[Dixonary] Spammer Strikes Dixonary?

[Guerri Stevens]

I got three Emails that look like spam to me. Possibly the moderators
have already taken action, but if not, now you know.
--
Guerri

[thejazzmonger]

Yep, I got 'em, too.

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 6:18 AM, Guerri Stevens <guerri (AT) tapcis (DOT) com> wrote:

> I got three Emails that look like spam to me. Possibly the moderators have
> already taken action, but if not, now you know.
> --
> Guerri
>

[Tony Abell]

Yes, and surprisingly obvious spam, at that. One in Vietnamese--a first for
me.

------------------------------------------
On 2011-10-26 at 06:18 Guerri Stevens wrote:

> I got three Emails that look like spam to me. Possibly the moderators
> have already taken action, but if not, now you know.

[Jim Hart]

You may be right Guerri. I didn't think we had a player called Best-
Penis, and I'm not sure that dealing a Vietnamese word would be in the
spirit of the game.

Jim

On Oct 26, 9:18*pm, Guerri Stevens <gue... (AT) tapcis (DOT) com> wrote:
> I got three Emails that look like spam to me. Possibly the moderators
> have already taken action, but if not, now you know.
> --
> Guerri

[Judy Madnick]

Ditto!

Sent from my iPod

On Oct 26, 2011, at 9:47 AM, Jim Hart <jfshart (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

> You may be right Guerri. I didn't think we had a player called Best-
> Penis, and I'm not sure that dealing a Vietnamese word would be in the
> spirit of the game.
>
> Jim
>
> On Oct 26, 9:18 pm, Guerri Stevens <gue... (AT) tapcis (DOT) com> wrote:
>> I got three Emails that look like spam to me. Possibly the moderators
>> have already taken action, but if not, now you know.
>> --
>> Guerri

[Hugo Kornelis]

I checked all the settings I could find, but I have no explanation as to
what has happened.

1. The senders of the spam mails are NOT registered as members of the group;
2. The settings of the group for non-members is NOT changed - i.e., the
setting is that posts from non-members end up in the moderation queue.

And yet, these three spam messages have all been posted without ever
being in the moderation queue. I have reported them as spam (which
caused them to be deleted instantly from the online view of the group,
but that is no help to those who have the mails forwarded to them).

Long story short, I have no idea how these messages got through. Maybe
someone else knows more?

Cheers,
Hugo

Op 26-10-2011 15:50, Judy Madnick schreef:
> Ditto!
>
> Sent from my iPod
>
> On Oct 26, 2011, at 9:47 AM, Jim Hart<jfshart (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
>
>> You may be right Guerri. I didn't think we had a player called Best-
>> Penis, and I'm not sure that dealing a Vietnamese word would be in the
>> spirit of the game.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> On Oct 26, 9:18 pm, Guerri Stevens<gue... (AT) tapcis (DOT) com> wrote:
>>> I got three Emails that look like spam to me. Possibly the moderators
>>> have already taken action, but if not, now you know.
>>> --
>>> Guerri

[John Barrs]

Hugo (and everyone else)

This morning I marked 3 emails - as spam - and, of those that arrived via
email from the group 2 of them were identical in content to those that I
marked. The third (vietnamese?) that came was not among those I marked this
time although that particular email has been coming regularly and I have
marked it as spam at least half a dozen times in the last week)

As 'marking as spam' should automatically (in theory) ban that email adress
forever then I guess they are using closely alike email addresses for each
of these tries

The only settings I can see (in this context) that we could change are

1. to require all unmoderated postings to be from members. (At the moment
we have "anyone can post" (moderate non members))
2. to disallow postings from the web - do any of us post from the web?


