Spyware Warrior

[wyrmrider]

Has Your Address Been Spoofed?

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followup to
http://www.winxpnews.com/?id=165
which was spywarewarrior Post subject: Are Some of the Spam Cures Worse Than the Disease? (below)
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Are you getting e-mail messages from administrators of other mail domains, notifying you that the messages you sent were undeliverable? When you open these, do you find that you never sent a message to the supposed recipient? Sometimes these messages indicate that you have a virus sending e-mail from your account without your knowledge. Other times, though, the mail didn't come from your account at all - instead, somebody spoofed your e-mail address and used it as their return address.

Either way, it's more than just an anomaly or an annoyance. If your address is used to send spam, it may be reported to various "spam cop" organizations, resulting in your address - or even your entire domain - being added to various public blacklists of known spammers. And that means the legitimate e-mail you send won't get through to a lot of recipients. Not a good situation. You can read more about how e-mail spoofing is done in my article at http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Email-Spoofing.html.

What can you do about it? The federal CAN SPAM Act makes it illegal to send unsolicited commercial e-mail with false or misleading headers (return addresses). Unfortunately, you can't prosecute someone for this or any other crime unless you know who the perpetrator is.

Okay, what if your name ends up on a black list? Is there anything you can do about that? The answer is: sometimes. There are many different black lists, so the first challenge is to find out which list(s) are identifying you as a spammer. There is a list of some black lists at http://www.email-policy.com/Spam-black-lists.htm. In some cases, you can write to those who maintain the lists and explain what happened and ask to have your address removed. Here is an article that contains info on how to get off of specific blacklists: http://www.emailtools.co.uk/tips/blacklists.htm. Have you been blacklisted? If others are telling you that your e-mails don't reach them, it might be because you're on a blacklist. Many ISPs use blacklists to block spam at the server level.

Let us know if you've had an experience with your e-mail address being spoofed, or if you've ended up on a spam blacklist for some other reason (unfortunately, with some lists, anyone who doesn't like you can report your address as a spammer and get you put on the list). Do you think blacklists, overall, are a good idea, or more trouble than they're worth? Share your opinions at feedback@winxpnews.com.

Followups: Spam Cures, VoIP Update (sniped by wyrmrider)

Last week's editorial posed the question: are many of the spam "cures" worse than the disease? Lots of you wrote to weigh in on that one. Like me, many of you are annoyed when you answer someone's e-mail, only to get back an automated message requiring that you fill out a form to be added to the approved sender list. Some of you pointed out that it's the implementation, not the concept, that's the problem. These services should all have a way for their users to manually add addresses to their approved sender lists and their users should always add the addresses of anyone to whom they send mail. Alternatively, the software should automatically add my address to your approved list if you send e-mail to me. That way I (the recipient of your message) won't have to jump through hoops to respond to a correspondence that you initiated. I like that idea.

Mark D. disagreed that a good anti-spam program is the best way to deal with spam. He pointed out, correctly, that although "spam whackers" prevent end-users from being bothered by spam, there is still an issue with bandwidth usage that may cost companies and individuals money if they're charged by the bit for Internet access. Like several others, he comes out on the side of "properly written and enforced legislation." I guess you guys just have more faith than I in the government's ability to do this effectively without also catching lots of non-spammers in their nets.

Mail was overwhelmingly against a tax on e-mail, especially if it would mean no more free newsletters. We were glad to hear that! However, one reader suggested the tax would be no problem - just charge each reader 10 cents per week to subscribe, and WinXPNews would come out $90K ahead (assuming a readership of 1 million). Well ... not exactly. First, that idea defeats our purpose of providing a free service. Secondly, others' attempts at paid newsletters show the subscription rate would drop drastically. It's not spending the dime that people object to; it's the inconvenience of having to go through the payment process and the logistics of how payment would be made. Speaking of which, the most logical payment method is by credit card. But many folks are reluctant to transmit that information over the 'Net. Even if they all would, many merchant accounts charge the vendor a fee (as much as 25 cents) per credit card transaction, along with a small percentage of the transaction amount. So rather than being $90K ahead each week, we end up $161,300 in the hole (assuming a 25 cent transaction charge plus 1.3%, which equals $251,300 to the credit card merchant account plus $10,000 to the government for the tax, minus the $100,000 revenue from the 10 cent subscription charge. Ouch! Let's not even get into the extra work involved in processing the payments and submitting the taxes.

Mark W. pointed us to the idea of a "punish" mode for spam whackers as described by Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com/ffb.html. Perhaps the most insightful remark came from Jeffrey D.: "the most important step in stopping spam is NEVER respond to an offer from an email message. If everyone did this, then spam would go away since there would no longer be a market."

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Quote of the Week:
Speak when you are angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret. - Laurence J. Peter (1919-1988)

'Til next week,
Deb Shinder, Editor
(email us with feedback: feedback@winxpnews.com)