You should not post complete firearm serial numbers. Leave the last several digits off, and don't replace them with the right number of X's unless the exact range is important. In that case x-out at least 4 digits so it is hard to guess the exact number; otherwise, just say "the first few numbers are. . ." This is to prevent a thief from filing a police report and an insurance claim using your serial number, claiming the gun was stolen from him. That will put your gun on a stolen gun list, ready to get you arrested if you trade it in or sell it. You could find yourself having to be able to produce receipts or other proof of ownership, which, with heirlooms and direct purchases from other gun owners, can be impossible to do. Such a gun could wind up being taken from you and given to the thief by the authorities, while you go to jail for receiving stolen goods.

Spammers have programs called spambots that do nothing but crawl the web searching for e-mail addresses they can add to spam e-mailing lists. This is why it is not a good idea not to post your e-mail address directly in a forum or on a web site (unless you actually want to get more spam). It is also why it is bad "netiquette"� to post another person's e-mail address without their permission; please do not do it.

If you want other board members to e-mail you, the best approach is to let them e-mail you through the board or communicate with you by private messaging. Go to your user Control Panel (USER CP button near the top of each page) and when the Control Panel loads, click on Options. In the second group of options, under Messaging and Notification, check the two boxes to the right of "Receive Emails"� and "Enable Private Messaging?"�

If you want non-member readers to be able to e-mail you, I recommend you do not put an e-mail address in a post without first munging it (making it unrecognizable) to spammer software.

The old method of munging was to re-write an address like:somebody@someplace.comTo look like:somebody at someplace dot comwhich humans can read, but the early spambots could not. Newer spambots can figure that out, so many mungers took it to the next level:somebody extratext a_t somplace extratext d_o_t c_o_mThe human is supposed to figure out that "extratext" should be removed and the underscores pulled from "a_t"� and "d_o_t c_o_m" and the appropriate characters put in their place. The underscores (or use dashes or asterisks, etcetera) are supposed to stop a spambot from successfully searching posts for the words "dot"� and "com"� and gathering whatever surrounds them to work out an e-mail address.

That last method still works pretty well, but it isn't foolproof. The best munging is to insert an image file made in a drawing program like Windows Paint, or scanned from intentionally clumsy handwriting. For awhile, people just captured a type image, but the spammers have gone to optical character recognition to pick up addresses in image files on web sites, so the jagged, inconsistent letters from a hand written address made using the mouse works best.

Example:

http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/4897/mungedaddressos4.gif

This was made in Windows by going Programs|Accessories and selecting the Paint program. In the window, the pencil tool is used to write the address with the mouse, holding down the left mouse button while drawing the letters. The eraser tool can be used to re-do a part you don't like. The file is the saved as a .gif file for small size. It is then opened in the Microsoft Office Picture Manager (free with Windows), and the Picture|Crop command is used to trim the extra white space away before saving the file again. You can use the Picture|Resize function to alter the size and shape to fit the page better if you need to. Making this image file is a bit of a bother, but you only need to do it once, then you can use it in other posts. Only real human beings can make any sense of it. It can be loaded into your post by any of the methods described in the attached file below:

A new alternative

This sight generates a spambot unreadable image of your e-mail address for you to put in your posts:
http://www.spam-proof-email-generator.com/

->

Good info Uncle!

Send me the spam!! I love fixing these guys w/ their own junk. I was getting spam from a guy in Brazil, so I sent him 20,000 thank you messages all at once. Never had an issue w/ him after that. :)

. . . I sent him 20,000 thank you messages all at once. Never had an issue w/ him after that. :)

Did you have to go to his web site to get an e-mail address, or did you do it through one of the domain name servers or through Whois? Spammer return addresses are invariably forged. I am asking because I've also noticed a lot of forged site registrations keep coming up. I just had a Viagra spam with a site registered in PA, but when I ping the site, it comes back from an IP number in China. He's redirecting.

Also, what on earth was the method you used to send him that many e-mails? Normally, if you respond to a spammer in any way, they just add your name to the various CD's of currently used valid e-mail addresses sold to other spammers. So, you get exponential growth in your spam in return for your efforts. Some denial of service and mailbox stuffing attacks have been done before, but only through anonymous or throw-away e-mail accounts. The ones I've been fighting with most recently are all sent from China, where contract spam e-mailing is a prospering business.

Exerpted from a spamcop.net user's forum. Partial rules of spam:

Rule #1: Spammers lie.

* Russel's Admonition: Always assume that there is a measurable chance that the entity you are dealing with is a spammer.

* Lexical Contradiction: Spammers will redefine any term in order to disguise their abuse of Internet resources.

* Sharp's Corollary: Spammers attempt to re-define "spamming" as that which they do not do.

* Finnell's Corollary: Spammers define "remove" as "validate."

Rule #2: If a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see Rule #1.

* Crissman's Corollary: A spammer, when caught, blames his victims.

* Moore's Corollary: Spammer's lies are seldom questioned by mainstream media.

Great common sense post guys!

Countryman

Note that a new means of putting your e-mail address into image form has been added to the first post in this thread at the end. I'll repeat it here.

This site does the job for you:
http://www.spam-proof-email-generator.com/

Howdy unclenick,

Thanks for the advice! I wish that I had seen what you posted before I listed my rifle. Guess I will watch for spamming and if I get hit I'll change my e-mail addy and rejoin! I forget that there are those sort of degenerate jerks out there who delight in making other peoples life miserable and just for the fun of it. Your post was thoughtful and I appreciate your waking up this old man! BTW, I read the exerpt from the spammers and I still think the best word to describe them is unprintable among gentlemen.

Thanks again unclenick!

longrangehunter

If the moderator would contact me I would be most grateful. Thanks!

Longrangehunter,

Thanks. I hope the tips help you stay Internet safe?

I left you a private message. Look at the upper right of the forum list where it shows you logged in and says "welcome" to find it.

a gun would not be taken from you to give to someone with just a serail number. i posed this question to a law enforcement officer, and his reply was that possesion was 9/tenths of the law, unless the thief could prove ownership. you may have to answer a question or two, but complete serial numbers of very expensive guns are available in many gun books.

The main risk is that the crook will commit insurance fraud using your serial number to collect on the "stolen" weapon, never expecting to actually obtain it. That scenario was my idea of the worst case, having insult added to injury. You are correct that it is not very probable. Given all the Internet theft and identity fraud that is initiated on-line these days, though, the attempt to commit insurance fraud is not so unlikely and the potential hassle involved in cleaning up your record after an accusation of being in possession of stolen goods just doesn't seem to me to be worth the risk when all you have to do to avoid testing the theory is to leave a few numbers anonymous.

While you are correct that ranges of serial numbers are published in books, most thieves are looking for an easy score and not a career in library research. Should the thief have the ambition and intelligence to get a book, though, he will likely be intelligent enough to realize that by randomly pulling a number from a book he runs the risk of picking one that has already been reported destroyed or stolen, bringing the insurance investigators and ultimately the police down on himself. Also not probable, but a risk he can avoid entirely if you hand him a valid number.

The bottom line is, no matter how low the chances of a particular problem, why take any risk at all when it is so easily avoided? The only reason I can see for publishing a complete serial number would be to sell a rare gun with well established and documented provenance.