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I have a stupid question and I would really like to know.
Spammers exist by pissing people off. Do they really make a
profit from it?
Do the companies that pay them to do their thing really realize a
profit from this operation?
Do they really get that one response for 99 angry deletes that might
make it worth while?
bs
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Stephen Gran wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 05:40:47PM -0400, gabriel rosenkoetter said:
> > On Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 08:13:23AM -0400, Kevin Brosius wrote:
> > > One study suggested that munging cut ~80% of spam on new email
> > > addresses. I'll see if I can locate a reference.
> >
> > Please do, because I'd like to read it.
>
> It was probably the study in LWN - they put a couple of addresses up in
> one place, didn't link heavily to it, and left it go for only 6 months.
> All that being said, even if it was a well designed study, you can't
> prove a negative - being able to say "these addresses received no spam"
> is not the same as being able to say "the reason these addresses
> received no spam is because obfuscation works". All you have managed to
> do is get no result.
>
> What you can do is put up an obfuscated address, link heavily to it, and
> wait - if you get spam to that address, obfuscation does not work. See
> this page for a study of that type:
> http://www.keybuk.com/2003/06/26/obfuscation.html
>
> Note - this is the first link when googling for 'spam obfuscation' -
> clearly heavily linked.
>
> > For the record, I object to munging mostly on principal. Here are my
> > reasons, in order of importance (to me):
>
> <snip> Agreed. Changing an otherwise helpful forum because somebody
> wants to enlarge my penis several times an hour (how much more can the
> poor thing take?) helps no one, and potentially harms new members trying
> to get in touch with people who have had similar problems in the past.
> I have probably gotten between 30 and 50 emails over the years from
> strangers about problems that I had long since resolved and forgotten
> all about, and (if I could dredge up the memory of the problem and the
> fix) somebody else had an easier go of it than I did. I have done the
> same myself, and I don't want to see this made harder for people.
>
> > Blaming anyone but the spammers for sending you spam is migrating
> > blame unfairly. Blaming anyone but yourself (or your ISP, in the case
> > that you're doing IMAP or POP across a dialup) for actually receiving
> > that spam is also placing blame unfairly. Filter your email. It's
> > really just not that hard, and it's a reality we need to all just shut
> > the hell up and accept.
>
> The tools to deal with it yourself are all there, even if your ISP is
> unwilling - check out popsneaker for those on a dialup who can only
> access their email from a pop server, spamassassin for those who have a
> little bandwidth to waste, and server-level filtering for those who can.
>
> I will also be happy to give people an account that does nothing but
> receive spam - if you want to set up two subscriptions to PLUG, one of
> which receives mail, and use the other for sending mail only (disable
> recieving mail in the mailman interface), I will be happy to provide
> that account. I will just pipe anything sent to that address to
> /usr/bin/sa-learn --spam --no-rebuild --single :) I already have
> several of these alias accounts going, so it is no problem to add a few
> more if people see a pressing need for throw-away, post-only addresses.
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | Stephen Gran | Many are called, few are chosen. Fewer |
> | steve@lobefin.net | still get to do the choosing. |
> | http://www.lobefin.net/~steve | |
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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