That reminded me of the Justin Bailey code for that game.
As for your sig, I think its priceless!
Re:Low tech spam control
on
Spam Bits
·
· Score: 1
Spammers have poisioned bayesian filtering, reducing its effectiveness. My program (see sig) uses a combination of techniques which, collectively, effectively deem an email message 'spam' or 'not-spam'.
Thanks for reading, Bryan
Re:Junk Senders file? Doomed to failure
on
Spam Bits
·
· Score: 1
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
Re:Low tech spam control
on
Spam Bits
·
· Score: 1
Then you run the risk of deleting an important messag as spam. If your time is precious to you, check your email while you sleep. If you use my program (see sig), all spam it detects will be clearly identified and archived for later perusal and/or deletion.
Identity theft - The ones I got were relayed through a 3rd party machine and deemed spam. Should I ever get a 'real one' that would mean either a spammer is using a stolen/throwaway account at a domain with mailserver(s) and easily traceable, or, worse yet, an 'inside job' by someone unscrupulous at the sender domain. The rule of thumb is to not give out sensitive information via email no matter how convincing said email is.
Viruses - All attachments are treated as 'text files' by my program and are 'harmless' provided a certain registry key affecting Notepad hasn't been changed/hijacked (see my website for more details). Also, all email is downloaded and treated as text files, making HTML related exploits impossible as well.
Sender - Anonymous senders are treated as spam. No exceptions. I've only gotten spam from such senders the rare times I recived them before I wrote my program.
Recipient - No 'BCC:' email if desired. In the past, such email I've recieved were spam.
Word lists - My program uses two of them. One of them is the single word list from Grady Ward's Moby project. The other file contains 'spam words' that appear in the first file. Both lists make 'hashbusting' and 'L33T' spelling, two tried and true spammer tactics, impossible.
Black/White lists - Supported at the email address and email domain level. I decided not to support IP level black/whitelisting since the IP source of spam is irrelevant--it is the content of spam that is relevant. Likely, such spam is deemed spam at the email header level anyway--or at the email message content level if need be.
Hash-tables - Pointlest due to 'hashbusting' and 'L33T' spelling. Unecessary in my program.
AI/Probabilistic systems - I researched the Bayesian approach and decided not to use it in my program. Though effective at first, spammers have thoroughly 'poisoning' this method of spam detection. Also, this method requires additional disk storage space, processor time (to do the math calculations on top of the pattern matching), and training time to be effective.
Bypassing filters - A default install of my program should catch almost all spam. Should any get through, one could read through the spam and identify new 'spam words' to be added to that list.
False-positives - Alas, to avoid deleteing such email at the server level, All such email is downloaded and processed. My program displays the subject lines of email messages it process and logs them to a separate file for further review if needed.
Spam filters do not stop spam - Agreed, but they can be as effective as my program which only has one known form of spam it cannot detect sent by a spammer from a stolen/throwaway account.
Reverse lookup - Not supported in my program to avoid slowing my program down and not overburdening the (likely) overtaxed DNS server system. This should be handled at the mailserver level to head off the sending of spam in the first place.
Challenge-Response - I considered using this but decided against it. In doing so I avoid 'mail loops' with another Challenge-Response system and outright rejection by email correspondents who hold a dim view of this antispam system.
Computational challenge: Another idea that fell by the wayside due primarily to the wide disparity in the CPU clock speeds of user's systems.
Cryptography - Not used by my program to process incoming email and thus unecessary. The 'bu
Why not go one step further and treat email from unapproved senders sent through a 3rd party machine as spam. Doing that should drop your spam down to almost zero--consiting of dumb spammers using stolen/throwaway accounts at a domain running their own mailserver(s) or worse, compromised user PCs acting as 'zombie relays'.
But then, for example, my program (see signature) would examine the content of such messages and likely deem them spam anyway.
My program CF13(TM) would render such malware email attachments safe to handle no matter who the sender was. It would also detect virtually all spam and treat it appropriately.
There is one at the bottom of this fraudulent phish site posing as a part of eBay that got sent to me recently via email.
http://210.93.131.250/my/index.htm
Needless to say, this is *not* a secure connection as far as the browser is concerned.
So I did what I could:
I looked up the abuse department responsible for 210.93.131.250 (the spam email *came* from this IP address) and traced it to a group of DNS servers in Korea. Cross referencing them with rfc-ignorant.org revealed they were *ALL* blacklisted--nobody worth complaining to.
