Keep your e-mail mungled.

Buck said:

"Marian Rosenberg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

J. Cohn said:

So how can you mungle your address? I'd prefer to do that rather than setting up a separate
spam-sink address, but it's not clear to me how it's done...

It's really quite simple - YOU DON'T

Munging is a bad bad bad bad bad idea.

Please, explain why this is such a bad idea. Right now you come across as the typical worry-wart
that we all dislike who says "Ooooohhhhh, riding a bicycle without a helmet is a bad bad bad bad
bad idea."

I'll start with the simplest explanation of all. It only takes two words.

"Common Courtesy."

Whether or not such a concept really is a common one, deliberately choosing to do otherwise doesn't
help when you want people to be nice to you.

Also, there are some oh so wonderful (choke) pieces of software out there such as Outlook Express
which hide the email address. You have no way of telling as a sender that the address was munged
until after you recieve the bounce message. I don't know about -you- but the reason I have any email
address at all is because it might be nice for people to contact me.

I'm going to snip the rest of your lame excuses for why it is okay for you to be rude and to waste
other people's bandwidth because you'd rather not try to fight the real problem (spammers) but
prefer to just hide from them.

-M

"Marian Rosenberg" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

J. Cohn wrote:

>So how can you mungle your address? I'd prefer to do that rather than setting up a separate
>spam-sink address, but it's not clear to me how it's done...

It's really quite simple - YOU DON'T

Munging is a bad bad bad bad bad idea.

Buck said:

Quoted message said:

Please, explain why this is such a bad idea. Right now you come across

as

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

the typical worry-wart that we all dislike who says "Ooooohhhhh, riding

a

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

bicycle without a helmet is a bad bad bad bad bad idea."

I'll start with the simplest explanation of all. It only takes two words.

"Common Courtesy."

I believe that this all comes down to the user. You are new to cycling and you are new to usenet.
You don't complain when we give you advice about your bike or your riding style, but you are
certainly upset when usenet doesn't work like you expect it to. You want us to fight against the
spammers, but don't realize that it is similar to the battle we face as cyclists against automobile
traffic. All we can do is use the tools available to us to protect our privacy in one case, our
safety in the other. No, this isn't about common courtesy.

Quoted message said:

Whether or not such a concept really is a common one, deliberately choosing to do otherwise
doesn't help when you want people to be nice to you.

Again, mungling an address has absolutely nothing to with being mean or discourteous. It is a way to
protect our e-mail addresses from the tools spammers use to automatically harvest our addresses and
use them to ply their trade. It is easily circumvented by a human being.

Quoted message said:

Also, there are some oh so wonderful (choke) pieces of software out there such as Outlook Express
which hide the email address. You have no way of telling as a sender that the address was munged
until after you recieve the bounce message. I don't know about -you- but the reason I have any
email address at all is because it might be nice for people to contact me.

Sure, I have an e-mail address so people can contact me. And anyone who will take a moment to
unmungle the address can do so easily. We are working our way down to the root problem here - you
are using outlook express. Here is the simple fix for you: when you want to reply to somone, instead
of hitting the "reply" button, right click on the message in the title pane (the one where all of
the message titles are listed, not the preview pane where you read the message). At the bottom of
the list is "properties." Open the properties page, then select the "details" tab. In this you will
see all of the message headers. The second line should be the "from" field where you can get the
name of the poster and the e-mail address. Highlight the address and copy it using either the ctrl+c
command or by right-clicking on the highlighted address and selecting copy from the context menu.
Now you can paste the address in the "to" field and make corrections. It sounds more difficult than
it really is.

Quoted message said:

I'm going to snip the rest of your lame excuses for why it is okay for you to be rude and to waste
other people's bandwidth because you'd rather not try to fight the real problem (spammers) but
prefer to just hide from them.

You only consider it rude because you don't understand the technology and the reasons for protecting
your address. From my limited understanding of Chinese culture, slurping soup and spitting out bones
onto your plate is considered normal and even expected behavior. These things would be considered
quite rude and disgusting at a proper English table. Perhaps you should consider these things before
you get offended in a medium which you do not fully understand.

The problem of spam is being addressed at many levels. Until we have a method for holding them
accountable for their actions, we can only take steps to protect ourselves. Munging an address is a
good way to prevent automatic collection of addresses from usenet while still allowing someone to
contact us. It's better than not providing an address at all.

