Subject: RE: A spammer subscribed to this list ?

From: "Ryan Malayter" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 2004 13:09:59 -0500

[Pete Resnick]
>I doubt there's a subscribed spammer.

I'd be very surprised if there *weren't* quite a few spammers subscribed
and lurking on this list. They're not stupid, and certainly would want
to know about anything this community is doing that might cause them
grief and cost them money. 

"Know thine enemy", and all that.

Regards,
	Ryan

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From: Hadmut Danisch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 23:02:54 -0700

> grief and cost them money. 

In the early days of the asrg mailing list, there were spammers
subscribed without any doubt. And they weren't just listening. Some
people were trying to jam the mailing list with high bandwidth blabla
and spreading wrong technical informations (wrong quoting of technical
proposals and other e-mails). I'm pretty sure that some of them were
at least related to spammers (maybe authors of spamming software).

So why shouldn't it be any different here? Whatever you do, expect the
spammers to be prepared. 

I am, btw, under the impression that spam is getting 'better'. They
conform to SMTP protocols better than they used to, and they are
forging better (e.g. Received lines). And the contents are getting
better in the way of presentation. Many spam messages I receive are
not that dull 'buy viagra cheap' anymore, but highly professional HTML
messages which look very well. 

I just saw a report in the Fox 6 News about the increasing problem
with Phishing, and a new special task force of the San Diego police
department (would have been nice to invite them for a talk at IETF). 
The forged mails they were showing were also of high quality. 

Spam is not that idiot's message anymore as it used to be about 5
years ago. Its becoming a tool of highly professional criminals. 

Whoever is behind that kind of crime and spending so much time to
produce good looking spams and phishing mails, will definitely take
care to be informed about what's going on in spam fighting.

regards
Hadmut

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From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 10:07:16 -0700

On 8/2/04 at 1:09 PM -0500, Ryan Malayter wrote:

>I'd be very surprised if there *weren't* quite a few spammers 
>subscribed and lurking on this list.

Well, of course. I didn't mean to imply that there weren't spammers 
on the list; just that receiving spam which could only come by 
reading the mail on the list is not by itself an indication of such.

pr
--
Pete Resnick <http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102