Slashdot Mirror
The One-Week All-Spam Diet
malibucreek writes: "A writer at the LA Times actually responded to every spam he got for a week. The resulting article about his descent into marketing hell is here.
Of course, everything turned out to be a scam. (Duh!) But some of the scams were just pathetic enough to be funny.
My faves? The pyramid scheme that helped '"George" reach his goal of making $7,000 a month within two years of getting out of prison.' And the bogus weight-loss plan that caused one sucker, er, customer, to gush, "This didn't work, but it was full of fiber and I was very regular!"" And at this very moment, some hot babes who have been clamoring to meet me electronically are finally at the door -- hallelujah!
As postmaster for a very well known domain on the internet, I find that spammers very often forge my domain in the spams they send. In fact, it seems that a huge percent of the spam that I get is from forged domains. When you set your mail bomb in place, do you check to make sure your actually sending to the place it came from, or are you just clogging up mail servers around the net by sending mail to bogus addresses, which simply bounce, creating more traffic?
Check out the little "$N.NN" markers next to each vendor. That's how much the vendor pays goto.com for each clickthrough.
I just clicked about $20 worth of ads ... want to join me?
Is an email offering to make me an ordained minister.
The best line from the spam:
"MARRY your BROTHER, SISTER, or your BEST FRIEND!!"
Which just seems all sorts of wrong.
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You have any idea what percentage of spam has a valid return email address? My guess is somewhere in the parts per billion.
What you're doing is mail-bombing yahoo, or whomever they decide to fake the sender as, with email for a non-existant account.
All i ever get is spam. Have you ever tried
too look for warez, roms, or porn on the web
using a search engine? all you get are 'top 100'
lists that have 100 links to sites containing 500 links
to sites containing javascript that makes 5
windows pop up everytime you close one.
It is time we all get really pissed and moan and groan and bitch about this horrid state of affairs.
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
#/bin/sh
for fqdn in $@
do
finger "${fqdn}@abuse.net"
done
# eof
Call the script with the domain(s) you want to contact and it will respond with the proper mail address, if known, of the abuse handler for that domain.
--
Unselfish actions pay back better
What's interesting about these categories of SPAM (Diplomas, Credit fixing, Spy software, Get-rich-quick, Gambling, Weight loss, Sex enhancement) is that they must attract an endless supply of suckers ("one born every minute") willing to send actual cash somewhere - otherwise the SPAMmers wouldn't bother. This must leave a "paper trail" or electronic trail leading to the SPAMmers. Most of these seem to be illegal in some way so it should not be difficult to bust them.
Is the problem that the "authorities" responsible for enforcement are technologliallyclueless?
First off, I highly doubt that any foodstuff is able to enter the bloodstream directly and deposit itself on the arterial walls.
Second, Spam is simply canned diced ham. If you slice it thin and cook it, the fat runs off, and you have a fairly lean, warm thick ham slice.
And yes, I started by eating it on a dare, and then because I needed five spam tins for a project, and now I buy a few cans a year for hurricane supplies, and wind up eating them at some point throughout the year.
Our anime club is SFAM - the South Florida Anime and Manga club, and our logo is a spoof of a can of spam, with the "P" turned into an "F" in the same font, with a big eyed slime peeking out.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Trying to hack, flood or DoS his system could get you in big trouble, and if you don't correctly identify the target, you could be causing a lot of trouble for innocent bystanders.
A better idea would be to complain to the spammer's ISP, and the ISP's ISP, either by manually reading the email headers and tracking the spammer down using traceroutes and abuse.net, or by using SpamCop. I've done that and seen several spam accounts get terminated.
Admittedly there are drawbacks to doing this. Sometimes, the ISP that you complain to will simply forward your complaint directly to the spammer, which may result in more spam. But usually, the spammer is forced to move to another throwaway account, and in some cases, is forced to pay a cleanup fee on the order of hundreds of dollars.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
There's too much collateral damage from doing this - you might not be flooding the spammer's account, but you may be hitting innocent bystanders (such as Hotmail & their non-spamming users) with friendly fire.
The only remotely effective way I know of to inconvenience spammers is to dig through the spam's email headers, locate their ISP, and complain to the sysadmins, and if necessary their upstream providers as well. (I use SpamCop to do this - saves a lot of work.) This frequently gets them booted for TOS violations.
Admittedly it's only a minor inconvenience for them - makes them move to another throwaway account, but every little bit of inconvenience helps.
Sysadmins. You can do your part to fight the spam war by hitting spammers with a $500.00 cleanup fee when you terminate their account for TOS violations. After all, the spammer cost you lots of money in terms of bandwidth, loss of good will from others, and time in performing damage control. Get some of that money back and discourage spammers.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
Out of the two e-mail addresses that I have had for a significant amount of time, neither of them get any spam... one is with my college (I've had that one for almost 4 years) and I've had another one with yahoo for almost a year.... and I never get ANY spam in either. I guess I just don't understand what the big deal is..