I reported the phish URL to eBay by sending them the url saying in effect 'why wast the bandwith sending you the spam email itself containing the (reported) url'.
I even 'filled' out the form at the phish site, using 'fraud' and 'I reported you to eBay' in the text fields.
The website is still up and running, ready to steal some persons credit card information.
Now with the program CF13(TM) I wrote and use, such phish scam emails are scanned, deemed spam, and sent to the program's 'spamdump'. Should such a message get past CF13(TM), that would mean such a message is (concievably) reportable to the abuse department responsible for hosting the such a site....
Now, I don't have to deal *almost all* forms of email spam and don't have to hide behind an obsfucated email address to do it.
Since it appears impossible to shut down this fraudulent site, the next best thing is to prevent anybody from going there. Thus a perfectly useable IP address has been ruined by scammers....
However, I heard HE DID NOT RUN 'PATTERNS' when he accomplished the amazing feat of the world's first perfect game of PAC-MAN. By doing that, he MAXIMIZED the challenge and made the feat he accomplished even MORE amazing!
The best I ever did was 'a coupla million' and yes I was 'running patterns' to do it.
On the other hand, I do know what marathon videogaming feels like. It took me about 8.5 hours to see what happes to a TAPPER videogame after 'board 255'....
There is a 'board 0' to play through then the game starts completely over as if you just first put a coin in the machine. I racked up over 5 million points along the way but that wasn't important to me at the time.
BURGERTIME was ridiculously easy to 'roll over' scorewise once you learned how to 'run patterns' like I did. However the game became simply impossible to play after about 30 levels as the 'monsters' moved way too fast to avoid.
Even TRON, one of the best videogames ever made, 'ran on patterns'. Though I had figured out 'patterns' to play it, it wasn't 'mindless' like in PAC-MAN or BURGERTIME. Because of randomization, you never knew which subgame you were about to play and had to be ready to use the right 'pattern' the instant the subgame playfield was revealed. Thus, that game still remained fun to play even when running patterns.
Once I learned how to stop the bad guys from firing in GALAGA, it turned that game into a giant space shooting gallery where it's rather easy to 'roll the score over'. Playing 'for real', I could barely get past 100,000. One time, many years ago, I saw a guy MAKE A GALAGA GAME STOP WORKING!!!
He scored 3,180,180 in the process with normal, 'bad guy shooting' play!
After finishing board 255, the game displayed 'board 0', and empty, ever-scrolling starfield....
Another high score I got years ago, was 406,650 in NICHIBUTSU'S demented masterpiece, CRAZY CLIMBER. It wasn't easy, but I had a lot of 'men' to help.
Another videogame accomplishment I am rather fond of was the 300,000+ I scored in a single game of Q*bert. I would put the difficulty of that game somewhere between the 'easy pattern play' of PAC-MAN and the unpredictability of ghost monster behaviour inherent in MS. PAC-MAN.
Years later, I started playing CAPCOM'S STREET FIGHTER II to get away from the 'pattern play' of those early BALLY/MIDWAY classic videogames.
I got somewhat good at SFII and its descendents I was able to play but I was not a world-class player--more of an 'experienced enthusiast'.
I rarely play any arcade games nowadays. The classics of yesteryear are gone in favor of the newest, expensive, graphic-laden driving/shooting/fighting game to appear in arcades....
I am glad I grew up during the era of classic videogaming and its graphically crude, minimalist fun....
This is one of the reasons why I've effectively STOPPED watching TV. The other is the overall quality of shows on TV. I've all but given up on mass-market entertainment and instead basically read Slashdot and a particular anime webfiction site I visit that I will not disclose publicly to avoid it turning into the junk-ridden (but not totally worthless) anime section of:
http://www.fanfiction.net/
On an unrelated note, the menace of email spam, itself a sign of overcommercialization, threatens to ruin the world wide email network. I read recently according to
http://www.brightmail.com
about 60% of the worldwide email traffic is spam.
That is why I wrote and use CF13(TM) to corral my spam into two separate files for easy archiving and/or deletion. By using CF13(TM), I am doing my part to 'take back' my email (address) from spammers and not 'hide' behind some form of obsfucation to protect it. Case in point: at another personal site I've set up, another of my email addresses is an IMAGE FILE on the page. It STILL got spammed which proves that spammers are DESPARATE enough to spam manually for email addresses that CAN'T be processed by spambot email address harvesting programs that cannot read text imbedded in graphical images....
Slashdot Mirror
That reminded me of the Justin Bailey code for that game.
As for your sig, I think its priceless!
