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Spammer Gets Spammed
William L. Jones sent us a link to a wired story about spammers getting what they deserve: it amused me. What also amuses me is my new hobby:
I now send the postage-page envelopes back from junk mailers. Empty. Eat that! 30 cents out of your pocket! Yeah! I guess now that we've evolved past sword fights, I need something to vent steam.
I was a Telemarketer for 3 months. I enjoyed it, the pay was good, and the more weird calls or ranting people I got the better. If someone had a good line to screw with me for a while it made my night interesting. I loved getting snappy comebacks before a hangup or anything out of the ordinary. So please, do Telemarketers a favor when they call you late at night, don't just hang up on them, say something witty or obscene THEN hang up on them. It actually does make the night more amusing.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Don't bother sending empty envelopes. Be sure you cut up their literature, old newspapers, etc, into small peices and shove them into the envelope until it can't take anymore.
;)
For phone soliciters, passing them off just isn't fun. You've gotta play with them for a while first. I usually give them a quiz about their product/service they'd like to sell (throwing in my own made up words as I go along) and see how well they do. Usually, they hang up before me
As for the spammers, those bastards got what was coming to them.
I once got a piece of mail with only my name on it. Then again, it was across-town mail in a town of 250...
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
The reason that people take some joy in this is that UUNET is considered to be pretty lackadaisical about fighting spam. Whatever their corporate mouthpieces say, their behavior suggests that they don't consider spam to be that big a problem. Or at least that they consider it to be somebody else's problem. Now perhaps they'll take it more seriously.
Note that this is probably not "an eye for an eye", in that nobody spammed them specifically to punish them for their previous spammer-friendly behavior; it appears that they just got buried in a normal spam run, the same kind of spam run that originates from their network all too frequently.
This is more akin to a policeman on the night watch who parks his squad car and takes an illicit nap, finding on waking that somebody stole his tires. There is a certain poetic justice that's less "an eye for an eye" than "what goes around, comes around".
Few would vote for raping the rapist, but equally few will shed tears for the rapist who, in spite of our efforts to prevent rape, is raped by a bigger, meaner rapist. Buddhists work to end the suffering of all sentient beings, but that doesn't mean they can't appreciate the beautiful symmetry of karmic balance.
I would say that an eye for an eye is simply an enforced version of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And trusteth me, they will if you do.
And of course the Golden Rule is also reflected in Kant's Categorical Imperitive. When deciding if something is ethical, ask yourself "what if everybody did it?"
And another reflection: Axelrod's work on the Prisoner's Dilemma. Someone who knows the phrase "Lex Talionis" has probably heard about this, so I'll leave you with this unexplained remark: Tit for Tat won.
Philosophers and scientists agree, an eye for an eye is OK and workable. Get into the 21st Century, man.
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
when i feel like sending a message to Joe's Credit Card company for spamming me and the postal service with their platinum credit card offers for the umpteenth time, i carefully peel out the postage paid return envelope and then shred the rest (not with a shredder, mind you, but the old fashioned neandethal way than really gives me a sense of satisfaction when it's done) and then send them back the resulting confetti.
35 cents out of their pockets, plus whoever unstuffs those envelopes gets a lapful of shredded paper. or, better yet, if they're done by machine, maybe my little act of revenge clogs up their cogs for a few minutes, and in the meantime, the machinery of junkmailing grinds to a halt.
i can dream, can't i?
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I used to clip a good crotch shot out of a porno mag and send that back in those postage paid reply envelopes. You know someone's either going to be shocked, or happy.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
JunkMail Removal Info
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"Do you hear the Slashdotters sing,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
Other types of mail income are used to offset these costs. 2nd class postage is a great example: a new subdivision called "Priority 2nd Class" has been given to monstrous magazines (think: U.S. News, Time, etc) To get their business, the USPS has given special treatment and costs, while those not qualifying (any magazine/newspaper under a zillion subscribers) have seen significant increase in postage. Example: 14% increase every other year. The post office has made it clear that these types of mailers are a hindrance, and a pain in the ass to the USPS. They would rather deliver sorted pallets by the truckload than break it down further.
On a smaller scale you'll see the same with 1st class. It's harder for the USPS to do this, because every citizen is affected by increases in 1st class mail, while only publishers are affected by 2nd class increases...Fewer people can complain..and so the raping of 2nd class continues.
Anyway, in the beginning, the USPS was in business to deliver your personal mail. As they grew, and tried to take more money, get more customers (Like all the dirty tricks they used to (and still do) against UPS) and allow bulk mail, etc, etc, they have since had to buy more facilities, more equipment, and many many many more employees. As they continue to make better bottom lines on large customers, they will continue to abhor your mail and mine. Our costs will increase. Eventually the cost will make us cut down our mailing. It already has. How many stamps can you get for $1. Ooops, not even 3 now.
I remember back in the '80s, once a month, letter mail that used to take 1 day to get here, took 2 days instead. What was going on? Turned out that it was all related to the day the new Playboy issue came out. Playboy paid a cheap automation rate that covered the automation costs of the USPS, but it was our 1st class mail that suffered, and paid for the extra employees and leg work that was needed.
Rader
The trick is not to go overboard. Instead of affixing a brick, find some old lead wheelweights, and put one or two in the envelope. It will be more expensive, and they company will have to get rid of a toxic substance. Enough people do this, and then we can report the bastards to the EPA!.
www.eFax.com are spammers
There's more information at Junkbusters.com which is very good for this kind of information. Incidentally, the fine is federally mandated (ie you and the marketer don't need to "negotiate", it's $500 per offense.) There are, I believe, lawyers who specialise in collecting the funds for a large cut, so if you're prepared to do the auditing, you can just report incidents of abuse and see the money roll in with no further intervention on your part.
Me, I just put the phone down on them. It's usually pretty easy to detect they're calling as the first few seconds of the call are usually complete silence, followed by background noise of other telemarketers in the same complex (prison?) at work.
The most important thing for people to realise is that these people are scum. Despite the obsession with some of the belief that if something is legal, then it is right, most people follow the basic rule that anything that directly reduces another person's quality of life for a minor gain on the part of the actor is an act of selfishness. Disturbing someone, intruding into their private time, with no regard to what they're doing or what effect it would have on them, is basically completely wrong. That's why we hate the calls.
It is legitimate to put the phone down without saying anything. It's also legitimate to (without resorting to abuse) tell the scumbag exactly what you think of them and tie up their time so they cannot abuse someone else and so they're made fully aware of the effect they're having.
If I were President, I'd cut their goolies off, but that's just me.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
a buddy of mine: "oh really? well let me tell *you* about the *great* anal sex I had last night" ... click.
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However, I would feel sorry for the poor postal employees that now have to send junk mail *both* ways.
...
Remember that the USPS makes a profit on delivering that postage-paid card. You're helping employ that postal employee
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
So what you're saying is that it is more humane to lock people away from 'normal' people, congregating them amongst a brutish populace administered by people who must for their own protection assume the worst of those they supervise, for an arbitrary amount of time determined by how much money they had and how well-spoken their attorney was and perhaps how politically distasteful their crime was.
No, I'm sorry. What you're saying is that we should realize that the perpetrator of the crime is a victim who must be treated and trained and assisted, who must be understood when they backslide and recommit the crime because of course the treatment is still in process, that we should not use punishment because it is damaging to the psyche - and of course the victims of the crime (other than the criminal victim) will have to recover as best they can without the cathartic closure of punishment but will have to gain strength from the knowledge that their pain was the first step to the recovery of another human being.
As opposed to a swift, certain, relevant punishment which provides the catharsis and the preventive measure, which can then be followed with treatments for both committer and victim of the crime.
What kind of giddy moral superiority do you get from assuming I like to see people hurt?
Empty is no good. People don't open the envelopes, machines do. They pull out the contents and stack them neatly and then someone picks up the stack and deleiers it to some poor sap who has to enter all the information.
Be sure to put something in the envelope. Confetti or paper chips are good, they can jam up the machine. Crumpled paper won't stack neatly in their machines. Small metal strips will jam the envelope slitting machine but since most machines slit the top and since the envelopes can be inserted either face up or face down, you have to tape a metal strip inside the envelope at both the top and bottom to be successful. Use brass or aluminum, they check for magnetic metal and reject those envelopes. You can also tape a bunch of papers to the envelope, it makes it so the machine can't separate the papers from the envelope.
(Info from a friend who used to work at one of these places.)
but perhaps that _is_ a solution. If this makes a spammer decide to find another line of work, the world is suddenly just a little more beautiful.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
With "Kiss this" written on the back.
When I was at uni in England the T.V. Licensing Board kept sending me nasty letters telling me to buy a T.V. License, despite the fact we already had one for the address. Eventually we got such a photo (which a friend had kindly left on a housemates camera that was laying around during a house party) and sent it to them in their reply paid envelope.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Here is soemthing my friend wrote recently on the subject of telemarketers and how to get back at them.
Click here to read it.
IRNI
What also amuses me is my new hobby: I now send the postage-page envelopes back from junk mailers. Empty. Eat that! 30 cents out of your pocket! Yeah!
Here's a way to make that method even better: instead of sending back the envelopes empty (which I assume you are doing), stuff them. Preferably, stuff them with some heavy objects. That way, it'll cost more than 30 cents to get them sent back.
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Check in...OK! Check out...OK!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Maybe this could turn out to be a good idea. Give the spamers the run around by poluting all the search engines with fake bulk mailer compaines. If the people doing this all link to each other then they get higher rankings at the search engines.
Apparently some (all?) postmasters will refuse to deliver these
:)
In Canada I understand this to be untrue - ANYTHING with an address and put in a PostOffice Box MUST be delivered - no matter what it is. Im almost certain its federal law. This is why you can send mail without a stamp - it still gets delivered.
Oh - and I do the same thing with them, ive mailed shoeboxes filled with dirt
Yes, this is the list you can submit your name and address to indicate that you don't want to receive unsolicited commercial postal mail. And to some extent it will cut down on certain types of regular junk mail.
