[KYHAM] Arrl source of Spam

[Chuck Milam, KF9FR]

The reason the spammers love to use the the ARRL E-mail forwarding service
as a spam delivery vector is really quite simple:  It's the sequential
callsigns.  All they need to do is attempt delivery to:

K4AA@arrl.net
K4AB@arrl.net
K4AC@arrl.net

...and so on...

...and the odds are very good that a majority of the addresses they
attempt delivery to will be valid.

Also, it is a fairly well-known fact that the longer you have a particular 
E-Mail address, the more likely it will end up on the spammer's address 
lists.  So, unless you plan on changing your E-mail addresses every few 
months, eventually you will be dealing with the spam problem.

Does this mean the ARRL is responsible for the spam you get?  Not at all.  
As an E-Mail forwarding service provider, they are in a no-win situation
when it comes to spam:  If they do nothing, they get blamed for sending
their subscribers spam, which is simply not the case.  If they attempt to
implement spam controls, they will cut back some of the spam messages,
but will also drop valid E-mails, which will cause mush consternation
among their subscribers as well.  Obviously, they make the logical 
choice, which is to allow all mail through, rather than risk losing a 
valid E-mail that a service subscriber may have a lot of stock in.

So, what is to be done about spam coming through the ARRL E-mail forwarding
service?  Is it up to the ARRL to do something?  NO, it is not.  As the
end-user, spam control and E-mail management is in YOUR hands.  Just as it
is the responsibility of every Internet user to ensure that their computers
are properly parched, firewalled, and (for the Microsoft users) running
current anti-virus signatures, it is YOUR responsibility to set up and
manage your anti-spam E-Mail filters.  All modern Mail User Agent (MUA)
systems support some method of filtering E-mail based on criteria YOU
define.  Only YOU as the end user can set the rules for which E-mail
messages you wish to see and those you wish to dump into the bitbucket.

Many quality anti-spam options are available for your use, and most of
the best have the beast price:  Free.  Check them out, learn to use them,
and enjoy a more manageable Inbox again.  By way of example, I use
"spamassassin" here at home.  When out on the road, I have to check my
mail using a web interface, which shows my raw, unfiltered inbox.  It is
almost unreadable due to all the spam mail.  I often lose messages in all
the noise--I simply can't pick them out in the pages and pages of spam.  
When I get home, I download my messages, and they are processed through
spamassassin.  On average, 80% of the mail I get is caught by spamassassin
and classified as either "almost-certainly-spam" or "probably-spam", using
rules I have defined.  Spam messages are automatically moved to a separate
mail folder, where I periodically review them to ensure that a valid
message has not been incorrectly flagged as spam.  When I am certain that
a particular folder contains only spam, I can process it through a special
process that trains SpamAssassin's Bayesian classifier to better recognize
spam in the future.  Do some spam messages get through?  Sure.  But, I'll
take 5 spam messages per day over 200 or more any day of the week!

Spam is here to stay, so you had best learn to deal with it in a
reasonable manner.  Changing E-Mail addresses every few months is maddening
not only for you, but for those who care to correspond with you as well.

-- 
Chuck Milam
KF9FR@arrl.net