-Buck

Quoted message said:

All we can do is use the tools available to us to protect our privacy in one case, our safety in
the other. No, this isn't about common courtesy.

I agree with you to a certain extent. Especially about not using OE. You'll notice I'm not, and
never haved. I certainly agree that active management of one's cyberspace (and road space) is a Good
Idea. I admit that I haven't been too attentive of late as far as this worm thing is concerned, but
all of the recent posts led me to take a closer look at my methodology.

I get a lot of spam. But as a member of two very active mail lists I also get a lot of legitimate
messages as well. I don't choose to maintain multiple email addresses.

Normally the spam content is under control. This latest attack, and it is an attack, is
unprecedented.

As for maxing out server space, it doesn't happen because I don't hold messages on the server. The
mail program DLs to my local machine every 10 minutes or so so I don't miss any vitally important
spam--but my mailbox never overflows.

The advantage of this is that the really important stuff always gets through, if it can make it past
my local filters.

The bad part is that I woke up to 22k unread messages in my inbox on Monday, granted a lot of that
was old...but it gives me the option to read the good stuff and chuck the rest.

It's my option as to how big a garbage can I choose to implement.

Assuming I know how to use firewalls, filters, IP mobility and block deletes of email, and
assuming I'm not crazy enough to execute attachments, I feel pretty comfortable with using an
unmunged address.

Besides, either my ISP has gotten more effective at filtering lately or I have, I've seen a big
drop-off in MS UPDATE emails lately.

Still in business at my existing address.

--

_______________________ALL AMIGA IN MY MIND_______________________ ------------------"Buddy Holly,
the Texas Elvis"------------------
__________306.350.357.38>>[email hidden]__________

"Eric S. Sande" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

As for maxing out server space, it doesn't happen because I don't hold messages on the server. The
mail program DLs to my local machine every 10 minutes or so so I don't miss any vitally important
spam--but my mailbox never overflows.

As a user of broadband, I find that automatic updates every five minutes or so are handy as well.
The only time I have ever had a problem with a full mailbox was with this recent experience using a
new address through a different provider. Even downloads every five minutes couldn't keep up with
the volume. I was once a dialup user. I can't imagine going back.

Quoted message said:

The bad part is that I woke up to 22k unread messages in my inbox on Monday, granted a lot of that
was old...but it gives me the option to read the good stuff and chuck the rest.

And here is where munging my address really shines. While you awoke to 22,000 messages, on my
regular accounts, I only had a few, and only two were spam. Both were caught by my anti-spam
software. While you were sorting through 22,000 messages, I was going for a ride. 🙂

Quoted message said:

Assuming I know how to use firewalls, filters, IP mobility and block deletes of email, and
assuming I'm not crazy enough to execute attachments, I feel pretty comfortable with using an
unmunged address.

Unfortunately, many people wouldn't even understand the terminology in that last paragraph.
That's another reason to mung your address on usenet - it's easy to do, easy to understand, and
easy to fix.

Quoted message said:

Besides, either my ISP has gotten more effective at filtering lately or I have, I've seen a big
drop-off in MS UPDATE emails lately.

I spoke to my old lab manager at the university yesterday about this problem. The traffic loads were
so heavy they had to completely disconnect parts of the campus so they could isolate the infected
machines, clean them, and then patch them. Thankfully, they could pull the plug building-by-building
and floor-by-floor, then run diagnostic tools to find the infected machines. It still cost thousands
of dollars in overtime, and untold amounts in lost productivity. I wonder if your ISP has taken the
same tactic - cut the connection for infected machines.

-Buck

Quoted message said:

I was once a dialup user. I can't imagine going back.

I am way too cheap for broadband.

Quoted message said:

While you were sorting through 22,000 messages, I was going for a ride. 🙂

I said I had the option to sort through them. I also had the option to eliminate them. Guess which
one I chose?

Quoted message said:

I wonder if your ISP has taken the same tactic - cut the connection for infected machines.

It wouldn't surprise me. Their TOS pretty much says they can cut you off for a crosseyed look, but
they've only posted instructions on antiviral procedures and nothing out of the ordinary appears on
their systems status page.

