Legal Recourse Against Spammers You May Know?

xrepete asks: "I have been getting spammed by a legitimate company for the last five months. I have gone to their site to ask to be removed, and sent several e-mails to various address asking to be removed from their mailing list. I have been totally ignored. We all get spam from individuals we can't identify, but what recourse do we have if we actually _can_ identify them. I've heard that it is illegal for a company to not allow you to opt-out of marketing spam, but I can find any information about how to go about it." This was last touched on over three years ago, but recent events have shown that the new spam laws may have better teeth. Are there other things we can do to curb the e-mail abuses of the companies we do business with?

Comments

Easy Answer

[trentfoley]

Are there other things we can do to curb the e-mail abuses of the companies we do business with?

Simple, Threaten them with the loss of your business.

Oh yeah, and you have to bitch about it on Slashdot to get a lot of people doing it.

Charge them!

[shfted!]

Charge them a series of escalating handling fees, starting at $5 and moving up to $5000 per message or whatever you feel like (don't be too unreasaonable). Give them one week before you start charging.

Send them written notice by both regular and registered mail. If they accept the registered mail, they cannot claim ignorance of your fees. If they deny the registered mail, then you have done your best to inform them of your rates.

When you send your bills, give them a time limit to pay them. If they do not pay you, take them to small claims court for the total amount they have not paid.

Good luck! (And of course, IANAL)

I've got an idea...

[jpsowin]

Post their site to slashdot.
After their site shuts down, they will get your point. And it's legal!

Call them

[littlerubberfeet]

I know it is not a method of legal recourse, but CALL them, preferably not at a general sales number, but a direct line (to someone in legal). This should get results.

Unfortunately, I think only the government can enforce the new law, so us private citizens are royally fucked over.

Someone above mentioned charging them on an increasing scale. Go ahead, but only after you have sent them a bill. If they don't accept certified mail, send it guaranteed delivery. They can't ignore that either, unless it is out of gross negligence (the mail room lost it...) or stupidity.

Can you stop doing business with them? Then do so, and wait exactly 18 months to the day. Then, bill them for taking up your time ($50 an hour), server space ($5 a Kilobyte), and bandwith ($10 a meg transfered) on an increasing scale.

My 2 cents...as above, IANAL...BIHBTC (but I have been to court).

Legal Recourse? Why on earth...?

[FFFish]

Illegal recourse will be far, far more satisfying, I'm sure.

Go for it.

We won't tell.

c'mon

[mOoZik]

Is it too damn hard to hit the check box and hit delete? Leave it to slashdotters to find needlessly complicated solutions to idiotically simple problems

Keeping in mind I am referring to an individual user, and not a company, which may otherwise spend lots of money on bandwidth, lost work, et cetera.

Re:c'mon

[xoboots]

>> Is it too damn hard to hit the check box and hit delete? Leave it to slashdotters to find needlessly complicated solutions to idiotically simple problems

Actually, it is too hard. Particularly when spammers flasify subjects, senders, reply-to's, etc. Who are you to decide how hard it is?

>> Keeping in mind I am referring to an individual user, and not a company, which may otherwise spend lots of money on bandwidth, lost work, et cetera.

Oh, so its not okay for companies to deal with spam, but its okay for individuals? You are not nice. Not nice at all. And your patronizing tone is very unwelcome.

Re:c'mon

[dbirchall]

Well, that depends on quantity, don't you think?

Presuming you spend 8 hours a day sleeping, you've got about 57,600 seconds per day to be awake. If you're exceptionally fast, you might be able to delete individual messages at a rate of one per second. But you're probably not fast enough to determine whether things are spam and delete them at that rate. Probably more like one every 3-5 seconds. So your capacity on a daily basis is perhaps somewhere between 11,000 and 20,000 messages.

That, of course, presumes that you do nothing but scan messages and hit delete. All day. What percentage of mail you receive is spam? If you're relatively fortunate and it's only about 50%, and it takes you an exceptionally fast 55-57 seconds to read and possibly respond to each non-spam message, that means one spam plus one non-spam takes you about a minute. Now you're down to 1,920 messages a day, maximum.

Of course, you don't want to spend 16 hours a day in email. You'll probably spend several hours working, at least an hour total eating, some time in the bathroom, maybe time going places, maybe time just having a life. That all probably leaves you with only 1-4 hours of time to spend on e-mail, if you're a bad case (no one should have to spend that much time every day IMO).

So... 60-480 messages per day that you can probably handle. How much spam do you get? :)

Re:c'mon

[littlerubberfeet]

You sir, are an ass.

Someone goes on vacation for 6 months, and returns to find 35,000 emails in their inbox. 200 spams a day is normal for quite a few people. Said person gets carpal tunnel syndrome by having to check a box 35,000 times. Said person wastes 9.7 hours deleting spam. (one delete per second).

NOW, imagine if that person (individual user) deletes spam at the same rate per day. they waste three minutes a day deleting spam. 19.4 hours a year. Now, if there are, say 5 million people with a spam problem that bad (a conservatve estimate) that means 97 million hours are wasted a year because of spammers. 11,000 years of time gone, because of Spam.

What if that time were spent raising children (as individual users tend to do) or helping kids learn to read? What if that three minutes a day were spent on a few situps? Maybe the US wouldn't have the obesity problem it does today. What if everyone could sit down for three minutes more a day and relax?

