Subject: [Asrg] Spam, UCE, Shifting trends

From: "Christopher Bird" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 09:01:52 -0500

One distinction that I haven't seen discussed much is the single
recipient, personalized subject line variety of UCE or Spam.

We talk about the mass nature of spam, but most of the spam that I get
today is addressed just to me - in other words, the spammers are sending
out millions of individual emails rather than a smaller number with
multiple recipients (unless they are using BCC). 

The second trend that I am seeing is that my own name appears somewhere
in the sender field, the reply to field or the subject field. So if I
reply to the spam to notify the sender, I end up sending myself more
spam. Most annoying.

We definitely have so many moving targets that we need to take a kind of
safety engineering approach. Design things that work first. Then look
for where the holes are if the equipment fails in some unexpected ways
(of course then they aren't unexpected!), then look for where the holes
are with a mindset of an exploiter. We must make the assumption that
those whose livelihoods we are attempting to stamp out will resist. To
use a somewhat hackneyed quote from Machiavelli...

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to
conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the
introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for
enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and
lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new." 
     -Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513 

Chris

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