Microsoft on Tuesday showed off a forthcoming update to Windows designed to make the OS more secure and proposed a caller ID-like system for e-mail that could help curtail the growing spam problem.
Bill Gates: ‘Everything’ Impacted by Security Concerns
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I wonder why any of these updates won’t make into Win2K. Or will they?
my caller id is blank because i have a “silent number” (as they’re called down here in Australia).
What’s to stop spammers adopting similar tactics?
cheers
peter
my caller id is blank because i have a “silent number” (as they’re called down here in Australia).
What’s to stop spammers adopting similar tactics?
There are also services/devices in place to block all ‘anonymous’ callers .. don’t know why such a thing couldn’t be done in email as well. Personally, I’m all for it, depending on just how much ofmration they actually want.
Interesting. I always thought most clients were already capable of displaying FROM:…
I’m not sure I understand the spam problem.
I am sure that the ISP’s know who the spammers are. They know spam, they know their customers and they know their wires. Why can’t the ISP’s not just unplug the spammers – no more E-mail account for you.
Or is it a matter of standards versus well paying spammers? I guess TV ads are no different. You can get rid of them but then your subscription fee goes up.
There are ISPs that are “Spammer Friendly”. These ISPs are in it for the money and dont care about the implications. Also alot of spam comes from home machines that are infected with trojans and such.
it’s not as easy as removing email access.
Most spammers tend to illegally hijack an “open relay” on a server or install mail software on unsecure Windows PCs and use them that way.
The ISPs should at least attempt to block the offending outgoing ports but it’s not that simple. You can configure you email server to send out on virtually any port and who knows what the hackers use as their default port(s).
You’d really have to analyse the traffic from the users and that is a huge task if you have tens of thousands of customers.
And as the previous poster said, there are spammer friendly ISPs. Hey they dont care, as long as you pay the bill.
cheers
peter
Why do they take a simple spamfilter and call it something completely different? Why do they try so hard to look innovative? I want a company that is open and honest about what they are doing, not trying to confuse people with a lot of vauge fluff.
Besides, the problem with spam is still the users. While people are still buying the penis enlargements and viagra pills the spamming will continue. My guess is that this feature will be left ontouched on many boxes. It’s not a long term solution.
And you mean that blocking mail from microsoft wouldn’t be allowed? I seriously doubt that.
Why do they take a simple spamfilter and call it something completely different? Why do they try so hard to look innovative? I want a company that is open and honest about what they are doing, not trying to confuse people with a lot of vauge fluff.
There’s a difference. A spam filter… filters spam.
A “caller-id” system would probably try to verify that sender [email protected] is an actual, bonafide’ e-mail address before passing on the message to you.
I, personally, would like that solution rather than playing cat-and-mouse with spammers who keep trying to trick the filters, or exploit holes in the filtering software. Anything to antagonize those who ruined my e-mail address with my ISP (300+ spam messages a day). Admittedly, I was a newbie when I first started surfing and supplying that e-mail address, but damn it, why is the price to pay so high?!
Die, spammers… DIE.
Because you know what? No, no, I would NOT like a Viagra-like product that turns me into a raving sexual tentacle-beast for six hours at a time, kthx.
doesn’t allow email from anybody who isn’t in his addressbook.
most email filters will allow similiar configuations. I don’t understand what the issue is?
I use Mail by Apple and when spam does make it through my filters I just hit the junkmail button. It’s amazing how much that helps.
xnetzero
doesn’t allow email from anybody who isn’t in his addressbook.
most email filters will allow similiar configuations. I don’t understand what the issue is?
I use Mail by Apple and when spam does make it through my filters I just hit the junkmail button. It’s amazing how much that helps.
you mean appleisp.net? my friend is signed up for one. and ive heard they provide good services special spam block for junk mails.
While the filtering in Apple’s Mail.app is handy it does not stop you having to pay for the download of the spam in the first place afaik.
