Slashdot Mirror
HOWTO: Annoy a Spammer
Bob writes "I think everyone by now has heard of the millionaire spammer Alan Ralsky. Here's a follow-up to the previous story. It seems that since the story was posted, people have signed him up for every advertising campaign and mailing list out there. And he doesn't like it." They're talking about this Slashdot story.
The point is they want to demonstrate their complaint to this person. Reasonable explanations haven't worked. So they are giving a more practical demonstration.
Their snail mail spam of a few hundred pieces isn't that much different then his billions of pieces of email spam.
The only apparent difference is that he can't understand what he is doing is wrong when he does it. Although he realizes it is wrong when it happens to him.
His ailment == "lack of empathy". Truly a common human deficiency. He will not be missed when the agents of karma take him out.
XML causes global warming.
Really! I know I personally don't know how I ever lived without knowing that 66% of all women are unsatisfied with their lover penis size, or that the president of Nigeria is desperate to smuggle 10 million dollars out of his country, or that hot underage girls have sex with beasts! What wonderful people these spammers are!
"plus it's so easy to just delete an email"
As opposed to throwing a letter in a big empty can?
"it's a lot more work to sort through physical mail and throw it out."
Are you serious? This is absurd. You got get physical mail ONCE per day. When you expect alot of important emails like me you end up checking every new message that comes in. In the mornings there are usually about 20 emails for me to ciphter through, with another 30 or so coming in during the day. 90% of them are junk.
Start sending him mail "Postage Due". That's how he's sending spam... you pay for him to send it by paying for your bandwidth which he clogs. So send him mail, and make him pay for each letter you send.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Who, short of you, is talking about justice and vigilantism?
The guy is receiving nice, legal, commercial offers someone thought he might be interested in. If he doesn't want them, he may well opt-out. It is a very simple process, all he have to do is write or call the senders to be immediately removed from their lists.
And I might also remember you that there are no laws regulating spam, so we are basically talking about a guy who insist on being un-civilised for the sake of a (millions of) buck. If he can be so unpolite as to send me (and millions of people more) hundreds of unsolicited emails a week, why should everyone be nice and treat him as if he was just a regular Joe working hard to make ends meet?
Well, he is not. He belongs to a class of people you won't be inviting over for dinner nor letting your daughter date. He has no clue about online etiquette, nor he want to have.
Your comparison with the RIAA situation is also out of line. RIAA was asking to be exempt from some very severe and important laws. This guy does nothing illegal. Also, nothing illegal was done to him.
As long as the law is concerned, no one was hurt. This is exactly how it should be: he does nothing to hurt us (by sending spam) and we (the whole body of the Internet) do nothing to hurt him (by sending him nice commercial offers through regular mail).
Vigilante justice (AKA blood-feud) is the best foundation for real justice. Far better than law made by politicians and enforced without the individual's consent.
I'll explain...
The supposition you seem to be working from is that unopposed vigilante justice would result in innocent folks being harmed. But, you forget that blood-feud cuts both ways - commit an injustice and you could be next on somebody's hit list.
It takes people very little time to realise that starting a war this way is to nobody's benefit. Thus spring up voluntary courts based on customary, not fiat, law. The aim of which, is to repair the harm done by one person to another. This voluntary legal system has market-forces that prevent the kinds of abuse to which legislative law is prone. Too harsh a fine, and the crook refuses to follow the judgement, preferring to shoot it out or at least negotiate for a different judge. Too soft, and the victim does likewise. And in no case can a law suit be brought where there has been no harm - the defendant would refuse to come to court, the judge would refuse to try it. Thus are avoided bread-and-circuses laws that steal from some and give favors to others, thus are avoided bans on victimless "crimes".
That was pretty much how it worked in viking Iceland - a system which lasted for 300 years (more than the USA thus far). They have sagas about their heroic lawyers, rather than hating them as pond scum as this culture does.
Not only does the law belong "in your own hands", but that's the only way to get honest justice.
That said, he's also a moron. He's been signed up for all that mail under false pretenses. It's mail fraud and a Federal Offense.
;> ), spam should be easy to block.
You're right, it is, and that's a protection that email should enjoy as well. I guess a while back when the US developed a great mail service (for the time), and people started abusing it, there was this huge push to punish people who do so. Hence, all the criminals that the cops can't pin anything on, but they get them for abuse of mails (that and tax evasion).
Point is, he is signing people up for/sending people stuff under false pretenses daily - or does he really think that people have "opted in" to his lists like he claims? If they did, why would he have to use countermeasures to get around anti-spam software?
