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Anti-Spammers Wage E-War

Posted by michael on from the no-quarter-asked-or-given dept.

ncstockguy writes "To its credit the Hartford Courant followed up with a second article this time from the perspective of an anti-spammer." The first story was about the life and times of a spam king.

8 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Never actually noticed.... by theRhinoceros · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From the article:

    "They are every fly-by-night artist that ever wanted to place a tiny little ad in the newspaper and get away with it," Frederick said. "I have yet to see one legitimate product advertised in an e-mail that I didn't ask for."

    Never thought about it before until now, but I don't recall ever having ever seen one either...

    1. Re:Never actually noticed.... by Mwongozi · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Even if I did, I make it a policy never to buy from companies that spam me, using e-mail or snail mail or telemarketeering or whatever.

      If I want their business, I will go to them. Spam me, and you will never, ever, get my money.

    2. Re:Never actually noticed.... by Chilles · · Score: 5, Funny

      Legitimate businesses usually refrain from actual spamming because they are easy to find and easy to get back at.

      A major dutch newspaper (I'm dutch) once sent several tens of thousand e-mails through a known spammer advertising subscriptions. They received more than 10 thousand complaint e-mails, a few people canceled the subscription they already had and all public e-mail adresses they had were subscribed to so much e-mail/spam lists by disgruntled recipients of their spam that their internal e-mail system got overloaded several times during the following month.

    3. Re:Never actually noticed.... by pi+radians · · Score: 5, Informative
      If I click on the unsubscibe link, my email comes back undeliverable 75% of the time, and I seem to get more spam each day!

      Ahhh! That's the worst thing to do. All of the ones that DON'T come back undeliverable now know your email address is being checked and read. Not only are you telling them to send out more stuff to you, but they can sell your address to others for a greater amount of money. Never ever ask to unsubscribe. It's better to just right a filter that deletes it immediately.

      --

      sin(6cos(r)+5A)
    4. Re:Never actually noticed.... by pmz · · Score: 5, Interesting

      One other thing to look our for is HTML email (gack!) with loads an image from the spammer's site. There's usually some id tag sent with the image request so that the spammer gets confirmation on your email address just by reading the email.

      Ugh. This is the absolutely worst aspect of HTML e-mail. Just by sending you an unsolicited HTML e-mail, a company can get your browser model and version, whether JavaScript and Java are enabled, your IP address and hostname, the operating system, and roughly where you are located in the world (sometimes down to the city). First, they know you check your e-mail; second, in one click, you just provided a wealth of marketing information; and, third, they can tailor their future e-mail to your system's security vulnerabilities.

      Does anyone know of cases, where e-mail was used to install spyware on the client?

      Whoever first concieved of HTML-based e-mail should cower in shame for lack of foresight. And all those who chose to implement HTML-based e-mail clients should also cower in shame. HTML-based e-mail is simply irresponsible. I'm simply tired of people who insist in making their e-mail pretty, while unknowingly sacrificing their privacy and security.

      --
      Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
  2. Spam Assassin by totallygeek · · Score: 5, Informative
    Let me say that I have never been happier since installing Spam Assassin. I reset the threshhold to 8, and get maybe five spam messages a week, as opposed to the more than 100 per day!

    --
    Click here or here.
  3. A thought ... by robstercraws · · Score: 5, Funny


    This article made me think of a slightly modified version of the question asked in the article yesterday about The True Story of Website Results: If you could press a button and kill a spammer on the other side of the world, would you do it? And would you even need to be paid the million dollars? ;-)

  4. I just can't do that by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unfortunately I can't afford to be quite so idealistic. I've had people call/mail me that are offering services that I someday want to use. I wouldn't have internet accesses if I went by that motto since the cable company, the phone company and Sprint (they do wirless internet here) have called me to try and sell me stuff. Unlike SPAM, I find that people are actually offering me (or at least are companies that have offerings) something that I want. I don't think I've ever bought from a sales call, but I've bought form companies that make them.

    However I find SPAM very different from telemarketing/bulk mailing for several reasons:

    1) The telemarketers/mailers are 99.9% of the time legit bussinesses offering legit products. When Cox calls to sell my high speed internet access, they aren't playing around, they can and will make good if I want. When I get a book of coupons in the mail, I can really go and use those for the products on them. SPAM is fradulant so often it's not even funny.

    2) Also, with classic methods, the sender pays. The company calling me is paying for the long distance time, the mailer pays postage. It doesn't cost me anything other than wasted time (and there is plenty of stuff that does that). SPAM costs me money, which makes me angry.

    3) However BY FAR the most imporant reason in my mind is that when you ask a telemarketer/bulk mailer to quit, THEY WILL. Since they are real, legit bussinesses and DON'T want to get sued, they'll obey they laws and stop contacting you if you tell them they have to. When a telemarketer calls you, ask to be placed on their do not call list, they have to maintain one and you can sue tehm if tehy call you again (unless you buy something from you, then you have a bussiness relationship so they can contact you if they like). Also a lot of companies get your address from teh credit reporting beuarues. SO call up Equifax and ask them to stop giving it out. They'll tell you what you need to do (submit a request in writing I think) and then they will, and pass it along to the other two.

    It really is the unrelenting, fradulant nature of many spammers that gets me. For the longest time I got a ton of spam from a place that wanted to allow my bussiness to acept credit cards. Well the thing is I don't HAVE a bussiness, and I already have service to accept cerdit cards anyhow. No matter, these assholes spammed me 2-6 times PER DAY. And of course they didn't say who they were or anything, just asked you to e-mail them (to a yahoo address) with a name and phone number to call.

    Stuff like that really pissess me off, I eventually had to resort to a technical solution to make them stop. However when AT&T long distance was pestering me (about 1 call every 2 weeks) I just told them to put me on a DNC list and I've never heard form them since.