From: Dave Dittrich <dittrich@cac.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 07:44:26 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: (cpx) Re: "Junk E-Mail"
Message-ID: <9511202303.AA23192@red3.cac.washington.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> At 06:47 PM 11/19/95 -0500, you wrote:
> >
> >  Is anyone else getting lots of junk e-mail lately? I'm getting all
> >kinds of direct marketing crap to both of my main accounts and I haven't
> >posted to usenet in months.
> 
>    On a related note, Compuserve had a note on their system last week from
> the sysop.  Their customers are receiving unwanted e-mail advertisements
> from the Internet.  Compuserve sysops are attempting to block the spaming
> but are finding it difficult because the advertiser is coming in via
> different routes.  They are also attempting to stop them using the court
> system.
> 
>    The advertiser, according to the Compuserve sysop, threatened a
> mail-bombing if Compuserve tried to block them!!!  This would be a just
> cause to call in the CSOF (Cypherpunk Soldier of Fortune) for a "measured
> response".

Yes, I've noticed these as well.  One troubling thing I noted with one
such spam-handed "attack" was the use of a group of internal email
addresses (in the sense that we don't advertise these addresses) as
addressees for a message that had an analog sent to www-buyinfo and
some other web related addresses.  This seems to indicate a way of
organizing lists into sets based on location/topic, but doesn't
include all other potential addressees in the same domain or
organization.

I guess it was only a matter of time before someone wrote
sophisticated spamming servers that somehow capture/analyze log files,
or is this just some idiot front end that lets ad-happy fools spam
with a smaller apparent footprint?

By the way... One reply I got from an ISP re: one of these drive by
spammings indicated that they were charging the idiot for disobeying
policy.  I've started suggesting to ISPs that they dis-user and charge
the offender (in case they haven't thought of this yet).  If non-spam
policies were more widely used, and these idiots loose their
email/access and a few hundred dollars in charges for wasting ISP
admin time, perhaps this trend won't continue.

-- 
Dave Dittrich                  Client Services, Computing & Communications
dittrich@cac.washington.edu    University of Washington

<a href="http://www.washington.edu/People/dad/">
Dave Dittrich / dittrich@cac.washington.edu</a>