10 ms·

Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List (2014) [pdf]

83 points by _ZeD_ 4y ago

etaioinshrdlu 4y ago
The issue is the lack of law enforcement especially for smaller scale spammers. Also, the law against spam in USA is fairly weak (cold emails are allowed in mass, in general, with some requirements and restrictions).
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
There’s no comments here, so I found some background: https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam
- ObiWanFrijoles 4y ago
  The paper was hilarious in itself. The context makes it even more interesting.
- Grimburger 4y ago
  For the lazy: > The journal, despite its distinguished name, is a predatory open-access journal, as noted by io9. These sorts of low-quality journals spam thousands of scientists, offering to publish their work for a fee. > In 2005, computer scientists David Mazières and Eddie Kohler created this highly profane ten-page paper as a joke, to send in replying to unwanted conference invitations. It literally just contains that seven-word phrase over and over, along with a nice flow chart and scatter-plot graph > According to the blog Scholarly Open Access, this PDF made the rounds, and an Australian computer scientist named Peter Vamplew sent it to the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology in response to spam from the journal. Apparently, he thought the editors might simply open and read it. > Instead, they automatically accepted the paper — with an anonymous reviewer rating it as "excellent" — and requested a fee of $150.
  - blitzar 4y ago
    > and requested a fee of $150. Did they pay? They really should have to get it published "Correction: This article previously said the article was published by the journal. It was only accepted, because the author didn't want to pay $150."
return_to_monke 4y ago
I am not sure, but I think the GDPR mandates an unsubscribe link for unwanted automatic emails.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Any spam I get, I never unsubscribe. Too risky to instead get confirmed as active mail. Instead, those get blacklisted/reported as spam (though I recently found out that this can also leak your email address, fun edit: apparently that’s only an issue with the web.de and gmx.de services). American companies are great of subscribing you to their spam mails without opt-in.
  - seqizz 4y ago
    Wait, how reporting spam can leak the address? Asking for gmail of course.
    - nomadrat 4y ago
      he's probably saying about clicking "unsubscribe" which usually leads to spammer website. in return they know now that this email is active
      - tux2bsd 4y ago
        A website, can just be a URL of, well... nothing. As long a web server is sitting there logging the requests. spammer.douch.nozzle/collect_request/JoeShmo_1x1-transparent-UUID_0se9a009fjwljwlfl2f.gif but all the info the douch needs is in the "UUID", the rest is easily obfuscated. If your email client renders renders images willy nilly, the image is enough to confirm a valid target (clicking "unsubscribe" isn't necessary to become victim but is a hard lock-in mechanism (A human is on the hook...)).
        jenny91 4y ago
        And that's exactly why you don't load random web resources in emails.
durnygbur 4y ago
The rule of the internet - you'll need to confirm your email for anything relevant or important, the email message might not arrive. Your email will be enrolled to any useless or malicious service and newsletter without any verification or consent.
zeofig 4y ago
I gave up on spam a few years ago. My gmail account which I got in the beta has 14000 unread emails in the inbox. I'm sure there are people out there with more. I used to delete/unsubscribe/report spam, but the amount just kept increasing, and I'm not the sort of person who can be bothered pruning his email inbox every day. If someone emails me something important, I usually still see it, or I search for it. If I'm unaware of it, well if it's really that important they'll call me. I've started to migrate to other addresses but I still use this monstrous account for a lot of things.
- tux2bsd 4y ago
  You must have had your email address on a website in plain text at some point.
  - blitzar 4y ago
    If by plain text you mean in numerous leaks ... can confirm I have the same problem. Never otherwise been published online. Also gmail spam filter isnt what it once was, or perhaps it is just the 1% failure rate shows up more when you get 100's of spam messages a day.
- heymetoo 4y ago
  This has been my solution as well. At some point in the last few (3-5 years?) I just gave up. My communication with important people hasn't really changed. I star important people by default and just glance over at them. I've also trained those same important people that I always pick up my phone, so they feel like they can call me if it's urgent or important. My output is higher now and I just don't think about email. Sometimes I miss things that people ask of me. They either come back around, because they are actually important, or they die on the vine. I'm also very specific about what/who an important person is, so there just aren't that many important emails.
charlieyu1 4y ago
Everyone should have at least a few more spare accounts for these proposes.
thexumaker 4y ago
slightly unrelated, I've been experimenting with using Lob's mailing API to send in real life ddoss attacks of people's mail services. While this is really expensive, sending roughly 1 million letters/postcards in one batch will set you back ~500k, it will lead the USPS sending a pallet of mail onto the porch of someone you hate. Spread out the sends a bit and you get so many wads of mail that the USPS comes awfully close to just putting you on a do not mail list. Not getting election mail, medicine, important notices, package deliveries, getting marked as undeliverable on their address verification service etc it can become quite annoying. It was the one feature I never got full buy in when working there, but if anyone has half a mil to spare, you can run some very fun experiments with mail.
asimpletune 4y ago
I have found Apple's "Hide my Email" feature to be really nice for this stuff. It allows you to generate an unlimited number of unique email addresses that relay email to your registered one, without exposing the actual address. It then integrates natively with forms, so I pretty much use a unique email address for each service. Then if I ever get spammed, I can just disable the relay and poof. If you ask me this, should just be standard.
- CursedUrn 4y ago
  Yahoo mail offers a similar thing. It's a lot of effort to generate and track unique addresses whenever you sign up for something though.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    Agreed, I think browsers should have a popup about the method you used to last sign in Did you use Oauth that time? Which Oauth service? Did you use an email? Were you on your phone and actually used the Apple Id “Oauth” looking button and gave a relay email? Were you lazy and used your phone browser’s autofill and password manager? Were you NOT lazy and an unhidden email and separate third party password manager?
- NoboruWataya 4y ago
  AnonAddy and SimpleLogin also offer this, it's very neat. Added bonus that, assuming each email is service_name@domain.com, you'll know exactly who has leaked your email if you start getting random spam.
  - TT-392 4y ago
    Also, I just found out it is really nice that, when you order stuff from a bunch of sites, and you get a shipping update from a shipping company, without info about which of your orders it is about, you can immediately see that from the email address.
  - wildrhythms 4y ago
jenny91 4y ago
Context for those who are not in academia: these days there are hundreds of low quality, shady "journals" that find your email on published papers and other academic databases, and then do half-arsed targeting to spam you every few weeks "inviting you" to submit to their overly generic random journal or inviting you to a "conference".
pull_my_finger 4y ago
How do you actually report spammers in 2022? There used to be an email you could forward them to but that is apparently unmanned. FTC has a report service but surprisingly there is no way to report common email spam, only fraud etc.
- JimDabell 4y ago
  According to the FAQ you can use it to report spam as well: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq
lupire 4y ago
I think this is based on prior work on "playing chicken": https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf

