Anonymous email users

[a***@gmail.com]

I notice that in some recent discussions, we have users who cannot be
replied to directly as their email addresses are not valid ones, and I
believe on purpose. Examples in the thread I was going to reply to are:

<mailto:***@devnull.tb> ***@devnull.tb

<mailto:***@nospam.invalid> ***@nospam.invalid

<mailto:***@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid>
***@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid (user <candycane> is
generated from /dev/urandom)

I know some here suggest that we only reply to the wider community and they
have a point. But I think there is a role for having some conversations
offline and especially when they are not likely to be wanted, or even
tolerated, by many in the community.

Using such fake or invalid emails makes it hard to answer the person
directly or perhaps politely ask them for more info on their request or
discuss unrelated common interests. Worse, when I reply, unless I use
reply-all, my mailer sends to them futilely. When I do the reply-all, I have
to edit out their name or get a rejection.

I understand some are concerned over getting email of the junk variety by
any who scan members of forums like this. I can see making a throwaway email
address for such purposes that can be replaced when it gets inundated. But
emails that don't work are a bit irksome to me albeit I assume perfectly
legit for many purposes.

The thread I posted in recently is an example where I spent a little time,
just for fun, and wrote a fairly short piece of code (almost a one-liner)
that I might have sent to the OP and not bothered others here with. I
suspect few here understand why there was a request to generate a limited
subset of three-digit numbers. I did suggest an outline of a way it could be
done, perhaps a bit wastefully but compactly. But there is no way to share
that with people who choose not to receive private email except to post
something like this here:

import re
[i for i in range(999) if re.match("^[1-4]0[1-3]$",str(i))]

* The internet is a wild place and when it is anonymous, even wilder.

[dn]

Post by a***@gmail.com
I notice that in some recent discussions, we have users who cannot be
replied to directly as their email addresses are not valid ones, and I

...

It's an interesting conundrum. There are good reasons and nefarious, for
such behavior.

Some have questioned my behavior in similar regard - asking why I use
initials (also used IRL). It is because my first name "David" is/was
very popular. At a meeting this week there were three of us. Thus,
"David", "Dave", and "dn" was necessary to distinguish between us.


These mailing-lists all run under the Python Code of Conduct.

This also effects a conundrum. Firstly, that someone abusing others (for
example) shall be held responsible. Secondly, that in order to hold
someone responsible, he/she/... must be identifiable.


Personal opinion: if someone is asked a
question/clarification/sample-code, particularly as a response to their
own OP, and does not answer; this is at the least rude, and thus
disrespectful, or at worst grounds for not bothering with them again -
hardly a 'community' attitude!

[Marco Moock]

Post by dn
These mailing-lists all run under the Python Code of Conduct.
This also effects a conundrum. Firstly, that someone abusing others
(for example) shall be held responsible. Secondly, that in order to
hold someone responsible, he/she/... must be identifiable.

The mailing list has a Usenet gateway

Those users use the Usenet to post.
Check the Injection-Info header for the address of the news server
operator. He can identify the account that posted it.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Marco Moock
The mailing list has a Usenet gateway

Not sure why. We don’t care what happens on the mailing list, why do they
care about us?

[a***@gmail.com]

Thanks, Marco, for explaining.

I, personally, have no interest in finding out who people are in this case.
I simply am thinking that people who do not allow me to easily reply to them
directly, should be ignored by me and not get my cooperation that way.

I do understand reasons people use fake ID but note others have put their
email address in their signature, perhaps slightly disguised as in:

Myname=ereweon.com

Or

***@unspecified.tb s/unspecified.tb/yahoo.com/

It may be the gateway or other records can find them if they are nasty, but
for now, it is just an observation that it seems the discussions with people
in the email list are more useful to me.

-----Original Message-----
From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+avi.e.gross=***@python.org> On
Behalf Of Marco Moock via Python-list
Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2024 2:03 AM
To: python-***@python.org
Subject: Re: Anonymous email users

Post by dn
These mailing-lists all run under the Python Code of Conduct.
This also effects a conundrum. Firstly, that someone abusing others
(for example) shall be held responsible. Secondly, that in order to
hold someone responsible, he/she/... must be identifiable.

The mailing list has a Usenet gateway

Those users use the Usenet to post.
Check the Injection-Info header for the address of the news server
operator. He can identify the account that posted it.

[Roel Schroeven]

Post by a***@gmail.com
I simply am thinking that people who do not allow me to easily reply to them
directly, should be ignored by me and not get my cooperation that way.

