
Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List (2005) [pdf] - af16090
https://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf
======
modernerd
The story behind this is here: [https://scholarlyoa.com/bogus-journal-accepts-
profanity-lace...](https://scholarlyoa.com/bogus-journal-accepts-profanity-
laced-anti-spam-paper/)

“After receiving a spam email from the International Journal of Advanced
Computer Technology, Dr. Peter Vamplew of Federation University Australia’s
School of Engineering and Information Technology sent the anti-spam article as
a reply to the spam email without any other message, expecting that they might
open it and read it, but not that it would be considered for publication.

To his surprise, the journal accepted the paper and sent him an acceptance
email that had two PDF attachments. One was a formal statement of acceptance
and the second was the reviewer report.”

~~~
glangdale
There are so many stories like this. My favorite (although this one is very
good) is that that a bunch of academics got together and pasted together some
absolute nonsense (I assume this is from the era before SciGen) and submitted
it to a conference.

When it was accepted they revealed the hoax, and the conference admins claimed
that it was because these academics were obviously very good, they figured the
paper was just a placeholder and would be fixed up in the final version. The
only problem was that the academics in question had used fake names on the
submission and the affiliation of "The Austrian Naval Academy".

(amusingly, there historically _was_ an Austrian Naval Academy and an Austrian
Navy, back during the Austro-Hungarian Empire period - Capt von Trapp of Sound
of Music fame is a famous example of one of their officers)

~~~
drfuchs
For the geographically-challenged: present-day Austria is land-locked, and
thus has no call for a navy, let alone a naval academy.

~~~
have_faith
Why would that prevent them from having a small navy? Assuming some country is
happy for them to pay to have a port somewhere. Although they don't it
wouldn't surprise me much to learn that they did have one despite being land-
locked.

~~~
squarefoot
Many moons ago I reconnected with an old friend who moved to Switzerland years
before; just imagine my face when he told me he was working for a Swiss
shipowner:).

~~~
aasasd
Well, Switzerland may not have access to a sea, but it has a haven. A tax
haven. A lot of ships are owned by corporations in those.

------
nathell
This reminds me of Doug Zongker's "Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken"
[0]. Sadly, Google Scholar appears to no longer be showing its citation count,
although, IIRC, it used to be well in the hundreds.

[0]:
[https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf](https://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf)

~~~
bristleworm
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk)

~~~
scott_s
A classic. For those who haven't seen it before, it's worth watching the whole
thing.

------
SimonB_
I notice the Mail Avenger link at the top.

> Mail Avenger is a highly-configurable, MTA-independent SMTP server daemon.
> It lets users run messages through filters like ClamAV and SpamAssassin
> during SMTP transactions, so the server can reject mail before assuming
> responsibility for its delivery. Other unique features include TCP SYN
> fingerprint and network route recording, verification of sender addresses
> through SMTP callbacks, SPF (sender policy framework) as a general policy
> language, qmail-style control over both SMTP-level behavior and local
> delivery of extension addresses, mail-bomb protection, integration with
> kernel firewalls, and more.

------
gandalfian
Double opt in required should be a law. When my email is given by mistake by
similarly named people but I can't correct the mistake because only customers
can contact them. Oh the iritating irony of getting security tips from the
coop bank when I'm not the account holder.

~~~
mcv
I've had this problem with a Netflix subscription in a foreign language. I
kept getting mail for it, but couldn't read what it was about, and couldn't
easily opt out. The only option was to reset password, login, change the
language, and then cancel the subscription.

At least I was fortunate I could easily cancel the subscription. You can't do
that with bank accounts.

~~~
kjs3
Cut-n-paste into Google Translate to fix the unreadable problem. Interesting
they made it that easy to cancel.

------
davalapar
Jesus christ the graphs are even borderline hilarious

------
imurray
Should have used pdflatex with

    
    
       \usepackage{microtype}
    

in the preamble. The hyphenation would have been much nicer.

------
jevgeni
We need the same but for newsletter modal ads on websites. And newsletters
themselves.

------
diogenescynic
Anyone had a professional mailing list or spammer add your email and have no
unsubscribe feature? Had this happen and had to find the guy on LinkedIn and
tell him to remove my email.

~~~
criddell
You reminded me of something Cory Doctorow wrote about a few years ago. He
wanted Mail Chimp to tell him all the mailing lists he was on and they
wouldn't.

I don't know if they've changed it since then, but as soon as he mentioned it
I thought that it was a great suggestion. There should definitely be a way
that I, as the owner of an email address, can log into Mail Chimp and manage
what they are going to send to me.

~~~
diogenescynic
I like that idea. Reminds me of how some credit cards now show you all the
stores that have re-occurring or automatic payments. I like the added
transparency because then it makes it easier to opt out if needed.

------
walterkrankheit
Did they get off the fucking mailing list?

------
dvfjsdhgfv
Do you know what software was used for the graph on p. 3? Usually I'm using
GraphViz, but the arrows are not as nice.

~~~
jomar
It looks like Kernighan's Pic.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pic_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pic_language)

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Thank you. I had a brief look at the existing implementations like the GNU PIC
and and unfortunately the arrows lack the finesse of the original.

------
parvenu74
I've been in the habit for years of making liberal use of the catch-all
feature of email to make up email addresses unique to everything. This makes
it easy to add NDR bounces to specific email addresses that end up on f-ing
mailing lists I don't want or for which the address was sold/given to other
groups (political parties are the WORST about this!).

~~~
kjs3
Right there with you. There are exceptions in all the (US, at least) rules for
spam email, spam sms, do-not-call list, etc. for political parties, and boy do
they take advantage.

------
rememberlenny
Is there one of these for recruiters?

~~~
paulie_a
I just ask them honest questions that are insulting to their ability to
recruit

~~~
sam_lowry_
Can you elaborate?

~~~
andrewflnr
Probably along the lines of "This position is for a front end developer with 5
years of React, but my resume clearly indicates that I do .NET backend work.
What made you think I was a good fit?"

~~~
paulie_a
You nailed it exactly.

------
chmaynard
The three certainties of modern life: death, taxes, and unsolicited marketing
emails.

------
musicale
When Kohler and Maziéres win the Turing award, we'll know why.

------
thasaleni
Funny, I wrote an article about why people don't cite Wikipedia as a source
for information in scholary papers when in fact Scholary papers can fall to
the same trap of being "not reliable" the same way wikipedia is here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21989531)
not so long ago

