stanislav shalunov: uce.el

Summary: At this time, uce.el is mostly of historic interest and probably should not be used for spam reporting. I (the author) don't use it for spam reporting myself. I no longer maintain the code. The new maintainer is Detlev Zundel. My best advice today, if you're looking for a way to automate spam reporting: use SpamCop. If you're interested in uce.el, you might also be interested in my ideas on reporting spam.

In 1996, I've written a little utility uce.el that makes replying to UCE easier. RMS included it in GNU Emacs (so you have it on your hard drive if you have Emacs installed). The utility was a blow in the fight with spammers. I hope it was useful. Since then, spammers' techniques have changed dramatically, as has the state of the art in reporting spammers' activities (new resources like whois.abuse.net and value-added services like Spamcop have appeared).

In 1996, uce.el would send the message I'd want to send--to the parties I wanted to send it to. In 2000, it sends unnecessary boilerplate that explains why spamming is bad (as if those who would take action against spammers don't know this already), often to parties that are, in fact, innocent bystanders. And the actual responsible party would not usually be detected.

I don't use uce.el myself anymore (I use Spamcop to report all spam incidents at the moment; not that I am completely satisfied with it, but it's better at this time that the alternatives I am aware of).

Doanload: the last version of uce.el produced by me in September 2000. You should probably use a newer version that comes with Emacs, if at all.