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Handling Spam from Large Commercial Entities?
"It was at this point that principle kicked in. It's MY e-mail account. I wanted Amazon to stop mailing me information about whatever special they were advertising. Seeing no easy way to contact them electronically, I picked up the phone and gave them a call. Three operators and getting hung up on once later, I was told that Amazon.com would not stop sending me their spam, because I was not the Amazon.com account holder.
This brings up a new twist on spam, privacy, and recourse to be taken. It is in fact my e-mail account, paid for by me, and Amazon tells me I have no control over what I may receive via it. I could in fact notify my ISP to block incoming mail from Amazon, but I know people who work there and may actually wish to receive mail from them. There doesn't seem to be any 'complaints@amazon.com' alias available on their site. What action can be taken in this instance?
As it turned out, I forked over the phone to my wife, who in the process of 'modifying' her account information, wound up hunting through her wallet to find those last five digits on her credit card, which sounds more dubious than entering them into a text field on a website.
There are many other variables which might have factored into this: What if my wife had died since last Christmas? What if she had left me in that time? (more probable ;-) Perhaps she had canceled the credit card in question.
In any case, I find it completely unacceptable that I as owner of an e-mail account could not easily get an e-commerce provider to stop sending me e-mail. What courses of action are available for this problem? Are there any precedents for this?"
And the never-ending problem of spam continues... You would think that after all of the debates, the new laws, and filters that spam would be less of a problem, yet now we have legitimate commercial entities able to fill your electronic in-boxes and in certain situations like the one above, you may not be able to do anything about it. Do any of you out there have ideas on any solutions?
When Harris Interactive spammed me, I nominated them for the RBL. The nominaton was accepted. The rest of that story was posted here a couple of weeks ago. One man can make a difference.
The tale you wrote here would make a good nomination. You made a good faith effort to unsubscripe, you made a mandatory phone call. That should be enough. Even if Amazone is not listed, having MAPS call them may actually have effect.
RBL is very effective, although a bit slow to my taste.
Ditto for AllAdvantage.com
I can't imagine it's lawyer-wrong to send someone mail, even repeatedly
OF COURSE IT'S WRONG!
If you shopped at BigMegaStore, and applied for their "frequent customer discount card", then they take your phone number, and call you EVERY NIGHT, and don't stop when you ask them, you'd be able to sue them for harassment.
The same applies here. Repeatedly contacting someone, when they've asked you to stop, is called harassment, and it's illegal in most civilized places.
Sue 'em is right.
Just call Amazon.com Customer Service department at (800) 201-7575. Bitch for a while and tell them that you want to close your account. It works.
When this kind of stuff happens, call them up! Complaint e-mails are easy to delete, while getting rid of a customer on the phone is much more work. If enough people call them up...
But now it doesn't matter anymore. I called them up and had them erase my account.
Posted by polar_bear:
.spam, and all porn sites should have to register with a .xxx so that we can all filter out spam and concerned parents and public institutions can filter out porn. Have nudie pictures on a .com, .net or .org? $1,000.00 fine, each complaint. Have 'em on a .xxx? Go for it. Same with spam. If a unsolicited email comes from a .com, .net or .org - $1,000.00 fine each complaint...
But my main e-mail is an Earthlink account, which suffers greatly from spammers. However, they have a "spamigator" service which is actually pretty effective. I went from 10-15 a day to 2 or less a week.
When I order from someone like Barnes & Noble (I won't order from Amazon..) I usually use a Yahoo! email address that I only check once or twice a week...when I get spam I use the "block address" feature, so I can be assured they start getting bounces.
I'm not really sure why spam annoys us more than junk mail...at least spam only abuses bandwidth, I get about a pound of junk mail a month, stuff that used to be living trees!
Not to go off on a tangent, but I encourage everyone to take those annoying magazine subscription cards, write "THESE THINGS KILL TREES" on them and post them. They're postage paid, so they automatically go straight to them, and then they have to pay postage...
Anyway...I personally think all unsolicited commercial email should have to come from an address that ends in
I guess spam is just the dark side of human nature manifesting itself and there's nothing we can do about it. If we get rid of spam, they'll probably start doing something else. It's just surprising to me that people still do it from a logistical perspective - I don't know anyone who has ever bought anything advertised in an unsolicited commercial e-mail. Ever. So how come the spam keeps flowing if it's not effective? Who are the idiots responding to this stuff and making it worthwhile for the spammers?
of course then theres the problem of a company framing thier competition...
Because with our ridiculously high population, we have more than our share of stupid people. I am an American, and yes, I think many Americans are stupid. Deal with it.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Two, then, for each e-mail that gets through those filters (about 1 in 10, in my experience), set up a specific procmail rule blocking the domain that sent the message. If they went through the trouble to have an e-mail specifically sent to you, then they probably have a semi-legitimate account on the system they're doing it from (rather than abusing an open relay).
Three, blocked e-mail is actually diverted to a spam folder. I go through this folder periodically and call all of the 800 numbers in them. Several times. This lets you leave awful messages on answering machines, or cuss out actual people. If everyone in the world did this for each piece of spam they received, unsolicited bulk e-mail would suddenly become very expensive.
(I once was "Ungrounded Lightning Rod" but slashdot slashed off my " Rod". Is that why they call Linux a "Unix wor
I'm sorry, but this is just so damn funny... It's got to be one of the best .sigs I've seen in ages. :-)
Amazon.co.uk must be different to the American branch... I've had zero spam from them so far.
I don't think so... I have bought about half a dozen books and a couple movies from the American Amazon and I haven't received a single spam. Not a one.
touches his veneer desk and hopes that it is good enough...
Yeah, but if you're a Linux foo' you can essentially grab all your mail off of another server, then filter/forward it...while I still haven't done it yet (too lazy =) I'm setting up my Linux box at home so that mail will be routed to different accounts based on the realname of a person, despite the email address being the same (using simmons75@nospam.com for both my wife and I, and sending the mail to different accounts depending on whether it's sent to Shane Simmons or Jene' Simmons.) No, I won't help anyone else set that sort of thing up, because I'm only 65% sure of how to do it =) Soon as cold weather hits, booyeah, my box will be doing that.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I made the mistake when I was naive of putting my e-mail address on some Comdex registration form, and putting it on the "fill out to download a trial version of Eudora".
Now, 3 e-mail address changes later, I am still getting this crap (forwarded). No matter how many addresses at each company I try, I still get the crap. I even complained to ZD's upstream provider and got a generic "Thank you for the report" e-mail, but of course, no-one is gonna cut them off.
Verisign was another terrible one, but I finally complained enough there to get removed from all their mailing lists.
Why? I spent the 30 seconds it took to make sure that I turned off any check boxes for "spam me frequently" when I signed up or they added new features. As a result the only email I get from them are a) receipts for purchases b) lists of new books in the area of science since I explicitly asked for it.
Go figure.
Also expecting amazon.com to alter your wifes records on your behalf is a bit inane. They've got no way of knowing the legitimacy of your request, whether you in fact own that email address or whether you're the sole owner.
procmail works wonders for filtering spam for me. Just read the manpage (yeah, it's hard; I can't remember anything I did since it was a long time ago) and throw together a few recipies. Better yet, bounce mail your filters reject. Odds are they'll remove it from their distribution list real fast.
I just odered some stuff from Amazon today, actually.
I realize others may have said this before me, but if you can get your account reset then then you have complete control over how they can communicate with you.
I can see why they (amazon) wouldn't give out the password without some verification, because if they do, then they would be basicaly be giving out your credit-card number! Dude, I don't think you a leg to stand on. Amazon was only covering their asses...and yours.
Do not read this
> Why didn't you just go get your wife's cc and get the password reset?
> This whole story is bullshit flamebait.
If you had paid attention you would have noticed that they refused to let HIM do anything, because it was not his account but his wife's account. This was on the phone. Now why didn't he go get her credit card when he was asked about it by the webpage? Maybe she wasn't in the room. Maybe he does not know which one she used out of several possiblities. Maybe he felt that they were asking for too much info. Maybe it was just too much of a hassle. Who knows, but I don't think it really matters. Why should they need all that info to email you your lost password? I can't see a good reason why but they probably have one they use. I don't think the article was flamebait, but a reasonable complaint about Amazon's policies.
RE:
Good for telemarketing: when they call, tell them in a shaky voice that the person they called for died in a drunk driving accident and please remove them from the list.
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It may not have the effect that you may think; I did some telemarketing charity work one summer, and I estimate that approximately 5% of the population had a spouse die on them just last week. A rather smaller number of spouses had died the day before. So far, no one has had one to croak that morning.
Most of these plans to get rid of spammers by annoying them fall into the same class -it's just more work for you and the spammer is expecting it anyway.
Why didn't you just figure out how to hit the Submit button once instead of three times? :)
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
But the problem is that a vast majority of spam is sent without a valid return address. So that leaves you with yet another piece of unwanted mail in your Inbox ("Address xggbsgwehgl@sdgsdfgsad.com does not exist!"). The only time I've ever had any luck is with those ones that link you to their website and at least make you think they're removing your address from their list.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
I have more problems with SPAM from large corporations than I do from subject: XXX
I have a mailbox labelled "spam" that my mail-filter delivers all "probably spam" stuff into.
These big corporations that end up spamming me end up with a special procmail rule that diverts their shit into that mailbox. If I really want I can still read it. I don't lose email when it misfires and it's satisifying to open that mailbox and see a list of mails that I would've discarded without reading anyway.
IBM, SGI, Trendmicro, itselling, webknowledgebase, shopping planet all have a private entry...
Roger.
Amazon has a horrible privacy policy, but so do a lot of direct-mail/post-order companies. Until the time arrives that people will be
as comfortable with deleting/bouncing/procmailing e-mail as they are with tossing RL-mail into the bin, we'll have to cope.
But please stop whining or procmail the bastards.
.Change the style.Son of Bazerk.
yup, I do this all the time, and it works great. The only problem is that I didn't do it when I first got the domain five years ago, and now a lot of spammers have the main e-mail address I give to most of my friends. Oh well. It still works in catching about 75% of the spam.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
Ironically, I set up an account on excite a long time ago for this purpose, yet I get far less spam on this account than on my real e-mail address. I guess I was a little too liberal with my real e-mail address for too long before I saw the light.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
Actually, you can't get your password back if you have never bought from them. (Why the heck do they assume that every registered has actually bought something from them?)
"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" - Albert Einstein
His may not be, but amazon did spam me recently. I had never registered at their site, never ordered anything, and did not at the time even *have* a credit card, yet I received a message from them advertising some deal or other, went to their website and got the same 'give me order details or credit card information deal' -- Called them up and asked them to remove me over the phone, got another message and had to call them *again*. The second time worked, haven't heard from them since.
but getting off their advertising list seems to be one of those every six month to a year things...and don't forget, this is the company that spammed when it first opened..they say they are reformed, but I'm not so sure I believe them.
Send an E-mail to Jeff Bezos...
it worked for me.
"A Little Song, A Little Dance, A Little Seltzer Down your Pants" -Chuckles The Clown
Kinda why I now have grumpy@nerdvest.com. I got tired of spam from retailers I've bought from. They all now get the grumpy address. It's my standard purchace item address.
That's great. I wonder if Mike Elkins could be convinced to build this functionality into Mutt...
The only problem I can see is user confusion - expecially since "bounce" as used in many mailers just means remail...
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
Between their general cluelessness about spam, and the whole patent fiasco, it's really not a good place to shop. They don't get my business.
This is an example that indicates a larger problem. Corporate spam is tough to deal with, becase ISPs are unwilling to enforce their AUP against large customers like online stores. Notable past and present corporate spammers include Amazon, Real, Insight (very bad), and MicroWarehouse.
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HAHAH. Fuck you.
Ignore the Anonymous Pissant trolls !!!
And your an annoying retard with nothing better to do.
Ignore the Anonymous Pissant trolls !!!
Spam filters! they work great!
