Slashdot Mirror
Beating the Spam Merchants
Crowbraid writes: "Well-written column by Margie Boule from the Portland Oregonian about an individual who got tired of getting spam,
sued the company for $25 an email, and won." See also Bennett Haselton's anti-spam page, where he has details on "pursuing the anti-spam lawsuits on four separate fronts." (Those lawsuits were mentioned a few months back.)
Or is it just a "boring news day"?
Spam sucks, we all know. All this spam news is making me sleepy.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Can I sue all the companies whose routers spam goes through that comes to me?
Thanks,
Travis
forkspoon@hotmail.com
Oh my god, I'd better call my lawyer... I may already be a millionaire!
The speed of time is one second per second.
There have been a large number of Spam stories in the media this week. What's the deal? Mayby the politicians will start to see that this is something that matters to John Q. Public.
Of course, mayby pigs will fly someday.
SM MBL-VIR looking 4 SIG 4 LTR. must be DDF, no 420, SD ok.
Then, he gets into litigation that takes several weeks of his time, demanding nothing for it.
This is a small-town lawyer who wanted to make a name for himself, and the Slashdot crew obliged him.
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
why does spam gt by i mean why is it allowed and why is that senator able to go and say with a striaght face that he thinks it is a good idea and such
Yours Truly, Wes -- Owner
In many cases, spam coming from a Chinese ISP really originates in the US, and is being bounced off of an open email relay.
"I e-mailed back, saying 'Take me off your subscription list. I don't want this.' " And then Harold put a little bite in his request. "I wrote, 'I will charge you $25 per message as a reading fee,' " for every subsequent e-mail.
;-)
:: Worth Every Red Cent!
Harold says the fee was not just a threat; it was a reasonable charge for time and equipment. "I have to download the message, to find out it's junk and delete it. If you're using my download time, you are in effect using my services. During that time I can't use my computer, which is essential in my business."
OK, so apparently this dude thinks he's worth:
($25.00 / 2 seconds to download and identify a message) * (60 seconds / 1 minute) * (60 minutes / 1 hour) = $45,000.00 / hour.
Hell, I'll even subtract $1.00 (I'm rounding up mind you) for bandwidth and computing costs to handle the huge 2KB spams.
So, he thinks he's valued at $44,999.00 / hour. Much better.
Must be a really smart guy
m o n o l i n u x
On a few occasions, they say they've even managed to successfully claim their fee.
That one is already in your mailbox, with Ed MacMahon's picture on it.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It is the small persons equalizer for corprate greed. Basically you can force a large company to show up and spend money on their lawyers, while you just show up and tell the judge what happened.
Used it twice, one time my bank was cashing my car payment checks, but not crediting my loan... Needless to say when they threatened to take my car away, I filled suit. Long story short, they paid up rather than spend the money on lawyers (which they would have lost anyway)
The other time it was my wifes employer not doing the right things with her termination... Got the district manager and ourselves infront of a mediator and a deal was struck...
You won't get rich with small claims court (I think it only covers up to 1,500 maybe 2,500) but it is very simple to file and win a reasonable case
Well, *yeah*, but the thing is that it's the chinese ISPs that are vectoring it because the US ISPs know better than to get caught vectoring spam themselves...
/Brian
I dont liked to be mailed, but since i get pretty important mail when i get it it has to be read instant, i tell everyone not to send me jokes, pictures etc.. I am very bad at concetrating, i lose it very fast, but its very important when doing certain work, so when i get mail i read it when its spam it gets me not very relaxed cause i dislike spam then i try to think of a way to not get it again from the same person/company then i am not concentrated anymore, getting the concentration back can take a while. That time costs money.
And i say 25$ isnt that much.
But yes i could get a seperate mailbox for this stuff, but then why should i ? why do people send me spam, why cant i just use one mailbox for all my stuff, why o why. damn it =D
Quazion.
I consider bullshit mail spam also =P
/me goes to hotmail to open 100 accounts.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
I would sue all the people that send me spam, but you know what. I don't get any. I've had the same e-mail address for almost 2 years, it has an alias or two also, and not one spammer has gotten ahold of it yet. Why is this? I'm not an idiot. I don't use the address book. I do use PGP. I remove myself from any and all non-spam newletters and announcements I don't want. And I don't put my e-mail in public places where spammers would look to pick it up. As far as I'm concerned if you get spammed, it's your fault.
