Periodic courtesy reminder, and Happy Pesach/Easter

As a well-known AFW busybody, I've periodically taken it upon myself to post courtesy reminders. There is more valuable info at

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as St. Helier pointed out.

First, a thought on anonymity and accountability. I run a non-profit. Our website includes a contact form (so anyone, even without an email address) can reach me. A useful tool, but I've learned to not give much weight to anonymous complaints. The same applies to Usenet. Most of the people here use their real names (even if in the industry, such as M. Pronay, Craig Winchell*, or Robertson Chai). Some use a pseudonym, but do include a valid email address. As to others, I personally don't feel that it's wise to put too much energy into conversations with those who are unaccountable and unreachable. As they say, YMMV.

A few other points (mostly derived from previous courtesy posts):

1) This is Usenet , a tool for discussion. Don't expect to post something w/o possibility of someone refuting it. 2) Please keep in mind that many of the contributors to alt.food.wine do not speak English as their first language. 3) Let's try to avoid personal comments. If you don't like someone, filter their posts. The details of how to do that vary according to newsreader software, but tutorials exist on the Web for employing filters in all the popular newsreaders. 4) New Folks: you're here to learn, right? So if someone who has been on AFW for years and serious about wine for 30+ corrects you, learn from it, don't get your feelings hurt. 5) Old folks : remember you were new (to wine and AFW) at some point, too. Correct if need be, but let's try to do so graciously. 6) Personally, I find it less than helpful to make generalizations about people based on where they live, what they do outside wine, etc. 7) No one is superior (In My Humble Opinion) based on either the simplicity or elegance of what they eat or drink. Isn't this group big enough for someone to have Shiraz with BBQed chicken and another to have rack of lamb with a fine Pauillac? Does it somehow offend you to read about a meal you wouldn't eat yourself? 8)Newbies: we welcome your participation (this is speaking as someone who has participated for a few years, I'm neither a true old-timer or a newbie). But as in ANY social situation, whether on or off line, it is wisest not to attack a respected member of a community while a newbie, it really won't win you any points. It is a time-honored tradition that one should lurk for a while before posting to get a feel re tone of a group.

So there. I'm sure I've offended a couple of old-timers and a couple of newbies, but hope the rest of you can take these remarks to heart. I don't claim to be immune to digression (remember the "collectors recork wine every 10 years/chianti cannot be drunk young/Europeans are all wine sophisticates" guy? I got a little over-involved); all I'm asking is that we try to keep these guidelines in mind.

  • mentioning Craig Winchell made me think that I hope many folks have enjoyed his fine wines over last few nights, and reminded me to wish you all happy Passover or Easter, as the case may be.

Best, Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Reply to
Dale Williams
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Post well recieved. Thanks

Reply to
Vincent Vega

Dale, I recently removed my real email address when I started to receive to much spam on regular email. Some one told me that the newgroups are scanned and addresses are some how collected. I have not problem giving my email address but not in the address heading of posts. I was getting over 500 spams a day. I did create a BS Yahoo account simply to collect spam. What have others done?

Reply to
dick

Well, first of all, it's not a bad idea to spoof your email headers in Usenet groups, then give instructions in sig re email (see Emery's method, or Mark L's mirror method). The spiders collecting email address are NOT reading Emery's posts and saying "oh, let's remove the Amazon)

A secondary account is also a good idea , as long as you do scan it occasionally.

Good spam filters (either through your email provider or a third party) are also a good idea.

My only point is that it's generally desirable for someone to be able to be reached outside of Usenet, it doesn't need to be in headers (or in body of posts, undisguised).

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Reply to
Dale Williams

So I discovered a while ago when attempting to send you an e-mail, Dick. ;-)

Some one told me that the newgroups are scanned

Dale has given you a pretty good rundown on the options. After years of posting with an unmunged address, I started munging it recently after seeing a sharp upturn in spam traffic -- though nothing to match your

500/day figure. I also employ heuristic spam filters in my e-mail/newsgroup client (Mozilla Thunderbird), which I can highly recommend.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

If I may say so as a "newbie" to this NG (but not to its subject), that is an excellent and succinct guide to usenet etiquette. I have contributed to, and benefited from, alt.guitar.bass for some time now, and have recently noted an increase in OT postings. It must be said that some of these are welcome, for instance when they involve personal or family news from a regular contributor whom one feels one "knows" even if they have no relevance to our common interest, the bass guitar. OTOH the increasingly common political rants (perhaps because it's a US election year) and the responses that they inevitably generate are becoming increasingly tiresome. Thankfully, these aberrations appear to be absent from AFW. The only (slightly) OT post I have noted so far concerns the Stanley Cup, though, so I can't promise not to get slightly animated about that.

Regards,

Ian

Reply to
Ian Hayward

You did exactly what I (and others) have done. We have provided a way for others to contact us privately (by regular e-mail) without letting our real e-mail addresses being scooped up by automated programs that "harvest" e-mail addresses from newsgroups such as afw to be used for sending spam. Different people have come up with different ways of dealing with this problem but my guess is that any of them works as well as any other.

