Tom Hutchison wrote: > Captcha verifies a human is submitting something on a form and it is not a > bot program. And it would soon drive people round the bend if they had to complete a captcha repeatedly. Yahoo mail does it on a fairly regular basis, and esp if I'm sending out a number of mails. It's also why I don't use Yahoo mail very often. > Right now spam bots just scrub the webpages looking for email addresses. > When they find them they record them, then they start spamming them. I think we are all aware of this already but thanks for the reminder! > This is > why most people mask their email online. Most people DON'T mask their addresses. Most don't know how to munge an address or don't want to. Even in newsgroups, where I DO use a munged address and where a fair few others also munge their addresses, there are other who will not make a private reply if they can't click on the address. With those genealogical newsgroups that are gatewayed to Rootsweb lists, posts with munged address don't get included in the archives. To effectively run a mailing list, it's not possible for people to use a munged address. The lists might possibly not include a private address in mails or the From field but that doesn't stop people putting their email address in the body of a mail - or even their private snail mail address and phone number! There's only so much Rootsweb can do to protect people from their own daftness or downright stupidity. > Example, John at domain.net, please > substitute the "at" with @ to send me an email.... It's also why a number of people won't bother with replies to address with such instructions. > I went back and looked at some of the spam today. It is so bad they are > actually backscattering the lists. In other words, they are sending out the > spam, and using the mailman system bounce back to send it to listowner-admin > addresses as a return address. It only gets sent to an admin address if the admin address is either in the To field or the Bcc field. Spam sent to the request, bounces or list addresses does NOT get "backscattered" or bounced by default to the admin address. > Perhaps they should just use the boards method and use a graphic generated > email address of the admin's real contact email. This would stop it too. An admin's "real contact email" isn't seen by anyone unless or until the admin him/herself reveals it either on list or to a list member who might have a compromised address. Although I have my doubts about Rootsweb's ability to keep addresses secure, I'm assured they are. At least Rootsweb is taking the matter seriously enough to attempt to keep list members safe. Just for the record, I'm not as green as I'm cabbage looking. You probably don't intend to come across as arrogant, but you are. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Greinton and Clutton, SOM Asst OPC for Ashcott and Shapwick, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk http://www.savethegurkhas.co.uk/
>-----You probably don't intend to come across as arrogant, but you are. I'm trying not to sound arrogant, I just don't like bullies who SHOUT(sorry) to try and make their point, especially those who have no clue what they are talking about. These people are probably the ones who admin 100s of lists and 100s of boards and think they know everything. They are resistant to change, hate suggestions and bully posters. These same people aren't even reading the emails in full. Unbelievable, the emails I got directly and not to the list with threats of doom and gloom for Rootsweb because I'm using SpamCop. Probably what Rootsweb uses to parse the headers anyway. >-----It only gets sent to an admin address if the admin address is either in the To field or the Bcc field. Spam sent to the request, bounces or list addresses does NOT get "backscattered" or bounced by default to the admin address. I never said any of the emails were directed at my lists and being bounced. Some are directed at other lists and being returned to -admin@ which is forwarded to the list admin's true email. The Spam contains the forwarding emails for the admins, -admin@... which forwards it to my email. They are using To: and Bcc:, but also they are forging the return email address back to the listname-admin@.... which is a backscatter forgery email address and being forwarded to my email. -----Original Message----- From: Charani Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 8:24 AM To: listowners@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [LO] Lot of S*P*A*M coming thru - Captcha Tom Hutchison wrote: > Captcha verifies a human is submitting something on a form and it is not a > bot program. And it would soon drive people round the bend if they had to complete a captcha repeatedly. Yahoo mail does it on a fairly regular basis, and esp if I'm sending out a number of mails. It's also why I don't use Yahoo mail very often. > Right now spam bots just scrub the webpages looking for email addresses. > When they find them they record them, then they start spamming them. I think we are all aware of this already but thanks for the reminder! > This is > why most people mask their email online. Most people DON'T mask their addresses. Most don't know how to munge an address or don't want to. Even in newsgroups, where I DO use a munged address and where a fair few others also munge their addresses, there are other who will not make a private reply if they can't click on the address. With those genealogical newsgroups that are gatewayed to Rootsweb lists, posts with munged address don't get included in the archives. To effectively run a mailing list, it's not possible for people to use a munged address. The lists might possibly not include a private address in mails or the From field but that doesn't stop people putting their email address in the body of a mail - or even their private snail mail address and phone number! There's only so much Rootsweb can do to protect people from their own daftness or downright stupidity. > Example, John at domain.net, please > substitute the "at" with @ to send me an email.... It's also why a number of people won't bother with replies to address with such instructions. > I went back and looked at some of the spam today. It is so bad they are > actually backscattering the lists. In other words, they are sending out > the > spam, and using the mailman system bounce back to send it to > listowner-admin > addresses as a return address. It only gets sent to an admin address if the admin address is either in the To field or the Bcc field. Spam sent to the request, bounces or list addresses does NOT get "backscattered" or bounced by default to the admin address. > Perhaps they should just use the boards method and use a graphic generated > email address of the admin's real contact email. This would stop it too. An admin's "real contact email" isn't seen by anyone unless or until the admin him/herself reveals it either on list or to a list member who might have a compromised address. Although I have my doubts about Rootsweb's ability to keep addresses secure, I'm assured they are. At least Rootsweb is taking the matter seriously enough to attempt to keep list members safe. Just for the record, I'm not as green as I'm cabbage looking. You probably don't intend to come across as arrogant, but you are. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Greinton and Clutton, SOM Asst OPC for Ashcott and Shapwick, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk http://www.savethegurkhas.co.uk/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LISTOWNERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message