Exposing Spammers For All They're Worth

llywrch points out this interesting story at Art & Farces in which a "guy fights spammers by occasionally sending an email telling the spammer to leave him alone or he'll bill for time & services. Some take him off their mailing list, some pay the bill, but most don't respond . . . except one guy who was so incensed at receiving this invoice he had his lawyers send a threatening note. Makes it easier for Fraase to collect on his invoice."

Comments

Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[evilviper]

Empty threats are nice... but until large numbers of people go to court to fight against spammers, well, you lie in the bed you've made (or have done nothing to stop).

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Gabey]

Remember that that virus also went through people's web caches looking for email addresses as well...so if you have yours on your website, it'll appear that you're more popular than you actually are ;>

Don't feel bad, I got my hopes up to when all these people started asking my advice on documents.

-gps

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Overcoat]

Wahington State went after spammers. The state was the first to pass anti-spamming legislation. More info here: http://www.wa.gov/ago/clearinghouse/consumer/junke mail/home.html

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[dytin]

Legislation is not what we need to stop spammers. The real problem is that spammers actually make money off of spamming us. There are enough dumb people out there that actually buy crap from the spammers. Just quietly delete all of you spam, and when spammers stop making money then they will eventually stop. Or if you don't want spam, just don't use email.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

What help will it be if we the "smart people" don't buy from spammers? We already don't but the "dumb people" do so the money flow will remain unchanged.

I'd prefer legislation against spam so that marketers can still sell to "dumb people" through classic methods like infomercials, home shopping networks, and advertisements in tabloid magazines.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[AntiNorm]

Wahington State went after spammers. The state was the first to pass anti-spamming legislation.

And many states have followed suit. Check spamlaws.com to see if your state (or country) is on the list.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Jace of Fuse!]

I hate spam, but I don't really think the government should be getting involved. They take enough liberties away from us. If they make more crap illegal then it'll be turned around and used against otherwise normal activity and pretty soon we'll have tons of law telling us what we can and can not do with the internet.

The only law that I think should be allowed concerns the requirement of those doing business on the net do so with full disclosure. If someone is going to mass e-mail they should not be allowed to misrepresent their e-mail address or host of origin. I consider that forgery and it should be punished as such.

Not only does it make finding those guilty of the forgery difficult to act against, but it also makes it hard to trust them enough to do business with them. It's for this reason that I do not do business with spammers. It's not enough that the products they are trying to sell to people are about totally worthless, but if you add to that the fact that they can't even tell you who they really are then one can only wonder who the hell WOULD want to do business with them in the first place.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[hashinclude]

Spammers never needed email before to 'get the message out'. It's called Direct Marketing for snail mail. Buy a product once, you go in their database. Periodically, whenever some new 'deal' comes out, no matter what your fealings are on the store, they feel compelled to issue you out a letter/flyer/etc informing you of what great new products they have just for you!

Actually if you look at Snail mail and Email, it costs a lot more to send a snail mail (print it out onto flyers, use envelopes, put appropriate postage on the envelope (so that the whole deal looks appealing), and create mailing lables to send the whole thing to.

With Email, it just has to be addressed to a mailing list (or a spam software given a list of addresses) and the *ENTIRE* message is put out. The whole thing turns out to be at least 100 times chepaer (in terms of efficiency, money, everything).

Email spam is just more efficient, and therefore more far reaching.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Micah]

You know, you're probably right. Spam IS theft -- theft of service and time -- and should be treated as such.

I was raised thinking that sueing is "bad" and I have always detested the way many in our society are so litigeous. But spam is making me just mad enough that I think I'd be willing to jump in that game if there's any chance i could win.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

I hate spam, but I don't really think the government should be getting involved. They take enough liberties away from us. If they make more crap illegal then it'll be turned around and used against otherwise normal activity and pretty soon we'll have tons of law telling us what we can and can not do with the internet.

Drop the Republican anti-government hate mongering. The federal government passed a law against junk faxes years ago and it hasn't lead to the confiscation of fax machines, innocent people being fined or jailed, or any violation of anyone's liberties. The law simply recognized that junk faxes, like e-mail spam, cost the recipients. In the case of faxes, the costs include toner and paper while spam e-mail costs include higher ISP fees to cover the cost of bandwidth, storage, and the salaries of the abuse department personnel.

The only law that I think should be allowed concerns the requirement of those doing business on the net do so with full disclosure. If someone is going to mass e-mail they should not be allowed to misrepresent their e-mail address or host of origin.

Your time isn't worth anything, is it? Well mine is and I don't want to have to wade through multiple spams per day. I don't want to have to opt-out 20 times a day. I want to be able to use a pager to tell me when I receive e-mail -- and not have it go off every two minutes because some loser sent me spam. It's my e-mail. I've paid for it, and no spammer has a right to use it for his advertising.

Collect calls from telemarketers are illegal. Junk faxes are illegal. E-mail spam should also be illegal.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Znork]

Eh, well, that reminds me of a (salon?) article a year or so ago. Do you know how many of the spammails where you cannot in any way give them money however much you try?

I mean, yes, there are loads of dumb people available, but those dumb people actually have to be able to find out where to send the money.

Of course, that says loads about how smart those spammers are...

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Jace of Fuse!]

Your time isn't worth anything, is it?

It's worth quite a bit. I dispise spam and receive so much I've resorted to using a private e-mail address for real communication with just a few poeple and forwarding all junk to a box that I never check. Other semi-important stuff (such as site-registration etc) goes to a third... and yet still I have other mail addy's for other things.

It's annoying and I shouldn't have to do this.

But I think the more laws that we pass the more screwed we're letting ourselves get. If we are allowed to track down spammers we could fight them much easier. At the moment however everybody like you wants to just cut them off immediately with the legal system instead of using current laws to help us fight them without having to resort to piling on more and more laws every day.

And one other thing -- my anti-law feelings are definately Libertarian, not Republican. If you're going to call me names, get your shit straight. Nobody likes a twisted turd.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

Hmm, so when someone expresses concern about civil liberties being slowly eliminated, that's "hate mongering"??

No, but when they say the following, it is "anti-government hate mongering":

If they make more crap illegal then it'll be turned around and used against otherwise normal activity and pretty soon we'll have tons of law telling us what we can and can not do with the internet.

Read it. Any Internet-related law "will be...used against" non-spammers and "we'll have tons of law[sic] telling us what we can and can not do with the internet." The original poster stated it as fact.

As far as the other adjective, "anti-government", is concerned, I find it interesting that when someone says government should be kept small, effective, and non-intrusive, they're "anti-government"

Don't twist what he wrote. He didn't express anything like what you just did. His premise was that the government, if it outlawed spam, would run amuck, destroying our civil liberties and passing an uncontrollable barrage of laws related to the Internet. If you don't see that as an anti-government sentiment, you probably think of Timothy McVeigh as a patriot.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

But I think the more laws that we pass the more screwed we're letting ourselves get.

Why would you be against a law prohibiting theft -- which is what spam is? Laws aren't bad. The anti junk fax law that I pointed out is an example of a perfectly good law that hasn't hurt anyone (other than junk faxers).

If we are allowed to track down spammers we could fight them much easier.

So laws are bad but lawsuits are good? You and I are definitely not on the same page.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[cburley]

No, but when they say the following, it is "anti-government hate mongering":

If they make more crap illegal then it'll be turned around and used against otherwise normal activity and pretty soon we'll have tons of law telling us what we can and can not do with the internet.

Read it. Any Internet-related law "will be...used against" non-spammers and "we'll have tons of law[sic] telling us what we can and can not do with the internet." The original poster stated it as fact.

Yet he's right. Nearly every law of substance has, at some time or another, been used against someone who wasn't the intended target of the legislation. He's warning against a slippery slope, and against human nature, not "hate-mongering", unless you find warnings against tyranny to be "hate-mongering" -- which I guess is the case here. (Consider such events as RICO laws being used to attack Operation Rescue, and the ADA being used by the Supreme Court as an excuse to rewrite the rules of golf, the right to free assembly notwithstanding. I can assure you, the authors of those pieces of legislation never intended such targeting.)

His premise was that the government, if it outlawed spam, would run amuck, destroying our civil liberties and passing an uncontrollable barrage of laws related to the Internet.

Perhaps you can get inside his head, but that's not quite what he wrote. What he wrote was correct -- that we should be aware of how laws designed to achieve a thing can have, in other words, unintended consequences, such as the possible (perhaps occasional) abuse of those laws, and that if we persist in not considering this possibility, continually asking government to protect us from even trivial impositions, the inevitable result will be a vast sea of incoherent, easily-abused legislation.

All of which has been proven true by the history of the USA, one of the most freedom-loving nations in history, yet also one that has a proven record of accumulating a vast sea of legislation and regulation, almost all of which was well-intentioned.

If you don't see that as an anti-government sentiment, you probably think of Timothy McVeigh as a patriot.

I'd say if you don't see what he and I worry about as being pro-individual-freedom as well as sensitive to all of recorded history and embodying common sense, and persist in seeing it as "anti-government hate-mongering", you probably think of Singapore as a paragon of governance.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[budgenator]

The real problem is that spammers actually make money off of spamming us
No I don't think so, but a lot of Lusers think they are. It's probably more like welder-spark + disposable-butane-lighter = 15,000 lbs air-fuel bomb.

There are enough dumb people out there that actually buy crap from the spammers. Lusers who are dumb enough to buy the crap are also dumb enough to believe that their CC data is more likely to be stolen off a SSL connection to the transaction house than they are to be muggged in the mall parking lot.

Just quietly delete all of you spam I actualy take some time once in a while, read it and compain to the person who benefits and CC the host, if it involves a regualated profession I also complain to the states board of professional liciensure or if it looks like fraud, to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

I'd like to see a law prohibiting falsified header info, punishing broken opt-out links, and perhaps giving recipients a more convienint way of sueing spammers for dammages. Punnishing affiate programms that pay for click-throughs from Email would help a lot

when spammers stop making money then they will eventually stop.
Your implying that the spammers are making money, posibly the only ones that are on the internet perhaps? More likely they are dreamming of make one big hit that'll come from the next scam

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[cburley]

As Barry Goldwater said, "Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue ... extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Thanks. I think you're helping me make my point (and supporting the original poster).

Still, it's hard to tell, since I think it was I who introduced the word "extremism" in this thread, and I used it to describe someone calling what I considered to be a defense of liberty "anti-government hate-mongering".

So, if you meant to agree that our defense of liberty, in the sense of warning against excessive regulation by government, is wise, great.

If you were trying to rebut my use of the word "extremism", your use of the Goldwater quote was off the mark, since it justifies a specific form of extremism, but certainly not the form I was identifying.

I.e. Goldwater emphatically did not say "Extremism in defense of excessive government regulation is no vice", at least not in that quote!

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Masem]

And I'll also point out that the federal Supreme Court, by not deciding to take a case, has also acknowledged that WA state's spam laws do not violate the Commerce clause as stated by the WA Supreme Court, since they are aimed to prevent fraud (such as false headers or incorrect removal instructions) as opposed to restricting commercial speech as other anti-spam laws have tried to done in the past. See this CNet story, for example (Tried to submit this when this was hot, of course it was rejected :-)

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[panda]

We still get junk faxes, despite the laws. Most laws passed by the U.S. legislature aren't worth the effort that they take to pass.

You know the old joke? "If con is the opposite of pro, then what's the opposite of progress?"

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[turg]

The real problem is that spammers actually make money off of spamming us. There are enough dumb people out there that actually buy crap from the spammers

I'm not so sure about that. The actual spammers do not have a product to sell other than their spamming services. They get paid (up front, I'm sure) as long as they convince some clueless business to use their services -- it doesn't hurt them if not one person buys the product advertised.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Mr. Slippery]

Why should someone have the civil liberty to send me emails about "horse fucking"

For the same reason that they have the right to come up next to you in a bar and say, "Hey, let me tell you about this horse I fucked the other day...".

Of course there are limits; if you get up and move and he follows you and keeps telling his story, that's harassment, which is actionable. (Spamming that continues after you've demanded them to remove you could be considered in this category - but so would someone who keeps forwarding you stupid and offensive jokes after you've asked them to stop.) If he stands out in the middle of a quiet residental street screaming out his story, that's disturbing the peace, which is actionable. (Flooding your inbox with spam might qualify also.) The content of the story itself is irrelevent; it's time, place, and manner that can be regulated.

The spam issue has nothing to do with the fact that the spam might be embarassing to you. It does, however, have everything to do with fraud and forgery; even the most libertarian people can't be against a law that punishes that.

There's often trademark violation involved as well (lately I've been getting a lot of spam made up to look like Yahoo! was somehow involved); while trademark is highly overused these day, someone using your mark to attempt to legitimize their spam is clearly over the line.

I was embarrassed! Where's my right to have my computer connected without the cable guy thinking I'm a pervert?

Hmm...don't see that one in the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, any state constitutions, the Bill of Rights...sorry, but I don't think there's a right to not be embarrassed by other people's speech.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Pig Hogger]

Legislation is not what we need to stop spammers. The real problem is that spammers actually make money off of spamming us. There are enough dumb people out there that actually buy crap from the spammers. Just quietly delete all of you spam, and when spammers stop making money then they will eventually stop. Or if you don't want spam, just don't use email.

This is precisely the kind of sheepish thinking spammers (or anyone who scams people by taking advantage of them) are counting on, and as long as there will be, profiteerers will have a jolly good time.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Skapare]

Whether spam makes money for spammers or not is irrelevant. The reason we get the hassle from them is because it is easier for them to shotgun blast a million messages for 10 responses. The reason this works is because ISPs let it work.

