Stopping Spam | O'Reilly Media

Stopping Spam Stamping Out Unwanted Email and News Postings

By Alan Schwartz, Simson Garfinkel
First Edition October 1998
Pages: 197
ISBN 10: 1-56592-388-X | ISBN 13: 9781565923881
(Average of 2 Customer Reviews)

This book is OUT OF PRINT.

Book description

This book describes spam -- unwanted email messages and inappropriate news articles -- and explains what you and your Internet service providers and administrators can do to prevent it, trace it, stop it, and even outlaw it. Contains a wealth of advice, technical tools, and additional technical and community resources.
Full Description

This is a book about spam -- unwanted email messages and inappropriate news articles -- and what you can do to prevent it, stop it, and even outlaw it. It's a book for people who have seen their mailboxes fill up with useless messages and unsolicited advertisements, and who are tired of footing the bill for them in their Internet service charges. It's a book for people who are upset that they can't find the on-topic postings in their once-helpful newsgroups, and fear that the community of newsgroup readers will dissolve in disgust. Stopping Spam looks at the problem of spam and explains ways you can eliminate unwanted messages and news postings. It provides information of use to individual users (who don't want to be bothered by spam) and to system administrators (also news administrators, mail administrators, and network administrators, who are responsible for minimizing spam problems within their organizations or service providers). It covers:

Introduction to spam: what is it, why is it a problem, who are the spammers and why do they do it, what are the types of spam (spam that sells things, spam that contains political messages, spam that hurts people's reputations), what is its history, what is its impact on the Internet now and in the future?
Internet messaging: a brief look at the technical underpinnings of Internet messaging to explain how email and spam work.
User's guides to email and news spam: how to protect your email address, filter email and news articles, and respond to spam.
Administrator's guide: how to trace spam, make policy choices for your site, block both incoming and outgoing spam, and select the right technical tools.
Community responses: how to join forces to defeat spam. There are many possible responses to spam: simply delete it, complain to spammers and/or their service providers, share information, trap spammers, litigate, campaign for legislative solutions, use the media.
Other resources: offline and online documents, tools, mailing lists, and more.

Browse within this book

Featured customer reviews

Stopping Spam Review, April 05 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Fred Jones [Respond | View]

i just bought "stopping spam" this afternoon...(4/4/2001)

in many ways i am a "newbie"...

i got "stopping spam" at one of the big book chains..

because it was close to home,

i was there looking for another book which i never found,

anyways, i just started subscriping to various "list"

and i wanted to know how to get off...

before i got on...

i was worried with the copyright date of "october '98,

per Moore's law that was "forever ago"...

thanks for the "erata" pages on the "o'reilly" site...

(i had visited your site before buying the book,

and therefore, figured it would be there.. Tx

Stopping Spam Review, January 01 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Steven Jackson [Respond | View]

Don't let the publication date scare you off. This book is timeless in its applicability. It covers all types of spam very nicely, and is acutely aware of the potential speech-related issues content-based filtering can bring about.

This book offers many options for combatting spam on the user and system levels, and makes sure to present the best way to stop spam: by teaching responsible system administration and shutting down open mail relays and public NNTP servers that allow posting.

I have had to admin mail and news servers for clients in the past, and I personally receive about 30 pieces of unwanted email daily. I've been particularly interested in the Procmail-based "friendly sender database", and the book presents the solution in a clear, concise fashion.

If you're tired of receiving more spam than real email, or having to really look hard for high quality, on topic postings in your newsgroups, then I strongly recommend this book.

Stopping Spam Review, June 23 1998
Submitted by Karl A. Krueger [Respond | View]

"This book describes spam -- unwanted email messages and
inappropriate news articles..."

This is a problem. On USENET, at least, a critical part of
the spam argument has been to define "spam". Because of the
undesirability of content-based censorship, spam on USENET
is not generally defined as "inappropriate news articles"
but rather as articles which are excessively multiply-
posted, *regardless of content*. (See the FAQs for
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, among other places.)

To ignore this consensus is unlike O'Reilly.

Read all reviews

Media reviews "A good read and a useful resource for the PC user."
--Computer Shopper, April 2002

" a valuable book on an important subject."
--Ken Fermoyle, PC Clubhouse News, January 2001

"an excellent tutorial on tracing and responding to Spam"
--Scott Atwood in San Jose Mercury News, Dec 29, 2000

Read all reviews

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