Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 2004 19:14:34 +0100
According to Phillip Gawlowski, on Wednesday 04 February 2004 13:14 the
word on the street was...

> P.S.: Your mail is classified as spam by my mail client since christmas
> or something. Anything I should know? ;)

Could be that your mail server has received too many worm/virus messages
that claim to be from me. I seem to be in a lot of peoples' address books,
seeing as how even I get those messages that claim to have been sent by
myself. I can guarantee 100% that I'm not using Outlook, and can't even
run the executable attachments without an emulator, so they almost
certainly didn't come from me...

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
You've been touched by the doubt of man
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 2
From: cmd_jackryan@***.net (Phillip Gawlowski)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2004 10:23:09 +0100
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 19:14:34 +0100, Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:

> Could be that your mail server has received too many worm/virus messages
> that claim to be from me.

It's the mail client, not the server. If the server would classify your
emails as spam, I'd never read them (coz I don't look into the spam-Folder
of the server, yuck...)

> I seem to be in a lot of peoples' address books, seeing as how even I
> get those messages that claim to have been sent by
> myself. I can guarantee 100% that I'm not using Outlook, and can't even
> run the executable attachments without an emulator, so they almost
> certainly didn't come from me...

Well, as I said above, that doesn't seem to be a problem. I'm just
wondering.
Maybe I have to fiddle with M2's settings to get rid of that.
It is more an annoyance than real trouble.

Ah, well...

--
Phillip Gawlowski
Bastard GameMaster From Hell (Der Meister) and General Idiot

"Anything worth shooting once is worth shooting twice."
- Col. Jeff Cooper, USMC (Ret.), regarding combat handgun training
Message no. 3
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 11:22:36 +0100
According to Phillip Gawlowski, on Thursday 05 February 2004 10:23 the word
on the street was...

> It's the mail client, not the server.

That's very strange. Did you accidentally choose an option that marks my
messages as spam or something? (If all else fails, blame the user ;)

> If the server would classify your
> emails as spam, I'd never read them (coz I don't look into the
> spam-Folder of the server, yuck...)

I have to clean out my spam "account" every so often, and if I see how much
of that junk it stops, I'm glad I don't have to download it all. 1500 to
2000 messages a month seems to be about average...

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
You've been touched by the doubt of man
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 4
From: scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 12:20:30 -0500
On Thursday, Feb 5, 2004, at 05:22 US/Eastern, Gurth wrote:

> According to Phillip Gawlowski, on Thursday 05 February 2004 10:23 the
> word
> on the street was...
>
>> It's the mail client, not the server.
>
> That's very strange. Did you accidentally choose an option that marks
> my
> messages as spam or something? (If all else fails, blame the user ;)
>
>
Or perhaps the filter is catching the xs4all.nl domain name since I
have seen some recent spam from there.

--
Scott Harrison PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86
Message no. 5
From: silvercat@***********.org (Jonathan Hurley)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 12:49:30 -0500
-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Harrison
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 12:21 PM
To: Shadowrun Discussion
Subject: Re: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)


On Thursday, Feb 5, 2004, at 05:22 US/Eastern, Gurth wrote:

> According to Phillip Gawlowski, on Thursday 05 February 2004 10:23 the
> word
> on the street was...
>
>> It's the mail client, not the server.
>
> That's very strange. Did you accidentally choose an option that marks
> my
> messages as spam or something? (If all else fails, blame the user ;)
>
>
Or perhaps the filter is catching the xs4all.nl domain name since I
have seen some recent spam from there.
-----Reply message-----

A couple of very powerful spam-catching tools based on Baysein Filtering are
out there; I use a package called K9 which is a spam-filtering mail proxy.
My wife also uses it; in her case, she has an email address that was so
overloaded with spam that she had to blind-filter it into the bit bucket.
After using K9 (and training it, it does not come with a built-in database,
and Bayesian Filtering requires training in most cases), she now gets most
of the legitimate stuff filtered out clean, and almost all the spam to *all*
her email accounts is filtered away. Very powerful stuff.