FWIW, personally I (mostly) don't see the point of replying to people
personally. To me a public mailing list is much like any public forum,
where my expectation is that conversations happen in public. To me it
always feels weird when I get a personal reply when I make a public post
in a mailing list. I mostly ignore those, unless there's really
something in it that's best kept out of the public. Sometimes people
write long mails with wandering thoughts only loosely related to the
topic at hand directly to me instead of to the whole list. My take is:
if it's not on-topic enough for the list, it's not on-topic enough for
me either. Not that it bothers me *that* much; I just ignore those. It's
very well possible that's just me, and that other people have different
expectations.

But I don't go hiding my email address, that's a whole different kettle.

[Grant Edwards]

Post by Roel Schroeven
FWIW, personally I (mostly) don't see the point of replying to people
personally. To me a public mailing list is much like any public forum,
where my expectation is that conversations happen in public. To me it
always feels weird when I get a personal reply when I make a public post
in a mailing list. I mostly ignore those, unless there's really
something in it that's best kept out of the public.

My sentiments exactly. I generally don't even read replies that get
mailed to me. They almost always seem to be copies of replies that
were also posted to the mailing list (which I read using an NNTP
client pointed at news.gmane.io).

--
Grant

[a***@gmail.com]

It seems clear we have people on mailing lists that see it as a purely
public forum, and that is fine for them.

I have found plenty of times I choose not to continue in public and waste
time for people as in this reply on a topic I raised and now will move away
from.

I have in the past, for example, offered to help people and participate in
aspects of their project that do not need to be viewed here, such as helping
them find out how to adjust their graphical output to better fit their
needs. Or, if someone mentions me negatively, I prefer not always replying
in public to perhaps see if I misunderstood something or was misunderstood.

I have lots of people I "met" in places like this that I keep in touch with
privately and see that as a plus. For those who just want a business-like
experience, no problem. For those who choose levels of anonymity or don't
like being contacted, again, fine for them.

The reality is that I have found people who show up in forums looking almost
legit but actually are not at all who they appear or claim to be even when
they have valid email addresses like ***@gmail.com or even use names of
real people you can search for on the internet but who are not actually the
ones they may even claim.

My message was not to say what people could not do, but to point out they
may be missing out on what some see as collateral opportunities. The people
I have helped privately would not have received it had they only
participated through the group and I would not have received some chances to
learn if I could not ask questions in private that clearly did not fit the
purpose of the group.

So, I am outa this conversation IN PUBLIC. LOL!

-----Original Message-----
From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+avi.e.gross=***@python.org> On
Behalf Of Grant Edwards via Python-list
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2024 5:08 PM
To: python-***@python.org
Subject: Re: Anonymous email users

Post by Roel Schroeven
FWIW, personally I (mostly) don't see the point of replying to people
personally. To me a public mailing list is much like any public forum,
where my expectation is that conversations happen in public. To me it
always feels weird when I get a personal reply when I make a public post
in a mailing list. I mostly ignore those, unless there's really
something in it that's best kept out of the public.

My sentiments exactly. I generally don't even read replies that get
mailed to me. They almost always seem to be copies of replies that
were also posted to the mailing list (which I read using an NNTP
client pointed at news.gmane.io).

--
Grant

[dn]

Post by Roel Schroeven

Post by a***@gmail.com
I simply am thinking that people who do not allow me to easily reply
to them
directly, should be ignored by me and not get my cooperation that way.

FWIW, personally I (mostly) don't see the point of replying to people
personally. To me a public mailing list is much like any public forum,
where my expectation is that conversations happen in public. To me it
always feels weird when I get a personal reply when I make a public post
in a mailing list. I mostly ignore those, unless there's really
something in it that's best kept out of the public. Sometimes people
write long mails with wandering thoughts only loosely related to the
if it's not on-topic enough for the list, it's not on-topic enough for
me either. Not that it bothers me *that* much; I just ignore those. It's
very well possible that's just me, and that other people have different
expectations.

+1

The "public" part is not to embarrass posters, but recognition that
there are likely other people 'out there' (or arriving in-future if they
care to read the archives) experiencing a similar problem. (hence need
for descriptive Subject lines - isn't the most difficult task in
programming 'choosing names'?)

Yes, like @Avi, I have been known to contact folk directly. However,
such for personal purposes - as distinct from the list, and possibly
subjects OT for the list.