Also, IF those 5 million people were dealing with spam at work, that is 1.5 trillion in lost wages ($15 an hour) in ONE YEAR. Hell, these spammers are costing us more then our national debt.

I say YES, it is too hard to hit that check box and hit delete.

Re:c'mon

[xoboots]

Thanks for your reply, as insulting as it is.

I never implied that I follow dumb links or can't tell the difference between legit and illegitimate mail--you obviously think yourself a bit better than everyone else, despite the fact that you put your own words into other's mouths.

I continue to contest your made-up assumption that I and every other "individual" (as you say) who uses email has should have to deal with spam simply because you think it is trivial to do so.

By-the-way, your name calling doesn't particularly bother me -- you have to understand that just because YOU say something, that does not make it true. That goes for your original post and certainly for your remarks towards me.

Anyways, no need to aplogize as no offence is taken--I actually feel sympathy for you. Life is hard for those who are not mannered enough to act with civility towards others. You may not realize it, but the people online are as real as the people in your everyday life. I can only hope that offline you are not as egregious.

Re:c'mon

[xoboots]

Just read the your reply that you posted as an Anonymous Coward (as if we didn't already know that about you). Nice of you to prove my point--you are an outcast and so shall you stay. At least be decent enough to not stoop to AC bullshit. Coward.

Re:c'mon

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were truly carpal tunnel syndrome, how would you get it from deleting spam? It's a syndrome. Syndrome indicates that the cause of the situation is not known. Perhaps you should consider this a repetitive stress injury.

Re:c'mon

[Anonymous Coward]

I stand corrected

End Spam Right Now!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can END ALL SPAM today for FREE!!!.

Just go to the site: www.wewillownyourbox.com, and download the Spam plugin FREE!!!! (Sorry, Windows customers only)

Stop spam today!

To unsubscribe from this post go to www.wewillownyourbox.com and download the unsubscribe plugin. (Sorry, Windows customers only)

Spammers You May Know

[LarryRiedel]

It is not particularly unusual to know who is sending the "spam", or who is paying for it to be sent. In either case the mail message headers will indicate where is the source of the message, and consequently it will provide enough information to determine who is the ISP for the host which sent the message. Either that ISP will have a process for dealing with "abuse", or their upstream ISP will, etc.

Larry

Re:Spammers You May Know

[Anonymous Coward]

This may actually get you removed from their spamlist, but if I were the spam victim in this case, that "solution" wouldn't satisfy me. They have been asked (nicely, I suppose) to stop sending spam to one individual -- and ignored it. Make them pay, either literally or in the figurative sense. I think the victim should inform them that further correspondence is unwanted and future emails will result in handling fees of a specified amount per mail payable by the sender. Then send invoices when more emails arrive from them.

Re:Spammers You May Know

[John Hasler]

> In either case the mail message headers will
> indicate where is the source of the message...

Not true. Headers can be forged.

Re:Spammers You May Know

[LarryRiedel]

In either case the mail message headers will indicate where is the source of the message...

Not true. Headers can be forged.

At some point on the path from source host to destination mailbox there will be a transition to a host on a legitmate ISP, and that host will correctly report the IP address from which it received the message; for the purpose of complaining, that IP address can be considered the source of the message.

Larry

anonymous being tracked and reported tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING, SLASHDOT NOW TIES AC COMMENTS WITH USER
(Use a disposable account from a disposable IP before moderating this up. Editors generally watch and see who moderates controversial things like this up.)

When you are logged in, /. ties your user account to any Anonymous Coward postings you make... Thus they know who posted it. To demonstrate this:

1. Get mod points.
   
2. Post an AC comment while logged in
   
3. Change your dynamic ip, clear all cookies
   
4. Log back in and try to moderate your AC comment... you can't!!!
   

Please *log out* AND use another browser before making your AC comments.
Your UID is being tracked, it's not Anonymous. Lots of people post lots of things to Slashdot as AC only because they believe it is really anonymous - it isn't. They hunt "trolls" (non-karma whores and non-group thinking bots) down.

This is true. I used to be a bit more freestyle and witty AC and be a nice guy logged in [basically a karma whore]. After a short while, I could no longer moderate. Slashdot does brand AC posts with IP and then map them back to users. They lie about AC, AC doesn't exist if you re-use ip addresses.

Big brother is watching. So while I might be a "troll" a lot of the AC things I said were to protect myself from Slash-bot groupthink. They punished me for voicing my opinion freestyle.

They also revoke moderation FOREVER - $rtbl it is called, for any moderations of any post that have been secretly flagged annoying [Slashcode has hidden flags viewable by editors]. If you *EVER* mod up something an editor secretly marked annoying you NEVER moderate again, ever - ever even if your karma is capped.

Also, Slashdot uses the friends system to track "trolls." Mark a troll you find funny as a friend *bang* $rtbl never to moderate ever again. My real account had many many good friends who had good karma, and a few funny trolls later, no more moderation for that account. Again, Slashdot is spying on its users to make the people who find certain things funny uneligible to moderate. You will never moderate again if you are a friend of a "foe or freak" of an editor.

FACT: This is in Slashcode CVS

Revision 1.7.2.5 / (download) - annotate - [select for diffs] , Thu Feb 8 13:12:32 2001 UTC (2 years, 9 months ago) by pudge
Branch: bender
CVS Tags: v1_1_3_0
Changes since 1.7.2.4: +18 -7 lines
Diff to previous 1.7.2.4 to branchpoint 1.7

log more AC info

So AC is a scam here. Hitler-Malda screws AC posts in the caboose. So now all you can do is go 100% AC, or , as they expect you to, KARMA WHORE. And it is so lame and unfair and probably illegal as they lie about anonymity.

