81–90 of 188 posts
I've tried forwarding a spam email from Apple Mail, but I got a response that it didn't work out. This is the raw email message I sent - http://pastebin.com/qNwT04my
EDIT: Can you add an issue to the tracker with the forward header verbatim so I don't forget?
What happened to hashcash proposals to email protocols?
The problem with hashcash for email is that there's no way for the sender and receiver to negotiate the amount of work to be proved, so they must correctly guess how much to perform/require. The most sensible requirement to guess is zero, since all existing email is sent without any proof of work, and the value of interoperability is higher than blocking spam. After all, if you're willing to lose interoperability, yo…
Another problem is finding a quantity of work which is high enough to stop spam, but low enough not to stop legitimate traffic. You want people to be able to send email from their RPiZero or original iPhone, but stop spammers who may have massive botnets, or at least decent PCs.
This seems like a noble endeavor which will be useful (albeit under different names over time, I assume) right up until the spammers start using bots to hold their ends of conversations, to make their own operations more efficient.
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I would also suggest giving the spammers more intense work to do. Like a pdf form for new suppliers that they have to download, fill out, sign, scan back in, and return. Or maybe submit to a form page with a horribly difficult captcha.
IFL this. Someone please make this happen. '[country] rules mean we need you fill out the attached pdf. Please complete and upload to [... IP logging website]'
EDIT: Or even just the PDF, really, I can host it on the server.
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Wait, how did you follow that one? Isn't it unlisted?
What do you mean by unlisted? I forwarded it, then received a mail from smannesty containing direct link to the thread. EDIT : oh, I also removed the private key from url param before posting it here. EDIT 2 : typo in my initial message: by "followed", I meant "forwarded" (in french, we say "faire suivre", which translates word by word to "make follow")
I'm guessing the emails this generates will become flagged as spam themselves. Do spammers use spam filters too or would that prevent them from getting replies?
However, you raise an interesting point: blacklists could reasonably be put into place. I'll make a merge request to use Spintax.
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And bots could do pretty well there. I recently read an article (cannot find it; but it may have been even linked from here) which explained the benefit of poor grammar in the spam (i.e., they want to put off more knowledgeable users as the cost of the follow on emails is significantly higher). El cheapo bots have pretty basic English skills which can help them fit naturally into the spam target patterns.
The paper you're referring to is probably this one: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-... The same logic that favours using an opening gambit that scares off all but the most unworldly of people works against using bots for the followup conversation. You don't want to finally find someone that genuinely believes that a random central African stranger might want to split $138,400,000 with the…
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Submit a form page with an impossible captcha.
Ouch. That's evil. Make it count how many times they've attempted. Every-time clear random fields and randomise fields to make auto-filling neigh-on impossible.
edit Also re-order the form locations, placeholders so it's nearly impossible to script automation for the page!
And this script that plays what sounds like an old man losing his memory: https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/