Subject: Tiny Programs - nice hacks (Signature is 10x longer than actual text, so hack me up by sharp axes)

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 20:20:14 +0300 (IDT)

http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/home.html

                                             --- Omer
   "MS-Word keeps thinking it knows what I'm gonna do next and tries to
   help me.  I've lived with my wife for 27 years and SHE can't do that.
   What makes MS-Word think it can?"             Bill Mullins
WARNING:
By sending me unsolicited commercial/political/religious E-mail message/s
(known also as "spam"), you irrevocably agree to pay me US$500.- (plus any
legal expenses incurred by my trying to collect the amount due) per
unsolicited commercial/political/religious E-mail message - for the service
of receiving it.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 20:40:45 +0300

> http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/home.html

A very interesting page :)

> unsolicited commercial/political/religious E-mail message - for the service

You've asked for it - I have to say something about your signature...
Do you really think that that 6-line legal threat is effective? Do you
really believe that address-harvesting robots actually read emails and
don't harvest address from emails with threats? I doubt it. Or do you add
it just as a joke (in that case, it's ok, but a bit too long for my taste)?

If people are interested, I can write to this group an article (actually,
probably a 4-article series because there's a lot to write) on how to write
an effective spam filter (and indeed, what is spam and why to filter it instead
of trying to hide your address or adding legal threats). I can even include
actual useful code with the articles. So tell me if there is any interest.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Saturday, May 20 2000, 16 Iyyar 5760
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |I would give my right arm to be
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |ambidextrous.

---

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 21:29:58 +0300 (IDT)

Hello Nadav,
I have a different philosophy about handling spam.
My policy is to have 100% complain rate i.e. for every spam message I
receive, I send a spam complaint to relevant ISPs (according to the spam
message's headers, E-mail addresses and URLs mentioned in it).  If I get
duplicate messages from the same source, then I send a single complaint
but mention there that I got several copies of the spam.

This policy seems to be effective in that less than 5% of my inbox consist
of spam messages.

I believe that if one just filters away and ignores his spam, the spam
mongers will just develop methods to overcome his filters.  Eventually,
the user will lose useful E-mail messages, which had the misfortune of
looking like spam.

Instead of developing better filters, I'd like to see a hack with the
following properties:
1. Invoked from pine:  each time I see a spam, I set pine to display full
   headers and pipe the message to a certain script for handling spam.
2. The script will process the message and automagically construct a spam
   complaint, with the following:
   Addressees:  all reasonable host names mentioned in the spam, with
                users 'abuse' and 'postmaster' (certain hosts will get
                message only their 'abuse' E-mail address - such as
                hotmail.com, yahoo.com and some other responsible ISPs).
   Standard message with the following customizable clauses:
                - Special statement for Turkish spams.
                - Disclaimer that I am not against cybersex, but only
                  against spam for sex related spams.
                - Authorization to sue the spam sender for $500, if the
                  E-mail address was provably harvested from a Web page
                  with my spam warning.
   Subject line has "SPAM COMPLAINT" (or "TURKISH SPAM COMPLAINT")
   prefixed to it.
   Of course, the original message will be included.
3. The spam complaint shall be displayed in an E-mail client application
   (such as pine or mutt) for manual editing, such as elimination of host
   names, which don't make sense.
4. One or two host names shall be marked for traceroute, and the
   traceroute output will be included in the spam complaint.  This is to
   be optional.
5. After all the above, the spam complaint message will be sent to its
   destinations.  A logfile entry shall be made (to facilitate future
   complaints against ISPs, which let too much spam through).

In short, make it almost as easy to build an effective spam complaint as
to press the 'd' key to delete spam.

                                             --- Omer
WARNING:

---

From: "Ury Segal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 22:14:12 +0200

Look Omer, you are starting to push it. You sent one-line email
with 10 lines of .sig . Have you ANY idea how anoying this is ?

----- Original Message -----
From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
To: Hackers-IL <[email-masked]>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2000 7:20 PM
Subject: [hackers-il] Tiny Programs - nice hacks (Signature is 10x longer
than actual text, so hack me up by sharp axes)

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---

From: "Ury Segal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 22:12:16 +0200

----- Original Message -----

> I have a different philosophy about handling spam.
[...]
> This policy seems to be effective in that less than 5% of my inbox consist

I have no SPAM policy, and yet less than 5% of my inbox is SPAM,
like yours. This is without anoyng every single person who recieve my
emails with sensles, worthless, useless huge signature. Did you ever get a
single $ from it ?