Also, sometimes when certain information becomes an active thread, they bitchslap the thread much later so that people think its "safe" to participate and the whole thing gets slapped.

There is a presumption anonymous means something. They lie like rugs to the posting public by using the word anonymous. It is not. They brazenly lie though and the un-assuming poster is having everything he says correlated with him and stored in a computer just waiting to be subpoenaed by the people that Slashdot claims to hate but works for. They work for the fascist forces and components of the US government. I like the US and other Western governments but they have good and bad components - there are things you need to do to protect yourself from the bad components. Basically "covering your ass" so to speak. At Slashdot, in lying about AC, un-protects its posting public (seeding a de-anonymizing privacy stripping pandemic in their own "little" way). This makes Slashdot a very dangerous target for you the posters to have your "anonymous" information subpoenaed and you to be chased down and persecuted for speaking your mind. I think that it is a joke Slashdot editors post about SCO, MSFT, RIAA, MPAA, TIA, FBI, etc. They do the same fascist big-brotherly things that those companies do the public at large as they do to the Slashdot posting public.

Protect yourself. Try and use proxies or a super good second browser with proxies that you never log into such as Opera (which makes it very easy to delete all private data). Thank you.

Re:anonymous being tracked and reported tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. I used to work for VA Linux about 4 years ago (back when they sold hardware). I can tell you that originally, AC comments were, anonymous in the database (the web logs could be used to link a comment to an ip address).

When the scientologists sued (or threatened to sue) over some copyrighted material that got posted anonymously, the slashdot team not only deleted the comments, but also started removing the anonymity from AC posts. This wasn't CmdrTaco's decision -- it came from the VA legal department.

Re:anonymous being tracked and reported tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

And thus a new Gestapo was born. Why wouldnt he just purposly sabotage the addresses he logged to PROTECT OUR IDENTITIES from John Ashroft.

Address

[rf0]

When filling out online forms its always worth putting "tagged" address like slashdot@domain.org, linux.com@domain.org. That way if you get spammed you know who sold your email address

Rus

Re:Address

[yuri benjamin]

Exactly. I use spamgourmet for this.

Re:Address

[Permission Denied]

When filling out online forms its always worth putting "tagged" address like slashdot@domain.org, linux.com@domain.org.

I've been doing this for over five years and my "real" address has (thank goodness) never got out (I only give it to humans). Over the course of five years, I've only accumulated about twenty or thirty procmail rules to discard mail to addresses that have been sold or leaked (most often via lax policy on someone else's website where large numbers of user addresses were posted). I also threw together an emacs lisp hack for gnus that automatically generates a new address whenever I post to usenet. I get literally zero spam and I never worry about legitimate mail not getting through.

For those who think having a vanity domain and mucking with sendmail is not worth it - there are other ways to do this. I believe sendmail's defaults allow you to send mail to "account+foo@example.com" where foo is any arbitrary string. I know for certain that qmail allows you to send mail to account-foo@example.com out of the box.

I'm so happy with this setup that whenever a spam-related story comes up on Slashdot, I post this same information. Gotta share the love.

Re:Address

[Anonymous Coward]

Moron. Half the places wont take ay spamgourmet email addresses anymore.

Fucking fool. Unscalable easily blockable.

Re:Address

[RevAaron]

Yeah, and your mom is unscalable. Or at least, that's what your brother told me when it was my turn.

Anywho, thanks for the heads up Yuri- I've never seen this place or anything like it. I will certainly start using it- and even if only "half the places" (*which* places?) don't accept it, that's still half the spam.

werd.

Re:Address

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe sendmail's defaults allow you to send mail to "account+foo@example.com" where foo is any arbitrary string.

No offense, but the spammers aren't that stupid. That's like people who write "bobNOSPAM@foo.com" thinking that will work. Most of the spam harvesting software knows about the "X+Y@" sendmail division and removes the "+Y" portion from the collection.

Re:Address

[Zocalo]

I use this technique too. One other often over looked benefit of doing this is that it makes sorting your incoming mail into folders *very* easy. For example, email to "amazon@domain.com" is from Amazon Books and can be filed into the folder "Amazon" - simple. Even if the company or mailing list changes thier subject tag, domain or anything else you might try filtering on, they are never going to change *your* email address.

Re:Address

[Yottabyte84]

I personaly use both spamgourmet, and sneakemail.

Re:Address tsarkon poops WITH triumph dog.

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't sugarcoat this. This is a very bitter. Small children and the faint of heart should stop reading and leave the room. The rest of this letter is focused exclusively on YURI BENJAMIN , not because I harbor any ill-will towards it, but because it wants to conjure up dirt against its fellow human beings. What does it think it is? I mean, if it thinks that it can walk on water, then it's sadly mistaken. I'm merely suggesting that YURI BENJAMIN bickers and argues over petty things. I know you're wondering why I just wrote that. I'll explain shortly, but first, I should state that YURI BENJAMIN dreams of a time when they'll be free to manipulate everything and everybody. That's the way it's planned it, and that's the way it'll happen -- not may happen, but will happen -- if we don't interfere, if we don't reach the broadest possible audience with the message that I am astonished by how little integrity and good judgment it possesses.