In cases where a spammer has their own network, I just block their network ... no more spam from them. Now if their ISP helps them by giving them new addresses to get around it, then I'll block the whole ISP.

In cases where a spammer does not have their own network, their ISP should block SMTP outbound from such customers, and force them to use the ISP mail server, and include in it throttling of some kind. One way to do it is to give each dynamic address customer an outbound mail quota of say 1000 messages a month and charge them $1.95 for each message over that. That works out to $1948050.00 billable for the ISP (not like they'd ever be able to collect on it). Even if the ISP charge $0.01 per message, we're still talking $9990.00 here, which would really inhibit a spammer's ability to make money.

In practice, the ISP should simply disallow email over the quota unless the customer has agreed in writing to pay.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[zaren]

See also: www.spamcon.org

This site offers a listing of ALL laws on the books in U.S. States, as well as a weatlh of other information. They also maintain a mailing list which is currently tracking the efforts of several people who are actively suing spammers.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[renehollan]

Why would you be against a law prohibiting theft -- which is what spam is

Because the proposal is for a law banning spam, i.e. yet another law. Laws against theft should be sufficient to use against spammers if precedent is established that spam is theft of service.

There are just too many laws which (a) are redundant, (b) used to restrict otherwise acceptable activity in the name of the crime they seek to deter. So, It should not surprise that libertarians (myself included) are wary of more laws when existing ones might suffice.

Personally, though, I don't think that the "spam as theft" argument would stick. I think a stronger case could be made under the fraud statutes with regard to originator mis-representation.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Philbert Desenex]

Just quietly delete all of you spam, and when spammers stop making money then they will eventually stop. Or if you don't want spam, just don't use email.

The only problem with "just hit delete" is that the spammers actually steal from their victims. Email spams cost (admittedly each one only costs a small amount) in terms of network connection time, CPU cycles, disk space, user time to hit delete. I suspect that what you're advocating would minimize any given individual's cost of dealing with spam, but we'd end up in a "tragedy of the commons" situtation, and ultimately any given individual's spam burden would be unbearable.

The other problem with email spam is that the economics of it differ from traditional advertising. In traditional advertising, the ads get paid for by a firm before you or I make a decision on buying a product. If the ad for the product in question sucks, we don't buy. If the ad for the product in question offends enough people, we don't buy. There's feedback between the ad and the "invisible hand" of the marketplace. If the ad isn't good (for whatever reason) the product doesn't get bought, and the firm is out the cost fo the ad. Email spam, the potential customers bear a large part of the cost before making a decision about buying the product advertised by spam. Any given ad budget can finance way more spam than conventional advertising because those being advertised too have to pay for the ad before they buy the product. The feedback, although not totally eliminated, is vastly weaker than before.

Because of the greatly weaker market forces, we do need legislation to stop spam.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[sammy baby]

Personally, though, I don't think that the "spam as theft" argument would stick. I think a stronger case could be made under the fraud statutes with regard to originator mis-representation.

Perhaps, but then you're trying to enforce something completely different. Generally, anti-spam legislation is designed to thwart a type of communication: the only qualification being that the communication has to be unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). To fall afoul of anti-spam laws doesn't require that the commercial message endorse a product fradulently ("ENLARGE YOUR PENIS, UP TO 6 INCHES!!!"), or inappropriately ("Sister Mary, of Our Lady of the Assumption - do you want to see pics of real amateur sluts?"). So, anti-fraud actions aren't really going to address the problems that anti-spam legislation backers want to address.

The problem with treating is that it isn't obvious that e-mail spam is theft. Frequently, court cases against spam pushers are couched using "trespass to chattels" laws. But those laws aren't perfect for this - take a look here for a discussion of some of the problems associated with it.

There are just too many laws which (a) are redundant, (b) used to restrict otherwise acceptable activity in the name of the crime they seek to deter. So, It should not surprise that libertarians (myself included) are wary of more laws when existing ones might suffice.

You're right in that laws can be misapplied. However, the counterargument here is that you can't prosecute something which isn't illegal. Just as prosecutors can misapply laws to prosecute actions outside of the intent of the authors, defendants can argue that existing laws do not apply to their actions - for example, by arguing that a trespass to chattels law doesn't make sense in the context of e-mail spamming.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Sygnus]

We have successfully /.ed a government site!

I wonder if that would constitute an act of terrorism.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[scoove]

One effective way to deal with this is maillist pollution with the Jam the Spammers Maillist Game.

Step 1. Start filling out online registrations (probably something you already avoid) and seek out folks that are looking for this type of marketing data (e.g. Radio Shack, Best Buy).

Step 2. Jam their marketing radar with noise. Noise can be incorrect zip codes for you, creative names and addresses, even brand new people that live in exotic places. For instance, I've always figured that the post office at Manville Wyoming must be quite bored, being in the least populated county of the least populated state. Zip code is 82227, which makes it easy to remember. And best of all, General Delivery helps your mailman by letting him toss the junkmail in a tall pile that can be left for a long time. (For a pretty picture of Wyoming's Niobrara county, see this site.)

Remember, the more garbage you dump into their maillists, the less effective those mail lists are that they're selling.

Looking at an recent maillist quote for my metropolitan area, InfoUSA wants $5,000 for a list of businesses complete with fax, email, etc. Imagine how frustrated list buyers get when they discover half of these leads are garbage. The greater the background noise, the less effective the marketing campaign, and the more likely other means will be sought in locating customers.

Start your jamming!

*scoove*

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[robbway]

Thanks for this insight. Most people aren't aware of the distributed cost of the internet.

I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that results of spamming have nothing to do me deleting them off. First, they're relentless, which to me constitutes harassment. Second, for every 999 people that simply delete, 1 (or more) responds.

Unsolicited business requests are not, with the exception of legal precedent, Constitutionally guaranteed. Unsolicited e-mail, unsolicited junkmail, and especially unsolicited phone calls should be illegal. The Constitution only guarantees individuals, not companies, free speech.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

hey dumbass

I'm a hell of a lot smarter than you are -- and I have the IQ scores and professional credentials to prove it.

they are deleteing part of the library of congress, how is that not taking away rights, things are different now.

And what does that have to do with e-mails entitled "Lose weight now!!", "68 MILLION Email Adresses - ONLY $149!!", "Sexual Enhancement", "Your Free Sex Passwords", "NEW MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH: EAT LOTS, DON'T GAIN!", "Advertise on tthe[sic] Internet !!!", "Easy fast cash in 48 hours!!", "Forbidden XXX", "ÐÌsì£~--ÅÜÁnqܾ÷/ÓqÅã¥Ü¾", "Terminate Credit Card Debt!", "Herbal Viagra.- 30 day trial....", "Prescriptions Online", and "Snoring Remedy -80% Effective -No Surgery"?

We might as well dismantle our government now. When you don't want Congress to pass laws to protect the citizens, then Congress serves no purpose.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

Thank you for your response. But if you are upset that RICO laws were used to fight anti-abortion terrorists and murderers and that the Supreme Court allowed a disabled professional golfer to continue to earn a living, we don't have enough in common to make further discussion between us worthwhile.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[rkent]

The Constitution only guarantees individuals, not companies, free speech.

I wish you were right, but unfortunately, the Supreme Court ruled, seperately, that corporations are individuals for the purposes of the first and fourteenth amendments.

I only have a link for the first amendment case, CONSOLIDATED EDISON CO. v. PUBLIC SERV. COMM'N, 447 U.S. 530 (1980), which is the one that specifically states that corporations are entitled to free speech protection under the constitution.

In addition, here's a more general article about the issue, which is less detailed but much easier to read than the supreme court opinion.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

infant-murdering lobby (you use loaded words, I'll use 'em too, okay?).

I use legal terms. When you shoot a doctor or kill people by bombing an abortion clinic, our laws recognize that as murder. Performing an abortion is not murder under U.S. laws. If you don't like that, lobby for the laws to be changed. But don't try to twist words to impose your morality on all of those who disagree with you.

As far as your claim that "the Supreme Court allowed a disabled professional golfer to continue to earn a living", that is an out-and-out lie. The Supreme Court, as I understand it, forced an independent organization to change its rules for a game to accommodate someone who was already entirely free to play the game however he saw fit, using whatever rules he liked, assembling and organizing with others with a like mind for that purpose, purchasing, renting, or borrowing land and/or other resources for that purpose.

How is a professional golfer supposed to earn a living by "purchasing, renting, or borrowing land" on which to play golf? He's a golfer, not an investment banker. And, like it or not, the PGA is the only game in town for professional golfers -- just as the NBA is for pro basketball players. The rules weren't "changed". The PGA was just required to make a reasonable accomodation for a handicapped player. Golf is about hitting a ball into a hole, not about walking and that's what the Supreme Court decided.

For someone who's so quick to point out his supposed "Christianity", you sure don't seem to have much in common with Christ when it comes to compassion for the less fortunate.

Let's face it, the reason Timothy McVeigh happened is because of people like you

You are another Timothy McVeigh with your rantings about dying for a cause, "tyrants", Waco, gun control, etc. I never mentioned anything about any of that. I simply said that junk e-mail, like junk faxes, should be made illegal. How the hell did that turn into an argument about abortions, gun control, tyrants, Waco, etc.? You need psychological counseling.

people who can't get up in the morning without first thinking about how to get the government to impose their wills on others' lives, whether it's gun control, morality policing, whatever, but don't have the guts to impose it themselves, directly.

"Morality policing?" You mean things like the religious right trying to ban abortions, same sex marriages, needle exchange programs for drug addicts, gays in the military, sex education in schools, and medical marijuana use for terminal cancer patients?

You are rude, insulting, and totally without honor. You have called me names and made slanderous accusations. If this is your idea of Christianity, I'm proud to be an atheist.

As a Christian, I'm willing to die for my ideals.

The world will be a better place for all of us if you make good on that -- for if you continue on the path you've started down, I fear that you you will be capable of unspeakable acts of violence. Anyone who would find any justification for the acts of Timothy McVeigh or the Operation Rescue murderers is a sick and dangerous man.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[4of12]

I hate spam, but I don't really think the government should be getting involved. They take enough liberties away from us.

I agree with you.

I detest the inconvenience of wading through UBE, setting up procmail, etc. There are counterparts, too, such as the time I spend at the counter in my post office, removing catalogs, credit card offers, magazine subscription offers, supermarket flyers, etc.

But I would feel more inconvenienced if various fundamental liberties for free expression were eliminated by legislation. Oh, it's not an issue as long as you have a government with policies that are not too abhorent.

But consider if you had a government that sorely needed to be changed (say you're a resident of Afghanistan, North Korea, Iraq or some authoritarian regime that punishes any expression of dissent).

In that case, an effective means for change would be the ability to broadcast anti-government propaganda to a wide audience and do it anonymously. Anti-spam legislation would effectively close those avenues. Which is fine, as long as you're willing to bet that you will never need those channels of communication in the future.

As it stands, it makes me nervous whenever censorship and limits on free expression are put into place. The current inconvenience is worth it IMHO.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

You win.

I just can't justify getting involved in any more of this long, off-topic flame fest. Basides, I have to go quit my job and take my life's savings to create a golf association that doesn't discriminate against handicapped players.

Maybe after I finish that, I can get back to being a tyrant...

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

dont forget "FREE PENIS ENLARGEMENT"

I've tried my hand at that...

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[pheonix]

Which brings you back to the point...make forging the header information illegal, as it is just that, forgery. Don't make spam illegal because it is genuinely abusable by the government. If you don't think that the government WILL abuse its power, review the UCITA and DMCA briefly and see what you think...

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[pheonix]

How is a professional golfer supposed to earn a living by "purchasing, renting, or borrowing land" on which to play golf? He's a golfer, not an investment banker. And, like it or not, the PGA is the only game in town for professional golfers -- just as the NBA is for pro basketball players. The rules weren't "changed". The PGA was just required to make a reasonable accomodation for a handicapped player. Golf is about hitting a ball into a hole, not about walking and that's what the Supreme Court decided.

The rules absolutely were changed. Carts were expressly forbidden on a PGA tournament course until this disabled golfer imposed his "civil liberties" on them.

As for "How is a professional golfer supposed to earn a living by "purchasing, renting, or borrowing land" on which to play golf?", I don't remember my inalienable right to make a living at professional sports, but I'm sure it's in the constitution, right? I mean, I'd really like to play hockey, but I can't skate, so can I sue to play sans ice? How can I, a professional basketball player, make my living if they insist on placing the hoops too high for my 5'11" ass to slam dunk on? Can I sue to get them lowered?

It's people like you that make life disturbingly difficult for intelligent people.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

It's as if you believe that your original post was somehow a worthwile contribution and cburley's retorts were just an annoying diversion.

That is what I believe. And the moderators, for the most part, agreed with me.

If your knee-jerk, hot-headed troll flames are so crucial to Slashdot, aren't the level-headed, oh-so-patient attempts to skool your sorry ass at least worth a reply?

I gave Mr. Burley the courtesy of several replies and he only became more irrational and long-winded, ignoring important points I made while trying to attack out-of-context quotes. Unfortunately, he is not as intelligent as I am, nor is he a skilled debater, so his attempts to "skool" me were simply a waste of my time.

As a practical aside, you might note that in many oppressive societies, outspoken, hotheaded loudmouths are marginalized, imprisoned, or in some cases killed by their own government.