However, we should still punish those who surf the net collecting e-mail addresses and spamming away. But while spamming is still a problem, deal with it and don't be an idiot.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
The fundamental change that the Internet introduced was the economic fact that sending n pieces of email took the same effort as sending 1. The fact that this essentially puts the cost (storage, bandwidth, attention, etc) onto the recipient distorts the incentive for posting which consequently leads to spam. This is the old story of privatise the benefits and socialise the losses.
... if the email wasn't worth their time, then they would "charge" the sender a small amount. If the free market worked, then advertisers would figure out the cost of your attention (especially if they lumped their mistakes) and be more selective in their branding activities (as well as reduce visual pollution). However, because the consumer doesn't have any expectation of privacy, much less opinion as to their preferences, B2C cheerfully ignore these minor details in their belief that buying xxx will solve your worries.
The book EarthWeb (see http://www.baen.com/blurbs/067157809X.htm, http://www.the-earthweb.com/) had a good idea in that people could set a threshold
Marketing is a necessary evil but the economic costs should be bourne by the originators (whoch have control over quantity) rather than the public at large. How much do you value your attention (and thus time)?
LL
There should be ways of pointing .mp3 links on the comment section so that when the page loads, out pops the sound from the skit...
:(
Oh well. I used to have a series of spam rules that would file it away, and play the audio from the skit... but then when the skit was ALWAYS playing in my headphones
Almost as much fun as attaching sounds to debugger events in windows. Attached the hindenburg catching fire to one in a debug lab. It was sooooooo much fun listening to the sound of the hindenburg crashing on a minute by minute basis (what a bad first day on the job for that announcer)
I think the hardest part to catching spammers is finding out and proving who they are. They do damn near every trick in the book to hide thier identity.
What might be more effective is to go after the people hiring them. Spam usually gives you a phone number (that's the only piece of reliable information) to call so you can get scammed. Don't buy anything from someone who won't tell you who they are. Call them up, find out as much information as possible, then rip them a new hole. Post the information on the internet, let the trolls troll the spammers.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Better yet, send out an e-mail to everyone telling them about this great money-making opportunity!
Beating the Spam Merchants
Good, you find the Spam Merchants and I'll find my bat!!
I stole this Sig
Mr. Bun: Morning.
Waitress: Morning.
Mr. Bun: Well, what you got?
Waitress: Well, there's katz and CowboyNeal; katz, slashdot and CowboyNeal; katz and spam; katz, CowboyNeal and spam; katz, CowboyNeal, slashdot and spam; spam, CowboyNeal, slashdot and spam; spam, katz, spam, spam, CowboyNeal and spam; spam, slashdot, spam, spam, spam, CowboyNeal, spam, tomato and spam; spam, spam, spam, katz and spam; (Vikings start singing in background) spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, Cmdr Tacos, spam, spam, spam and spam.
Vikings: Spam, spam, spam, spam, lovely spam, lovely spam.
Waitress: (cont) or lobster thermador ecrovets with a bournaise sause, served in the purple salm Mr. Bunor with chalots and overshies, garnished with truffle pate, brandy, a fried katz on top and spam.
Mrs. Bun: Have you got anything without spam?
Waitress: Well, there's spam, katz, slashdot and spam. That's not got much spam in it.
Mrs. Bun: I don't want any spam!
Mr. Bun: Why can't she have katz, CowboyNeal, spam and slashdot?
Mrs. Bun: That's got spam in it.
Mr. Bun: It hasn't got as much spam in it as spam, katz, slashdot and spam has it?
Mrs. Bun: (over Vikings starting again) Could you do me katz, CowboyNeal, spam and slashdot without the spam then?
Waitress: Ech!
Mrs. Bun: What do you mean ech! I don't like spam!
Vikings: Lovely spam, wonderful spam....etc
Waitress: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Bloody vikings. You can't have katz, CowboyNeal, spam and slashdot without the spam.
Mrs. Bun: I don't like spam!
Mr. Bun: Shh dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, Cmdr Tacos, spam, spam, spam and spam. (starts Vikings off again)
Vikings: Lovely spam, wonderful spam...etc
Waitress: Shut up! Cmdr Tacos are off.