Why YURI BENJAMIN would even pretend that we have no reason to be fearful about the criminally violent trends in our society today and over the past ten to fifteen years is beyond me. YURI BENJAMIN can blame me for the influx of sick champions of deceit, lies, theft, plunder, and rapine if it makes it feel better, but it won't help its cause any. YURI BENJAMIN 's flunkies argue that its publications are good for the environment, human rights, and baby seals. These are the same possession-obsessed beggars who organize a whispering campaign against me. This is no coincidence; YURI BENJAMIN not only lies, but it brags about its lying to its factotums. This is not to say that we must remove the misunderstanding that YURI BENJAMIN has created in the minds of myriad people throughout the world -- not just in the poetic sense, but in the very specific and prosaic terms I am outlining in this letter. It is merely to point out that I didn't want to talk about this. I really didn't. But if YURI BENJAMIN were paying attention -- which it would seem it is not, as I've already gone over this -- it'd see that its ideologies all stem from one, simple, faulty premise -- that the majority of heinous thought police are heroes, if not saints. Not surprisingly, YURI BENJAMIN spouts the same bile in everything it writes, making only slight modifications to suit the issue at hand. The issue it's excited about this week is obstructionism, which says to me that it talks a lot about defeatism and how wonderful it is. However, it's never actually defined what it means. How can YURI BENJAMIN argue for something it's never defined? This is not a question that we should run away from. Rather, it is something that needs to be addressed quickly and directly, because if the word "calcareoargillaceous" occurs to the reader, he or she may recall that YURI BENJAMIN once tried to compromise the things that define us, including integrity, justice, love, and sharing. And here, I maintain, lies a clue to the intellectual vacuum so gapingly apparent in its fibs.

There's a little-known truth that isn't readily acknowledged by nerdy deadbeats: In order to convince us that the average working-class person can't see through its chicanery, YURI BENJAMIN often turns to the old propagandist trick of comparing results brought about by entirely dissimilar causes. Is there anyone else out there who's noticed that before bothering us with its next batch of flighty, stingy cajoleries, YURI BENJAMIN should review the rules of writing a persuasive essay, most notably the one about sticking to the topic the writer establishes? I ask because once you understand its intimations, you have a responsibility to do something about them. To know, to understand, and not to act, is an egregious sin of omission. It is the sin of silence. It is the sin of letting YURI BENJAMIN turn once-flourishing neighborhoods into zones of violence, decay, and moral disregard. YURI BENJAMIN is always prating about how it is the one who will lead us to our great shining future. (It used to say that all minorities are poor, stupid ghetto tras

procmail - their contact address

[menscher]

I had this problem about a year ago with a company. I asked three times to be removed, threatened lawsuits, etc. Each time I was ignored, or told that I would be removed in 2 weeks. After about a year of this I wrote a procmail rule. Basically, it forwarded each spam I received through their servers, along with a note requesting to be removed, to all of their contact addresses (they had several). Within a week or two I was removed.

tsarkon and triumph dog say SHUT THE FUCK UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Lick tihs poop, fuckersicle! FUCKERHEAD!

Well it was my job to wake up Jacinda and get her to school as our parents already left for work. Jacinda is my baby sister and at the age of 18 she was real sexy. Her measurements are 36c-22-34 and has a very sexy smile to match.

Well I yelled at her but there was no answer so I had to go in her room. I saw what she was sleeping in and I like it. She wore a baby blue tank top and a lacy blue pair of panties. I push with my arm to wake her up but she said leave me alone. So I started tickling her and she started to laugh. While tickling her my hands accidentally brushed against her tits, they were firm and soft. I kept tickling her and she turned over and looked at me and smiled. I asked her if she knew how much she meant to me and how much I love her. She said yes Roger I know you love me and I love you too.

I asked her if I could kiss her and she said yes. We kissed passionately and while kissing her I cupped her right tit in my hand. I felt her nipple harden and she moaned softly. She pulled her tank top giving me access to her tits. I slowly lick one and suck her nipple deep in my mouth, then I move to the other one. She moans yes Roger suck baby sister's tits.

As I suck her tits I slide my hand into her panties and find out that she has shaved all her public from her pussy. I slowly slide a finger in her and notice that she is very tight. She tells me she is a virgin and she wants me to be her first lover. I slide down and slowly move her panties down and she lifted her sexy ass to let me slide them all the way off. I look at her and smile and see her smiling back. I spread her legs and slowly lick one side of her pussy and then the other side. I spread her lips and see how pink she is and slide my tongue deep inside her.

She yells yes big brother lick my pussy. As I lick her pussy she tells me to stop and strip, which I slowly take off my pants and underwear she gasps when she sees my hard cock and says she wants to measure it. She gets up and goes to her dresser and gets her ruler and measures it. She said oh God it is 9" long brother. Gee, you really are my big brother. She tells me to lie down and then sits down on my face. As I lick her pussy again she starts to lick my cock. I gasp as she takes it in her mouth. I slowly slide a finger deep in her ass as she has a very intense orgasm and I swallow all of her sweet juices.

She says she is ready for me to take her virginity and lays on her back. I ask her are you sure you want me to do this? She yells yes Roger fuck my tight virgin pussy! I slowly slide my cock up and down her pussy lips teasing her with my cock. She begs me to put it in her. I slowly slide the head in her and she gasps. I ask her if she wants me to go on and she says yes. I slowly slide in till I hit her cherry. I pull back a little and then thrust it all the way in. she moans and says yes Roger fuck your baby sis's pussy.

I feel her wrapping her legs around my back and I start to kiss her. I tell her that her pussy is so tight and I don't know how much longer I'll last. She tells me to fill her pussy full of my cum and I push my cock all the way in fire shot after shot of cum deep in her. We lay there holding each other and I say I might as well call your school and say you're sick. When I return she tells me to lie down as I do she takes my cock in her mouth and says I can taste my juices on you cock. She says it is sweet like a peach. As she sucks my cock she slides over and tells me to eat her pussy again. As I do she keeps saying you are gonna to take my anal cherry brother. I tell her she has to be lubed up and she gets her hand lotion and smears it all my cock.

Then she smears it all over ass and says she wants to be in control of this. As I lay there my cock is sticking straight up. She takes it in her hand and slowly pushes the head towards her ass. I tell her to go easy and she slowly slides down. She tells me that I feel good in her ass and then she slams hersel

i always wanted to do this

[gyratedotorg]

if i could get their (preferably toll-free) phone numbers, i'd like to set up some sort of an auto-dialer to repeatedly call these "businesses" and play my own pre-recorded messages.

"want to increase your profit size?!"

"make money now!"

Alternative Contacts

[JGski]

When you can't find the obvious contact point, try the non-obvious ones: there is contact info on their employment page

There's a fax #. It says to mark the fax "ATTN: Recruitment", but if you send 100 faxes with "ATTN: Spamming Department", it will probably get to the right place, be it marketing or IT. Try to be nice and polite, but clearly indignant.

There's also a nice job application web form. If they got 1000 applications (you're a geek, cobble up a Perl LWP program), all with a message asking them to stop spamming you, again it will probably get escalated and do you some good. Include the full text of relevant federal and state anti-spam laws. Yes, use your real name - you want to really be taken off their list.

Also notice: a physical address. Haven't tried looking it up, but odds are you'll be able to find some phone number some where with it. Start polite and direct. If that doesn't work, try working through the exchange/pbx prefix to people at random. Validate that they work for that company and then repeat the message. For most the hits will be "it's not my department, you have to call so and so", but who cares; keep calling them anyway. You'll destroy productivity and be communicating the fact their business processes are for shite; eventually the right people will hear about, even if it's from fellow employees who now hate them for making their lives miserable.

Is it possible that they might get huffy and spam you more? Sure, but like you said, they are trying or seem to be legit so they can't afford to take it too far.

With the dot.bust and layoffs it is a real possibility that the one person whose job it was to edit the spam list was layed off and the remaining crew are too clueless to spend the time learning how to fix it - a little insult and injury is usually what's need to kick a lazy compnay in the butt. Been on the receiving side enough to know.

Re:Alternative Contacts

[sakusha]

Oh come on, you can be more creative than that with a FAX machine. Some friends and I tried a revenge-fax method we heard about, we used to wait until late night (when presumably nobody was around to watch the fax machine), get an 8.5x24inch piece of black paper, start faxing it to the target, and then once the lead end of the black page came out of the machine, we'd tape it to the trailing end. You create a continuous loop of black paper, so you are faxing an endless black fax (make sure everything is aligned perfectly or the loop will walk sideways over time).
At worst, you'll waste their fax paper, at best, you'll burn out the thermal printheads on their fax machine.
Optional: tape a small piece of white paper with a short message to the loop (keep it small, you don't want to let those thermal printheads cool off by transmitting too much white). I'd recommend removing the sender's phone number from your fax machine before sending this (which, BTW, is illegal now).

Re:Alternative Contacts

[Anonymous Coward]

this is gay stupid and you are bullshitting. you lie like a rug and are a fucking fag. please return to the cave from whence you came never to return, a pox be unto you, you fucking asshole got this idea from a movie and live vicariously throuhg it on slashdot. FUCK YOU ASSHOLE

Re:Alternative Contacts

[RevAaron]

Heh. I work with a woman who did this, although using white paper with a printed message in ink rather than an all-black piece of paper. The killer was an 800 fax number; they had a helluva bill I imagine.

Re:Alternative Contacts

[Anonymous Coward]

what kind of woman is this? the ru-paul kind you fucking queer homosexual!

you lie like a FUCKING RUG!

Re:Alternative Contacts

[JGski]

The question is whether you want to actually communicate the specific information of the request "I want you to stop spamming me", or if you to communication the specific information "HATE HATE HATE HATE". The former may gain the original poster's goal. The latter will be disconnected from that goal.

I don't see the point of simply being harrassing without wanting to achieve something specific. Harrassing for the pleasure of it makes you a sociopath, not a legitimately aggrieved consumer escalating ignored requests. Another reason I'd include my real contact info and moderate the attack to irritating but not excessive.

Does anyone still use thermally printed faxes anymore? At least in California, particularlly a dot-com-ish kind of company, I certainly doubt it. Inkjet is more likely.

Re:Alternative Contacts

[Jucius Maximus]

"At worst, you'll waste their fax paper, at best, you'll burn out the thermal printheads on their fax machine."

At worst, you'll just put a few extra megs onto the hard drive of the computer that's monitoring their fax line.

Re:Alternative Contacts

[sakusha]

I don't know a single person or company that owns any fax machine other than ancient thermal printer units they bought when fax was considered hi tech. Fax is for Luddites that don't use computers.

REAL HAMSTERS ANUS STRIKES AGAIN

[Anonymous Coward]

f.a.q frequently asked questions

What sort of people buy REALHAMSTER?
Can I get a catalogue?
When will you offer a SHE-MALE REALHAMSTER?
What is the price for a REALHAMSTER?
How are REALHAMSTERs shipped?
Can I customise my hamster?
Does the fur fabric have a foul odour/flavour?
What if I don't fit with REALHAMSTER's sex parts?
Can REALHAMSTER stand upright, unsupported?
Does REALHAMSTER come with clothes? What clothes can it wear?
What are REALHAMSTER's cosmetic features?
Tell me more about the fur fabric.
How strong and flexible are REALHAMSTER's joints?
How do I clean my REALHAMSTER?
What is your return policy?
So you offer teledildonic REALHAMSTERs?
Is REALHAMSTER Year 2000 compliant?

Question: What sort of people buy REALHAMSTER?

REALHAMSTER customers include futurists, artists, animal lovers, film-makers, engineers, computer scientists, health-conscious types, housewives, househusbands you name it. We provide REALHAMSTERs to single men or women, couples seeking to spice up their sex lives, librarians looking for exotic bookends or anyone who is willing to pay outrageous sums of money for the ultimate buggering hamster (for whatever reason).

Question: Can I have a catalogue or more information mailed to me?

Sorry, we don't offer a printed catalogue. All useful information about REALHAMSTER is here, on these web pages. A printed catalogue would simply be a waste of dead trees.

Question: When will you offer a SHE-MALE REALHAMSTER?

We're not quite sure what such a critter would look like. Since, however, the willy and vaginal options are independent on all models, we should have no trouble coming up with your idea of a "SHE-MALE" REALHAMSTER. Please advise us of the relative positioning of the genitalia.

Question: What is the price for a REALHAMSTER?

The Standard REALHAMSTER with two entries is $3,999. The Deluxe three-entry REALHAMSTER is $4,249. Shipping is $50 within New Zealand. Complete information about ordering can be found on our ORDERS page.

Question: I read somewhere that you offered a less expensive sackcloth hamster. Where can I buy it?

Our sackcloth hamsters have been discontinued. They were extremely difficult to engineer and were nowhere near as popular as our fur fabric hamster our testing staff refuse to have anything to do with them. We will not resume engineering of sackcloth hamsters.

Question: Why do you charge so much for REALHAMSTER?

REALHAMSTER would probably be cheap at thrice the price. REALHAMSTER engineering is labour intensive and the component cost is high. We've bent over backwards to make REALHAMSTER affordable while keeping the high performance, realistic look-and-feel and lifelike flexibility our customers demand of the world's finest buggering hamster.

Question: Do you offer a payment plan?

Yes. To qualify for the playment plan, however, you must send us your firstborn. Our interest rate ranges between 11 and 22* percent per annum, depending on the result of an asset-test performed on your immediate family.

Question: Where else can I buy REALHAMSTER?

REALHAMSTER cannot be purchased from anywhere but a private sale or this web site.

Question: How are REALHAMSTERs shipped?

REALHAMSTERs are shipped by standard freight in a rugged cardboard box purporting to contain something innocuous such as a 20" Triniton monitor. The box has child-proof opening instructions and is sealed with brown packing tape. The box is a cube approximately 2'6" across and weighs about 60 lbs when packed. The hamster is buried deep inside the box in a pile of wood shavings.

Question: Can I customise the look of my hamster? Can you mill a custom hea

Re:Alternative Contacts tsarkon reports on FUCK

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING, SLASHDOT NOW TIES AC COMMENTS WITH USER
(Use a disposable account from a disposable IP before moderating this up. Editors generally watch and see who moderates controversial things like this up.)

When you are logged in, /. ties your user account to any Anonymous Coward postings you make... Thus they know who posted it. To demonstrate this:

1. Get mod points.
2. Post an AC comment while logged in
3. Change your dynamic ip, clear all cookies
4. Log back in and try to moderate your AC comment... you can't!!!

Please *log out* AND use another browser before making your AC comments.
Your UID is being tracked, it's not Anonymous. Lots of people post lots of things to Slashdot as AC only because they believe it is really anonymous - it isn't. They hunt "trolls" (non-karma whores and non-group thinking bots) down.

This is true. I used to be a bit more freestyle and witty AC and be a nice guy logged in [basically a karma whore]. After a short while, I could no longer moderate. Slashdot does brand AC posts with IP and then map them back to users. They lie about AC, AC doesn't exist if you re-use ip addresses.

Big brother is watching. So while I might be a "troll" a lot of the AC things I said were to protect myself from Slash-bot groupthink. They punished me for voicing my opinion freestyle.

They also revoke moderation FOREVER - $rtbl it is called, for any moderations of any post that have been secretly flagged annoying [Slashcode has hidden flags viewable by editors]. If you *EVER* mod up something an editor secretly marked annoying you NEVER moderate again, ever - ever even if your karma is capped.

Also, Slashdot uses the friends system to track "trolls." Mark a troll you find funny as a friend *bang* $rtbl never to moderate ever again. My real account had many many good friends who had good karma, and a few funny trolls later, no more moderation for that account. Again, Slashdot is spying on its users to make the people who find certain things funny uneligible to moderate. You will never moderate again if you are a friend of a "foe or freak" of an editor.

