Re: [tlug] spammers

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "jb" == Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com> writes:

    jb> Believe it or not, there are actually a few legit .biz domains
    jb> out there.

Yeah, and there's be more if people didn't just have

:0
* ^from:.*\.(biz|info)(,|$)
/dev/null

(however you say that in your filter of choice) in .filterofchoicerc.

    jb> In fact, we have a few of them as customers.  I suspect they
    jb> probably date back to the days before spammers took over .biz
    jb> and .info.  Even .us is rather suspect now.

Of course.  Anybody who isn't a principled libertarian or a spammer
wouldn't touch those domains for a mailbox because they'll lose too
much mail.

    jb> It's interesting that one thing you (or at least I) don't seem
    jb> to ever see discussed in anti-spam forums is how much spamming
    jb> benefits domain registrars.  [...]  I don't think any
    jb> registrar would fold from putting in effective safeguards to
    jb> keep spammers out, but it would nevertheless affect the bottom
    jb> line.

Think about what you're saying.  These guys are basically common
carriers.  This is _not_ a precedent I'd like to see set.  "I'm sorry,
but trying to mass-register byrne-for-president.*.us fifty times
smells like spamming to me."

You have to wonder who ever sees spam any more.  I mean, the XEmacs
lists are these huge targets since they're advertised on the web, etc,
but less than 0.2% of the spams get through, and I don't even try all
that hard any more.  (Yes, I have to try at least a little bit:
spamassassin is only about 98.5% effective in our configuration.)


-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
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              ask what your business can "do for" free software.