/etc/mail/access
msn.com 550 Sorry. This server does not accept mail fro$
aol.com 550 AOL Sucks.
commandcom.com 550 FUCK OFF !!!
mediaone.net 550 GO THE HELL AWAY !!!
musicmatch.com 550 GO THE HELL AWAY !!!
mp3.com 550 Fuck off you spamming assholes.
public.sta.net.cn 550 Fuck off you stupid ass spammer.
dartpro.com 550 Quit sending me Junk.
dart.com 550 Go away damnit.
3d-unlimited.com 550 Sorry, This is a private emailaddress.
legalminds.org 550 Sorry, go away.
Ignore the Anonymous Pissant trolls !!!
HAHAH, thats cool.
Ignore the Anonymous Pissant trolls !!!
Yupp, somewhere someone expressed the will to get this message finally delivered to you.
That doesn't need to be written in the headers you receive, try for instance BCC mails
Do what i do.
Run Qmail, and then you can give out myname-slimball@mydomain.mytld
when you don't want mail from amazon spambots, just turn off that alias.
finito
Just call me....
-- Spankmeister General
I definitely have to agree. After I made the mistake long ago of ordering something from amazon, I've been under an endless onslaught of spam from them.
:)
mp3.com does suck at this too- they're worse than most of the corporate spammers. I'd rather suffer the porn email than mp3- they just won't give up, or stop. argh.
thank god for MAPS. I also block mp3.com for any incoming email on my home account
EOM
Another trick is to use a email which contain nospam like "nospam@aeiwi.com".
/dev/null
Those who make spam list tend to filter out "nospam" from the emails so they will end up with "@aeiwi.com"
which you bounce from your domain or redirect to
I have an account with Amazon, and I vaguely remember there was an option to not receive spam from them. I don't have a spam problem with them. I get maybe one or two e-mails from them a year, normally for relatively 'important' things, e.g. if they change their TOS or something. I can't remember when last I got crap-mail from them.
I do have a more general spam problem though. My spam-to-real-email ratio is about 5 to 1.
Some time ago, for some strange reason (I must have had a good reason at the time but I don't remember what it was) I entered one of my e-mail aliases into some form at microsoft's web site. Suddenly I started to get crap-mail from them (didn't ask for it.) Nonetheless, they provided no less than 2 options for removing oneself from the list: (1) reply to a specific e-mail address with remove in the subject line, and (2) unsubscribe using a form on their web site.
I tried option 1 first. Soon after that, I got some more crap-mail from them.
I tried option 1 again. Soon after that, I got more crap-mail from them. Then I tried both option 1 and option 2. Soon after that I got crap-mail from them again.
After another few attempts, I gave up, and eventually just deleted that e-mail alias.
Even though it was MS, I somehow expected at least a *little bit* more professionalism than that. Incredibly unprofessional and pushy.
It's what Microsoft calls innovation.
Later on, they STILL emailed me, to "let me know their privacy policy had changed, because I was listed as someone who was concerned about such things".
bozo@bigredshoez.co.it
is my favorite.
In their headers there is a bounce address, I mailed them back their spew to that address...
:>)
Bounces-to: ems+EXLBGH6EYWACAJ@bounces.amazon.com
Though they may not appreciate the subject I gave it.
I have unsubscribed more than once, they have slammed me again by resetting my preferences.
I think if you do not visit them or buy anything in a set amount of time they slam your settings and send you spew to try and get you back on their site.
I have had this experiencce with others as well. They say "you must have made a mistake when you set your preferences" and without a recipt for the setting made, how can you argue?
Stenkink Bastages
Rick B.
In one of those Slashdot cosmic coincidences, I called Amazon to change my password yesterday. (Same reason - tired of the email.) It was a very pleasant, quick, and effective phone call... but there was an unsettling thing about it.
I'd not ordered from Amazon since 3/98, and the credit card number I'd given was expired (and cancelled - I switch cards occasionally). After some readings of the last five digits of my current cards, the account rep noticed this problem, and allowed me to use my billing address instead as identification.
So, if you know the email address and meatspace address of someone who's been boycotting Amazon for a while, call Amazon and see if their credit card has expired in the interim. If you bingo on this, you can find out whatever goat porn they like to read, etc. (And a free expired credit card number!)
Awfully rude to the pleasant people on the phone at Amazon, but it might work...
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
I would like to know why Amazon needs all this password stuff anyway. If I go into a physical bookshop and buy a book using my credit card they don't get me into convolutions about password assignment, future mailings opt-out, or whatever. I just pay, walk out onto the street with my book, and that's it.
Of course without the password system the "1-click-purchase" thing would not work next time (if there was a next time.) However I don't actually care about that I just want my book.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
After the privacy policy change which specifically allows Amazon to sell your personal info as an asset in the event Amazon is sold, I tried using the Amazon website to close my account, but I got some sort of failure message which told me to call a toll-free number. So I called. They asked me for the title of a recent purchase and the last 5 numbers of my credit card on file. Well, waaaaaaay back when they announced the 1-Click patent, I had removed my credit card information and so didn't have one on file. This caused problems. Eventually, persistence paid off and I convinced the guy on the phone to pull the plug on me. But then a few days later, I got e-mail from Amazon customer service saying they couldn't close my zShops and Auctions account without the 5 numbers and the recent purchase title. Well, I had never opened any separate "zShops" account! But there it was nonetheless and I couldn't close it. Nor could I log into my now closed "regular" Amazon account to get the information even if it was there. Finally I wrote to every customer service and/or abuse@amazon address I could think of threatening to report their repulsive business practices to the BBB if any and all accounts were not closed by week's end. That got some action - accounts closed. But easy it was certainly not.
This pissed me off so much that I changed my hosts file to point anything at amazon.com back to localhost so no content they serve will ever grace my screen again. They are miserable bastards.
"So many ways to skin a cat, and still everyone uses a great big knife."
I posted this using the "Plain Old Text" mode of Slashdot. If it turns out like it's got tags, then it's Slash's fault.
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Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
Put in a complaint to MAPS!
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Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
Uh huh. Well if someone spams you, forging my e-mail address, I'll be mad at them, but you won't get away with that excuse.
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Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
It's just like the WWW censorship filters. Murphy's law states that I *will* end up casting the mail I actually wanted to get to the void.
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Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
but only for smaller time spammers, it looks up the abuse address for their ISP, and in some cases their ISP's ISP and registers complaints with proof (headers tracking #'s and all) it wipes out most of the small stuff, don't imagine it would work for amazon. you know tho, i haven't found any customer service department that would bend the rules to fix aproblem if you go up the corporate food chain enough, "Let me speak to the person who tells you what to do!"
A friend of mine has had 100% success with setting up a script that sends a nasty complaint letter every 5 minutes. The text mentions that this will go on until they've fixed his problem.
From taking weeks to do nothing, they usually respond in an hour.
I'd give you his email address so you can get the script from him, but I don't think he'd appreciate it...
That pisses me off more than the spam I get from Amazon.
It would seem that the ratio of commercial to "spank your slut" Spam has changed quit a bit in the last year. I used to get quite a bit of "clisk here to see young, hot, we dripping, whatever here" in my email everyday. Now I'm bombarded with llbean, and amazon everyday.
Perhaps big buisness will now (if they haven't already) try to influence law makers into not punishing the spammers, because it would now hurt "legitimate" commercial interests....
gag...
~Sean
Huh, the solstion is simple as a moo. Don't work
for spammers. Refuse to develop any piece of
software that can be used for spamming. Refuse to
maintain spammers' servers, leave them on their own and skript kiddiez will do the rest.
Spam is a result of activity of individuals who
are unable to produce something usefull due to
lack of knowledge, talent or education.
You can rarely meet a spammer who wrote his bulk
mailer himself. So- don't help them. There's alot
of other job that is paid better and is more
respected.
KuroiNeko
>>hances are that is how you got hit. The spammer does not care, since hotmail is just going to say "uh, sorry, that account does not exist". Pick
something like fjiogio83fj@hotmail.com. Chances are you won't get hit for a while. If you do get hit right off, then I would say hotmail is selling it.
Doesn't make a difference.... I still got spammed by them anyways.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
I don't get a prompt for this information: they just e-mail the password change URL. Evan after removing the login cookie on my browser, it still lets me get the password with no problems.
I really don't understand what you are doing -- are you using the same links that I described?
Hi!
I think it depends on you account name. My account with this name gets tons but my girlfriend's account with an underscore in the name gets maybe one a month.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
I use this method too. I have found that that I get Spam to my E-bay address all the time. Even though I've only bidded on one item. Also, ICQ's goes to Spam lists. Another big one is E-commerce companies. Back when I had one e-mail address, I contacted alot of them asking questions. After that, I got tons of E-commerce spam to that address. I wish I had my domain back then so I could track them. I'm thinking about changing my E-bay one and not using the account at all to see if it gets on spammer lists.
In general (unless they are a reputatble company wiht a good net reputation, which are few and far between), do not under any circumstances follow a spammer's instructions for list "removal" (eg, replying to an address, or using a web page) -- send it to abuse@(the ISP involved). Note that most spam headers are forged, so you'll need to look at the "received" lines, and find the first non-forged one, which can be tricky. Following a spammer's "instructions" will only confirm to them that you have a valid working email address that you check.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I have written a program which is designed to keep track of where and when various untrusted entities obtain email addresses. It does this by encrypting information in the actual email address, in a form that is not trivial to forge.
Well, I use a similar, but more simple system. I use a distinct email address for each server, instead of an encrypted name I just use the regular site name (slashdot@mydomain.com, yahoo@mydomain.com, etc). If they start spamming (or if their mailing list is stolen by a spammer, or whatever) I can easily block the address. Sure, people could still "forge" an email address, but why would anyone want to? In any case, its both reliable and simple.. works for me.
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
I don't know what MUA you use, but learn how to use filters. Then you would just create a kill filter for anything from Amazon or anyother spaming scum merchant.
Heh, I do tech support via email for a living and we have been getting spam from some Republican congressional candidate regularly for about the past four months. If you ever meet some dude named Chuck Yob who's running for Congress, kneecap that dumbass for me. We've also gotten a couple of Bush spams here and there, but I see so much spam flow through here that I barely notice it. But that Chuck Yob shit gets really old after awhile, and after emailing what addresses I could find to let those idiots know that they are emailing tech support at a HUGE company with their stupid crap, I still have yet to get any response other than "Vote for our doofus!"
Deo
> Of course, I'm also sure that MAPS doesnt wana get sued again
Au contraire! See How to Sue MAPS on their website, where they say "It's our hope that MAPS can help bring about a similar landmark case and carry it all the way to the Supreme Court where federal case law can result." They want to be sued!
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. -- Berthold Auerbach
For some real spamorific excitement, try Amazon's typo-url website, Amazone.com"! I'm sure you'll love it ;-D
On a more serious knote, can't you just block the sender email address? (I can't remember. I haven't used POP3 in over 1 1/2 years. [Long live web-based email!])
-----------------------------------------
Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
Yeah, but there is a pattern -- same credit card number, same checking account (same name even!). These things can be traced if the will is there.
It's not possible for an end-user to determine whether spam was sent out from one account or multiple accounts. Sure, this can be done at the ISP level, but I was addressing the concern of an end-user claiming that UUNET does nothing about these accounts.
This also doesn't answer the question why they don't jump on amazon
This I don't have an answer for. Possibly because they're more concerned with the garden variety spam, which tends to be a lot more destructive and annoying. *shrug* Just a guess.
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Turn on, log in, burn out...
Half of the spam I get originated from Uu.net ips. I send complaints, get their canned response, then nothing. Often I get the same spam a few days later. WTF! Practice what you preach boys.
They do. Remember, UUNET leases POPs and bandwidth to other ISPs. They process their complaints, determine which ISP's luser was responsible, and sent it off to the appropriate party with the RADIUS logs identifying the offending account. Do you have any idea the volume of complaints UUNET gets daily? There's no way they could follow up personally even if they wanted to.
You may receive the same spam again, but it's extremely unlikely that it was sent from the same dialup account. Spammers sign up 10, 20, or more, accounts at a time so that when one gets whacked, they switch to another and keep spamming without missing a beat. Killing these parasites is called "playing whack-a-mole" for a reason.
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Turn on, log in, burn out...