--

_______________________ALL AMIGA IN MY MIND_______________________ ------------------"Buddy Holly,
the Texas Elvis"------------------
__________306.350.357.38>>[email hidden]__________

In <[email hidden]>, Marian Rosenberg
<[email hidden]> opined:

Quoted message said:

It's really quite simple - YOU DON'T

After 10 years on USENET, it's Swen, and not spam that has finally convinced me to start masking my
address. Spammers don't send >100KB messages at the rate of 20-30 per hour.

Quoted message said:

If you absolutely feel the need to do something stupid and want to mung your address keep a clean
and valid address in your reply-to line, for some reason despite the fact that people have been
doing this for years the bots don't pick up on this.

Some do. Some also get around certain anti-spam masking, like inserting illegal characters in
addresses or putting any variant of "nospam" in the address. It only takes hits from a few bots to
get the address on a list, then the list gets traded and passed around...

Quoted message said:

Sure, you might think itis a nice clever thing but your munged address might just be someone
else's real address. People have the weirdest email addresses. And, every single mail that is sent
to your munged address is now a double waste of bandwidth because some ISP somewhere has to send
back a bounce.

That's confusing -- if it's someone else's address it won't bounce, and if it's nobody's address it
won't bother anyone. But anyway...

There is one domain name that was reserved long ago to never be assigned to real services - example.
example.com, example.org, and example.net are guaranteed to never handle mail.

Back to the original question then -- I think that I'm doing the nearest possible to correct thing
in using example.com as the domain in my "From:" header and written addresses, and providing
instructions to swap mindspring in place of example. If you're a person and you want to mail me you
can, but otherwise you'll get a non-delivery message.

Your mail service may also allow sub-addressing. A message addressed in the form
"[email hidden]" would still be delivered to [email hidden], and then local filters
could take appropriate action.

Quoted message said:

There are quite a few ISPs which make munging against the rules in their Terms of Service. But no
one ever reads the TOS.

Mine explicitly and specifically PERMITS "Using deliberately misleading headers ("munging" headers)
in news postings in order to avoid spam email address collectors". The AUP at the first ISP I worked
at prohibited using inaccurate headers, but had room for the AUP police to consider intent and
effect as well.

--
[email hidden] | depending, of course, | REPLACE example WITH Dave Salovesh | on your
perspective | mindspring TO EMAIL ME (After more than a decade on USENET , it's finally come
to this ^^^)

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 14:02:13 -0400, <[email hidden]>, "Eric S. Sande"

Quoted message said:

It wouldn't surprise me. Their TOS pretty much says they can cut you off for a crosseyed look, but
they've only posted instructions on antiviral procedures and nothing out of the ordinary appears on
their systems status page.

This address <[email hidden]> had one spam> No worm generated spam has shown up at that box
which is, unmunged, a legit address I use for various contacts.

Another address I use for mailing lists gets no spam, ever.

This one <[email hidden]> has been stuffed for a week since the filters only permit
shuffling it to the trash folder. Usually it only attracts about 4 per day. Bicycle related
newsgroups are the only place I use that address.

My machine is clean and no M$ products on it are permitted access to the net.
--
zk

Quoted message said:

After 10 years on USENET, it's Swen, and not spam that has finally convinced me to start masking my
address. Spammers don't send >100KB messages at the rate of 20-30 per hour.

If I read the Swen writeups correctly it's spreading itself using the local machine's address book
upon which it was executed, not a list of USENET addys. I don't think many people keep munged
addresses in their local address book, so munging your USENET identity isn't going to help in this
case, I think.

--

_______________________ALL AMIGA IN MY MIND_______________________ ------------------"Buddy Holly,
the Texas Elvis"------------------
__________306.350.357.38>>[email hidden]__________

"Eric S. Sande" <[email hidden]> spake thusly on or about Wed, 24 Sep 2003 20:06:17 UTC

-> f I read the Swen writeups correctly it's spreading itself using -> the local machine's address
book upon which it was executed, not a -> list of USENET addys. I don't think many people keep
munged -> addresses in their local address book, so munging your USENET -> identity isn't going to
help in this case, I think.

FWIW I have used this address only on UseNet for about 8 months. I am getting many hundreds of
notices that my isp has stripped dear old swen from an email. easy enough to filter but still a bit
of a pain.

