[thechat] conspiracy theory?: spam created to sell more anti spam software?[OT?]

[deacon]

On 7 Apr 2004 at 0:22, Alex Beston wrote:

> im getting the feelling that the makers of anti spam solutions are in 
> cohorts with the peddlers themselves. a tentative contection  i admit, 
> but is there something in it? those software dealers are certainly 
> getting in the luca!

Everybody's claiming that spamming is almost free to do, and is highly 
profitable. It's not. It's cheaper to reach people with an ad in USA 
Today than to send spam. But those claims sure encourage people to 
spam, don't they?

I woudn't argue that they are in cohorts with each other - but when 
idiots are encouraged to spend hundreds of dollars trying to spam, it's 
certainly something they both benefit from. 

I'm thinking that I want to start using an email address that is hooked 
to an autoresponder. When users mail to it, they get back the URL of a 
page where they can enter a message on a form. They'll have to type 
in a code word which appears in the form of a GIF. 

Regular correspondents would be assigned an address ONLY they 
use, such as "from_aunt_bessie at master.gen.in.us" which bypasses 
the autoresponder.

But how you make a solution like that work with YahooGroups or 
TheChat? I dunno. There needs to be a filter, I guess, so that I can let 
certain IPs mail to that address, while everyone else gets the 
autoresponder.