Vino To reply, add "x" between letters and numbers of e-mail address.

Reply to
Vino

You can avoid having your email address harvested from your messages by altering it so that it will be obvious to humans but will fool machines. See Dale's address below as an example. So, if your address is snipped-for-privacy@provider.com you can alter it to something like this:

johndoe @ provider.com (note spaces around the @) snipped-for-privacy@provider.com snipped-for-privacy@provider.comREMOVETHIS snipped-for-privacy@provider.comNOSPAM

-- ================================================Do you like wine? Do you live in South Florida? Visit the MIAMI WINE TASTERS group at

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================================================

Reply to
Leo Bueno

Just changed my address...hopefully this will keep me of the spam lists.

sophisticates"

Reply to
dick

Mark, I changed my email signage so you can email me in future. Just remove the cap items.

thanks.

Reply to
dick

Thanks, Dick. I actually *did* eventually figure it out from back posts, but I suppose you could have changed ISPs. Anyway, thanks for the consideration.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Leo Bueno at snipped-for-privacy@usa.net wrote on 4/9/04 4:23 AM:

Not wine related, but maybe w-h-i-n-e related:

For about a year I have only posted to newsgroups using a separate e-mail account, not the one I use for business or regular e-mail. I still get 50+ spam e-mails a day on my regular account, whereas the newsgroup-only account gets just one or two a day. I do a fair amount of Google-searching and I've had conflicting advice as to whether or not it's possible for sites to pick up my address if I only visit them (not filling out anything). One computer tech told me it can be done and the site will sell the address on lists that people buy to hawk whatever product...... usually viagra, debt management, organ-enhancing products, various other schemes, etc..

Questions:

  1. Anyone know, for sure, if sites can harvest your address that way?
  2. Using Outlook Express, can I add something like "REMOVE" to my regular (business) address and have it apply ONLY to newsgroup postings? Going through the account set-up routine, it looks like there is only a single address configuration possible for each account, so I'd have to use the "REMOVE" even in business. Don't want to do that.
  3. Any other thoughts on what might be generating the spam on the non-newsgroup account? (I am one of the 3% using an Apple computer, so I've found that many filter programs won't work for me.)

Thanks.

Reply to
Midlife

There are lots of ways: Is your address at a "mail to" link on a web page? Do you have friends that constantly email you forwards (jokes, petitions, chain letters, "you must read this", supposed health alerts)? With unblinded addresses, easy toharvest. Is your email address guessable - snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net isn't that hard, computers can generate a million combinations of common first and last names (or initials) and combine with common ISPs. Some websites sell names of those who signed up for their email lists.

It's a battle, but improved web filters have helped a lot lately IMO.

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Reply to
Dale Williams

in article snipped-for-privacy@mb-m14.aol.com, Dale Williams at snipped-for-privacy@aol.comdamnspam wrote on 4/10/04 10:25 AM:

No. Cox.net is part of Cox Cable service. As far as I know it's a direct ISP.

Not really. But how would my address be harvested by simply receiving e-mails? I never forward that stuff without deleting everything but the relevant text. Does the list of addressees get carried along in the header and get harvested somehow?

My regular address is 3 letter + 3 numbers @ cox.net. I've considered the possibility that Cox, having several million subscribers, could be an easy target for some kind of permutation program that would churn out my address pretty easily, since the last part is so widely used. How could I find out if that's happening?

I try not to give my e-mail address to any site that doesn't appear to be reputable. How would all those individual senders (if they really are individuals) pushing drugs, vitamins, etc., etc., get their hands on the lists? You'd think there would be tons of spam selling lists if they were that available.

Very frustrating. I just cringe when someone tells me they get 500 -1,000 a day. Where is there a good source of info to learn how all this works?

Reply to
Midlife

Midlife wrote in news:BC9DE090.38FB% snipped-for-privacy@cox.net:

Most of my spam comes with an attbi.com address. That was my address before Comcast took over and the attbi was supposed to stop working some time ago, guess they didn't tell the spambots that.

Reply to
jcoulter

Unless you "forward all" (or whatever the option is in OE) you shouldn't include other addresses. However, spammers have taken to various "hacking" techniques to harvest addresses: installing backdoors on computers, sniffing Ethernet traffic, Man in the Middle attacks, etc. Also, some spammers obtain ISP databases via inside jobs.

Might I also put in a plug for Mozilla Thunderbird, since I note that you're using a Mac Outhouse Express client? It's more secure, less buggy and has much more advanced anti-spam features. It gets my seal of approval.

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if you're interested.

3 letters + 3 numbers? That's far too simple for such a large customer base, and guarantees simple brute force methods for username generation.

There probably *are* that many spam e-mail lists for sale. If you were to hang out in the right IRC chatrooms, you might get a firsthand glimpse of it.

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HTH Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

Dale

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Dale Williams

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