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Re: OT: offending sig + headers



Actually I don't think spam management is off topic, and even if it
were I'm not on mutt-ot and not going to sign up.  It's completely
natural that off-topic discussions arise from on-topic threads on
mailing lists, and I think trying to reroute them is largely pointless
and a bit misguided.  I don't think it should be discouraged until a
particular thread reaches the level of being annoying.  In my
experience, trying to reroute threads mostly just kills a potentially
interesting thread, which usually is at least marginally related
anyway.  I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one on this list who thinks
that way.  Anyway...

On Thu, May 17, 2007 at 03:10:19PM +0200, Rado S wrote:
> > 4. Since adopting my new method of spam management (now some 5+
> > years old, if I'm not mistaken), I receive at most a total of
> > about *3 spams per day* to all my personal e-mail addresses
> > combined, *completely unfiltered* for spam.
> 
> How can this happen, it should be totally free of spam then?

There are a few ways it happens.  Some people use broken mail clients,
and the clients have exploits that gather all e-mail addresses in the
user's address book, and send them off to a spammer (or someone who
sells them to a spammer).

Another way is certain friends, with good intentions, disregard
requests not to send your e-mail address to e-card websites and other
such spam-collecting web sites.  

A third way is when organizations you WANT to receive mail from decide
it's OK to share the address you use for that with someone else.  For
example, I get e-mail about shows in my area from one organization.
But apparently they've decided it's ok to give my address to some of
their partners.  Not cool, but not much I can do about it if I want to
keep getting mail from them.  Fortunately, this actually doesn't
happen that often (I consider myself lucky).

Finally, someone you know might (accidentally or maliciously) post
your address in a mailing list or usenet post.  The address trolls are 
going to find it...

In actuality, most of the spam I do get goes to an old address that
used to be associated with an OSS project.  I never really used the
account, so the spam I do get from it is minimal, but nonzero.  I do
get a small amount of legitimate mail to that address that I care
about, at least in theory, so I can't actually shut it off.  But like
I said, I get so little spam, I can deal with it manually, for the
most part without even thinking about it.
 
> > What would it take?
> 
> A spammers-free world, no free (of cost) eMail.
> Fix the origin, then you don't have to fight the symptoms.

That's an ideal that I'd love to see, but I know it'll never happen.
The mailing list management software I described would (I think) go a
LONG way to making address trollers' jobs a lot harder, though.

-- 
sig deleted due to evil reply-to: header

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