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My Short Life As An Unintentional Porn Spammer

Freerange writes "Mike Masnick wrote up his experience getting slammed by a somewhat new kind of spam attack that doesn't get much hype (yet?). A spammer spoofed his personal email address as the 'reply-to' for a batch of spam, with interesting results for Mike: "I can now answer the questions 'who replies to spam?' and (should anyone ever wonder) 'what are the hundreds of variations on bounced messages?'" From Politech."

27 of 557 comments (clear)

  1. What the Internet needs: by unterderbrucke · · Score: 5, Funny

    A proprietary mail protocol by a major power (MS?) to eliminate IP address/e-mail address spoofing.

  2. Skynet by OwlofCreamCheese · · Score: 5, Funny

    its not going to be military computers that come alive and kill us all, its going to be the spam filters! I mean, its going to take some serious adaptive AI to filter out spam at this rate...

    and the conformforting thought:

    when spamfilters come alive... their prime directive will be "eliminate anything that is worthless"

    --
    -You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
  3. No way to contact spammer by $$$$$exyGal · · Score: 5, Funny
    I am repeatedly surprised by the amount of spam out there that does not contain any way to contact the spammer. How do they expect to make money if there is no way to contact them?

    --sex

    --
    Very popular slashdot journal for adul
    1. Re:No way to contact spammer by nomadic · · Score: 5, Funny

      Volume!

    2. Re:No way to contact spammer by ColdForged · · Score: 4, Funny
      I am repeatedly surprised by the amount of spam out there that does not contain any way to contact the spammer. How do they expect to make money if there is no way to contact them?
      Are you really gonna leave that hanging up there like a big, juicy grapefruit?
      1. Sling a kajillion spam messages with no contact information whatsoever.
      2. ???
      3. Profit!

      "We apologize for the previously displayed shenanigans. Those responsible for that ordered list have been sacked."
      --

      -"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." - Arthur Dent

  4. Not happy... by Space_Nerd · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...with all the spam replies and such he got, he now decides to take it a step further and slashdot his server!

    Way to go!

    --
    Everybody has a purpose in life, maybe mine is to lurk in slashdot.
  5. Who replies to spam by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 4, Funny
    I can think of a few. People looking for:
    • Penis emlargements;
    • Viagra;
    • Boob jobs;
    • Sex;
    • Porn;
    • Rebuilt credit;
    • Credit cards;
    • Cheap mortgages;
    • Cheap health insurance;
    • Cheap dental insurance;
    • An easy way to make millions from home with little effort!;
    • University Diplomas;
    • Free anything; and, of course
    • Spam lists.
    Spammers try to sell (gullible) people what they might buy, never what they won't. I've yet to see a spammer selling flights to Mars - although I do predict it will be a growth area for spammers in 20 years time.
    --

    "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
  6. Re:Not New @ All by jo_ham · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's what baseball bats are for.

    If the FBI won't take it further, you could always beat seven shades of shit out of him, then when the police arrest you, assume his identity.

  7. Spam Addresses by David_Bloom · · Score: 3, Funny

    Someone needs to register a domain name and make anything@foo.bar automatically forward to UCE@FTC.GOV . That way, when we sign up for sites and such that filter out users who use UCE@FTC.GOV as their email, there will still be a way to prevent junk mail. Also, sites that list randomly generated fake emails to slow down spambots could be made more effective.

    --

    Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
  8. Re: Reverse spam really isn't that new... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny


    > The new one i've run into recently is they use some kinda script so that the reply-to address in my address....which makes fintering really easy becuase how often do I send mail from my account TO the same account. However I could see some stuipd user getting very confused.

    ...and replying to himself in outrage.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  9. Better than Disneyland? by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 4, Funny
    Q: You've had your email address forged on spam, subjecting your mail server to many many many bounce messages and complaints. What are you going to do now?

    A: I'm going to slashdot my web server!

  10. Killed or Hurt Spammers by PerlPunk · · Score: 3, Funny

    Have there ever been any cases of an e-mail equivalent of "road rage", where someone (or a group) has actually went out and either physically harmed a spammer or killed him?

  11. Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... by Greg+Hewgill · · Score: 5, Funny

    That reminds me of when it was cool to tell lusers that there was this huge ftp site at 127.0.0.1, just log in with your existing account...

  12. Most users too clueless... by ackthpt · · Score: 3, Funny
    Most users are too clueless to realize it's really not coming from that address.

    I've given up on most of it. The best way to figure out where junk is coming from is to just view the contents as ASCII, which The Bat does very nicely. (Show kludges shows headers) Most of the time there's a phone number or website and doing a whois on many will reveal the villain.

    There are urls which are use just the IP address and those which look like HTTP://434328432849, the number being an IP address, not in the form 127.0.0.1, but the sum of 1+0*2^8+0*2^16+127*2^24, a neat way of masking sites.

    Other news... I was just checkin a website I've had for 4+ years and never checked the mailbox that came with it. It filled up Mar 23, 2002 and has 1,669 pieces of mail, mostly spam. Looks like I'll be cleaning it out on Saturday. It would be an interesting project to archive it all and see how many violate California's anti-spam law and see if I can Make $$$$ At Home!

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  13. Re:It happened to my wife! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    That was *your* wife?

    Sorry man. I didn't know.

    You have to admit though, I bet you never expected to see a picture of a guy doing that to to a chicken.

  14. since they have a threshold by commodoresloat · · Score: 4, Funny

    only break $5000 worth of his bones. then you won't be worth investigating either.

  15. You Don't Like The Mail Admin, Do You? by Myriad · · Score: 4, Funny
    Our domain is productive.com so any email to whatever (at) productive.com comes back to the admin email accounts. As you can probably guess there's quite a few spammers that use productive.com as reply-to.

    Given that you just entered the domain name not once, but twice, and your post is likely to be seen my thousands, spidered, and google-cached, I take it that you don't like your mail admin very much, do you?

    --
    "They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
  16. IQ Test by nuggz · · Score: 3, Funny

    Press CTRL-ALT-DEL now for an IQ test.

    1. Re:IQ Test by shepd · · Score: 5, Funny

      Which button is it???~!?//!?11

      LOCK WORKSTATION, logout, shutDown, _Change Password, TaSK L1st, or Cncel?

      I MUST KNWO! Give me answer! Pleez! NOW! Right NOW! PLEAEEHZ! PLEEZ!

      --
      If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
    2. Re:IQ Test by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Duh. It's a trick question.

      The *real* IQ test button is hidden on the back of your computer near the power cord.

    3. Re:IQ Test by schon · · Score: 5, Funny

      Press CTRL-ALT-DEL now for an IQ test.

      Reminds me of my days as a BBS sysop..

      My board forced registration before you could post anything - in the registration sign-up (before it asked for any information) I had it say "Press any key to begin. If you don't know which key is the 'any key, it's the large one on the front of your computer labeled 'reset'

      Over the course of the 3 years I had it running, the logs showed two people drop carrier immediately after reading that.

  17. Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... by evilviper · · Score: 4, Funny
    just zip up your files and attach a password to the transmitted zip file.


    should you get side-tracked and not make it home (eg, if you get lucky and score


    What kind of a geek ARE you??? Not only do you talk about zip rather than gzip/bzip, then call zip passwording "secure", but you also talk about getting sidetracked by scoring, rather than some more sci-fi reason, like being shot at by storm troopers, attacked by some creature from LOTR, etc. Come on, get it together man! This IS slashdot afterall.
    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  18. It happened to me too, but I got a little revenge. by antigone · · Score: 3, Funny

    in the last 4 days my yahoo account (which i've had for years and don't want to have to change) has used its' 6mb quota up 17 times because of all of the undeliverables i'm getting back from this spam I didn't send. I volunteer for a Forensics K9 Search group and I get emergency call-outs sent to this address, so my mailbox filling up and bouncing messages is a very very very bad thing. (side note: this week NASA contacted us saying that if they needed to call in groups from outside CA and TX we were next on the list to be brought in!) This morning was the last straw..i got over 1000 bounces again and I decided to take a closer look at the SPAMMERs site. It turns out they have a crappy verisign shopping cart that does not, in fact, verify credit card numbers beforehand. So i submitted the form about 1000 times before i got sick of it. If you'd like to have a laugh, or to help me get revenge, then click the link below to see a screenshot of their website with the info i filled in the form, as well as the URL to the SPAMMER's page...

    This is NOT the spammer's page, just a link to a screenshot of their page with the URL included

    --
    "Leave no authority existing which does not answer to the people" --Thomas Jefferson
  19. Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... by jovlinger · · Score: 3, Funny

    many years ago, at this site, i believe, it was reported that someone registered warez.blackdown.net as 127.0.0.1 Could have been SA too.

    The chat logs as people came in fuming and it slowly dawned on people that they had been had were priceless

  20. Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... by David+Gould · · Score: 4, Funny


    That reminds me of when it was cool to tell lusers that there was this huge ftp site at 127.0.0.1, just log in with your existing account...

    No, it's "Dude, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid you've been hacked -- the FTP server at 127.0.0.1 has all your personal files. See for yourself; just log in with your normal id..."

    Thing is, it only worked when a sufficiently naive person would still be likely to be using a Unix system and be familiar with FTP, whereas now, even having heard of those things is something like a guarantee of knowing too much to fall for it.

    Speaking of falling for it, though -- didn't I read here a while back that this particular troll had been used on the Scientologists, with spectacular success? Like, they were in court taking a deposition and their lawyer was shouting at the guy "Tell us who runs the FTP server at 127.0.0.1!"

    --
    David Gould
    main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
  21. Re: Reverse spam really isn't that new... by Have+Blue · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...And replying to himself in outrage.
    ...And replying to himself in outrage.
    ...And replying to himself in outrage.
    ...And replying to himself in outrage.
    ...And replying to himself in outrage.

    It's "How do you keep an idiot busy for hours?" for the new millenium!

  22. Re:Replying can help stop spam... by isorox · · Score: 3, Funny

    Do you people simply not bother to see to whom this message is going to? Do you not bother to do market research to see if I'm even going to be able to use the product? I am a man. I have a penis and not breasts. I am a guy, a bloke packing a "willie", a "johnson", "meat and two veg", a "one-eyed trouser snake", a "little fellow", a thingie, the "outy" parts to match up with the "inny" bits of the people to whom you should be sending this spam to and not me and my "Collection of dangly bits".

    To put it simply people..."A DICK"


    You've got balls man...