Mr. Bun: Well, can I have her spam instead of the Cmdr Tacos?
Waitress: You mean spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, and spam?
Vikings: Lovely spam, wonderful spam...etc...spam, spam, spam! (in harmony)
but all this Spam news is making me hungry.
Spam Nachos anyone??
I did a little bit of research last week on Spam laws in my home state (Tennessee) According to Tennessee Spam laws, if a company based in Tennessee spams you after you have requested they remove your name, you can sue them for up to $5000 per day they continue to spam them. I found out about this law at SueSpammers.org.
Incidentally, I have a spamcop IMAP e-mail account that filters out potential spam. There was one guy from Canada that kept spamming me over and over. I noticed that the unsubscribe link (which I had tried twice) pointed to a top level domain. Using Internic's WHOIS, I got the jerk's home address, phone number, and e-mail address. Luckily in this case it wasn't forged. After personally contacting him (and threatening legal action), I have gotten no spam from his "company" in 1 week. (Funny thing is, Canada has no anti-spam laws... it was all BSing)
I don't care about the money, I just want naturally bigger breasts.
monolinux
Imagine a Beowuld Cluster of these!!!!
Go to JunkBusters website for lots of information on how to beat the spam mailers, as well as other info on telemarketers, junk snail mail, and lots more. Fairly decent site...(no it's not my site)
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Jerk. You made me spit cola out my nose!
I love stories like this where the individual triumphs over evil.
;-)
In the State of Washington you can sue for up to $250.00 per spam. Spam is defined as unrequested commercial bulk email that has either a misleading subject line and/or invalid return address.
The real problem with trying to collect is that most spammers make it VERY difficult to trace the email back. They may bounce it off of an open relay or use stolen accounts and they almost always use a false return address.
You can usually find the domain that the email came from by looking at the header information but if they bounced it off of an open relay in China it may not do you any good.
Really, the only ones that you should try to go after should be the ones that are stupid enough to provide you with real information in the body of the letter that will allow you to track them down.
Most of the time the spammer wants one thing: Your money. So he may give an 800 number or a web page URL. If you can convince him that you need his real address to send him money the may provided it and you can send him a subpoena instead.
Some spammers will try to get your credit card number. Once they have it you may find yourself the unwilling donator of a brand new laptop or some other piece of property that the spammer can sell on the black market.
Never, never, never, give a spammer your credit card number.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Shouldn't take long.
-------------------------------------------------
(I've gotten into a few good e-mail discussions via the address I post here. I also get about 20 spam messages a day, between having my address having been here and briefly on one of the Linux mailing lists. Is it worth it? The jury's still out.)
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
I am attempting to do the same. I recieved a spam a couple days ago that caought my attention. They had copied an image from my homepage and used that in the spam they emailed me.
I sent them back a letter demanding $110 for my time wasted. $100 for 'legal fees' and $10 under colorado law for each unsolicited commercial email.
Hopefully if enough people do this, spammers will be more careful to who they send emails. Either that or spammers might start something like the RBL except it would be a list of spam-unfriendly recipients. That'll be the day...
I understand your points about taking precautions, but should we be faced with the prospects of either getting assloads of spam, or cowering in fear of even the companies we pay to protect our information? I guess I could get an email address and make is super secret and never give it out, but then what's the point?
You know what?
You too can make easy money with just hours a day.
First, this offer is only available to citizens of forward-thinking states like Washington, Oregon, and California that permit you to sue spammers an amount per email in small claims court.
In Washington, it's $250 per spam. In Oregon, it's $25 per spam. I'm not sure of the amount in California.
Now, set up a whole bunch of email accounts on some service - yahoo.com or some other free service. Make sure you enter your address and state in the registration - and for good luck, put it in the email address (e.g. WeLiveInOregon@yahoo.com would be an excellent email address).
Now go and surf the net and post as you will. Make sure you let them read the email address you've created.
Soon you'll be getting tons and tons of checks as the spams roll in!
[patent pending]
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Sadly, this does nothing about all the lame pyramid-scheme and enlarge-your-body-parts spam we all get. This originates from rather stupid individuals who've ben conned into joining high-tech versions of the old stuff-envelopes scam, and thus pop up faster than you can smack them down.
will they sue you for spamming?
easy come - easy go!
