stop sending mail to people who ask me too. I'd also be happy if those people would simply browse the web site where we actually sell stuff, but I know that the platform that most use is insecure, fails and is abused. I'm very distrubed to know that 1/5 of my readers won't get my email because it gets lost in porn spam and other crap from people who could care less.
I get spammed by a very large company everyday. My wife uses a hotmail account, and Microsoft attaches garbage to each and every mail she sends me.
Yeah, that's pretty funny - I got the wrong answer by guessing "bathroom". Just what I need - some pictoral test for every email I send...
'Promotions and greeting cards ...' ... forgive me for thinking this may not be a bad thing.
No forgiveness, since none is required. Even among the companies with which I actually have an on-line business relationship, practically none of them distinguish between desired product/service related messages (e.g., time to renew, product recall, upgrade available) and undesired promotions. I can't have one without the other. And that makes most of their e-mail spam, as far as I'm concerned, despite a pre-existing business relationship.
Heh. If that's true, I can't think of a better place for a spammer to live.
How about in a box. A pine one. About 6 feet underground. I'd like it if most of them lived there... at least for as long as the oxygen lasts.
can
aux.v. Past tense could
1.
1. Used to indicate physical or mental ability.
2. Used to indicate possession of a specified power, right, or privilege.
3. Used to indicate possession of a specified capability or skill.
2.
1. Used to indicate possibility or probability.
2. Used to indicate that which is permitted, as by conscience or feelings.
3. Used to indicate probability or possibility under the specified circumstances.
So that's like, what? 25 lines of Perl?
I kid because I love.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
More spam is not an idle threat. It is a Real Danger.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
So CAN-SPAM means "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing"? What I want to now is, where was all this unsolicited porn?! I sure didn't get any. Now that the law is in place, I'll NEVER get any. ;)
Seriously, this acronym is ridiculous. Any porn-like junk mail IS marketing. No one ever sends out free, non-solicited porn.
"I forgot my mantra."
--- SPAMMERS
It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with... it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear... and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. (Well, maybe not even after you're dead.)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I posted this yesterday, but i was way too late for it to get read. I know it's poor form to repeat yourself, but i just wanted some feedback.
So what about this:
You start with a central certificate authority. I know, I know, bottlenecks. But you only need them to issue keys to (or sign the keys of) about 100 (or 1000?) servers. The signing authority has to be central, but the *revocation* authority does not. That's the key here.
So those servers can sign the keys of 1000 servers of their own and so on.
So my mail server tries to send your server an email. Your server checks if my key is signed by someone who is signed by someone who is signed by the CA. It also checks against its nightly downloaded revocation list. If everything is good, the mail goes through. Very little processor time, and very little bandwidth.
It is robust against DoS attacks because the CA doesn't have to sign every email. They only sign keys that sign keys that connect servers. Or something like that.
Suppose someone issues a key to a dishonest server? Well, enough people issue complaints and the issuer's key gets revoked. Or some automatied spamassasin type thing that auto-revokes the key after enough spams get spotted. No more spam from them, and maybe next time the admins are more careful.
In this scenario some spammer hijacks an honest user's Outlook and spams 1000 messages. If the ISP is not checking outgoing mail for spam levels, then they risk getting their certificate revoked. Maybe ISPs could even sign the emails with the account info of the person who is trying to send - thus producing an exact record of the email chain.
This totally eliminates (i think) the threat of zombie SMTP servers on DSL and open relays.
Think of it where SMTP only accepts connections over SSL and only with certificates that it trusts.
Then the ball is in the park of the ISPs and server hosters (those with their own email keys) to keep spammers out locally. SLL login for SMTP? sure. C/R for each email sent through them? Whatever. Send anything over their open relay? Not for long.
Sounds reasonable to me. It makes it easier for the end user I think, and minimizes spam.
This totally eliminates zombie SMTP servers on cable lines spewing spam.
Any suggestions?
Muerte
Notorius Spammer Alan Ralsky is currently residing at: 5733 Stone Rd, Lockport, NY 14094
His current home phone: (716) 434-9173
His current cellular phone: (716) 807-7120
Please go ahead and let him know how much you love him--being Spamhaus's number 1 offender and all.
