Re: Cypherpunks afraid of spam?

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On Sun, 16 Feb 1997, camcc@abraxis.com (Alec) wrote:

> :> I put a spam-busted address in my .sig and give root@127.0.0.1 as my email
> :> in the from: header. Sure, somebody out there is going to be unhappy with
> :> me, but if they have a clue they'll figure it out. Meantime, the SpamBots
> :> are bouncing mail to the admin of the site instead of to me.
> :
> For the less computer articulate (me), please rephrase what you just
> said more in the form of basic instructions.

For starters, root is the all-powerful system administrator account on
UNIX machines, and 127.0.0.1 is the "loopback" or "localhost" IP address,
generally used for testing.  A connection to loopback amounts to a
software connection back to the originating host, and e-mail sent to
loopback won't even go out the Ethernet card / modem / whatever.

So, if I put root@127.0.0.1 in the "From:" field of my news reader's
configuration, all of my posts will give this as my e-mail address. 
Depending on the news reader, I may have to set options like "override
default domain name", which would override my service provider's name.

Since many commercial mailer programs ("SpamBots") scan Usenet news posts
for potential target e-mail addresses, these programs will pick up my
phony e-mail address and send their junk to their own system administrator
instead of me :-)

The smarter programs will also scan the bottom of posts for e-mail
addresses in people's signatures (or .sig files).  The "spam-busted"
address described above could be anything that is not a verbatim copy of
my e-mail address, for example:

c.y.n.t.h.b@i.o.s.p.h.e.r.e.dot.n.e.t
cynthb[at]iosphere.net
cynthb@[NOSPAM].iosphere.net

Any reasonably computer-literate human will be able to figure out what my
real address is, but a cut-and-paste by a software robot won't work.

Hope this helps,

Cynthia

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===============================================================
                   Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng.
E-mail: cynthb@iosphere.net  | PGP Key:  See Home Page
Home Page:  http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/
Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received.

        Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.

From: "Cynthia H. Brown" <cynthb@sonetis.com>
   Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 23:02:02 -0500

   So, if I put root@127.0.0.1 in the "From:" field of my news reader's
   configuration, all of my posts will give this as my e-mail address. 

More likely to be delivered is root@[127.0.0.1] or
root@localhost.nceye.net or similar.  The thing to the right has to be
a name or a numeric address *in brackets*.  Yes, this doesn't seem to
make terribly much sense.  Another approach if you can do it is to get
an alias that looks like a message-ID.  All my outgoing usenet posts
lately have said
From: Bryan Reece <23je8s$ksd@taz.nceye.net> 
at the top, and no spam has come to that address.

On 17 Feb 1997, Bryan Reece wrote:

>    So, if I put root@127.0.0.1 in the "From:" field of my news reader's
>    configuration, all of my posts will give this as my e-mail address. 
> 
> More likely to be delivered is root@[127.0.0.1] or

Oops, finger trouble... Must've been something in that pizza for supper 
<sheepish grin>

Cynthia
===============================================================
		   Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng.
E-mail:     cynthb@iosphere.net  | PGP Key:  See Home Page
Home Page:  http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/
Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received.

        Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.