--
I hurt before the ride so fibro gives me a head start on the rest of the pack. silver lining?
[email hidden]

Quoted message said:

This one <[email hidden]> has been stuffed for a week since the filters only permit
shuffling it to the trash folder. Usually it only attracts about 4 per day. Bicycle related
newsgroups are the only place I use that address.

Aha! A telling point!

Quoted message said:

My machine is clean and no M$ products on it are permitted access to the net.

And so are my machines. I know this because I just completed a full system scan on Net Pig, my main
machine, with virus definitions dated 9/24/03, which will catch the worm (but not eliminate it).

I didn't expect to find it on that platform anyway, since it isn't used for mail or newsgroups, but
since it's running XP I couldn't trust it.

Server Girl is my other machine, running old and crusty '95.

This is the mail and newsgroups machine, the one on which I received the wormspam. Netscape 4.7. I
do know every nut and bolt of this one, and it's easy enough to reboot and run regedit.

The worm disables regedit as one of it's nastier effects, but lo and behold regedit ran.
Ergo, no worm.

I attribute this to my policy of NEVER EXECUTING ATTACHMENTS EVER.

Well, that was that. My ISP is apparently filtering effectively, because I've seen no more activity.

However we still have a problem. There is an infected machine out there, or more than one, that
contains our email addresses in its local address book. Likely its owner doesn't know they're uh,
wormy, so it goes.

--

_______________________ALL AMIGA IN MY MIND_______________________ ------------------"Buddy Holly,
the Texas Elvis"------------------
__________306.350.357.38>>[email hidden]__________

In <[email hidden]>, "Eric S. Sande" <[email hidden]> opined:

Quoted message said:

If I read the Swen writeups correctly it's spreading itself using the local machine's address book
upon which it was executed, not a list of USENET addys. I don't think many people keep munged
addresses in their local address book, so munging your USENET identity isn't going to help in this
case, I think.

According to Symantec, it "Searches the .html, .asp, .eml, .dbx, .wab, and .mbx files on the hard
disk for email addresses." If someone reads USENET through a web interface, there will be lots of
email addresses in the cached HTML and ASP files. If they aren't masked, they're candidates for
receiving Swen.

But this is actually worse than I thought:

I'm on quite a few mailing lists. I can't mask my address there or I won't be allowed to post. Or,
the server may identify me when it accepts my messages through a web interface.

If someone on those lists has an infested computer, and uses Outlook/Express or Eudora to read list
traffic, my clear address will appear in their .eml, .dbx, and .mbx files. And there ain't nothing I
can do about that.

Also, I believe that Exchange puts spooled messages in .eml files. If someone out there has an
infested server, the worm can glom onto the real addresses in every inbound and outbound message
that crosses it.

Ugh. I'm gonna go shoot my email address now and put it out of its misery...

--
[email hidden] | depending, of course, | REPLACE example WITH Dave Salovesh | on your
perspective | mindspring TO EMAIL ME (After more than a decade on USENET , it's finally come
to this ^^^)

Quoted message said:

Ugh. I'm gonna go shoot my email address now and put it out of its misery...

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

"Not until you delete Windows, Dave."

Seriously, don't freak out. This is a little threat. Just make sure your machines are clean and
don't execute anything from non- trusted sources. Oh, and don't run any Microsoft products you
don't need.

Not because they are bad products necessarily, but because they are the easiest targets for the rat
[censored] who love to get us off topic.

--

_______________________ALL AMIGA IN MY MIND_______________________ ------------------"Buddy Holly,
the Texas Elvis"------------------
__________306.350.357.38>>[email hidden]__________

Thanks for those tips Dave!

take care Liz Learning something new everyday

Hey! Look what Dave Salovesh <[email hidden]> wrote :

Quoted message said:

There is one domain name that was reserved long ago to never be assigned to real services -
example. example.com, example.org, and example.net are guaranteed to never handle mail.

Quoted message said:

Your mail service may also allow sub-addressing. A message addressed in the form
"[email hidden]" would still be delivered to [email hidden], and then local filters
could take appropriate action.

Please note, I've succumbed.