So you think that I would be marginalized, imprisoned, or killed by my government because I posted something on Slashdot that was pro-government? And Mr. Burley, after his violently anti-government statements, would have fared how? You aren't very bright, are you?

How does it make you feel for me to post this anonymously?

No matter how you posted, you'd still be anonymous. It's not like any of us have ever heard of you in real life -- or ever will.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

Carts were expressly forbidden on a PGA tournament course until this disabled golfer imposed his "civil liberties" on them.

Supreme Court Justice Stevens, an avid golfer, said the walking requirement is "at best peripheral" to PGA Tour events. And in any case, Stevens wrote, if the purpose of walking is to tax golfers' stamina, Martin's disability does that for him.

It's people like you that make life disturbingly difficult for intelligent people.

Yeah, it must suck to just be "intelligent" and have to deal with someone who's so far above you.

P.S. I seriously doubt that you are nearly as intelligent as any of the seven Supreme Court Justices that voted in favor of golfer Casey Martin.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[benedict]

If you start collecting your $500 prizes, I bet you'll see a reduction in spam as spammers start taking you off of their lists post-haste.

That disclaimer is very funny.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[benedict]

Fraud over telephone lines isn't legal either. Are you going to tell me there's no "telephone community"? There is: it probably includes almost everyone in the industrialized world.

I'm so sick of the "regulation is baa-aa-aa-d" Slashdot orthodoxy. It's so thoughtless and unconsidered.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[fmaxwell]

you continue to stupefy me

Stupefy: 1. To make stupid; to make dull; to blunt the faculty of perception or understanding in; to deprive of sensibility; to make torpid.

I think you need to blame your parents and schooling for that.

Your account is seriously past due...

[rela]

Ha, I just wish I could have seen their faces...someone didn't back down in fear!

Spammers

[WickedClean]

Speaking of spammers, I have gotten more junk mail this past month, trying to trick me into changing registrars for a couple of domains that expire in November and December. I have gotten 4 different letters from Register.com, as well as about a half dozen emails from Register.com or their affiliates. I had always thought they were a big company and above sending spam, but I guessed wrong.

One thing I would like to see is to make it illegal for these so-called 'companies' to sell mailing lists. They are selling people's personal information! I know, I know - wishful thinking....

Re:Spammers

[WickedClean]

Am I wrong in thinking it is still ok to tell telemarketers to eat the poo fresh out of my butt? I always thought that if they called you, then you have the right to tell them off. I wonder if that lawyer is a REAL lawyer...the spammer could just have whipped up a fake letterhead.

Re:Spammers

[OmegaDan]

I've gotten these same emails and snail mails, they're definatley not cool ...

interestingly enuf last year I registered a set of com/net/org domains for a project and got a phone call at my home from some business wanting to sell me their web services cuz they "noticed" I registered these domains ...

Re:Spammers

[spectral]

I dunno, I got one telemarketer to go through all his stuff, then he wanted to send me something, and asked for my address.. so I told him to send it to his own, he wasn't sure how that'd help me.. I told him that I wasn't interested in the literature, I thought he might since he spoke so highly of it. I then paused a second, and asked to be removed from their list. He started swearing at me and telling me he was going to come and kill me and my family and all this other stuff and hung up on me :)

Re:Spammers

[Pathwalker]

For a while (about 6 months) whenever I had a telemarketer call, I would explain that I was busy, and ask them for a number at which I could call them back.

Only one actually left a number - I looked it up on Google, and got a hit. It turned out that they were an artist, who I would assume was doing telemarketing as their day job. It really weirded them out when I commented on one of their paintings when I called them back :-)

Nowdays, I don't deal with telemarketers - I leave the phone off the hook most of the day, as I work nights.
Spammers I just stick in /etc/smtp.cdb and never hear from again...

Re:Spammers

[Tony Hoyle]

In the UK we have legally enforcable telemarketing opt-out lists (http://www.tpsonline.co.uk). They seem to mostly work, apart from a few lamers.

A couple of weeks ago we had a call from a bunch of idiots who'd obviously just gone through the telephone directory.

Phone rings. My wife answers, and after listening to the speil asks for the callers name. He gives it. She then asks for the callers address... He gives it! Then she asks for the callers telephone number. At this point he gets suspicious and asks why. "Because I need the information to report you to the TPS". Amazingly, this satisfied him & he asked his collegue for the phone number!

It gets better. He couldn't find the number but promised to call back.

10 minutes later - he called back! With the correct number!

15 minutes later he called *again* and starts all over again - this time asking for me... it hadn't clicked that there are two people living in this house with the same last name & telephone number.
Given the level of the fines that the TPS can levy (Minimum of £10,000 per call) I suspect the guy is currently unemployed...

Re:Spammers

[blang]

Same thing here, but they're not going to get my business. Who is lame enough to pay $35 per year?

I bough my domain at domainstore.com, for around $15 per year. So when it was time to renew, I went back to the site, and now they were going to charge me $35 per year, or $30 for a transfer. No way Jose.
Turns out they've been bought up by one of the big ones (registrars.com I think).

Luckily, my name is so unusual that I can let the domain expire, and get a .com or .net instead of the .org I have. And this time around I'll register for 10 years, at one of the cheapo registrars that charge $8 a year.

"So you want to sue a spammer"

[IvyMike]

There's an outfit called "Private Citizen that helps you receive less (snail) junk mail and fewer telemarketing calls. The sell a book called So You Want To Sue A Telemarketer. I sure hope that they come out with the "Sue A Spammer" edition of this book soon. Even though I think too many people are quick to sue in this country, I can't think of anybody who deserves a lawsuit more than the spreaders of spam.

People too cheap (ok, "frugal") to spend money at Private Citizen can try following the advice at Junkbusters, and they even have a page concerning spam.

Re:"So you want to sue a spammer"

[sasha328]

Alternatively, you can get yourself a Law Degree:

A University Diploma is waiting for you.

Obtain a prosperous future, money earning power,
and the admiration of all.

Select your field of study from business, computers,
engineering, education, the sciences, liberal arts,
fine arts, social sciences, history, literature,
languages, or any other discipline.

No required tests, classes, books, or interviews.

All levels of diplomas awarded - including bachelors,
masters, PhD's, and MBA's.

Diplomas from prestigious non-accredited universities
based on your present knowledge and life experience.

Open enrollment means that you are already
accepted into this unique program.

Someone is always waiting to take your call -
24 hours a day, 7 days a week including weekends.

All you have to do is call to insure your future!

1 - 2 1 2 - 2 1 4 - 0 6 6 9 (U.S.A)

OR CALL

1 - 4 1 0 - 5 1 0 - 1 0 7 8

All calls kept strictly confidential.


That is always the best spam I get. Makes you wonder how many people actually use this service?

Re:"So you want to sue a spammer"

[CaptainSuperBoy]

The funniest part is "prestigious non-accredited universities." They're already spamming, why not lie? Are they going to get in any more trouble if they leave out the part about being non-accredited?

Google cache

[Milinar]

Seems slashdotted... try:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:R7VWyB6BrGM :w ww.farces.com/farces/999462920/index_html

Re:Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

Or better yet:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.farces.co m/farces/999462920/index_html.

(It didn't work when I left in the R7VW... stuff)

Mirrors?

[Wayne247]

Well i found this article dated September 2nd which appears to be the one being submitted today. So happy caching

Spammer's Real Address

[istartedi]

How do you get it? I've always wanted to send them bills, but I always figured getting the real addrress would be too time consuming.

Re:Spammer's Real Address

[Darth RadaR]

Do I get 70-something virgins and 70-something wives to hand-feed me grapes and whatnot?

I don't think I'd want a virgin that was in her 70s.
:)

What about using copyright law?

[www.sorehands.com]

Many spammers are using bots to grab email addresses off of web pages. Why not use the fact that they are illegally copying the websites to get them?

Of course the SPAM lists that some companies sell is a derivitive product.

Remember Bidder's Edge v. Ebay, they argued using bots to collect information is illegal. Companies selling software to use open relays and collect addresses is as illegal as napster (if not more). Lets use some of these rulings against spammers.

Re:What about using copyright law?

[www.sorehands.com]

If its online, then its publicly viewable. While some sites have legal statements saying that you cant use any
of the herin information for commercial purposes, most dont.

The point is to place terms of use on a site. Look at the terms of use on my site. This has not been tested in court, yet.

Even without a terms of use or copyright notice, copyright still applies.

Re:What about using copyright law?

[hearingaid]

You're quite correct. They're engaging in unauthorized copying.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to prove. But yeah, email harvester bots are probably illegal, unless the site author (not the owner, the author, the one who owns the copyright) authorizes them.

lets do worse

[JohnG]

If they are spamming an ad for a website, you can look at their registars whois database and find the owners mailing address.
I say we all send a pizza to his house. After a few million pizza delivery guys after every spam sending attempt he'll give up.
Not to mention the double effect that you can invest in Pizza Hut and watch the stock go WAY up!
Disclaimer: The post was intended for entertainment. I will not be held accountable for any spammers who die from pepperoni overdose!

Re:lets do worse

[doorbot.com]

Not to mention the double effect that you can invest in Pizza Hut and watch the stock go WAY up!

If anyone plans to implement JohnG's ingenious plan, please drop me an email. I'll send you a pizza after I make millions selling Pizza Hut stock short.

Who do you think is going to end up paying for those "million" pizzas that are sent to spammers?

Re:lets do worse

[cobar]

Or better yet, how about signing them up for magazine subscriptions. That way they'll spend as much time cancelling them as you do dealing with spam.

whore

[seanadams.com]

I didn't have a chance to get to the other link before farces.com went down, but here's the first page (edited to pass junk filter):

A few months ago, I published an article outlining my opinion and experience with spammers in general and one in particular. That article, Fun with spammers, has drawn the attention of the subject spammer?s lawyer, and I am being threatened with legal action.

I am publishing both the demand and my response without comment. Your comments are most welcome.

Today I received the following letter on lawyer letterhead:

Gary K. Kahn
-address-
November 12, 2001

Michael Fraase
-address-

RE: Dispute Involving E-Core Technologies, Inc.

Dear Mr. Fraase:

This office represents Jim Hobuss of Portland, Oregon. Mr. Hobuss has called my attention to information you have placed on the internet regarding Mr. Hobuss. Specifically, you have defamed Mr. Hobuss in your posting and it is clear you are attempting to interfere with his business.

On behalf of Mr. Hobuss, demand is hereby made upon you to remove any reference to Mr. Hobuss from your posting. If you fail to do so within ten (10) days, my client will consider all appropriate legal recourse against you.

Sincerely, REEVES, KAHN & HENNESSY (signed)
Gary K. Kahn

To which I responded on my business letterhead:

ARTS & FARCES LLC
-address-
16 November 2001

Gary K. Kahn
--address-

Dear Mr. Kahn,
I received your letter concerning Mr. Hobuss? claims of defamation in information posted on the ARTS & FARCES internet website. I believe the article in question can be found at:
http://www.farces.com/farces/999462920/

under the title ?Fun with spammers.?

The piece accurately reflects my email experience with Mr. Hobuss and my opinion of that experience. I stand by the article and have no intention of removing it from publication. Nor do I intend to remove any reference to Mr. Hobuss in the piece.

In fact, I expect to publish a follow-up piece including the text of your letter and this response.

Your client?s account with this firm is now seriously past due, and I?d like to know what his intention is with regard to my unpaid invoice(s).

Regards,

(signed)

Michael Fraase

I've had things like this happen to me.

[Yottabyte84]

A while ago I got an account at neopets.com (using a disposable email address) making sure to select the "don't send me any email" box, and after I was disgusted at thier birbery for clicking ads forgot about it. Then they spamed me. I sent them an email telling them they'd be billed for any further spam. Here's what they sent me (personal details deleted):

To Mr. [censored]:

The Legal Department is in receipt of your message regarding an
advertisement you allegedly received from NeoPets. We take all user
concerns-especially those in connection with member privacy and safety-very
seriously, and in this regard monitor the website around the clock for
inappropriate content.

To begin with, NeoPets unequivocally rejects your "purported" contract and
refuses to enter into any agreement with you. Your demands are neither
reasonable nor are they acceptable under any circumstance. As such, this
message should not be construed as an admission of liability or acquiescence
to your demands, but asv a complete rejection of your offer. Likewise, any
transmission you may receive from NeoPets is not an acceptance of your
agreement and may not be construed as an acceptance under any condition.

Moreover, by registering on the NeoPets.com website, you expressly agreed to
NeoPets' Terms and Conditions, which states that NeoPets may send
notifications and announcements to its users' e-mail addresses. Neither
NeoPets nor its sponsors send unsolicited e-mails and will only send e-mails
to users who have expressly requested, or consented to receive, such
correspondence and have provided an e-mail address destination. As such,
immediately upon the Legal Department's receipt of your message, we had
0rnrsegu001@sneakemail.com blocked from our system to ensure that you do not
receive any more unwanted e-mails. Additionally, we researched your e-mail
address in the NeoPets database and located the account "yottabyte," which
we immediately froze to prevent you from receiving any further unwanted
e-mail communications.

Unfortunately, we have no control over the sponsors our users register with,
and this is a matter that must be taken up with each sponsor that sends you
e-mails. As a practical matter, our sponsors are very responsive to
"unsubscribing" users who wish to be removed from e-mail databases. As a
courtesy, we will try to help remove your e-mail address from our sponsors'
systems, although we can make no guarantees as to the effectiveness of
preventing future unwanted e-mails. To do this, however, I will need you to
send a list of the sponsors from whom you are receiving unwanted e-mails.
Because NeoPets.com does not pass along user information to anyone, we do
not know where your e-mail address was registered and thus have no way to
automatically unsubscribe it.

