Subject: Spam on CCL and my appeal for your help

From: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 12:16:42 -0400 (EDT)

Dear CCL Subscribers...

Some of you may have noticed that I was out of the country for over 3 weeks.
But of course, my "caring eye" {:-)} was with CCL most of the time whenever
I could plug myself into some "wire".

Few appeals, warnings, etc...

We fight spam diligently, but it is not an easy fight. CCL is on any possible
spammers list in the world, and we get at times a 1000 spam messages a day.
Price of fame and glory {:-)}. Of course you do not see it much...
But it is a constant struggle... Spammers devise more sophisticated exploits,
and we counter them... It takes resources... Please read on, and at the end,
I will tell you what to do, in case when your legitimate message is being
bounced back from CCL.

But now, an APPEAL FOR HELP... Our funding from federal and state sources
reflects a well known trend. Our costs and resources usage are up, while our
support is down. The long term outlook does not look good, either, and
it would be a pity, if CCL had to go after so many years of fruitful
operation. But I am very positive that you will help, and we can prove to
our parent organization that we are an important asset. OSC is very generous
and provides us with high-bandwidth Internet connection, IP address space,
office space, technical support, etc., etc., at no cost, but expect as to
cover at least some of personnel and hardware costs. PLEASE HELP NOW!!!

You can help in a number of ways:
  1) Give us a DONATION (tax deductible in US and many other countries).
     Small donations are welcome! We will gladly take many $20 donations.
     Make check to "OSC Development Fund (CCL)" and send check to me:
     Jan Labanowski, OSC, 1224 Kinnear Rd, Columbus, OH 43212-1163, USA
     We will add you to the CCL Sponsors Page at:
         http://www.ccl.net/cgi-bin/donors
     You can also do a bank transfer, or FAX us a simple Credit Card
     form to: 614-688-3998 (secure FAX in OSC Business office). 

       Donation  for CCL in the amount of:.................... US Dollars

       Card: Visa/MC    Your Name:

       Your Address:  [We need it to send you the a Thank you letter for
                      Tax Purposes, since your donation may be TAX Deductible]

       Card Number:                         Expiration Month/Year:

       Signature:

     You will get a letter confirming your donation for tax purposes.
     For bigger (1000 USD or more) donations we will put your logo and link on
     the CCL page of your choice as our way of saying Thank You!!!
     If you need a supporting letter from CCL, or more details,
     do not hesitate to contact Jan Labanowski at [email-masked].

  2) PURCHASE THE CCL ARCHIVES from us. You will have a set of 4 CDs which
     contain all files, software, and messages from CCL archive. They can
     be easily searched with grep or whatever. They are $250 for a set.
     You can also purchase multiple sets. We offer a regular billing
     procedure, so you can pay from your grant or other institutional
     funds by PO, check, credit card, wire, etc.  Details can be found at: 
            http://www.ccl.net/chemistry/aboutccl/supporting/services

  3) ADVERTISE YOUR JOB OPPORTUNITIES with us, and if you are successful,
     please send us $100. We are being praised for capturing attention of
     selective audience which uses computers in chemistry, life sciences,
     and materials design. We are told that we bring more CVs than ads
     in traditional trade publications at a fraction of the cost.
     Paying for our service is voluntary and on honor basis. Pay if you can.
     More details:
         http://www.ccl.net/jobs

Now... More about the spam defenses... We use several layers. Basically,
we collect spam messages and then extract IP addresses of spammers from the
headers with scripts. Then, we block the subnets with 3 first octets of the
spammer. Our latest spammers list is available at: 
   http://www.ccl.net/spammers.txt
(we cannot advertize it for legal purposes, but you are a member).
Check, if your mail gateway is there by any chance Yes, we know,
it is radical, and innocent blood is being spilled. If some hackers
invaded one of your departmental computers, and spammed us, your
innocent computer will be blocked. If your message bounces as: "Access denied"
it means that your computer was blacklisted as a spam generator.
Send the copy of your mail to [email-masked], and I will usually remove your
computer from the black list, and resend your message to CCL. Please do not
hesitate to do this... We really want your messages appear on CCL, and we
are here to help. At the same time, imagine what would happen if the spam
was appearing on CCL. This is a painful compromise... Sorry...

The blacklisting of IP addresses is the reactive measure (we had to be spammed
first to add it to a blacklist). We also use the pro-active measures. Our
distribution script checks a large dictionary of words commonly found in
spam messages. We also check the consistency of e-mail header lines. Note,
we do not check if message comes from a subscriber of CCL. We get many
subscriptions from people which we suspect are prospective spammers.
We do not have resources to do "background checks" and have a policy to
sign up everyone, THOUGH WE PREFER THAT YOU SEND US YOUR SUBSCRIPTION FROM
AN INSTITUTIONAL ADDRESS.

Sometimes legitimate messages are being stopped since they contain words
which may imply spam (e.g., sex vs. spin sextet state). The messages rejected
this way are reviewed, usually at least once a day, and resent if found
legitimate. Unfortunately, the students working for CCL are not computational
chemists, and are asked to act with "extreme prejudice". If your message
does not appear on CCL within two days, please bug me directly:
[email-masked] (send me an original message) and I will resent it.

There are also many other tests which are done on the messages (e.g., for
possible viruses, and hidden junk in attachments). It is constant fight
to get ahead of the latest devices of evil forces of the Internet. We hope
that this is working for the common good, and that our effort is worth it.
We would hate to send a single message with a malicious virus and infect
a few thousands computers with a single mistake. You can help us a lot
by sending plain text, unencoded mail, with no attachments. In most cases
this is what you really want.

Please understand that when your message is stopped or bounced, it is nothing
personal. We try to do our best and defend the CCL against malice, naivete
(e.g., those poor kids hoping to earn millions on spamming people with
junk mail which nobody reads), oversight, and irresponsibility of some
Internet users. When we review messages, the address of the from line
is our list consideration, as it is easily forged.

Some final advice... If you get a spam message, and it says: send request
to UNSUBSCRIBE from our service, do not send any requests. They just want
a confirmation that your address is valid, and that you received their junk
mail. Also, do not open any attachments when you are not ABSOLUTELY SURE
that they are safe. Do not always trust the originator e-mail address.
People ask me often while that get the e-mail from [email-masked] which
advertises "teen site". It did not come from me... Someone forged mail 
headers and used my address hoping that you will recognize it and open the
message. To really see where your message is coming from, you need to look
at the top Received: line of the header of your message. While it is easy
to do under UNIX with most mail readers, the MS products will usually not
allow you to easily look at headers (they want to keep it EASY -- but the
problem is that it AIN'T EASY).

Thank you for your attention and help...

Jan Labanowski, [email-masked]
The CCL Keeper...

Jan K. Labanowski            |    phone: 614-292-9279,  FAX: 614-292-7168
Ohio Supercomputer Center    |    E-mail: [email-masked] 
1224 Kinnear Rd,             |    http://www.ccl.net/~jkl
Columbus, OH 43212-1163      |    http://www.ccl.net/    http://asdn.net/