[Wolves] Linux Display

[Wayne Morris]

Peter Cannon wrote:

>Not to give any secrets away getting email addresses is dead easy.
>
>Kelly's Directory is the best although not cheap £300 odd you get a disk that 
>lets you export 5000 records there is a way to get the lot but I'm not 
>telling.
>
>Thomson Local is second but very poor on email addresses there are others such 
>as G-Tech but they are just copy's of Thomson.
>
>Kelly's give you the golden nugget in respect that they have websites and 
>email addresses in the records.
>
>  
>
I used to have an email grabber (well I probably still have it, but god 
knows which pc its on).
Point this at a website and it returns every email address on any page 
on the site.
I used to point it at sites containing classified ads placed by the sort 
of people who would buy my stuff and let them go to work,
could generate 200-300 email addresses in five mins. Very effective.

>Now before we all jump on the Spam crusade we need to take a step back and 
>think about it like sensible adults. I agree there is loads of Spam out there 
>but its not as simple as the knee jerk reaction I see on a daily basis, its 
>dead easy to say "Your spamming me you bast$£%@d".
>
>I'm not defending Spamming!
>
>One mans Spam is another mans advertising I had a guy ring Monday to say your 
>spamming me then in the next breath "Having said that I'm interested in the 
>Laptop your offering" he then went on to buy it. Hes not the first or the 
>last, so its a tough call is it spamming or is it advertising? I don't see 
>anyone phoning Central Television and complaining about the adverts and they 
>are just the same I don't want to see 'Buy this jumbo pack of sanitary 
>towels' so am I being spammed by the TV? I think I am.
>
>Anyway getting back to the point most business victims of spam have themselves 
>to blame they stick their details in Kelly's Directory, Thomsons Local, 
>Yellow Pages, Websites in fact all over the place in the hope of 'getting a 
>sale' then complain when someone tries to sell to them by joining the spam 
>crusade and crying "I'm being spammed Mr BT".
>
>Simple solution you don't want junk mail? don't advertise your address!
>  
>
>
I think the biggest perceived critiscisms of spamming are two fold:

Most spam is drug/porn/scam related, if these were negated then the 
volume of email potential received by a target would be hugely reduced, 
less offensive
and contain potentially useful  products. Hardly anyone complains about 
junk mail coming thru the door, you just bin it - the hysteria might be 
a bit greater if every envelope contained porn mags and drug catalogues. 
Email has a much more effective blocking system if used correctly, you 
CAN choose to block it - my five domains would receive probably 1000 
spams a day if I didn't have Exim linked to SORBS , blacklisting 99.9% 
of the porn/drug spammers.

The other thing about spam is that there are still a lot of old time 
users who beleive that the internet is supposed to be a  non-commercial 
encyclopedia and that advertising  is as welcome as  television at a 
library.  If these people thought about it for two mins they would 
realise that the internet would not exist if it wasn't for the  
commercial content, nobody  provides servers and lines if they are not 
making  money. People will  realise that the internet is more like Sky 
Tv  now, plenty of content  paid for by  adverts in one shape or form.

Anyway, I spam (but I can handle it - Eddie Izzard), I sent 1200 
messages yesterday, received 100 bounce due to bad addresses, two 
bounces due to spam controls, nobody emailed to be taken off, three 
people used the 'remove me' link on the email, two people emailed to say 
they had pressed 'remove' by mistake and wanted to be put back on and 
NOBODY emailed to say we were a bunch of spammers!


On a sidenote, I used to beleive that if an email address was 
succesfully blocked or disused for a long time, then eventually it would 
be cleansed from spamlists.
Not so, I used a test email address ONCE five years ago and it 
immediately got picked up by spammers,  I then  cancelled the user 
account and all mail would have bounced. I then stopped accepting mail 
for that domain. So spammers would have had five years of 
bounces/refused connections.
Anyway, looking at my logs for the now active domain, I still see at 
least five attempts per day to send to that adddress (and its not a name 
or a word, so these arn't
dictionary attacks).
Looks like my lasting imprint on history will be a bunch of made up 
email addresses (still being used to sell porn in 2476)!

Wayne