> unsolicited commercial/political/religious E-mail message - for the
service

This piece of legaly-crap parse has no legal binding ability whatsoever. It
was
invented as a joke, BTW.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 00:16:27 +0300

> emails with sensles, worthless, useless huge signature. Did you ever get a

Nicely said, Ury :)
Omer, your complaints to all the ISPs are an excellent way to reduce the
amount of spam in the universe (for a long period I did that too, and I still
collect all the spam I get for "research"), but you have to understand: it
won't lower the amount of spam that YOU, personally, get. It's not like
spammers are going to say "we better not mess with him - he has a lawyer and
knows how to contact the ISPs!". They're not going to say that. They are just
going to ignore all your complaints, warnings, and threats. In fact, some
spammers even collect addresses of people who replied to "remove" and
"complaint" addreses, because these are people who actually read their spam :)

Myself, my email address(es) appear on many websites, mailing lists, I'm
webmaster@ of several sites, so there is no chance I can stop spammers from
harvesting my address(es). Currently, about 30% of the email I get (excluding
mailing-lists I subscribe to) is spam (but I have to admit - most of the
spam I get arrives at the webmaster@.. addresses).
I can't tollerate over 1% of it being spam. I can't tollerate seeing "you have
new mail", and then realising it's only spam. I can't tollerate spam being
sent to my cellphone by my email notification program. This is why I need a
spam filter.

Omer, what do you think about the following home security policy: put up large
signs near your (unlucked) door and (open) windows saying "If you illegaly
enter this house, you'll be looking at 10 years in jail, plus I'll sue your
ass off!"; then, when your house gets burglerized, you call the cops, and the
burgler's parole officer, friends, and mother. Does this make any sense?
Calling the cops (and other relevant complaint addresses) is always good, but
you better couple it with some way of protecting yourself...

BTW, if anybody has any objections to *my* signature (see below an example),
speak now or forever hold your peace!

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Saturday, May 20 2000, 16 Iyyar 5760
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Sign seen in restaurant: We Reserve The
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |Right To Serve Refuse To Anyone!

---

From: "David Tabachnikov (NetHunter)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 23:23:09 +0300

> This policy seems to be effective in that less than 5% of my inbox consist

I do nothing about spam and I still get less then 1% of my inbox with
spam. I wonder why. (And yes - I do post to newsgroups, and I don't use
any filters.)

-- 
Best Regards,
	David Tabachnikov (NetHunter)
Please sign the Linux driver petition at
http://www.libranet.com/petition.html

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 00:31:55 +0300

> but mention there that I got several copies of the spam.

Way to go. Keep doing that, regardless of what other actions you decide
to take against spam.

> the user will lose useful E-mail messages, which had the misfortune of

1. It's a war, between us and them. Whoever is smarter, will develop
   better weapons :)
   Besides, compared to what most other people are doing to get rid of
   spam, my filters are nuclear weapons. I doubt spammers will seriously try
   to handle nuclear weapons when most people are fighting them with stones.

2. I never lose messages - if I have "false positives" the messages just
   end up in the "spam" folder, and I'll see them later. Usually, it's not
   too much of a problem. Besides, I have a "whitelist" - a list of people
   from whom I accept all email, without testing for being spam.

>...

Take a look at www.spamcop.net: I think it is doing roughly what you want to.
It has some heuristics on how to find all the relevant complaint addresses 
for a mail message. It seems that service is not completely free, however.

>    Subject line has "SPAM COMPLAINT" (or "TURKISH SPAM COMPLAINT")

I got spam in English, Spanish, and Dutch. Turkish I never got :)
Anyway, I even have a filter to recognize Dutch and Spanish texts, and
filter them out. If anybody ever sends me a Dutch non-spam text, then
tough luck for them :)

> to press the 'd' key to delete spam.

If you come up with such a script, I'll use it. In addition to my filters.

There is one problem though: are you sure that sending thousands of abuse
emails from thousands of users to an ISP is effective? If I were an ISP, and
I got 1 abuse email a day, I would handle it. If I got 10,000 abuse letters
from 10,000 users, I would go crazy, and just delete all my email...

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Sunday, May 21 2000, 16 Iyyar 5760
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Promises are like babies: fun to make,
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |but hell to deliver.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 00:44:27 +0300

> spam. I wonder why. (And yes - I do post to newsgroups, and I don't use

First, it's obvious that the percentage of spam will be different by the
amount of real email you get. If you get 1 spam message a day, and 4 real
messages, then you got 20% spam. But if you got 99 real messages a day, then
this percentage is down to 1%...
It also depends which messages you count; Do you count mailing-list messages?
I don't. When you don't count mailing list messages, I rarely get more than 5
emails a day - and I always get 2 or more spams a day...

Second, the amount of spam you get depends on how many spammers have your
address, and how many addresses you have. Many spammers don't send each spam
to *all* the addresses they have, but rather to, say, 10% of the addresses,
randomly. So if they have 3 of your addresses in your list, you've almost
tripled your chance to get that spam from them.

Third, some spammers make their own lists (and don't buy other lists) so
unless you post to newsgroups often, subscribe to mailing lists, or put your
email on the web, they won't be able to get your address. If you do all these
things, they will surely get your address.