Well, lucky for you. I choose to close my old mail account, simply because it got so much spam. Actually I wasn't as plagued as others; some days 4-6 spams, other days nothing. Still, around 50-100 spams a month was enough for me.
There seems to be an element of randomness, in whether ones email account becomes a spam magnet or not. But I suspect my address was spam harvested early on, since I used the account on Usenet, and had it on my homepage too. I seems like, when first an account is in a spammers db, it will resold to other spammers, who will merge it with their db, etc.
Besides the address was a short one, at a local, quite nice, ISP. I guess that ISP domains are popular among spammers, since they got so many users, that a "lexical" spam attack is worthwhile.
I would never post my main e-mail addresses publicly, that would just be asking for it
Me neither. It's just so sad that this how spammers has transformed the net. This is not the idea what the Internet was about; easy communcation between peers. It's cool with me to post under a nom de guerre, or hiding ones mail address, if that's what you want. But it is sad when people choose not post their real mail address, on Usenet, on their homepage, on slashdot etc, simply for the sole reason, that they don't want spam.
And sometimes it is a really good that peoples mail address is posted on the web: eg. a friend of mine is writing his phd tesis. He was able to track down, in only 5 minutes, the only other person in the world, who has written something on the same subject, even though he was from another country. Without the net, without email, without publicly availably email addresses, it would been a small project in it self, to track down that person and starting communication.
In short, be happy that your mail account isn't spam infected. But don't confuse your own luck, with the general spam situation.
For some weird reason (my guess is the warranty on a ceramic knife) I've been getting craploads of spam from Hong Kong - I can't even read Chinese, but they expect me to buy toner cartriges from a "local" address - in Hong Kong. I haven't answered a single one, and have been giving them "550 Rejected as spam. Go away." for 18 months and they still mail daily. I've blocked Class B nets from China. They won't stop.
Good enough reason to sell nukes to Taiwan ;-)
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Years ago one of the first usenet spams involved a company called Madera International (WOOD). They said their stock price would go up to several dollars a share. I figured the spam might cause a rush on the stock and bought $25 worth and got 400 shares. The current closing price is .00700 a share and is down 92% over the last year. My last statement from my broker claims its worth $2 but I fear thats an overestimate.
What kind of company is this? They were going to make assult rifles in Asia for the US market but some law messed that up. Then they decided to log wood in the Amazon. The last time I saw their web page, they were doing some sort of "sponser a rain forest tree" for $10 gig. One of these days I'll sign over the stock to someone like greenpeace.
I wish I could find the orignal spam... I would build a nice web page about this kind of "deal"
The guy from the so-called Glencullen University was named Danny Ramalotti. I thought I'd heard that name before. My wife reports that it is a character on the daytime soap Days of our Lives (verified with a web search). You'd think he could have picked an interesting pseudonym, at least.
We shouldn't know this factoid, of course, but that's what you get for working from home.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Advertising supports television, radio, mail, and the newspaper because the advertisers pay money. Spammers don't pay anyone to spam. Spam makes Internet services cost more, not less.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
You can automate this process by using spamcop.net.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Most computer users who've used the 'net for a certain amount of time are hip to what is, and what isn't spam. however keep in mind that thousands of users log on to the internet for the first time on a daily basis.
With so many people turning in, all a spammer needs to do is capture a fragment of that amount, and coerce them into spending, assisting them, etc., with their "Great Ideas" and they could have a nice sizeable chunk of money. So this is my thoughts on spam on why its still persistent.
Many people on the internet turn to it for an escape of reality, maybe life it to tough, maybe to depressing, etc., and many of them fall into these scams, because many are vulnerable. Many are also good hearted people who don't give things a second thought, and dish out thinking they can help the world. Some spammers know how to capitalize on this, and those people can make them a fortune.
Its no big deal sending erratic information hoping someone will fall for it, there are plenty of stupid people in this world, however answering spam is even stupider than sending it. What did the person expect by replying to a spammer? An insightful look into why they sent it? A possible product? Get real common sense should've told him/her they'd only get back more spam.
So who's the fool?
Hardcore crypto
Want Root?