When contacted by others off-list, I play it by ear - ignore, personal,
or post response on-list. (some lists/email-clients do seem to prefer
personal replies, even when incoming message is from a list - so easy
accident.)

The Delete-key is your friend!

[Mats Wichmann]

Post by dn
+1
The "public" part is not to embarrass posters, but recognition that
there are likely other people 'out there' (or arriving in-future if they
care to read the archives) experiencing a similar problem. (hence need
for descriptive Subject lines - isn't the most difficult task in
programming 'choosing names'?)

well, one of two, along with cache invalidation and off-by-one errors
(according to the wags).

I do agree with this, but mailman (2) archives aren't particularly
useful for searching, as they're organized in monthly chunks and you
have to keep clicking around - this list doesn't have a search engine as
it's not converted to be one of the mailman 3 lists.

There are supposed to be some search engine incantations to make this
better. I find this one works, though I can never actually remember it
and have to go hunting again each time... picking a random-ish subject
line from this list in the past:

site:mail.python.org inurl:Python-list multiplication

I don't know that we publicise such methods (there are probably others).

[Grant Edwards]

Post by Mats Wichmann

Post by dn
+1
The "public" part is not to embarrass posters, but recognition that
there are likely other people 'out there' (or arriving in-future if they
care to read the archives) experiencing a similar problem. (hence need
for descriptive Subject lines - isn't the most difficult task in
programming 'choosing names'?)

well, one of two, along with cache invalidation and off-by-one errors
(according to the wags).
I do agree with this, but mailman (2) archives aren't particularly
useful for searching, as they're organized in monthly chunks and you
have to keep clicking around - this list doesn't have a search engine as
it's not converted to be one of the mailman 3 lists.

Gmane used to have a usable search feature (along with a decent
threaded web UI to read the arhives), but that got lost during the
great gmane server/domain upheaval of 2016 (or whenever that was). I
still miss it.

--
Grant

[Chris Angelico]

Post by dn
These mailing-lists all run under the Python Code of Conduct.

The newsgroup, however, is not. Which means that anyone who posts on
the newsgroup is subject to no such restrictions - and that might
explain the, shall we say, quite different signal-to-noise ratio of
newsgroup posters compared to mailing list posters.

ChrisA

[Cameron Simpson]

Post by a***@gmail.com
I notice that in some recent discussions, we have users who cannot be
replied to directly as their email addresses are not valid ones, and I

[...]

Post by a***@gmail.com
I know some here suggest that we only reply to the wider community and
they
have a point. But I think there is a role for having some conversations
offline and especially when they are not likely to be wanted, or even
tolerated, by many in the community.
Using such fake or invalid emails makes it hard to answer the person
directly or perhaps politely ask them for more info on their request or
discuss unrelated common interests. Worse, when I reply, unless I use
reply-all, my mailer sends to them futilely. When I do the reply-all, I have
to edit out their name or get a rejection.

I often reply-all (meaning to the list and to the author). And edit the
headers (frankly, often just to discard anything @gmail.com which has
very stupid spam poolicies). If I miss an @invalid.com or whatever,
then whoops.

If I want to reply directly (eg for some kind of feedback rather than a
list type reply) and they've got a bogus address, well then I don't.
Supposedly my reply would be of benefit for them or I shouldn't be doing
it, so their loss. But equally, if they don't want personal off-list
contact, they've expressed their preference. I should respect that.

Plenty of people have reasons to post anonymously, even to a list like
this one. Just assume they've got their reasons and move on.

[Sebastian Wells]

Post by a***@gmail.com
I notice that in some recent discussions, we have users who cannot be
replied to directly as their email addresses are not valid ones, and I
generated from /dev/urandom)
I know some here suggest that we only reply to the wider community and
they have a point. But I think there is a role for having some
conversations offline and especially when they are not likely to be
wanted, or even tolerated, by many in the community.
Using such fake or invalid emails makes it hard to answer the person
directly or perhaps politely ask them for more info on their request or
discuss unrelated common interests. Worse, when I reply, unless I use
reply-all, my mailer sends to them futilely. When I do the reply-all, I
have to edit out their name or get a rejection.

The spammers won the spam wars, so even if you have someone's real
e-mail address, that's no guarantee that you can contact them. You
certainly wouldn't be able to contact me at my real e-mail address,
unless you also had my phone number, so you could call me and tell
me that you sent me an e-mail, and what the subject line was so I
can find it. I don't even open my e-mail inbox unless there's a
specific message I'm expecting to find there right now.

