[Tfug] Re: ISP for Qwest DSL

Thu Jan 16 13:10:01 2003

My point, really, is that crawlers aren't in use, that I know of, that 
do this currently. Again, I'm open to the idea they're being developed, 
but -- again -- my own experience both on my own systems and others I've 
worked on leads me to believe many Listserv and message board systems 
are relatively safe compared to AOL message boards and newsgroups, where 
joining a single message board will result in a SPAM problem within 24 
hours... a SPAM problem that will haunt one for the rest of the screen 
name's life span.

As I noted in my post, mailman doesn't include the email addresses in 
the archives. Check the tfug archives at www.tfug.org.

All that having been said, I may have been responding more to the 
general tone of Michele's post, as well as the flagrant use of the AOL 
brand name in an external communication, then to the message in general.

If the point is, "People control, to a large extent, the amount of SPAM 
they receive by the ways in which they make their email address 
available to the general public and harvesting programs," I would 
whole-heartedly agree.

It's the rest of the garbage that got my fingers going.

Oh, and I think the only people manually harvesting addresses any more 
are Insurance salesman and the like -- not too difficult blocking or 
filtering a message that always comes from the same address... :-D

+ I'm probably responding to some of what was said below:

. Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 10:57:50 -0700
. Subject: Re: [Tfug] Re: ISP for Qwest DSL
. From: Leo Przybylski <leo@leosandbox.org>
. Reply-To: tfug@tfug.org
. To: tfug@tfug.org
. User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a)
.     Gecko/20021212
. 
. Anthony Steckman wrote:
. 
. >Outside of AOL, most message boards and email groups are pretty safe 
. >from harvesters, who prefer to use crawlers that harvest mailto 
. >addresses from an html context. Mailman protects against this by not 
. >posting email addresses in the archives. In other words: the only way 
. >to get addresses from this Listserv... is to join the Listserv. Most of 
. >the old-school newsgroup type crawlers fail here because they don't know 
. >how to reply to the confirmation email.
. >
. Doesn't TFUG use mailman? I would hate to rain on your parade, but I 
. could quite easily (with procmail, bash and sendmail), start spamming 
. people on this mailing list. There are ways to protect against this with 
. sendmail, but I won't go into that.
. 
. In a modular sense, it would be simple to integrate this functionality 
. into a crawling system.
. 
. Speaking of crawling, isn't it also possible to crawl mailing-list 
. archives available through good ole' HTTP?
. 
. I don't mean to boast, and this may not really prove anything by me 
. saying it, but I used to write crawling software for spammers (much to 
. my shame). I maintain a personal database of domestic/international 
. email addresses (I'm sure you're on it somewhere).
. 
. I'm with the AOL QA person. I also used to write software for profiling 
. over network protocols. I'm sure that if you have visited any of the 
. clients from http://www.coremetrics.com, you have been tagged and are 
. tracked throughout the world of HTTP. If you have ever seen an XXX 
. banner (now, I would never stoop that low, but they are the competition 
. for legitimate businesses) or email, you again are tagged.
. 
. Spam isn't all you have to worry about. Be sure to turn your cookies off 
. even in your email viewer.
. 
. -Leo
. P.S. By "you", I wasn't referring to any specific individual. I mean 
. anyone reading this on the list.
. 
. >
. >This isn't to say it couldn't eventually become a problem, but your 
. >experience with AOL is skewing your perception of what happens on the 
. >rest of the Internet.
. >
. >Yahoo! mailing lists also protect one's email address -- again, the only 
. >way to harvest the address is to join the email groups -- and the 
. >crawlers in use just aren't smart enough to handle that yet.
. >
. >Finally, if you really work at AOL, your email to this Listserv is in 
. >violation of at least three company policies.
. >
. >All things being the same:
. >
. >Stick around awhile and you might learn something.
. >
. >
. >+ I'm probably responding to some of what was said below:
. >
. >. Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 21:08:12 -0700
. >. Subject: [Tfug] Re: ISP for Qwest DSL
. >. From: Michele Campbell <omega593@mac.com>
. >. Reply-To: tfug@tfug.org
. >. To: tfug@tfug.org
. >. X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.551)
. >. 
. >. 
. >. I would like to suggest that you consider how your name is getting on 
. >. the spam lists rather than changing your ISP. Email addresses are 
. >. harvested from a variety of places, including public forums such as 
. >. this one. They are also harvested from ebay and yahoo. So you can 
. >. change ISP's but if your behavior does not change, you will continue to 
. >. receive spam no matter which company provides your internet service. I 
. >. work at AOL and we are currently running some tests on Spam filters-- 
. >. but no filters are perfect. What you must consider is that if your ISP 
. >. starts filtering, the ISP might inadvertently filter some of your 
. >. non-Spam email. So, for your own sake, take a look at who is receiving 
. >. your email address and where your email address is appearing and 
. >. perhaps limit that exposure.
. >. 
. >. L. Michele Campbell
. >. Associate QA Engineer, America Online, Inc.
. >. 
. >. _______________________________________________
. >. tfug mailing list
. >. tfug@tfug.org
. >. http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug
. >. 
. >. 
. >
. >_______________________________________________
. >tfug mailing list
. >tfug@tfug.org
. >http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug
. >  
. >
. 
. 
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