Eliza for Spam

Saint Aardvark the Carpeted writes "Check this out for sheer genius...This guy has posted to Perl Monks a script that uses the Perl Eliza module to respond to spam. Check it and contribute your suggestions for improved vocabulary." The downside of course is that spammers never set their reply correctly (which I think is forgery, and should be treated as such) so this is probably more academic then useful, but its definitely funny.

Comments

Re:Cost them $ with your mouse - it's easy:

[isorox]

More generally, this looks like a scripting job.

something like a cronjob of

wget --recursive --level=1 --span-hosts http://www.goto.com/d/search/?type=home&Keywords=b ulk+email

?

You will want to delete the output too

Cost them $ with your mouse - it's easy:

[jcapell]

Click here, go down the list and open each link in a new window (rightclick, openinnewwindow then tally up the $ damage yourself.

Hit 'em where it hurtz -

Sounds like a bad idea

[Skuto]

Hmm, isn't replying to spam bad because it will
mark your address as 'in use' with spammers?

This looks like a fun thingy, but I wouldn't
use it to acutally reply to spammers for sure...

--
GCP

Please don't use this

[13013dobbs]

This script is useless, unless you just want to harass some innocent third party. You will NOT be responding to the spammer. I know it is tempting to do, but your flames will not do any good. Why is that?

1. Spammers use invalid or non-working email addresses. While dealing with a spammer at my job (I work an abuse desk). The spammer told me that of a list of 200k email addresses 90% were bogus. Spammers don't put a working email in the 'From:' or 'Reply to:' fields because they would be flooded with bounces.
2. Spammers use random addresses in some innocent third parties domain. It is for the same reason as above. But this also helps to get past filters that try to determine if a domain is valid.
3. Spammers use the email address of someone who complained to them, or thier ISP. Spammers do this so the complainer gets to deal with the thousands of bounces, plus the flames, and now all the eliza replies.