The wise man avoids evil by anticipating it. Publilius
Syrus
#113
The Spam Cop is Your Friend
Julian Haight is the Spam Cop
Doug Clifford, our FOTOgraphics editor put me on to the Spam Cop and I've probably
visited that site more in the past month than any other single site I’ve been to
(combined) in the past six years.
The Spam Cop site parses the full email you received
(you have to include headers and footers), and then sends complaints to all guilty
parties -- including the ISP, the sender, the MailMaster, and any "Abuse"
addresses found on the ISPs server. Very slick and very cool. In the past 30 days,
I've been responsible for having several dozen or so spammers kicked off their ISP's
servers. Six just this morning. Yay!
Unfortunately, it is usually too difficult to
figure out who was responsible for any one email, particularly with the advanced
techniques that savvy spammers use. However, the key to this puzzle is the combination
of the IP address of the sender and the time and date at which the mail was sent.
These two pieces of information can lead an administrator back to the user who actually
sent the mail. Both pieces of information are in your email header.
SpamCop uses a combination of Unix utilities (dig,
nslookup, finger) to cross-check all the information in an email header and find
the email address of the administrator on the network where the email originated.
It then formulates a polite request for discipline including all the information
the admin needs to track down the user responsible.
This is very savvy programming, and for once,
programming that actually is helping society in some small way. Our hats are off
to Julian and all his hard work on the Spam Cop.
Julian offers a Spam Cop filter for your email
system that can help eliminate most of the spam you get. He charges a very small
fee which is well worth eliminating the plague of spam hitting you each day. It's
only too bad someone doesn't invent a way to eliminate annoying banner ads from web
pages.
You can hear Julian's radio interview (real audio)
on Point and Click Radio, where he describes the basics of SpamCop by pointing your
browser to: http://www.kzyx.org/pc/metafiles/mar17_99_2.ram
Then to report spams, just go to http://www.spamcop.net/ and follow the instructions. Once you've
registered, save the bookmark so you can return again easily.
Happy spam hunting!
Thanks for reading, 'til next time -- Good day!
"There are only two forces that unite men - fear and interest." Napoleon I
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Fred Showker is a designer, consultant, writer and speaker. He has published 60-Second Window and DT&G Magazine online since 1990, and is director of The Graphic Design Network which includes The Design & Publishing Center at www.Graphic-Design.com. (1994) He was a co-founder of both The User Group Forum on America Online (1987), The User Group Network at www.User-Groups.net, (1994) and the Designers' Bookshelf (1996) He originally founded Showker Graphic Arts & Design in 1972, has been an avid computer activist and supporter since 1984.
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We bring you 100% spam-free content for computer users -- particularly designers, illustrators, publishers, photographers, and visual graphics arts professionals from all corners of the world. Visit our parent publication DT&G Magazine -- Contents Copyright (c) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. 60-Second Window is trademark of Showker, Inc., a Virginia Corporation. Copyrighted since 1990. Reproduction or reuse of parts or all of this manuscript without prior written permission is expressly forbidden. DT&G Magazine, and The Design & Publishing Center invite you to visit Photoshop Tips & Tricks at: http://www.graphic-design.com/photoshop/ and post your Photoshop questions at: Photoshop911.com.
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