But my old boss at Working Software, Dave Johnson, who wrote the chapter on direct mail in The High-Tech Marketing Companion, says that the Mail Preference Service has the very highest response rate of all - for certain kinds of product offers.
(For a long period of time Working Software made most of its sales through direct mail, and Dave became quite an expert on direct mail. This was after he nearly went bankrupt listening to "channel people".)
What kind of product offers sell through this list?
Studded dog collars, burglar alarms, personal security devices, gun magazines and in general products that are aimed at people who are concerned with personal security and just want to be left alone.
Being on the DMA opt-out list doesn't actually prevent you from receiving mail. Instead, members who care to bother (usually because they don't want to waste money sending mail to people who won't respond) get the list periodically and use it to prune their in-house lists. So for lists whose owners bother to go to the trouble, you will be taken off some lists.
But studded dog-collar vendors just take the list and print up mailing labels!
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
The irony is simply amusing, that's all.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
A friend of mine runs a business from home with her father and two employees. Every time they get a call like that they tell them they need to speak with Mr. Randy Stevens. Phone calls for Mr. Randy Stevens get put on hold waiting for him because he's very busy.
So far he's already been pre-approved for 3 platinum credit cards based on his excellent credit record.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I now send the postage-page envelopes back from junk mailers. Empty. Eat that! 30 cents out of your pocket! Yeah!
If the postage was *already* paid, the only thing you are costing them is the annoyance of having to open your worthless mail (AFAIK, they pay whether or not you actually use the prepaid envelope). Of course this, in itself, is probably worth it. However, I would feel sorry for the poor postal employees that now have to send junk mail *both* ways.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I've been doing this for years. Instead of empty I toss in some prizes. That way the person opening the letter will have something to talk about on their break. All kinds of things have found a new home this way:
- Little plastic army men.
- Out of focus photographs.
- Change. (Costing more in postage than it's worth)
- Lettuce.
- A printed warning about the Goodtimes virus.
One more to add to your list
- Used condom
A friend of mine gave me a very simple approach to get to leave temporiarily: Answer the door with your phone in your hand.
For a more permanant solution, answer the door with the lower receiver of your AR-15 in one hand, and your cleaning cloth in the other.
I actually did a variant of this once: I lived in an apartment with an exterior landing that was shared with another apartment. In that other apartment lived (as near as I could tell) a large number of jail-bait teenybobbers who thought they were God's gift to the universe. They would
(Before anybody makes the obvious comment: I don't mess with jailbait.)
One day, my friends and I had gone shooting at one of their farms, and we had returned to my place to clean the weapons. The teeny's were doing their usual, hanging around being in everybody's way.
Funny, how people get out of your way when you have a rifle over one shoulder, a shotgun in one hand, an ammo can in the other, and have two holsters on your belt.
After the six of us had each made three trips from the cars, and had finally finished carrying the firearms into the apartment, and had started on the reflex weapons (longbows, crossbows, etc.), the teeny's disappeared into their apartment.
Funny, ever since then the aways got out of our way, never bothered my friends or me, and kept their music at a reasonable level....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Empty? No, tape them to hunks of steel or large bricks. Then you cost them a couple of bucks instead of a measly $.30. Apparently some (all?) postmasters will refuse to deliver these, but I suspect that isn't strictly legal. Anyway, it puts pressure on the PO to get things changed as well.
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MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
whenever I give out an address online, I make it unique to the recipient...
recipient_info__date@my.com
If that address ever gets spammed, I send an email to the person who gave out my address thanking them for the spam and informing them that they can have the rest of it. Then I permanently redirect that address to some permanent email address of theirs (like sales@ or service@) so they can deal with the consequences of their actions (and I no longer have to).
For telemarkerters:
tell the insurance folks you're immortal
tell the newspaper folks you're illiterate
tell the telephone folks you're telepathic
tell anyone else that you're in the middle of some satisfying goatsex, and that they can piss off unless they're Natalie Portman and want to hear the goat bleat.
No, not that UUNET fell over- the fact that it got back up :(
How long have you held your WCOM stock? If it's long enough to be able to make a shareholder's proposal, please consider doing so.
There are probably some folks at MAPS who would very much like to talk to you.
You're close - the Anglicized version would be "Jehovah's Witnesses".
I did carry on a brief doctrinal discussion with a Jehovah's Witness to try and explain why I'm not a Christan. It was rough going. A JW isn't interested in hearing you say you've made a rational decision that their religion isn't for you, because reason doesn't really enter into it.
The best story I know on this subject involves a friend of a friend, who was actually working as a butcher at the time. Upon being forewarned that the witnesses were canvassing their block, he put his apron on and grabbed the biggest knife he could find. When they showed up, he threw open the door, and shouted back to his wife with glee - "Sarah! Guess what! More Christians!"
They didn't come back.
The first step, BEFORE you dump empty postage-paid envelope into the nearest mail box, is to affix it to an old telephone book with lots and lots of clear tape. _NOW_ you're cookin' on all burners!