Please contact us directly at legalDepartment@NeoPets.com if you have any
further questions or if this problem persists. We hope the foregoing has
addressed your concerns.

Sincerely,

The NeoPets Legal Team

Now for some commentary.

Moreover, by registering on the NeoPets.com website, you expressly agreed to
NeoPets' Terms and Conditions, which states that NeoPets may send
notifications and announcements to its users' e-mail addresses. Neither
NeoPets nor its sponsors send unsolicited e-mails and will only send e-mails
to users who have expressly requested, or consented to receive, such
correspondence and have provided an e-mail address destination.

And yet they tried to get me to buy tickets to some event (I seem to recall it being some radio station held event of some sort)

Unfortunately, we have no control over the sponsors our users register with,
and this is a matter that must be taken up with each sponsor that sends you
e-mails.

I definatly did not register for any annoying ads.

I responded to this by telling them "whatever.... all further email to this address will bounce" then going to sneakemail.com and deactivating the address.

I'm sort of amused by this, I bet it cost them at least $100 to have thier lawyers tell me off.

Re:I've had things like this happen to me.

[Malcontent]

"I'm sort of amused by this, I bet it cost them at least $100 to have thier lawyers tell me off."

If everybody did what you did it might cost them some real money. Especially if you replied and argued your case. You could have argued that the spam you got was not covered by your agreement and that they indeed owed you money. Imagine if a thousand people did this?

Re:I've had things like this happen to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen other people mention this, and I have to wonder: what's to keep the spammers from learning that the LHS of the + is a perfectly valid account?

me+foo@foo.bar --> me@foo.bar ... easy!

Personally, I'm at the "create new entries in /etc/mail/aliases" stage of address tracking. So far the only real bastards are Ticketmaster, who don't acknowledge bounces and keep spamming the damn thing.

The next step is to use subdomains, and revoke the DNS when they get spammed. One subdomain per e-mail address is silly, but it's about the only way to keep them from filling my maillogs with bounces.

SpamCop, and Nagging Admins with complaint Email

[RageMachine]

I would have to say the best thing to do is to use spamcop for the 1st or 2nd time, and then after that if the ISP still does nothing about the spammer, then find every address listed on the site, and forward the spam to it. That will make the admins listen.

I repeatedly recieved spam from a site called popsite.net, run by megapop.net, and repeadidly asked them to stop sending spam, or to stop providing free dialups to spammers, and they still din't listen. I got tired of it and called them. They still did nothing. I recieved another one, and decided to just annoy the hell out of them untill they did somthing about it. I forwarded the spam to EVERY email address listed on megapop.net: abuse@ support@ noc@ billing@ etc... every one. Then I forwared the auto-replys back to them. And finally a REAL person emailed me and said they had found the spammer, and mentioned that several people were pressing charges against him, and asked If I wanted to, and gave me his email address, AND his home phone number.

Now every now and then when im near a phone and bored, ill call the spammer and hangup, or play a recording of a Telemarketer; somthing along the lines of "Congratulations! You've qualified for the platinum card!". Every site that asks for an email address to download somthing, I just put his email address in it.

I have over 1,200 lines in access file for sendmail, and STILL I get spam from overseas servers. Mostly I will just block all of .co.uk, or .com.pt, or somthing to that nature, to prevent 9/10ths of the spam that comes in.

The best way to fight spammers/advertisers/telemarketers is to fight fire with fire.

Getting back

[wormyguy1]

Spammers really go to all ends to get you to open their email. I got an email the other day that said, in all caps, "BIN LADEN HAS BEEN CAPTURED", and it came from a coherent-looking MSN email address. Realizing that I didn't know anybody lame enough to send me anything in all caps, I opened it anyway. Well, to no surprise, it was porn, in HTML format, with some 300k of blinky, flashy, seizure-inducing images.

If it's one thing I don't understand about spam (and this coming from the fact that my mother is in the advertising/graphic design business and I help them with tech support issues, I know how the corporate marketing machines work) is that you want to target a key demographic who is going to be interested in your product (in this case porn), you want to send it to the people who will be most likely to give you their money. Marketers spend millions of dollars on demographic databases to make sure that they aren't wasting money marketing to people who aren't interested. Now imagine how much it costs them to send 300k of images to the email boxes of, I'll be conservative here, a million email addresses. Imagine how much it costs when said email bounces. Witnessing the slashdot effect (especially right now, I haven't even been able to resolve the domain of the site linked above), I can't even imagine what must be going through spammers minds when they send an email with "BIN LADEN CAPTURED!" as the subject. After reading that subject, I imagine that most people would open the email, download all that porn, cost the spammers money, and then not even be interested as they weren't looking for porn to begin with. Same thing with them registering domain names... if you are looking for information on the White House (IE: whitehouse.com) and you come across porn, how interested are you going to be?

The other thing that surprises me: if it wasn't successful, they wouldn't bother.

Re:Getting back

[sg_oneill]

Actually I suspect the decision to title it "Bin Laden Captured" worked quite well. You opened it didn't you?

Not that makes it ethical. (Now that said, wouldn't it be great to be able to tell Mr Bin that there is *PORN* with , like , chicks with no veils on *AND MORE!* being marketed under his name. *And yet the west STILL doesn't apreciate him!* The look on the guys face would be priceless. (grr infidels! etc)

Ahem.

cached copy and weird coincidence

[2id]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:R7VWyB6BrGM:w ww.farces.com/farces/999462920/index_html+farces+f un+with+spammers&hl=en

Very odd. I was reading this exact page ~2 hours ago(from nanae I think). Synchronicity?

The other page

[Forager]

/.'s stupid "lameness filter" won't let me post the other page. Here's google's cache:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:R7VWyB6BrGM:w ww.farces.com/farces/999462920/index.html

~Aaron.

Going after TrafficMagnet

[greysoul]

Recently I got Spam from a company called Traffic Magnet, they provided me with a screensho of my webpage, and I sent them the following, feel free to copy, or comment on the points of my letter. thanks

Christine,

One thing I notice is that you are using my copyright images to sell a product and/or service.

Please email the physical address of your legal department, or the location to which I should have an attorney contact you about this issue.

If you prefer to contact me via mail please use my business address:

--Address--

As an artist I take my copyright, and privacy very seriously. While no laws yet exist in New Mexico regarding Unsolicited Commercial Email (SPAM) There are laws that protect Copyright holders. As a copyright holder it is my responsibility to protect my property. I do hope that you take this matter seriously and we can resolve this quickly. The normal process is I would have my attorney send a cease and desist letter, to which you would have a lawyer reply that the actions demanded (by me or my agent) have been followed out in accordance with applicable laws.

Thank you for your time

Signed.

Re:Going after TrafficMagnet

[shakah]

Assuming their practice is to include a screenshot of each owner's website in an e-mail to that particular website owner (e.g. they'd grab a screenshot of yahoo.com when sending their spam to Jerry Wang, a screenshot of dell.com when spamming Michael Dell, etc.), wouldn't that be fair use? Copyright (at least pre-DMCA) doesn't give the content creator absolute power to dictate use of that content.

Re:Going after TrafficMagnet

[hearingaid]

Probably, in the United States.

Next time, pretend to be French or Canadian and threaten to sue for violation of your moral rights. Heh.

"Asshole fee"

[innocent_white_lamb]

Two years ago, I walked out the door of my business one day at noon and discovered that a roofing contractor had strung a cord across the vacant lot beside my building and had plugged into an outside electrical outlet on the rear of my building. He was using my power to run his roof-tar machine.

I immediately turned around and went back inside and turned off the circuit breaker for that outlet. After a while, though, I thought, "Hey, where does he get off plugging in without permission!" As the fax number for his company was printed on the door of his truck, I wrote up an invoice for one "asshole fee" at $50 plus $3.50 sales tax, and faxed it to his company.

To my surprise, the following week I had a cheque in the mail from them, for $53.50. The payment stub that came with it said, payment enclosed for asshole fee, $50 plus sales tax.

I was amazed. On the other hand, I hotfooted it right to the bank and deposited the cheque, too!

Re:"Asshole fee"

[cburley]

I wrote up an invoice for one "asshole fee" at $50 plus $3.50 sales tax

That's all it costs??

Man, I've been paying way too much for that privilege!

Re:"Asshole fee"

[aozilla]

To my surprise, the following week I had a cheque in the mail from them, for $53.50. The payment stub that came with it said, payment enclosed for asshole fee, $50 plus sales tax.

I was amazed. On the other hand, I hotfooted it right to the bank and deposited the cheque, too!

Did you send the sales tax to your state government?

But seriously, the civil charges alone for such theft would run much higher than $50, not to mention the lawyer fees for the criminal case (and the possible jail time). Considering that you had their fax number and were potentially interested in persuing it, getting away with $53.50 was a pretty good deal.

Spammers, on the other hand, aren't doing anything illegal.

Re:"Asshole fee"

[Nickoty]

haha! Couldn't you please scan that stub and put it on the net, along with the story?

Re:"Asshole fee"

[pete-classic]

He probably doesn't have a "state government" since he spells it "cheque."

But he used "$" so safe money says he's Australian.

Anyway, if he bothered to collect it he probably paid it.

-Peter

Re:"Asshole fee"

[aozilla]

In some states, the spam itself is illegal.

Name one. I'll give you a hint, not Washington.

Fraudulent contact information in WHOIS

What law is there against that?

Use of open relays

Most spam does not use open relays.

Use of dial-ups as mail servers and web servers, usually against ISP TOS

Breaking an ISP TOS is not at all illegal. It may be a breach of contract, but in most cases the spammer is not going to get in any more trouble than having his/her account deleted. Besides, if the spammer is breaking the ISP TOS, it makes little sense to make legal threats when you can just contact the ISP.

If you want to charge for spam, force people to agree to pay before you let them email you. It isn't that difficult to send an autoreply with a simple contract and a one time reply address for them to reply if they agree. That'll eliminate 99.9999999% of your spam, still allow people to contact you, and give you a shot in court of actually collecting money on the spam you do receive, especially if you ban IP addresses outside your own country.

Re:"Asshole fee"

[hearingaid]

Breaking an ISP TOS is not at all illegal. It may be a breach of contract, but in most cases the spammer is not going to get in any more trouble than having his/her account deleted. Besides, if the spammer is breaking the ISP TOS, it makes little sense to make legal threats when you can just contact the ISP.

Nice logic, buddy.

Contracts. Breach of contract.

Contract law.

Breaching a contract is illegal. It's not criminal behaviour in most cases, but you know, contracts are legal documents and have the force of law.

BTW, entering into a contract with the intent to violate it is usually considered fraud, which is a criminal offense.

I'm beginning to seriously thinking about going to RBL. I'm averaging about 10 spams an hour now, with peak times sometimes giving me about 5-10 a minute. This is too much to deal with reasonably.

Luckily, I have my own mailserver. :)

Re:"Asshole fee"

[Merk]

Or Canadian? Remember us? The big country to the north of you? The really big one? We use the dollar sign too, and we have provinces, not states. Sure, we spell things strangely but we're not that bad...

Re:"Asshole fee"

[Dimensio]

Uh, spam is theft by conversion. The spammers force third party ISPs to host their advertising by means of disk storage. Often spammers hijack third party mailservers to send their spew -- theft of service. Sending junk e-mail to a domain that has specifically stated that it is not desired is trespass to chattel.

Spam is illegal. Spammers should be tortured and killed, their heads should be placed on pikes that should line Silicon Valley.

Re:"Asshole fee"

[hearingaid]

Breaching a contract is illegal. It's not criminal behaviour in most cases, but you know, contracts are legal documents and have the force of law.

Fine. But by that rationale, it's also illegal to threaten to sue someone, at least under Erols AUP (part 1i, banning threats and intimidation). It seems clear to me that there's a huge distinction between criminal law and contract law.

I should rephrase. Valid contracts are legally binding documents; to the extent of their invalidity, they're not binding.

You can't contract out your right to sue. (You can contract out your right to sue in the jurisdiction of your choice, though.) There are things that contracts cannot force you to do: for example, a contract to commit murder is not legally binding, on either party.

Re:"Asshole fee"

[TekPolitik]

Uh, spam is theft by conversion.

Firstly, conversion is not necessarily theft. Secondly, spam is not conversion (IIRC this was decided in CompuServe Inv v. Cyber Promotions. Spam is, however, a trespass to chattels (from the same case.

And yes, it does look like all spam is in fact illegal.

Re:"Asshole fee"

[Legion303]

All the registrars I've dealt with also have two types of contact entry: the type they can reach you by and the type that shows up on whois/dig/host searches. My registrar can reach me, but people trying to find out where copkiller.org's owner lives are going to have a harder time.

-Legion

Re:"Asshole fee"

[pete-classic]

Who? The name doesn't ring a bell.

Been in any wars I might of heard of?

Just kidding. East of Alaska, right?

I thought you guys used francs. HA!

Kidding again. Seriously, I like you guys. And I know you were in the French and Indian war ;-)

Keep warm, eh?

-Peter

Art & Farces' didn't do anything ...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

"except one guy who was so incensed at receiving this invoice"

That link is already /.ed to death : how's that for spamming the messenger ?

Google cache comes through again

[steveha]

Go to www.google.com, and type in the keywords "farces fun with spam". The top hit is the page with the details about this. Click on "cached" to see what google.com has in the cache, and you can read the whole thing.

