10 comments:

On Wednesday 23 July 2003 at 18:34, Mark Bell said:

Al, I wish I did!

We've just spent a lot of money on a spam filtering server at work, which seems to do a good job, but there's not really any way you can trace the actual person who's sending it all out.

Most of the time, if you traced it to a server and took it down, it would just be somebody who didn't even know they were relaying the spam anyway.

It's being made illegal in the EU at the moment; not sure this will affect it at all though...

On Wednesday 23 July 2003 at 20:27, Matt said:

Bide your time Al, revenge is a dish best served cold...

Also I was wondering: I have filters to block my most common spam and immediately delete them - does this tell the sender that the email was not delivered (like when you email a full/non-existent/closed account)? And if so, would they then take me off their list?

On Wednesday 23 July 2003 at 20:32, Mark Bell said:

I take it your filters are in Outlook or similar?

If so then no. Besides which, most spammers aren't people, they're Linux boxes sitting in an office somewhere which just generate email addresses at random and send out messages.

On Wednesday 23 July 2003 at 20:39, Matt said:

Its in hotmail, so I thought it might be like when your inbox is full it returns messages. Wouldn't the box realise it was getting messages returned and stop wasting its time?

Also, Mark do you use messenger/icq? I have what is obviously an old hotmail account in my contact list...

On Thursday 24 July 2003 at 09:34, Mark Bell said:

Spam servers don't care about wasting time; 99 percent of the addresses generated are invalid, but as it doesn't cost anything to keep sending them out, it's worth it even if only 2 or 3 people respond.

I don't currently use MSN but I'm about to install it. I'll mail you my address when I do (probably tonight).

On Thursday 24 July 2003 at 20:45, Al said:

Yeah my norton internet secruity filters out spam, but it still downloads it from my isp account and then labels it as spam in the my inbox...kinda of useless in a way.
I heard that some spam blockers send a message back to the spamers that tells them your email address is invalid. Something that sends a huge great cyber death vertual killer monster would be better!

Plus I watched a program on it a few weeks back and one guy was able to get the i.p of the server that the spam was being sent from. Also most of these spammer dudes are hardcore criminals in the U.S.

On Thursday 24 July 2003 at 20:57, Al said:

“It is very cold in space” Khan. From the Wrath of Khan.

I'd love it if Khan got the spammers and put those worms in their ears (those weird things in that tank) and command them to repeatedly poke themselves in the eye.

On Thursday 24 July 2003 at 21:21, kavi said:

sorry to go off topic...but my blog is back after a nearly 3 month absence....it is located at http://www.fingerpie.vze.com take a look

On Thursday 24 July 2003 at 21:42, Mark Bell said:

You can get the IP address of the server the spam comes from fairly easily, but it's usually been relayed through about a dozen other machines before it gets to you!

With some fairly hardcore software you can do a traceroute back to the originator, but I'd imagine the software in itself is probably illegal...

kavi: checked it out and left some comments. Nice work.

On Thursday 24 July 2003 at 22:15, kavi said:

thanks for the comments mark, i changed the backing to the comments pop up!