With e-mail addresses being phone-validated, it's not easy to create
a new one either. And even if I did, you can't even trust e-mail
providers not to give your address out to spammers.

The only function e-mail addresses serve now is to positively identify
the sender of a Usenet posting so he can be targeted for harassment,
lawsuits, or worse.

[Barry Scott]

Post by Sebastian Wells
The spammers won the spam wars, so even if you have someone's real
e-mail address, that's no guarantee that you can contact them. You
certainly wouldn't be able to contact me at my real e-mail address,
unless you also had my phone number, so you could call me and tell
me that you sent me an e-mail, and what the subject line was so I
can find it. I don't even open my e-mail inbox unless there's a
specific message I'm expecting to find there right now.

My email address is well known and yes I get spam emails.

I use the wonderful python based spambayes software to detect spam and
file into a Junk folder. It works for 99.9% of the emails I get.

I am subscribed to a lot of mailing lists. I just checked and I am getting ~3,200
emails a month of which less than 200 are spam.

A few years ago the spam count was greater than a 1,000 a month.

I have been using spambayes for a very long time, 20 years I guess at this
point and bayesian categorisation has stood the test of time for me.

For me the spammers have not won, I have the tech to keep ahead of them.

Barry

[Thomas Passin]

Post by Barry Scott

Post by Sebastian Wells
The spammers won the spam wars, so even if you have someone's real
e-mail address, that's no guarantee that you can contact them. You
certainly wouldn't be able to contact me at my real e-mail address,
unless you also had my phone number, so you could call me and tell
me that you sent me an e-mail, and what the subject line was so I
can find it. I don't even open my e-mail inbox unless there's a
specific message I'm expecting to find there right now.

My email address is well known and yes I get spam emails.
I use the wonderful python based spambayes software to detect spam and
file into a Junk folder. It works for 99.9% of the emails I get.

I use the Thunderbird mail client and I just use its built in spam
detector. I don't know how it works but it's pretty darn good. Very
few false positives or false negatives. And it learns each time I
classify a message as "Junk", in case it missed one.

Post by Barry Scott
I am subscribed to a lot of mailing lists. I just checked and I am getting ~3,200
emails a month of which less than 200 are spam.
A few years ago the spam count was greater than a 1,000 a month.
I have been using spambayes for a very long time, 20 years I guess at this
point and bayesian categorisation has stood the test of time for me.
For me the spammers have not won, I have the tech to keep ahead of them.
Barry

[dn]

Post by Thomas Passin

Post by Barry Scott

On 23 Jun 2024, at 06:58, Sebastian Wells via Python-list
The spammers won the spam wars, so even if you have someone's real
e-mail address, that's no guarantee that you can contact them. You
certainly wouldn't be able to contact me at my real e-mail address,
unless you also had my phone number, so you could call me and tell
me that you sent me an e-mail, and what the subject line was so I
can find it. I don't even open my e-mail inbox unless there's a
specific message I'm expecting to find there right now.

My email address is well known and yes I get spam emails.
I use the wonderful python based spambayes software to detect spam and
file into a Junk folder. It works for 99.9% of the emails I get.

I use the Thunderbird mail client and I just use its built in spam
detector.  I don't know how it works but it's pretty darn good.  Very
few false positives or false negatives.  And it learns each time I
classify a message as "Junk", in case it missed one.

Post by Barry Scott
I am subscribed to a lot of mailing lists. I just checked and I am
getting ~3,200
emails a month of which less than 200 are spam.
A few years ago the spam count was greater than a 1,000 a month.
I have been using spambayes for a very long time, 20 years I guess at
this
point and bayesian categorisation has stood the test of time for me.
For me the spammers have not won, I have the tech to keep ahead of them.

Aside from the attractions of the new, and the 'shiny', what
email-antagonists didn't anticipate, was that as fast as they moved to
non-email messaging, the spammers, advertisers, and malcontents would
simply do the same. Thus, a variation on whack-a-mole, as folk move from
platform to platform trying to stay-ahead and find an illusion of
safety. Quite how one out-runs human-nature is an issue
philosophised-over by the (Ancient) Greeks (and was no-doubt old even-then).

Paradoxically, applying for an account elsewhere usually involves
providing an email address. Even backing-up a cell-phone (communication
tool) to the cloud requires an email address(!!!)

