 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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This month spam (unsolicited e-mail) has caused numerous problems
for us (particularly me). First, there were reports that Melb PC's ISP service had been blacklisted as a
spammer, causing our e-mails to be rejected, but nothing more has emerged. If you receive such a complaint,
please forward it to admin@melbpc.org.au.
Then I heard from a friend that my e-mail was rejected by her ISP. I do something a little unusual, but I
know that several other members do this: we are on cable or ADSL and we send our "melbpc" mail using our
ISP's SMTP server. Some ISPs will reject it if the e-mail domain does not match the IP address from which
it is coming; others will block a range of IP addresses if it has been reported as a spam site. I was the
victim of the latter situation: my ISP had not responded to a complaint from the other site over a year ago,
so all of us on BigPond are blacklisted indefinitely until that complaint is addressed.
Think Before You Bounce
Some anti-spam tools have a "bounce" option, which seems attractive at first if you believe that spammers
send e-mail from a genuine address and that they pay attention to bounces. Few do. In fact, most send their
spam from a "disposable" account that they know will be closed within hours, or some hijack an unguarded
machine in another country. Spammers typically send millions of messages at a time - do you think that they
would care if a few dozen or a few hundred people use such programs to delete it?
The bounce option apparently creates an "unknown user" message and returns the mail as undeliverable. This
message is sent on behalf of the Postmaster, which is your ISP's e-mail account. Bouncing is bad because
you increase the amount of traffic and rarely achieve your purpose. If the spammers have used an innocent
third party's address as the sender, you will make matters worse for that person.
If your address is on a spam list on some CD-ROM, it will continue to attract spam indefinitely. There is
no mileage in it for the producer to remove bad addresses. Therefore, just choose the option to delete
spam.
Frankly, such programs only make you feel better for a while, until you get sick of checking your e-mail
before downloading it. My tactic is to use a good filter and delete spam unopened after downloading it.
CAUBE
If you are interested in the anti-spam cause, you should inspect
http://www.caube.org.au and particularly its "How to avoid being
spammed" link. At the bottom of that page there are links to other sites and articles that cover the subject
in depth. Unfortunately, there is no definitive solution.
Member Survey
In this issue we once again feature our Member Survey. Please fill it out online at
http://www.melbpc.org.au/surveys/02pcupdate.htm
(there are links from the MOTD and the main external page) if you have Internet access. It is very important
that you complete the survey because the Management Committee intends to conduct a planning workshop in
September or October and needs up-to-date information about your needs. In addition to that, of course,
there is always an ongoing need to keep PC Update costs to a minimum; a comprehensive knowledge and
understanding of the membership "big picture" helps attract appropriate advertising.
The survey is anonymous; if you don't trust our server, you can visit
http://www.anonymizer.com, which masks your trail. Thanks in
advance!
Reprinted from the August 2002 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
 
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