Active Spam Killer (ASK)

[Richard Steinfeld]

Here's an interesting utility that I stumbled upon today.
Active Spam Killer is freeware (donationware). Here's how it
works:

You send an email to someone you don't know. When the recipient
(who uses ASK) receives your message, ASK adds its own data to
the message and fires it right back to you with a request. You,
the sender, are requested to resend this mesage by just hitting
"the reply button." ASK verfies the message as legit because it
recognizes that it's been sent back by a human, and it sees its
own code within it.

I received such a post, returned to me for verification, from an
eBay seller tonight; and I checked out the ASK web site. This
seems to be a nifty, slick aid if you're inundated with spam. I
was impressed!

I confess that my returned post was a surprise, and I found the
routine a little bit of a pain. Ironically, I don't need this
myself. My ISP (Sonic.net) uses Spam Assassin on their servers;
they've tweaked this tool so well that only one or two spams get
through to me per day. But if your ISP takes your money and runs,
giving you little or no relief, this might just be your ticket to
sanity (and it may drive your correspondents nuts -- I don't
know).

If you want to check out Active Spam Killer, go here:
http://www.paganini.net/ask/

Please post your feedback in the group. I'd like to know how this
worked for you.

Richard

 

[Onno Tasler]

Richard Steinfeld scribebat:

You send an email to someone you don't know. When the recipient
(who uses ASK) receives your message, ASK adds its own data to
the message and fires it right back to you with a request.

Which creates another problem: Many spammer do not use "invalid"
addresses (which could be filtered to easy), but use an address from
their "recipient database" instead. Thus, this program annoys innocent
people and creates a lot of traffic. If everyone used such programs, the
traffic caused by spam would be more than twice as high!

Also, these kind of programs (there are more of this kind, they are
called "challenging system" if I remember correctly) often have problems
with newsletters and other [wanted] automated mailings.

 

[Alastair Smeaton]

Here's an interesting utility that I stumbled upon today.
Active Spam Killer is freeware (donationware). Here's how it
works:

A wee heads up for windows users = this is Linux only, it would
appear.


2.4 I use Windows. Can I use ASK?

ASK is a Unix/Linux/OSX program. It will not run on Windows servers or
workstations. You may however, switch to an Internet/Mail provider
that offers ASK services.

 

[John Fitzsimons]

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 07:03:20 GMT, "Richard Steinfeld"

A wee heads up for windows users = this is Linux only, it would
appear.

2.4 I use Windows. Can I use ASK?

ASK is a Unix/Linux/OSX program. It will not run on Windows servers or
workstations. You may however, switch to an Internet/Mail provider
that offers ASK services.

Or use a windows C/R system :

http://www.gb7abc.net/spam.html

Regards, John.

--
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[John Fitzsimons]

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 10:48:53 +0200, Onno Tasler

Also, these kind of programs (there are more of this kind, they are
called "challenging system" if I remember correctly) often have problems
with newsletters and other [wanted] automated mailings.

Mailing lists should NOT be a problem for challenge-response
systems. One just needs to whitelist the address of the mailing
list/newsletter.

Regards, John.

--
****************************************************
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/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
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v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/

 

[Melinda Meahan - remove TRASH to reply]

Mailing lists should NOT be a problem for challenge-response
systems. One just needs to whitelist the address of the mailing
list/newsletter.

I think the problem is when the person fails to do so and floods the
mailing list with those pesky emails.