Fourth, because spammers do sell each other address lists, having an "old"
address can mean most spammers have it. I still get spam, once in a while, to
an address I haven't used for 5 years.

This is why different people get different amounts of spam.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Sunday, May 21 2000, 16 Iyyar 5760
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |I want to be a human being, not a human
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |doing -- Scatman John

---

From: Ira Abramov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 01:07:49 +0300 (IDT)

<mode visibility=delurk>

> 1. It's a war, between us and them. Whoever is smarter, will develop

umm, guys... I have not $0.02, more like $.15 to give about Spam, but
this thread is kinda getting into a silly worthless fight, and
endangering the S/N ratio I hoped to read. I'd preffer discussing the
technicalities of how to write a minimum-false-positives spam filter
rather than personal feelings and policy fights... (I was once a victim
of such a filter, wrote my girlfriend a funny Email about FREE SEX and
she almost missed it. I wonder if THIS post passes into your spam box,
Nadav :-)

I'll add my $0.02 anyway: on iglu.org.il and scso.com I use a tiny
spam-harvest preventer, in 4 lines of perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl
$address=substr($ENV{'PATH_INFO'},1);
$address=~ s/nospam\@dht/\@/g;
print "Location: mailto:$address\n\n";
exit(0);

so instead of: 
    mailto:[email-masked]
I have: 
    http://www.scso.com/cgi-bin/m/[email-masked]

based on the assumption that spammers' harvesters do not follow links to
CGI scripts. (it seems to work fine so far)

Nadav, you mentioned an SMS gateway, I'd love to hear abit more. I'm
getting a phone for suce a gateway at work soon, but for now I hacked a
script to invoke the free CGI on goSMS.com. I canibalized a script in
perl called email2SMS that even uses Lingua::EN::Squeeze to stick more
data on your screen, but it's not entirely my hack then I guess :-)

so back to the JAPHs and fun stuff. Since I have exposed myself without
"permission", I'll now vow to find a lecture subject to entertain you
with. I don't like Blue that much (blocks-by-indentation like Python,
and too many pascal-like leftovers), would you like a short talk about
Brain? It will be an interesting project for me, because I know nothing
of Scheme and Self for background, but I'm willing to try.

</mode>

-- 
Ira Abramov - Linux Enthusiast and Tshirt collector.
-- My employer thinks my opinions are crap.
"Notice: Your mouse has been moved. Windows will 
now restart so this change can take effect."

---

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 01:26:53 +0300 (IDT)

Hello Nadav,

> for a mail message. It seems that service is not completely free, however.

Thanks for the URL.

> filter them out. If anybody ever sends me a Dutch non-spam text, then

:-)
I sometimes get legitimate Spanish or French E-mail (I know neither
Spanish nor French).  I think I got Chinese spam E-mail (of course looks
like Chibberish when I read it) once or twice.

> If you come up with such a script, I'll use it. In addition to my filters.

OK.  I'll wait for someone else to hack such a script.  If none shows up,
maybe I'll handle it.

> from 10,000 users, I would go crazy, and just delete all my email...

I assume that serious ISPs installed filters, which summarize spam
complaints and reduce them to a single report per active spammer.  I do
get automatic responses from some of the ISPs to whom I complain, and
those automatic responses often contain an incident ID number to
facilitate further tracking (I don't keep such responses, usually I don't
need to follow up on my spam complaints). 

                                             --- Omer
WARNING:  By sending me unsolicited commercial/political/religious E-mail
message/s (known also as "spam"), you irrevocably agree to pay me US$500.-
(plus any legal expenses incurred by my trying to collect the amount due)
per unsolicited commercial/political/religious E-mail message - for the
service of receiving it.

---

From: "David Tabachnikov (NetHunter)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 06:33:51 +0300

> It also depends which messages you count; Do you count mailing-list messages?

no.

> address, and how many addresses you have.

I got 2 addresses - and only one in use. (I'm rather sure that if I'll
check the other one it got loads of spam).

> email on the web, they won't be able to get your address. 
Post to newsgroups at least once a week, I'm subscribed to 7 mailing
lists, 3 of which are rather medium traffic (ie not Linux-devel, but
still higher then 6 messages a day)

> an address I haven't used for 5 years.

Nope, no old address.

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 09:22:38 +0300

> endangering the S/N ratio I hoped to read. I'd preffer discussing the

Ok, ok... I understand that you guys don't want to hear about spam filters
any more... Got the message - you won't hear a word out of me about them
any more.

Please feel free to resume your dynamic typing vs. strong typing fight!

> rather than personal feelings and policy fights... (I was once a victim

Ok. When I find a little time, I'll write something about these technicalities.
With example code. But it seems that nobody is interested in this subject
anyway...

