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Eliza for Spam

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the fun-things-to-do dept.

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.

6 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Anonymity vs. forgery by sqlrob · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why does a commercial message need anonymity?

  2. Re:Interesting conversation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    idea of merging CATS and Eliza: +5 (de rigeur, but you did it first)

    actual cleverness of joke: 0

  3. suggestion.... by Marcus+Brody · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The downside of course is that spammers never set their reply correctly.... so this is probably more academic then useful

    Yeah, but its pretty easy to find the server from which the email originated from the full email header, heck, even a perl script could do this... (although i guess there are ways of even spoofing this????).

    Then you just get the script to respond to postmoster or root@offenfing.machine, stating that spam was originating from it. If you include the message ID in the email, the admin can determine the spammer and hopefully will suspend their account. The again, it might be the admin doing the spamming....
  4. Re:Sounds like a bad idea by 13013dobbs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Also spammers don't use their own email addresses. They will use a random address at some innocent domain, or they will use the address of some one who complained. When you use this, you are harassing some innocent person.

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  5. Forgery? by Kasreyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    (which I think is forgery, and should be treated as such)

    Strange. When slashdotters insert "NOSPAM" in their email addresses, making them incorrect and misleading, it's fine. And when the government proposes systems to track everyone online, the /. crowd erupts in a furor of activity, denouncing it as tyrannical. Yet, when spammers spoof their email addresses to avoid backlash of outraged netters too dumb to view the real headers and do a whois, (ab)using the very same online anonymity, it's suddenly "forgery".

    Pfft, yeah, whatever. Let's start making some sense now Rob, hmmm?

    -Kasreyn

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    Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger /. flamers since 1999.
  6. True to form by The+Angry+Clam · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is it only me who's noticed the irony that on an article about punishing spammers, the /. equivalent of them is out in force?

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