JohnnyB

On 26 October 2011 16:04, Hugo Kornelis <hugo (AT) perfact (DOT) info> wrote:

> I checked all the settings I could find, but I have no explanation as to
> what has happened.
>
> 1. The senders of the spam mails are NOT registered as members of the
> group;
> 2. The settings of the group for non-members is NOT changed - i.e., the
> setting is that posts from non-members end up in the moderation queue.
>
> And yet, these three spam messages have all been posted without ever being
> in the moderation queue. I have reported them as spam (which caused them to
> be deleted instantly from the online view of the group, but that is no help
> to those who have the mails forwarded to them).
>
> Long story short, I have no idea how these messages got through. Maybe
> someone else knows more?
>
> Cheers,
> Hugo
>
> Op 26-10-2011 15:50, Judy Madnick schreef:
>
> Ditto!
>>
>> Sent from my iPod
>>
>> On Oct 26, 2011, at 9:47 AM, Jim Hart<jfshart (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
>>
>> You may be right Guerri. I didn't think we had a player called Best-
>>> Penis, and I'm not sure that dealing a Vietnamese word would be in the
>>> spirit of the game.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>> On Oct 26, 9:18 pm, Guerri Stevens<gue... (AT) tapcis (DOT) com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I got three Emails that look like spam to me. Possibly the moderators
>>>> have already taken action, but if not, now you know.
>>>> --
>>>> Guerri
>>>>
>>>

[Dodi Schultz]

Hugo Kornelis wrote:
> I checked all the settings I could find, but I have no explanation as
> to what has happened.
>
> 1. The senders of the spam mails are NOT registered as members of the
> group;
> 2. The settings of the group for non-members is NOT changed - i.e.,
> the setting is that posts from non-members end up in the moderation
> queue.
>
> And yet, these three spam messages have all been posted without ever
> being in the moderation queue. . . .

Hm. I now gather that these spam messages all arrived from GoogleGroups
and weren't sent to players individually. I received NONE of these
(although I did get the batch from "Wayne Scott" that came through a
while back). I can only guess that my ISP is very good at recognizing
spam so that they were immediately zapped and not there for T'bird to
pick up.

—Dodi

[Judy Madnick]

<< Hm. I now gather that these spam messages all arrived from
<< GoogleGroups
<< and weren't sent to players individually. I received NONE of
<< these
<< (although I did get the batch from "Wayne Scott" that came
<< through a
<< while back). I can only guess that my ISP is very good at
<< recognizing
<< spam so that they were immediately zapped and not there for
<< T'bird to
<< pick up.

Dodi,

All my email is filtered through gmail, and the recent trio of spam messages ended up in gmail's spam folder. I check the spam folder daily because occasionally a "good" email is seen as spam. Do you check your spam folder in Thunderbird so you don't miss a message that might get "caught" by accident?

Judy

[Hugo Kornelis]

Hi Johnny,

>> to require all unmoderated postings to be from members. (At the
moment we have "anyone can post" (moderate non members)) <<
The ability to post for non-members has been useful in the past when new
players first joined, when people started posting from a different email
address, or when there were posts from the TAPCIS forum that were either
from people who don't normally play or posted by TAPCIS with an
incorrect email address.

>> to disallow postings from the web - do any of us post from the web? <<
I don't know if that would help (were the spam messages that got through
posted from the web?), or if that would break the bridge with the TAPCIS
forum (does the Google software see the TAPCIS messages as coming from
the web?)

Cheers,
Hugo


Op 26-10-2011 17:43, John Barrs schreef:
> Hugo (and everyone else)
>
> This morning I marked 3 emails - as spam - and, of those that arrived
> via email from the group 2 of them were identical in content to those
> that I marked. The third (vietnamese?) that came was not among those I
> marked this time although that particular email has been coming
> regularly and I have marked it as spam at least half a dozen times in
> the last week)
>
> As 'marking as spam' should automatically (in theory) ban that email
> adress forever then I guess they are using closely alike email
> addresses for each of these tries
>
> The only settings I can see (in this context) that we could change are
>
> 1. to require all unmoderated postings to be from members. (At the
> moment we have "anyone can post" (moderate non members))
> 2. to disallow postings from the web - do any of us post from the web?
>
>
> JohnnyB
>
> On 26 October 2011 16:04, Hugo Kornelis <hugo (AT) perfact (DOT) info
> <mailto:hugo (AT) perfact (DOT) info>> wrote:
>
> I checked all the settings I could find, but I have no explanation
> as to what has happened.
>
> 1. The senders of the spam mails are NOT registered as members of
> the group;
> 2. The settings of the group for non-members is NOT changed -
> i.e., the setting is that posts from non-members end up in the
> moderation queue.
>
> And yet, these three spam messages have all been posted without
> ever being in the moderation queue. I have reported them as spam
> (which caused them to be deleted instantly from the online view of
> the group, but that is no help to those who have the mails
> forwarded to them).
>
> Long story short, I have no idea how these messages got through.
> Maybe someone else knows more?
>
> Cheers,
> Hugo
>
> Op 26-10-2011 15:50, Judy Madnick schreef:
>
> Ditto!
>
> Sent from my iPod
>
> On Oct 26, 2011, at 9:47 AM, Jim Hart<jfshart (AT) gmail (DOT) com
> <mailto:jfshart (AT) gmail (DOT) com>> wrote:
>
> You may be right Guerri. I didn't think we had a player
> called Best-
> Penis, and I'm not sure that dealing a Vietnamese word
> would be in the
> spirit of the game.
>
> Jim
>
> On Oct 26, 9:18 pm, Guerri Stevens<gue... (AT) tapcis (DOT) com
> <mailto:gue... (AT) tapcis (DOT) com>> wrote:
>
> I got three Emails that look like spam to me. Possibly
> the moderators
> have already taken action, but if not, now you know.
> --
> Guerri
>
>