I'm not trying to troll here, but this whole discussion got me thinking, how effective are the current means of blocking spam, such as RBL, blocking out certain countries, etc., if so much spam is getting to people's inboxes? Whenever I read the mail-abuse.org website, they talk about how effective they are, but if so many people are using their product and other products like theirs, why is spam still a problem? Or is this just a case of the people who are not using these products complaining about the spam?
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
This man doesn't qualify for hero status. He basically threatened the company with a lawsuit and accepted a little money to go away and not tell anyone about the company's practices (or at least without the company's name).
When people settle cases, they may get some money and self-satisfaction, but it does very little good for anyone else. When a case is tried in court and a verdict is rendered, a legal precedent is set by which future actions are governed. This is the only truly effective way of fighting the onslaught of spam email in the long run.
Even if you manage to get a huge settlement and put a company out of business, the way is still paved for 5 more companies to pop up and take its place. And in this case, it sounds like the company is absolutely free to continue its practices as it has in the past. Where's the good angle to this story?
Such as web archives of mailing lists for opensource projects? It must be nice to sit there handing out advice and calling people idiots when you never contribute to the community.
Most of the spam I get is at an address harvested from mailing list archives for GCC, Doxygen, and few other much smaller projects. Does that mean I'm an idiot? If you think so, perhaps you shouldn't be using these programs (after all, an idiot has contributed to them).
Does that mean I'm going to stop sending mail to a public mailing list? No, because as much as I'd like to reduce the amount of spam I get, I'd much rather see improved software.
Suing spammers is being an idiot? Huh?
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I do know this is a standard clause in boilerplate agreements lawyers typically put together. But these things can be changed, and often do get changed during the course of negotiations. What is the dollar amount you would put on agreeing to hide the identity of someone who wronged you and is now finally agreeing to pay up for it, but won't pay as much (if any at all) if you don't agree to include that clause? And likewise, what is the dollar amount for agreeing not to submit it to slashdot/kuro5hin/etc?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Too bad it prevented the naming of the company that did the spamming. I understood the point of going to small claims court was to hurt the spammer. Wouldn't naming them hurt them the most?
... and still make a living?
Potential clients need to be able to contact me by clicking on a mailto link without any faffing about. If I make it harder than that they'll just go elsewhere.
must be a few takers
Everyone trying to track down a spam-source probably allready had the same problem:
How to tell the complaining enduser to forward you the spam-email with all email headers intact? "What are email-headers?" is the number one question you hear. After two minutes explanation the next question will probably be "Where do I have to click to do that?". And another five minutes explanation later you know that you will never get that spam-email intact because you hear a phone ringing or the boss asking "Is that report ready?" in the background.
Why not adding one button to each mail-client labelled "This is SPAM"? So the user simply has to click this button, is asked a confirmation question like "Do you really want to send the messaged titled blah..blah to your anti-spam department and erase it?" and then whoosh the mail is send with all headers (as an attachment) and with the propper legal text in in "user thisandthat declared the attached email a being UCE blah..blah". And the configurable antispam-address defaults to - say - spam@users_main_email_domain where you or your script is ready to handle it.
Then depending on your policy you can check it and report it to the spammers ISP, or have an automatic script behind it, which updates your block-lists (e.g. after a number of complaints about the same sender or depending on the trustworthyness of the enduser). You could even implement scripts, which automatically delete this email (or all emails from the same source) from the POP accounts of your server and send them back to where they came from - with the propper RFC-compliant messages. Or send them to spamcop or whatever your agreed-on anti-spam policy says.
Perhaps you know a friend who is writing Email-Clients or Plugins for these beasts (or you yourself can you that).
If it's time to fight back, let's use automatic weapons!
Especially if it causes them to lose advertisers who want a cheeper way to reach people.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
If nobody gets a "joke", isn't the joker the real joke?
Dealing with SPAM through the legal system is never going to work very well; it's too easy play jurisdiction games, and the punishments are too light. So:
Step 1: track back SPAM to the person sending
Step 2: Visit that person
Step 3: Torture them to death, disembowel them, crucify them, leave their body parts all over the PC they use for spamming. Carve "SPAMMER" into their dead body. Be creative with Hormel products.
Step 4: take pictures and give them wide distribution on the 'net.
