Where does the term come from?
Why does Vineyard.NET frown on the practice?
Who should one be angry with?
What is Vineyard.NET doing about junkmail?
You can create your own anti-junkmail filter.
Further discussions about mail abuse.
What is meant by spam?
spam is computer slang. It is both a noun and a verb. It refers to the practice of sending identical, unsolicited e-mail messages to multiple recipients. Such bulk mailings are generally (but not exclusively) advertisements of a commercial nature. Often such mailings are simultaneously sent to tens of thousands of addresses.
Where does the term come from?
The use of the term was inspired by a brilliant comedic sketch written and performed by the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus. I won't attempt to explain the reference; suffice to say that if you have ever seen the spam sketch, the use of the term becomes immediately apparent.
Why does Vineyard.NET frown on the practice?
As of the time of this writing, I know of no US Federal or Commonwealth of Massachusetts laws which specifically address the practice of spamming. While efforts are being made to stretch current law to cover the issue, users of the Internet are largely unguided at this time.
Regulation of junkmail is a volatile issue. Junkmail is a very valuable commodity. Substantial amounts of money are paid for lists containing hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses. Service bureaus exist who will (for a fee) transmit your message to all parties named on these lists.
In spite of this, Vineyard.NET (VNI) takes the position that the practice is unethical. We do so largely because we feel that the burden of unwanted e-mail is placed squarely on the recipient at little or no cost to the sender. Since junkmail is unsolicited (by definition), VNI views junkmail as an invasion of privacy. As such, we do what we can to limit junkmail with regards to our service.
Who should one be angry with?
If you find yourself the recipient of an annoying or offensive junkmail, your first reaction is likely to be to make a complaint. It will quickly become apparent that while your anger is justified, it is highly unclear to whom you should complain. An obvious target is the sender of the message. However, the sender listed in the headers of the offending message is likely to be an innocent dupe.
The earliest versions of programs which could send and receive e-mail and the definitions of the protocol (RFC 822, et al.) were largely written in a time when the Net was young and folks were far more concerned with making the Net work at all and had no time to build in security niceties. The standard mail protocol, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (smtp), has no mechanism for authenticating sender or receiver. When you receive e-mail, there is nothing built into smtp which will definitively identify the source of the message. In fact, it is technically trivial to make e-mail appear to have originated just about anywhere.
I have been told of a long standing spoof at MIT (this is hearsay; so take it as a fable intended for edification). Every year on April 1, an e-mail message is sent to various department heads and other individuals of authority From the provost of the Institute. In effect, it reads:
Due to the propensity of MIT students to "hack" the staff and student
body of MIT, please beware of any e-mail dated April 1 as likely to be
of false origin.
The false message rarely fails to fool at least a portion of the recipients into sending a polite reply back to the sender, thanking the provost for his warning on their behalf.
Most spammers will in some way disguise their origin (a significant admission of guilt). This is because most spams solicit a flood of angry response. By falsifying message headers like From:, Sender:, Reply To:, etc., spammers lessen the likelihood that their own machines and services will be the recipient of the response. This has 2 effects: if the address is a legitimate address (or at least a legitimate source) an innocent party is fingered and receives the complaints, or if the address is completely bogus (e.g. nobody@nowhere.com) then the complainant's service is burdened with the complaint because it is undeliverable and eventually returned to the complainant.
If the reply address is bogus, an obvious question is then: How do they make money? Generally, the content of the message will list a phone number or an http URL neither of which is likely to be sought by anyone who wants to vent their annoyance as quickly and easily as the spammer piqued them. After all, a phone call wastes the complainant's time and money, not the offender's.
What is Vineyard.NET doing about junkmail?
Vineyard.NET (VNI) currently has a number of anti-junkmail measures in place. We consider our efforts to be innovative and useful to ourselves and our customers. Sadly, nothing we can currently offer will eliminate all junkmail. We hope that we can reduce the amount of junkmail appreciably.
Vineyard.NET will not tolerate any spamming efforts by any of our customers. Under our Terms of Service Agreement, we consider any such activity to be immediate grounds for the customer's removal from our service.
Currently, our smtp will refuse email which does not contain a resolvable From: address (e.g. unpleasant-person@nowhere.com). If nowhere.com is not resolvable by our name sever, it is deemed to be false and to have no legitimate business with our servers. This eliminates an appreciable number of junkmails. There is an unfortunate side-effect in that it will also block mail from legitimate individuals who have simply misconfigured their e-mail client program. We feel that this is an acceptable error condition because legitimate folk probably want to be aware that their mail program is misconfigured. Once the error is corrected, our smtp will no longer balk.
Our smtp server will only accept messages which either originate from or are ultimately destined for machines within Vineyard.NET. This step is necessary because of the common spammer practice of using someone else's smtp in order to shift the blame onto innocent parties. Messages which use our smtp simply as a reflector (ie., they originate outside VNI and are destined for locations outside VNI) are deemed as having no legitimate reason for using our server and are refused. Again, there does exist a reasonable possibility that the attempt to use our smtp for such a mail transferral is simply a configuration error. We feel that this is also an acceptable error condition because anyone making such an error has a more proximal smtp server available to themselves the use of which help reduce miscellaneous network traffic.
We offer an optional filtering service for our customers. Customers can designate specific domains from whom mail will not be accepted. Mail sent to that customer's account from sources so specified will be refused. For more information on how to set up your own filter please examine the next section.
The term refused in the above discussion has a very specific meaning in the definition of smtp. The effect of a refusal will vary according the abilities and configuration of the program attempting to use our smtp server. Our server always provides error information to the connecting host when it refuses a message. Whether the connecting program manages to do anything useful with the error message is completely out of our control.
We will continue to experiment with techniques to reduce or eliminate unwanted junkmail from Vineyard.NET.
You can create your own anti-junkmail filter.
You can create your own anti-junkmail filter for your Vineyard.NET account.The simplest Vineyard.NET filter that you can turn on automatically blocks any junkmail message that appears to be an advertisement. Currently there are several criteria that are used to determine if a message is an advertisement:
- Any message that has a subject line beginning ADV: (in accordance with some state laws) is considered to be an advertisement.
- Any message with a header that starts X-Advertisement: is considered to be an advertisement.
- Any message originating from a host in the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) is considered to be an advertisement.
Vineyard.NET also allows you to block individual domains. The filter currently cannot block individual addresses (we are considering this option), only entire domains. This suggests that the use of this filter to block an individual spammer who is broadcasting from AOL (for example) is inappropriate, because adding aol.com to your personal filter will cause all messages from aol.com to be refused. Perhaps it is your personal opinion that mail from a domain which tolerates the practice of spamming (even if only because they are so large that they cannot control such activities) should be refused on principal.
Vineyard.NET maintains a system wide filter which is not in use on any account by default. Use of this filter is available as an on/off option via the same interface used to edit a personal list of excluded domains. The VNI master list is subject to change. It's current contents can be viewed here (have your browser refresh this page if you suspect that the contents have changed since your browser last stored the contents in it's cache):
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We are happy to listen to arguments about whether or not a specific
domain should be added to or removed from our master list. We are
prepared to include domains on our list which provide access for
innocent customers as well as spammers. We generally only do so if
the domain maintains an open policy for the practice of spamming in
spite of the presence of innocent parties. We apologize if our master
list causes you conflicts, but we are not prepared to modify our
master list simply on the basis of I have a friend who lives
there. We are happy to converse with individuals who do not
understand the particulars. We are not prepared to
waste time in general discussion with educated individuals who wish to
debate the ethics of junkmail. Such discussions are appropriate for a
much larger theater and well beyond the scope of a small community
ISP.
Further discussions about junkmail.
For further information, I recommend you view the following:
- Fight spam on the Internet!
- Mail Abuse Prevention System Paul Vixie's famous Realtime Blackhole List and other filter lists
Interestingly enough, www.spam.com is a site owned and run by Hormel Foods Corporation. One wonders what effect the transcendence of the term spam has on the company which has been producing the product for the last several decades...