But I pasted a copy of the text in here. Well, most of it; the slashdot lameness filter won't let me paste in the whole thing.

Warning: the spammer likes to use bad words.

BEGIN QUOTED TEXT

Every day I get roughly as much spam, which I define as any unsolicited bulk email, as legitimate email. It's a problem that doesn't have an easy solution. The proposed legislation generally misses the mark of eliminating either the unsolicited bit or the bulk bit. While the first amendment protects your speech, it doesn't include a requirement that I subsidize it--financially or with my attention.

With that in mind, I think I may have hit on a formula that probably won't eliminate spam, but it sure makes the parasites think twice about doing it again. And it always seems to push the indignant outrage button that all of these vermin seem to have in common. So far, the formula has worked like a choreographed dance in each instance. Here's how it goes (please play along at home):

Each day I select 2 or 3 of the more outrageous spam messages that serve no useful purpose whatever. They're almost always some sort of commercial scam. I do a traceroute and a whois with NeoTracePro (it's got neat maps) to determine who they really are, where the message really originated, and who their local and upstream bandwidth providers are. Then I send the following reply to the original message--complete will all header information from the original spam--with copies to the abuse, postmaster, and hostmaster addresses at the bottom-feeder's local and upstream provider:

Remove this and all addresses within the farces.com domain from your distribution lists immediately. We have no existing business relationship, nor do I wish to establish one. I don't do business with spammers. Not now. Not ever. You are using my resources for your gain without my permission or compensation. Any further contact from your domain to any address within this domain will indicate tacit agreement to your use of our resources at our published billing rate of US$125 per hour with a 10 hour minimum.

Clear enough?

Invariably I get a quick response, singularly uninspired in its lack of originality:

From: Jim Hobuss
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001
To: mfraase@farces.com
Subject: RE: Save Money On Your Home Loan Today!

Not really.

Could you explain it again?

Yeah, right!

Except this idiot, dumber than most, actually sent a second retort, this time issuing a challenge:

From: Jim Hobuss
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 7:43 PM
To: mfraase@farces.com
Subject: RE: Save Money On Your Home Loan Today!

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. That email you
received was an opt-out email ... Certainly legal.
If you want to be removed from our mailing list,
I suggest you follow the instructions on the email.

Go ahead and send me a bill... And try to collect.

Clear enough?

Astute readers will recognize that I never claimed what scum like Hobuss was doing was illegal, only that I rejected his offer and counter-proposed one of my own. Of course, by responding, he's now agreed to my terms and is billed accordingly (with copies again going to his local and upstream providers):

You received the following message on 1 Sep 2001 in reply to your spam and yet you continue to spam this domain. Accordingly you have accepted our terms of contract and are being invoiced under Minnesota state statutes and the Universal Commercial Code. Payment in full is due immediately. If you fail to pay in full immediately the invoice will be rendered for collection, appropriate credit reports will be prepared, and we will vigorously pursue judgment in the appropriate venue(s).

For the record, our original offer is included below.

Remove this and all addresses within the farces.com domain from your distribution lists immediately. We have no existing business relationship, nor do I wish to establish one. I don't do business with spammers. Not now. Not ever. You are using my resources for your gain without my permission or compensation. Any further contact from your domain to any address within this domain will indicate tacit agreement to your use of our resources at our published billing rate of US$125 per hour with a 10 hour minimum.

Clear enough?

Invoice

[Professional-looking invoice for US$1250 removed thanks to slashdot's lameness filter. I particularly enjoyed the part on the invoice where it says "Thank you for your business."]

In this case, Hobuss actually got two of these, differing only in invoice number. As you can imagine, this game of Invoice Ping Pong can go on for days, but it rarely does. It almost always immediately devolves into barely intelligible abuse:

From: Jim Hobuss
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 8:18 PM
To: mfraase@farces.com
Subject: RE: Save Money On Your Home Loan Today!

Go ahead and try collect asshole.

And if you even try to file one Judgement against me, I'll
sue you and your LLC. There is no fucking tacit agreement
here. Kiss my ass and fuck off. I've taken your name off our list.

Clear enough?

Oooh, I imagine the spittle at the corners of his mouth are not very attractive. But he's made the mistake of crossing over into clear abuse and maybe even threats, a second and more serious violation of his provider's Acceptable Use Policy. At this point, all I have to do is reply to the message (again with copies to his--they've always been male so far--local and upstream providers) with yet another invoice and the following tasty bit addressed specifically to his providers:

NOTICE TO ISP AND UPSTREAM PROVIDER(S): As you can see this has escalated to abuse on the part of your client. Kindly take whatever action you find necessary with regard to your AUP and notify me directly of anything necessary on my part to expedite the process. Suffice it to say that I expect immediate action with regard to this matter.

Most importantly, he's removed me from his spam list. And I'll bet good money he's at least thinking about the next spam missive he sends. From his next provider, of course.

Now, I probably can't collect on all 3 invoices, but I can certainly make the parasite's life miserable with just one. A quick trip to the county courthouse (until they get their system web-enabled) generates a court date that subsequently renders a judgment that I can easily file with the appropriate agencies. Like fish in a barrel. I've never done it because I haven't had to; my intent is to stop the spamming of my domain, and it's working. A few of these bottom-feeders have, however, paid the invoices. I deposit the checks with a grin.

END QUOTED TEXT

Notes on my editing: To avoid the slashdot lameness filter, I used HTML "blockquote" for the quoted email messages; the original text used '>' characters. Also, some of the punctuation came through as question marks; I tried to replace it with correct ASCII punctuation. (The punctuation was apostrophes and long hyphens.) I did my best not to introduce any errors, but no promises!

steveha

Re:Spam and Hotmail

[mgv]

I used to get alot of mail addressed directly to my hotmail account - which I don't give out (its a redirect from a pop3 account).

Someone obviously got a subscriber list from the hotmail site, as you would see 20 or so names alphabetically sorted near your own name in the To or CC list.

These just stopped happening (Maybe the spammers were overwhelmed with a sense of remorse, but I doubt it). I never changed anything in my settings. They aren't in my bulk mail. I think microsoft is filtering them out. Anyone else seen this?

If it is happening, its the most effective thing I've seen so far as a spam filter.

Michael

Google Cached here ....

[MartinD]

... Arts & Farces: Fun with Spammers

Re:Spam and Hotmail

[AntiNorm]

Has microsoft actually improved their spam filters lately for hotmail? I seem to be getting alot less spam through them.

I've had a Hotmail address as my primary address (don't laugh, please) since before M$ bought them out. Somewhere around five years now. So it follows that I get so much spam it isn't even remotely funny.

Anyway, in response to your comment, my inbox spam seems to have been narrowing itself down into a few specific categories/spammers lately, including:
* Some company repeatedly trying to sell me pharmaceuticals
* University Diplomas
* A few others

I would get a kick out of sending some legit cease-and-desist letters to these people, but I don't really have the time or money to get the necessary legal counsel. Yes, I have looked into changing my email provider, but I don't want to pick a company only to have it become the next dotcom of doom. So I guess I'm screwed :[

I had a similar experience...

[Tribbles]

I really enjoy it if the spammers have a telephone number I can call, or better still a fax number.
One spammer I called I tied up his line demanding why I was being spammed for so long, he put the phone down on me.
Another I faxed with an invoice for $300. I live in the UK, and this guy was in the States. About a month later, I received by **post** a print-out of my invoice, with hand-written notes (in orange highlighter pen) effectively telling me to get stuffed, and wishing my mother would die. A few people in the office suggested I reported them for threatening behaviour, but I never got around to it - after all, there's only so many hours in the day...

Re:I had a similar experience...

[aozilla]

A few people in the office suggested I reported them for threatening behaviour, but I never got around to it - after all, there's only so many hours in the day...

There's [sic] only so many hours in the day, yet you had the time to call the spammers and tie up their lines, and fax them? Admit it, the real reason you didn't report them is because you got scared once your fun little passive-aggressive games entered the real world, not some fantasy safe world of fax machines, phone calls, and internet access.

Re:I had a similar experience...

[j-beda]

Whenever I see a listed fax number, I use TPC's email to fax gateway to send a copy of my complaint, along with the message to spamcop.

TPC's coverage is spotty, but often it works, and ties up their line and fax machine for a little while.

Re:I had a similar experience...

[hearingaid]

Want to tie up lines? Easy.

Turn the speakerphone on. Pay occasional attention to the spammer at the other end while getting on with your life.

Faxing is a no-time-investment deal. Run your fave wordpro, use its wizard to make an invoice, and then use the print driver for your faxmodem to send it. Five minutes, tops.

Talking to police, now, takes time.

Re:I had a similar experience...

[hearingaid]

Cops are usually brighter than spammers :)

Granted, in some jurisdictions, the reverse may hold true.

Remember though - the objective when calling the cops is to persuade them to do something; when you're calling the spammer, you're not trying to accomplish anything beyond increasing the spammer's phone bills.

Re:Stupid Spam Terrorists

[AntiNorm]

Here in Canada I go to Radio Shack to get some batteries and they want my mailing address to send me their retarded flyers

Tell them "I choose not to reveal that." That's what I always do.

I hope not...

[Tom7]

I think it'd be a big step backwards if we went to court and somehow got laws against this stuff. It's fun to mess with these guys, who are obviously assholes, but I don't think it's a good idea to encourage legislative regulation of the internet. Think: CDA I, II, DMCA, ....

Spam is just not that bad! If you set up your e-mail client properly and don't publish your e-mail address, it's hardly noticeable. Still, I'd rather press 'd' six times per day than have my email regulated by the government.

Hmm, terror

[forgoil]

If you could fool the goverment into thinking that spam is terrorism, I bet they would definitly do something about it;)

[Disclaimer, don't even try to take that seriously]

Re:Hmm, terror

[moncyb]

Actually, in the US, that may not be too far from reality. I do remember reading about an anti-terrorist law in the works that would categorize any sort of computer attack as "terrorism." I don't think it would be too far of a streach to classify spamming as a "distributed denial of service" attack under this law...

Entertainment Value of Spam

[liquidweb]

I have simply initiated a policy of placing falicious phone calls to spamming organizations.

The last one I made was to another web hosting corporation, I used a deep south accent and kept asking about how many pullups a 'gigerbyte' was.

Ocassionally he's use a three syllable word, and I'd freak out saying, "Ya'll from the future?". It ended when I started calling him boy, and talking about how "I don't done know them fancy reading boy words" while fake yelling at various red neck named children and referencing the fact that I was "Sick a dem computer boys lording their electronic pants over me".

I did this from the office with mixed reactions from employees.

The only event beating this one was when I actually talked a lady into a telemarketing office into checking three cubes down for me. I had her convinced that I was from the same agency and the autodialer had errored out. My next goal is to start a dispute between employees at a given location. It's hard work even to break them out of the script, let alone get them this far.

What about non-English spammers?

[Skevin]

I get mail all the time from spammers who not only send their message in another language whose charset my mail client doesn't accept, but whose email return addresses are invalid as well. If I give sufficient prior warning, do I attempt to bill the owners of the website advertised in these emails?

Solomon

Er! Not quite

[CaptainZapp]

and don't publish your e-mail address, it's hardly noticeable.

This might be true for you, as a private entity. For me, running a business this is no option. I do have a website and the whole idea is to publish my contact information, with as little hassle as possible for prospects.

Do I publish my cell-phone # ? Sure as hell, no! But I make damn sure, that if you dial the business # published on the site is routed to my cell phone, if nobody is in the office with the caller not even noticing.

This is not so easy with an e-mail address: customer.FUCKOFFDIMMWITT.care@YESTHATMEANSYOUdomai n.ASSHOLE.com, doesn't really sound too professional, now does it ?

Re:Er! Not quite

[MentlFlos]

Yeah, I agree. This is why I have several accounts on my mail server. Some private, some very very public (aka, the spamgoeshere account).

If one gets too spammy, I just kill it and make a new one. Actually its not even that complex, they are just aliases :)

Re:Er! Not quite

[onepoint]

>>I do have a website and the whole idea is to publish my contact information, with as little hassle as possible for prospects.

I have a small javascript that might help you. If you like I will post it.

-Onepoint

I've tried billing them...

[vandan]

Doesn't seem to work for me.
However http://spamcop.net does wonders. A couple of weeks ago I contacted dodgy list-seller, http://www.incnet.com.au and complained about them continuing to sell my details to others when I had emailed AND phoned (it's a local call - I'm in Sydney) and asked to be removed. I talked to a guy who said "Oh YOU'RE the bastard that reported us to Spamcop. We had a LOT of trouble because of that". He then bullshitted on about how he was going to sue me for causing him financial loss. So I called the Australian Direct Marketing Association and put in a formal complaint and haven't heard from either since. I assume he was talking shit at the time and got into trouble over it since.
Anyway, the moral is that Spamcop does seem to do something, and it's a lot easier than personally emailing all involved with each piece of spam you recieve.

Re:I've tried billing them...

[austad]

The ISP (Genuity) just no longer accepts spamcop complaints on that domain anymore.


That's because that fucking black rocket they have is a nuclear spam generator.

Re:I've tried billing them...

[Tackhead]

> > The ISP (Genuity) just no longer accepts spamcop complaints on that domain anymore.
>
> That's because that fucking black rocket they have is a nuclear spam generator.

Yeah, but since it's not like fucking Genuity ever does anything about the spam complaints they do accept, what difference does it make?