[—Keith Hale—]

I never got the bogus-Wayne spams (never had the good fortune to swap emails
with him), but i got the three today.

I NEVER post by web. Always seemed to be a "Plan D" or so, if all else
fails posting by email.

The other option:
>to require all unmoderated postings to be from members
is undesirable --- i think --- because then someone can't jump in and join
the game without first joining the email list and verifying and whatsoever
hoops it takes. Am i right about that? I never learned email computer
science (just basic HTML and early days of Flash).

If the second option isn't viable, i am quite agreeable with just deleting
the annoying messages. I didn't mark them as spam in my gmail (usually
second to none at catching such spiced ham) - i worry it might monkeywrench
the game for me in some way. My personal feeling about email spam messages,
annoying as they are, is that they kill no trees. The electricity and
bandwidth they travel on were going to happen anyway. I've always wished i
could turn people's outrage about spam to the infinitely worse problem of
junkmail - or "SnailSpam" as i call it. It almost never gets recycled, the
ink, paper and various other environmentally-impacting materials only serve
one purpose: to anger\annoy 99.8% of the people that get it. By contrast,
clicking [Delete] is a pure joy. Click, done, troll-not-fed.

That's just my €0.07 on the matter.

I'm a Monty Python Spam Viking, and i approve this message!

—Keith—

[Hugo Kornelis]

Hi Dodi,

Probably true. I received one of the three spam messages. The other two
were probably filtered out by my provider (who, unfortunately, does not
give me any way to check the filtered messages). I did see all three
when I connected to the web to check what had happened.

Cheers,
Hugo

Op 26-10-2011 18:35, Dodi Schultz schreef:
> Hugo Kornelis wrote:
>> I checked all the settings I could find, but I have no explanation as
>> to what has happened.
>>
>> 1. The senders of the spam mails are NOT registered as members of the
>> group;
>> 2. The settings of the group for non-members is NOT changed - i.e.,
>> the setting is that posts from non-members end up in the moderation
>> queue.
>>
>> And yet, these three spam messages have all been posted without ever
>> being in the moderation queue. . . .
>
> Hm. I now gather that these spam messages all arrived from
> GoogleGroups and weren't sent to players individually. I received NONE
> of these (although I did get the batch from "Wayne Scott" that came
> through a while back). I can only guess that my ISP is very good at
> recognizing spam so that they were immediately zapped and not there
> for T'bird to pick up.
>
> —Dodi
>
>
>

[stamps]

What's the point of having a spam filter if you have to check it for "good"
messages?

--
Salsgiver.com Webmail

Fiber Optic Internet and Voice are here!
Find out more at http://www.gotlit.com


---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Judy Madnick" <jmadnick (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
To: dixonary (AT) googlegroups (DOT) com
Sent: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:52:18 -0400
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Re: Spammer Strikes Dixonary?

> << Hm. I now gather that these spam messages all
> arrived from << GoogleGroups << and
> weren't sent to players individually. I received NONE of
> << these << (although I did get the batch from
> "Wayne Scott" that came << through a
> << while back). I can only guess that my ISP is very good at
> << recognizing << spam so that they were
> immediately zapped and not there for << T'bird to
> << pick up.
>
> Dodi,
>
> All my email is filtered through gmail, and the recent trio of spam
> messages ended up in gmail's spam folder. I check the spam folder
> daily because occasionally a "good" email is seen as spam. Do you
> check your spam folder in Thunderbird so you don't miss a message
> that might get "caught" by accident?
>
> Judy
------- End of Original Message -------

[Judy Madnick]

<< What's the point of having a spam filter if you have to check it
<< for "good"
<< messages?