Spammers have poisioned bayesian filtering, reducing its effectiveness. My program (see sig) uses a combination of techniques which, collectively, effectively deem an email message 'spam' or 'not-spam'.
Thanks for reading, Bryan
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
Then you run the risk of deleting an important messag as spam. If your time is precious to you, check your email while you sleep. If you use my program (see sig), all spam it detects will be clearly identified and archived for later perusal and/or deletion.
Thank you for reading this,
Bryan Taylor
My credentials are years of programming experience and months of research invested in CF13(TM), my solution to English-language spam.
Part I of the article:
Identity theft - The ones I got were relayed through a 3rd party machine and deemed spam. Should I ever get a 'real one' that would mean either a spammer is using a stolen/throwaway account at a domain with mailserver(s) and easily traceable, or, worse yet, an 'inside job' by someone unscrupulous at the sender domain. The rule of thumb is to not give out sensitive information via email no matter how convincing said email is.
Viruses - All attachments are treated as 'text files' by my program and are 'harmless' provided a certain registry key affecting Notepad hasn't been changed/hijacked (see my website for more details). Also, all email is downloaded and treated as text files, making HTML related exploits impossible as well.
Sender - Anonymous senders are treated as spam. No exceptions. I've only gotten spam from such senders the rare times I recived them before I wrote my program.
Recipient - No 'BCC:' email if desired. In the past, such email I've recieved were spam.
Word lists - My program uses two of them. One of them is the single word list from Grady Ward's Moby project. The other file contains 'spam words' that appear in the first file. Both lists make 'hashbusting' and 'L33T' spelling, two tried and true spammer tactics, impossible.
Black/White lists - Supported at the email address and email domain level. I decided not to support IP level black/whitelisting since the IP source of spam is irrelevant--it is the content of spam that is relevant. Likely, such spam is deemed spam at the email header level anyway--or at the email message content level if need be.
Hash-tables - Pointlest due to 'hashbusting' and 'L33T' spelling. Unecessary in my program.
AI/Probabilistic systems - I researched the Bayesian approach and decided not to use it in my program. Though effective at first, spammers have thoroughly 'poisoning' this method of spam detection. Also, this method requires additional disk storage space, processor time (to do the math calculations on top of the pattern matching), and training time to be effective.
Bypassing filters - A default install of my program should catch almost all spam. Should any get through, one could read through the spam and identify new 'spam words' to be added to that list.
False-positives - Alas, to avoid deleteing such email at the server level, All such email is downloaded and processed. My program displays the subject lines of email messages it process and logs them to a separate file for further review if needed.
Spam filters do not stop spam - Agreed, but they can be as effective as my program which only has one known form of spam it cannot detect sent by a spammer from a stolen/throwaway account.
Reverse lookup - Not supported in my program to avoid slowing my program down and not overburdening the (likely) overtaxed DNS server system. This should be handled at the mailserver level to head off the sending of spam in the first place.
Part II of the article:
Challenge-Response - I considered using this but decided against it. In doing so I avoid 'mail loops' with another Challenge-Response system and outright rejection by email correspondents who hold a dim view of this antispam system.
Computational challenge: Another idea that fell by the wayside due primarily to the wide disparity in the CPU clock speeds of user's systems.
Cryptography - Not used by my program to process incoming email and thus unecessary. The 'bu
Why not go one step further and treat email from unapproved senders sent through a 3rd party machine as spam. Doing that should drop your spam down to almost zero--consiting of dumb spammers using stolen/throwaway accounts at a domain running their own mailserver(s) or worse, compromised user PCs acting as 'zombie relays'.
But then, for example, my program (see signature) would examine the content of such messages and likely deem them spam anyway.
My program CF13(TM) would render such malware email attachments safe to handle no matter who the sender was. It would also detect virtually all spam and treat it appropriately.
Every time I read one of these, I 'hear' Phil Hartman doing it 'in character' in my head.
He will be missed in that respect....
Bryan
'Re: Do people even see the lock?' Stay sharp!
There is one at the bottom of this fraudulent phish site posing as a part of eBay that got sent to me recently via email.
http://210.93.131.250/my/index.htm
Needless to say, this is *not* a secure connection as far as the browser is concerned.
So I did what I could:
I looked up the abuse department responsible for
210.93.131.250 (the spam email *came* from this IP address) and traced it to a group of DNS servers in Korea. Cross referencing them with rfc-ignorant.org revealed they were *ALL* blacklisted--nobody worth complaining to.
