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:Fill out forms

[Pedrito]

This guy has a lot of interesting ideas. I would think it would be fairly simple to write a program that did the following things:

1: If a SPAM message contains a form, you forward it to the program (which would create a local SMTP server to receive messages only from you). It would fill the form with random data, but somewhat intelligently, by parsing the HTML and figuring out what is valid for the form.

2: If a SPAM message goes to a web site with a form, go to that form in your browser. Run the anti-spam program and click a button to auto-fill the form. You could configure it to fill out the form multiple times, in the background, without user intervention.

3: If the SPAM message contains a link to geocities, or other free web hosting services, forward the e-mail to your anti-spam program's local SMTP server. It will grab the link and then forward the e-mail, header, and link to the appropriate abuse@ address.

There are probably other things like this that could be done. If someone wrote this program, I'd use it religiously, and I'd imagine a lot of other people would too. If it was easy enough to use and as unobtrusive as possible, people would be using it like crazy. The spammers would get wiped out.

Believe me, if I had the spare time, I'd start writing this program today.

Faked FROM fields.

[bluephone]

I agree it's nasty, but hardly forgery. It's no more forgery than writing "Dr. Nikolai Pantsanundies, 6th planet of the Gastric System, 7th Dimention" in the return address portion of an envelope. What we NEED instead of more stupid laws (we have enough idiotic ideas about computer "crime" in law enforcement already, Taco) is legal recourse for the recipient. I say, if we can track down who sent it, we should have a legal right to send them a bill, and sue if it's not paid. I mean a law that explicitly states this, not just a sig tagline like some guys have tried over the years.