View from the Roof

Spammer Holiday?

Did the spammers take the weekend off? I asked myself this question when I opened my Outlook Express and had no new messages for the second time this weekend. I have three email address. One for work, which receives no spam. A second from my current ISP, which receives almost no unexpected spam. The third is from my former ISP, who I was with for a few years. This third account usually gets at least five to eight spam messages per day.

I keep the old account for those sites where you need to provide a valid email address but you don't really trust them. Since my former ISP never deactivated this account it became the logical "throwaway" email.

So when I open Outlook Express(OE) and I have no new messages since Friday, I start thinking Spammer holiday. Odd part is the only reason for opening OE was not to check my email but to read my newsgroups. I beleive usenet to be one of the least appreciated resources available.

For anyone not familar with usenet it is similar to web based forums or discussion boards. Only it has existed far longer than either. Longer than the web itself. It operates on it's own protocol, namely the Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) with it's own set of servers.

You can find groups dedicated to just about every interest you can think of and some you wouldn't ever think about. Each group has a unique culture and woe to those who barge in and violate the norms of the group.

Some of the groups I follow include:

alt.folklore.urban
sci.electronics.design
rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic
microsoft.public.vb.general.discussion

Messages are posted to a NNTP server and are propagated through the network of servers, with each holding a finite amount of posts with the older posts dropped into the ether. Well not exactly. Not anymore anyway. Because a number of years ago someone decided to archive the messages, and actually seek out older messages from old tape reel backups and wherever else they could find. They the set out to make the whole of usenet searchable, and deja.com was created.

Deja was soon taken over by google and has become an important resource for me and others seeking specific knowledge difficult to attain from other sources. In the earlier days it was common to include one's clear text, unmunged email address in each post. This was before spambots were created to scour the posts and harvest what would most likely be valid accounts. Which of course is probably where most of my spam originates from.

Of course the spammers didn't take the weekend off. It's more likely I never shutdown my OE at work when I left Friday. Since it's setup to check for new mail every ten minutes that's where I'll find all my email Tuesday morning.

In any event, the practical upshot of all this is that I have inadvertenly taken a holiday weekend off from email.

Not bad.

posted by Chris @ 7:49 PM