Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 16:39:54 +0100
Reply-To: John Whittington <John.W@MEDISCIENCE.CO.UK>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: John Whittington <John.W@MEDISCIENCE.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Banning HTML-Spam ?
In-Reply-To: <E181TSv-0005ca-00@coumxnn02.netbenefit.co.uk>
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At 06:00 15/10/02 +0000, Gregg Snell wrote:
>On this point I would respectfully disagree, though I certainly can offer
>no evidence to support my position. Except it seems to me that the only
>way spammers can make their system work is by mass-emailing as many as
>possible which, in my opinion, means simply buying or mining address and
>then letting a computer do the work. I would find it hard to believe that
>any of these guys would take the time to subscribe to a list prior to
>broadcasting their junk.
You may well be right - but I wouldn't underestimate the 'sophistication'
of the 'spam industry' - don't forget that the process of subscribing to
lists could, itself, also be automated. A few hundred list addresses is as
good as a million individual e-mail addresses, and I don't doubt that those
selling the lists might well also sell the automated means of subscribing
to those which only allow subscribers to post!
In fact, although my memory may be playing tricks on me, I have a feint
recollection that there was a time when at least one of the SAS-L peers
actually _did_ only allows those subscribed (to that peer) to post. I
certainly remember having to subcribe at (and set to NOMAIL) an additional
peer in order that I was allowed to query the (more extensive) SAS-L
archives at that peer.
However, whatever one's views on this issue, only allowing subscribers to
post is such an easy thing to implement that I imagine it's well worth
considering. Very many lists work that way, and I would imagine that only
a very small minority of people (mainly those who use work computers and
are not allowed to subscribe to lists) would be inconvenienced.
Kind Regards
John
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