Re: [tlug] Verislime

[Godwin Stewart <gstewart@example.com>]

And Thus Spake Tod McQuillin <devin@example.com> (on Fri, 19 Sep 2003
20:28:36 +0900 (JST)):

> I googled for corroborating evidence of email address harvesting at
> petitiononline and I couldn't find any other people complaining.  Has
> anyone else heard bad things about them?
> 
> They certainly appear to be making an effort to prevent email harvesting
> by others.

It could, of course, be that the person who posted that simply has a bone to
pick with petitiononline.com. However, it came from someone whose POV I
generally respect. I wouldn't have posted the comment here otherwise.

It also occurs to me that POL is dead easy to abuse. All a spammer needs to
do is set up a petition of which the content is basically something hawking
$BODY_PART enlargers. Then, you just need to script an HTTP request which
you fire off (through an open proxy, of course) to POL once for each address
you want to spam. POL will then mail a confirmation complete with spam off
to each of the target addresses.

-- 
G. Stewart   --   gstewart@example.com -- gstewart@example.com
Registered Linux user #284683 (Slackware 9.0)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sign spotted outside a second hand shop:
WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING - BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES, ETC.
WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL BARGAIN?

Attachment: pgp00074.pgp
Description: PGP signature