----- Original Message ----- From: ravi To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 8:08 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Spam questions
Gary? wrote:
> I don't get spam anymore, my inbox used to overflow with at least eighty
> percent spam, then I changed ISPs with a spam filter at the server. Not
> only did I miss spam but I lost a mail list also, along with a few
> personal mails but things settled down and in the last three months
> maybe two spammy messages got through.
> The strange thing right now is another list, an English bike list that
> was going fine, just stopped last Thursday, well I can read the archives
> but the live list doesn't recognise me anymore, mail I send to it and
> mail it sends to me doesn't get through. I subscribed from a different
> address and it works, I checked verizons mail options but cannot see
> where it could be dumping my mail.
> I'm sure it's something simple, or aliens.
>
gary?,
if you don't get bounce messages back, then its probably one of:
1) the list is silently rejecting mail from you (quite correctly since you use verizon ;-))
2) verizon is silently eating up the bounce messages
3) verizon is silently eating up the list messages (do you see your messages in the archives?)
you can easily verify #2 with the list admin. #3 (in a more general form) is what makes me wonder about the confidence people seem to have with spam filters at their ISP (this comment is why i am replying onlist). does verizon entirely filter out your spam or does it save it to a "spam" or "junk" folder?
--ravi ============================ ====================
In regard to: 1) the list is silently rejecting mail from you (quite correctly since you use verizon ;-))
My @SprintPCS mailbox *IS* a spam collector... Absolutely no built in filtering. The best use for their email system would be to use it as a decoy for SpamCop's data collection server. Do you ever see an @sprintpcs.com sig on *any* mail?
There's a reason for that.
My first thought is that verizon's service may get routed through an ISP that's on somebody's "blacklist" (blackhole) or visa versa ...from the list to you.
For the average internet user, it's well worth the $20-30 a year for a good PoP service. Yahoo! works fine for me.
My Yahoo bulkmail filter is set to "brutal", catches almost every piece of junk. I just put the email addresses of mail I *do* want in yahoo's address book, and it bypasses the bulk folder. It's more reliable than using the "Not Spam" button, which only works right if the mail you want to receive *always* comes from the same ISP(?). (Hah! Good luck!).
I'm more concerned with "spoofing", and address forgery. For a while, I was receiving emails... apparently from Jwanzala at hotmail.com . The only way I knew it wasn't a list posting is because it came in through a "tainted" ISP and got shlepped over to the bulk folder, where I found myself looking at an email attachment that had been cleaned of one of the variants of netsky virus.
Leigh Meyers leigh_m at sbcglobal.net