(Assfelching dialinx.net dialups in 65.*.*.* are two fucking thirds of my fucking spam load these days. I'd like to take that black rocket and shove it up their CEO's ass. Sideways. I'd shove it up their abuse department's ass, except they don't have an abuse department.)

You need to give admission to receive emails

[Gery]

Hi,

i just wanted to mention that in Austria you have to give your admission to receive email. Only then, a company may send you an email.

So even "first contact" may only be made if a prior acceptance is available (ex. with a tip-on-card where the user gave his email-adress or whatever...).

Afaik, this is the strongest law in the EC (and of course by far stronger than US-laws).

Gery

Re:You need to give admission to receive emails

[maroberts]

Sure like thats going to work. The UK is planning similar laws, but most spam is sent from outside the long arm of the UK or even EC net police so enforcing this is going to be damn near impossible.

Re:How slloooowwww does this guy read?

[clheiny]

Yeh, it is so quick to download 1MB of email over a slow wireless link (9.6 kbps, paying by the minute) only to find out that all of it is a spam-storm for toner bargains in Argentina.
Spam is theft. Whether it's one second or two hours of my time, it's still theft. Maybe you don't find burglaries inconvenient, but I sure as hell do.

Deth 2 Spammers

[BillTheKatt]

I'm on a personal anti-SPAMMER crusade. I'm just ticked that hackers waste their time launching DDOS attacking on corporate websites and writing virii. Maybe they should use their skills for a noble purpose, like pounding SPAMMERS. Just create a throw-away email account, post a few messages to USENET, and plenty of targets for DDOS or hacking. Redirect the SPAMMER's webpage to point to SPAMCop or suespammers.org. I posted a single message to USENET with my real email address 5 years ago, and I still get 5-10 SPAMs per day. Hackers and crackers, do the world a favor, go after SPAMMERs. Find their real names and expose them for the world to see.

Spam from an admins view

[buss_error]

Out of 13K mail boxes, I get 10K-15K e-mails per day not including those that don't pass our Internet MX (In otherwords, internal e-mail). About 3 in 20 are spam of one sort or another. So that makes about 2250 spams per day.
Lets say it takes about 2 seconds per-person per e-mail to decide it's spam and hit delete.
OK, that's 4,500 seconds, or about 1.25 hours. Lets say the average pay per person with an e-mail box is $221.00 per day.
So, total, it costs my employer 276.25 per day just to delete spam.
Now, let's say that 1 in 100 of those e-mails deleted really wasn't spam, but real e-mail. If the user notices they deleted a legit e-mail, and goes to get it out of the trash, lets say that it takes them about 30 seconds to retreive it. That makes 22 per day, at 30 seconds each, at 221 per day, that is another 41.50 per day.
Grand total now is 317.25 per day completely pissed away because someone wants to sell some lady a penis enlarger, or some gay guy hot teen bitches.

OK, now about content filtering. I've looked at quite a few, and all choke on the amount of e-mail we have. Others, running on unstable OS'es, are a complete joke. The only thing that does seem to work for a week at a time is to block based on IP. If I could find an IP distribution map by country, I'd be a happy camper. Sure, I could zot 202/8, 203/8, 210/8, 211/8, 64/8 and a few others, but more and more these netblocks are getting re-assigned to US companies that I don't want to block.

One thing that's helped quite a bit is blocking all of DialSprit's assignments, and a few others. The RBL helps, but it's too easy to get off and too hard to get on.

Re:Spam from an admins view

[moncyb]

Don't forget about those important emails that are mistaked for spam, deleted, and never recovered. For example, I'm sure quite a few employees get emails from potential customers and accidently delete them. How many disappear do to spam filters? What about lost productivity due to server crashes? Spam contributes to that last one too doesn't it?

How much money do you think this causes your company to lose (on average)? A hundred dollars per day? A thousand? Ten thousand? I'm not trying to argue, just trying help you get a more accurate estimate.

Re:Spam from an admins view

[Anonymous Coward]

15000mail/(3spam/20mail)=2250spam
2250spam*2s/spam=4500s
4500s*(1min/60s)*(1h/60min)=1.25h
1.25h*(1workday/8h)=0.15625workday
0.15625workday*221dollar/workday=34.53125dollar

22falsepositives*30s/falsepositive=660s
660s*(1min/60s)*(1h/60min)=0.18333h
0.18333h*(1workday/8h)=0.022917workday
0.022917workday*221dollar/workday=5.06458dollar

34.53125dollar+5.06458dollar=39.59583dollar

Unless all the people behind the 13000 mailboxes make 221 bucks per hour, your off by about an order of magnitude.

Re:Spam from an admins view

[slashBastard]

Yep, it takes up a load of time sorting out, but spam can also seriously hog system resources. I'm not just talking about routers and switches all over the net....this morning when I checked my Hotmail I had 1741 mails in my junk mail folder. They were all from the same address. If they had spammed my work address instead of my Hotmail I'm sure our poor little mail server would have fallen on it's ass, thus causing our business untold headaches and costing us money.

To anyone who says spammers have the right to do what they do, I would say they should also be held responsible for their actions.

Re:Spam from an admins view

[Howie]

Sure, I could zot 202/8, 203/8, 210/8, 211/8, 64/8 and a few others, but more and more these netblocks are getting re-assigned to US companies that I don't want to block.

I don't understand this part. The implication is that all spam comes from "other countries". As someone in another country, I find that more or less all my spam comes from either the USA, or (for reasons I've yet to decide) China or Taiwan.

The US spam typically is for products I couldn't buy even if I wanted to (call a 1-800 number, don't ship outside US) or that it's illegal for them to sell (financial products). The chinese spam could be for nose flutes for all I know, since it's in big5 - I'm not sure why they bother.

I agree with your general point (I run a similar sized mail server), but why those netblocks?

Re:Spam from an admins view

[ivan256]

13K e-mails is very few. What software have you tried that chokes on such a small amount? You should try procmail. It has a very good message scoring system that I use for a spam filter. It catches 90% of incoming spam, and I haven't had a false positive in over two years. Also, on a relativly modest linux box (I use a P2 233Mhz) you can filter tens of thousands of messages an hour. You should be able to incorporate such a filter into your environment even if you are windows based without changing your client setup, and using your existing server software.

I would be happy to send you my rules file if you are interested.

Re:Spam from an admins view

[buss_error]

Spammers use servers in other contries to make prosecution hard/impossible. The spam we get isn't from some spammer in another country, it's a US spammer using a server offshore. As a rule, I find offshore e-mail (that isn't spam) is more welcome form of e-mail than, say, from my congressman.

Re:Spam from an admins view

[buss_error]

Actually, all my servers are locked down as far as services offered (the MX doesn't do web pages, so httpd is off), my configs are all up to date and don't permit unauthorized relays.

I think the chief problem here is all the OS'es that came with relay enabled by default. This isn't Unix specific by the way, plenty of other OS'es, and some databases (Lotus Notes for one) used to come with SMTP on, even if not used, and permitting relay for any that care to send an e-mail.

Is this the fault of the admin involved? Well, yes, it is, but sometimes it hard to remember you're supposed to drain the swamp when you are hip deep in large, scally, sharptoothed preditors. I've been guilty of that once or twice myself, when I was very young and innocent. I was fortunate that I saw it before it was used.

I like the fact that sendmail for RedHat comes enabled only for the loopback address. If you don't know how to configure sendmail, you just arn't going to use it. That's an instant off for spammers.

For all you Missourians

[Mustang Matt]

I'm working with State Rep. Carl Bearden to get our spam laws up to par. We're currently adopting a several sections of the Washington laws, and hopefully coming up with some of our own in the near future.

I've submitted the details of my success twice to slashdot but my stories are always rejected.

I strongly encourage people in other states to contact their state reps and ask for better laws! It really IS that simple!

I was amazed at how willing my State Rep. was to learn about the problems and what possible solutions can be put in place.

For all you people complaining about Spam, if you haven't done your part and tried to make a difference, quit all the fuss.

Re:For all you Missourians

[wiredog]

Sounds interesting. If slashdot doesn't want it, how about submitting it to k5?

An easy way to avoid new spam.

[xenoweeno]

I've used this method for a couple of years with great success. What is this magic? Setting the href in your "email me" links to:

javascript:window.location='mailto:tda'+'vis@tda '+ 'vis.org'

...doing appropriate substitution for your own email address, of course. It would probably also be useful to include an explanation in case someone doesn't have JavaScript enabled.

The only problem I have now are legitimate mailing lists, like the PHP lists, which archive stuff to the web without obscuring addresses similarly. sigh.

Re:An easy way to avoid new spam.

[YKnot]

The only problem I have now are legitimate mailing lists, like the PHP lists, which archive stuff to the web without obscuring addresses similarly.

This, asshole-ACs who post mailto links, "friends" who send electronic greeting cards and using email adresses in circumstances which don't allow for obfuscation are reasons why the problem needs to be solved on a different level. It is absolutely necessary that the simple knowledge of your email adress is worthless to spammers because that knowledge alone is either not enough to send you mail or because it is too costly to send unsolicited (or fake solicited) mail to you. These are the only attack vectors which work.

Missouri is following suit

[Mustang Matt]

I've been working with my State Rep to get laws similar to Washington's put in place. Shouldn't be long now! I wish EVERYONE would contact their state rep and ask for legislation. It would save us all a lot of time, headaches and money.

How about some new spam....Lawsuit Spamming

[udelslayer]

How about we grind up all the workers of those stupid little nothing companies that spaM all the time and put them in a can so we can sell it to their geriatric relatives.... No matter what laws they'll make, there will always be ways around rules and nothing will change. How about those clever applications for credit cards? Anyone know how to stop the banks from sending me 8 a week, and without going postal?

So...

[gvonk]

What's his phone number?

Procmail helper script to "connect" spammers...

[21mhz]

... with their provider's contact persons.
Usage in procmail:

:0
* From .*\.spammer\.com
* Received: .*\.carelessisp\.net
| spam-forward -s 'Oops, they did it again' \
postmaster@carelessisp.net

Here's the script itself:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Procmail helper to redirect spam messages.
#

[ "$SENDMAIL" = "" ] && SENDMAIL=/usr/sbin/sendmail
[ "$SENDMAILFLAGS" = "" ] && SENDMAILFLAGS=-oi

subject='[SPAM ALERT]'
while getopts s: opt; do
subject="$OPTARG"
done

shift $(( $OPTIND - 1 ))

dest="$*"
if [ -z "$dest" ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 [-s subject] recipient ... <message" >&2
exit 1
fi

to_line="${*/%/,}"
to_line="${to_line%,}"

( cat <<EOF
From: $LOGNAME
To: $to_line
Subject: $subject
X-BeenThere: $LOGNAME@$HOST
Precedence: bulk
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Hello,

This is an automatically generated spam alert.
Feel free to contact me if you have any issues related to this.
The (partial) listing of the message that triggered it
is included below.

EOF
head -n 100
) | $SENDMAIL $SENDMAILFLAGS $dest

Re:Procmail helper script to "connect" spammers...

[smnolde]

My exim .forward file to filter spam emails:

if $reply_address contains "@com.tw" and
$reply_address does not contain "postmaster@" or
$h_received: contains "sol.control.com" or
$h_from: contains "safe-mail.net" or
$h_received: contains "216.126.161.44" or
$h_received: contains "popsite.net" or
$h_received: contains "thrunet.ne.kr" or
$h_received: contains "hinet.net" or
$h_received: contains "net.tw" or
$h_from: contains "net.tw" or
$h_from: contains "mail2000.com.tw" or
$h_from: contains "choicescom@163.com" or
$h_received: contains "163.com" or
$h_received: contains "travelincentives@aol.com" or
$h_received: contains "getawayandtravel@hotmail.com" or
$h_received: contains "202.105.16.164" or
$h_received: contains "bunutanko3@excite.com" or
$h_from: contains "bunutanko3@excite.com" or
$h_received: contains "intnara.com" or
$h_from: contains "intnara.com" or
$h_to: contains "hinet.net" or
$h_received: contains "61.13.229.84" or
$h_received: contains "computername" or
$h_received: contains "blick.com.tw" or
$h_received: contains "thirdage.com" or
$h_received: contains "216.126.160.29" or
$h_received: contains "ethome.net.tw" or
$h_received: contains "shoplet.com" or
$h_received: contains "shoplet.net" or
$h_received: contains "ctc-control.com" or
$h_received: contains "hot.ee" or
$h_sender: contains "mail.ee" or
$h_: contains "AmyWilson" or
$h_: contains "T_crow133"
then
seen finish
endif

The above seems to work pretty well for email coming to me. I haven't recieved spam in at least a week now... But it ain't over I'm sure.

Spam the Pizza Companies!

[VValdo]

I know this plan is a joke, but maybe there's a way to do it without causing damage to the pizza companies but rather to the spammers themselves.

Maybe the key is to start ordering shitty products from one spam company and sending to another's whois mailing address. We can call this program like "Spam-Swap(TM)" and even make them opt-out of it.

"Sorry if you've received this other spammer's product in error. Reply to be removed from our Spam-Swap(TM) List."

W

(ps. this is a joke too...)

I once had a call at work...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a credit card company that does much advertising on the internet with ads which Im sure all of you must have seen many times.

One day on the phone this guy called me up asking for a billing address. At first I assumed it was just another guy asking where to send his payment to. But then he clarified that no, he wanted us to pay him.

Asked him for what.

He said a pop up ad appeared on his screen and he charges a dollar a minute for when its on his screen.

As much as I hate advertisements I really had to explain a few things to this guy.

