Skip to content

UNSOLITED E_MAILS: Integrate R data-analysis projects with Microsoft Office for free

9 messages · Gorden T Jemwa, Doran, Harold, Douglas Bates +4 more

Gorden T Jemwa
# 
Dear R Admins,

I received an unsolicited e-mail from BlueInference as an R 
user. Does it mean that R that our e-mails (and  names) is 
sharing it's user database with third parties without our 
consent? Or perhaps the BlueInference guys are using an 
e-mail address miner to get our contact details?



[SNIP]

Dear Gorden Jemwa,

As a fellow R user, I am sure you agree with me that R is a 
dear gift from the R-project community that should enjoy 
broad use.  Towards that end, we?ve built a software 
solution directed at the very large community of Microsoft 
Office users, called Inference for Office.  It combines the 
powerful data-analysis capabilities of R with the familiar 
and flexible word-processing and data-preparation features 
of Microsoft Word and Excel.  We are making Inference for 
Office available for free to R users at educational and 
non-profit research institutions.  A free trial is available 
for everyone.

With Inference for Office, you can assemble all the elements 
of an R data-analysis project (text, data, R objects, R 
code) into dynamic documents.  These dynamic documents can 
then be executed in real-time to create results documents 
containing all the output and graphics.  If Inference for 
Office is of no interest to you, please disregard this 
message and accept our humble apologies for having bothered you.

If Inference for Office sounds like it might useful, you can 
obtain additional information by visiting our website and 
viewing a two-minute screencast overview of Inference for 
Office:

http://www.inference.us

While you're there, you can also download a free trial of 
Inference for Office

To your success,

  --Ben

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
. . . . .
Ben Hinchliffe
Inference Evangelist
BlueReference, Inc.
ben.hinchliffe at bluereference.com
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
. . . . .
website:  www.inference.us
(Ted Harding)
#
On 18-Mar-08 12:08:44, Gorden T Jemwa wrote:
It would not be difficult to mine a database of email addresses
from the R-help archives. Each month's postings can be downloaded
as a .gz file. Each posting in the resulting unzipped .txt file
has a line of the form

  From: user.name at email.domain

and all that's then needed is to replace " at " with "@", and
you have the email address.

On a Unix system, a quick 'grep | sed' would do the job
in a second!

In this case, the spam was clearly carefully targeted at R users,
so quite possibly they took a bit more trouble over it (to the
point of extracting full names as well).

I can't see the R people deliberately sharing their database,
and the list of subscribed email addresses is accessible only
to the list owners. So it seems much more likely that the
publicly readable archives have been mined along the lines
I suggest above.

Best wishes,
Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 18-Mar-08                                       Time: 12:32:30
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
Doran, Harold
# 
Can a CAPTCHA be implemented as a prevenative measure
Douglas Bates
# 
Usually a captcha is used to prevent creation of email accounts for
use by spammers.  (There was an interesting article recently on
whether the Gmail captcha scheme had been broken so that spammers
could create masses of gmail accounts.  The general conclusion is that
the capcha scheme is intact but spammers hire people in low-wage
countries to manually respond to the captcha challenge.)

What Ted has suggested and what I am confident is the case is that
email addresses of posters were obtained from list archives or
something like that.  I know for a fact that the R Foundation is not
selling any email lists. The idea that R Core has engaged in a
nefarious money-making scheme of spending more than a decade
developing high-quality open source software, providing support,
enhancements, conferences, email lists, etc. so they could "cash out"
by selling a mailing list for a modest amount of money seems, well,
unlikely.

If email addresses are being extracted from the archives then the only
place a captcha would help is when viewing the archives.  Requiring
everyone to submit the solution to a captcha before retrieving a
message from the archives would be tedious and make the archives
essentially useless.  Besides, all that is required is for one person
to legitimately subscribe to the lists and run their own filters on
the incoming email to extract the addresses of posters.  My guess is
that Ben Hinchliffe or someone else at Bluereference.com is already
subscribed.

The best way to discourage such questionable practices is not to
patronize organizations that use them.
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 7:48 AM, Doran, Harold <HDoran at air.org> wrote:
Doran, Harold
# 
I think on the python list, when you review the archives, the poster
address is viewed like a CAPTCHA. So, it makes it slightly more
difficult (though not impossible) to pullout poster emails addresses and
replace john.doe at domainname.com
Rory Winston
# 
Me too. Getting directly spammed like this is really annoying. I dont mind a
general post to the list, but individually spamming each member of the list
is unacceptable. Especially as I have no interest in the stupid product in
question.
Gorden T Jemwa wrote:

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        
      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      (Ted Harding)
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On 19-Mar-08 10:34:12, Rory Winston wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
It's not worth giving in to negative emotions when you receive
this stuff. It's on the same footing as a bird-dropping on
you car windscreen -- just wipe it off, and carry on as usual.

However, I do agree that individually spamming each member of
the list is unacceptable.

I just received my personalised copy too.

I note from the headers that it was distributed by cpbounce.com
See:

  http://www.aboutus.org/Icpbounce.com

I also see a header:

X-List-Unsubscribe:
<http://app.icontact.com/icp/
listunsubscribe.php?r=8703476&l=4762&s=VH7B&m=121192&c=224770>

[all one line]

Does that mean that either I, or us, or the R-help list,
am/are/is now subscribed to some icpbounce spam-dissemination
list?

It is clear that the particular sender, Ben Hinchliffe,
has been acting reprehensibly. This would possibly be a
breach of the Data Protection Act and or Misuse of Computers
Act in the UK.

But it also seems possible that we may now collectively be
in the clutches of this icpbounce bunch.

I hate to suggest it (they have enough on their plates in
any case), but might the R-help owners consider following
this up with icpnounce and/or Hinchliffe, and getting this
undone?

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 19-Mar-08                                       Time: 14:18:13
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

  
  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Duncan Murdoch
    

    

      
      #
    

  


  

      
On 3/19/2008 10:18 AM, (Ted Harding) wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
I don't think this is a reasonable request.  The mailing list admins 
have no more or less ability to deal with this than anyone else on the 
list.  If you don't like the spam, talk to the spammer (or the spammer's 
service provider), or "just wipe it off".

Duncan Murdoch