Filtering once having downloaded all emails is handy. However, stoping the emails before they make it to your computer is far better.
I have numerous filters set up on my isp (i.e., server-side filtering) – but unfortunately the options they provide don’t go far enough. e.g., they don’t let you filter on the suffixes of attachment names or allow more advanced pattern matching for Subject Names. So I need to put in every combination by hand for VIAGRA, VI@GRA, VIAGR@, V1AGRA, etc etc.
LD wrote
While the filtering in Apple’s Mail.app is handy it does not stop you having to pay for the download of the spam in the first place afaik.
Filtering once having downloaded all emails is handy. However, stoping the emails before they make it to your computer is far better.
I have numerous filters set up on my isp (i.e., server-side filtering) – but unfortunately the options they provide don’t go far enough. e.g., they don’t let you filter on the suffixes of attachment names or allow more advanced pattern matching for Subject Names. So I need to put in every combination by hand for VIAGRA, VI@GRA, VIAGR@, V1AGRA, etc etc.
———————————————————–
I personally havent tried appleisp.net nor any filtering email programs that is why i have a personal email acount and a spam account. another note is to get a good email service provider so that they automatically block unwanted spam mails. appleisp.net so far has been very good in blocking those spams. but yet i have to see one of em viagra spam cause im planning to try em out
Wasn’t there an article a few days about about 99.984% accurate spam blocking programs? If that’s true, the problem is solved.
False positive – one important email deleted is one too many, especially if you’re a business. Even if it all goes to a ‘Junk Mail’ folder, if you have to search through that folder to find out if you missed anything, then what becomes the point of filtering?
what? win98 was better os than winxp. you must be joking!. i guess you have forgotten all those blue screen adn ctl-alt-del in win98!
Stop MS bashing here it’s not forum for that. Microsoft has pretty good OS in win2k and winxp.my exp is that i have fewer problems with xp than with linux. Xwindows on linux is just too murky
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=2295
I wonder why any of these updates won’t make into Win2K. Or will they?
Gee, I wonder why Linus Torvalds isn’t adding all of his latest kernel updates to the 1.0 kernel? /SARCASM
my caller id is blank because i have a “silent number” (as they’re called down here in Australia).
What’s to stop spammers adopting similar tactics?
They could adopt such tactics. But their mail would be rejected, because it isn’t coming from a verifiable source.
If spammers had to pay $.10 (USD) for each email sent, there would be a sharp drop in the amount of spam
being sent. This means that everyone would have to pay to send email, but $.10 is still a lot cheaper than
postage for snail-mail ($.37 USD currently). If the governments of the world were truly serious about ridding
the internet of spam, all they would have to do is impose EMail postage that’s collected by ISPs, a portion of
which could be considered an EMail tax if you will, with the rest going to the ISPs for administrating the
collection of the email postage. This solution is coming, so don’t say you were blind-sided when it happens!
Jim Steichen
Can you be specific on which email service or program you use or in particular your company use to filter em spams and put em on one of em junk mails kthxbye
As stated in earlier posts there are spammer-friendly ISPs that would gladly allow them to send their e-mails at no extra cost. How would such a thing be controlled?
A nicer, freer spam filter:
http://popfile.sf.net
That’s what I thought. It’s again that money that’s tipping the scale without first checking what’s on the other plate.
I suppose the spammers want replies. Well, why not give it to them. KMail has a bounce button. Maybe a multiplier could be added. Like bouncex1, bouncex5, bouncex10… And hit bouncex5 to send the spam back 5 times. Then the spammers will start complaining about spam. Their own.
i’m thinking… if the caller id feature simply tries to verify an address exists… what keeps spammers from using my email address as the FROM address, similar to what worms are doing right now? i mean, it’s as simple as starting up your own smtp server, spoof the from address, and send. and what about those “spam-friendly” ISPs? they have someone sending spam, you or your mail server tries to verify the address exists… it does, because the ISP doesn’t really care. they’ll let anyone send spam. what then?