83 points by _ZeD_ 4y ago

The issue is the lack of law enforcement especially for smaller scale spammers. Also, the law against spam in USA is fairly weak (cold emails are allowed in mass, in general, with some requirements and restrictions).

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

There’s no comments here, so I found some background: https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam https://www.vox.com/2014/11/21/7259207/scientific-paper-scam

ObiWanFrijoles 4y ago
The paper was hilarious in itself. The context makes it even more interesting.
Grimburger 4y ago
For the lazy: > The journal, despite its distinguished name, is a predatory open-access journal, as noted by io9. These sorts of low-quality journals spam thousands of scientists, offering to publish their work for a fee. > In 2005, computer scientists David Mazières and Eddie Kohler created this highly profane ten-page paper as a joke, to send in replying to unwanted conference invitations. It literally just contains that seven-word phrase over and over, along with a nice flow chart and scatter-plot graph > According to the blog Scholarly Open Access, this PDF made the rounds, and an Australian computer scientist named Peter Vamplew sent it to the International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology in response to spam from the journal. Apparently, he thought the editors might simply open and read it. > Instead, they automatically accepted the paper — with an anonymous reviewer rating it as "excellent" — and requested a fee of $150.
- blitzar 4y ago
  > and requested a fee of $150. Did they pay? They really should have to get it published "Correction: This article previously said the article was published by the journal. It was only accepted, because the author didn't want to pay $150."

return_to_monke 4y ago

I am not sure, but I think the GDPR mandates an unsubscribe link for unwanted automatic emails.

Semaphor 4y ago
Any spam I get, I never unsubscribe. Too risky to instead get confirmed as active mail. Instead, those get blacklisted/reported as spam (though I recently found out that this can also leak your email address, fun edit: apparently that’s only an issue with the web.de and gmx.de services). American companies are great of subscribing you to their spam mails without opt-in.
- seqizz 4y ago
  Wait, how reporting spam can leak the address? Asking for gmail of course.
  - nomadrat 4y ago
    he's probably saying about clicking "unsubscribe" which usually leads to spammer website. in return they know now that this email is active
    - tux2bsd 4y ago
      A website, can just be a URL of, well... nothing. As long a web server is sitting there logging the requests. spammer.douch.nozzle/collect_request/JoeShmo_1x1-transparent-UUID_0se9a009fjwljwlfl2f.gif but all the info the douch needs is in the "UUID", the rest is easily obfuscated. If your email client renders renders images willy nilly, the image is enough to confirm a valid target (clicking "unsubscribe" isn't necessary to become victim but is a hard lock-in mechanism (A human is on the hook...)).
      - jenny91 4y ago
        And that's exactly why you don't load random web resources in emails.