I told him charging by the minute is useless since its up to him how long its on his screen, all he has to do is close the window. I also advised him that its the website he was visiting that decided to have ads on the site and suggested he complain to them.

I then just had to ask him if hes ever ACTUALLY gotten any money doing this. He of course said no, but he just started.

After that call I really felt sad for the guy. He obviously hadnt thought this little plan of his through. Not to mention what a pathetic creature he is that he had nothing better to do in his free time than to find our customer service number and explain his scheme to me.

I figure anonymous email may be different of course because theres no matter of controlling it. For pop up ads, you can not see the ads simply by visiting websites that dont decide to make money by having them. But I still doubt in the long run this "charging" for precious valuable time is going to work.

Do these people really make money?

[FunkyRat]

The general concensus seems to be that spammers do their thing because there is at least a small percentage of recipients who actually send these people money.

Can this really be true that there are enough people out there who are so gullible as to make this profitable...!? or is it that the ones who are really making money in this game are those selling lists of e-mail addresses to spammers? I know that in the online porn industry, the real money to be made is not in the porn sites themselves, but in selling services to the people setting up porn sites. I would expect something similar is going on here, especially since I've gotten a great deal of spam lately telling me how lucrative a business 'mass e-mail marketing' is, and how I should act now to 'get in on the ground floor' by buying their CD-ROM's full of e-mail addresses 'for the low, reduced rate of $99.95.' It looks to me like spam mailing is just another get rich quick scheme.

I'm asking this as a legitimate question. Do people really make money by spamming or are the only ones making money those who are supporting this "industry?" I mean, if .025% of the population is stupid enough to send you money for something like fake Viagara work-alike pills at $25 a pop and you send e-mail to 1,000,000 addresses, that's $6,250 -- well, with those kinds of numbers I'm tempted to start spamming too. After all, if the idiots are willing to pay...

Disclaimer: Before you flame me for admitting to the same thing you've likely thought of yourself, rest assured. I am not about to start spamming anytime soon. However, I think the question is relevant. Is there anybody actually making money at this game?

Sorry, not funny.

[jcr]

This amounts to stealing from the pizza vendor, and that's as bad as spamming.

Sure, it would probably make the guy unable to order pizza from anyone in the city as soon as they set up a list of addresses that get frequent bogus orders, but it would still be wrong to do it.

-jcr

Request

[Asic Eng]

Please record these calls and put them on a website. :)

Re:Anti-spam is fine, get a filter, and quit bitch

[Keith_Beef]

You're missing the point, Mr anonymous coward.

I'm on a dial-up account. That means that every minute I spend connected is costing me money. Now, if I have to spend time connected to download a long HTML message with images in it, that is costing me money, albeit a small amount for a single message. Let's say it cost me 0.03 Thalers. If I now get 100 of these in a month, it's just cost me 3 Thalers.

You suggest filtering... but that happens after I've downloaded the messages, so doesn't lower the cost. It's not a realistic option.

And this is before I start factoring in costs for

• wear and tear: keyboard (extra typing to delete message)
  
• wear and tear: mouse (extra pointing and clicking to delete message)
  
• wear and tear: hard disc (extra read/write operations)
  
• depreciation: hardware loses its value fast, so every second occupied has a high cost during the first year of use
  
• my time: 0.9 Thalers per minute
  

Hmm... that makes for a low cost per spam mail received. But, like most companies, I'm going to set a "minimum invoice charge" to cover fixed costs associated with drawing up each invoice and chasing up payment. Lets say 30 Thalers. And now, we factor in a percentage for "bad payers". Let's double it.

All in all, I feel quite justified in billing for 60 Thalers per spam received.

You're the problem

[ebcdic]

"As much as I hate advertisements"... they're fine so long as I'm the one making money out of it.

Some nice spamcop reporting scripts

[Erik Hensema]

When you're running a system with procmail (don't we all?) and better yet: use a mailer which supports piping messages to stdout, you can use these scripts to report spam to spamcop semi-automatically.

I don't get these people

[Yuioup]

What I don't understand about spammers is that they expect you to buy their products after you've been annoyed by them. I never buy any products from advertisers who:

1) spam my mailbox
2) use popups
3) annoy me with flash animations that take up 80% of the webpage I'm trying to read
4) have floating flash animations which seek out your mouse pointer
5) etc..

Yuioup

Spammer: "Consequential and more severe actions.."

[camusflage]

Declan McCullagh's Politech has a post with a reply from the spammer. In it, he says "Therefore,
consequential and more severe actions will now be initiated and followed through to conclusion. An acceptable conclusion is no longer a removal of the Web page."

Want some cheese with that whine?

terms of service and email harvesting

[Multics]

I have on my website two mailto: addresses that are in html comments. Sitting next to both are comments that these shall not be used for SPAM. They are do_not_spam1@ and do_not_spam2@. According to my terms of use, anyone who uses them is up for (us)$10,000 per use + cost of collection.

An email address harvester apparently from:
bidmain.com
came through took them then used them.

I sent them a bill with a 30-day deadline to pay. Bidmain's information, BTW is:
iBIZCAST (BIDMAIN-DOM)
302, 1008-2, Daechi-dong,
Kangnam-gu, Seoul 135-280
KR

But more interestingly, their phone numbers are:
822-564-3404 fax: 822-539-0925

So far, for my complaint, my spam per day has trippled. They don't use the above addresses, but they sure do use the address I used to send them the bill. The 30 days is up in about a week.

My take on all of this is SPAMMERs are criminals. They are taking huge amounts of money from us (us == owners of systems).

If anyone wants to join in class action against the criminal above, I'd like to hear from you. Reply below.

Thanks!

-- Multics

actually, he won

[jonbrewer]

The guy who called likely cost your company a dollar. Unless you were very poorly paid, in a conversation lasting long enough for you to "lay down the law" he actually achieved his objective.

I personally value my time too much to fuck around with spammers or telemarketers (aside from adding myself to DMA do not mail and do not call lists).

Spammers lie to net retailers

[Snowfox]

I buy a few things online each week, and I create a different mail alias at my domain for each online retailer, and tack a random 'apartment' on as well, for example, if Slashdot had a store, I'd be "slash@mydomain", and I'd add "Apartment sdt" to my mailing address.

I always make it abundantly clear that I don't want my contact information shared. If there isn't policy on the site explicitly promising not to share my information if that's what I choose, I don't buy there.

More than a dozen times, I've gotten mail advertising the original store, followed by a flood of random spam to the same address. When I contact the store owner, they insist that they had an agreement with the 3rd party that they wouldn't use the list of addresses for anything else. "Then why am I getting mail to UglyShoes@mydomain when you're the only one who ever got that address?" They lose a customer, and I cancel a mail alias.

Then again, not all retailers are honest either.... God forbid you share your name with Radio Shack.

Three years ago I bought a soldering iron at Radio Shack, the address including an "Apartment RSHK", again requesting no mailings or address sharing. Now, if I had a dollar for every shit mailing and magazine I'd been automatically subscribed to at "Apartment RSHK", I'd be a rich man by now.

Again, it doesn't seem to stop with Radio Shack sharing. I think many of the companies Radio Shack shared with turned around and sold my address as well, because it went from Radio Shack mailings to Columbia House to Playboy to Victoria's Secret to Lillian Vernon to Fingerhut to god knows what. Half my specifically targeted junk mail comes to "Apartment RSHK", and about half comes to "Apartment SN", from my long-ago subscription to Science News.

Re:Spammers lie to net retailers

[camusflage]

God forbid you share your name with Radio Shack.

At least Rat Shack will let you not give your info, when you say you'd rather not. When pressed, I usually start "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue". Most of the time, they take a clue and stop asking. One guy at an appliance store once, however, just didn't get it. "Washington DC, huh? You just visiting here?" It somewhat pained me when I told him that he had the choice of bothering the president, not bothering me, or not making a comission. Needless to say, he took option B.

A more reasoned response would be to do the homework ahead of time. Find out what their corporate headquarters address is, and what the CEO's name is, and use that.

Re:Spammers lie to net retailers

[Dimensio]

Hrmm, it might have something to do with the mail class as well -- an individual First Class stamped letter may be returned with different rules than bulk mail.

I recall a story about a church that mailed out religious-themed videotapes to every address that they could snatch up within their city -- and then they had to pay return postage when a number of recipients returned the video (often with bricks attached to increase the postage). I'll have to investigate the law further.

Re:Spammers lie to net retailers

[Weaselmancer]

Couldn't agree more. My method was to use a different middle initial for snailmail, and disposable email addresses from flashmail or hotmail or whatever.

But you have to do it each and every time! Never let up. I'll share my best spam story to illustrate.

It had been a while since I'd seen a concert. I live in Ohio, and decided to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers at a local venue. I won't mention its name, but they're local to Akron and a good place for a new band to Blossom. [wink, wink]

Said venue is an outdoor amphitheater. I always loved going there as a teenager. Bands, stars and a blanket. Nothing better.

And I come back years later and it's Corporate. Six dollar beers, and you're not even allowed to bring a blanket in to sit on - put your ass on the grass and deal with it. For free, you also get a half-hour walk back to your car to stash your blanket.

So I get home, and I'm furious. I go to their webpage and type up a well-written but angry letter and send it to The Powers That Be. The gist of the letter is that I will NEVER attend another concert there, even with a personal invitation from Jesus Christ. And what do you suppose happens?

....wait for it....

They put me on a mailing list informing me of exciting new shows coming up and ticket deals!

So everyone, by all means - hinder these marketing morons. Call their 800 numbers, tie up their salespeople...make it expensive and annoying because they're likely to not understand anything else.

Billing for time and services

[CaseStudy]

If one of these bills were disputed in court, the guy would lose. You can't charge people for sending you e-mail without some sort of prior contract.

Re:Billing for time and services

[Lion-O]

This would heavily depend on the country. For example; in Europe it usually costs money (phonecosts) to get the email. So these spammers are forcing you to make costs you don't want to make. Therefor I think this trial would work in most countries.

Re:Billing for time and services

[CaseStudy]

Obviously you can do it if you're in a jurisdiction that has a statute specifically for that situation. But contract law won't cut it.

spam hunter

[Alien54]

The real problem is that spammers actually make money off of spamming us.

Actually we need a way to make money of the spammers. If there is a legal system to make money off spammmers, they will go away.

Solutions I've advocated in the past included spamm licenses, complete with cute orange ear tags for the spammer, and a culling program. This may even make a good kids games; "Spam Hunter! Can YOU catch the spammer?"

if you wanna do something make them pay with $$$$$

[4444444]

Got http://www.goto.com do a search for bulk email click on each link because spammers pay several dollars for each click slashdoting thier links can cost them a fortune!!!

re:Spammerz

[sg3000]

> He started swearing at me and telling me he was
> going to come and kill me and my family and all
> this other stuff and hung up on me :)

Uh, be careful, homeboy. I saw a news report where a lot of companies (like airlines) hire prison labor to act as telemarketers.

This REALLY gets the telemarketers . . .

[div_2n]

When they start into their script, yell STOP until they stop. Then say something like this, "This call my be recorded for contractual purposes. I must politely inform you that I perform most of my work on the phone and I charge an hourly rate of US$100 per hour with a 3 hour minimum for any and all non-personal calls. All calls past 6PM (insert your timezone) are considered overtime and will be charged an additional US$50 per hour. To agree to these terms, please do so by saying yes now . . ."

Take that and run with it. Buy a cheap recorder and actually record it. If they have someone stupid enough to say yes, then you just scored 300 maybe 450 dollars!

Anti-Spam Idea

[Xesdeeni]

I can't figure out who to open a discussion with about this, but I have this simple idea that should at least eliminate the anonymous/spoofed spam, which is all I get.

You simply modify the mail servers to query the sending server whether a received mail actually came from that server. The query is a key based on the contents of the message and a key included with the message, which is itself based on the same contents and a private key of the sending server. If the sending server has been upgraded with this feature, it can validate, or not, the message. If it's not validated, the message is bounced. For backwards compatibility, if the sending server hasn't been upgraded, the message always goes through. But as more servers are upgraded, fewer and fewer servers will be able to be used as scapegoats for spoofed spam, and pressure will mount to upgrade these servers as well.

Eventually, the only spam you will get will be from a valid return address, which can be handled more effectively in more conventional ways. In fact, adding manual bouncing at this stage might be helpful as well, since now it really will bounce back to the sender.

I realize I've glossed over some details here, and someone much more experienced in mail servers will have to massage this approach to make it practical, but I think the germ of a very simple but effective idea is here.

Xesdeeni

Re:Private Citizens

[j-beda]

Sure, just send them an invoice from "neksys enterprises" or something similar. Generally there are few if any requirements for small self-employed operators. Your average babysitter, lemonade stand, spam-invoicing-company need not incorporate.

Re:SpamCop, and Nagging Admins with complaint Emai

[Fastolfe]

The single thing that had the most effect on the amount of spam I receive is blocking client connections to my mail server from IP addresses that either do not have, or have broken reverse DNS. Since the bulk of mail servers that are misconfigured with respects to their relay settings are also broken with respects to their DNS, this has very neatly curbed 95% of the spam I receive. The rest of the spam comes from domains with correctly configured DNS, which usually means they have a manned and relatively clueful abuse@ contact that will take care of the rest.

Though in the couple of months I've done this, I occasionally review my mail logs to see what's being rejected, and I've found 2 pieces of legitimate correspondence that were rejected. One of them finally got back to me with a "oops, my bad" message while the other one was a victim of a clueless ISP that I had to allow through by hand. Still, it's worth it.