Summary of the verdict: An ISP can demand that a spammer stops (ab)using the computer systems of the ISP for sending unsollicited email to its customers. If he continues after that, the spammer is infringing the ISP's rights.
Holy sensible-court-opinions, Batman!!!
Go figure, somewhere on planet earth there's a legal system that puts the rights of individuals and legitimate businesses ahead of those of penis-pill-hawking, bandwidth-thieving, filter-evading, virus-sending, windoze-mass-trojaning criminals? What is the world coming to?!? Next thing you know, some court somewhere is going to suggest that surreptitiously installing user-tracking software on someone's computer without their actual knowledge and consent is as illegal for a bizness as it is for one of them ebil counter-culture hacker types.
Does anyone know anything about the Dutch immigration process?
The shit hits one ear first (the closest). A couple of cosines and you're cool for the most part, if you want to really play around try HRTFs. Now get lost kid, you bother me.
Submitting an email address to the "do-not-spam list" risks that address leaking to foreign spammers (or domestic spammers operating in a foreign country). They would know the address is "for real" so they would be happy to add it to the lists they sell.
If the email addresses were distributed in MD5 encrypted format, it would be a little harder for spammers to do much else with it. Of course, as they scan their list to see who is on the "do-not-spam list", they can still sell those addresses to others (outside the US) as "for real". They won't get to know about new addresses from the list, but they will get to know whether or not new addresses gained from other places is real or maybe not.
Perhaps better would be to limit the list to domain names only. The domain name owner would have to authorize being on the list, but then it would specify any email address with any username part would be effectively listed. And even still, it would be MD5 encrypted so spammers aren't handed a list of domain names.
Ultimately, it will have very little effect (big time spammers will move operations to outside the US), and have some problems (spammers will be detecting many "for real" addresses in this). The real solution is to send spammers to the gallows.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yet the post is off-topic and trolling about SCO's fee, the username is suspicious and the their posting history shows they are indeed a troll, so why not mod them as such and be done with them asap?
BEGIN RANT:::
:::END RANT
If I hear one more spammer refer to himself as a victim I'm going to lose my lunch. Yeah, spammer, you're a victim, just like Charles Manson and Kenneth Bianchi were victims.
And hearing spammers justify what they do based on how much money they bring in likewise makes my stomach start to heave.
Another favorite is when they claim an inherent right to spam people. "Hey, don't use email if you don't want to get advertisements," is their repugnant, pathetic little battle cry, like a serial killer who justifies committing murder by claiming that people who don't want to be murdered shouldn't be born.
I remember this humorous tagline in a Car Wars supplement that read, "If you don't like the way we drive, stay off the streets (and the sidewalks and the lawns)." Spammers have the same kind of tagline going in real life, "If you don't like getting spammed, stay off the internet." But that's quite a bit less humorous, especially when people are having to weed hundreds of stupid spam messages out of their inboxes every day, after waiting fifteen minutes to download them all.
Time for popcorn.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
The page is at http://boycott-email-caller-id.org/ if you're interested.
æeee!
"I never send porn."
Suuurrre.... But my favorite is when they complain about about the [baby voice]Big Bad Mean Old People On the Intewnet[/baby voice]. I mean duh! They know damn well they only make money because they're playing the odds. Mail a million people and you'll find a few stupid enough to buy your product and make you money. Well guess what goes hand in hand with that? Piss off a million people in one mass mailing, and you'll also find a few psychopathic enough to do what most of us just fantasize about. Suddenly the numbers game isn't such an advantage.
I work for a company that, among other things, has a newsletter that's available by paid subscription. MSN/hotmail.com and AOL users are claiming never to receive it on a fairly regular basis.
Things were bad enough around December that -- for a little while -- I had a theory that hotmail was simply blocking any e-mail that contained a URL.
NOT a good thing.
I sure hope you have a lot of disk space. But it sounds to me like you are wasting your time. That's because every junk mail these days contains a forged 'From:' header, and spammers are smart enough to generate different From headers for each batch of spam they send out. Since the From header cannot be trusted, any rules that make spam/no-spam decisions based on it cannot be trusted either.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Like someone said, "what we need is a couple of good hangings." Myself, I wouldn't mind seeing Alan Ralsky, George W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein on the same scaffold in downtown Bagdhad one sunny afternoon. Actually, I'd gladly pay a grand to see it happen.
