Tap, tap, tap, is this working???

[Fred Cisin]

>> I wonder of all the subscriber how many have posted something or 
>> anything in the last 6 month, year, ever?  I suspect the never cases.

Well, it is likely that if there is a subscriber harvesting, that that one 
is not posting.  But there are so many that don't post that you need a way 
to narrow it down further.  Automagically kicking out everybody who 
doesn't post doesn't seem like an appropriate action.

When I Google a topic, I often get hits that are posts on this list.  So, 
it is obviously possible to get posts from this list without subscribing.
(Sometimes I get my own previous posts on the topic)


I have always assumed that harvesting produced a list of addresses, 
probably a lot of smaller lists.

For one type of spam, that with a forged FROM from a friend or associate, 
that an address is chosen, possibly randomly, possibly by other criteria 
such as frequency of posting, and used for the FROM, and another for the 
TO.

Multiple smaller lists means that there is a high probability that the TO 
will recognize the FROM since they obviously have some contacts in 
common (well, at least the source of the list) and therefore the message 
is likely to get through.

I find it amusing that on many/most lists, when it is known that there is 
such actions going on, people bombard the FROM with advice that THAT 
computer has been compromised and taken over to send spam, should 
immediately change passwords, etc. and refuse to believe that the FROM 
line of the spam has nothing to do with where it is coming from.  People 
just won't accept that the FROM of an email is NOT necessarily the actual 
source of the email.  If you print "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" on the upper 
left of snail-mail envelopes, would they insist that somebody has hijacked 
the whitehouse mail-room?


I find that SOME spam lists last forever.  I still get quite a bit of spam 
for an address that I created temporarily for Comdex 2000.


On Tue, 17 Dec 2019, Peter Coghlan via cctalk wrote:
> I've made about thirty postings to this list so far this year from this
> mailbox.  If your theory is correct, I should be getting a whole bunch of
> spam now.  I've received two spams (I found one that I missed earlier) and
> had one other spam filtered going to this mailbox since April 2019.  Do you
> believe a non-posting subscriber could be targetting your email address with
> spam and not mine?

They might have further filters, and target you less because they value 
your top-level domain (".ie") less.

It is possible, but unlikely, that they may filter to such an extent that 
they think that Allison is a better qualified lead than you are?

>> Short term solution is use Gmail then run for a while and then kill it 
>> or leave it to as a bit bucket and replace with new Gmail.

A partial "solution" for those who can handle multiple email addresses, 
snd can run a "white-list" filter, would be to create an address that is 
ONLY for posts to and from this list.  THEN, any mails that come to that 
address get filtered to only pass those that purport to come from this 
list.  All others being put in a special "probably spam" folder.  Glance 
at that folder periodicaally to retrieve any that are actually private 
messages sent by somebody on the list.  Discarding that dedicated address 
periodically will lose few valid correspondents.

That would be a valid use for a "white-list" filter.

Other than that, I don't normally find "white-list" useful, because a 
significant part of the email that I get, such as about XenoCopy, is from 
people I have never encountered before.  It would be insane suicide for a 
business to only accept contact from their prior contacts!
Similarly, after my mother died, I got phone calls and emails from 
relatives I had never met.


> At one time Google used to publish recommendations to avoid having emails
> inadvertently stopped by their antispam systems.  At that time, I made sure
> that my mail server complied with all their recommendations.

As did all spammers, so Google probably found it counter-productive to 
discuss their algorithms, and didn't know WHICH parts of their algorithms 
should be published V kept secret.

> I've since tried to contact Google to ask them about this but I've had 
> no success.

It probably went into the Google Tech Support department's spam folder. 
:-)


Since this address is on PINE, I often forward emails that I want to look 
at, but that need a "modern" client (such as attachments, pictures, etc.) 
to my gmail address.  A lot of those get sent to the spam folder of my 
gmail address.  Marking them as "not spam", etc. hasn't helped to convince 
gmail that I don't consider anything from THIS other address of mine to be 
spam.  So, they don't seem to have a white-list over-ride.

I have to have that "modern" account for otherwise unreadable emails.
A friend coming into town emailed me her Orbitz itinerary.  Full of lots 
of ads and "of interest", and with pictures of text rather than text.
While I was still affiliated with the college, one of the administrators, 
who insisted that we were more than adequately meeting the state mandates 
for computer literacy and information competency used to compose short 
text memos (such as meeting schedule change) on Word-Pervert, with 
different color horizontal lines, etc., print them out on a color printer 
on letterhead, feed them through a scanner, and attach them to a "FYI" 
email.  Often, the horizontal lines were a couple of pixels off from being 
level.

15 years ago, some idiots started a company with similar name to mine, 
with a ".us" extension because I had the ".com" extension.  90+% of my 
incoming spam (half of which looks like it was legit offers and even 
actual correspondence) is address errors of stuff intended for them.


> Google is not the solution, it's part of the problem.

That's a given.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com