Exactly. Also, AFAIK, Hotmail recycles their usernames. Hotmail mailboxes expire after a period of inactivity (six months? I don't remember) and then the username is available again. When setting up a Hotmail account you run the risk of picking an address that's already on one of those "millions of e-mail addresses" CDs.
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Turn on, log in, burn out...
but I really like Amazon.com. I don't approve of their patenting the one-click stuff but it isn't enough for me to stop using them or anything. I have spent over $3,000 there over the past 2 years, and have never received any emails from them aside from my order processing emails. You possibly checked something, I dunno. That does sound pretty crappy that it was that difficult to remove yourself from their lists though.. I never have the problem of forgetting passwords though so maybe thats why =P Ok thats my two cents for now.
-DAcash18
MAPS is busy enough dealing with real spammers than "acquaintance spam", which is kind of a gray area. Something which I fully understand. One must prioritize. I did submit B&N at some point in the past.
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This will e-mail the password. Read his post again. I think it wanted his [wife's] credit card information before mailing the password. Remember before commerce on the net? When most every mailing list had unsub instructions in it? And they worked? No longer. Corporations intentionally make it hard to unsubscribe, sometime to the point of impossibility. Barnes and Noble has been spamming me for years, even after I've opted out dozens of times. There's always some new B&N marketing department head who thinks that "opt-out" doesn't mean him.
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This is known as "acquaintance spam" and I think MAPS generally won't much involved unless it's happening on a massive scale. Amazon is the worst offender and always has been. Barnes & Noble will also repeatedly spam you even after opting out. They manage it by outsourcing their mailings, Click Rewards for one. When you get spammed B&N responds with "Take it up with Click Rewards" then Click Rewards responds with "sounds like a B&N technical problem take it up with them". There is zero accountability in that company. /.
I managed to stop the spam-hose by changing my account email address to <randomstring>@[127.0.0.1] Lastly... get this. Guess who else spammed me? Fatbrain. In blatant violation of my preference settings. When challenging them on it, they played ignorant. I spelled it out very clearly in my complaint that my preference settings said "no promotions", but their employee carefully didn't read that part. They still haven't explained to me why I got the spam despite having opted out of everything. Everyone please think about this while promoting Fatbrain on
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I have also yet to receive any spam on my yahoo mail account (except for the ones from yahoo itself, but that was in agreement to have them POP3-enable the email account).
Also I have found them to be faster, and more reliable than either hotmail or excite mail (especially from france or brazil)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It's funny that you think I'm joking. I'm not. I'm seriously very pleased with their mail service. I don't even use the one that my ISP gives me anymore because Yahoo's is so damn convenient.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Why not make it a government issue? Governments are supposed to help uphold quality of life, represent large groups of people, etc. and we the people have passed a law against spam. search thomas.loc.gov and you will find it. As a 14 year (thats right) vet of the net I can tell you democracy has arisen several times before, and it will on this issue. Any takers ? I'll give 4 to 1 odds Amazon doesnt get whipped back by the USPTO, the FED and the state of Oregon ;-) ...
he who has the fastest cart always has the best lie.
Not to be mean, but you could of taken care of it alot easier. First you could've responded to the emails with "Unsubscribe" amazing how that works, they'll actually do it. Second you have to understand account security if your name is not on the account they keep it secure by not telling you about it or doing anything for you. You were ranting about security and privacy well that's simply what they're trying to ensure. I'm not quite sure how you think stuff like this works. But why would they give you the password if you can't verify anything at all. The accounts have credit card info and stuff like that, so if you can't verify stuff maybe you're not the account holder. If you're not the account holder you don't know the credit card number, but if they give you the password you will. Next time think logically before you complain about a good company. Amazon.com has always treated me well with orders.
You know, I thought this was a dumb idea. But my friend signed up for an @Home account and kept getting spammed from their weekly newsletter that he did not want. There was definitely an unsubscribe e-mail address provided in the e-mail, but he did not ask for the weekly e-mail, and upon signing up for @Home he was not told he would receive it (in fact, he signed up with the cable company for Internet access before they provided the @Home-portion of the service). So what he did is he would send his cable company 10 e-mails for every e-mail they sent him. Weeks went by, but eventually one day he received an e-mail back telling him to stop spamming them and that all he had to do was e-mail the unsubscribe address and he would be removed from their mailing list. So...he kept sending them the mail, replying 25 times to the non-spam "stop spamming us" e-mail request by the cable co. A week later, he stopped receiving the weekly newsletter - without having to go through the unsubscribe process. He now uses this technique on every piece of spam he gets and there has been a noticeable drop (dramatic in fact) in the amount of spam he receives. I'm sure it has provided some other spammers with proof of the existence of his e-mail address (they sometimes send out mail to whole domains, using words from the dictionary as the user@ parts of the e-mail address...when you reply back they know the e-mail exists and then can add you to a spam list). But all in all, I'd say this has got to be the best way of getting the attention of big-name spammers. If the support@amazon.com address received 10 e-mails from 100,000 customers who also happen to read Slashdot and don't like the newsletter...well, you can bet they'd be pretty pissed (they'd probably have to go through all 100,000 just to make sure there were no genuine support e-mails...now that would be a bummer).
How is this amazon's fault? It would be irresponsible of them to let someone other than the account owner modify that account's settings. He simply should not have let his wife use his email address, is hotmail.com so difficult?
Actually, the company that does abuse for UUnet (RCN) is surprisingly small. I'd say about 10 people at the most handling mounds of abuse for UUnet and several other ISPs. This includes any kind of system abuse (cracking, harrasment, etc, as well as spam), and I am generally amazed at how much they are able to do with such a small staff. Despite all this, however, about 40% of my spam comes from their domain...
At least once a month, for three months, I received an e-mail from Simutronics, advertising AT&T and another of their games. There was a remove-from-list link at the bottom of the e-mail, which I always clicked on, to no avail. I ranted and threatened, to no avail. Luckily, the fools had left the brass' e-mail addresses stashed away on their company web-pages... so I e-mailed the head of their Marketing department, explaining exactly why I would never play another Simutronics game, use an AT&T service, and encourage everyone that I met to do the same.
Within three days, he confirmed that I was off the list.
With an outfit like Amazon, your best bet is to get an e-mail program that can handle filters. Just set it up to delete anything that comes down the pipe from Amazon, and you're all set-- until your friends sign up for their AmazonMail e-mail addresses.
Five tons of flax.
i must be a spambot because i can't figure out your email address ^^;;
where does the statement in your sig come from? i've seen it on the walls in my school's ee lab and i'm wondering if it's a reference to something or if it's just my sadist professor...
thnx in advance
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
I wish I could simply click on cliff's name and filter out his Ask Slashdot posts. It should be that easy, but it's not.
/dev/null" mail filter)
I could almost see posting this to the Ask Slashdot Section, but definitely not to the front page. Everyone already knows spam sux0rs and it's hard to escape.
This guy wasted more time writing this incredibly long and boring submission to Slashdot than he would have simply hitting Cntrl+D on every email from slashdot (Or setting up an "amazon.com >
signature smigmature
- James
On a similar note: when a telemarketer calls and asks you to help them in a survey ask them 'hey what's in it for me?' you would be surprised at the results. A lot of them actually are supposed to pay you for your time and effort. They don't usually admit this until you bug them for it. If they say they can't pay you hang up. If they say I am authorized to pay x amount haggle. I have gotten 10 and 25 checks in the mail from them, in fact I got one for $10 today.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
I've tried that. I have something like 40 hotmail accounts. I never remember to check them, which I suppose is just sad on my part. I just don't seem to be able to get worked up about spam. I mean, I really do hate it, but I just kind of ignore it. I suppose it's a holdover from when reading usenet was still possible. (The skill transfers well to /. as well..)
This is really simple. Get one of those programs that will bounce the message for you. After a short time, you'll be removed from their list, and you'll never get spam from them again. I've done it in the past. Now I'm *much* more careful about who gets my email address.
That's useful if the spam is actually *to* your address. The majority of spam I recieve isn't even addressed to me. I've been told it's because I have only 3 letters in my login.
My question is: Is the spam actually to my address, even if it doesn't show, or is it some sort of catch all that I happen to be in the middle of?
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
I imagine that you have some information in a cookie or whatnot that others may not have, which would therefore require more information from them.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Unless you force people to use https their username and password will keep going over the network for EVERY http request. And even if you do, there's a bug in IE and maybe some other browsers where if you switch from https to http for whatever reason, the username and password will still go over the network.
A session id stored over a cookie is much better. Even if the session is stolen, the risk is far less as you can expire sessions after a while. The session id method also allows you to use other methods of authentication - you can allow people to click on a emailed link and they are authenticated and then start a valid session.
By having an abstraction layer between authentication and session control you gain a great deal in flexibility.
I don't really like Javascript that much either. It's probably necessary in some cases but I really hate those sites where you even need javascript for the links to work! Doh. I mean what sort of web designer doesn't know how to use a href?
Link.
I was once told by a wise person, "the computer is the most flexible machine in the world"
Believe it! If Amazon won't help you, take your superbly flexible computing device and put a stop to this madness...Place a filter on their posts and be done with it! Success! You've won!
The problem is, unless you're knowledgeable in SMTP, it's hard to figure out what's going on.
Well, let me throw in my rant at Microsoft after all. Outlook makes it excruciatingly hard to look at the headers, but it still is possible. It's something like go the the Server Settings menu, click on the SMTP tab, and then click View Headers. I can never remember the exact sequence, but it is almost as stupid as I make it out to be.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
just enter root@127.0.0.1 as your e-mail address. It'll backfire on them nicely! regards
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these amazon monkeys spamming your account!?!? With each node running Bonobo/Spider Monkey so they can embed mass mailing clients in their arse... This is what you might call Spit-Shitting on the client, they are there to serve.
I get more spam at my AOL address than anywhere else, and the only place it's exposed to the world is in my AOL profile.
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
I'm glad this story got posted -- I've been in the same boat as the original poster, but hadn't bothered to do anything about it yet.
-- Adam
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
The sad thing was, I emailed them just to give a heads-up, and when I finally got a response a month or more later, they had *no idea* about the whole thing. Subscription to their list is not small, either.
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"Tomorrow we'll seize the day and throttle it!" -Calvin
Set up a free account with excite mail and use that for everything else. When it gets too spam-ridden, cancel it. Set up a new one.
I had 7 email accounts and usually got about 5 spams a day on some of them. I canceled those acounts, set up a new account which NO ONE but my friends/family gets, and set up an account at Excite (which is a nice one).
Email's cheap enough (free) that you can afford to set up a new one.
On the other hand, if you're already bombarded by spam, that is a problem.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
The problem with spamcop is that it reports it to the network administrator of the originating spam--which may be the spammer himself. In my case all it did was confirm that they were sending to a valid address.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
So what do you do when someone sends spam to one of these encrypted email addrs? You know exactly where they got it from. Then what? Do you call up the place they got it from ? What stories can you relate from your personal use of it? thanks
True... but I don't think your email address is webmaster@amazon.com. :-)
First I'll block the sender then run my trusty perl script that mails a target over and over and over again. I'll just set it in the morning before I go to work and let it run ALL day. I don't get as much spam or anoying forwards anymore.
My site works just fine for those who are not overly paranoid or go out of their way to be different for the sake of less compatibility. I don't use heavy JS, and JS isn't necessary, but common, I thought technology was about advancement. And what, is Microsoft.com trying to see if I have linux on my HD or are they just trying to create some nice dynamic pulldown menues (which legitimatly enhance UI).
On the flip side, I do understand your point with http authentication, and agree 100%. The problem is, for sites like this (slashdot), it makes more sense to use cookies since it is much more convenient for the user and is only being set up for user customization, not to secure sensative data like a bank, webmail, "e-tailer" should.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
My sites require javascript and cookies. They are not poop thank you very much. And no, I can't track your existance with a cookie, or h4x0r j00r r00tz with javascript. If you want 100% security and privacy, don't use technology that networks you with other people. Let's find a balance here people.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
good spam is spam that you may get often but comes from the same place with the same headers. For example if you get spam that says:
/dev/null
From: spammaster@amazon.com
OR Subject: See Amzazon.com's hot deals
This case is really easy -- set up a procmail rule that sends these to
Spam that fits no pattern can be controlled with rules based filters or fgrep'd through word lists.
