• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Spam Solution?

Microsoft has come up with a reasonably good way of dealing with spam. You must establish a trust relationship with the recipient by means of paying with computer time.

When a connection is established with the recipients email server there is some exchange of information that requires the sender to do some work taking a few seconds (calculating the answer to some algorithm or the like). Once a trust is established, presumably by user choice, all arriving email from that source passes freely. This method is to be built into future versions of Microsoft email programs. Patches will no doubt follow in the weeks there after.
 
I have a good way of avoiding spam. It involves not giving my address to anyone who asks. Mail me at example@example.nildram.co.uk and it goes straight into the crap folder. The crap folder is quickly examined and emptied now and then. Unless you know the real myaddress@example.nildram.co.uk address, your mail will not get through.

Obviously, my website only lists web@example.nildram.co.uk as an address, and that goes into another folder.

I enter competitions with the address competitions@example.nildram.co.uk and all the spam goes there.

If my real address (within that subdomain) goes pear-shaped, I'll just use a different one; it's not difficult.

Cheeers,
Rat.
 
It would be neat if you could bounce unwanted e-mail with a "return to sender, address unknown" message attached, just as if the e-mail wasn't valid. Then your e-mail would register as invalid with the spammer and you would be removed from his list.
Or maybe that wouldn't work?
 
bangdazap, so if I chose to put your mail address into the mail headers from: field, you'd get a million answers per hour, telling you that the recipient was unavailable.

Forging the header is standard procedure, that's why this won't work.

Oh, and:

If people would just stop buying the crap the spammers are selling...
Click to expand...


THAT'S IT!
 
Yeah, well if "people"* were that smart, we'd have been colonizing space centuries ago.

Unfortunately, "people"* are stupid, and it only takes that 5% described in the Dilbert Principle to make it all worth it for the spammers.

Average intelligence isn't very bright, and placing "average" almost anywhere reasonably valid for an "average", more people will be AT or BELOW average than above it.

A strong argument for better AI: Naturally occurring intelligence is too rare.
 
Duh!! We are all trying to fix the symptoms, NOT the problem.

The symptoms are well-known: clogged networks and ISP servers, unwitting drones launching tonnes of junk, nights slaving over hot servers fixing stuff, yadda yadda yadda, all the stuff we know and hate. And this is an economic issue too - all this junk consumes real network time, real ISP power, real software development effort to combat, real wasted work time. And that means $$$. BIG $$$, going down the tubes.

The REAL PROBLEM is that emails are running over protocols that have no security capabilities at all, or so few that they are totally inadequate for the job. Remember, email was originally designed to be running on a closed network between trusted clients, so security was a non-issue. Now it's on a wide-open network...but it still has no real security worth spitting on. In effect, we will always be behind the 8-ball because the lifeboat is leaking faster than we can plug the holes (it's nearly been swamped a few times already).

So the solution is obvious: Change the email protocol(s) to be properly secure. Ensure it has those features we know will cut off all avenues for unsolicited emails. Make sure it cannot be circumvented, no code hacks, etc, etc. We are smart enough to do this, so let's do it. Make it pay for ISPs to make the change and simply block-and-drop the old, unsecure email protocols, so they die a quick death.

And I understand this is already in the pipeline anyway. Anyone care to enlighten us on this?
 
FXT said:
bangdazap, so if I chose to put your mail address into the mail headers from: field, you'd get a million answers per hour, telling you that the recipient was unavailable.

Forging the header is standard procedure, that's why this won't work.
Click to expand...
What? I don't understand. If the spammer gets a message that my e-mail is invalid, why would he keep sending me messages? With this idea the spammer would get the same response as if he was trying to send an e-mail to a genuinly non-existent e-mail address. Not that I know that much about how these things works..
 
ratcomp1974 said:
I have a good way of avoiding spam. It involves not giving my address to anyone who asks. Mail me at example@example.nildram.co.uk and it goes straight into the crap folder. The crap folder is quickly examined and emptied now and then. Unless you know the real myaddress@example.nildram.co.uk address, your mail will not get through.
Click to expand...

Yeah, i use this method as well, but you still get some spam as people get through somehow.

Another method would be to only read emails from people you know (that are in your adress book). The only problem i can see is if you want to contact people for the first time you have to talk to them first.

Any solutions?
 
The only way to stop spam, and telemarketing, is for enough recipients not to respond that the spammers find their activity totally unprofitable. Unfortunately, spam is like a desert flower -- it exists with apparently no nourishment. I don't want to see many if any restrictions placed on internet communications. So at this point, I'm willing to simply dump the 50 or so spam items a get each day. The few spam-blockers I've looked at seem to require my identifying all those from whom I want to get e-mail, or don't want to. This seems impractical, since I don't recall or know all those I may want to hear from or the thousand or so I don't want to.
 
I don't like the way the idea of us all having to pay to send emails keeps getting put forward.

If that has to happen then I much perfer a kind of paypal kind of system. I propose that if i send my friend an email i attach a tenth of a penny (or something like that) to that email, which he gets to keep. When he replies I affectively get my money back.

Then every spam email yu get would give you a little money and would bankcrupt then.

Just an idea, I haven't thought it through ...
 
There are several available solutions to spam, if your in charge of the mailserver

One is whitelists; if someone sends you an email the address is checked; if it isn't in your whitelist a message is sent back to the person requesting the reason they need to speak with you. If they don't give a response you never see the email.

Blacklists are the opposite; your email is checked & if the address appears on a blacklist, you never see the email.

Reverse-DNS lookups can be helpful in combating spam as well.

If you're jsut a common person looking for a decent solution check out http://www.mailwasher.net ; it's a free spam fighter that allows you to bounce messages if you like. Though, honestly, that rarely makes a difference since the header is forged anyway...but it comes with several filters already set up and you can make your own. And it's free.
 
What T'ai Chi said...also, I think the standardization of digital signatures being bandied about is a very good idea as well. This way, there's some degree of authentication about who sent what email and this will make it a lot easier to manage.
 
I'm with lemastre on this in that I want to see as little regulation as possible. I get no spam at home, and I get maybe a dozen a day on my yahoo account. It's really not as big a deal as some make out.

OK, so I can say this easily now that I'm not on dial-up, but it was never really a problem then.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
I'm amazed at how good a job Yahoo! does of filtering spam. If anything, it's overzealous. I barely get any spam on a many year old account, though I occasionally have to fish something out of the bulk-folder [though they're usually asking for it; one legit email had 'FREE' and 'DO NOT DELETE' in the header, and a dozen links inside]
 
I've been using www.spampal.org for the past couple of weeks.

It's freeware and not too difficult to setup.

It can use a variety of filter methods (whitelist, blacklist, Bayesian, and pattern matching). I'm using the whitelist/blacklist method with:

Spamhaus XBL
SpamCop
NJABL
DSBL
SPEWS

So far about 6-7 emails have gotten through the blacklists (out of over 100 spam). I've since added a pattern matching filter or two (like any email which Norton cleaned goes in the spam folder).

Anyway... in the past week, it's been 100% reliable. Not bad for a free program with several filtering options.
 
I use MailWasher. There's a free version you can use for 1 email account. Using it, I can preview the email subject and who they're from. I can blacklist the garbage, even whole domains, and delete/bounce the trash. It never gets to my actual inbox. Recommended by De_Bunk, so you know it's good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom