Subject: RE: [Asrg] Turing Test ...

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 07:29:18 -0800

Dear 'Art Pollard'

Hello, I am a robot.

Thank you for your message to Dr Phillip Hallam-Baker, B.Eng, D.Phil,
FBCS, C.Eng. Unfortunately Dr Phillip Hallam-Baker is far too important
to actually read you email unless he knows it isn't spam.

You can prove your message isn't spam by replying to this message.

If you also have a robot then chances are that we don't get to talk
which would be a pity because the exalted Professor Bxxxxxxxn is
an amazingly exalted guy, I feel true pride that he has selected
me as his humble robot.

You can buy his pills for penis enlargement here. Yes, they really
do work. And his porno site has pictures of really hot babes that
are better than anything else on the net.

....

So 2 questions:

1) How do I distinguish the messages from these robots from spam?
	A lot of them advertise these horrible services.

2) How do two people who use the service talk to each other?
	Your message to me will be challenged by your service. There
	is a strong possibility that some of the more clueless bots
	will livelock here, others will never allow the 
	communication.

I don't think that you can address these questions at the same
time. If you create a privilleged channel for the spambot you
create a privilleged channel for spam:

"An email harvesting technique that is being used increasingly attacks
archives of mailing lists on the web. The harvester records the addresses of
each poster and uses them to provide both sender and recipient addresses.
This attack results in the spam recipients receiving email that appears to
come from people they know, bypassing many types of filters and increasing
the chance that the message is read. "

		Phill

		Phill
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From: Matt Sergeant <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 16:54:20 +0100

On Thursday, Apr 3, 2003, at 16:29 Europe/London, Hallam-Baker, Phillip 

> 	A lot of them advertise these horrible services.

Use a VERP. Another robot should reply to the VERP, whereas a human 
should reply to the Reply-To.

> 	will livelock here, others will never allow the

Clueless bots are always going to be a problem (see vacation messages). 
You have to use cluefull bots and complain to the ISP of those who use 
dumb bots.

Matt.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 06:14:15 -0800 (PST)

Guys, havent we all seen good example of what robots do last week with 
that mailkey bot?

I agree with Vernon - the challenge/response roboots are last resort and 
if you already determined its a spam and just want to make sure its not 
false positive. 

If we do any challege-response system it must be automated in a way that 
humans do not get annoyed and that all systems can recognize its a bot and 
since its automated some kind of authenticaiton would be necessary to not 
let spammers participate in it.

---

From: Chuq Von Rospach <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 09:30:23 -0800

nope. just a bad example of what badly written, buggy robots do. You 
only use that to write off all robots if you've decided they're bad to 
start off.

---

From: Chuq Von Rospach <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 09:36:19 -0800

> should reply to the Reply-To.

lots of robots use reply-to. isn't that the default behavior of 
anything based around procmail that uses formail to build there return 
address?

> Clueless bots are always going to be a problem (see vacation 
> messages). You have to use cluefull bots and complain to the ISP of 
> those who use dumb bots.
>

If you depend on clueful bots and people fixing them, then it's a 
non-starter. Ain't gonna happpen.

---

From: Matt Sergeant <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 19:41:10 +0100 (BST)

> non-starter. Ain't gonna happpen.

I don't like C/R systems either, but this is a strawman. Anything can 
create a mail loop on the internet if it is so inclined. Please focus on 
the real problems with C/R systems.

Matt.

---

From: J C Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 11:55:14 -0800

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003 09:36:19 -0800 

> non-starter. Ain't gonna happpen.

Its not like we have a long and glorious history of well written
vacation bots.

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
[email-masked]               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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