And on the other hand Spam serves of little value if the spammer does not leave some way to get ahold of them or the "product" they are selling...That leaves a pretty open target does it not?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
One trick I use regularly is I have a second email address I use only for eBay, Amazon, places like that. This email address I set to forward to my main address only when I'm expecting something, and just drops the mail otherwise. I don't want to send bounce messages as they may decide to render my account inactive (had this happen from one place some time ago). I also change this name every so often because even for those few days I have it open, the amount of spam grows to obscene amounts, even with RBL and ORBS running.
I just checked, and the various rogue accounts dumped 73 messages yesterday alone. 52 were caught by RBL or ORBS. In contrast, I received 8 legit email.
I've considered setting the rogues to bounce instead, but, as has been mentioned previously, that tends to send the messages to the wrong people.
Every so often I try and get myself off the mailing lists, but I usually can only get maybe a third of it, and that helps for a bit, but the amount continues to grow.
While I don't think anti-spam legistation is the solution, one wonders if redoing the mail protocols (SMTP, etc) wouldn't help alleviate this problem.
Assuing you are using an mbox based mail client open up the mbox in any editor and check the headers.
Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.
Them re-subscribing you doesn't surprise me. I was shopping around for one of those wonderful Linksys EtherFast Cable/DSL routers about a month ago and they had some with (I believe) $40 rebates. I thought that was nice. Then I clicked on the link for more info. I read the legalese crap. I guess when you use the rebate, you're basically exchanging loads of spam from them reselling your e-mail address for the $40 rebate.
I figure they can burn in hell before they get my e-mail address.
Yeah, but there is a pattern -- same credit card number, same checking account (same name even!). These things can be traced if the will is there.
This also doesn't answer the question why they don't jump on amazon.
The answer to both these points is they make money from these people, so they won't try too hard to stop them.
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
That's what Spamcop does.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
I have a Netcenter account from who-knows-when that I may have used once or twice. Anyway, I start getting email a couple weeks ago that my Netcenter Id (that I don't use) is the same as an AOL IM ID (also, mine, an old one, that I don't use) and since they are combining systems, I need to prove they are both mine or change it to a knew id. Problem is... I don't remember the password. And in order to have the password mailed to you, you need to include other personal information (like zip code)... which I always fake.
.plan
Bottom line: they are sending me email about an account (that I don't want) telling me they are going to create another account for me (that I don't want) unless I login (which I can't do).
And responding to the message and contacting Netscape customer service have brought no response. (HINT: It isn't actually customer *service* unless you provide some!)
Arrrgh!
--
Some day, I hope to have a
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Hmm. It only takes 1-Click to buy something, but a bunch of personal information to get of[f] their mailing list...
That is an extremely incisive comment. Your comment deserves to be moderated up to 5. I would do it, but I don't have enough cookie points. *sigh* Regardless: someone, do readers a favor here.
--
Me pican las bolas, man!
Thanks
--
Me pican las bolas, man!
Thanks
Jaco
In red leaves, I weep
The slashdot masses know not
What senryuu are
Counting sylables
Yours is neither, Anne Marrie
But, thanks anyway
With innuendo,
Freethinking and sarcasm!
Anne Marie, you rock.
it's a pain, but I have, like many, acquired multiple email accounts for exactly this reason: spam avoidance. i use yahoo or hotmail, whatever...it's free, and if i start getting too much spam, i just get another account. i don't give out my "regular" email address(es) to anybody except friends and the like---people whom i know won't shower me with unsolicited and unwanted spam (as if there's a difference). it would be nice if there were an easier way--but i personally don't see any other solution unless you want to fight. and fighting spam is like fighting the birds in that hitchcock flick.
...does Spam has a soul? And if so, should the filters be allowed to eat Spam up? Will they accrue negative Karma?
It's like all those sinners that used to A)bort their DOS commands. They got bad Karma, so therefore they got punished by having to use M$ Windoze.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
... is to use procmail, and just drop all the mail from amazon.com into the bitbucket. I started doing this a few weeks ago, when I received the straw that broke my back: "MAKE MONEY NOW!" Procmail was not difficult to setup, especially after reading the man pages. Granted, I'm not doing complex things, just moving stuff into different folders, and sending junk to /dev/null. But still...
My INCOMING->/dev/null patented SPAM-ANNIHILATOR (TM) has an ever-growing list. It really feels good to be oblivious to all that crap. When some new sender throws junk my way, I just add his name to my .procmailrc, delete his message, and never hear from him again.
What's truly great about all of this is, if you share an e-mail account with your wife, you could tell your friends to send mail to the account using your name, and your wife could have her friends mail her at her name. For instance, my email could come to Commandant <ajh3@spam.redirect.de>, and my wife's mail could come to MrsCommandant <ajh3@spam.redirect.de>. Then procmail can separate these, delivering my mail to my inbox, and her mail to her inbox. Now your wife won't be able to find out about that anniversary gift you ordered her.
This does put the burden on my hardware instead of the spammers', but I think it's worth it. One problem with unsubscribing to spam is, they usually require personal information like a name. They generally don't know this when they send you the original message, so I'm not eager to give it out. This way, I remain totally anonymous and oblivious. Also, since I'm not getting 10,000 messages a day, it's not like my PIII works much harder than it does anyway to drop the three messages per week that I get.
Either way, good luck in not getting another email from them.
Thank you.
I do not belong in the spam.redirect.de domain.
Those 'Yes! I want to hear about amazing new specials" check boxes are often set defaultly to sign someone up. Surely this is a dodgy business practise in the extreme, and is almost cetainly designed to lure unfortunate saps into signing up for spam.
-----
"Almost isn't good enough - but it's almost good enough."
-Me
Since the majority of the email addresses are collected and sold by a third party, how about purchasing these lists. Then "spam" all the people on the list telling them where the list was purchased from.
Perhaps somebody would have the kindness to explain to me, being an ignorant netizen, why most of the spam emits from America. I cannot ever remember receiving any English spam, perhaps we are deficient.
Peter.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Because, spam is incredibly cheap to send out. And for every 10,000 people with a clue, there's unfortunately 1 idiot (read A0L LAM3R) who's dumb enough to actually read it and possibly buy something.
SpamCop seems to help me (and ISPs) out with legitimate spam.
-----------
end communication
When I get put on a mailing/spam list that wont let me unsubscribe, I simply setup a filter in my email program and send any such messages on into my trash bin. Very effective, and quick and easy.
i hate getting messages like that. i've got stuck on some mailing lists that i cant get off because you get it from a new address everytime (soandso@yahoo.com) and i get so many of them. jeff
on your signiture put "no m$" i want to see how many ppl agree with me
Companies should make it very easy to unsubscribe from a list or to prevent other users from spamming you from their site (ie.. email to a friend).. I wrote an email 2 a friend where I work at BestDoctors.com (ASP.. yuck).. when you email someone.. at the bottom of the email is a link you click and it prevents others from sending you email from BestDoctors.com ever again... its pretty secure.. when you are sent an email it adds your name to a DB and gives you an ID that is a random 50 char string...... If you want to see it at bestdoctors.com its under the condition summaries or ask a doctor section.. My point is.... we are a small company... I can code anything but I am far from a genius... why can't big companies with all this cash make stuff that is this easy to use???? bd
Taxes and Lazy People are best friends.
Jeff Bezos says that he "wants to make Amazon the most customer-centric company on the Internet", but my experience is that the company is often abusive toward its customers.
Does abuse make more money than being kind to customers? I don't think so.
Unfortunately, this isn't an option available to most people, but since I have control over my own mail server, I create an email address (actually I create a new Microsoft Exchange public folder that has an email address associated with it) for each new company that asks me for one. I then can track how my email addresses are passed around/spread.
BTW - this if you are ever in the job market - this is a great tactic for measuring the success (or lack thereof) of a number of the job posting sites.
Evolution: love it or leave it
Once I kept getting spams about the same stupid service/product. After looking at the message, I noticed that the reply address was indeed valid since there wasn't any URL/phone number/name in the main message, and I assumed any replies were going to the actual people that had paid to get their messge sent.
So I sent some BSM (Bouce Spam Mail) messages to all the address I could find in the message headers/source. Kept getting some spam, sent more messages...
One day I got a whole slew of the same messages (again), I had enough, so I sent 100 BSM messages to each reply address for each message I got.
I haven't received any of these messages again, and I get less spam now.
It's a good thing to check the headers/source of the message to see if there are any valid addresses. If it's all fake, then it's time to email abuse@{domain} ;)
AC comments get piped to
I somehow got on ITWorld's Linux spam list and have not been able to get off. They give you a web site along with their spam that has a form that doesn't work. Sending 'unsubscribe' to the supplied email address doesn't work. I suspect they just use the email hit, like any common spammer, to verify that you haven't just blocked them. Currently anything that comes into my mailbox with ITWorld or LinuxWorld goes straight to /dev/null, and I'm one unhappy puppy in this regard.
--
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Half of the spam I get originated from Uu.net ips. I send complaints, get their canned response, then nothing. Often I get the same spam a few days later. WTF! Practice what you preach boys.
I'll say! Half of the forged spam I receive in bulk comes from uu.net accounts and they never do anything about it.
[caveat - I own stock in VZ who now own uu.net]
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Actually, their patent is on "42 click SPAM removal"... the business advantages for such a system are enormous. It's also referred to as the "carpul-tunnel" SPAM removal process.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
This is of course complete rubbish. A web server can do anything given a compliant client. There is no inherent security or functional limitation built into a web-server that prevents it doing exactly that.
The only possible way is if you ran an ActiveX control or an executable(scripting languages can't do this) that accessed the registry, but if you did that, it would be your own fault. Its certainly not the default behavior for a browser to access and send registry values to web servers.
Wrong. You have no idea what any closed proprietary web browser does or is capable of. The assumption that a web browser does not - or worse, can not - read and transmit information from any part of a client system is a fundamental mistake.
In any case, much of the functionality on microsoft.com is built around ActiveX controls. Windows Update for example. I guess anyone who wants to update their OS deserves what they get don't they?
However the registry and the information a browser sends are two very different things. There is no way a web server can get to your registry. And there are no secret API's that only Microsoft knows about. It would be way too much of a security risk, and someone would have blown the whistle a long time ago.
Like the security risk inherent in their ludicrously insecure Outlook client for example? Or the multitude of security risks that have plagued Internet Explorer from day one? Not to mention the ludicrously insecure concept of letting a browser run binaries on a client system. Gee those explorer chappies certainly do have security on the brain don't they?
We already know Internet Explorer keeps more information than it lets on. I don't know how many times I've seen yet another article on the information Internet Explorer maintains on the client machine. The fact that no-one has found a particular feature does not mean it does not exist.
IE is a closed system. It is proprietary. The code is not available for peer review. Therefore no independent validation can be made regarding its security. Given the right stimulus from a web server, IE could theoretically be made to dance a jig.
A web server *can* get to the registry on your machine if there exists on your machine a client that has the facility to send out that kind of information. Mind you that would require an organisation that constructs both web servers and web browsers? Hmm... how many companies do that?
Oh and as for secret API's. Nah, in this day and age you'd only expect that from a company with a history of doing that sort of thing.........
Oh wow.......
wait a sec.... I've got this intense feeling of deja vu.....
Cryptimus
Great idea! But be careful to avoid legal problems. You could get sued, especially if you use that as your return address (for impersonating them or something like that, IANAL)
Rockwalrus
The sleep of reason produces monsters -- Francisco Goya
http://www.spam.abuse.net/ might help you find a way out...
..:: Molotov's cocktail is a Russian blowjob
I thought that had been done already, or to some extent. As far as spam goes, steer clear of hotmail, I get at least 40 spams a day, i don't even use the account anymore because of the XXX and "Free Whatever" crap they send. Unsubscribing doesn't work, blocking email addresses doesn't work. Then again, what should I expect from Free email. However, I've been happy with my Excite Mail. Anyhow...that's of topic. :p
"Game over man! Game over!!"
It used to work about a year ago. Just click, enter your email, and BAM never get anything from them again. Now its click... we dont have your email in the database. No changes made and you get the same email again and again.