**>>BELCH
First, the FTC is collecting info, for possible action.
...
Forward the spam, with All Headers visible (different choices on browsers), to:
uce@ftc.gov
Secondly, if it is an attempt to solicit money for supposed investment purposes, it's the SEC's job to police these babies. Go to www.sec.gov and find the email address of your regional SEC office. Mine, for example, is sanfrancisco@sec.gov, but yours may differ. Then forward, with All Headers visible, the spam you get concerning investments (usually fraudulent) to that email address.
Why make the government do the work? Because until enough people complain and help all those Level 9 operatives, nothing will be done.
If using PINE, then just bounce the email to that address.
Also, always forward to the abuse@yourisp.com (or abuse-nonverbose@yourisp.com if they're smart) any such emails. And any legitimate ISPs (hint, not wierd ones, they may be spam collector sites) along the trail the email came. This helps them shut down those loopholes.
Most of my spam mail originates from a uu.net address. Which is kind of ironic, cause I own 400 shares of Worldcom, who own UU.NET in the first place. If something isn't done soon, I'm filing a shareholder's proposal at the next Annual Meeting
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I think the very best spammers have always been Jeovah witnesses (or whatever they're called in english; it's "témoins de Jéovah" in french).
Bt I got rid of mine indefinatelly, Ibeleive, as it's been a whole year and a half since their last visit.
The last one to knock on my door, I actually invited him for the post-dinner (supper) tea and dessert. My girlfriend was furious, but now is happy of the outcome.
I actually had their "blue book" at had (a gift of a friend of mine, that came to that very same diner for the occasion). This book is the definitive know-it-all book of answers for the doubtfull. They give this book to people they think have bought their story, to reel them into the boat.
After a lengthy (3hour) evening, I ended up ending the discussion by throwing the blue book (mine) into the fireplace. Ever seen Fahrenheit 451?
Beatty ran out my place, while I was reminding him my mortgage was for another 21 years.
It was mean, but worth it!
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
Junkbusters has a comprehensive list of mass snail-mailers. You enter your information, it composes the letters, and you print them out and mail them (addresses included, so no envelopes necessary). I did this and was amazed at the reduction in the amount of mail that I received.
Check out Chad's News
...my pop was owner of a company and got several calls a day requesting donations.
he finally started saying "Oh, you need to talk to the corporate office, and ask for Mr. Wolf."
Of course, he gave them the ph. number of the local zoo...
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
there are, of course, the usual tales about pre-approval of pets, and at non-existent addresses entered by clerical error, etc.
:)
But my favorite of all time is from the late 80's. I'd just set up my practice (which is why I can place it), and was talking to my grandmother. She was living in the house she was born in, and received a letter addressed to her father. Seems he was pre-approved for a gold card due to his excellent credit--never mind that he'd been dead for over half a century . . .
now how in the world did *that* one get into the system??? 19th century birth records? death certificates? 1920's electrical bills? oh, wait, the house would have still been gas at that point . . .
Let me also recommend Citizens Against Government Waste's report on the US Post Office's financial indescretions
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Or how about just stuffing them with tidbits of garbage? Then you don't have to take out your trash as often ;)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Recording, disclosure of do-not-call requests:
If a person or entity making a telephone solicitation (or on whose behalf a solicitation is made) receives a request from a residential telephone subscriber not to receive calls from that person or entity, the person or entity must record the request and place the subscriber's name and telephone number on the do-not-call list at the time the request is made.
This seems to say that even if they have some processing to do, they are liable the instant you notify them. Try quoting this section to them and see how they respond.
is that it applies equally well to prostitution, selling crack, contract hits, etc.
This "desparate person" is yharming other people to collect his minimum wage. That *does* make him a lousy person and a zit upon society's posterior.
i[Pipex is owned by UUNET, and according to statistics compiled by spam fighting and tracking sites SpamCop and SpamHaus, more spam gets spewed through UUNET than from all the other Internet service providers combined]i
Gee, could this be because of the size of UUNet and it's placement as a backbone provider?
It's like saying, "According to a recent survey, AOL has more novice users than all other ISP's combined".
I guarantee, no North American tree is ever touched for the sole purpose of making paper. There are mountains of unused wood chips that can be used to produce paper. All byproducts of wood manufacture.
I grew up in logging communities. Certain types of wood are only useful for paper production, so I don't know that I buy your statement. Kind of like when people keep saying logging at alpine levels will grow back - it's the topsoil destruction that makes it take 100 years for even partial regrowth. I know, I've logged at such heights. Used to spend my summers, as a boy, floating around Kootenay Lake (in Kaslo, B.C., Canada) on logs, which is really cool.
However, you are correct that almost all trees are used for various purposes. I've made shakes and shingles from redwoods, used cottonwoods (wet buggers) for firewood (long drying period for those). A lot of B.C. trees are used for chopsticks, actually.
