-----Original Message----- From: Jeff Chan [mailto:jeffc@surbl.org] Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 12:01 AM To: SURBL Discuss; phpot-surbl@matthew.unspam.com Subject: Fwd: Re: [SURBL-Discuss] In support of Project Honeypot
Here's a response to Chris Albert's concerns about Project Honeypot from Matthew Prince, the head of Project Honeypot and unspam.com. He also gives his direct phone number as: 312.543.3046. Matthew's reply address is: phpot-surbl@matthew.unspam.com or you may be able to reply all since I included this on the To: list.
I invited him to join our lists, but expect he may already get plenty of mail.
Jeff C. __
It's a strange thing to have to prove that you're one of the good guys.
*snip*
Oh no! It's worse then we thought! They aren't spammers, or spam helpers. They are lawyers! ;)
J/K. I remember seeing the video on the MIT site from the conference. Its a very good idea. Which is why I'm one of the 50. But I don't get much traffic. I need to get a few more sites setup.
--Chris (The curse has been reversed!)
Jeff, Matthew
Here's a response to Chris Albert's concerns about Project Honeypot from Matthew Prince, the head of Project Honeypot and unspam.com.
Thanks for the clear and frank post Matthew. I'm convinced now of your bona fides.
About the Google placements: you would be surprised how changing some syntax and replacing some words with synonyms could change the Google placements. You could test this with a Gmail account, since I'm sure the matching algorithm is similar, though there might be different partitioning on Gmail than that used for websites (e.g. are threads grouped into semantic classes!?). I think with a little behavioural analysis you will be able to change the palcements from email marketing firms to spam fighting firms. I appreciate the ironic, sweet vengeance effect of the current placements, and in fact I really thought it might be an ironic clin d'oeil. However, there is so much bad faith, deception, and downright criminal intent among the hardcore spammers, that a certain apriori skepticism is often warranted by default.
Count me in. I may have some IT resources to share.
Chris Albert
All,
The bizcn whois server(s) ha(s|ve) been down for nearly a week. Given the huge number of abusive domains registered through them, this has made it it much more difficult to lookup domain details for domains they are the registrar for. Sadly, their whois server is often down, but this is the longest outage I recall.
Please drop ICANN a note asking them to require bizcn to shape up. If you can also provide details of their inaction to abuse and data validty issues please do so.
http://reports.internic.net/cgi/registrars/problem-report.cgi
It has been a long while since ICANN has given a public wrist slapping to a registrar. Perhaps if we generate enough reports they will step up and do something.
-- Andy Warner http://spamvertised.abusebutler.com/
-
Andy Warner -
Chris Santerre -
Christopher Albert