Risk = (probability) x (consequences). Let the spammers know that while the probability of something bad happening to them as a result of spamming is low, the consequences are very high indeed.
(I do not advocate the above actions, they would be wrong. But it's about what it would take to stop SPAM...now if someone with Photoshop and a sick imagination wants to start an urban legend, please be my guest).
faster than cpu speed, and hard drive storage, doesn't it seem that spam will get worse as the technology provides more and more bandwidth at ever lower prices? It doesn't seem that the extreamly rare individual costing the spammers some pocket change is a significant pressure against the behavior. And since the bandwidth is going to probably be less and less of an issue, doesn't it seem likely that spam will just be something we'll have to just accept? At least until law makers provide some real teeth for little guy to rend soft pink spammer flesh. Unless ISP decide to throw their weight around for their customers, with the problem getting easier for them to ignore, it's just going to end up an accepted, and shitty part of life.
It'd be interesting to see what spam cost the world in lost time, and lost network resources.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
I, too, am careful about my email address, and use a variety of them to be able to sort out the real mail from the spam.
But I also give out my email address to my friends, many of whom are not geeks. Some of them aren't even all that close friends, but I have a responsibility for one reason or another for them to contact me. Such people have a way of "sending this news article to a friend!" or sending me birthday cards or other such spam-friendly activities.
They say that the only secure computer is the one turned off, encased in concrete, and dropped into the ocean. The only spam-free email address is the one that you never use.
My response is to use various email addresses, any of which can be turned off. Some people will lose contact with me through no fault of their own, because somebody in their circle decided that I needed to be on some mailing list. That's one cost of spam to me.
Repost of my message from previous spam story, sorry for repetition, but I think it might help people to see it: (no karma whoring, I'm already at max :)
It's easy to stop spammers, but you need to have the ability to create an arbitrary number of email addresses. If you manage your own domain, or at least have the ability to create and destroy email addresses in your domain, you can virtually eliminate spam.
Here's my recipe. I have no worries explaining this in public, because there's nothing the spammers can do to get around it. For every Internet service you use, every mailing list you subscribe to, every online retailer you buy from, you create a unique email address (for example, my PayPal email address is "paypal@mydomain.com"). In essence, you have a different "email channel" for every source which might potentially be used to send you email. As soon as you receive a single spam on any email address, you delete it. You'll never get spam for that address again, and if you really want you can create a new one for whatever site it was used for (e.g. if you get spammed on "paypal@mydomain.com" you can create a "paypal2@mydomain.com" and change your email address with PayPal; or you can just stop using PayPal). Simple so far.
Where it gets trickier is your more "permanent" email addresses, but the problem is solvable. I have a main email address I've used for 10 years, and of course spammers have gotten a hold of that address many times over. I don't want to destroy that address, since all my friends and colleagues know it and expect it to exist. Notifying them all each time I cancelled it would become quite burdensome for all of us. To deal with this, I have created a tool which is executed by procmail that checks each incoming message to my permanent address to ensure that the sender is valid. I have a fairly small list of known valid senders which are allowed to send me email, and those go right through to my mailbox. Not only does the tool check the sender, but it optionally checks the "Received" header in the mail to ensure it's coming from the expected mail server (in case a spammer tries to pose as someone on my OK list - paranoid, true, but I like paranoia).
This solves all problems except one - how do people I don't expect to send mail to me actually reach me? My tool also has a "disallow" list of mail servers, and any mail originating from one of those servers will be tossed in the trash. Mail from an unexpected sender whose server is not in the disallow list will get a response from my procmail tool with a special subject line in it. They are instructed to reply, and my mail tool will then accept their message on a one-time basis after scanning the subject line for the secret magic key. If I like the person, I'll add them to my "allowed" list so they never have to go through the two-step process again.
What if a spammer figures out my scheme and makes a spam tool that auto-replies, you ask? For that to work, he would have had to use a real return address, which they never do. But if he did, I would then know who he was and be able to block further mail and pursue him, if desired. So far that's never happened. Even if it started to happen frequently, I have plans for an upgrade to my tool which would randomly vary the required method of reply in a way that was impossible to perform programmatically. No need for this so far.
I realize that most of this can be done with procmail alone, but there are some aspects of it that are ugly or impossible to do with just procmail. It's integrated with sendmail to a small extent, as well, which requires a separate tool as well (future extensions for other mailers should be fairly easy).