If we just extended the existing laws, it would reduce spam dramatically. Like when you request an opt-out, they can't resell your name. No forged headers. No disguised opt-ins. If we can get those things (and turn off all of asia
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I agree that this is different:
Junk mail costs him absolutely no money to have delivered to his door.
His @#$#$ing spam mail costs me MY MONEY every time it eats up my bandwidth! Even if it costs me 1/1,000,000th of a cent for every one, it is still *MY MONEY* that he is *stealing* from me, that bastard.
As I see it, he's not only an unwelcomed guest, but he's a god @#$# @#$@#$ing thief as well, and should get *sued* for stealing MY MONEY!
Yeah, I have some *serious* issues with spammers.
1. Mail fraud is when you use the mail to commit fraud. Does signing up someone via the Web or an 800 number constitute using the mail to commit fraud?
2. Many catalogs come to me that I never signed up for. Are each of these companies committing mail fraud? What about the people who sold them the lists that suggested I might be interested in their products?
3. If he's a millionaire, he is a prime candidate for a number of lists, and qualifies to receive a number of catalogs he may not presently be receiving. If it's not mail fraud for the catalog firms to buy lists of addresses of potential purchasers, is it fraud when people volunteer addresses of potential purchasers to them without asking for compensation?
4. Many catalog merchants ask for addresses of friends who might also like to receive their catalog. After receiving so much mail from this guy, can't we consider him our friend? Or do our friends commit mail fraud if they sign us up?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Seriously. It is so sad that so many have a real malformed idea of what being "human" is.
The world today needs some serious work to become even as good a world is was 30 years ago.
The loss of such important concepts like empathy, compassion, respect (especially respect) allows the sickness and cancerous traits take root in the mind and behaviors of society as a whole. No longer are people concerned about others, and it is so wide spread that we see it expressed in the way corporations and businesses are setup as if conceived and executed by robots - where humans are nothing but a consumable. (hence we are now known as consumers - not because we consume - but rather our resources (money, time, mindshare) and in the end, ourselves - is what is consumed by the machine that is the corporate bottom line and profit margin)
Hopefully some slashdotters out there will take a moment in their illusinal lives to stop and realize that everything outside of yourself, your relationships with the people around you and your attitude towards the current reality is the reality - and the only thing that matters. Otherwise - when moving through your life with your whole focus of being on concepts (and remeber that all that exists - exists as concept. Some manifest in physical form - most manifest in rule of conduct through material life) which are not founded on solid principle, you create a meaningless and illusory reality for yourself, your soul - and all whose life you influence and touch.
Please breath for a minute and try to enlighten and raise another persons life - even for just a moment. Then realise that there is only one moment you ever need to do this in, only one moment you ever need to be mindful of. Now.
Harassing the lawyer for doing his job is another step altogether. If he himself is harassing people, that's one thing; if he's just protecting the spammer's rights, he's doing his job. For that matter bear in mind that the law frowns on self-help generally.
Remember that excessive harassment will make the antispammers look every bit as contemptible as the spammer. The antispam effort needs the moral high ground. I'm talking about the perceptions of 3rd parties.
Please don't bother to tell me how terrible spammers are; I agree. But I don't think it wise to trample everything in our path to take what we believe to be ours. That's what the spammers do, after all, and "but we're right!" is nice but does not authorize disreagard for the rules of the game.
What's next? Spam anyone who even makes a gesture at fair play that might somehow benefit the spammer? That's one of the reasons I'll never post my email address.
I have one question for Alan Ralsky: why do you spammers never remove the email addresses that bounce back? Since my mail servers get your junk mailed over and over and over to email addresses which represent supposed users that have never even existed, it's clear you don't make any attempt whatsoever to clean your lists of bounces. Spam is theft, and this makes it clear that it is willful. Maybe we slashdotters should be asking the Oakland County Prosecuting Attorney's Office to pursue criminal theft charges.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Really, man. If he doesn't want the stuff, he should *JUST OPT OUT*. That's right, unsubscribe. In this case, pick up the phone or write a letter to each magazine publisher and marketing company and request they remove him from their lists. Really, it's very simple.
Now, how many offers do you think he's receiving a day? If it's anything like what my parents get after living in the same place for the last 12 years, with Mom shopping in every mail order catalog she can find, and trust me, I've had to go pick up their mail during their vacations--mail delivery at their house can be a stack a foot high. How it fits in the mailbox is an entirely different question.
I hope he's inundated. I hope he gets a sense of what we all feel when we see his shit. Oh, wait, he says he wants to sue antispammers for "harrassing" him. I see he's got that sense now.