Non-bot-harvestable address (was:Re: None Bot harvestable address)

In article <ced75c7f4f.alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Alan Wrigley
<spamhater@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In message <4f7f299f7atim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Tim Hill <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Alan, when you [snip] say [snip] please.

[Snip]

I will say again, the best way to defeat spam is to use an ISP which
uses blacklist technologies.

I'll second that. ;-)

There are two separate issues here.

There's one. Can spam.

You can have effective spam filters, which benefit you.

Filters? Who was talking about filters? Do you think blacklist
technologies are as crude as what can be done with local filters in the
likes of Pluto, Antispam etc? That makes three issues, AFAICT. Three.
There are three issues: Server blacklist technologies (which rely on a
sophisticated legalese approach and much 'behind the scenes' stuff),
local filters and hiding on a web page.

Then there's the AI attempts with heuristics and its associated time
wasting false positives. Four. There are four separate issues:
blacklists, filters, web-hiding, and AI.

If your ISP is still rubbing two sticks together and doing nothing about
wasting your time with spam from known spammers, you're either a
masochist or perhaps it's time for a change of ISP. If you haven't
experienced the wonderful calm which descends when (almost all) the spam
vanishes, you may as well be dialling up a bulletin board with a prestel
terminal. If a few a-holes are responsible for sending >90% of spam,
doesn't it make sense to simply destroy it all (and them!) and petition
ISPs to plug the known holes and deal with users who may be unknowingly
part of a botnet? There are large ISPs who seem to do nothing but
thankfully there are can-spam organisations such as www.spamhaus.org who
bring pressure to bear on all our behalves.

These blacklists are a great idea if you have a fixed IP address but
unfortunate if you share a pool of addresses with a spammer or a bot.
Another reason to avoid free and big ISPs. Get your own IP address and
keep it clean.

You can also take steps to prevent spam being generated in the first
place, which benefits everyone because it cuts down on wasted bandwidth
in the system.

That's true but only if you keep your fingers crossed. ;-)

The two are not mutually exclusive but your post appeared to dismiss
the second out of hand.

Did it? You must have missed the lower part of the message containing
chunk of BASIC which not only provides a means of munging an 'mailto:'
but you snipped without [snip]. Did you remember to scroll down? You
didn't 'snip' willy nilly did you? Ouch.

I didn't open my mouth for you to fill it. I said "the best way" not "the
only way". You can't stop getting onto spammers lists in the first place
so there is little point expending too much effort (or hot air) in
finding 'the best way' to defeat harvesters of web pages. You have only
to send one message to a prat without up-to-date anti-thingy in their pee
sea and the floodgates will open. What is it now? An unprotected pee sea
is said to be infected within eight seconds of being connected to the
'net.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4423733.stm

Why did I post a munging proglet if I thought trying to defeat web
harvesters was a complete and utter waste of time? How is this to 'dismiss
[anything] out of hand'?

The fight against spam is multi-dimensional

Ooh - ee - oooh, nah nah nah nah-nah-nah.

and any method that can cut
it down is worth pursuing.

/Any/ method??? You didn't mean 'any' did you? I have a foolproof way
but it'll cost fifty grand a year per mailbox and I will /guarantee/ to
save you time and filter out /all/ your spam.

That's why I posted that bit of BASIC. To save people time who want /A/
method. Not the only or probably best method as a determined prat will
defeat anything given time; they are funded by gullible fools. Spammers
will employ eight-year-old kids in Tibet for a pound a day and have them
manually defeat even those sites which use the current fad of a scribble
box, you know: "type in the six letters which have been walked over by a
spider with inky feet" kinda thing.

You have claimed several times that blacklist technology stops all spam.

I think you need to back that up by quoting me as saying those exact
words because, as you well know, blacklists don't stop /all/ spam any
more than they stop annoying postings from someone whose head is full of
assumptions passed off as facts :-p

I have loads of addresses which have been 'infected' thanks to dozens of
journos and hundreds of luvvies but my ISP's interventions are so good I
see only a handful of spam arrive daily and most of it - bar the odd one
or two - are caught by my collection of hundreds of Pluto filters. So
there.

It can definitely help a lot but it doesn't stop all spam.

> 90% is 'a lot' and 'nearly all'. Judging by the amount of rubbish I
used to get I would say my ISP's stopping >99% but its only a gut feeling
I have no stats to back up.

And it
certainly doesn't stop the spam being sent in the first place.

Well it does stop it in its tracks because when mail-servers are
communicating with each other, those with blacklist technologies don't
accept spam in the first place AIUI. Blacklists are not really filters as
you intimate because only the sending IP address is examined and mail
from known idiots or bots is not accepted. Such blacklists are
interrogated and updated in real time.

As many of us found out years ago, it is filtering technology which is
most likely to let you down and reject 'ham'. The foolish system adopted
by Google, for example, allows users to tell it what spam is. I know many
PC users I wouldn't trust to identify the difference between heads and
tails on a coin. Nevertheless, setting up a gmail account simply to
'wash' your email has been recommended in certain quarters though even I
(with nowt to hide) do baulk at the prospect of letting Google analyse
all my messages.

So, in short, waste as much time discussing and constructing ways to
defeat spam harvesters as you like but just make sure you never send an
email to a plonker with a keyboard who doesn`t know that, like condoms,
good protection is free if you know where to get it.

There should be a rule which states that only those people who experience
blacklist protection are allowed to comment on it. ;-)

Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.

--
* Stop paying BT so much: www.timil.com/usenet.php
* Want a genuine but spam-proof Usenet address? Visit www.invalid.org.uk
or email me: postmaster at invalid dot org dot uk
* (tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx is deleted unread - please use my valid address above)

.... "God shall be my hope, my stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet" Henry VI, Act ii, Sc.3
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Viruses - Tom Ogilvy
    ... except that it's extremely rare that my filters ... don't catch the spam (maybe 3 false negatives a week). ... The blacklists send 75% of the spam straight to the trash. ...
    (microsoft.public.excel.misc)
  • Re: OT - B****y Spams
    ... It allows you to use various filters and blacklists to automatically delete and/or bounce spam emails back to whence they came! ... spam has a forged return path which means the bounces go to innocent accounts thereby increasing the spam problem for somebody else. ...
    (uk.rec.walking)
  • RE: Spamcop listed - need help to diagnose why
    ... >> Unfortunately in the spam game, it only matters if the spammer ... move on to the next server. ... >> strangeness when SA checks blacklists and such to assign scores. ...
    (freebsd-questions)
  • Re: A Farewell to RSS
    ... The problem for you, from what I read, is that you want to access rss from many different computers. ... That's the real problem, not the spam. ... newsreaders and filters are alien concepts. ... than a web forum (eerrrrr, no - by their very nature, web forums ...
    (rec.sport.soccer)
  • Re: SpamAssassin-Milter accuracy...
    ... but you have to accept that blacklists have been compiled with very ... objective criteria, ... Not to say you shouldn't reject spam, ... an overloaded server. ...
    (freebsd-questions)
Loading