Fun_People Archive
26 Aug
A simple twist of spam

Content-Type: text/plain
Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2)
From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 96 13:52:50 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: A simple twist of spam

Excerpted-from: TBTF for 8/25/96: A simple twist of spam
		by: dawson@atria.com (Keith Dawson)

	||| A simple twist of spam |||

Nathan Syfrig <nsyfrig@condor.depaul.edu> wrote to the e$ mailing list to
describe a recent development in the spam wars. A company called Cyber-
Promo, well known to spamfighters, has come up with a new twist to avoid
ISPs' prohibitions on unsolicited commercial messages.

> A friend of mine got an innocuous e-mail with a reply-to address of
> zol@answerme.com, saying that she was the recipient of an "electronic
> postcard"... [she was instructed] to reply with the word "POSTCARD" in
> the mail header. So she responded (thinking that this was a new twist
> to the recent Web greeting card fad): It was a marketing spam! However,
> because the original was not commercial and the actual content had to
> be "requested," it was not unsolicted... In my book, this is worse than
> being direct about it!

So if spam offends you, don't reply "POSTCARD" to an unknown address. The
next time Cyber-Promo runs this spam the return address will almost cer-
tainly be different.

© 1996 Peter Langston