The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> writes: > On 2017-02-26 at 09:01, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > >> * John Cuffs tells Lee to "shut the fuck up", and quotes a spam that >> isn't visible (anymore?) in the bug log. > > Just to note: this almost certainly wasn't actually addressing any of > the thread participants, and also probably wasn't posted by John Cuffs. > > This is a standard form of spam that I've been seeing on mailing lists; > my assessment of the form indicates that the "original" spam message was > never actually sent, the spammer is instead sending a fake "reply" which > quotes the spam message and has headers (etc.) as if it were a response > by J. Random Netizen to a message already posted in some random > thread. I think you are mistaken. Having seen both the noise on lists, and having on a couple of occasions also received the same (pre-reply) directly to me, I would think that what happens is that the spammer lifts the headers from a legitimate list mail, and replaces its body with their drivel. The (often rude) replies we see on the lists are almost certainly from misguided folk who look at the headers and think that they have been subscribed to one of our lists, and probably think that our lists are a mechanism for sending spam -- not realising that the mail they got actually never touched our servers, but simply copied the headers from a genuine message. I presume spammers are doing this because it is likely that a lot of people have our list/bug mail as a significant contribution to the HAM corpus in their statistical filters. Sadly, I'm not sure there is much we can do to stop this, since it's all happening on other people's systems, so the first we hear about it is when someone becomes confused enough to reply angrily. Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. |-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY
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