Most of the non-email platforms are provided by organisations who have
'other uses' for your personal-data (and not forgetting GMail and MSFT's
email services).

Python mailing-lists are covered by the Code of Conduct and monitored by
ListAdmins. Thus, there are controls which limit the impact which
advertisers and others with non-pythonic aims might otherwise exert!

[Chris Angelico]

Post by dn
Python mailing-lists are covered by the Code of Conduct and monitored by
ListAdmins. Thus, there are controls which limit the impact which
advertisers and others with non-pythonic aims might otherwise exert!

So long as there's a newsgroup gateway, those controls are toothless.

ChrisA

[Anton Shepelev]

Post by Chris Angelico

Post by dn
Python mailing-lists are covered by the Code of Conduct
and monitored by ListAdmins. Thus, there are controls
which limit the impact which advertisers and others with
non-pythonic aims might otherwise exert!

So long as there's a newsgroup gateway, those controls are
toothless.

The gateway operator can have the usual anti-spam software
installed, and of course there is Gmane:

<https://gmane.io/>

which actually subscribes users to mailing lists (on their
behalf). Gmane's NNTP server is: news.gmane.io .

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, 26 Jun 2024 at 03:40, Anton Shepelev via Python-list

Post by Anton Shepelev

Post by Chris Angelico

Post by dn
Python mailing-lists are covered by the Code of Conduct
and monitored by ListAdmins. Thus, there are controls
which limit the impact which advertisers and others with
non-pythonic aims might otherwise exert!

So long as there's a newsgroup gateway, those controls are
toothless.

The gateway operator can have the usual anti-spam software
installed

Anti-spam is not the same as CoC and admins, though. Without putting
an actual moderation barrier in there, it's still toothless.

(Yes, there are a scant few posters who've been blocked from the
gateway, but it's rare.)

ChrisA

[Grant Edwards]

Post by Barry Scott

Post by Sebastian Wells
The spammers won the spam wars, so even if you have someone's real
e-mail address, that's no guarantee that you can contact them. [...]

My email address is well known and yes I get spam emails.

I've been puzzled by this for a long time. Many people talk about how
they get so much spam e-mail that there's little chance they'll notice
if I send them an e-mail.

I've been using the same e-mail address for about 20 years. I've use
that e-mail address with probably close to 100 retailers, charities,
open-source projects, media sites, and various other organizations.

I get at most a few spam emails per week [I just checked my spam
folder: 8 in the past 30 days]. And Gmail is very, very close to 100%
accurate at filtering them out. I can't remember the last time I
actually got a spam message in my inbox.

Post by Barry Scott
A few years ago the spam count was greater than a 1,000 a month.

I'm baffled. Is Gmail silently rejecting that much junk before it
even gets to the filter that puts stuff into my "spam" folder?

--
Grant

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, 25 Jun 2024 at 11:41, Grant Edwards via Python-list

Post by Grant Edwards
I've been using the same e-mail address for about 20 years. I've use
that e-mail address with probably close to 100 retailers, charities,
open-source projects, media sites, and various other organizations.

Mostly the same, although in my case, I've had multiple email
addresses for different purposes (and still kept all of them for
decades).

Post by Grant Edwards
I get at most a few spam emails per week [I just checked my spam
folder: 8 in the past 30 days]. And Gmail is very, very close to 100%
accurate at filtering them out. I can't remember the last time I
actually got a spam message in my inbox.

Post by Barry Scott
A few years ago the spam count was greater than a 1,000 a month.

I'm baffled. Is Gmail silently rejecting that much junk before it
even gets to the filter that puts stuff into my "spam" folder?

It really depends on how you count. On my mail server (can't get stats
for Gmail), I have a number of anti-spam and anti-abuse rules that
apply prior to the Bayesian filtering (for example, protocol
violations), and any spam that gets blocked by those rules isn't shown
in my stats. And then I have a further set of rules that nuke some of
the most blatant spam, and finally the regular trainable filter. I
should probably keep better stats on the stuff I don't keep, but at
the moment, all I actually track is the ones that the filter sees -
which is roughly 25-50 a day.

So.... yeah, Gmail is probably rejecting that much junk, but most of
it for protocol violations.

ChrisA

[a***@gmail.com]

This discussion has wandered far from my original mention that I found it
hard to reply to people using an invalid email address. I see no real
connection to python except insofar as at least one spam-filter mentioned is
written in python!

