(no subject)

[ewx]

Some email users say they are using electronic mail less now because of spam.

The mail I save (which excludes cronmail and spam, but includes LJ comment notifications and a few low-volume announcement mailing lists; basically anything with an interested human at both ends) has increased a bit by raw volume lately, although not by much; however since July more than half of it (by message count) has been LJ comment notifications. The conclusion would seem to be that the conversations I used to have by email are now happening on livejournal instead, and up to a point this is true, though the subjects and actors seem to have changed somewhat. It's hard to determine the root cause of this; the spam volume doesn't dissuade me from sending people email, but perhaps it's encouraging other people I know to use LJ instead, carrying me along as an indirect effect.

My usenet posting volume has collapsed, too; 2002 saw about a 20% increase over 2001 (line count) but at the current rate 2003 is going to be around half of what 2003 was. It's harder to make an argument that spam has anything to do with this as (for whatever reason) I don't see anywhere near as much usenet spam as email spam; you could much more easily argue that LJ is responsible (both directly and in the indirect way described above) but I also feel less inclined to respond to things on usenet than I used to. That said I stopped reading some high-volume groups earlier this year for reasons unrelated to LJ, so it could just be a coincidence of timing.

Comments

[simont]

Depressingly, LJ itself is now beginning to attract spam. Several people on my Friends page recently found some of their world-readable entries had attracted spam comments of the form "hi I added you to my friends list hope that's ok" followed by a link "katies journal" which actually went to a porn site.

(Entertainingly, the link didn't work in some browsers, because the spammer put a double backslash after the "http:" rather than a double forward slash. I can only assume that IE is slash-direction-blind and didn't mind...)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I had one of those a week or so ago (always ahead of the curve, me) but deleted it before anyone else seemed to notice.

[gerald_duck]

Noted. Time to turn on screening for anonymous posts, then.

Actually, what would be nice is a facility like Erdös Numbers on Livejournal. You have a friend number of 0, your friends have a friend number of 1, their friends have a number of 2, etc. I'd be tempted to limit comments to people with a friends number of three or less.

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

I feel more justified than ever in my decision to make everything I post friends-only.

[rmc28]

That makes me glad I screen comments except for people on my Friends list. No spam yet (touch wood)

[perdita-fysh.livejournal.com]

I have one public usenet account and one public email account (used for business purposes so put onto every form, application etc I ever complete). I'm getting around 10-20 spam a day on the email one now, which I'm still manually deleting. The usenet one was up to 300 a day though, so I actually got around to configuring spamassassin last weekend.

I suspect, though, that rather being an indicator that more addresses are harvested from usenet, it's more that this address has been around so long it's on every spam list ever derived from usenet ever.

There was an interesting slashdot yesterday about how we should dilute the success rate of spam by sending genuine sounding, but actually false, replies to it. I can't find it today though, although I wanted to for another thread on a mailing list (synchronicity rules).

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

http://www.paulgraham.com/ffb.html has the interesting suggestion of automating something similiar, and making (eg) spamassassin automatically retrieve all urls in email identified as spam, this driving bandwidth bills for spammers through the roof and making it uneconomic.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

And this won't be used to DDoS innocent third parties because...?

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

He proposes combining this with a blacklist, so you only spider blacklisted sites, but this is the weak point of the whole scheme, and a bit handwaved.

[krabbe.livejournal.com]

And this won't trigger the "yes, this is an actual verified e-mail address that Mr. Spammerman can and will sell at triple price" unique ID in the URL how?

[gerald_duck]

It would trigger it, but it would also dilute the meaning of it. In particular, every link you ever sent to a spamtrap address would automatically get "verified".

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I was thinking a while back that spamtrap addresses should use shifting domain names; once (for instance) *@one.mydomain.com starts getting spam, you rename all the records for one.mydomain.com to two.mydomain.com, and so on. Then any spammer accumulating lists of addresses gets a gradually increasing number of bogus addresses that cost you no more than a DNS lookup. (Variant that costs you a little more DNS bandwidth: add a wildcard MX *.mydomain.com that ends up back at 127.0.0.1.) This doesn't do anything about the kind of spammer who pulls addresses of usenet (or wherever), spams once and then forgets them, though.

[lusercop.livejournal.com]

I've found that it's only since I started using SAUCE extensively that I've been happy publishing my main address on the internet. I still don't get *that* much spam to that account. My work account, by comparison, gets around 300 a day (about 170 on average will get tagged by our SA installation). I've been asked to look into possibilities for stemming the tide, as my boss gets around 1200 a day. (and I assume that around the same sort of fraction are tagged)...

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

I think lj has the advantage of being socially structured; it's easier to keep track of somehow.

One of the wonderful points of the modern world is the fact that nobody seems to realise there is a total disparity between the "global village", the fact that you can contact anyone anywhere pretty much, and the number of things, people, events and situations the human mind can keep track of. The smallness of the world is constantly waved under our noses, but in human terms the world is not small and trying to live as if it is makes no sense. It just stresses you. I gave up on that; I don't follow international or indeed national news in detail, I don't travel more than I need to, I prefer to spend my time on my friends and partners; the things I care about and want to have, not the things I can have. The only real consequence of globalisation for the individual is that you can have anything; and the skill you need to live in a world like that is the ability to distinguish between what you need or want and what is fundamentally irrelevant to your life and only appears attractive because it's there.

This ramble brought to you by my marvellously peculiar brain :)

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

I get perhaps one spam a week, despite my address having been around on the Web for five years. I think my mail provider uses BrightMail, FWIW, but have never bothered to investigate.

Using LiveJournal for email is Evil, Bad and Wrong - especially 'This is nothing to do with your post, but you left your hat at my place/let's go down the pub'.

dont spread your email-address!

[thcmyxa.livejournal.com]

the same -- since 1998 the email and i hold tha spam-bitches away...
1 spam in 2-3 week !!!
IT'S possible!