I think this needs to stop! no one I know has ever bought anything because of an email ad. But it costs the companies zero so they keep doing it.
ARG!
It's not for everybody
Well, it isn't perfect, but set up mail rules in your client. (There are plenty of really good mail clients out there that support rules - I'll leave that part as an exercise to the reader.) Just add a domain each time you receive UCE. Then, when you have a free saturday, send them polite e-mails (through the comments field of the web site, or to admin@ and postmaster@ the domain) asking them politely to stop. Until the mail system is reformed (which may be a while :), that seems like the only real option...
AragornCG
---
Hmm. I need to come up with a witty sig, don't I?
Now....on to the legion of responders...
To all of you recommending I not give out my e-mail to those I don't know too well....In case you didn't bother to read the body of the story, I gave my e-mail to MY WIFE. We have carnal relations and everything, I've even seen my son pop out of...well, you know. At least I hope you know.
As to the use of filters: Yes, I'm aware of that route. However, that's not the point. I don't even want that crap taking up space on my ISP's server.
To those responding to the privacy issue of Amazon somehow compromisiong their credit card number database by providing me with someone else's account password (even if it was my wife's): Oh, get a fscking clue. I wasn't asking for her password. I was asking Amazon to stop sending my e-mail account what I considered to be unsolicited e-mail. That's as easy as it should have been. For any /. reader to even suggest a defense of what has transpired easily translates into a future career at Amazon's marketing department. And on the one side note to the person suggesting I stop bitching and just ferret through my wife's wallet, this goes in order - just consider what you're suggesting. You deserve a job at Micros~1.
All in all, a pretty good spate of responses, things considered.
Just remember, given the situation: Anyone you've sent e-mail to might have as well ordered something from Amazon using YOUR e-mail, and even with a confirmation mail, I doubt seriously that you'd be able to remove yourself from their spam list wihtout knowing what was ordered and the last five digits of the credit card used to place the order.
IF.cmg/Kanghyr Caggee/
As I have said elsewhere in this discussion, I DID NOT seek any information from my wife's account, I simply wanted them to cease sending me unwanted e-mail. I could have at any point grabbed her wallet and found the credit card I know she uses most, and got into her account that way. I can see no reason that you or other detractors to this situation can interpret my respecting her privacy any other way.
Bottom Line: Complaintant (myself) called a customer service organization to stop e-mailing me. I didn't expect the rep on the phone to be able to take any action but to point me to whatever tool or address needed to alleviate my situation. In turn what I got was firm verbal authority that not only COULDN'T they do anything, but WOULDN'T do as well.
I don't see this problem as solvable, really. The problem was not to do with her Amazon account, but with my e-mail account. If you feel this to be otherwise, I'm sure Amazon is hiring.
IF.cmgIt's either your fault or the fault of your OS vendor.
Some ActiveX controls are marked as "safe for scripting". IE will allow javascript to use these controls. And at least two controls which were marked as safe should not have been. That's how the kak worm works.
The postmaster may be innocent of spamming per se, but they are guilty of providing an open relay for spammers.
I used to support this company, Pixels, that makes a modelling/rendering package that's pretty high end in its way, Pixels 3D. I tried a demo, never could afford the actual product but got a phone call from them once and was so favorably disposed that I kept talking and ended up on the line with one of the programmers talking about different programming languages that could be used in shaders! I thought they were really cool.
I began to get different mail- before, I'd very occasionally got a very informal sort of note that didn't come off like spam at all, and I didn't mind that. Some new person came in and cranked up the email volume more and more, and the emails got harder and harder sell, until they were indistinguishable from full-on spam- nobody was listening, they weren't talking to _me_ anymore, I was just a target. It was set up as if it was a list, with instructions for unsubscribing. I don't trust 'remove' procedures from most spammers, but with my history interacting with Pixels I thought I could trust their remove procedures...
Nothing happened. The unsubscribe procedure was either broken, or being intentionally ignored. I couldn't tell which. This, not the spammish tone of the frequent emails, was what finally tipped me over the edge, and I began a full-on Spamcop.net assault against the company I'd once quite liked, bitterly. In fact I called their office and left a message stating exactly why I wished to never hear from them again and had changed from an interested potential customer to the opposite. The person they'd spoken to on the phone had turned into an enemy through _their_ actions- the actions of one marketroid whom they might not have even been keeping an eye on.
That worked- I don't know if I actually got their connectivity and website interrupted, or if someone figured out they were paying too high a price, but I don't hear from them anymore.
No company needs to make this horrible mistake. Talk about badwill.
Am I the only one who sees storing credit cards as a problem. Nobody should ever be able to get at my credit card number. If amazon has it in a database it means a cracker has a chance to break in and get it.
Regarding the MAC address: That is a layer two protocol, not layer 3. That information isn't able to be transmitted across network segments. A router, access server (like a portmaster), bridge, or other similar devices will terminate that portion of the level 2 communication - it can't go any farther.
As for your other claim (I doubt there is any validity to your claims. ), I suspect that microsoft does in fact do such things. It would not suprise me in the least.
http://gabrielcain.com/
Somebody needs to sue their ass and make a nice big deal of it all in front of the media. No big company wants bad publicity like that, especially when its so blatantly obvious that they are clearly at fault.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
hm. due to the way i hold my trackball, i usually click with my middle finger. guess that explains why i come off so offensive?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
If all else fails, complain to the company that supplys the network services for abusing company. For amazon.com, that is UUNET. However, amazon is a very big company, so UUNET may not want to resolve your problem.
dread:~$ nslookup www.amazon.com
Server: dread
Address: 0.0.0.0
Name: www.amazon.com
Address: 208.216.182.15
dread:~$ whois 208.216.182.15
UUNET Technologies, Inc. (NETBLK-UUNET1996B) UUNET1996B
208.192.0.0 - 208.249.255.255
Amazon.com (NETBLK-UU-208-216-180) UU-208-216-180
208.216.180.0 - 208.216.183.255
We supposedly have laws here in the US to protect of from this, but for some reason the big boys are exempt. Threatning to use the anti-spam laws if useless because of the time/cost needed to pursue this.
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
From a company's perspective, hey, they've got you, why should they stop? It's not until they realize that it will cost them customers that they need to end spam. IF you've not bought something from them in a while, they probably figure they have nothing to lose.
Another place that really bugs me is Outpost.com. Seems that it's fairly simple to get off their e-mail list, but every time you buy something from them, they *resubscribe you*. Needless to say, I don;t buy anything from those clowns anymore.
I've seen all sort of hoops being put up that you have to jump through to get off a list. The *worst* I've seen is a recent MediaOne spam I got, which said, basically, that if I wanted off of their stupid mailing list, I needed to send them my physical address and contact information. WTF? This, ironically, was to be sent to their "consumer privacy" department. Lemme get this straight... I need to send you personal information via an unsecured e-mail link so you'll respect my privacy? Sweet.
One tactic you might try is to say that someone else gave your e-mail address as their own (in a big ISP, this has got to happen occasionally... jdoe21@hotmail is sometimes going to accidentally give an address of jdoe12@hotmail).
As with all sorts of spam, the best way to avoid getting it is to not give out your private e-mail. A Hotmail or other account is handy here. Moreso, in fact, since you can get the recipt info from whatever computer you're at. Of course, there is the privacy issue. You might try hushmail or some other encrypted web e-mail service.
Personally, I have my own domain, and the ability to create e-mail accounts at will. I'll use one for a while, then kill it.
I had a similar problem with another site. My solution was to take one of the spam messages, forge a convincing "mailer-bounce" message, and set a cron job to send a "bounce message" to their postmaster every 15 seconds. After a few days, my "bounce messages" started bouncing back to me, and viola, no more spam to that email account.
I am the admin at a medium sized ISP. We're always getting complaints about spam sent from our customers. So, we have shut down lots of them. I've noticed that whenever Uu.net gets a hold of one of these pieces of SPAM, they threaten to blackhole our ip space if we don't shut down the spamvertised site. I would not have a problem with this, I love to turn off spammers DSL accounts, except for these two facts.
1. Why have they not shut down Amazon's site yet, judging from how many complaints I see here, I can't believe they've not gotten complaints. Smells of an old boys network to me.
2. Half of the spam I get originated from Uu.net ips. I send complaints, get their canned response, then nothing. Often I get the same spam a few days later. WTF! Practice what you preach boys.
[Let me first say, yes, I am an employee of Amazon.com, however, I speak for myself and not Amazon.com or any of its partners in any way. I am only speaking as a person who uses thier Amazon.com account often]
When you sign up for an account at Amazon.com you given the option of recieving mass mailings. If ths person did not want to recieve want to recieve them, they should have clicked the opt-out. It is simple and painless and you can change it to opt-in or opt-out rather easily when you login.
This does not qualify as spam in anyway. You asked for it, and Amazon.com sends it.
Also, It is too bad that the poster's wife did not keep track of her Amazon.com account properly and he feels that getting her Amazon.com account password is too difficult. However, this is done for security, which is in her best intrest.
She should keep track of which Credit Cards she uses and where. This not only makes retreiving your Amazon account much easier, but also is good sound advice for shopping anywhere.
[And while I am here]
As some others have pointed out, this question is, another, cheap shot at Amazon.com from Slashdot. Amazon.com sells quality products at good prices to millions of people around the world. Amazon.com does not do anything unethical or illegal in its business practices. If at anytime you don't like how Amazon.com does business, you can send email to feedback@amazon.com and real person will read it.
If your an ISP and your getting Amazon.com email sent to dead accounts, you can contact techhelp@amazon.com and someone will work with you stop the email.
P.S. I dread seeing Slashdot turn into, not only a Anti-Microsoft, but also an Anti-Amazon.com site on the back of cheap posts and flimsy Ask Slashdot Questions.
Linux O Muerte!
One can't help but wonder how quickly they would filter/complain/sue if you put all their employees on a spam list and started bombarding them with junk like they do us.
I was at a university where there was a "zero tolerance" policy against using your student account to send commercial e-mail. And yet they turned around and started spamming me with adverts for Student Publications. When I complained, and pointed out the double standard, they lamely countered that their committee had discussed it and decided it was OK, because it was "for a good cause". I counter-countered that I considered raising money for my education to be a good cause as well, so by their new standards I was entitled to use my account for spam as too, see-how-fast-I-sue-you if you don't like it.
They quit sending me spam. I don't know if it's because my argument convinced them, or if they just took me off the list so they wouldn't have to listen to me anymore. (Makes no difference to me, so long their crap stops showing up in my mailbox.)
I don't have nearly so much spam trouble as I did a couple of years ago, but one big company that is being a real butt is Continental Airlines <CO.O.L._101700@airmail.continental.com>, may they rot in Hell for Christmas. They have an opt-out message at the bottom of their spam, but when I visited the site I got a blank page. (Linux not supported? Non-cookie visiters not supported?) And of course, the e-messages to postmaster and webmaster bounced.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Look, the internet is going on thirty years old today. Do you have any idea how many doublings of Moore's law that is? Is it really that hard to believe that somewhere in there, when all those transistors got packed in really tight in warm dark quarters, they remained completely chaste?
I visited a Web site late last night, and from what I saw there, I can assure you that the internet has not remained altogether chaste.
However, I'm quite angry about having to give them my credit card number, because -- honestly -- I only wanted to see the pictures out of scientific curiosity.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Regardless of how frustrating it is, and how much we hate spam..
Your email *account* is an endpoint for smtp mail. Unless your ISP offers you filters, that is *ALL* you are paying for, and, state-based legislation aside, you do not have a 'right' to prevent others from sending you mail. (Note I said prevent them from sending.... you *absolutely* have the right not to receive it.
That's the whole problem with mail. YOu have no control over acceptance.
I'm sure in the latter case that it's not Slashdot's fault, and I'm amazed that anyone would troll for addresses on this forum as the recipients are likely to be as spam-hostile as anyone.
No, I don't work for Amazon, and although I am a happy customer, I have no particular allegiance to them, I'm just calling this one like I see it.
Amazon's mail to Ironfist isn't spam, because it's really not unsolicited. IMO, Ironfist is not taking proper responsibility for delegating the use of his account to his wife. Remember, the prior business relationship was between Amazon and his wife. He had NO standing to modify her account settings in any way. Also, note that Ironfist says Amazon complied right away once they were able to confirm that his wife wanted the mail stopped.
I think this is a boundary condition case caused by the sharing of e-mail accounts and a ridiculous oversensitivity to what appears to be Amazon's correct protection of thier customer's rights and privacy. I wonder if Ironfist would also whine to Slashdot if Amazon were to allow *anyone* claiming to own the account modify his wife's settings? Amazon was right not to act too quickly here, since that could have hurt one of their customers.
I understand Ironfist's frustration, but the situation was at least indirectly of his own making, and as an objective observer, I can't fault Amazon's actions in this case in any way.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
The spam envelope is actually to you, even if it doesn't show - check the received: lines in the header - any recent sendmail install (or decent sysadmin) will include the $u macro in the received line of the header, which will list the email address that the mail was 'really' sent to.
The "to:" line is usually bogus in most spam - in reality it's completely decorative, and not used by the mail server at all.
How can any large respectable business expect to gain anything from making life difficult for potential customers. If placed in this position, I would make it my business (no pun intended) never to purchase anything from Amazon again.
(BTW, since their 1-Click Patent fiasco, I havn't, and won't ever buy a book through them.)
All Amazon know about this e-mail address is that somebody used it to order some books. Now somebody, who seems to know nothing about the book ordering history, is trying to get the password for the account.
Would this not strike you as just a little bit suspicious?
Imaging the alternative scenario:
Husband and wife shared the e-mail account.
Husband tries to get into wife's Amazon account to order 500 hundred copies of "Why I hate you bitch." in the wife's name.
Now imagine the shit that would be heaped on Amazon if this happened.
The whole point of the Amazon account is that all the user information is stored there (including preferences on mailings). There is absolutely no way that they should change it without him satifying some basic security check. Should he be able to change it so that he opted the amazon account into a mailing list.
Was it really to much effort to ask her "Darling, what was the title of one of the most recent books you've ordererd from amazon?"
Mp3.com is the fucking worst. I am an artist and they send me shit EVERY FUCKING DAY! It sucks because I can't just ban their domain because they send me emails on how to get paid. I have tried to get off the list, but it won't let me.
I have more problems with SPAM from large corporations than I do from subject: XXX Want to see Hot Girls?
Serious.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, you certainly have raised a good point here. When there's potentially a situation that could result in someone getting information they shouldn't have or being able to pull a nasty "prank book order" or worse, then I think the company should take steps to minimize that possibility.
And it's a good idea to make sure whatever privacy buttons you want clicked GET clicked! Look for them first in the future.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
All this does is select some action based on what operating system you're using. It's probably the same thing they use in Windows Update. There isn't anything particularly sinister about this.
Then why do they care about "isRegistered()" and "MSID"?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
www.eFax.com are spammers
If legislation is needed at least require a opt-out link with every email. Its just courtesy. They purposely do this to keep their crap flowing. I'd also like to see all of them have [ADV] as the subject so we can just use a regular filter.
While I'm dreaming up an email utopia, what keeps ISPs from identifying spammers who dialed up on the open relay and sent 400,000 messages? Just call Ameritech or whomever and call their abuse department. Now with those 400,000 messages figure out the real cost to the ISP, bandwidth, CPU time, etc and send them a bill. Oh I would guess they would get a crappy rate and it would be $40,000. Cheaper than the post office. Sue them if they don't pay, garnish wages etc. That would stop them cold. Unless they're coming off-shore this should be happening all the time.
I'm still dreaming here but why don't we start a little campaign to inform technophobes that buying from spammers encourages spam. I'm sure enough banners and it'll get into the mainstream. "Grandpa are you crazy?! That's a spammer, go to a real store for your aluminum siding."
The really unfair part is the more you particpate on the internet the more spam you'll get. Lets say you want the newest download and you have to fill out a webform, you use USENET, you find yourself quoted on some webpage with your email address attached, you're on a long list of CC:, you post to webboards, etc.
Most AOL users rarely venture out of the Disney-esque safe for family AOL net so their addresses don't get picked up and they don't understand what we're complaining about. Get a hold of every AOL address dump it on usenet and the angry AOL customer lobby will take care of the rest. Upstanding citizens and "family oriented users" blow experts, technophiles, and geeks out of the water when it comes to getting shit done on certain levels.
Fair? No. Effective? Yes.
Imagine how fast I would be laughed out of court if I complained about the busy modems at my little ISP compared to the colossal suit AOLers smote upon Steve Case.
Yes, absolutely, Amazon should have Herculean protections against giving your your password. But that misses the main point:
Amazon should NOT require your password to stop mailing to you!
Amazon, like anyone else, should respect the legal right of the mailbox owner to control what mail gets sent to it. Amazon doesn't have the right to set up so many barriers to stopping mail to a mailbox that may never have even given permission.
What if I set up an account tonight and give your e-mail address? We know Amazon doesn't do any sort of verification; they just add you to the list. You can't possibly know or find out my password; you don't even know who did this to you.
Amazon's actions wouldn't stand up in court, if anyone had the time, energy and money to sue them. In fact, you could probably sue them in small claims to avoid the money part.
Funny. My job is fighting spam at the biggest, evilest ISP in the world, and *I* think it's spam. Someone (doesn't matter who) was sending mail to his account and he couldn't get it to stop.
On what grounds do you declare it not spam? Do you work for Amazon? Why are you so worried about the sooper-sekrit c0nsipricy between Ironfist and Slashdot to "vilify" Amazon?
You can argue that the prior business relationship made it solicited, but once he requested it stop, it was clearly no longer solicited. It's unsolicited, it's bulk, it's email. That's spam.
Amazon needs to provide a way for mailbox owners to stop the mail. Period. Nothing to do with passwords, purchases, or anything else - Amazon simply doesn't have the legal right to send mail to people who don't want to receive it.
not, the one for ordering books. So he would not have been able to pull this stunt.
I have found Junkfilter for Procmail effective at stopping 99% of all of my spam. It filters out about 3-5 spam messages per day.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I realize that not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to handle their own mail server. Procmail works well with fetchmail too, though you really want to stop the messages before they come over you wire.
If you run your own mail server, you can also ipchain out the most offensive spam domains (*COUGH*Agis.net*COUGH*) I cut my spam by about 90% with an aggressive set of ipchains and some procmail scripts. Of course, most spammers seem to think my current domain is fake, which kind of helps.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I had somehting similar happen to me. I had signed up for something (I can't remember what) from Yankees.com, and from then on out I would get periodic updates from them. It was fine for a while, I just deleted them. But then I wanted to get off.
I tried following the instructions at the bottom of the emails; it didn't work. I tried replying to the emails, asking politely to be taken off. I tried CC'ing those replies to various emails @yankees.com (root, abuse, spam, www, etc). They all bounced. I tried sending rather rude and vulgar. Still nothing.
I went to Yankees.com and looked for some sort of contact info. NOTHING!
Finally, I noticed something at the bottom of the site saying "Powered by ultrastar", so I went to their website, ultrastar.com, found their phone number and called them up. I got the reception desk, and asked to speak with whomever was in charge of yankees.com. I got a very nice lady on the phone, and explained my situation to her. I gave her my email address, and have never gotten another email from yankees.com again.
Cire
I'm sorry, but I don't see what you guys are all angry about here. Maybe I'm missing something, but for once isn't a corporation trying to *protect* your privacy?
That's why God invented filters. It might not win the war, but it gets the job done.
Apparently, the Republican party has taken to spamming newsgroups as a form of canvassing for votes. I've seen RepubliSpam all over, in newsgroups like netscape.public.mozilla.general and alt.comic.sluggy-freelance. It's become really annoying.
It's like everybody on those committees that had to deal with anti-spam bills took one look at the subject of the legislation and thought, "Wow, that's really shady! Why aren't we doing that?"
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
It's not original, and dosn't always work, but I carefuly inspect the headers, and try to track down the server it came from.
I use that information as well as the address the spammer is claiming to use, and mail root, postmaster, and webmaster at the domains I find. In the case of providers like hotmail, abuse@ as well. I send a form message stating that I have recieved unsolicited mail (attached) and that any further communications recieved will result in a bill being sent to both the ISP serving the spammer and the spammer; for use of company time (time being worth $45 dollars an hour, with a typical spam "advertisement" using one half-hour to 45 minutes of time.)
It dosn't work every time, but I am usually sucessful.
---
Desperation is a stinky cologne
A computer is able to be considered a fax machine if it's hooked to a phone line and a printer. The SPAM does not have to come as a fax transmission.
It provides for statutory damages. If you go for harassment, you would have to prove how much the spam hurt you. Under the SPAM fax law, there is a $500 statutory damages.
Fight Spammers!
Considering we have so many draconian and badly thought-out laws in the UK (such as RIP), I'm kind of glad somebody has given me a chance to think about how cool the Data Protection Act is over here.
In effect, all records (originally just computer-based, but it's now moved out to all records regardless of media), concerning an individual are available to that individual (with a few exceptions for military/police intelligence purposes). In effect, if you write to a company like Amazon and ask to be removed from their mailing list, they must comply. Failure to do so gets them into hot-water with the Data Protection Registrar who can cause all sorts of nasty things to happen to a company.
Other nice features are the right to have access to algorithms and methods used on personal data that may affect you in some way - e.g. credit scoring, etc.
Look, from this code snippet I can't tell much more than those two registry keys are being looked at. Those quite clearly tell what operating system is hosting the client. I don't know what isRegistered() does or what the MSID member is. Both are apparently members of the RegCtrlWiz object. But it's obvious that you don't know what they are either. I can tell you that if they wanted the product key it's encrypted in the registry. They don't need to decrypt it on your side; they surely have the crypt keys. SO why not open that registry key explicitly? They're not doing it, as far as I can tell.
But even if they did, you have to know that their whole product ID database must be trash. I personaly have installed about 300 NT servers with the product id of "111-111111". That key works on almost any MS product up until a couple of years ago. They teach you that in MCSE class, for crying out loud. There are eight thousand machines at my place of business with the same copy of Windows 95 on them. Sure we have licenses, but I'll be damned if I'm going to install it eight thousand times by hand. We use disk imaging like most companies of any size. In that case, knowing our product ID's would be useless to MS.
So even if they're gathering your product ID (of which there is zero evidence in this code) there's not jack they can do with it. They're bound to have millions of multiple entries.
And if they were, someone like NTBugtraq or the l0pht would have publicized a security exploit about it now. For that matter when I am at work again I'll just plug up a sniffer while I surf their site and see for myself what those functions retrieve. But you don't need to attribute to malice what is easily explained by idiocy.
All this does is select some action based on what operating system you're using. It's probably the same thing they use in Windows Update. There isn't anything particularly sinister about this.
I have a domain (for arguments sake, lets call it domain.web), and any email address that's sent to it winds up in the same place.
So, for example, if I were to order from amazon, I'd give my email address as amazon@domain.web. I then set a configuration file to "enable" the account. Email to addresses that haven't been "enabled" get discarded (I never reply to unsolicited email, because you're giving away vaulable info that that email is good). Email to addresses that have been enabled get saved. Every few weeks, I scan, via a web interface, the emails.
This way, I can also tell who sells my email address, or where spam comes from! Everyone gets their own email address
--- Speaking only for myself,
I was just in a big email war over this. This company moneyformail.com was sending me spam, and said that it was an opt in list. I never subcribed to anything like this. When I went to follow the link to cancel, it asked me for a usename and password. As I said, I didn't subscribe, so it had a link if you didn't know your login information. In order to remove you, they wanted my mailing address and the last four digits of my social security number! Like I'd give that out. I tried to tell the guy that I never even signed up for anything, and he had no way to even verify that information, but he insisted that he needed it. This is ridiculous. Here's a quote from the email:
Furthermore, we are well aware of the federal laws and statutes that pertain to the Web and especially to our site. Please be advised that we do not nor are we under any legal obligations to go any further on your request without the additional cooperation and assistance that we requested of you.
You've got to love that....
