[LINK] SPAM to my link only address: Fwd: within my wrath of you.

[Craig Sanders]

On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 05:54:47PM +1100, Howard Lowndes wrote:
> I hate to tell you but the Link archive is an open archive, one reason 
> why I use:
> X-No-Archive: yes
> in my mail headers.

it makes no difference anyway. munging your address or using
X-No-Archive or whatever is completely pointless - your address WILL be
harvested by spammers no matter what you do. and once it's harvested
once, it will spread to more and more spammer lists.

so, it's a waste of time. it's far better to concentrate on blocking and
filtering spam.

> OK, my pearls of wisdom are not cast before swine, but neither is my
> email address.

actually, it is. all it takes is one loser with a windows virus to be
subscribed to the same list(s) as you or to encounter your email address
on a web site or in an email, and your address will be harvested.

there's NOTHING you can do to prevent your address from being harvested.
even addresses that have never been used, not even once, can end up
in spammer lists because spammers use dictionary attacks (and similar
methods - e.g. randomly combining known-good localparts (i.e. the bit
before the @ symbol) with random domains) to compile lists of *possible*
addresses. unless your address looks like line-noise, it will eventually
be discovered this way.

and once your address is in a spam list, it will never, ever be removed.
it will just keep on being added to more (e.g. my mail server is still
rejecting spam for addresses that didn't exist 10 years ago, still don't
exist now, and never have existed....they were added to a spam list by a
vengeful spammer, and must have now spread to pretty nearly every spam
list out there)


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>           (part time cyborg)