FACT: This is in Slashcode CVS

Revision 1.7.2.5 / (download) - annotate - [select for diffs] , Thu Feb 8 13:12:32 2001 UTC (2 years, 9 months ago) by pudge
Branch: bender
CVS Tags: v1_1_3_0
Changes since 1.7.2.4: +18 -7 lines
Diff to previous 1.7.2.4 to branchpoint 1.7

log more AC info

So AC is a scam here. Hitler-Malda screws AC posts in the caboose. So now all you can do is go 100% AC, or , as they expect you to, KARMA WHORE. And it is so lame and unfair and probably illegal as they lie about anonymity.

Also, sometimes when certain information becomes an active thread, they bitchslap the thread much later so that people think its "safe" to participate and the whole thing gets slapped.

There is a presumption anonymous means something. They lie like rugs to the posting public by using the word anonymous. It is not. They brazenly lie though and the un-assuming poster is having everything he says correlated with him and stored in a computer just waiting to be subpoenaed by the people that Slashdot claims to hate but works for. They work for the fascist forces and components of the US government. I like the US and other Western governments but they have good and bad components - there are things you need to do to protect yourself from the bad components. Basically "covering your ass" so to speak. At Slashdot, in lying about AC, un-protects its posting public (seeding a de-anonymizing privacy stripping pandemic in their own "little" way). This makes Slashdot a very dangerous target for you the posters to have your "anonymous" information subpoenaed and you to be chased down and persecuted for speaking your mind. I think that it is a joke Slashdot editors post about SCO, MSFT, RIAA, MPAA, TIA, FBI, etc. They do the same fascist big-brotherly things that those companies do the pub

Source of my spam...

[Unsolicited Commando]

Most of my spam comes from my friends and family. Is there any legal recourse I can take against them? Can I sue my grandma for sending me a picture of the worlds largest cat?

Re:Source of my spam...

[JamesP]

No, but you can send her a picture of the goatse.cx guy.

I am sure she'll never talk to you again...

Procmail.

[evilad]

Bounce every offending email to all of the marketing addresses you can find at that company, along with a polite request that you not receive any more.

Do not leave a copy in your inbox.

How to deal with spammers in Washington State

[Speequinox]

This site gives you step-by-step instructions:
http://www.smallclaim.info/

PLEASE HELP! My cat mittens! HELP! tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

So I came home from work the other day to discover my cat mittens laying on the floor. His breathing was very shallow and his eyes were very glassy. When I approached him I noticed a belt tied around his arm and both a syringe and a bent spoon laying beside him. Despite all his promises to the contrary, my beloved Mittens has started shooting up smack again!

Fortunately the paramedics showed up quickly and gave him some naloxone which saved him. Unfortunately the problem of my cat being addicted to heroin still remains. Last week he sold my stereo and this weekend Mittens offered to perform oral sex on me in exchange for a hit.

I love my cat and want to see him off this horrible drug. Unfortunately he won't stop on his own! Mittens says he can quit anytime he wants to and becomes combative when I force the issue. I'm tired of seeing him throw his life away. He could've been a great mouser, one of the best before he got hooked.

Can anyone recommend a way to get my cat off heroin? It would be much appreciated.

Also, this must be said; I dont want to fuck my poor cat mittens. I love him dearly. IF he offered oral sex as a hit, and I would never compromise the sanctity and trust of our brotherly (non gay, non sexual) relationship! I thank youall for your genuine concern for the safety of my genitals with regard to animal contact with sandpapery cat tongues, I assure your that fornicating with animals is not on the repitoire!

Please, if you know how to help poor mittens get off the smack, please, for the love of god help. Its mittens darkest time, and I dont want this to turn out like that beefy rugby guy who died on junk in Trainspotting. I dont want me or mittens to swim in toilets either. Please, help!!

Re:Procmail. oh please. refer to a doc tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

please link to a document that chronicles exactly how to do what you are suggesting and its efficacy. my line of thinking is two fold:
1) you dont know what you are doing or talking about
2) if you did, no such documents exists and you are talking out of your ass.

Some ways to fight spam

[Valleyman]

o Don't ever use your primary email address
when subscribing to newsletters/registering
at a forum/posting on a guestbook that does
not allow anonymous comments. Don't forget
that emails are DISPOSABLE! Make as many
as you want, and if one is getting tons of
spam, just stop checking it and get another!
Just make sure to keep a primary email for
you and your friends (nothing more!).
o Set up filters that auto-delete subjects
with words like mortgage, refinance,
singles, dating, fat, weight, viagra, free,
several sexual expletives. Be sure to tell
your friends about them so their jokes
aren't deleted.
o If a spammer DOES get through, just take
whatever there is from "@spammersdomain.ext"
and add it to a second list of filters called
"spammin' fools" or something.
o Here's an interesting piece of literature
I found regarding the fight against spam:
Look for "Subject: ADMIN: For Your Spam Only" within page

Hope this helps!

Re:Some ways to fight spam fuck you : tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

these instructions FUCKING SUCK ASS FAG. this shit sucks balls. you fucking moron. you copied that shit out of a copyrighted documents.

FUCK YOU PIG

it doesnt help

YOU KNOW NOTHING OF STOPING SPAM YOU LYING SACK OF SHIT

Re:c'mon AOL mailboxes are a pain in the tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

you are an AOL fag with an AOL fag address that got harvested because you are an idiot. You leftyour fucking email somewhere to be harvested and now you want JOHN ASHCROFT to come FUCK ME. Fuck you, your stupidity, your AOL email address, and your fucking draconia laws. change your email address. Ask your dumb fucking friends to BCC you, and get on with life you fucking moron. And learn to use delete and grep for viagra.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

Cease and desist letter.