My own experience with it is not as dramatic, but I get much less spam than
average, so the training period is longer.
Message no. 6
From: scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 13:46:46 -0500
On Thursday, Feb 5, 2004, at 12:49 US/Eastern, Jonathan Hurley wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Harrison
> Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 12:21 PM
> To: Shadowrun Discussion
> Subject: Re: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and
> you)
>
>
> On Thursday, Feb 5, 2004, at 05:22 US/Eastern, Gurth wrote:
>
>> According to Phillip Gawlowski, on Thursday 05 February 2004 10:23 the
>> word
>> on the street was...
>>
>>> It's the mail client, not the server.
>>
>> That's very strange. Did you accidentally choose an option that marks
>> my
>> messages as spam or something? (If all else fails, blame the user ;)
>>
>>
> Or perhaps the filter is catching the xs4all.nl domain name since I
> have seen some recent spam from there.
> -----Reply message-----
>
> A couple of very powerful spam-catching tools based on Baysein
> Filtering are
> out there; I use a package called K9 which is a spam-filtering mail
> proxy.
> My wife also uses it; in her case, she has an email address that was so
> overloaded with spam that she had to blind-filter it into the bit
> bucket.
> After using K9 (and training it, it does not come with a built-in
> database,
> and Bayesian Filtering requires training in most cases), she now gets
> most
> of the legitimate stuff filtered out clean, and almost all the spam to
> *all*
> her email accounts is filtered away. Very powerful stuff.
>
> My own experience with it is not as dramatic, but I get much less spam
> than
> average, so the training period is longer.
>
>
>
The Mail application that comes with Mac OS X has a very good
filtering system as well. However, I do not use that any more, because
it seems spam eventually works its way through. I use TMDA
(http://tmda.sourceforge.net/) and have received 3 spam messages since
last August. And the only reason those got through was because the
sender actually responded to my message. Once I found them to be spam
they were moved from the whitelist to the blacklist. I would heartily
recommend using TMDA to anyone who does not want to receive spam.

--
Scott Harrison PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86
Message no. 7
From: maxnoel_fr@*****.fr (Max Noel)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 19:59:13 +0100
Scott Harrison wrote:

> The Mail application that comes with Mac OS X has a very good
> filtering system as well. However, I do not use that any more,
> because it seems spam eventually works its way through. I use TMDA
> (http://tmda.sourceforge.net/) and have received 3 spam messages since
> last August. And the only reason those got through was because the
> sender actually responded to my message. Once I found them to be spam
> they were moved from the whitelist to the blacklist. I would heartily
> recommend using TMDA to anyone who does not want to receive spam.
>
> --
> Scott Harrison PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86

It's very effective, indeed, but its whitelist-based nature makes it
less transparent than Bayesian filters such as Apple Mail's, which I
use. Well, it's still in training mode (I don't get lots of spam and am
afraid of false positives), but it's been tagging most of the MyDoom
messages I've received over the last week (even though they all contain
hashbuster strings).

-- Wild_Cat
maxnoel_fr@*****.fr -- ICQ #85274019
"Look at you hacker... A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting
and sweating as you run through my corridors... How can you challenge a
perfect, immortal machine?"
Message no. 8
From: silvercat@***********.org (Jonathan Hurley)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 14:08:34 -0500
-----Original Message-----
From: Max Noel
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 1:59 PM
To: Shadowrun Discussion
Subject: Re: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)


Scott Harrison wrote:

> The Mail application that comes with Mac OS X has a very good
> filtering system as well. However, I do not use that any more,
> because it seems spam eventually works its way through. I use TMDA
> (http://tmda.sourceforge.net/) and have received 3 spam messages since
> last August. And the only reason those got through was because the
> sender actually responded to my message. Once I found them to be spam
> they were moved from the whitelist to the blacklist. I would heartily
> recommend using TMDA to anyone who does not want to receive spam.
>
> --
> Scott Harrison PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86

It's very effective, indeed, but its whitelist-based nature makes it

less transparent than Bayesian filters such as Apple Mail's, which I
use. Well, it's still in training mode (I don't get lots of spam and am
afraid of false positives), but it's been tagging most of the MyDoom
messages I've received over the last week (even though they all contain
hashbuster strings).