And once you've got your own domain, you can set up an admin mailbox, or use postmaster@ to register your domain(s). Then use mail rules to file all mail for that account in its own folder. BTW, be careful if you're doing this with NSI's mail-from admin scheme. Mail-from is a poor choice to begin with, but it's a real pain if your admin account can't be used for some reason.
/. public address is the only one that still gets bombarded with porn spam.
It's really amazing how little spam you get if you keep your everyday address private.
As an aside, my
it's called "One-Click Fuck Off".. if you click on a site with your middle finger (of course your mouse has to be equipped for biometric finger identification) you are automatically removed from that site's mailing lists and your account is deleted, with all personal information removed.
To increase adoption by companies, if you middle-finger-click on a site that isn't signed up to the program they just get sent a bunch of spam with ASCII art flipping them the bird!
A quick search of the SpamCop database reveals postmaster@amazon.com as a candidate address, not neseceriy (sp?) for complaining to, but at least for putting on
A TRACERT of www.amazon.com ends up going through a whole bunch of gblx.net URLs, so I had a look at www.gblx.net:
Global Crossing is a new breed in the world of telecommunications. Leading-edge technology. Global reach. The ability to rapidly deploy new services. A next-generation network designed to support voice, data and bandwidth-intensive applications.
Putting the URL the gblx website ends up redirecting us to (globalcrossing.com) into the Spamcop host tracker gives us:
Statistics:
ISP score:380
Note, this is not necessarily a reflection on the specific address given. It is rather based on the overall ISP score.
Email from this host would be detained by SpamCop Filters: isp score:380
Found abuse address: abuse@globalcenter.net
So you could always send complaining e-mails to abuse@globalcenter.net if it gets too bad. They're bound to do something.
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I hope this gets moderated up to get the word out.
To quote from the sneakemail site:
Consider each Sneakemail address as an informal agreement between you and an online business or organization.
You agree to allow them to contact you through this address, and they in turn, by accepting and using this address, agree not to abuse this privilege by sending you unwanted solicitations or to give or sell your address to others.
If they abuse this privilege, by using Sneakemail, you have more control.
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
WTF! A post about a web site created to solve just THIS problem sits at score 1 and a post for a windows utility gets a 5. Is this one of those slashdot bugs I've heard about
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
Here is what I do. Now that there are tons of free webmail addresses available, I found a solution. I registered a hotmail account for the specific purpose of junkmail/spam. Freedrive, for example, says that in order for you to use their service they must be allowed to send you advertisements via email. I find hotmail to be excellent for this purpose. Everytime I sign up for some web promotion, I use this account and I never have to worry about recieving junk in my "real" email box.
I like it. I had the paper equivilant when I bought a car. The title had a minor typo in it. I didn't fix it. Since it only went to the DMV (which at the time I didn't think sold lists), I was very supprised at the amount of paper mail with that name on it. The typo? My middle initial was wrong. After I got the first junk mail, I decided not to correct the error. About 1/3 of my junk mail came with that name. I even got a couple phone calls to that name. I imediately grilled the callers where they got my name. They wouldnt say, but it was obvious. It made an auto spam filter. It also made me aware what the government does with personal information.
The truth shall set you free!
What Ironfist.cmg was trying to say is that Amazon's mails may be solicited ones to his WIFE not to HIM.
If he allowed his wife to use his e-mail account and naow he doesn't want this e-mails anymore he is in his rights to be removed from Amazon's mail list.
To do this is very simple and doesn't require any privacy violation. Amazon can place a link in the e-mail message pointing to an URL that will remove him from the list without revealing personal information.
What ? Me, worry ?
What if my wife had died since last Christmas? What if she had left me in that time?
I do stuff like this often: call them and tell them that your wife died or is in the hospital, or left you, or whatever. Come up with a story. The people on the other end are only human and will bend the rules. It works.
Good for telemarketing: when they call, tell them in a shaky voice that the person they called for died in a drunk driving accident and please remove them from the list.
You could call every day and ask them firmly ``This is $yourname. Did you remove me from the database yet?'' After a while they will pass you off to a manager or somebody who will do it. I learned that trick from my mom.
Companies do crap like that all the time, it's only fair to do it back to them!
It'll be a little work, but the fun and enjoyment you'll get will be well worth it. You said you had friends at Amazon. That's good, you already have their email address schema (john.doe or john_doe @amazon.com). Hopefully in this case you are using MS outlook, or some other email client that allows auto reply, or auto forward. Set up a rule in the mail client that whenever an email is received from the spam address at Amazon, your email client autoforwards it to the CEO of Amazon.com, then moves it immediately to the trash. Every time you get one of the messages from then on, you'll know he's getting it too!!! You'll be amazed at the amount of fun you can have with this until he gets tired of it and gets you off the list!!
Half the information you whined about is available to them the instant your computer contacts their web server with a browser...
MAC address, IP address, OS version, Browser version, etc.(the last three are recorded in the web server logs)
I doubt there is any validity to your claims.
I'm an IS guy for a small company. Recently a key employee employee quit, but since she was a key employee we could not just bounce all e-mail sent to her e-mail address. So, I receive it, and if it's important I relay it to the correct person.
She is on AMAZON.COM's spam distribution list. I contacted Amazon.com customer support no less than ten (10) times in my quest to get her e-mail address removed from their spam list. I was roundly defeated in every attempt; I did not know her password; I did not know her credit-card number; I did not know what book she bought recently; and I was not her; so, they CONTINUE to send their spam which arrives at my address!
I find this to be apalling, because I am now the owner of this e-mail address, but there is NO WAY for me to get that address removed from their spam list.
How rude!!! If anyone from AMAZON.COM is reading this, you should know that I discourage everyone I know from doing business with you as a result of this fiasco.
I totally empathize with the author of the original question.
Maps WANTS to get sued. They even have instructions on how to sue them on their website. They really want to blow this out in the open, and I commend them for this.
The feel that by getting sued, they will eventually get the chance to prove the constitutionality of spam or spam blockers. It will be interesting to see what happens.
First of all, mail from Amazon is not spam. Maybe in conversation, but generally, spam means unsolicited commercial e-mail. Let's go over this again:
...
This e-mail was solicited. It is not spam.
Then we have the issue that the husband wants to break into his wife's Amazon account to change the subscription. Does the husband ask his wife what her password and credit card are? No, he expects Amazon to just hand over this information to someone else, namely him. Let's go over this briefly:
Bravo to Amazon for protecting his wife's privacy.
The fact that this was difficult to do is good. The fact that this gentleman found dealing with a large corporation frustrating when he could simply have asked his wife, and then turns this into a Slashdot complaint, is bizarre. Particularly when his wife chose to receive the e-mail. Yes, Amazon greased the way, but c'mon
Bottom line:
this problem was solvable.
Bottom line:
complainant didn't feel like following through.
Next!
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
It's not fixed if "some people don't have this problem". It's fixed if "no people have this problem".
Amazon has spent years running opt-out spam, spamming harvested addresses, and generally playing fast and loose with things. They've made people jump through opt-out hoops, they've managed to fail to handle unsubscribe requests, and they've never, ever, responded substantively to complaints about this process.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
...Coz I have the patent on One-Click(tm) Mailing List removal :)
Gfunk007
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I ordered some books from Amazon.co.uk last Christmas, making sure at the time that I didn't miss any checkboxes asking them to send me junk relentlessly. As a result, I was somewhat surprised when I started getting adverts from them via email. Apart from the sheer terribleness of the removal instructions (that really didn't cope well with the concept of me replying from a different address to the one they were sending mail to. Why should I have to reconfigure my mail client to deal with their poor quality system?), I was sufficiently annoyed to reply asking why they felt that it was acceptable to email me without asking first. In return I received a form letter telling me that I'd been unsubscribed. I replied saying that this didn't actually answer my question and received another copy of the same email. This happened three more times before I gave up headbutting the sheer wall of cluelessness and simply vowed never to go near them again.
Microsoft were similarly bad. Even after following their unsubscribe instructions, I was still getting mail. I rang up the agency doing the mailing, was politely annoyed at them for 20 minutes and eventually received a full apology and an explanation that Microsoft departments can obtain email addresses up to 3 months in advance of mailings, meaning that even once you're unsubscribed you'll get junk for up to 3 more months. Still, this time they promised that I'd been taken off their lists fully.
Right.
Another ad arrived a week later. A decidedly pissed off email to Microsoft later, I received a copy of my complaint that had been forwarded through 4 levels of customer service drones each adding something like "This customer appears annoyed. Can something be done?" culminating in webmaster@microsoft.com telling me that I'd been removed from all their lists. This time it seemed to work.
Moral of the story? Companies seem significantly more worried about having lots of customers on their email lists than they do about the small number of people who get annoyed at them as a result and probably will carry on doing so until enough people realise that they're not obliged to put up with it.
I use a great little Windows utility called Bounce Spam which sends an email to the spammer looking very much like a message from the server indicating that the message couldn't be delivered.
Spammers don't generally get the bounce messages. Most of them are relay raping some misconfigured mailserver using nothing more than a 33.6 modem with forged envelope from, forged from headers, forged receive lines and more. The bounces will usually end up sitting in the lap of an entirely innocent postmaster. It would take more time for the spammer to process bounces than it would save them when sending the spam in the first place.
However, this does stand a fairly good chance of working with "legitimate" spam (ie, that sent by companies on behalf of themselves) since they're actually paying for their bandwidth.
I thought, 'Naah, this can't really be the Republicans. They wouldn't do something as stupid as spamming people for support.' But then I did some research...and apparently they really are this stupid.
Here is a Salon article from 1999 about a Republican senate candidate's spam. And there's an anti-spam spite with an article about the Californian Republican party spamming people. A mention in the Seatt le Times. And then of course there's EChampions, the RNC-funded group who sent the spam that hit my mailbox.
If I needed a reason not to vote Republican, this gave me one. Bastards. But I suspect that the next election will be far worse, with candidates spamming from all sides.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Microsoft were similarly bad. Even after following their unsubscribe instructions, I was still getting mail.
Did the mail look like an advertisement for a developer's conference? Did it have remove instructions asking you to send a reply or visit a web site to be removed? Did sending a reply bounce, so you had to use the web page?
If so, it wasn't just spam. It was an attempt to mine your machine for information.
I started getting those spams from microsoft - and I didn't even have a windows-capable machine anywhere in my domain. So after the unsubscribe email bounced I probed the web site (with an ancient version of Mosaic that didn't know how to do most of the dirty tricks B-) ).
The main page gave a link to a mailing-list manipulation page. The button on the page where you delete yourself from the mailing list downloads a very interesting page.
The page is a mix of HTML, Javascript, and VBScript.
- The HTML uses the instant-refresh trick to forward you to a page at register.microsoft.com if you're not java-enabled, else it runs the javascript.
- The javascript forwards you to the same page if you're not on a VBScript-enabled browser, else it runs the VBScript.
- The VBScript (judging by the names of the classes it uses) sniffs your registry and then forwards you to the same page, but with the registry information added to the URL.
I didn't follow it to the next page to see what other dirty tricks might have been embedded. (I presume the automatic forwarding eventually terminates on an 'unsubscribe me' page, so everything looks dandy.) But by this point register.microsoft.com already has the sniffed registry info (at least your Windows and browser versions), tied to your IP address and whatever other stuff the browser includes in the HTML request. And their server can feed you other pages, tuned to your configuration, to mine more info or maybe do some damage, before they finally give you the page you wanted.
So Microsoft found a new use for spam: Populating a database by sucking registry info out of the machines of any Windows user they could sucker into trying to use the web to get off their spam list.
The registry has all sorts of information in it. Here's some that I know exists there, for starters:
- The MAC address of any ethernet cards. (These are a unique identifier that can be used to recognize your individual machine, just like the Pentium CPU serial number that caused such a flap for Intel.)
- The names, version numbers, serial/program key numbers, etc. of any installed software, both from Microsoft and from most other vendors.
I leave it to you to imagine the intended uses of this information.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Web servers can't read your registry, plain and simple.
R F=Y&".
/REGWIZ/win40.asp from immediately downloading a more extensive subversion that might be visible on a non-subvertable software configuration.