I used to use MAPS, but now that they've changed their policies, they require me to mail in two original copies of some hefty contracts just for their free personal-use service, so I haven't gotten around to doing that yet. I've done some tests though, and the MAPS RSS would have nuked most (if not all) of the spam that's blocked by my refusal to traffic with hosts that have broken reverse DNS.

root@localhost anti-spam measure

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I'm forced to give an e-mail address over the web I always type in root@localhost

Even if only one spammer gets there own spam, I think it is worth it.

(Yeah I know, but some sysadmins _are_ that stupid)

Re:root@localhost anti-spam measure

[Maserati]

I've been known to use "abuse@" and cut myself out of the loop completely, while getting the spammer to report him/herself to the bofh dept. of a major ISP.

Re:Stupid Spam Terrorists

[Darth RadaR]

Here in Canada I go to Radio Shack to get some batteries and they want my mailing address to send me their retarded flyers. I'm like, no. (Unless I'm desparate for some fire-starting paper!).

You're missing out. Just give them a fake address. For example...

Gonzo MacGuilicutty
1313 Mockingbird Lane
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

If enough people do this, then Radio Shack (You've got questions? We've got blank stares.) will discover that they're blowing a lot of money on sending out brocures to fake addressen. The people that Radio Shack sells their address lists to will be kinda pissed off when they discover that so many of the addressen are pooched. Eventually a clue might be imparted to them when it hits them harder in the pocket book. So, c'mon everybody, give Radio Shack those fake addressen.

easy to prove.

[www.sorehands.com]

You set up specific email addresses for the spam bots to grab.

If they are not available anywhere else, then their grabbing them is a copyright violation.

Re:easy to prove.

[www.sorehands.com]

I was not clear.

You put the unique email address on a page that the bot is not authorized to grab. The use of the email address is evidence that the page was accessed, as it is the only place that the address is listed.

Re:easy to prove.

[hearingaid]

If they are not available anywhere else, then their grabbing them is a copyright violation.

Unwittingly, you've put your finger on the nub of the problem.

You have to prove a negative. This is difficult; it can be done, at least to the level a court of law needs, but it's still not all that easy.

Re:What we're up against...

[j-beda]

We don't care. We make over a billion dollars a year, we can absorb the fines as the cost of doing business.

Fill out Form 475 at the FCC, and eventaully they will hit them with a large enough fine to make them think twice. I think that willfully breaking federal laws can get you in bigger troubles than just the $500 fine.

Re:strange

[j-beda]

This is the "bcc:" or "blind carbon copy" field. Recipients listed in the bcc field are not listed in any of the headers that anyone else (to and cc reciepients) get sent. It is pretty useful if you are sending to a large list of people and do not want everyone to be forced to page through screens of recipients. It also provides some privacy features in that all of your recipients do not get everyone else's email address - great for things like "STD test results! Very important!" that you might not want everyone to know to whom else you are sending the message.

The bcc field is also often used by spammers who do not go through the trouble of individually addressing each email message. If you combine a filter on your address not being in the "to" or the "cc" fields along with the sender not being someone you know, it probably works pretty well as a spam trap.

Note that many mailing lists might use similar features.

speaking of spam-swap...

[dR.fuZZo]

I've been wondering... wouldn't it be possible to set something up where you accumulate a database of email addresses from spam, and then have a program automatically send email to those addresses that appear to be from someone interested in their service/cash prize/whatever, and have the email forged so that it looks like it's coming from one of the addresses of the other spammers?

So, for example, spammer A gets a message that's appears to be from spammer B's email address. Spammer A now wastes time trying to sell crap to spammer B, while B has his email box filled up with email from spammer A. The end effect would be that both of them waste their time dealing with each other, and since they waste more time, it makes spam less valuable a tool.

And, uhm, if anyone from the federal gov't asks, this was a joke, too.

Step #3 in Jam the Spammers Game

[scoove]

I neglected to mention Step #3 that is particularly helpful inducing noise into the email spam channels:

Step 3. Develop noise email identities, particularly focusing on notably abusive spam domains. My favorite here is someuser@chinanet.cn.net (make up your own value for someuser - common names like admin, hostmaster, root, etc. are good to try) - per my experience with Spamcop assessments, Chinanet is about the most frequent spam abuser (and they almost always lie about their email origin identity). These guys literally provide safe harbor to spam terrorists.

Sure, it's fun to route chinanet IP's to a null interface (and probably wise too - countless rogue script-laden emails that fire up a browser and open you up to numerous issues come from chinanet solicitions).

Obviously, chinanet likes spam - so be sure to put them down to receive some!

*scoove*

You WHAT?!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

So let me get this straight. You want to invite the legislature to bad bots harvesting information off the web, and certainly to ban any web site from copying any information at all from your own (even an e-mail address). Is that about right?

Oh, dear. You just took Google off-line. (Actually, the legality of Google's cache must be slightly questionable anyway, on IP grounds. But do you really want their bots to stop indexing web pages?)

Re:You WHAT?!

[hearingaid]

Google has an implied license claim that's pretty good, IMO.

Search engines have been indexing the web for quite some time, and there's a file called robots.txt that they use. Perhaps you've heard of it. Search engine spiders that read it use it to decide what they're allowed to index.

If I were a Google lawyer (and I'm not :) I'd use the existence of a robots.txt file on a website as proof of an actual license to index. I'd also suggest that given the fact that robots.txt files are common and well-documented, when a person puts up a website and does not include a robots.txt file, that person is giving an implied license to index the web content.

Spambots, however, ignore robots.txt files.

Re:You WHAT?!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Google has an implied license claim that's pretty good, IMO.

For indexing purposes, I hope they do. Most copyright laws seem to allow for "fair use", and I'd hope things like reasonable criticism or citation would constitute fair use.

For caching a whole web site, though, they're taking the content and essentially presenting it as part of their own system. I suspect they're on much less solid territory there; I have content on the web, and haven't given my permission for them to copy it en masse. In fact, my web pages all state explicitly that the material may not be copied without my prior permission. Personally, at this moment, I don't object if they want to cache it. But if I took the site down, in order to publish the articles for profit, for example, then I might have a different opinion at that time.

If I were a Google lawyer (and I'm not :) I'd use the existence of a robots.txt file on a website as proof of an actual license to index. I'd also suggest that given the fact that robots.txt files are common and well-documented, when a person puts up a website and does not include a robots.txt file, that person is giving an implied license to index the web content.

If I were a lawyer fighting Google in the courts (and I'm not :-)) then I might try to refute that argument on the basis that most of the net-dwelling public is not aware of robots.txt and its uses. In particular, it's possible to create and e-publish a web site via many ISPs without any knowledge of that file being made available to you.

Personally, my feeling is that if you want to use a tool like the Internet, it's your responsibility to at least learn the basics first. I'm a great believer in Netiquette, and it annoys me when newbies come along, don't understand why things have previously been done a certain way, and expect the whole world suddenly to revolve around them because they haven't done their homework. But I can see a reasonable argument the other way, too, in the indexing case. (I don't think any argument about robots.txt can possibly justify copying my work wholesale without my permission, when my site explicitly forbids this.)

Re:You WHAT?!

[hearingaid]

For caching a whole web site, though, they're taking the content and essentially presenting it as part of their own system. I suspect they're on much less solid territory there; I have content on the web, and haven't given my permission for them to copy it en masse. In fact, my web pages all state explicitly that the material may not be copied without my prior permission. Personally, at this moment, I don't object if they want to cache it. But if I took the site down, in order to publish the articles for profit, for example, then I might have a different opinion at that time.

Googlebot supports metatags that allow you to prevent caching. For more information, read this.

Also, they don't cache pages that have gone down since the last crawl. This isn't like the Usenet archive.

You're right, though, in that they'd have a fight on their hands in court. They've got a much stronger position legally though than the spam harvester bots, because they've made a good-faith effort. I can't see them getting hit with much of anything but an injunction, and maybe not even that; whereas if I was a prosecuting attorney, I'd want to go after the people behind eBay harvester bots with criminal remedies.

Publishing a Cell Phone Number

[hillct]

Theoretically, of you publish your cell phone number and a telemarketer calls it (since it costs you money to recieve calls) you can invoice them $500 - $1500 per call under the Telecommunications Act of 1991

--CTH

Top 49 Ways To Have Fun With Telemarketers

[hillct]

Why bother telling them off when you could do any one of the following:

Top 49 Ways To Have Fun With Telemarketers

--CTH

PS: this link to a site that I run (although completely topical) is offered in the spirit of shameless self promotion :-)

And killing open source while you're at it?

[devphil]

If you ... don't publish your e-mail address,

then I can't collaborate, contribute, or even ask a freaking question in public.

I will not be chased off of developer email lists just because some poodlefucker harvests the addresses of the list traffic.

(And yes, I do support the death penalty for spammers. They cause far more loss in time and revenue than their lives could possible be worth. Yes, I really am that cold. *grin*)

Re:And killing open source while you're at it?

[Tom7]

Oh, gimme a break...
Are we not communicating in public now?

Spam is NOT killing open source. If you like, develop a spam-proof email system (digital signatures). That will be much less dangerous to open source than government regulation of the internet.

It's all well and good to make fun, but this kind of attitude is really dangerous! I am very wary of any sentiment like "We should make laws against X kinds of people..."
(X = KKK members? Communists? Muslims?)

Re:And killing open source while you're at it?

[dvdeug]

It's all well and good to make fun, but this kind of attitude is really dangerous! I am very wary of any sentiment like "We should make laws against X kinds of people..."
(X = KKK members? Communists? Muslims?)

Oh, come on! Do you really object to us making laws against X kinds of people (X = Rapists? Murders? Thieves?)? No one has even mentioned suing spammers for what they believe, only for their actions. It's akin to littering - no one wants to see, and when there's dozens of idiots who do it, it gets to be a real problem.

Re:And killing open source while you're at it?

[devphil]

Spam is NOT killing open source.

That wasn't my point. Let me try again.

This idea of "simply don't reveal your address" would kill the spirit of open collaboration. A user goes to report a bug or ask a question, and then changes his mind because "then the spammers would get me... maybe I can just live with the bug instead." The cure would be worse than the disease.

Some OSS lists have already gone down that route. The KDE lists are blocked from open posting, and subscribing takes way too many hoops to jump through. It's a shame.

My aplogies for not making my position clearer in my previous posting.

(As for the laws-against-certain-people... that only holds as long as they meant the definitions of "people." I have nothing against Communists, and some of my best friends are Muslims, and unfortunately we have to allow the KKK freakos their opinions, but spammers add nothing to the quality of life anywhere on the planet, and do a lot to detract from it. They are nothing but a plague.)

Re:And killing open source while you're at it?

[devphil]

My aplogies for not making my position clearer in my previous posting.

My apologies for not doing a cursory spell check in my previous posting. (Those responsible for the previous apology have been sacked.)

Re:Procmail is your friend

[cloudmaster]

I do something simlar on my employer's system. Employees forward me spam, and I put the from address into the mailserver's access file. It's nice, because I've got postfix configured to use a mysql database type, so not only do all the mail servers share an aliases file, but they also share the access database (and my home mail server gets to use it too). It's also nice to put in specific reject messages for annoying quasi-spam things, like YDI's "550 your wireless products are the worst I have ever used" response. :) I suppose that I could just set up bind to run my own RBL and have the same distributable effect, but the database makes the possiblity of publishing the smammer list to the web (or whatever) more feasible, and makes automating the list updating more easy as well... :)

Terrorist act? Sure, why not?

[dschuetz]

If you could fool the goverment into thinking that spam is terrorism, I bet they would definitly do something about it;)

[Disclaimer, don't even try to take that seriously]

Why not?

According to the latest anti-terrorism acts, if I recall correctly, any "attack" on one or more computer systems resulting in an aggregate cost of more than $5000 qualifies as a Terrorist Attack on the computer systems in question.

So, if a SPAM sent to your ISP clogs up the mail server, and it takes more than $X to clean it up (in admin costs and, possibly, refunds to annoyed customers), or if this happens to your company's main email gateway, or if everyone in your organization gets it and it has a virus in it, or each email includes remotely-hosted HTTP images that pushes your burstable line into a higher bracket, then, well:

* Record everything you can about the email, who sent it, when, contents, how it got there, what it did, and most importantly, what it cost to clean up
* Publish this on some central spam-cop site
* when enough other victims have come together with similar experiences, that the total cost exceeds $5000, then get a good lawyer, demand a grand jury be empaneled to consider indictment of the perpetrator on terrorist computer attack charges, and see what happens next

Repeat as necessary.

Hey, worst case the act is thrown out as unconstitutional. Best case, you put a bunch of SPAMers in jail for life (for which you could argue, as the plaintiffs, for a reduced sentence and large fine).

But I'd argue that this is exactly what the act was supposed to do -- prevent against any computer-borne attack that causes $5000 or more in actual damage to one or more corporations. Right? Just because the DDOS came in the form of Email doesn't make the law less applicable than if it were an email virus, or a script-kiddie DDOS, right?

Re:Terrorist act? Sure, why not?

[forgoil]

Why not?

Because I think terrorism should be reserved for what it is. I rather get spam than anthrax. I rather have it that the us goverment battle real terrorist and battle the narcoticts distributers with the same means. The US biggest problem is not really terrorists, as they haven't been able to do even close to the same damage as the gangs and the narcotics.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for getting rid of spam, heck, I am sick and tired of all the commercials in society, since 99% of them have products and don't give a damn about.