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Re: [Asrg] This research group will fail

2003-03-19 23:20:15
At 10:36 PM -0400 3/19/03, Ian Wilson wrote:
The vast majority of my troublesome mail appears my untrained eye to be
easily identifiable.  Most of the SPAM I get comes from Domains that only
change a bit.  optprofessionals.com,  freegift.com, and a lot of others that
don't leap to mind right now.

They change as they get blocked. Some spammers use fake ones. Others create new (real) domains on a weekly basis. If it were just a matter of blocking domains there wouldn't be a business for anti-spam companies.

I'm not sure *anonymous speech* is worth protecting.  I'm not saying Free
Speech isn't worth protecting, but I should not have the protection to say
whatever I want, and the protection of doing it under cover.  While I'm no

A quick google search turned up lots of references on the consitution and anonymous speech. This one seems to cover the issues pretty well:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=1380

 On the other hand, legislation that said it was okay to
 spam if the return address was valid could potentially make your spam
 volume much, much higher.

I would clarify that a bit.  My idea is that I be able to reply to a SPAM,
and asked to be removed from future mailings.   Currently there seems to be

Of course the people who violate this are the ones you won't be able to track down easily. The issue with making this rule is that it has the potential to legitimize unsolicited email. While getting thousands of spam messages every week is really unpleasant. Getting thousands of offers from legitimate companies every day would be even worse. Yes, you could unsubscribe. But you'd spend all day doing it. I'm not arguing against requiring legitimate return addresses on bulk email. I think it's a very good idea. But we do want to make sure that we *still* require some form of opt-in.


for the SPAMMER to respect my wishes.    Today I am going to get at least 20
messages from

suzy-acbyxuqd(_at_)free-gift-offers(_dot_)com  to  
suzy-yxtvmuxk(_at_)free-gift-offers(_dot_)com

The first part of the address changes all the time, but the Domain remains
the same.  I currently use a program called Mail Washer, and I have over
1000 messages from these people.  As a paying customer of NBTel they should
address concerns.  If they backed me up I'm sure it would stop

What should they do? That domain maps to optindeals.com. (Amusing rule of thumb, I have *never* gotten a false positive flagging an address with "optin" in the domain name :-). That domain maps to a DSL connection on cais.net. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that IP address periodically changed. They can complain to cais (and so can you). They might close the account. Not clear if they could safely block the entire ISP. And in any case--you've said the email's from address is free-gift-offers.com. But do you have any evidence that the email actually comes from the owner of that domain? The circumstantial evidence looks good--but presumably you'd want your ISP to carefully check for proof before shutting off *your* account if someone accused you of spamming.

--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.puremessaging.com/        Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/   Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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