No spam filter is perfect. Occasionally a "good" message is "trapped" in the spam filter because of some unknown word or phrase...in the same way that spam occasionally slips through. The point of having the spam filter is that my mailbox rarely contains any spam (e.g., the three messages under discussion were in my spam folder). It's not a big deal to check the spam folder (just one-liners showing the sender, subject, date, and time). If you don't mind missing what might be an important message that gets "trapped" in the spam filter, that's up to you. I don't want that to happen -- personal choice!

Judy

[Guerri Stevens]

What do you mean by "posting from the web"? Is that the same as going
into the group itself and posting? I generally operate by Email, but if
our Internet service is down, I might go to the library, go into the
group, and read/post from there. Or if travelling, I might do the same
or use mail2web.

Guerri

John Barrs wrote:
> ...
>
> The only settings I can see (in this context) that we could change are
>
> 1. to require all unmoderated postings to be from members. (At the
> moment we have "anyone can post" (moderate non members))
> 2. to disallow postings from the web - do any of us post from the web?

[stamps]

My point was that now you have 2 places to look for good messages, and you
still have to scroll through all the spam.

--
Salsgiver.com Webmail

Fiber Optic Internet and Voice are here!
Find out more at http://www.gotlit.com


---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Judy Madnick" <jmadnick (AT) gmail (DOT) com>
To: dixonary (AT) googlegroups (DOT) com
Sent: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:30:36 -0400
Subject: Re: [Dixonary] Re: Spammer Strikes Dixonary?

> << What's the point of having a spam filter if you
> have to check it << for "good" << messages?
>
> No spam filter is perfect. Occasionally a "good" message is
> "trapped" in the spam filter because of some unknown word or
> phrase...in the same way that spam occasionally slips through. The
> point of having the spam filter is that my mailbox rarely contains
> any spam (e.g., the three messages under discussion were in my spam
> folder). It's not a big deal to check the spam folder (just one-
> liners showing the sender, subject, date, and time). If you don't
> mind missing what might be an important message that gets "trapped"
> in the spam filter, that's up to you. I don't want that to happen --
> personal choice!
>
> Judy
------- End of Original Message -------

[Judy Madnick]

<< My point was that now you have 2 places to look for good
<< messages, and you
<< still have to scroll through all the spam.

But only when I feel like it. <G> Meanwhile, the email that arrives in my mailbox is spam-free.

Would you want to miss a "good" message that ends up in spam? I guess it's my Type A personality that's afraid of missing something. LOL! Sometimes simply adding the sender to my contact list in gmail solves the problem. But I have to know that a problem exists first!!

Judy

[Dodi Schultz]

Judy Madnick wrote:

> All my email is filtered through gmail, and the recent trio of spam messages ended up in gmail's spam folder. I check the spam folder daily because occasionally a "good" email is seen as spam. Do you check your spam folder in Thunderbird so you don't miss a message that might get "caught" by accident?
>
I don't have to. T'bird alerts me with a banner message (it calls such
things "Junk"). If it was sent to me by our group site, it must have
been tossed by my ISP; T'bird never saw it. (BTW, I also checked the
AOL/CS mail site, just to see if perchance it had been sent to my old
address. Nope.)

Anyway: I just went to our GoogleGroups site; there were no spam threads
there; the most recent threads were Millie's, about the last round,
followed by Mike S's statistics posts.

—Dodi

[Judy Madnick]

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Dodi Schultz" <DodiSchultz (AT) nasw (DOT) org>

<< I don't have to. T'bird alerts me with a banner message (it calls
<< such
<< things "Junk"). If it was sent to me by our group site, it must
<< have
<< been tossed by my ISP; T'bird never saw it.

So...your ISP blocks what it perceives to be spam? Perhaps most of them do. I wonder if that's why we sometimes find out that we didn't receive an email that we should have received -- or our intended recipient says he or she never rec'd one of our emails. Maybe our ISP has blocked it and we don't know that!! Scary thought...

