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FTC Encourages Consumers to Forward Them Spam

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the solicited-unsolicited-email dept.

Burl Ives writes "See this CNN Article. 'The FTC encourages consumers to forward any spam they receive to the e-mail address uce@ftc.gov'. I'd say if they've posted their e-mail on the web, they are probably getting as much as the rest of us already, which isn't to say I'm not hoping to see some discussion of using the statistical spam sorters to auto forward a lot to them in encouragement..." I've been using SpamAssassin for some time now with excellent results. Perhaps now I need to have my spam folder auto-forward to the FTC as well.

9 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. What will they do? by pgrote · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I like the idea of forwarding the spam, but the question remains what will they do with it?

    For instance, Yahoo Mail has a feature where you can forward Spam to their Yahoo! Customer Care department. Yet, you don't know what happens.

    I don't know if this is a "feel good" attempt at showing that they are handling spam or they actually run some super secret program and change their spam variables.

    I'd like to see what the FTC is doing with the spam sent to them. Are they going to start a black list? Will they take action against the spammers?

    1. Re:What will they do? by Amit+J.+Patel · · Score: 5, Funny

      I used to send them all my spam, but like you, I started wondering what they did with it. I think I'd start sending them spam if they sent me a summary monthly of:

      You sent us 1385 spam messages.
      We had not seen 18 of them before.
      We prosecuted 58 of the spammers:
      13 were shot
      19 were beheaded
      26 were forced to read spam in prison

      They'd probably get a lot better response rate that way.

      - Amit

    2. Re:What will they do? by Coppit · · Score: 5, Informative

      They prosecute when they can. And (blatant self promotion) they use grepmail to help them. I got a bug report from a guy on the project:

      Specifically, grepmail -r reports a grand total of 3,046,173 messages, but MHonArc generated only 2,558,869 HTML files.

      And you thought your mail archive was big. ;)

  2. If... by darkov2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...we find FTC commissioners have suddenly become very thin and rich with enourmous penises, we will know they got the spam.

  3. Sample .procmailrc and .forward file by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    To use with spamassasin username is "cartman"

    bash-2.05$ cat .forward
    "|IFS=' ' && exec /usr/bin/procmail -f- || exit 75 #cartman"

    bash-2.05$ cat .procmailrc
    LOGFILE=/home/cartman/proc.log

    :0fw
    | /home/cartman/SpamAssassin/spamassassin -P -c /home/cartman/SpamAssassin/rules

    :0:
    * ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
    /dev/null

    Yeah and lets stay anonymous not to be a carma whore...

    /cartman

  4. Read about Microsoft's efforts to do this. by fmaxwell · · Score: 5, Funny
    From http://www.bbspot.com/News/2002/03/block.html

    Microsoft Unveils New Spam Blocking Technology
    By Francisco Rangel

    Redmond, WA - Microsoft has taken a new step in the ongoing fight against spam. The software company will offer a new Spam Blocking service named "Block XP". Initially, the service was tested on Hotmail accounts, but now is included as an IIS Service.

    At a press conference, Steve Ballmer explained, "Our new system is guaranteed to only let through the e-mail that you want to see." He then proceeded to dance around singing, "Unspamable! Unspamable! Unspamable! Unspamable!"

    Bill Gates spoke to the audience, explaining how the system works. "We've replaced unreliable computer filtering with specially trained third-world laborers. These workers, or 'Spam Blockers' as we like to call them, will personally check each and every one of the e- mails you are getting. Any suspicious messages will be sent to a Junk Mail folder or deleted right away."

    The initial Hotmail users, were impressed by the new technology. "This system really has cut down on the spam I've been receiving. Come to think of it I haven't gotten any e-mails recently," said Harold Gorman, MSCE.

    Consuela Xiang a 12 year old veteran employee of Microsoft's Block XP project said, "I get mail. I delete mail. I eat today."

    Some users did remark that they were receiving more "special offers" about Windows XP and MSN than they did before the system was put in place.

    George W. Bush chastised Microsoft for exporting e-mail monitoring jobs when the US had a fully staffed FBI already in place.


    Sorry, but it looks like someone beat you to the idea. ;-)
  5. Re:Self-inflicted DDOS by RiotXIX · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and then blames terrorists.

    --
    "You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
  6. Re:Some costs of spam. by realgone · · Score: 5, Informative
    Ah, the "lost time" argument -- rhetoric at its most manipulative and least accurate. (Nothing personal against you, arkham. Your post was actually an entertaining read.)

    The fallacy here is in assuming that every employee exists in a continual "on-and-working" state from the moment she sits down at her desk. Under such an assumption, 10 seconds spent doing something else equals 10 seconds of quantifiable production loss. Problem is, most white-color jobs are task based: I need to get X done today, where X equals a presentation, a subroutine, a sales call to Duluth -- whatever. Ten seconds spent doing something else don't result in 10 seconds less of X.

    The only place where these efficiencies would truly come into play is repetitive (and, might I add, borderline inhumane) assembly line work like meatpacking. And I'm assuming most meatpackers are less concerned about getting spam than making it.

    Heck, given the original argument, we could calculate astronomical amounts of monetary loss for just about everything. Employee time spent blinking could bankrupt a third world country. The time spent typing smiley faces? There goes Luxemburg. =)

  7. SpamAssassin by ceswiedler · · Score: 5, Informative

    For me, the killer app for using Linux at home was fetchmail / IMAP / procmail / SpamAssassin. I was using POP3 to download email from several accounts, into mail clients at home and at work. I was tired of re-downloading the same messages, and of sorting the messages into folders in one place and having those changes not reflected other places.

    So I set up my Linux server, which up to that point didn't do much except NAT, to fetchmail my messages from various accounts, run them through procmail and Spamassassin, and then publish the messages via IMAP. Now my email is accessible from anywhere, through an IMAP client or over the web (running IMP) or through ssh/pine. It's filtered for spam and sorted into folders, and I can back it up easily.

    I wish Mozilla mail supported addressbooks stored in IMAP folders, but instead I have to run an LDAP server (way overkill) to manage contacts. IMP's address book component, Turba, is just about the only LDAP client which acts like a sensible contact manager and allows adding / editing entries.

    I'm serious when I say this is a killer app for me. Before, I could have replaced my Linux server with a NAT router and not really missed it. Now it's essential to the way I work and communicate.