[Ontbirds]Ontbirds and SPAM

[Mark Cranford]

Birders

Just got back this morning on a red-eye flight from a birding trip. I'm 
still a little sleep deprived. For the last three weeks the list has 
been ably monitored by my brother Tim. Thank you, Tim.

The recent spam message entitled "MIRIAM N sent you a special gift" was 
sent to the entire Ontbirds list and its 2000 plus subscribers from a 
registered Ontbirds subscriber.  Blubet.com is something that bills 
itself as 'social betting' a form of social networking similar to 
Facebook except that its focus is on betting (popularity polls?) using 
imaginary 'money'.  Something I would ignore.

One of the more common forms of email address gathering used to build up 
social networks is to ask a user of their service to invite others to 
join the network.  If you accept the service (Facebook, Blubet etc) it 
will access your address book and send email invitations to all 
addresses listed including ontbirds at hwcn.org.

Future messages containing the word BluBet are now blocked for review by 
Ontbirds software.

Ontbirds employs a number of strategies to block spam and viruses. 
Without detailing the works, first-time posts from new subscribers are 
held for review. If you unsubscribe then resubscribe at a later date, 
your first post is reviewed before going to the list. I then have to 
reset a moderation flag so that future posts go directly to the list. 
There are many email addresses that predate these settings. So there 
could be potential 'trojan horses' - accidents happen.

As always discussing spam and virus related problems on Ontbirds is not 
to be encouraged. It may feel good but it just annoys others and 
compounds the problem.

Back to my field notes.

-- 

Mark Cranford
ONTBIRDS Coordinator
Mississauga, Ont.
mark.cranford at ofo.ca
905 279 9576