[ On Saturday, January 3, 2004 at 21:58:07 (-0600), MLH wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: SPAM Alert: Email Address Harvesting
>
> Greg A. Woods wrote:
> 
> > Nothing but directly attacking the problem of spam itself will help in
> > the long run.
> 
> According to my logs, it isn't actual spam that is the problem,
> but Windows-based viruses that harvest email addresses from places
> such as this and just email (often unreadable) garbage.

While I do usually get a few copies of the M$ virus de jour to the
addresses I use for the NetBSD lists, the vast majority of what is
directed at those addresses from sources other than the NetBSD mail
server or from other subscribers is in fact true spam/UCE junk mail.

Of course there's an increasing number of viruses and worms that are
being used by spammers to gain distributed control over other people's
machines, but that's just another artifact of the overall spam problem.

Remember also that (non-spammer-originated) viruses often use the
address book databases they find on, or can access from, the client
they've just infected.  This means that any methods of obfuscating
addresses in the mailing list traffic will ultimately be futile, at
least so long as any subscribers continue to use vulnerable machines.

> So even attacking the 'problem of spam' will likely not address
> this issue.

I believe it would, it it could be done successfully.

I think what you're talking about is a separate, but also very serious,
problem.

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098                  VE3TCP            RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>          Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>