But decreased demand is still decreased demand.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
email services, which I advertise on my home page, along with my phone
number. He wants to make sure that I've got a reliable connection,
because he keeps losing his Internet connection. I ask him why. He
says that his Internet providers keep kicking him off, accusing him of
spam. "But it's legal by federal law and by my state to send
unsolicited advertising". I hang up on him.
He's so stupid that he doesn't get it the first time. He calls back.
I know it's him because I've got caller ID. I pick up the receiver
and drop it.
He's not only stupid, he's persistent. He calls back a third time,
and I give him the finger again.
Stupid spammers.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Or maybe put fortune cookie fortunes in them...
Man, I have to find a site to purchase those in bulk...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
check out spamcop. They'll notify abuse@, postmaster@, etc., on your behalf. Just cut and paste your spam into their web form. Their cgi does the rest. Scans the headers, locates the true source(s) of the spam, looks up any links/email addresses in the message itself. Works great.
Never meant half of the things I said to you. So you know, there's a half that might be true - G. Phillips
It's Pournelle & Niven, not just Niven
I think he was talking about the equipment of the junk mailer, not the post office.
However, in the US the junk mailers get a better rate than everyone else since the 1st class mail subsidizes the junk mail. That would make the US post office a target of the gillter idea. If they find out enough people are going to take out their million dollar machines every few days due to this junk mail, It might get a point accross but most likely would lead to arrest.
OK, so "taking it out" on the low guys isn't the best solution. Maybe telling them about anal sex or verbally abusing them isn't the answer.
One Mormon guy I know starts telling telemarketers about his religious beliefs -- annoying, yes, but at worst he's annoying, and at best he can hope he's changing someone's life. So why not try evangelizing YOUR favorite cause, religion, book, band, or whatever you think might make the world a better place!
TELEMARKETER: I'm calling to inform you about HomeSelect, a brand new program from MegaCard...
YOU: That's great! You know, I have something I'm really excited about too -- have you ever used the open source text editor vim? I've been using things like BBEdit and CodeWrite for a while, but vim is amazing.
(And now the question is, who will flame me first? People who don't like Mormonism? People who don't like vim? BBEdit Bigots? CodeWrite haters? I love slashdot! )
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
You on the other hand, must work for the government, or on crack if you say "Self-sufficient" "Cut costs" and "Post office" in the same sentence.
There are 10 times the number of small post offices compared to large post offices. Only the entry point of large periodicals start at large BMC's.
No one argues that pre-sorted mail is faster and cheaper to sort than non-sorted mail. Einstein! But the money saved from the automation process decreases every year as the technology margin narrows, while the cost of processing non-sorted mail increases, due to human labor, increases mail weight, etc. Your logic is similar to a car race...where you say you're gaining on this guy 10% faster, because you're driving 55mph instead of 50mph, but he's still going 70mph.
I don't "SAVE 10%" of my money when I buy a bag of chips that says "10% more FREE!" when the weight is the same and the cost is the same from the day before.
This supposed 8% report you made up is just one-sided numbers. They don't take these "million$ saved" and subsidize the 1st-class stamp...it goes back into the system to purchase more automation machines, build new Bulk Mail Centers, new semis for transport, more carriers to handle the increase in mail. Unfortunately it is impossible to draw the line where costs are afflicted, so an increase in new mail carriers might get attributed to 1st-class, so maybe the stamp has to be raised a penny.
Well over 1/2 my mail is junk mail. If I'm a typical John Doe, then multiply that out. You're trying to say that this increase in all our junk mail has somehow saved them money over-all just because it was presorted?
You are correct, pallets of bundled, zip+4 magazines never crossed my mind, since all mail qualifying for automation have 11-digit delivery point zip codes.
Just start in asking them "are you making all the money you'd like to make?". This usually gets a confused pause, "uh, no, but.."
Continue on with "let me tell you about a great business opportunity. Ever heard of Amway?"....
(And if you're actually in Amway, who knows, you might pick up another distributer.)
-- Alastair
A first class stamp may be only $.34, but the business is charged an additional per-item fee. This can vary from $.35 down to only $.01, depending on volume. Hence, if it's a small organization, you're really sticking it to them, but for bulk mailers, it's not as big a deal.
(This was verified at www.usps.gov)
About a decade ago myself and a few friends decided to take action to increase the demand side of the economic equation for recycled paper. At the time, supply of post-consumer recycled paper was about three times larger than demand.
What we did was go to all the libraries and workplaces we could, gather all the postage-paid subscription cards, and write various different economic messages, asking the magazines and software companies to use recycled paper for some of their material. For software companies, it was the manuals; for magazines it was just the insert cards (paper plants to produce clay-content magazine picture quality paper did not exist in North America at the time).
One of the reasons it worked was we had a limited targetted message asking for something that was not only acheivable, but was cheaper too.
For some of these we made stamps to stamp all the cards. Then when our group had collected a few thousand of the cards, we'd send off bundles of 100 or so in different mailboxes throughout the city. For a period of five to ten days. Which meant that thousands of these postage-paid cards would flood the target for weeks on end, from various places, and various people, all at the cost of the magazine which published them.
