From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk  Mon Mar 30 13:20:16 1998
Received: (from daemon@localhost)
	by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.8.7/8.8.8) id NAA29363
	for britdisc-outgoing; Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:03:34 +0100 (BST)
Received: from polaris.kbw.co.uk (kbw.ltd.uk [193.132.201.37])
	by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.8.7/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA29351
	for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:03:29 +0100 (BST)
Received: by dns1.kbw.co.uk with Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49)
	id <H9HHL5C5>; Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:08:40 +0100
Message-ID: <DE5F813EE256D1118E8400A024889FA611237B@dns1.kbw.co.uk>
From: Roger Thomson <Roger@kbw.co.uk>
To: "'britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk'" <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: Mail Bomb
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:08:36 +0100
X-Priority: 3
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.0.1458.49)
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Sender: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk
Precedence: bulk

Chris and Ben,

I already suggested this to Ralf (see below), but using an
industrial-strength mail bomb package. He says don't bother and i'm
inclined to agree. Let's wait a few days and see if Ralf's approach to
AOL works. If we bomb him, he may well bomb us all back and I'm not
convinced Britdisc users on dial-up access could hack the repercussions
if we up the ante. Sensible Ralf.

BTW: Well played UTI. Looks like we're all going to have a competitive
and fun season...at last. Those Catch boys don't look too bad either.

Surely we're not going to have to wait long for a report on this
weekend! 

Regards
R

> What about a particularly strong mail-bombing campaign to keep him
> quiet?

No, I think not. In all likelihood, one of these will be true:

1. the spammer will only use the account for outgoing mail, and never
   actually waste their money trying to read mail from that account.

2. the address will be forged.

3. they'll use the fact that you've replied as confirmation that your
   address works, and you'll probably end up with even more spam. The
   same goes for web pages you are invited to use to unsubscribe with.
   (I've heard reports of people creating false mail addresses on these
   pages, and then watching all the attempts to send spam to these false
   addresses)

4. AOL will complain at your postmaster, which could cause trouble for
   you.

In general, the best policy with junk mail is to ignore it or complain
to your postmaster. (Whilst I'm not the postmaster in our department, I
am in the fortunate position of beoing able to edit the automatic junk
kill-file used by sendmail :-)

Ralf.


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	HUGHES, Chris [SMTP:CHughes@chelt.ac.uk]
> Sent:	30 March 1998 12:35
> To:	'Ralf'; 'br5@leicester.ac.uk'
> Cc:	'britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk'
> Subject:	Mail Bomb
> 
> I agree, Wayne Retter had an interesting suggestion; if he is using 
> AOL, then he probably has to down load all his mail via BT. If 
> everyone who received his mail returned it to he five or six times 
> with unwanted message, or similar in the title, his system is going to
> 
> get a bit hung up.
> 
> Don't go off and do this yet, lets get a response from britdisc and 
> see if we're all prepared for to do this rather than an ineffectual 
> few.
> 
> Chris
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Ralf [SMTP:ralf@dcs.warwick.ac.uk]
> Sent:	30 March 1998 10:42
> To:	br5@leicester.ac.uk
> Cc:	britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk
> Subject:	Re: BFDF Events Reminder
> 
> Hi Ben, (cc'ed to BD)
> 
> To be honest, I'm a little ****ed off about all this kind of e-mail 
> (I
> thought the last one was pretty sick, but this one is just out of
> order).
> 
> It appears that whoever is responsible for this has found out that we 
> run
> a list-server at Warwick, and managed to get the subscribers to
> practically every majordomo mailing list run at Warwick, and has been
> sending this junk to everyone from those lists. I've mailed our
> postmaster to complain; apparently he already knew about this, as 
> it's
> affected an awful lot of people within the Uni (for instance, I 
> received
> this 3 times as I'm subscribed to quite a few lists here), and he 
> told
> me he'd already complained at AOL.
> 
> However, as this doesn't appear to have stopped, I'm going to 
> complain
> again myself. (I suggest if you to complain, you mail abuse@aol.com 
> as
> well as postmaster@aol.com). From the mail from our postmaster:
> 
> | A complaint has already been sent to America On-line's postmaster,
> | asking for appropriate steps to be taken against the user (since 
> this
> | kind of mailing is a breach of the "Terms of Service" agreement 
> which
> | they operate, this will normally result in the account being 
> closed).
> | In addition to this, none of the Computing Services mail relays 
> will
> | now accept mail which is sent from this specific address.
> 
> Unfortunately, due to the way they've get hold of the addresses, they
> have everybody's real addresses rather than just the britdisc 
> address,
> so there's not an easy solution to stopping the mail from getting
> through, as it goes straight to the recipient, and not through 
> britdisc.
> 
> I suggest you ask the postmaster at your site to block all mails
> originating from Spice16402@aol.com. Most unix-based sites run 
> sendmail
> which can be configured fairly easily to refuse mail from certain
> addresses.
> 
> Sorry about all this,
> 	Ralf.
>   ____     ____     _        _ ____ 
> .----------------------------------------.
>  _\__ \   _\__ \   / \      / \\__/ |             Ranulf Doswell 
>             |
> / \_/ /_ / \_/  \ /  /     /  /___  |     Department of Computer 
> Science     |
> \   __  \\   __  \\  \    _\  \\_/  |University of Warwick, COVENTRY, 
> CV4 7AL|
>  \  \ \  \\  \ \  \\  \__/ \\  \    | Phone: 01203 523296  Fax: 01203 
> 525714 |
>   \_/  \_/ \_/  \_/ \______/ \_/ 
>    `----------------------------------------'