Just to add an observation, the people writing here have obviously had many
different experiences with their email addresses and whether yours is
hijacked in some way, and made less useful, can even just become down to
random luck.

But SPAM filters can also be manipulated and cause you to lose mail. I think
some people have been reporting email from a source they do not favor, such
as for political reasons, that then ends up being junked for people who
would welcome the messages. And, I can well imagine how something like a
post about python programs can start being filtered out because some key
words commonly use end up being used a lot in some kind of SPAM and the
filter "learns" to filter those out. Imagine of "python" appeared in lots of
actual SPAM messages as the war moved on, such as in the metadata designed
to make it look legit.

Email addresses can go bad for many reasons. My wife had a nice simple
address like ***@gmail.com that was messed up probably by
well-meaning people when another Jane Smith had an email address like
smith.jane or janesmith123 and they or others typed in the more
straightforward ones. It seems we ended up getting odd email from many
continents such as e-tickets for airplanes, initial estimates or bills from
vendors for products in places we have never been for services rendered in
say Tennessee or South Africa (well, I've been in Tennessee, but) and
subscriptions to internet magazines or groups that sent lots of messages, or
conversations between lots of people (all To: or Cc:) that included her
email address wrongly and even when she replied to ask to be taken off, the
conversations continued for months as many kept hitting reply-all, ...)

And, obviously, with so many people using the address wrongly, SPAM
followed.

Of course, choosing a strange name designed not to be typed by accident, has
it's own disadvantages.

But for those who want me to CALL their unspecified phone number and tell
them the subject line and then maybe you will look for my message,
FUGGEDABOUTIT! I have a cousin who does a trick with her phone service
where she never answers and I have to run some gauntlet to identify myself
and then wait for a call back. After a few times, I solved the problem and
simply never call her.

Admittedly, making it hard for an email address to be abused in a forum like
this is understandable. Making it very hard to reach you legitimately when
the message is that your house is burning or just that your appointment is
canceled, may not work as well as you think.

And, FYI, I check my junkmail regularly and I have a fairly high rate of
finding things, including posts on forums like this one, that are NOT in my
opinion junk as I ordered them and they are on topic and not easily visible
as having committed some kind of sin. And as I use many email services, I
still find a high rate of false negatives everywhere.

It would not surprise me if a phrase like "not SPAM" gets this message
dumped into /dev/null


-----Original Message-----
From: Python-list <python-list-bounces+avi.e.gross=***@python.org> On
Behalf Of Chris Angelico via Python-list
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2024 9:49 PM
To: python-***@python.org
Subject: Re: Anonymous email users

On Tue, 25 Jun 2024 at 11:41, Grant Edwards via Python-list

Post by Grant Edwards
I've been using the same e-mail address for about 20 years. I've use
that e-mail address with probably close to 100 retailers, charities,
open-source projects, media sites, and various other organizations.

Mostly the same, although in my case, I've had multiple email
addresses for different purposes (and still kept all of them for
decades).

Post by Grant Edwards
I get at most a few spam emails per week [I just checked my spam
folder: 8 in the past 30 days]. And Gmail is very, very close to 100%
accurate at filtering them out. I can't remember the last time I
actually got a spam message in my inbox.

Post by Barry Scott
A few years ago the spam count was greater than a 1,000 a month.

I'm baffled. Is Gmail silently rejecting that much junk before it
even gets to the filter that puts stuff into my "spam" folder?

It really depends on how you count. On my mail server (can't get stats
for Gmail), I have a number of anti-spam and anti-abuse rules that
apply prior to the Bayesian filtering (for example, protocol
violations), and any spam that gets blocked by those rules isn't shown
in my stats. And then I have a further set of rules that nuke some of
the most blatant spam, and finally the regular trainable filter. I
should probably keep better stats on the stuff I don't keep, but at
the moment, all I actually track is the ones that the filter sees -
which is roughly 25-50 a day.

So.... yeah, Gmail is probably rejecting that much junk, but most of
it for protocol violations.

ChrisA

[Anton Shepelev]

Post by Sebastian Wells
The spammers won the spam wars, so even if you have
someone's real e-mail address, that's no guarantee that
you can contact them.

No so with me. My e-mail address here is munged, but in a
very obvious way, and no, my mailbox is not overwhelmed with
spam.

I make a habit of reporting spam via:

1. https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml
2. https://submit.spamhaus.org/submit/

They maintain blacklists of e-mail providers or notify them
of spam e-mails. It helps.