As a result, a number of positive things happened. Magazines started to send only three or four of those post-paid insert cards in the magazine (before we'd get 20-30 per issue, which kept falling out). They started using recycled paper for the inserts, and sometimes even the magazine (e.g. Science News). And software manuals started being printed on recycled paper.
And since demand for recycled paper increased ten-fold, new non-chlorine recycled paper plants were built in the US and Canada, saving untold forests from being logged.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I don't see how this would necessarily follow.
You put the sparklies in the envelope. The
envelope stays closed until it gets to the
junk mailer?
Then, when the junk mailer opens it, it gets
all over HIS sorters, not those of the post
office?
I now send the postage-page envelopes back from junk mailers. Empty. Eat that! 30 cents out of your pocket
Wait wait - Ive dont the same thing.. many times (after I had my name 'listed' to be removed from the Canadian Direct Marketers Association list.. lost the info on how to do this, but im sure it is around.)
What you HAVE to do is just tape your envelope to a brick, or a 12" log, or a shoebox filled with sand, or some other very HEAVY things - why waste only 0.30 of their dollars when you can waste MUCH more...
....by all those receipients who won't be able to Get Rich Quick until next week.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Anti-Spam-Defense-Shield.
I wonder if all those rolling blackouts in CA will have any effect on the quantify of spam I receive via e-mail.
And, I like the idea of sending back the prepaid mailers attached to something heavy. Most of that type of mail goes unopened in my house anyway...never thought to send it back at them.
To deal with telemarketers, you can tell them to put you on their no-call list. They typically have sixty days to get you off their lists. After that, you can sue them AND collect $500 per call (I think that's right). Just document the calls and build an audit trail.
Finally, if you have caller ID, if it says unavailable or private, then take that to mean your status as well. If its important, they'll leave a message.
RD
My practice for years has been to simply set the phone down gently and let them talk on. Occasionally, if I walk by the phone a few minutes later and they're still talking, I'll pick up the receiver and say "Go on," or, "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that last part, could you go over that again," and set the phone back down. Sometimes they catch on quickly, of course, but some callers will go through their entire script without noticing I'm not there.
The point is not to piss off the telemarketer, that's just fortuitous. The point is to take up as much time on a fruitless call as possible.
Telemarketers' business models depend on their getting through the negative calls in as little time as possible. That is, they *depend* on us snarling and hanging up on them. If instead, the custom were to chat with them indefinitely, the business would become unprofitable, because they couldn't cycle through the negative calls quickly enough to get to a profitable margin of positives. In a polite society, telemarketing doesn't work.
Junk mailers have automatic envelope-opening machines. Post office doesn't. This machine opens the envelopes and gets sparkled. Unless you fill the envelope too tightly it probably won't jam the mail sorters, which are designed to handle envelopes full of tax forms and the like.
sulli
RTFJ.
Rader
Magazines don't have 6 pre-paid postals in each magazine...at 500,000 to 1,000,000 magazines ---already paid for. That would be a ridiculous cost of something that only gets less than 1% used. (or whatever the stat is) They could give the magazine away at that cost!!!!!!!!
Yes, they pay to get an account, pay an annual or per-issuance cost, meet a minimum, and THEN pay for each USED one. It's all barcoded to their account or OCR'd, and tracked that way. Pre-paid postcards or envelopes must follow VERY strict guidelines ranging from size, paper, and positioning to make sure they are completely usable through the automative process.
Rader
I've heard of, but never witnessed, people wrapping a brick in paper and taping the reply envelope to it.
This is probably illegal, and I don't recommend you do it.
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1) Make sure it is junkmail.
The company I work for sends out large, somewhat plain, letters on behalf of people's employers. People aren't specifically expecting a letter from XX corp and assume it's junkmail. We get this empty return trick sometimes, often with some funny profanity on the envelope.
2) Don't put anything in the envelope.
Sometimes, people put junkmail inside our return envelopes. They think it will increase the postage bill, but I think the return is a flat rate (I don't know, I'm not in the mail room). The thing is that every once in a while people accidentally send us credit card applications and/or statements. One woman sent us some private insurance documents. Less trustworthy people might do bad things with these.
Just trying to help
-B
Why should we be happy when the spammers get spammed? Ponder this.
Lex Talionis, the principle of an eye for an eye, is a morally bankrupt code of law we've been moving away from for the past few thousand years, thankfully. It can't deal with the complexities of the modern legal order, and it ignores all proper justifications for systems of punishment: rehabilitation, prophylaxis, etc. It makes an assertion of rigid judgment in an attempt to avoid judgment itself. We can't live in a world without judgment.
Ask yourself this: should we rape the rapist? If not, why not? (Ignore for a moment that we essentially do rape rapists by committing them to so-called "maximum security" prisons where they get systematically brutalized and raped by guards and other inmates.) It's not a morally tenable position to lower ourselves to the level of brutes just so we can vindicate some idea of retribution.