-----Reply Message-----

K9 supports both whitelists and blacklists in addition to doing Bayesian
Filtering. It is only available for the PC platform, though. I understand
there is a PERL-based solution or two out there as well, some of which are
quite sophisticated.
Message no. 9
From: datwinkdaddy@*******.com (Da Twink Daddy)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 00:10:28 -0600
On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 14:08:34 -0500, Jonathan Hurley
<silvercat@***********.org> wrote:

> Scott Harrison wrote:

[Thge above attribution may be incorrect...]

>
>> I use TMDA
>> (http://tmda.sourceforge.net/)
>
> K9 supports both whitelists and blacklists in addition to doing Bayesian
> Filtering. It is only available for the PC platform, though.

SpamAssasain (http://www.spamassasin.org/) is cross platform and quite
effective. I don't think it's Bayesian though.

--
Da Twink Daddy
datwinkdaddy@*******.com
ICQ: Da Twink Daddy (514984)
YM: DaTwinkDaddy
AIM: DaTwinkDaddy
Message no. 10
From: zadoc@***.neu.edu (Damian)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 01:38:15 -0500 (EST)
On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Da Twink Daddy wrote:

> SpamAssasain (http://www.spamassasin.org/) is cross platform and quite
> effective. I don't think it's Bayesian though.

Version 2.60 includes Bayesian classification. And, I agree that it is
quite effective.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Damian Sharp of Real Life |
| Zauviir Seldszar of Wildlands, Scribe of House Maritym |
| Xavier Kindric of Shandlin's Ferry, member of Valindar |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Now to unleash screaming temporal doom!"
Message no. 11
From: graht1@*******.com (David Buehrer)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 10:27:38 -0700
>From: "Jonathan Hurley" <silvercat@***********.org>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Max Noel
>
>Scott Harrison wrote:
>
> > The Mail application that comes with Mac OS X has a very good
> > filtering system as well. However, I do not use that any more,
> > because it seems spam eventually works its way through. I use TMDA
> > (http://tmda.sourceforge.net/) and have received 3 spam messages since
> > last August. And the only reason those got through was because the
> > sender actually responded to my message. Once I found them to be spam
> > they were moved from the whitelist to the blacklist. I would heartily
> > recommend using TMDA to anyone who does not want to receive spam.
> >
>
> It's very effective, indeed, but its whitelist-based nature makes it
>
>less transparent than Bayesian filters such as Apple Mail's, which I
>use. Well, it's still in training mode (I don't get lots of spam and am
>afraid of false positives), but it's been tagging most of the MyDoom
>messages I've received over the last week (even though they all contain
>hashbuster strings).
>
>-----Reply Message-----
>
>K9 supports both whitelists and blacklists in addition to doing Bayesian
>Filtering. It is only available for the PC platform, though. I understand
>there is a PERL-based solution or two out there as well, some of which are
>quite sophisticated.

I tried one of the PERL-based solutions (SpamAssassin?). It was arduous to
install, but did a pretty good job. The problem was that I still ended up
downloading all of the Spam before it was sorted.

My favorite program for handling spam is MailWasher
(http://www.mailwasher.net/). It's free. It looks at your email on the
server (POP email account required) and lets you decide whether or not to
delete/bounce email at the server before you download it. And, it uses
established white/black lists (SpamCop for one) and you can train it.

-Graht

_________________________________________________________________
Click here for a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee.
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid963
Message no. 12
From: silvercat@***********.org (Jonathan Hurley)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 13:24:15 -0500
-----Original Message-----
From: David Buehrer
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 12:28 PM
To: shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com
Subject: RE: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)

>From: "Jonathan Hurley" <silvercat@***********.org>
>
>K9 supports both whitelists and blacklists in addition to doing Bayesian
>Filtering. It is only available for the PC platform, though. I understand
>there is a PERL-based solution or two out there as well, some of which are
>quite sophisticated.