Gee, I wonder why Linus Torvalds isn’t adding all of his latest kernel updates to the 1.0 kernel? /SARCASM
Sarcasm? Dude, I hope so. My point was that Win2K is barely any different than XP. It has a theme service, faster network start up times, is a little friendlier for media activities, etc.. Firewall fixes is understandable for an “XP Update”, a pop up blocker for IE is not.
MS will not put the changes into w2k. They want you to upgrade to XP. Its all about the dollar. Kind of funny when you think about, everyone that owns win2000 paid for a copy. Most people that have XP got it with their PC.
ps: ms already sounded the death toll for 2000. This will only be maintance releases.
Odds are they will extend the life of XP and 2000 users will have to go there if they want to keep their systems patched. Somehow it doesnt seem right. Using Linux and *BSD seems more and more right everyday. And I am still a user in transition. Waiting for the day.
Its also kind of funny that the article never mentions that MS and Sendmail got together to work this anti-spam deal out. I guess Open Source and Free Software get the shaft again.
How about people giving credit where credit is due. And if you dont believe the above statment. Check out slashdots article on the subject. Your all big boys and girls you can do a search.
Funny..I already paid Microsoft unfortunately — XP Home came with the PC I bought, but I resorted back to Win2K Pro so I can use a couple of things that I can’t on “Home”. Besides a couple of cosmetic features, it’s pretty much the same exact OS (I think the NT version numbers aren’t that far off either).
“False positive – one important email deleted is one too many, especially if you’re a business. Even if it all goes to a ‘Junk Mail’ folder, if you have to search through that folder to find out if you missed anything, then what becomes the point of filtering?”
“False positive – one important email deleted is one too many, especially if you’re a business. Even if it all goes to a ‘Junk Mail’ folder, if you have to search through that folder to find out if you missed anything, then what becomes the point of filtering?”
You’ve definately got a point here. I use Apple’s mail.app built in junk mail filter (which I think is very good) but it DOES produce the odd false positive and I have to skim thru the junk mail folder just to check I haven’t missed any important mail.
That said, I still use it as skimming thru subject titles is quicker than deleting the 200 (!) spam emails I get each day.
(On a side note, I looked around for an alternate junk mail filter and the one that LOOKED best to me was spambayes
http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/
as it was designed to err on the side of caution and give false negatives rather than false postives. There was no easy mac fit though so I’m still with mail.app’s junk mail filter.)
I have seen that the telephone caller-id can be spoofed just like email. How will this emailer-id prevent spoofing? As a previous poster said, anyone doing their own smtp server has control over email addresses so I would assume control over the emailer-id.
Would people have to sign up for a particular emailer-id with some central computer system? Say, a Microsoft server such as Hotmail? Would there be some kind of encrypted key verification? Who will keep a repository of the keys?
Will the now standard email protocol have to be changed in order for this emailer-id to work properly? If so, will the new email protocol be less open than now?
I am not for paying 0.10 cents an email. I send more email than snail mail. I am still on dial-up because of small amount of funds so an additional cost to use email would not be good. If the government backs a pay-per-email system most of the money will go to them not the ISPs.
If spammers had to pay $.10 (USD) for each email sent, there would be a sharp drop in the amount of spam
being sent. This means that everyone would have to pay to send email, but $.10 is still a lot cheaper than
postage for snail-mail ($.37 USD currently). If the governments of the world were truly serious about ridding
the internet of spam, all they would have to do is impose EMail postage that’s collected by ISPs, a portion of
which could be considered an EMail tax if you will, with the rest going to the ISPs for administrating the
collection of the email postage. This solution is coming, so don’t say you were blind-sided when it happens!
Jim Steichen
OK two problems, the spammers are using home machines to send these emails so a home user could get a $1000 invoice for sending emails. Not going to stop spammers. Second problem is a lot of spammers setup real accounts to send emails then let them get canned for spamming, the damage is already done. This means verified emails we be allowed through until the account is killed.