X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f996b,eb9483ef2e5525ad,start X-Google-Attributes: gidf996b,public From: cfbd@southern.co.nz (Colin Douthwaite) Subject: Proliferation of junkmail to the Internet: What to do? Date: 1997/07/17 Message-ID: <5qlpb1$l6l$5@mnementh.southern.co.nz>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 257720166 Organization: Southern InterNet Services Newsgroups: alt.ascii-art [ Article reposted from news.admin.net-abuse.usenet,news.admin.net-abuse.email,news.admin.net-abuse.misc ] [ Author was Timo Salmi ] [ Posted on 13 Jul 1997 08:53:54 +0300 ] An extract from 112853 Jul 12 1997 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsfaqn46.zip tsfaqn46.zip Questions from Usenet and Timo's answers 11. ***** Q: How should I react to abusive email or postings? (snip) A3: The worst current annoyance if you write a lot to the news is junk email advertising. This is different in the sense that it is not meant as personal abuse of single individuals, but it is nevertheless highly annoying and unwelcome. Some services gather posters' email addresses from the news for bulk advertising mailing lists. They even sometimes tell that the receiver has to unsubscribe from their forced mailing list if the receiver wishes not to get any more email sent from that source. Fortunately there is a very effective method to get rid of such unsolicited junk email, but it requires some programming skills and a fair understanding of the email system to avoid e.g. infinite email loops. What I have done is set up an email filter on my Unix host (see "man filter") to let through email only from users whom I have listed in my database as privileged. All other email to me gets summarily discarded with an automatic response requesting the sender to resend his/her email including a certain password in the subject header. This method has been virtually foolproof since the bulk spammers do not have the time to handle such individualized precautions. The downside is the unsocial nature of this approach, but with the current situation users like yours truly have no more a choice. All the best, Timo .................................................................... Prof. Timo Salmi Co-moderator of news:comp.archives.msdos.announce Moderating at ftp:// & http://garbo.uwasa.fi archives 193.166.120.5 Department of Accounting and Business Finance ; University of Vaasa mailto:ts@uwasa.fi ; FIN-65101, Finland