SC - Thin is in . .. .lose the spam

[Siegfried Heydrich]

    Actually, what you're seeing now is the thin edge of something that's
going to get worse and worse as time goes on. Remember all the unsolicited
faxes people would get back in the old days? I knew one guy who came into
his office one monday morning and found an entire roll of (back then, very
expensive) fax paper on the floor covered with solicitations, and the buffer
on the machine was full as well.
    There are scanbots that can scan the contents (in a cursory manner) of
every computer that's on-line in your state over the course of a single
evening. It'll just make a note of whatever it's been told is interesting
(certain keywords, like account, CC, or PIN number, bank records, etc), so
whoever is running it can come back and examine you system more closely, at
his leisure. It can pull information of a saleable nature in a matter of
milliseconds - you'll never even know it happened.
    This information is massaged and packaged, and distributed to paying
customers. You know the spam you get wanting to sell you 10 million
addresses? That's where they got 'em.
    Now, there ARE ways you can protect yourself; making your system
invisible to scanners is a very good start. Also, check your system to see
if any spybots have taken up residence in your system. Last time I did a
flush with Opt Out!, I found I had 3 of 'em that had gotten past my
defenses.
    Go to this site - www.grc.com and go to their Shields Up! page. You'll
find a very lucid explanation of the situation regarding computer
protection, and several FREE methods of protecting yourself. Seriously,
things are going to get a whole lot worse, and fairly soon, I might add.
Spend an evening learning how to protect yourself. It won't cost you
anything but time, and you'll learn a very great deal. You just won't sleep
well afterwards.

    Sieggy

>
> It can get a LOT more tasteless!  I get spam that is obviously not
> tailored to me.  What use do they think a late-middle-aged woman would
> have for hot teen-aged nudes--or viagra, for that matter?  I also get
> spam that begins "I saw your web site..." and I don't have a web site.
> Fortunately, there is less of it on juno that my commercial provider, but
> more is coming, all the time.  I don't surf sites that carry pornography,
> stocks, get rich quick schemes, or web sales to customers, so I don't
> know why they'd all send ads.
>
> It sometimes works to forward the offending mail to abuse at the original
> address, but posters can fake those, somehow.  You can a nice post from
> the postmaster, saying, "it didn't originate here..."
>
> here's some of the info on latest ones: Return-path: <cqqul at hotbot.com>
> To: sshar at aol.com   also Return-path: <mqris at hotbot.com>
> To: jrqdm at aol.com
>
> I don't even have an aol account, so how am I getting this spam?  I
> deleted the offending ones that came to the list--don't know if the
> hotbot.com figured in the address.
>
>
> Regards,
> Allison,     allilyn at juno.com
>
>
> On Tue, 2 May 2000 09:48:55 -0700 (PDT) Jeanne Stapleton
> <apiskp at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> >
> >--- Peldyn at aol.com wrote:
> >> If it hasn't come through majordomo, then how are we
> >> getting it? This one was
> >> not only tasteless but insulting!! I would like to
> >> find the author and fry
> >> his butt! So what is the best way to fry spam? Over
> >> a high heat until it is
> >> charred black?
> >> Peldyn
> >>
> >My guess is that whoever's doing the advertising did
> >some sort of search for all lists with words like
> >"food", "cooks", etc....I'm not on general cooking
> >newsgroups and mailing lists any more, due to lack
> >of time, but this sort of tasteless drivel is not
> >at all uncommon in such venues...