Most legit companies know better than to spam. Alienating your customer base is not a good idea. Thre was quite a stir at the satellite TV company I was working at when a reseller sent a spam trying to sell my company's product. It came back pretty quick that we had a strict policy against this sort of thing and we came down pretty hard on the reseller in question.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
One kind of spam that doesn't get enough recognition is boss spam -- you know, when your PHB sends out some inane email to fifty people with twenty Word documents attached and everyone clicks "reply to all", and the thread ends up lasting for days and wasting waaaaaaay too much disk space and waaaaaay too much time. I've considered submitting my boss's Exchange server to the MAPS RBL. ;-)
The only spam I don't mind too much is the porn spam on my Hotmail accounts, just because it's so amusing. There's nothing like stumbling out of bed to check my email and find three messages with the subject "please fuck me now i need you" waiting. :-)
--
--
I like to watch.
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The individuals at the core of our group have worked closely together for over 20 years. During those years, each of us has developed a high degree of skill and know-how through personal discipline and concerted effort.
We try to stay positive in every circumstance and put the good of a project above any personal concerns or artistic egos. By sustaining this attitude and conduct, we have achieved a high level of efficiency and quality in our work.
This crew-minded effort, combined with ingenuity and creativity, have helped us provide advanced solutions at highly competitive rates.
Based in Rancho Santa Fe, California (near San Diego), we provide excellent opportunity for advancement to a higher place. In fact all of our employees have recently been promoted.
We provide free clothing, Nike tennis shoes, pudding, apple sauce and vodka. You must supply your own Phenobarbital. Every employee is issued a large purple cloth, the purpose of which will become clear. Free haircuts too.
No experience is necessary. We will train you to work and think within our business model.
ID is required. Abduction experiences a plus.
We are looking for real team players.
Please send resumes to bunchowackos@highersource.com.
...but damnit, I know Bill Gates is sending me $1000 for forwarding that message!
No, NO NO!!! Don't do this!!! This means that every time you get a spam, the bandwith usage of the spam is multiplied by 45k. You are costing people a lot of money. This isn't good for anybody except maybe the stockholders of Cis... ummm... excuse me I need to log into etrade for a minute.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Anyone else find it amusing that a guy who devotes an entire article to how terrible spam email is places his email address in all its glory at the very top of the article for all human- and machine-grabbing spam companies to exploit/b>?
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Actually, there was someone a while ago who actually did go a whole month eating only Spam (the food, not the email crap). It was, of course, televised on Fox News and CNN.
When the month passed, he vowed never to eat spam again...he needed to go to a hospital to get liposuction because his arteries were filled up with spam (which is basically just pink-colored fat).
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
Problem with that is, spammers either use
faked email addresses OR addresses belonging
to innocent third parties. Even addresses
belonging to spam-fighters, sometimes, to
get revenge.
This cannot be recommended, unless you've
taken great care to ensure the address
you spam really does belong to the spammer
and that the account won't simply be
trashed tomorrow when the inevitable
complaints to the ISP pour in. It would
probably work well only against spammers
who own their own servers.
The author got this mail:
So he rang them up, eventually got onto "Mr. Benson", and wrote up the whole adventure. I tell you, the Spamworld sounds like a parallel universe.
The article is at htt://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.10/spam.html.
Perhaps the most curious was the site promoting a program that would bring about a 2- to 6-inch growth in sexual endowment. "No pumps, pills or weights are used," it said. "The only tool--your hand."
You know, I've been trying similar techniques fo years, with little improvement. I guess I just need to step up my strict regiment.
Stupid like a fox!
i used to do that, it DID cut down the volume of spam for a while, but it started taking so much time to reply to every single piece that i gave up. once i gave up i was spam free for about 3 weeks then it just came back in force.
Silly slashdot, sigs are for kids!
I will point out however that to seriously cut the amount of spam your mail servers see as a whole nothing beats mail-abuse.org..... The DUL blocks 33% of spam. The RBL blocks roughly 5% and using the RSS blocks 50% of the monthly spam. All three are well worth the time to install and use.
--
When I'm good I'm very good, when I'm bad I'm better, But when I'm evil you better run
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
It's been done, and it's hilarious.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
That doesn't sound regular to me....
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
If that does not work, I try admin@domain, and if that does not work, root@domain. If that does not work, I write the better business bureau....
You all should try it before you complain about SPAM-- You too will get a lot less...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
A couple of my friends and I have used a novel, and, most system admins tell me, extremely annoying method to get rid of SPAM. We have set up a web of auto reply and auto forward accounts in our workplaces and free websites accross the net, so that all any one of us has to do is send a CC of the solicitation to a hotmail address, and set the chain in motion. hotmail forwards to a whole bunch of accounts, which auto reply and forward to each other, every time sending a carbon copy to the sender. Usually it stops when one of the accounts maxes out its disk space, which can take quite a while. checking server logs and account statistics, I'd guess that anyone that mails me gets a deluge of about 45,000 e-mails in a minute. odd, but the same place usually doesn't e-mail twice.....
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
haha, x10 spam when opening this story
Resopnding to EVERY spam letter could very well simulate a DoS attack...