in reply to OT: Spam protection

I'd have to caution against ever responding to any UCE.

Your response is unlikely to ever been seen by human eyes, much less acted upon in th eway you would hope. Any form of response is only ever likely to be read by a computer which will simply transfer the email address from the "possibles" list, to the "Hey, We got a real live, living mug" list.

I'm afraid I don't have an answer for you, and I seriously do not envy you the task of protecting your kids from this sort of stuff.

I have a half-cocked notion that the only real way to protect them is to show them the stuff, explain it to them, explain why the parasites that send it do so.

Perhaps, by getting it into the open, raising the subject to the level of "stupid adult stuff" that they can talk (and laugh about) with you, you can make it become as insignificant as many of the other irritations of daily life are, rather than allowing it to become a "super secret" that they will try to hide from you.

There I go, moving into an area of life, child rearing, for which I am totally unqualified to express an opinion.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller


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Re: Re: OT: Spam protection
by t0mas (Priest) on Jun 10, 2003 at 08:33 UTC
    There I go, moving into an area of life, child rearing, for which I am totally unqualified to express an opinion.

    Aren't we all? As a father of five, I still move into such areas all the time. Like this...

    You have a very good point there. And I'll certanly give this a serious thought before starting my code editor. Getting the public address to a "live" list would not be such a good idea.

    rather than allowing it to become a "super secret" that they will try to hide from you.

    Well, my children have full access to the internet (web) (I don't even snort the traffic) so they can watch pretty much whatever they like without me knowing. If they choose to watch some "inappropriate" stuff, it's a bad choise, but it's their choise. I just want to stop the bad choises from hitting them when they make want to make a good choise.

    /brother t0mas
[reply]

      I just want to stop the bad choises from hitting them when they make want to make a good choise.
      Well... I get lots of spam just because I published source code on CPAN. I tend to think that participation on the internet precludes any exclusionary mind set absent a human filter. You could pre-vet their e-mail for them if you really needed to, its not as if SpamAssassin is all that great anyway.

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Re: Re: OT: Spam protection
by perrin (Chancellor) on Jun 10, 2003 at 14:53 UTC
    There's no problem with responding to spam if you are using a challenge-response authentication system. If the spammer doesn't respond back properly (which he won't, since the pammer is a program routing mail through China and using a fake MSN address), you will never see any of his mail. He can send you offers all day and they will never reach your inbox.
[reply]

      Whilst it is true that you will block that one email address, and therefore never receive (or at least see) stuff from that source again, the fact that you have responded means that your email address in live.

      So, not only will that spammer ensure that he spams you from the next 10 50 100 email addresses he creates for his spamming, the fact that he can list a response from that address along with the address, means that he can charge premium rates for it when he sells it as a "known live" address to other spammers.

      Examine what is said, not who speaks.
      "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
      "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller


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        So what? The spammer will never respond to your challenge mail, so you will never see any of his spam. That's the purpose of this exercise.
[reply]
Re^2: OT: Spam protection
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jun 10, 2003 at 23:29 UTC
    As perrin pointed out, no serious spammer uses valid sender addresses in their mail these days. Replying to spam will result in a bounce far more likely than confirming your email address as live. Challenge response systems won't expose you to more spam, they will however roughly at least double and may even quadruple your mail traffic (depending on how many different partners you correspond with).

    Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]

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