General info about 'spam' on SCN

[Nancyk]

The following is some general information about 'spam', and a specific 
problem affecting SCN recently.

Anyone that has had an e-mail account for more than six-months has
feelings about unwanted junk e-mail--loosely called 'spam'.  Mostly those
feelings are:  stop it!  (Why they should think that annoying potential
customers is a good way to sell things makes one wonder if most spammers
have had e-mail for less than six-months!) 

It used to be standard practice to return "unwanted bulk e-mail"--or
"UBE"--to the sender.  Several times!  Such multiplicative feedback tended
to keep them in check.  However, the spammers have learned to hide their
tracks.  Specifically, they can forge return addresses.  That piece of
junk mail you get probably has bogus "From" and "Reply-to" address.  Or it
might be a real address--of a completely innocent person.  (So please:  DO
*NOT* FLAME THE STATED SENDER!  That person is probably innocent.) 

The spammers do this by subvertng a site's mail server in such a way that
they can fib about who the mail is from.  This was recently done to SCN,
and thousands, probably tens of thousands, of Internet users were sent
junk mail originating from SCN.  We received complaints from the system
administrators at several other sites, and admonishments to plug this
hole.  Failure to do so would have gotten SCN branded as spam site--and
many sites would then reject all mail from us--so fixing this problem has
become the Hardware/Software committee's highest priority. 

We have installed protections which we believe are catching most of this
fraudulent mail.  And we will soon have our mail server upgraded to better
prevent this kind of abuse.  Other measures are being investigated. 

However, technical measures alone are not sufficient to end spam, as long
as the spammers can remain anonymous.  Additional measures, including
political and legal action, may be required.  For more information about
spam check the /spam.abuse.net/ Web site.


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