Spammers don a friendly mask

Spammers don a friendly mask (excerpt)
Stefanie Olsen, ZDNet.com, April 12 2002

...Dan Birchall, executive director of advocacy group the SpamCon Foundation, suggests that recipients contact their Internet service provider to see if it is using proper filters to help stop the forgeries.

"You have to be a little bit skeptical," Birchall said.

(Addendum: I was referring to being skeptical of forgeries, not of service providers.)

No Subscription for Spam Relief

No Subscription for Spam Relief (excerpt)
Joanna Glasner, Wired News, April 5 2002

...In many cases, replies to spam end up going nowhere because the address from which the message was sent has already been shut down, said Dan Birchall, executive director of SpamCon Foundation.

"The odds are very good that at the beginning of their spam run, it'll get reported by someone who doesn't like spam," Birchall said.

He added it typically takes few complaints for an ISP to suspend or cancel an e-mail account.