I used to be a sceptic. These days, I'm not so certain.
Mailing lists have served us well for many years.
I don't think challenge/response can work with mailing lists.
When designing an action, think about what would happen if everyone did it. This is an old standard, but a good one. For mailing lists, it would be a nightmare if everyone started using challenge/response.
When you're thinking about SPAM solutions, and other mail admin matters, remember mailing lists...
- If you use challenge/response, exempt mailing list mail. Figure out how to do it.
- Don't send bounces to the list address. Or the "From:" address. Use "Sender:" to route bounces to the list owner.
- Create your "I'm away until.." msg with the vacation program or think it through to exempt mailing list mail.
-=- Sally
I think nobody should be using the email protocol for commercial purposes. [snip] You could email them the address and everything else once, but they usually already have that from a puchase receipt.
Wouldn't that constute "commercial purposes"? How about if I run a business, and a customer requests my contact info by email? Is that commercial?
It's too gray to just draw a line like that.
S
A lot of them are one-shot domains, yes, but I often see repeats in the space of a couple of days.
Besides, I filter out the common one-shots like yahoo, hotmail, etc. Noone uses those to send business email to me.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
Spamarrest seems like it has a better CAPTCHA mechanism: sample image. The loops are pretty ugly; certainly more difficult to subvert than dark characters on a light background (with no dark obfuscators). For myself, I use bogofilter. After piping a bunch of known good ("ham") and bad ("spam") through the engine. I get almost no spam that isn't caught and quarantined for later inspection.
I belong to a club that does mass emails to our members and to folks that members have invited to our club functions. Everyone on our email list gave us their email in writing and every email we send allows opt out. But still this is thousands of people and some of them, rather than click the the unsub button, identify us as spam to block the emails. The result is that many of our dues paying members cannot get mass or even individual emails from the club they belong to (and pay money to belong to).
With the CAN SPAM laws now we're running around wondering if we now have to worry about being hassled for simply emailing someone who is too lazy to click the unsub link. My take to our board was that we are fine, but some are still worried about having to deal with court costs because someone decided to abuse this law and doesn't understand the difference between SPAM and emails that you asked for and then changed your mind.
So the potential result of this law is hassling small legitimate groups that want to cut postage costs - while the real spammers, who you don't have any prior relationship with you and who you didn't give out your email to, continue to fill your email box with crap.
Ugh...
When do they come back? I wouldn't want to keep checking a website just in case there was something new there this week. If I an genuinely interested in something, then I don't mind signing up to hear that there is an update. Maybe you college students have time to go looking for new things every day, but I don't.
Although I don't like the idea of having ISP's in control of what reaches my inbox, this still is good news.
For those interested, here's the link to the verdict (in Dutch)
Have you automated the process of removing addresses from the list after consecutive bounces?
This would make it easy to eliminate the false addresses, those people who signed up but later changed their minds, and those who were unfortunate enough to have been "pranked" onto the list.
Also, an initial form email requesting confirmation of the subscription is a good policy, and it eliminates the problem of "pranked" subscriptions.
Read, L
...it's really $140,000 Canadian, which is like, $372 U.S.
I went to Olympia Sports Camp in Huntsville for three summers for basketball.. was a ton of fun, I snuck a carton of cigarettes in each year, meeting many people, getting caught once (they got returned that night) and learning from b-ball players from Duke, North Carolina, and various NBA teams.
;)
The best part, though, was that my friends and I would make sure to schedule our week the same week as the cheerleading camp that was our age group.. a lot of those girls smoked
From one AC: Huntsville is nearly 300 Kms away from Toronto, I'd hardly consider that a 'suburb.' Scarborough is a suburb.
From another AC, Photo of Huntsville
Ok, little John is trolling in his math class, his nickname is suspicious, and his math test history shows 0, 0, 0, and 0. Why not give him 0 on his next test and be done asap?
My error rate was about 1/6, good luck trying to get that to work...
My program (see sig) filters on email headers AND content. One 'filter' alone will deem a message spam if it contains text like 'aslkdjhfplh' and/or '\/|4gr4' and the like.
Thanks for reading, Bryan
If so, you are a SPAMMER.