Re: This mailing list is being filtered for email addresses.

Jason Monroe (jmonroe@axi.net)
Sun, 07 Jul 1996 12:29:55 -0600


At 12:26 AM 7/7/96 -0700, you wrote:
>I just got similar stuff from 357 and also from netcom. I'm going to be
>contacting the Washington State Autorney General on Mon to see what level
>of this junk falls under the Unwanted Electronic Communications Act that
>exists in this state. I figure the first on worthy of a reply warning them
>(with cc: to the site's postmaster), and then the rest go to Olympia.
>
>Just a thought. Could it possibly be just one person or company that is
>'culling' the email addresses and then is distributing them for profit?
>
>=============================================================================
>dcflood@u.washington.edu
>
>
ya know what I find that's really funny about this whole issue, is the fact
that everyone is taking this "junk mail" thing so seriously. If this list
is being filtered for e-mail addresses, so be it. There is nothing in my
opinion that will be able to prevent it. Most of us that subscribe to this
are fairly compentent at programming. So I offer these example of how easy
it is to get internet e-mails.

1. There are web robots that go thru and parse every single word on your
home page. Alta-vista is an example. Just how hard would it be to scan the
page, and only grap mailto:foo@bar.com, or for that matter foo@bar.com.
then write it all to a log file. After that, it's simpley a matter of a
short perl script to send a ton of mail.. while you sleep.

2. Just how hard would it be to write a simple little c program, that grabs
all the domain names registered with the internic, then goes and fingers all
those domain names for possible e-mail address. Again, simple perl script,
and the e-mail goes flying.

3. The obvious filtering of newsgroups.

My point to all this is, there is almost no way of stoping the junk mail
from coming, so just ignore it. All the junk mails I have gotten, always
say something to the effect "you won't be contacted again unless you reply
to this e-mail". That being the case.. don't reply.

Just my 2 cents worth.

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Jason Monroe -=- SysAdmin -=- AXI Internet
http://www.axi.net/jason jmonroe@axi.net
A.K.A "WonderBoy" IRC "DeadZone"
"You want WHAT?? By WHEN??? HAHAHAHHAHA"
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