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De-spamming Your Inbox The Hard Way
ajain writes "Even after using precautions like dummy email address in public forums, I have been plagued by the spam mails for long time now. Accidentally, I hit upon a not-so-elegant but effective solution recently: Ever thought of shutting down the mail server temporarily to stop spam to your inbox permanently? Well, it seems to work. In my case, a two-day shutdown resulted in 97.5% decrease in spam traffic! Here are the details and a step-by-step guide to this desperate-method of spam reduction. I think I'll model, simulate and then optimize the amount of shut-down time required for spam levels to drop to zero!"
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Posted 11:16 PM by Anurag
De-Spamming The Inbox: The Hard Way
Even after using precautions like dummy email address in public forums, I have been plagued by the spam mails for long time now. Two years back it used to be a few per day. And since then it has been a steady increase in the volume. As a result, till last weekend I used to get around 200 spam mails a day on my Institute's life-time email account. Then, one fine day (well, actually we were given notice 3 weeks in advance) our Institute decided to upgrade the Exchange mail server to the latest version. Hence the mail server was shut down for approximately 2 days/48 hours (4th Dec evening to 5th Dec noon). During that time, all the mails sent to my mail account were of course bouncing. Between the time when the system was shut down and the time when the system came back online on 5th noon, something miraculous had happened: My spam traffic had reduced considerably. After John finished with me, he reached over onto the nightstand and brought out what we prepared earlier. Five raw eggs, emptied and drawn into a turkey baster. John excitedly inserted the baster into my ass and squeezed. Thoughts of sanitation quickly left my mind as a rush of pure pleasure came over me. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, I realized the laxative I had taken just an hour earlier had kicked in. I tried with all my willpower to hold on. I could feel the warmth of John's breathing, and I knew his open mouth was right behind me. After what seemed like an eternity, I just let go. In a split second, a beautiful cocktail of raw egg, excriment, and man-juice erupted from my rear, coating John's face and hair and running down his body. A perfect end to a perfect evening--almost as perfect as when a troll like this gets modded up on Slashdot.
Now I am receiving 'only' (!) 5-6 spam mails everyday! That is a 97.5 % drop in spam traffic! Interesting, eh? So what's happening is that the spammer dudes are dropping the bounced mail IDs like a mad-cow disease affected, well, cow. There doesn't seem to be a second try from spammers: Apparently they don't use the bounced email IDs again. I would assume that after the two-day shut-down/start-up of mail server, my spam traffic would have become zero. My current 'very low' spam traffic is only probably because of my email being available in public domain on webpages where I can not remove it from (damn my early Internet days' Naivete).
Essentially, for this De-Spamming methodology we can draw an analogy with the routine detoxing of the body. Example: On the basis of specific relgious beliefs, people fast once in a while. More than the religious custom, fasting has a scientific reason behind it: It detoxifies whole internal system by a) giving the body some much-needed rest and b) by cleansing the traces of toxins (as there's no fresh inflow, the bodily processes work on the left-over inventory and makes sure that it is digested properly and taken care of to give a fresh start the day after the fast).
So, is De-Toxing (De-Spamming) the Inbox by fasting/starving! (shutting down the Mail Server) a good idea? Well its effetive for sure, but it has its costs. You lose the genuine mail traffic for the duration of shut-down. Hence, if you are in a desperate need of De-Spamming your Inbox, here's what you should do. Let's say you plan to shut your mail sever down on Date T and you plan to bring it back to life after Y days. The question is for how long do you shut down the mail server? Well, I think most mail programs try to re-send the mail for a maximum of 48 hours. If the message doesn't go through even in 48 hours, the mail program gives up and finally returns error to the sender. Hence, to be on the safer side I would say, shut the mail server down for at least 48 hours (2 day). So once you have decided on a shut-down date and duration, here's the how-to guide to shutdown survival and resurrection thereafter!
1) T-30 (days) : Include in your mail signature at the top the "Please
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.