Amiga.org
Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga.org site announcements => Topic started by: System on April 03, 2003, 04:05:43 PM
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Due to recent problems with spam mailers infesting or harvesting our site, I have to announce the incredibly difficult decision to temporarily suspend the @amiga.org e-mail forwarding service beginning next Friday, April 11th.
It would seem that some Amiga.org members have started receiving dozens (and in some cases literally hundreds) of SPAM messages due to some scum sucking parasite running a spam spider against our server or site.
We'll be looking into alternatives including running RBL software and rewriting the user's preferences to make it all optional to begin with. Unfortunately this will take time.
I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this will cause each of you and I want you to understand that if I felt I had ANY choice whatsoever, I would most certainly not take this action.
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That's really a shame :-/. How about making the forwarding bit optional? I haven't received any junk/spam to speak of *yet*.
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Spammers suck!
If they are using this site to harvest addresses, couldn't we use it against them somehow ? :-P Really #### 'em up? Maybe by creating a whole bunch of fake addresses to screw up their system like this thing:
http://www.hostedscripts.com/scripts/antispam.html (http://www.hostedscripts.com/scripts/antispam.html)
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@odin,
Closer inspection of my post reveals;
We'll be looking into alternatives including running RBL software and rewriting the user's preferences to make it all optional to begin with. Unfortunately this will take time.
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That's really a shame :-/. How about making the forwarding bit optional? I haven't received any junk/spam to speak of *yet*.
Likewise. Somehow, this mail has remained pretty clean, unlike my old 'Vizzavi' (Vodafone) mail address, which was mail-botted everyday.
The standard rule of thumb these days is if you get spammed by the Nigerian money scammers, it's time to change the address.
-john
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@Wayne:
It would seem that some Amiga.org members have started receiving dozens (and in some cases literally hundreds) of SPAM messages due to some scum sucking parasite running a spam spider against our server or site.
I've certainly been receiving a lot of spam recently. I wondered what was going on, as the address had always been free from spam until only a few months ago.
I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this will cause each of you and I want you to understand that if I felt I had ANY choice whatsoever, I would most certainly not take this action.
No worries Wayne. You've gotta do what you've gotta do.
Robert
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Actually spam was the reason I found out that I had an forwading adress at amiga.org...
However I have only recieved a some spams through
my amiga.org adress.
But I would at most want to be able to disable the email forwarding service. I've got more that enough with email aliases.
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Now as you say, I indeed received some spam mails, and it was to my surprise, as these are very rare with me. Yet I think the org email address may be vital for some. I can live without this function, and I presume many others, yet, for those who relied on this some solution would be nice.
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@wayne:
D'Oh, as usual I read only half a sentence and hit the reply button :oops: .
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You gotta do what you gotta do, Wayne. As far as I'm concerned, you can turn it off even earlier than April 11. Today or tomorrow for that matter! But I figured you wanted to give people a little notice, eh?
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Hi Wayne
I it will get fixed ASAP ... I use it, and like it ... have not had any problems with SPAM yet.
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Yup, I have my own domain and use a different address for everything, so I know my recent influx of Spam was due to my Amiga Org address :-(
Lets hope a nice lawful method will arrive soon so we can unblock our mailboxes from these rodents.
I had the sooo old 'South African' unnamed Government official spam the other day, the one where they want to put $20,000,000 into your bank account ;-) Yeah right............. :pint:
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ALL my email goes thru this @amiga.org address so life is going to halt whilst the redirect is suspended. I look forward to its return!
@amiga.org - the final destination...
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:-(
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OK, thx for the info Wayne.
STOP SPAM :-(
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Spammers do nasty tricks like taking over other peoples mail servers to send out their spam.
Or, sending out spams with the wrong return address - today this is one of mine - so people get spam sent from what appears to be one of my addresses so I'm getting all the bounces sent to me.
I can think of a few words to describe spammers none of which are appropiate in a public forum...
:madashell:
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My hotmail account is practically useless
lately because of the spam (although I
don't think amiga.org has anything to do with
it).
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I have not had any spam messages,i like this feature hope you can sort some way of bringing it back. :-)
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It would seem that some Amiga.org members have started receiving dozens (and in some cases literally hundreds) of SPAM messages due to some scum sucking parasite running a spam spider against our server or site.
...And there's me thinking I had just become very popular. :-o
Do what you need to do Wayne.
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If i got paid for every bit of Spam i got, i would be pre-ordering some expensive hardware about now :-)
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taking over other peoples mail servers to send out their spam.
They do?
Last time I checked they just use the misconfigured email servers that *allow* relaying. This is not "taking over" in a sense I understand it.
These misconfigured email servers are called "open relays" (http://ordb.org/faq/#what_is).
Anyhow, I agree that spam is a problem, and spammers should be shot at sight.
Anyone having a spam problem should look into spamassassin (http://www.spamassassin.org/).
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I've tested Amiga.org's servers in several ways and don't find them to be an open relay.
Wayne
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Wayne, that's good. I wasn't expecting it to be anything like that.
Open relays are just part of the spam problem.
Basically what the spammers are after are email addresses, once they get them, they're gone. They will remain in the spammer databases forever.
So, basically, trying to "hide" your email addresses from spammers will not work in the long run.
The real solution is to install some good spam filter program (either locally, or to receiving email server). In this case amiga.org could run spamassassin, I think. This way 95-99% of spam would stop at amiga.org and would not be relayed to final recipients.
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I hope it's back soon.... I use the Amiga.org email address on my business cards....
:-(
PS. I've never had any Spam from Amiga.org... I guess the spammers don't love me...
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Everyone, please understand that we are desperately searching for alternatives at the moment which will allow us to keep the forwarding going. The problem is, they already apparently have the addresses, so....
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Wayne,
Are you sure that the mail forwarding was removed on the 11th April? I have just checked my inbox and found spam (just 2 today!) dated 14th April, which have been sent to amgia.org and forwarded to me!
Is this possable? :-?