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Re: Re: Send Your Own Mass E-Mail-Complete Kit



At 05:53 PM 8/13/98 EDT, you wrote:
>
>In a message dated 8/13/98 12:48:15 PM, nyfac2@nyfac.com wrote:
>
>>I have heard that replying to these mass mailings does not get you taken 
>off
>their
>>list-  in fact, I have been told
>>that this only shows them that your account is active, and puts you on 
>future
>spam
>>lists.
>>Anyone hear the same thing?
>
>
>That's my understanding also- it is better to filter out what you can (I 
>would
>love to be able to filter "Blind Carbon Copy" email (Loopers excepted, of
>course)) and simply delete unread what you can't.

another course of action, if you are interested in fighting spam, is
learning how to read mail headers. The "from" address in spam is always 
fake
(so replying with "remove" is a waste of time, it will just bounce), but 
you
can usually tell from the header the server/ISP where it originated. Then
you contact the abuse department at that ISP and forward a copy of the 
spam,
asking them to investigate. They will almost always close the account
immediately. (and its such a nice feeling when they write back to let you
know and say thanks!)

You can also tell from the header which SMTP server the spammer used to 
send
the mail. Usually they route to some unprotected mail server over the
internet, and use it without permission to send the spam. If you contact 
the
owner of that server (usually an inexperienced sysadmin) and let them know,
they can upgrade the server and set it so spammers can't use it anymore.

BTW, this doesn't work for spam sent to a mailing list like this, since the
spam header gets stripped out by the mailing list software. The header you
see will just show you that it originated at the mailing list account, and
won't help you find the spammer at all.

There is a lot of info online about this, unfortunately, I don't a a good
list of links with me. Well, I guess I have one....Here's a place that's
pretty good, and includes some cool online tools for investigating origins
of spam mail, and has lots of info on decoding spam headers:

http://www.blighty.com/spam/

anyway, have fun. If spam to the list starts becoming a problem, I can
restrict it so that only subscribers can post. I didn't want to do that so
far, since there are some folks out there who post useful stuff sometimes
but aren't on the list anymore.

kim
________________________________________________________
Kim Flint, MTS                 408-752-9284
Chromatic Research             kflint@chromatic.com
http://www.chromatic.com