From: "Cynthia H. Brown" <cynthb@sonetis.com>
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 21:27:59 -0800 (PST)
To: Alec <camcc@abraxis.com>
Subject: Re: Cypherpunks afraid of spam?
Message-ID: <199702170527.VAA21254@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Sun, 16 Feb 1997, camcc@abraxis.com (Alec) wrote:

> :> I put a spam-busted address in my .sig and give root@127.0.0.1 as my email
> :> in the from: header. Sure, somebody out there is going to be unhappy with
> :> me, but if they have a clue they'll figure it out. Meantime, the SpamBots
> :> are bouncing mail to the admin of the site instead of to me.
> :
> For the less computer articulate (me), please rephrase what you just
> said more in the form of basic instructions.

For starters, root is the all-powerful system administrator account on
UNIX machines, and 127.0.0.1 is the "loopback" or "localhost" IP address,
generally used for testing.  A connection to loopback amounts to a
software connection back to the originating host, and e-mail sent to
loopback won't even go out the Ethernet card / modem / whatever.

So, if I put root@127.0.0.1 in the "From:" field of my news reader's
configuration, all of my posts will give this as my e-mail address. 
Depending on the news reader, I may have to set options like "override
default domain name", which would override my service provider's name.

Since many commercial mailer programs ("SpamBots") scan Usenet news posts
for potential target e-mail addresses, these programs will pick up my
phony e-mail address and send their junk to their own system administrator
instead of me :-)

The smarter programs will also scan the bottom of posts for e-mail
addresses in people's signatures (or .sig files).  The "spam-busted"
address described above could be anything that is not a verbatim copy of
my e-mail address, for example:

c.y.n.t.h.b@i.o.s.p.h.e.r.e.dot.n.e.t
cynthb[at]iosphere.net
cynthb@[NOSPAM].iosphere.net

Any reasonably computer-literate human will be able to figure out what my
real address is, but a cut-and-paste by a software robot won't work.

Hope this helps,

Cynthia

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===============================================================
                   Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng.
E-mail: cynthb@iosphere.net  | PGP Key:  See Home Page
Home Page:  http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/
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