Junk mail addendum

Even if your web pages are taking care to obscure email
addresses, 
I'll bet that there are some PDF or Word or Powerpoint
files that have 
email contacts inside and are not locked in anyway. That's
one source.

Then the odd virus or two that grabs an address list from a
machine 
and sends it to the ill-intentioned. That's a second
source.

Helpful people who put your contact addresses on their web
pages 
without protecting them. There's a third source.

'Guessable' account names. That's a fourth source.

The list is much, much longer. Spam is right up there with
death and 
taxes 


Graham
--
Graham Patterson, System Administration
Dept. of Economics, UC Berkeley (510)643-5397

------------------------------------------------------------
------------
The following was automatically added to this message by the
list server:

For information about Micronet, including subscribing to
or unsubscribing from its mailing list and finding out
about upcoming meetings, please visit the Micronet Web site:
<http://micronet.be
rkeley.edu/>.

Graham, Tom, I understood most of that already, though I had
not thought of
the address-harvesting virus angle, that does make perfect
sense.

However, what really puzzles me is this:

My personal email account is on our department website (and
in various other
places around the campus web presence).

Our departmental mailing lists are also visible (and
clickable) on our
website.

Spam that comes to my personal account gets tagged at
50-90%, and flagged as
such.

Spam that comes to our mailing lists seems to mostly get
tagged at 7-13%
instead.

It's a pattern I can't explain yet, unless it just happens
that two distinct
groups of spammers are using two distinct methods of
harvesting addresses,
with very little overlap, and the latter group of spammers
is just plain
clever enough to keep their spam-tag ratings very low.

Since that seems unlikely to me, I figured I'd ask around.

-----------------
Lyman Lockwood
Webmaster, Programmer/Analyst-II
PP-CS Information Systems Group
3-8467

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-micronet-listlists.berkeley.edu 
> [mailto:owner-micronet-listlists.berkeley.edu] On
Behalf Of 
> Graham A. Patterson
> Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 2:01 PM
> To: 'Micronet'
> Subject: RE: [Micronet] Junk mail addendum
> 
> 
> Even if your web pages are taking care to obscure email
addresses, 
> I'll bet that there are some PDF or Word or Powerpoint
files 
> that have 
> email contacts inside and are not locked in anyway.
That's one source.
> 
> Then the odd virus or two that grabs an address list
from a machine 
> and sends it to the ill-intentioned. That's a second
source.
> 
> Helpful people who put your contact addresses on their
web pages 
> without protecting them. There's a third source.
> 
> 'Guessable' account names. That's a fourth source.
> 
> The list is much, much longer. Spam is right up there
with death and 
> taxes 
> 
> 
> Graham
> --
> Graham Patterson, System Administration
> Dept. of Economics, UC Berkeley (510)643-5397
> 
>
------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ----------
> The following was automatically added to this message
by the 
> list server:
> 
> For information about Micronet, including subscribing
to
> or unsubscribing from its mailing list and finding out
> about upcoming meetings, please visit the Micronet Web
site:
> <http://micronet.be
rkeley.edu/>.
> 



------------------------------------------------------------
------------
The following was automatically added to this message by the
list server:

For information about Micronet, including subscribing to
or unsubscribing from its mailing list and finding out
about upcoming meetings, please visit the Micronet Web site:
<http://micronet.be
rkeley.edu/>.