=
0 0" WIDTH=0 HEIGHT=0>
, _
R F=Y&"
But web clients, running on your machine, sure can.
The only possible way is if you ran an ActiveX control or an executable(scripting languages can't do this) that accessed the registry, but if you did that, it would be your own fault.
How about running a VBScript fragment that uses a Microsoft backdoor object to read the registry?
I've dug out and reviewed the code. I know zilch about VBScript except that it's object oriented. But by analogy with other OOP languages this VBScript checkFlags() routine sure looks to me like it uses a class called "RegWizCtl" to:
- Extract your MSID (your product key?)
- Start a string with:
"/REGWIZ/wiz40.asp?CRF=Y&RegMSID={your MSID}&"
- Iterate through the registry entries for the Windows and Windows NT version numbers:
- Check if they're registered and
- If they are, add "&D={n}" to the end of the string (where {n} is 1 for Windows, 2 for Windows NT).
- Return the string to the Javascript routine.
The Javascript routine looks like it checks whether your browser is internet explorer and your OS is Windows 98 or Windows NT 5, making a reference to the return from the VBScript routine if so, else making a reference to "http://register.microsoft.com/REGWIZ/wiz40.asp?C
The HTTP looks like it puts up a web bug to get an object named "RegWizCtrl" with class ID "CLSID:50E5E3D1-C07E-11D0-B9FD-00A0249F6B00" loaded, the zero-delay refreshes to "/REGWIZ/wiz40.asp?CRF=Y&" (if the Javascript hasn't done it already).
Tell you what: Here's the web page in question (minus a BUNCH of leading blanks on each line apparently designed to throw the code off the right of the window if it happened to be viewed). Maybe some of the HTML, Java, and VBScript experts on this board can tell us all what it really does.
(Of course this means that the whole slashdot community can see it and make their own versions. What a pity.)
Remember: Though this part might seem benign, it tells the server at "/REGWIZ/wiz40.asp":
- That you're running Windows 98 or Windows NT 5.
- That you're running Internet Explorer.
- That your system is subvertable using this mechanism.
So if your system IS subvertable there's nothing to keep
==============================================
To restore the original:
- Change leading blanks to tabs, 8 blanks to one tab.
- Add three leading tabs to every line starting with the "!--" line.
- Add seven more tabs to the start of the line containing "\Windows NT\"
- Change all occurrences of "[" to left-angle-bracket. (Someday I'll figure out how to put that character in a slashdot posting.)
- Join the lines beginning with "[OBJECT" and "CLASSID" (a long line that got wrapped by slashdot).
===============================================
[HTML>
[OBJECT ID="RegWizCtrl" STYLE="display: none" CLASSID="CLSID:50E5E3D1-C07E-11D0-B9FD-00A0249F6B
[/OBJECT>
[SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBScript">
[!--
Function CheckFlags()
on error resume next
Dim sBuffer, sRegMSID
sRegMSID = RegWizCtrl.MSID
aProdKeys = Array("SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion"
"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion")
sBuffer = "/REGWIZ/wiz40.asp?CRF=Y&RegMSID=" & sRegMSID & "&"
for iCounter = LBound( aProdKeys ) to UBound( aProdKeys )
RegWizCtrl.IsRegistered = aProdKeys( iCounter )
if RegWizCtrl.IsRegistered then
if err.number = 0 then
sBuffer = sBuffer & "&D=" & CStr( iCounter )
end if
end if
if err.number then err.clear
next
CheckFlags = sBuffer
End Function
' -->
[/SCRIPT>
[SCRIPT LANGUAGE=JavaScript>
[!--
if ((navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE") >= 0 && navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Windows 98") >= 0) ||
(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE") >= 0 && navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Windows NT 5") >= 0))
{
location.href = CheckFlags();
}
else
{
location.href = "http://register.microsoft.com/REGWIZ/wiz40.asp?C
}
//-->
[/SCRIPT>
[META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="0; URL=/REGWIZ/wiz40.asp?CRF=Y&">
[/HEAD>
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Get your own domain, and create a new address for every company that requests one (e.g. amazon@mydomain.net). Then use mail aliases to decide if the company gets to send mail to your ccount or to /dev/null.
That's exactly what I do. It also helps to find out what sites are being mined by the mailing-list sellers. (I've only gotten about three spams to "rod" so far. B-) )
Unfortunately, the WHOIS database of domain contact information is open and has been mined by the mailing list sellesrs. So having a domain gets you spam - to an address that you CAN'T ignore if you want to keep the domain.
The "cybersquatting" procedure starts by sending notices to the posted contact information (which is also where billing info is sent). Don't answer and you might find your domain reassigned to someone else. So if your domain name is at all desirable, you have to deal with spam.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I was getting a bunch of "On sale today only!" e-mails from some company. I sent a typical "please remove me" e-mail every time a new message rolled in, but after a month I was still getting spammed.
So to make my plight a little clearer I created a 500K file with nothing but the word "remove" in it. I then quoted the file as text in the body of my next e-mail to them. The response I got back was from the system administrator was that they couldn't find my name in their mailing list and couldn't remove me. I responded back with the 500K text file again. The next e-mail I received was that I had been removed from their list. To this day I haven't received another e-mail from them.
The moral of the story, one 500K message is worth more than 500 1K messages.
-Hi, I want to *buy* a book from Amazon, but I can't, since I forgot my password. Could you please e-mail it to me (so I don't have to turn to B&N instead)?
I'm pretty sure you'll get your password this way.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Yes, the registry contains lots of nifty information. Besides the stuff you mention, it can store your passwords. If you have Auto complete enabled it'll even store your credit card numbers.
There are several things your browser sends, and its available to any web server. Your browser brand and version, language, the URL you clicked through from, your IP address etc. A server can tell if you have Javascript enabled. Most of the stuff a web server can detect about you is defined in the HTTP standard. Yes, Microsoft was collecting this information. Then again, Slashdot collects the same information. /. knows your IP, browser version, Javascript capability, how long you stay, how often you visit, etc. Read the code. But so what. Most commercial websites collect this information.
However the registry and the information a browser sends are two very different things. There is no way a web server can get to your registry. And there are no secret API's that only Microsoft knows about. It would be way too much of a security risk, and someone would have blown the whistle a long time ago.
Actually, you would have more luck reading their registry than the other way around. IIS 4.0 and up provided a component that provided access to the web servers registry through a web page. You are able to set things up to perform any system admin task through a web page, if you want. Pretty insecure, if you asked me.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Spambouncer has been running on Linux since at least the 2.0 kernel days.
-- Anne Marie
Hmm. It only takes 1-Click to buy something, but a bunch of personal information to get of their mailing list...
I'm sure I'll be lambasted for saying this, but this is about the stupidest Ask Slashdot I have ever seen. If you are going to give your credit card number to a company which you know they will have on file, you better be damn sure you don't forget the password.
Would you rather have someone crack your e-mail address password and have them realize all they have to do is go to amazon and click a few buttons and they'll have access to your amazon account as well?
Anyway, if it bothers you that much, and you can't even go through the trouble to get you credit card out to verify that this is your account, all of amazon's mass e-mails are sent from specific e-mail addresses from amazon.com, such as history-editor@amazon.com or alerts@amazon.com, and you can filter out those specific addresses really easily in most modern mail programs.
This all leads me to the conclusion that you are a troll.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
They are waiting for their one-click SPAM removal patent application to be confirmed. If they're not careful with such innovation, someone might steal it and use it to undermine their entire operation!
- Twi
I don't know about the links in the e-mail, but if you go to Amazon.com and scroll to the bottom you'll find a Privacy Notice link.
Click on it, and on the resulting page you find a Customer Communication Preferences link.
Click on it, type your e-mail, select the forgotten password option and hit continue.
This will e-mail the password. Then update your e-mail preferences using the same two starting links.
I don't seem to have your problem?
IMHO Amazon.com has done a reasonable job of responding to the privacy and spam concerns of their customers. YMMV
Hi!
Set up a free account with excite mail and use that for everything else. When it gets too spam-ridden, cancel it. Set up a new one.
I had 7 email accounts and usually got about 5 spams a day on some of them. I canceled those acounts, set up a new account which NO ONE but my friends/family gets, and set up an account at Excite (which is a nice one).
Email's cheap enough (free) that you can afford to set up a new one.
On the other hand, if you're already bombarded by spam, that is a problem.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Sort of a similar story. Once a few years ago I bought my wife a book from Amazon and have since received email from them at various points. I finally decided I no longer wanted it and looked for an easy way to "opt-out." Just as stated, you seemingly had to jump hoops if you didn't know your password (I didn't, I had ordered a long time ago). I wasn't looking forward to calling them and wasting more time, so I tried the obvious. I simply replied and put "unsubscribe" as the subject line. They sent me a confimation email within a day stating I had been removed and I haven't received another email from them since. Sometimes the simplest solution really is the best.
For example, my Yahoo member account has the word "yahoo" encrypted in the email address. The email address kiwi-nody4la is the word "sldot" (short for `slashdot') encrypted by the program.
This program also has support for encrypting time stamps (email addresses that time out), having a different encryption code for messages posted to Usenet, and encrypting the IP someone views a web page from.
The program is completely free, being under the public domain. Source can be found here:
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
I've had great results with my method for handling spam - I use a great little Windows utility called Bounce Spam which sends an email to the spammer looking very much like a message from the server indicating that the message couldn't be delivered. I don't know if a similar utility exists for Linux but I wouldn't be surprised to find one.
Dead email addresses are less than useless to spammers - making them think yours is dead is the fastest way to get off their mailing lists.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
Ironfist.cmg is whining without thinking, and Slashdot has no discernably legitimate reason to post this story:
Making a long story, shorter: it wasn't that simple. It should have been, but it turned out to be much worse.
In my experience, most things on Amazon are much easier and more straightforward. Create and cancel an order on Amazon - *very* easy. Now try the same thing with buy.com, outpost.com, or others - and good luck, because you simply can't do it through their web interfaces. The convenience of one-click (which I personally love) requires Amazon to be a bit more sure of who you are before sending out a password - passwords are for security after all, and your inability to manage your authentication credentials is hardly their fault.
It was at this point that principle kicked in. It's MY e-mail account.
Perhaps you should have considered this before letting someone else use your account. You hardly have cause to gripe here, as the situation is entirely of your own making...
This brings up a new twist on spam, privacy, and recourse to be taken. It is in fact my e-mail account, paid for by me, and Amazon tells me I have no control over what I may receive via it.
Again, you let your wife use it, and she, who was Amazon's customer, not you, selected the "let me know about things at Amazon" option. If this ticks you off, it's something you should discuss with your wife, not Amazon, as you aren't even a customer...
And the never-ending problem of spam continues...
Not really, your own post makes it clear that this was resolved with Amazon over the phone. This entire piece seems to be just an excuse to accuse Amazon of spamming, which they're clearly not doing here.
You may not like getting this mail, but what you've described is NOT spam. Not by a long shot.
And if the problem is resolved, just what was you motive for this posting? (and Slashdot's motive for selecting it for publication?) This whole thing looks like a very badly disguised attempt to villify Amazon on unjust grounds...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I dont have time to check, but perhaps MAPS can threaten to add them. Last that I heard, the main requirement is that the spammer wont stop even after being asked. http://maps.vix.com/rbl/reporting.html talks about how to report spammers. Give it a shot, I'm sure that they'd be in trouble to get blackholed. heh. Of course, I'm also sure that MAPS doesnt wana get sued again :)
Typical creationist pab, and I see it all the time. Just because something exists in nature doesn't mean it was necessarily placed there by an intelligent and omnipotent Creator. It goes back to Dawkins and the watchmaker -- complexity will manifest itself when given sufficient time and enough evolutionary pressure.
Look, the internet is going on thirty years old today. Do you have any idea how many doublings of Moore's law that is? Is it really that hard to believe that somewhere in there, when all those transistors got packed in really tight in warm dark quarters, they remained completely chaste? Is it so inconceivable that the result of just one of these matings could've produced the primordial ancestor of the modern internet filter?
The universe is an exciting enough place as it is. We don't have resort to unsubstantiated but entrenched rumors about divine intervention in these strictly mortal affairs.
-- Anne Marie