Digital BW, The Print

Martin and Antonis,

What a nice group of people we have assembled here in this 
group, sharing valuable information that we all seem to be 
learning from. Also, what a shame it's going to be to see 
valuable people depart the group due to noticeably increased 
amount of SPAM appearing in mailboxes, and increasingly 
annoying Yahoo ad practices.

I have tried to do my part by searching through the mysterious, 
hard to find Yahoo sections related to Spam deterrence. Yahoo 
is a master at being hard to contact. I did find one section about 
"harvesting of email addresses" and they clearly warn that they 
cannot prevent people/companies from harvesting addresses. 
This is probably where the Spam increase is coming from.

I know Tom McConnell (sp?) has researched this too. I guess no 
suitable alternative has been found.

I am just raising this question again because I want to continue 
to be a part of this group, yet at some point, I'm going to abandon 
Yahoo as my home page portal, and all of their groups, just out 
of principle alone. I know advertising must support these 
vehicles, but the way they do it is, to me, increasingly 
unacceptable and sleazy.

I will continue to search for alternatives. 

Mark Tucker
http://marktucker.com

Mark,

Martin pretty much covered it, but I want to add that, like his,  my yahoo email 
has gotten next to no spam in a year or so of use on lists , while my pacbell 
email is just full of it, though kept away from Yahoo.  
At this point I am far more frustrated with the sleaze that runs pacbell than 
Yahoo, believe it or not.  I pay pacbell for the service and they do nothing to 
stop big-time spam. Of all providers, they are easily the ones to avoid. 

All this is to say, perhaps you can find relief by setting up an email with yahoo 
that you use exclusively on these lists and see what happens. And never sign 
in with your main address. I think spam depends mainly on trading on line and 
on your particular ISP.

This still doesn't solve the ad situation with Yahoo, nor their creepy policy of 
hiding from any attempt to contact them about it. I can only conclude that this 
is a whole new "world order" in which a new web-based culture and logic has 
sprung and caught us off guard. We could have never had the community we 
established here if Yahoo wasn't easily available and free. Now we find out 
the real costs.

As a long time Compuserve member I have watched their ranks diminish 
because there you have to pay to play. People may not have appreciated the 
absence of ads or the nice threading software. When all this list-mania 
errupted, nobody thought what an invasive, ugly thing advertising would 
become in the hands of invisible sleazoids  that would come to make a buck 
out of our need to communicate on line. Live and learn. 

For the moment, I am afraid we would disrupt what we have going too much if 
we made a move. But I will definitely keep my eyes open for ways out. And 
thanks to Tom and others who researched this so diligently. 

Antonis





--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "marktuckerdotcom" <mark@m...> 
wrote:

> Martin and Antonis,
> 
> What a nice group of people we have assembled here in this 
> group, sharing valuable information that we all seem to be 
> learning from. Also, what a shame it's going to be to see 
> valuable people depart the group due to noticeably increased 
> amount of SPAM appearing in mailboxes, and increasingly 
> annoying Yahoo ad practices.

It's possible that the most workable solution is on the individual users
end. I subscribe to more lists than I can bother to follow and get hardly
any spam.

From yahoogroups I take individual emails, which get routed into individual
folders inside my email program - that handles the ads. As for spam, I have
two filters in place, one called Spaminator, which my ISP provides, plus a
junk mail filter inside of Outlook express. Consequently, if I get one piece
of spam in my inbox per day I'd be surprised.

Solutions are out there.

Todd

> Martin and Antonis,
> 
> What a nice group of people we have assembled here in this
> group, sharing valuable information that we all seem to be
> learning from. Also, what a shame it's going to be to see
> valuable people depart the group due to noticeably increased
> amount of SPAM appearing in mailboxes, and increasingly
> annoying Yahoo ad practices.
> 
> I have tried to do my part by searching through the mysterious,
> hard to find Yahoo sections related to Spam deterrence. Yahoo
> is a master at being hard to contact. I did find one section about
> "harvesting of email addresses" and they clearly warn that they
> cannot prevent people/companies from harvesting addresses.
> This is probably where the Spam increase is coming from.
> 
> I know Tom McConnell (sp?) has researched this too. I guess no
> suitable alternative has been found.
> 
> I am just raising this question again because I want to continue
> to be a part of this group, yet at some point, I'm going to abandon
> Yahoo as my home page portal, and all of their groups, just out
> of principle alone. I know advertising must support these
> vehicles, but the way they do it is, to me, increasingly
> unacceptable and sleazy.
> 
> I will continue to search for alternatives.
> 
> Mark Tucker
> http://marktucker.com

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "antonisphoto" 
<antonisphoto@y...> wrote:
> All this is to say, perhaps you can find relief by setting up an 
email with yahoo 
> that you use exclusively on these lists and see what happens.


I agree and understand what you and Martin are saying. It would 
certainly be a drag to lose the archives, if we moved somewhere 
else.

I have already set up a Yahoo account. I should change it back to 
that; maybe that would help the spam. But that Yahoo mailbox is 
already full with so much spam that I don't even bother checking 
it any more; I just get  GREAT JOY knowing that I'm filling up 
Yahoo's server space with spam derived from them! I wish it 
didn't empty itself automatically; that's the only joy-killer.

Maybe I should also avoid those barnyard animal adult sites as 
well. That would probably help keep down the spam too. But ever 
since I got this one email from a concerned woman who knew 
exactly how to enlarge my tee-tee, they've had my unwavering 
attention ever since...

Mark

On 2/23/02 2:09 PM, "marktuckerdotcom" <mark@...> wrote:

> It would 
> certainly be a drag to lose the archives, if we moved somewhere
> else.