I tried one of the PERL-based solutions (SpamAssassin?). It was arduous to
install, but did a pretty good job. The problem was that I still ended up
downloading all of the Spam before it was sorted.

My favorite program for handling spam is MailWasher
(http://www.mailwasher.net/). It's free. It looks at your email on the
server (POP email account required) and lets you decide whether or not to
delete/bounce email at the server before you download it. And, it uses
established white/black lists (SpamCop for one) and you can train it.

-----Reply Message-----

Well, I have several e-mail accounts to deal with, so I'd have to get the
Pro version at US$29.95. Also, I'm on broadband, so the time to download
mail is not a big factor (filtering takes longer than downloading the
message). But it does look nice, and being abl to interface with established
blacklists looks nice.
Message no. 13
From: maxnoel_fr@*****.fr (Max Noel)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 19:47:30 +0100
Jonathan Hurley wrote:

> I tried one of the PERL-based solutions (SpamAssassin?). It was
> arduous to
> install, but did a pretty good job. The problem was that I still
> ended up
> downloading all of the Spam before it was sorted.
>
> My favorite program for handling spam is MailWasher
> (http://www.mailwasher.net/). It's free. It looks at your email on
> the
> server (POP email account required) and lets you decide whether or not
> to
> delete/bounce email at the server before you download it. And, it uses
> established white/black lists (SpamCop for one) and you can train it.
>
> -----Reply Message-----
>
> Well, I have several e-mail accounts to deal with, so I'd have to get
> the
> Pro version at US$29.95. Also, I'm on broadband, so the time to
> download
> mail is not a big factor (filtering takes longer than downloading the
> message). But it does look nice, and being abl to interface with
> established
> blacklists looks nice.

I've also been hearing lots of good things about POPFile (
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/ ), which is free, open source,
multi-platform (yup, there's even a version for you Windows users), and
easy to use. It uses bayesian filtering, so it requires a training
period, but like all bayesian filters it's very effective once it's
been properly trained. I think it also supports white/blacklists, but
I'm not sure.

-- Wild_Cat
maxnoel_fr@*****.fr -- ICQ #85274019
"Look at you hacker... A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting
and sweating as you run through my corridors... How can you challenge a
perfect, immortal machine?"
Message no. 14
From: datwinkdaddy@*******.com (Da Twink Daddy)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:17:33 -0600
On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 10:27:38 -0700, David Buehrer <graht1@*******.com>
wrote:

> I tried one of the PERL-based solutions (SpamAssassin?). It was arduous
> to install, but did a pretty good job. The problem was that I still
> ended up downloading all of the Spam before it was sorted.

People mention this as a problem but for numerous emails I've had to see
the body of the mail before I realized it was spam. And if you (or you
locally running program) looks at the body, you've downloaded it to
somewhere.

> My favorite program for handling spam is MailWasher
> (http://www.mailwasher.net/). It's free. It looks at your email on the
> server (POP email account required) and lets you decide whether or not
> to delete/bounce email at the server before you download it.

If it looks at the body, it's got to download at least the part that it
looks at. Even the spam mails I get aren't that large. [The viruses are,
but that's a different story.]

Also, if you really want to deal with them at the server, spamassain is
used by many ISPs (and my univeristy) on the server side to sort mail as
it arrives on the server.

--
Da Twink Daddy
datwinkdaddy@*******.com
ICQ: Da Twink Daddy (514984)
YM: DaTwinkDaddy
AIM: DaTwinkDaddy
Message no. 15
From: l-hansen@*****.tele.dk (Lars Wagner Hansen)
Subject: [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you)
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2004 20:40:26 +0100
On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Da Twink Daddy wrote:
> SpamAssasain (http://www.spamassasin.org/) is cross platform and quite
> effective. I don't think it's Bayesian though.

It would help if you used the correct URL: http://www.spamassassin.org

Lars

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about [OT] Spam from me? (was Re: Magic Fingers, firearms, and you), you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!