> she almost missed it. I wonder if THIS post passes into your spam box,

Sure it did. Until I see spam coming from mailing lists, I don't filter
mail from them. I also have a whitelist of people I'll accept any mail
from - including email about FREE SEX, and email in dutch :)

> data on your screen, but it's not entirely my hack then I guess :-)

I have written a perl script that can send SMS to orange or cellcom (using
their official sites. I'd used goSMS.com, but I stopped liking them and
switched to orange's official site). As I said, I already sent this script
to linux-il, but I can send it here again. It's not a "gateway" per se, just
a script, but I can easily make it into an email gateway (I just didn't want
to).

It doesn't use that Squeeze hack, but I'm aware of it :) I just decided it
was too weird :)

Anyway, the same server that filters my mail also decides which of my mail
is "important" (i.e., not a spam, not a mailing list, and not addressed to
one of my webmaster@... aliases), and when it finds such an "important" mail
it sends me an SMS announcement, with the sender's name, and the subject
line. I usually get around 5 such email announcements per day.

I also use the SMS sending script for other things. For example, I wrote
a script which contact's Globes' site every evening and sends me updates
on stuff that I'm interested in.

> of Scheme and Self for background, but I'm willing to try.

Where do you people come up with all these languages? :)
Blue? Brain? :)

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Sunday, May 21 2000, 16 Iyyar 5760
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |All those who believe in psychokinesis,
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |raise my hand.

---

From: Omer Mussaev <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 09:39:06 +0300

Wow, now I have yet anoother story for you!!

One day someone put a small joke regarding size of his sig block.
Someone else just did not get the picture:

We are not linux-il. we are hackers-il. No spam is allowed.
The interesting thing is that garbage in sig blocks is not a spam,
but garbage in your mailbox _is_.

Therefore, following people get a red card for stupidity:

Nadav Har-el
Omer Zak

Regarding David Tabachnikov: Do you really think that you had read
our guidelines draft? Time to RTFM. Two red cards.

Ira: sane voice in desert. However, too obvious a voice IMHO to be posted during stupid bashing. Those ones who can not make their own filtering
system, use already made of them system, put a sed into .forward, or
use procmail, or whatever, are not desired guests there. A red card.

Hackers-il: Spam filtering? How about idea of calculating s-value of
sentences in mail, cacheing s-values and making a distributed dictionary
of spam blocks, so that filters will get an update of "brand new spam"?
There should be an issue of pruning the s-vs, since there is too much
spam out there.

have a really nice day.

P.S. So where do I get one?

--
Omer Mussaev    051-308-214   mailto:[email-masked]
systems programmer, Mercury Interactive/RND/Conduct/core

---

From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 17:00:34 +0300

> Therefore, following people get a red card for stupidity:

I'm sorry to offend you, your holy schemeness!

This group is starting to go down the drain... I'm sorry to say, but if this
continues, I'll unsubscribe and find other things to do (that's not hard...).
I'm sure you won't miss me :)
You know the Hebrew saying, "Haposel bemumo posel". Are you really in a position
to judge our stupidity? You, who just started a am-I-a-Newjersian-or-MITian
thread?

> our guidelines draft? Time to RTFM. Two red cards.

Easy there! Why are you attacking everybody? If his messages annoy you, why
don't you filter them out (oops, I'm entering this thread again... ;)

> There should be an issue of pruning the s-vs, since there is too much

Hey, Omer! If you hate this thread so much, why are you continuing it?
I asked if anybody wanted to hear technicl details about my filters, and only
one did. So don't give me a hard time just because my postings didn't have
code, and yours had pseudo-CS mumbo-jumbo.

Sorry for this angry posting, but you've asked for it, calling 4 people
"stupid" in one posting!

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Sunday, May 21 2000, 16 Iyyar 5760
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |If you're looking for a helping hand,
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |look first at the end of your arm.

---

From: Moshe Zadka <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 17:23:58 +0300 (IDT)

> I'm sorry to offend you, your holy schemeness!

Try to tone down the language, please. 
Since this group *is* about self-moderation, you should assume people
will judge your posts. As they judge mine, and Omer's.

> I'm sure you won't miss me :)

Oh, you've contributed a lot of coolness. I'd sure miss you.

> don't you filter them out (oops, I'm entering this thread again... ;)

We have very strict guidelines about who can post. David hasn't read them,
or ignored them. A mailing-list is somewhere to post according to specific
rules: it is disrespect for all people on the list to violate them.

> So don't give me a hard time just because my postings didn't have

No one is dissing anybody because of no-code-in-letter. I've sent no code to 
the list, and no one criticised me about it. Try to see why you were
criticised, and decide whether you agree or not.
--
Moshe Zadka <[email-masked]>
http://www.oreilly.com/news/prescod_0300.html
http://www.linux.org.il -- we put the penguin in .com