On Sat, 2002-10-26 at 05:07, Peter L. Peres wrote:
> Sorry to noise the list but I've been getting spam from something that
> calls itself axis-of-evil@gwbush.com. It is filthy political spam and I'm
> fed up with it. Since I've complained before I seem to have been
> resubscribed ?! Question: has anyone else seen filth from this source ?

LOL!  That's a good fake address... funny!  At least that spammer has a
good sense of humor.  GW rehashing the nickname of the "bad guys" from
WWII sure is an interesting Marketing gimick from his staffers, eh?

E-mail ender addresses are very easy to fake.  Would you like some
e-mail from me that says it's from president@whitehouse.gov ?  (GRIN)

Even the headers are relatively easy to fake... remember there's very
little effort done at authentication at most mail servers, and even less
personal authentication of the sender, even though both technologies
have been viable for a decade or more.

Generically, replying to spam addresses that say "click here to take me
off the list" or hitting reply to it just guarantees to the spammer that
a real live human being is on the other end of the e-mail address in
their list, and the spam just gets worse.

Best to just delete and move on in most cases unless you're absolutely
sure the spam is something you got from a reputable organization that
will remove your address if asked.  You can literally spend years
digging through headers and "fighting the good fight" against spam and
more spammers will show up next year.

The best chance you have against spam right now is to install good
quality spam blocking software (SpamAssassin on a Unix mail server comes
to mind) and simply throw out anything questionable... if you're a
business you probably need to flag spam for deletion but not throw it
out... depending on your preference.  Moving anything questionable at
the server level into its own folder on an IMAP mail server is a
WONDEFUL technique, but good luck getting any ISP's to even offer IMAP,
let alone good anti-spam software.  This is where running your own
server really starts to show major benefits... you know how your
anti-virus, anti-spam, and anti-annoying-person filters are set up.
(And you can put *me* in your annoying-person filter list!  hahaha...)

The only real solution is serious laws (eventually recognized
Internationally) with teeth in them against the STEALING of resources
that Unsolicited Bulk Commercial E-mail really is.  Write your local
politicians and CongressCritters if you're in the U.S.  Tell them that
you're tired of others using what you paid for... your server, your
bandwidth, your monitor, your eyeballs... heh... well, I wear glasses...
(GRIN).

Nate

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