I reported the phish URL to eBay by sending them the url saying in effect 'why wast the bandwith sending you the spam email itself containing the (reported) url'.
I even 'filled' out the form at the phish site, using 'fraud' and 'I reported you to eBay' in the text fields.
The website is still up and running, ready to steal some persons credit card information.
Now with the program CF13(TM) I wrote and use, such phish scam emails are scanned, deemed spam, and sent to the program's 'spamdump'. Should such a message get past CF13(TM), that would mean such a message is (concievably) reportable to the abuse department responsible for hosting the such a site....
Now, I don't have to deal *almost all* forms of email spam and don't have to hide behind an obsfucated email address to do it.
Since it appears impossible to shut down this fraudulent site, the next best thing is to prevent anybody from going there. Thus a perfectly useable IP address has been ruined by scammers....
Just ask Billy Mitchell.
However, I heard HE DID NOT RUN 'PATTERNS' when he accomplished the amazing feat of the world's first perfect game of PAC-MAN. By doing that, he MAXIMIZED the challenge and made the feat he accomplished even MORE amazing!
The best I ever did was 'a coupla million' and yes I was 'running patterns' to do it.
On the other hand, I do know what marathon videogaming feels like. It took me about 8.5 hours to see what happes to a TAPPER videogame after 'board 255'....
There is a 'board 0' to play through then the game starts completely over as if you just first put a coin in the machine. I racked up over 5 million points along the way but that wasn't important to me at the time.
BURGERTIME was ridiculously easy to 'roll over' scorewise once you learned how to 'run patterns' like I did. However the game became simply impossible to play after about 30 levels as the 'monsters' moved way too fast to avoid.
Even TRON, one of the best videogames ever made, 'ran on patterns'. Though I had figured out 'patterns' to play it, it wasn't 'mindless' like in PAC-MAN or BURGERTIME. Because of randomization, you never knew which subgame you were about to play and had to be ready to use the right 'pattern' the instant the subgame playfield was revealed. Thus, that game still remained fun to play even when running patterns.
Once I learned how to stop the bad guys from firing in GALAGA, it turned that game into a giant space shooting gallery where it's rather easy to 'roll the score over'. Playing 'for real', I could barely get past 100,000. One time, many years ago, I saw a guy MAKE A GALAGA GAME STOP WORKING!!!
He scored 3,180,180 in the process with normal, 'bad guy shooting' play!
After finishing board 255, the game displayed 'board 0', and empty, ever-scrolling starfield....
Another high score I got years ago, was 406,650 in NICHIBUTSU'S demented masterpiece, CRAZY CLIMBER. It wasn't easy, but I had a lot of 'men' to help.
Another videogame accomplishment I am rather fond of was the 300,000+ I scored in a single game of Q*bert. I would put the difficulty of that game somewhere between the 'easy pattern play' of PAC-MAN and the unpredictability of ghost monster behaviour inherent in MS. PAC-MAN.
Years later, I started playing CAPCOM'S STREET FIGHTER II to get away from the 'pattern play' of those early BALLY/MIDWAY classic videogames.
I got somewhat good at SFII and its descendents I was able to play but I was not a world-class player--more of an 'experienced enthusiast'.
I rarely play any arcade games nowadays. The classics of yesteryear are gone in favor of the newest, expensive, graphic-laden driving/shooting/fighting game to appear in arcades....
I am glad I grew up during the era of classic videogaming and its graphically crude, minimalist fun....
Thank you for reading this,
Bryan
This is one of the reasons why I've effectively STOPPED watching TV. The other is the overall quality of shows on TV. I've all but given up on mass-market entertainment and instead basically read Slashdot and a particular anime webfiction site I visit that I will not disclose publicly to avoid it turning into the junk-ridden (but not totally worthless) anime section of:
http://www.fanfiction.net/
On an unrelated note, the menace of email spam, itself a sign of overcommercialization, threatens to ruin the world wide email network. I read recently according to
http://www.brightmail.com
about 60% of the worldwide email traffic is spam.
That is why I wrote and use CF13(TM) to corral my spam into two separate files for easy archiving and/or deletion. By using CF13(TM), I am doing my part to 'take back' my email (address) from spammers and not 'hide' behind some form of obsfucation to protect it. Case in point: at another personal site I've set up, another of my email addresses is an IMAGE FILE on the page. It STILL got spammed which proves that spammers are DESPARATE enough to spam manually for email addresses that CAN'T be processed by spambot email address harvesting programs that cannot read text imbedded in graphical images....
Thank you for reading this,
Bryan