Maybe when this is all finished I'll make it publically available. Would anyone out there find it useful? (Or has it already been done, and am I wasting my time?)
A reply to one of my comments in the slashdot article about ORBZ Shuts Down has pointed to a new article which reveals the identity of the party who threatened ORBZ operator Ian Gulliver with jail.
In that new article it is mentioned that Ian's lawyer advised him against releasing a copy of the search warrant. Why? Is it copyrighted?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The reason that spam is so prevalent is because it is considerably cheaper than many other forms of mass marketing. I think that the government should impose a tax on spam driving the price up so that it is at least competitive with snail mail mass marketing. This would reduce the amount of spam, and generate a lot of tax dollars that could be used for upgrading the nations technology infrastructure.
I got unsolicited mail (post office mail) addressed to 'NanoGator Animation, Inc.'. I know where they got this info. When I registerred my domain, I sarcastially put that as the billing info. That is the only time I have ever used that name.
I've come up with ideas ad nauseum about how to fight spam, but so far the solutions either require really limiting your capabilities, or threaten to force spam to come through other ways such as Instant Messaging. Maybe we're fighting the wrong battle. What are some other approaches to fighting spam?
One approach to fighting spam would be to devalue it. Anybody know how we could do this? One idea I had was to generate a bunch of fake lists and actually sell those to would be mass-solicitors. Tainted addresses would increase suspicion of whether or not it'd be worth buying a list.
Another one would be to generate so much spam that everybody is forced to take steps against it. I realize this would initially do more harm than good, but if our mailbox did get 1400 mail mesasges a day like mentioned in a previous article, then it would make unsolicited mail far less interesting. I'm willing to switch to IM (or a private email network) for a month or two to blow it out heh.
Anybody else have ideas about how to devalue spam? If we brainstormed a few ideas, something really interesting might pop up.
"Derp de derp."
I wonder if some of the services like SpamCop could handle something like this. For each spam that is reported, allow sending the "$25 will be owed for each subsequent spam" along with the spam report. On collecting a sufficient quantity of subsequent spam from the same company, sue on behalf of the many receipients and split the cash to cover their expenses. Even if they could not sue directly on behalf of the inviduals, it would be nice to consolidate the contact information for the companies and individuals that could be sued for the spam received.
Bernard Shit^Hfman!!! :)
--pi
You don't ever let your email address be posted anyplace? Not even like on http://www.cs.rit.edu/usr/local/photo_album/slr277 7.html?
But small claims may not set precedent. So taking their money is the best you can do. If enough people do it, it works.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Lets do the math. Lets say a Spammer sends out 100,000 emails at a cost of $0.50-$20. Lets say their %0.01 hit rate gets them 10 $20 subscriptions for their effort. Thats a nice $180-199.50 profit. Now suppose they hit one Washington resident who charges them $250 in small claims court. Now the numbers are all questionable, but I think the premise that it only takes a few people using the laws to make Spamming unprofitable is valid. Right now sending spam costs next to nothing. Any fines really move the margin.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Are you saying that this is a way to MAKE MONEY FAST?
A great project that is still in it's startup phase to combat spam is the Public Domain Intellectual Property Archive also can get great responses from the spammers themselves.
------Excerpt from pdipa.gnutec.com ---------
The Unsolicited Comercial Bulk Intellectual Property Daemon (UCBIPD), is a deamon that looks for $spambox folders in user mail directories, automatically responds to each SPAM message found, thanking the SPAMer for asigning all intellectual property rights in the SPAMed material to the recipient, archives the SPAMed material in a Public Domain Intellectual Property Archive (PDIPA) and then deletes the SPAMed material from the user's $spambox.
How about a class action suit against a spam company.
Any hungry lawyers out there?
One last thing (posting as AC to avoid what apparently was a string of idiot moderations)... how exactly was the parent of this post offtopic, givent that China is a big part of the spam problem?
/Brian
In one of the cases discussed here, the spammer got really upset about being dragged into discovery about his spamming. But many ISPs keep SMTP forwarding logs. Can you use discovery subpoenas to get *them* to produce their log files for a small claims case? That would be an interesting way to go after the spammers who are their customers, if their abuse people aren't helpful enough.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks