I was puzzled recently when a friend couldn’t get his email through to me. We have our own spam filter we called SpamQuiz which nicely takes care of Nigerian pleas and lottery solicitations. SpamQuiz is not a product – it’s a project we did at TeleMuse Networks testing ISP correctness and email management. However, when I mentioned it on a special interest group email as part of our email changes a few months back, I found by the next day people were trying to piggy-back on our fame by “creating” a product called SpamQuiz for sale. Sigh. The world is full of crooks, isn’t it?
So just for the record – don’t buy SpamQuiz thinking that’s what Lynne Jolitz, open source pioneer and co-inventor of 386BSD – the First Open Source BSD Unix Operating System, SiliconTCP and Massive Video Production (MMP) created and uses, because it’s not from us! And it’s not a product for sale because 1) we’re not in the spam business and 2) we’re not crooks. We just build cool technology. If you’re a researcher or want to try it out for fun, I may help you – but that’s not a product.
But back to my friend. Since he wasn’t a crook, why was he getting trapped by SpamQuiz? Well, since the point of SpamQuiz is to catch nonconforming ISP’s and their bad emails, it was likely that his ISP had some small issue that could be cleared up. It couldn’t be all bad, could it? Or maybe not. So we traced the email. It’s a wonder he get anything through anybody because his ISP looks like Spam Central.