Overview of spam from Softoptions

15 Feb 2006

Note: Automated spam monitoring stopped several years ago. These web pages are maintained for historical reasons. Some may be updated from time to time as news about the individual sites becomes available.

No spam today

General information about Softoptions

Added 2 July 1998 due to persistant rogue cancels.

Ownership & Contact Info
Site history
Netnews Feeds
Sample Cancel

Ownership & Contact Info

Whois identifies Softoptions as

Registrant:
SoftSource Computing Inc. (SOFTOPTIONS-DOM)
   100, 622 5 Ave. SW
   Calgary, AB T2P0M6
   CA

   Domain Name: SOFTOPTIONS.COM

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
      Softsource Internet  (SI69-ORG) internet@SOFTOPTIONS.COM
      403-297-1641, Fax- 403-297-1618
   Billing Contact:
      curtis, lisa  (LC3091) lcurtis@SOFTOPTIONS.COM
      403-297-1611 (FAX) 403-297-1618

   Record last updated on 09-Mar-98.
   Record created on 10-Aug-95.
   Database last updated on 2-Jul-98 04:27:32 EDT.

Site history

2 July 1998: Added to tracking list.

NetNews Feeds

Softoptions receives netnews feeds from the following sites that I know of:

Telus Advanced Communications (whois)

These sites have been added to the reporting list for Softoptions to keep them aware of the problem, and to suggest that they terminate their netnews feed with Softoptions until such time that Softoptions adopts an anti-spam policy and regains control of their servers.

Sample Cancel

Path: nntp.csuchico.edu!newshub.csu.net!www.nntp.primenet.com! globalcenter0!news.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com! cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news1.bellglobal.com! news.agtac.net!207.34.97.3!usr44-dialup10.mix2.atlanta.mci.net! cyberspam!not-for-mail From: howardk@iswest.com Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.usenet Subject: cmsg cancel <35a2097c.112347050@news.alt.net> Control: cancel <35a2097c.112347050@news.alt.net> Date: 2 Jul 1998 17:57:01 GMT Organization: Internet Specialties West, Inc. Lines: 2 Approved: Y Message-ID: <cancel.35a2097c.112347050@news.alt.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.34.97.3 X-No-Archive: Yes Spam cancelled. Autocancel spam type: N.A.N-A.U

To report spam, contact one or more of

A complete history may also be available.

General notes:

Only a small subset of usenet (261 groups) was sampled. Only articles that hadn't been cancelled yet were counted. Actual spam may have been much greater.
Heuristics that detect single-posted articles are, by their very nature, somewhat shaky. Innocent articles may be tagged as spam because they share certain characteristics or keywords with actual spam. In particular, a posted spam complaint that includes the spam in its entirety will very often be identified as spam.
Some posts may be forgeries intended to look like they came from Softoptions.
The first entry in the history file is not used to compute peak or average spam counts, as this entry covers an unknown number of days. This may cause an apparent disreprency between spam totals and spam averages.

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The opinions expressed on this page are solely those of Ed Falk and do not necessarily represent those of any other organization, (although I hope they do). I wish to thank Rahul.net for hosting this web page.