Therefore, ask yourself why we should be happy when the spammer gets spammed? No one should have to endure the pain and annoyance of spam: it's the scurge of the online world. Not even the spammer, who may be in his business because of factors outside his control like debt or bills for an illness in the family, etc. We should be outraged when anyone is spammed, and we should put the full force of the state and the law against the perpetrator no matter who the victim! Picking and choosing among which victims to protect is something the legal order of former barbaric times did. I'd be disgusted if our government returned to those days.
Spam == bad. Victimization == bad. Why do people conflate the two? What kind of giddy moral superiority to you get from seeing anyone hurt?
Read the rest of this comment...
Spammers like your attitude as you described. When you visit or send an email, you prove to them your email exists. Bingo, you are a prefered customer.
Next time, look at the email headers at the connection that delivered to your mail server. Try to identify the ISP identified by the ip address and deliver your message to abuse@ISP.
When a telemarketer calls...
Me: What has a 1-inch dick and hangs down?
Marketriod: Wha?
Me: What has a 1-inch dick and hangs down?
Marketroid: Uh... I dunno.
Me: A vampire bat... get it?
Marketroid: Uh... sure.
Me: What has a 10-inch dick and hangs up?
Marketroid: Wha?
Me: What has a 10-inch dick and hangs up?
Marketroid: Uh... I dunno.
Me: (CLICK!)
Time was, people would take the blow-in cards from their magazines and avail themselves of the Business Reply Mail system by taping them to bricks, on the presumption that snail-mail charged by the pound for BRM. It was also popular to do this to the ubiquitous American Express applications.
Did it work? Maybe. The Annals of Improbable Research (www.improb.com), formerly the Journal of Irreproducible Results (URL to hijacked IP denigrated), published a study in which they had mailed odd and bulky items with correct postage and addresses. The USPS seems to have been imperfectly willing to maintain their unflappable image (what unflappable image!), so not everything got to where it was supposed to.
--Blair
"The bison's in the mail."
I used to mail those in blank for awhile too, but then I slacked off about it. When I read the little side joke on it today though, it got me thinking. Not trying to karma whore here, but I'm curious to see what people think on this one.
Is mailing back pre-paid envelopes a GOOD idea, in the long run?
At first I would say yes, sure it is. It takes away cash from them. But then I realized that it will never BANKRUPT a company. It will only force them to take away the pre-paid part of the spam. Here's some bullet points to simplify your responces:
1) How many people are REALLY persuaded just by the fact that it is prepaid? IE do you really think that the fools that send away for bogus junk and lousy magazines are thinking "Hey, I should get that, but it requires a stamp...oh wait, postage is free? Sign me up!"
2) For bad postal spam: All they will do is convert to non-prepaid envelopes in the next mailing. We still have to get it, groan, and throw it away. No time saved.
3) For GOOD postal spam: Yes, there are rare times when being on a techie mailing list means that you actually get some spam mail for something you really want/need/enjoy. It's rare, but if our policy was to mail these prepaid envelopes in blank, aren't we only hurting ourselves in that we semi-force those companies to change to non-prepaid mailers to save money? Yeah, it's 34 cents and no big deal, but why hurt good guys?
Just some random spam from my thought mailbox...
------
Let me give you the lowdown
--I have this cat, named Cat, who makes a meow that sounds like heh-row. Anylou, I put the phone next to the cat, or on her and after a few minutes she starts, "Heh-row, heh-row," into the phone. Must drive them insane.
This
As a gun owner and member of the NRA, I didn't appreciate Sarah Brady telling me that I was a pawn of Satan for owning a gun.
I sent them some NRA decals. That didn't work, they continued to send me their junk. Then I filled the reply envelope with expended .22 rimfire shell casings and sent it back to them. That worked :-). I figure that they must have placed me on the "danger: psychotic gun owner" blacklist.
The NRA is pretty bad about sending out tons of direct mail solicitations.
I used to give money to the local public television station until they became extremely aggressive in sending out direct mail begging for more money. It seems that any donation results in getting put on the "soft touch with money" mailing list.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Actually, it's t'other way 'round. The junk mail subsidizes the first-class. Bulk mail gets a "better" rate because all the labor-intensive stuff is already done: it's pre-sorted, pre-coded, and whatever. This subsidizes the postal employee who has to spend ten minutes deciphering your Great-Aunt Hilda's spidery handwriting on the Christmas card she sends you every year.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
I've been doing this for years. Instead of empty I toss in some prizes. That way the person opening the letter will have something to talk about on their break. All kinds of things have found a new home this way:
- Little plastic army men.
- Out of focus photographs.
- Change. (Costing more in postage than it's worth)
- Lettuce.
- A printed warning about the Goodtimes virus.
This is doubtful. Sure, UUNET is big, but not that big. If I look at the hit logs from the (large, J.-Random-User-oriented) web sites that I have access to, spam from UUNET dialups is way out of proportion to the hits from them.
And that doesn't explain why UUNET is also such a popular place to host spammer sites. The more likely explanation is that fighting spam isn't a priority for them. In spam-fighting circles, they're not known as "Spew-U-NET" for nothing.