I don't think it's a given that we'd "lose" the archives.  I believe Martin
Wesley said he has the full archives in another email format.

I've also been looking at writing some scripts that could extract all the
current messages from the Yahoo group; at some later point, those messages
could be made public again somewhere else.

I'm not sure whether this is necessary yet (Martin, do you definitely have
the elm archives of the list?).  But I'm happy to help with any conversion
should that be necessary.

john

John and Mark-

The real problem is not transferring the archive (though it would 
probably take some work on our part to convert them to the format of 
whatever system we moved to). 

The problem is that half our members access the list via email and 
half via the web. There really isn't a good alternative that does 
both. There are some excellent web based solutions we could join, but 
we would lose a large number of our best contributors. The closest 
thing to the Yahoo type setup would be the USENET setup on 
Google...it's functional but lacks a lot of features we all use.

The other alternative would be to invest in a server and software to 
run it ourselves...much more of a commmittment than any of us are 
prepared to undertake at this time. 

If anyone sees a list/forum platform that handles both email and web 
access, be sure to speak up, but I couldn't find one.

Tom O'Connell


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., John Labovitz <johnl@m...> 
wrote:
> On 2/23/02 2:09 PM, "marktuckerdotcom" <mark@m...> wrote:
> 
> > It would 
> > certainly be a drag to lose the archives, if we moved somewhere
> > else.
> 
> I don't think it's a given that we'd "lose" the archives.  I 
believe Martin
> Wesley said he has the full archives in another email format.
> 
> I've also been looking at writing some scripts that could extract 
all the
> current messages from the Yahoo group; at some later point, those 
messages
> could be made public again somewhere else.
> 
> I'm not sure whether this is necessary yet (Martin, do you 
definitely have
> the elm archives of the list?).  But I'm happy to help with any 
conversion

> should that be necessary.
> 
> john

People should learn about spam before complaining. Learn 
ways to reduce or eliminate it.

First, do you have an email address listed with your browser?
Check preferences, email. Put in a hotmail or fake or NO 
address. When you visit sites, they pick off your email from your 
browser.

Next, get a filter system. I use Amerion.net, which has cut my 
spam from 50 pieces a day to about 15 now. You can check and 
delete span at their site very fast. More info: 1-877-518-1005, 
filtering@....

As some suggested, use a different email address for joining 
groups over your business or personal email address. Don't 
allow your prime email address to be listed on a page any where 
on the net, such as a post at yahoo. Spiders find it all for search 
engines, as do spiders for spammers seeking new email 
addresses.

This is all off topic, but is important if you are in a large group, 
with many posts, such as this group.

Al

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "bop999" <acamp@t...> 
wrote:
> People should learn about spam before complaining. Learn 
> ways to reduce or eliminate it.
...

> Next, get a filter system. I use Amerion.net, which has cut my 
> spam from 50 pieces a day to about 15 now. You can check 
and 
> delete span at their site very fast. More info: 1-877-518-1005, 


Al, 

A little harsh maybe to phrase it that way? One of the ways 
people "learn" is to post questions to the group this way. I was 
not "complaining" necessarily; just trying to find a better way to 
do all this. 

Given your suggestion, I went to Amerion.net, which, like other 
companies like this, have a very murky, vague, description on 
how to use their system. After reading all that, I still don't 
understand how their system works -- I assume that I must 
convince my ISP to "partner" with them. After searching all the 
FAQs, no information whatsoever on costs. I would assume that 
make it purposely vague. I'll add Amerion to my list of companies 
to avoid.

Other software that I've installed, like Panicware, seems to install 
all sorts of intrusive software.

It would be great if Outlook Express offered a simple checkbutton 
, alongside things like Flag/Priority, and Attachments, to simply 
add a Sender to the Junk Mail Filter. But they don't.

So, sorry for "complaining". But while I'm complaining, I'll add to 
that -- people who sign their posts with only their first names.

-Mark Tucker

>[snip] So, sorry for "complaining". But while I'm complaining, I'll add to
>that -- people who sign their posts with only their first names.

And I'm sorry to have given Mark Tucker and maybe others cause for 
complaint on this score. I've just signed my e-mails "Sam", mainly to 
mark the end, and have been too ignorant or insensitive to realize 
that's not enough for readers who see the posts, if at all, only on 
the web and, I guess, without access to the headers. But I'll be 
pulling my socks up and welcome any suggestions about how best to do 
that.


Mark also wrote, in another e-mail:

>That [OE block-sender] feature, just like SpellCheck, must not be 
>active in the
>Macintosh version of OE. It sure is needed.

When I went online, Opera wasn't yet available as an alternative to 
Internet Explorer, but Eudora was already available as an alternative 
to OE. And unlike OE, Eudora was already well documented in Adam C. 
Engst's first Visual Quickstart Guide on it. It's now in its second 
edition. Page 135 is especially good on filtering spam. It says his 
"trickiest" spam filter is:

From: contains aol.com unless Received: contains aol.com

which finds forged AOL return addresses by finding messages from AOL 
that never in fact passed through AOL's mail servers. Here "aol" is 
in effect a variable which might have been "yahoo", "msn", etc.

I haven't tried these because I get very little spam. And find it 
easy to delete because I'm filtering most of the mail I _do_ want - 
like posts to this list - into its own (in) mailbox. So the junk mail 
sticks out like a sore thumb in the generic "In" box.

There's another good reason to use Eudora instead of OE: you're no 
longer holding up the much larger target for the hackers to shoot at. 
After already welcoming them by using Internet Explorer as a browser: 
are there any Opera users on this list?

Sam McCandless              samcc@...