Judy

[Dodi Schultz]

Hugo Kornelis wrote:
> I received one of the three spam messages. The other two were probably
> filtered out by my provider (who, unfortunately, does not give me any
> way to check the filtered messages). I did see all three when I
> connected to the web to check what had happened.

That's weird. By "connected to the web", do you mean you went to the
Dixonary homebase at GoogleGroups? I just went there and saw no such
messages.

—Dodi

[Hugo Kornelis]

Op 26-10-2011 23:59, Dodi Schultz schreef:
> Anyway: I just went to our GoogleGroups site; there were no spam
> threads there; the most recent threads were Millie's, about the last
> round, followed by Mike S's statistics posts.

There are no spam threads */anymore/*. After going online to find if I
could see how the spam managed to get out to the group, I deleted them
(by marking them as spam).

Best, Hugo

[Dodi Schultz]

Judy Madnick wrote:
> So...your ISP blocks what it perceives to be spam? Perhaps most of them do. I wonder if that's why we sometimes find out that we didn't receive an email that we should have received -- or our intended recipient says he or she never rec'd one of our emails.

I don't know; I'm just guessing. I do know that (a) I never received
this most recent batch of spams and (b) they did not appear to have been
posted at the Dixonary/GoogleGroups website. With my present ISP, I've
never heard of any e-mail that I should have received and didn't.

—Dodi

[Judy Madnick]

From: "Dodi Schultz" <DodiSchultz (AT) nasw (DOT) org>

<<With my
<< present ISP, I've
<< never heard of any e-mail that I should have received and
<< didn't.

You're fortunate. Of course, I have no idea why I occasionally do not receive an email from someone who claims to have sent one to me or why an intended recipient doesn't receive an email I have sent. There are probably multiple reasons for those scenarios to occur -- perhaps I shouldn't blame my ISP for that. :-)

Judy

[Dodi Schultz]

Hugo Kornelis wrote:
> Dodi Schultz wrote:
>> Anyway: I just went to our GoogleGroups site; there were no spam
>> threads there; the most recent threads were Millie's, about the last
>> round, followed by Mike S's statistics posts.
>
> There are no spam threads */anymore/*. After going online to find if I
> could see how the spam managed to get out to the group, I deleted them
> (by marking them as spam).

Oh! Thanks, Hugo. Well, that explains that. Now, I guess I can conclude
that my ISP definitely got them and recognized them as spam and tossed
them in the dustbin. Good for it!

—Dodi

[Jim Hart]

Hugo - I generally read and post from the Google groups website, which
I assume is what JB meant by posting from the web. I do that because
(a) I prefer to get only one summary email not multiple individual
emails, (b) I don't always use the same computer and while I can email
anywhere with gmail (see separate thread) it's not the most user-
friendly way; and finally (c) because that's how I started. None of
those reasons are very compelling and I'm sure I could do it another
way.

I agree with you that it's better to keep the door open for new
players if possible. Spam has been rare and not a serious problem.

Jim

[Jim Hart]

> What's the point of having a spam filter if you have to check it for "good"
> messages?

It's about what I think statisticians call Type I or Type II errors,
aka false negative or false positive (or vice versa).

Google's algorithms are very good at least 99.99% of the time and must
be q Sometimes my gmail filter takes out an email from a mailing list
that it allows on other days, so

[Jim Hart]

> What's the point of having a spam filter if you have to check it for "good"
> messages?

Most filters are pretty good and I think Google gets it right better
than 99.99% of the time. Sometimes its algorithms generate a false
positive and mail from one of my regular reliable lists lands in the
spam folder; and likewise a false negative occasionally slips through
to the inbox. That's life with email I guess. It only takes me a
minute about once a week to scan for a legit sender among all offers
of dubious products and services - a small price to pay for a good
service.

Jim

[Judy Madnick]

From: "Jim Hart" <jfshart (AT) gmail (DOT) com>

<< Most filters are pretty good and I think Google gets it right
<< better
<< than 99.99% of the time.

I agree.

<< It only takes me a
<< minute about once a week to scan for a legit sender among all
<< offers
<< of dubious products and services - a small price to pay for a
<< good
<< service.

I have to do it more often than that because I've managed to spread my email address around a tad too much, but I don't mind...and as you say, "a small price...."

Judy