Go take a look at the stats at Spamcop or at Spamhaus and it's pretty obvious that some big vendors are much worse than others about spam.
If you perceive a problem, don't be part of it, fix it. For now, use filters. Deleting an e-mail is much easier than recycling physical junk mail. Whatever you do, don't let them get ahold of another e-mail address.
----------------------
My brother's phone number was listed under someone else's name in the phone book, and the telemarketing calls were always for the wrong person. One day, I must have been in a bad mood when they called:
"May I speak to Mrs. Smith, please?"
"I'm sorry, she's dead. I just killed her."
silence... "what???"
"I've just killed her. She's lying on the floor right here."
Turns out it was Circuit City of all places, and they must have thought I was serious. I got a call from the local police about 15 minutes later, and I could tell that the guy on the phone was trying very hard not to laugh...
I've gone a step better, I send thos business reply envelopes back with stuff in them!
http://www.wpidalamar.com/fun/telemarketer
Spam? Nope, they signed right up for it, took several STEPS in signing up for it. At any rate, point is, spamcop misses, that was one example, but I had this happen to me quite a few times.
I like music
That was a great site! The scientific language kills me. They neglected a fruitful area of inquiry though: malformed addresses on otherwise normal items of mail. Heinlein commented in one of his books about receiving an (international!) piece of mail addressed to "Robert Heinlein, The United States". That was the sole address and (obviously) it got to him.
--
MailOne
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Maybe someone ought to get a gaint list of these sucker's email addresses and spam them with messages saying "all these spam emails are scams, don't send a single penny and don't click their links, because idiots who get taken keep these slimballs in business".
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
The sorters are at the junk mailer, not the PO. The get sliced open and the INSIDE sorted.
A bit of inside scoop - the reason the ALL have you afix some sort of stamp is that they usually have magnetic ink, so the can autosort
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
(sending recipient-paid envelopes back)
Hey, I just started doing that too! But why empty? That just makes it easier for them to sort out. Waste their TIME too. Have no use for that old Linux HOWTO printout? Stick a couple pages in there. Or some of the company's own flyers. Just don't send them back anything that has anything printed on it that would let them know who did it.
Now if only I could figure out a way to Jam that bundle of loose ads (no envelope, like you'd find in the middle of a newspaper, but with more stuff of different sizes and materials) that they deliver every thursday... What, did the postman suddenly become the paperboy? It forces you to go through to make sure you aren't accidentally about to throw out your electric bill.
This may be a way for them to confirm.
If they have a domain, trace it back to their provider! Let their provider cut off the service or their provider's provider do it.
I have called spammers and they hang up, so I call back and explain to them how rude it is.
What we have to do is to stop the people providing the SPAM lists. What about the SPAMMERs using open relays being charged with the computer tresspass statute--for using a mail relay w/o authorization?
Fight Spammers!
What also amuses me is my new hobby: I now send the postage-page envelopes back from junk mailers. Empty. Eat that! 30 cents out of your pocket!
I don't do this because I really don't mind junk mail through the regular post. They are paying to use the system, it brings in revenue for the Post Office, and it's easy to throw away. E-mail Spam, however, has brought down MY e-mail account on 2 occaisions. Some Spammer had a software fart both times and sent me each Spam 1000's of times filling my account to the limit and making my mail bounce.
Also, Spammers frequently forge common e-mail addresses in the "reply to" or "from" field, so if you are "steve12**@hotmail.com" for example, you can kiss your account goodbye.
I have it (on fairly good authority) that the best (worst) thing you can do to a junk mailer is send back those postage paid envelopes with an oz or so of the "sparkles" you can get in most craft shops.
They are stick tenaciously to EVERYTHING, including the scan heads of the mail sorters, and jam up the works. Word has it that it takes about 1/2 hour to clean up after this happens
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
more effective, and especially troublesome and tedious for them, is to a: request to be put on their DO NOT CALL LIST (say it in bold capital letters) and b: request WRITTEN CONFIRMATION that you have been put on the do not call list. compliance with both A and B is mandatory, and it takes whoever actually does the putting on the list and the written confirmation of such off the calling queue for the time necessary to fill out the forms.
several times i have heard, however, that the update to the do not call list will take 4 to 6 weeks, and who knows how long it takes to get written confirmation...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
Don't return the envelope empty. Tear up every insert they send you and the original envelope into small pieces. Write "VOID! PLEASE TAKE ME OFF YOUR MAILING LIST!" anywhere your name appears. Insert these into the prepaid envelope and mail. The shreds of paper will jam the average automated Pitney Bowes letter opener.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
I've found an effective method of dealing with spammers. I look up who owns the web site which is sending me spam, then send an email to the owner telling them the following:
To Whom It May Concern:
I recently recieved the attached email advertising your site. Due to the rising costs of internet access and the space which downloading email takes up, further emails advertising your site will be considered your electronic signature that I may send you a bill for $500 per email. This bill is for downloading and archival fees. All bills will be sent to the following address:
[copy and paste of billing contact for domain name]
Thank you for your time.
I usually never hear from them again.
~Ken