I've been googling for a while, but I plan to quit that now, so that I may have a munged email
address. So please note:

The yahoo address is still valid for me, but because I still receive about 60 - 100 copies of the
sven gibe worm attachment daily, the account is often overwhelmed and your message to that account
may bounce. If you want to reach me, please substitute earthlink for mousepotato, and .net for .com,
in the address in the to and from lines above. Got it?

I've chosen "mousepotato" because 'way back when, I remember it was touted on halcyon (ah, for the
days when I was [email hidden]!) as an okay domain for munged addresses.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky Please substitute earthlink dot net for mousepotato.com Home of the meditative
cyclist at: home.earthlink.netWelcome.htmOpen ↗

Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at: bookcrossing.comCpeterskyOpen ↗

Claire Petersky said:

Please note, I've succumbed.

Quoted message said:

I've been googling for a while, but I plan to quit that now, so that I may have a munged email
address.

Quoted message said:

Claire Petersky

That's fine but you aren't using this to post anonymously as so many
do. So many snipers (one who shoots from cover) claim they cannot sign their dissertations for fear
of receiving piles of spam. Maybe you can explain that to them.

My ISP traps 99% of spam directed at my address. However, I get mail from all sorts of people that I
prefer to receive.

Jobst Brandt [email hidden]

"Claire Petersky" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:3r7hb.527642$cF.192750@rwcrnsc53...

Quoted message said:

I've chosen "mousepotato" because 'way back when, I remember it was touted on halcyon (ah, for the
days when I was [email hidden]!) as an okay domain for munged addresses.

I'm sure those nice people at mousepotato.com.aumousepotato.com.auOpen ↗ won't mind.

"Claire Petersky" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:3r7hb.527642$cF.192750@rwcrnsc53...

Quoted message said:

Please note, I've succumbed.

I've been googling for a while, but I plan to quit that now, so that I may have a munged email
address. So please note:

The yahoo address is still valid for me, but because I still receive about 60 - 100 copies of the
sven gibe worm attachment daily, the account is

often

Quoted message said:

overwhelmed and your message to that account may bounce. If you want to reach me, please
substitute earthlink for mousepotato, and .net for .com,

in

Quoted message said:

the address in the to and from lines above. Got it?

I've chosen "mousepotato" because 'way back when, I remember it was touted on halcyon (ah, for the
days when I was [email hidden]!) as an okay domain for munged addresses.

The email (ptr @ usaf.com) I use for newsgroups, and nowhere else, gets about the same.
50-100 per day.

It is a free or paid service. I like the "usaf" so much, i succumbed and paid so I could apply
filters to stem the tide.

Pete

Fri, 10 Oct 2003 02:30:52 GMT, <[email hidden]>, "Pete"

Quoted message said:

The email (ptr @ usaf.com) I use for newsgroups, and nowhere else, gets about the same.
50-100 per day.

Operamail has probably been hitting them with something.

In two days I got 8 spams (normal for this addy) of which 2 were bounced there and one was a "MS
Update". I've not had a wormy attachment in about two weeks.
--
zk

"Claire Petersky" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<3r7hb.527642$cF.192750@rwcrnsc53>...

Quoted message said:

I've chosen "mousepotato" because 'way back when, I remember it was touted on halcyon (ah, for the
days when I was [email hidden]!) as an okay domain for munged addresses.

It's actually a registered domain, Claire. Someone in Seattle, of all places, registered it in
September 2002. He doesn't seem to have a web server, but may well be using it for mail.

I think I've got everything except Usenet off this address now. Still getting lots of "update"
spam/virus/worm/whatever on it.

Brian Huntley <[email hidden]> wrote:
: It's actually a registered domain, Claire. Someone in Seattle, of all places, registered it in
: September 2002. He doesn't seem to have a web server, but may well be using it for mail.

weird. mousepotato.com is registered but neither of its DNS servers (ns2.sims.cc and ns3.sims.cc)
resolves "mousepotato.com" .. it does have a mail exchanger (MX) record (which tells where to route
email going to that domain) tho and that points to ..

mail.mouse-potato.com

which in turn resolves to

127..0.1

which, umm, well 127.0.0.1 refers to the machine you are on (aka localhost). which is
pretty strange.

in english someone seems to have set mousepotato.com up to be a mail sink hole. if not a minor PITA
if you happen to be running an MTA on your local box.

so, claire, you're probably ok.
--
david reuteler [email hidden]