Reducing Spam Associated with Posting to Newsgroups
 

Due to a recent increase in spam sent to posters in newsgroups, Microsoft advises that newsgroup participants should consider avoiding posting to newsgroups using their real email address. Microsoft is also committed to continuing to address the issue of spam from a technological perspective.

To help avoid receiving unwanted messages (spam) in your regular e-mail account, you may not want to include your regular e-mail address when you post a question or reply to a post in a discussion group. Instead you may want to do one of the following:

* Use a modified e-mail address: Use a different version of your e-mail address that others will understand, but that spam tools can't automatically pick up. For example, if your actual e-mail address is ", consider using a modified e-mail address such as: "emailnameaccount.com.invalid", lid, or _SPAM. In this case, the spam tools will send mail to an invalid e-mail address, and others will know to exclude the "(removethis)" when they send you e-mail. When you post a question or reply to a discussion group, just enter your modified e-mail address in the appropriate box.

* Use a secondary e-mail account: Set up or use an e-mail account, such as a Hotmail account, that is separate from your primary account for posting to discussion groups. When you post a question or reply to a discussion group, use your Hotmail account as your e-mail address.

If you have feedback or questions about this, please post a reply in the newsgroup, or contact us at http://register.microsoft.com/contac...in=communities

Thanks!
Microsoft Communities Team

Reducing Spam Associated with Posting to Newsgroups
 

Good example!

now look at your own email address

<smile! you're on candid camera!


keepITcool


"Microsoft Communities Team [MSFT]" wrote:


To help avoid receiving unwanted messages (spam) in your regular
e-mail account, you may not want to include your regular e-mail
address when you post a question or reply to a post in a discussion
group. Instead you may want to do one of the following:

* Use a modified e-mail address: Use a different version of your
e-mail address that others will understand, but that spam tools can't
automatically pick up. For example, if your actual e-mail address is
", consider using a modified e-mail address such
as: "emailnameaccount.com.invalid",

Thanks!
Microsoft Communities Team

Reducing Spam Associated with Posting to Newsgroups
 

In article ,
keepitcool wrote:

now look at your own email address

<smile! you're on candid camera!

did you try it? It's not a valid address.

--
Email address ROT-13'd for spam reduction
see www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/groupspam.html to decode

Reducing Spam Associated with Posting to Newsgroups
 

Nope.. didnt check.
Why should I send an email to reply to a newsgroup post?

I see you only use encoding since yesterday. I've been using it since
july2002 and so far so good! ..

I can('t) appreciate your enthousiasm though :)

As it's a mechanical decode, it's too easy for spammers to include in
their parsing engines...once they wake up. So please dont flaunt it?


keepITcool

< email : keepitcool chello nl (with @ and .)
< homepage: http://members.chello.nl/keepitcool


"J.E. McGimpsey" wrote:

In article ,
keepitcool wrote:

now look at your own email address

<smile! you're on candid camera!

did you try it? It's not a valid address.

Reducing Spam Associated with Posting to Newsgroups
 

Thanks for pointing that out - I'd used the ROT-13 as an example in
another post and forgot to change it back.

I used ROT-13 from about 1987-2001. I stopped when I got my mvps.org
address - the domain owner is death on spam, and while in the first
few days of swen I received over 10,000 messages to that account,
I'm down to just a few per day now. On my other email accounts, I
have spam filters that work very well, too, though since the domain
was spoofed I filter out quite a few more...

Frankly, both spam traps and ROT-13 are extremely vulnerable to spam
bots, with spam traps having the edge because they can be more
unpredictable. It doesn't take a lot of processing power to figure
out that a string with an "@" in the middle and ending in .ay has a
99.9% probability of being a ROT-13 address from the Netherlands,
especially since .ay isn't a valid TLD.

Thankfully, spammers don't seem to want to spend even that small
amount of horsepower.


In article ,
keepitcool wrote:

Nope.. didnt check.
Why should I send an email to reply to a newsgroup post?

I see you only use encoding since yesterday. I've been using it since
july2002 and so far so good! ..

I can('t) appreciate your enthousiasm though :)

As it's a mechanical decode, it's too easy for spammers to include in
their parsing engines...once they wake up. So please dont flaunt it?

--
Email address ROT-13'd for spam reduction
see www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/groupspam.html to decode

Reducing Spam Associated with Posting to Newsgroups
 

-----Original Message-----
I used ROT-13 from about 1987-2001.
I stopped when I got my mvps.org
address - the domain owner is death on spam,

What I don't understand is why ISPs allow spam to enter
the network at all. It cannot be in their interests to
propagate SPAM that clogs everything up ???

Surely it would be simple enough to restrict all "normal"
postings to no more than say ten addresses ?

Providers of Mailing Lists would need to have special
authorisation (pre-registration) and use a special number -
surely no big deal ?

Shows how much (little) I know....

RClay AT haswell DOT com