This was also the point of my email about the two kinds of spam I have
seen. The first kind has no email address in the message body (what
spammer would tell you how to get back at them). The second kind has an
email address in the body of the message and the domain in the email
address is to be found in the headers too.
I think Barry and I both missed a third kind as well. There are some
that actually send you an email with some offer very attractive and an
email address. Of course the offer is bogus - all they want you to do is
click a URL on the email page that takes you back to some site. The
purpose? To verify that you really are there. Is this a rogue spammer or
not?
Chuck
Barry Shein wrote:
On July 9, 2003 at 22:08 dhc(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net (Dave Crocker) wrote:
> Barry,
>
> BS> This relates to the idea that the only reason spammers can operate
> BS> effectively is because they exploit thousands of hijacked computers
> BS> which gives them location mobility (not geographic but in ip space.)
>
> I think your line of reasoning is aided by a distinction I've taken to
> making, between "rogue" spammers -- who are not accountable and for
> which direct controls are not feasible -- versus "responsible" spammers
> -- who are accountable, but too aggressive.
I agree that's an important and useful distinction.
One advantage we tend to have with non-rogue spammers is that they are
generally easy to block (their IP sources are relatively stable and
they don't tend to hide their identities), although I'd agree that one
shouldn't have to waste their time blocking them out of exasperation,
life should be more orderly.
I recently had an experience with Apple who was sending one of their
mailing lists to all kinds of addresses here which never could have
existed (e.g., domains which never had email service.)
Requests to remove those addresses and generally clean up their act so
that kind of thing doesn't happen went completely ignored, not even
the usual automated response brush-off.
Oh well, not hard to imagine where that's going...Apple's just going
to get itself blacklisted piece by piece.
But my point is that is, thus far, the major annoyance to me from the
non-rogue are otherwise reasonably legitimate businesses that have
obtained mailing lists from questionable sources and/or won't clean up
their mailing lists, ever, so the number of mailings and user unknowns
just grows and grows as addresses age and die.
But why should they clean up their act? It's just more expense to
them, this way Apple et al can shift their costs to the recipient
systems.
That is, until they're just blacklisted entirely.
> The path you are discussing pertains to rogue spammers, not responsible
> ones. That does not make it impractical, useless, or the like. It
> merely restricts it to one segment, and not the other.
>
> The other has plenty of legal resources, and always will. And they are
> a serious problem, too.
I'll add a third class, and maybe a fourth if you want to split hairs:
Nutballs and sociopaths: These are people (or small groups of people)
who exhibit some of the superficial characteristics of spammers (they
send a lot of unwanted mail by automated means), but their purpose is
either unknowable (nutballs) or malicious (sociopaths.)
The problem with these groups are that many, e.g., economic controls
are likely to be useless with them since they seem to have no
commercial purpose.
Although not the biggest problem I think it's more common than people
imagine.
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