durnygbur 4y ago

The rule of the internet - you'll need to confirm your email for anything relevant or important, the email message might not arrive. Your email will be enrolled to any useless or malicious service and newsletter without any verification or consent.

zeofig 4y ago

I gave up on spam a few years ago. My gmail account which I got in the beta has 14000 unread emails in the inbox. I'm sure there are people out there with more. I used to delete/unsubscribe/report spam, but the amount just kept increasing, and I'm not the sort of person who can be bothered pruning his email inbox every day. If someone emails me something important, I usually still see it, or I search for it. If I'm unaware of it, well if it's really that important they'll call me. I've started to migrate to other addresses but I still use this monstrous account for a lot of things.

tux2bsd 4y ago
You must have had your email address on a website in plain text at some point.
- blitzar 4y ago
  If by plain text you mean in numerous leaks ... can confirm I have the same problem. Never otherwise been published online. Also gmail spam filter isnt what it once was, or perhaps it is just the 1% failure rate shows up more when you get 100's of spam messages a day.
heymetoo 4y ago
This has been my solution as well. At some point in the last few (3-5 years?) I just gave up. My communication with important people hasn't really changed. I star important people by default and just glance over at them. I've also trained those same important people that I always pick up my phone, so they feel like they can call me if it's urgent or important. My output is higher now and I just don't think about email. Sometimes I miss things that people ask of me. They either come back around, because they are actually important, or they die on the vine. I'm also very specific about what/who an important person is, so there just aren't that many important emails.

charlieyu1 4y ago

Everyone should have at least a few more spare accounts for these proposes.

thexumaker 4y ago

slightly unrelated, I've been experimenting with using Lob's mailing API to send in real life ddoss attacks of people's mail services. While this is really expensive, sending roughly 1 million letters/postcards in one batch will set you back ~500k, it will lead the USPS sending a pallet of mail onto the porch of someone you hate. Spread out the sends a bit and you get so many wads of mail that the USPS comes awfully close to just putting you on a do not mail list. Not getting election mail, medicine, important notices, package deliveries, getting marked as undeliverable on their address verification service etc it can become quite annoying. It was the one feature I never got full buy in when working there, but if anyone has half a mil to spare, you can run some very fun experiments with mail.

asimpletune 4y ago

I have found Apple's "Hide my Email" feature to be really nice for this stuff. It allows you to generate an unlimited number of unique email addresses that relay email to your registered one, without exposing the actual address. It then integrates natively with forms, so I pretty much use a unique email address for each service. Then if I ever get spammed, I can just disable the relay and poof. If you ask me this, should just be standard.

CursedUrn 4y ago
Yahoo mail offers a similar thing. It's a lot of effort to generate and track unique addresses whenever you sign up for something though.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Agreed, I think browsers should have a popup about the method you used to last sign in Did you use Oauth that time? Which Oauth service? Did you use an email? Were you on your phone and actually used the Apple Id “Oauth” looking button and gave a relay email? Were you lazy and used your phone browser’s autofill and password manager? Were you NOT lazy and an unhidden email and separate third party password manager?
NoboruWataya 4y ago
AnonAddy and SimpleLogin also offer this, it's very neat. Added bonus that, assuming each email is service_name@domain.com, you'll know exactly who has leaked your email if you start getting random spam.
- TT-392 4y ago
  Also, I just found out it is really nice that, when you order stuff from a bunch of sites, and you get a shipping update from a shipping company, without info about which of your orders it is about, you can immediately see that from the email address.
- wildrhythms 4y ago

jenny91 4y ago

Context for those who are not in academia: these days there are hundreds of low quality, shady "journals" that find your email on published papers and other academic databases, and then do half-arsed targeting to spam you every few weeks "inviting you" to submit to their overly generic random journal or inviting you to a "conference".

pull_my_finger 4y ago

How do you actually report spammers in 2022? There used to be an email you could forward them to but that is apparently unmanned. FTC has a report service but surprisingly there is no way to report common email spam, only fraud etc.

JimDabell 4y ago
According to the FAQ you can use it to report spam as well: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq

lupire 4y ago

I think this is based on prior work on "playing chicken": https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf