Oblig vnet: So what's the vnet presentation supposed to look like at
VRML 99? Any hints, Jeff?
Those uninterested in spam may safely skip the rest of this
message....
> This may seem too extreme; but why not just ban yahoo.com
> completely?
I had an isp that did that, and it caused no end of problems.
Esp since some of the people I corresponded with _worked_ for
places like yahoo, and thus had yahoo business addresses.
Standard solution is to prevent posting to the list from
unsubscribed addresses. This is a pain for people with forwarding
services, but helps. There are also various spam filters
available that hunt for things like subject lines with "FREE
MONEY!!!!" in them. This helps in the short term, but eventually
the spammers just start signing up for the lists and using
different subject lines. Sigh.
Notifying the spammer's isp is satisfying in an emotional sense
(I start my day off by doing just that for the night's spam
load) but doesn't really help very much in the short term, because
there are an infinite number of spammers using an infinite number
of isp's.
The following is (part of) an announcement from the OPENGL-GAMEDEV
list that addressed some of the steps they took to cut down
on spam:
------------8<----------------8<---------------------------------------------
Several mailing lists hosted at fatcity.com (which may or may not include this
list) have previously been managed on a "lax subscriber" basis, allowing
individuals to post to the list even though they were not officially registered
as a subscriber. This was done either at the request of the list owner, or to
aid list growth, or to allow people with multiple E-mail addresses to access the
list. Most lists have always been closed to everyone but subscribers. While
this USED to be a perfectly acceptable and normal way to run a list, the
proliferation of spam (unsolicited advertisements) during 1998 has grown to an
intolerable level. The problems associated with replies to spam getting on the
list, confusion about who is originating the spam, educating people to ignore
spam, etc., have all caused numerous headaches for everyone.
As a result, several steps will be taken to fix this for 1999 and the future.
Specifically, ~~ALL~~ mailing lists will now require that you be a valid,
registered subscriber in order to post messages. In addition, a spam filter
will be put into service that will reject messages based on
unsolicited/objectionable content, point of origination and/or subject lines. I
anticipate these new policies will cause some problems for a small group of
people, but the benefit of zero spam will outweigh these short-term initial
problems.
The new subscriber validation scheme and the spam filter have been in place for
the past two weeks, passively evaluating each list and indicating what would be
denied, rejected, allowed, warned and so on *ON A TRIAL BASIS*. The new
features have not yet actually restricted postings or spam. However, these
features will be turned on *PERMANENTLY* as of 23-Jan-1999.
