On Thu, 22 Jun 2000, Bernie Cosell wrote:
> The thing is that the "moral outrage" of a lot of the spam-haters often
> exceeds their technical prowess, and so rather than work harder [or
> learn more!] so that they can really try to figure out whence the spam,
What specific advice can you offer frustrated list owners who receive a
lot of spam and don't have your technical knowledge to trace them
properly? I am among those people who use traceroute to the first IP
address appearing in the forged headers, hoping against hope that it will
reveal the name of its ISP. I then bounce the message with full headers
to the abuse addresses of the closest one or two named domains upstream of
the suspected offending IP address, and the following two addresses:
"Federal Trade Commission: Spam Reports" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Spam Complaints - WA Attorney General's Office <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I take it you feel this is the wrong approach. May I learn from you what
the correct approach is, or could you please point to a published resource
for learning what the correct approach is?
> those folk *some* sysadmin will be the actual culprit... hassling other
> folk unnecessarily and inappropriately almost certainly doesn't register
> high on their list of concerns...
I would rather not "hassle other folk unnecessarily." However, I
(apparently) lack the tools or experience to recognize the "other folk"
for who they are and avoid sending them sepam complaints.
Given that I receive a lot of spam through many of the same hosts
(gip.net and exodus.net come to mind), and few of the people I bounce spam
to actually reply with "we've terminated this user's account", it can
easily feel like nothing is being done to stop the spammers, or that I'm
not casting as wide a net as I should to include the "correct" responsible
parties.
What do you propose as a solution to that?
Note: I already close lists to non-subscribers, so the spam isn't reaching
them, just the list moderators and owners, which is still just as annoying
as if it had been sent to me directly (and it often is).
Is there a public resource where I, and less-technical spam-victims like
me, can learn how to trace spam more effectively and accurately? I
understand how frustrating it is for people like you, but if you don't
offer constructive advice, how can you expect the flow of false complaints
to abate?
--
Michael S. Johnson Miyazaki Web and Mailing List Owner
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/mailing-list