[foniksonik]

You are describing harassment and invasion of privacy. Send a hard copy letter of cease and desist care of their legal department. Add a clause that you will place a lean on their assets for damages, you don't have to specify how much... unspecified damages. That should get their attention. If it doesn't, go ahead and file the lean with your local county judge... w/ copies sent to the same address. Collecting is never easy but the threat is usually enough to get action.

Re:Cease and desist letter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a clause that you will place a lean on their assets...

Obviously you don't read too much. Lean is what you do when you're standing at an angle. Lien is what you file against someone's property. Oh, and for your benefit, "loose" is what your pants are when they keep falling down; "lose" is when you have misplaced something.

This post brought to you by the Insensitive Grammar Nazis of Slashdot.

Re:Some ways to fight spam fuck you : tsarkon

[Valleyman]

*yawn* Don't you just LOVE the anonymous coward :)

Re:Address whatever toilet duck flingis tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

You know nothing. THe scalability of vagina was never questioned. I am christ so I was immaculatly concieved and haveno parents.

Anywho is a fucking lame thing to say. That makes you a dumb slashbot fag.

Yuri is a fucking communist evil follower of satan.

How hard would it be for spammers to figure this shit out? Seriously. Most of them dont accept hotmail and yahoo at this point. You know what, you go fucking ahead and try it, it isnt going to reduce spam - who has ever used a real email for any of that shit? justmake a "junk" yahoo accounts, empty it when you need to sign up, and move on.

So you go ahead now and think you are hot shit with some commies spamgourmet that doesnt solve anything.

Re:Some ways to fight spam fuck you : tsarkon

[Anonymous Coward]

dont you just love the CRUSHING FUCKING BOOT of the jackbooted ashcroft loving GESTAPO.

seig heil to you Valley Man, Waffen Shutzstauffel Waffen SS. Seing Heil to you SEIG HEIL. I kneel to you Fuhrer. you are der leader in the fascist world and i submit to you because you belay the hatred I have towards you towards jews, negriods and cripples.

yes, censor me and i shall do your bidding. SEIG HEIL.

Re:Holy hell... tsarkon reports

[Anonymous Coward]

holy fuck you. /. was never good. k5 would have never started if this place didnt suck and k5 sucks because of left wing communists. people only troll here because of lameness filters, and the group moderation here leads to more or less wrong answers being moderated up because its populist.

you reall think that mass moderation by a mobocracy can ever produce anything of value? you reall think that? you are fucking deranged.

Oooh, you sent them several emails?

[nastyphil]

Call them on the fucking telephone.

Certified Mail

[iamweezman]

I work for the post office. You want to send it certified not registered. Certified is legal proof of mailing and it is the only special service that you can add to postage that will stand in court.

I doubt most judges would ignore a registered receipt, but registered mail is for secure mailing (mailing the hope diamond and such), and is not legal proof of mailing.

Re:Certified Mail

[shfted!]

Ahh... I had the two terms mixed up. Thanks!

Re:Certified Mail

[cartman94501]

Of course, certified mail is only proof that you mailed SOMETHING, not that you mailed the specific thing you claim to have mailed. There is also a less-expensive "proof of mailing" which would serve a similar purpose but without the possibility of confirming that the recipient actually received it. This is popular for things like college applications and tax returns, which simply must be postmarked by a certain date to be considered timely, and where date of receipt is irrelevant.

didn't read question did you?

[bluGill]

Your answer has nothing to do with the question. He already knows who is sending this, likely he shoped at their store once, entered a contest where they notify by email, and then started getting their advertising flyers in his email. On all levels it checks out as them - they own the domain it is from, the spam, when opened (often it is some windows only format though) looks just like the one they send with the local newspaper. It is clear exactly who sent it. So you try the opt-out address, and it doesn't work.

So, how does your post help them at all? You can filter on the sender just as easially as who it is to.

Re:didn't read question did you?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what I would do? Though this would require that you are willing to give up your e-mail address, at least temporarily, and also have access to a shell prompt,

I would tell all my friends to stop e-mailing me at the address and then create a .forward file and put their e-mail address in it. That way all their junk mail will simply be sent back to them. Alternatively, you could probably create some mail rule to look for their e-mail address in each e-mail and send it back to them as well. I would also send them an e-mail telling them I was doing so.

I would tell them if they do not remove me from their list then they will continue to get all the e-mail they are sending me returned back to them.
I would also try to get them on a spam list and report their address to ordb.org in the off chance their e-mail server is an open relay (though that's less likely to be the case coming from a legit organization, still worth a try though).

Blather

[andy@petdance.com]

I can't think of a topic more likely to generate ill-informed, second-hand, undocumented frothing blather from the Slashdot multitudes.

New Shimmer is a Slashdot article, AND a troll!

Similar problem

[yamla]

I had a similar problem with Microsoft. Actually, with their XBox advertising list. They ignored my removal requests (four), my complaint to their support address, and eventually even a written cease-and-desist letter. Luckily, I found Microsoft was a member of eTrust. Dealing with eTrust, in comparison, was a pleasure. I got a response back from eTrust within minutes asking for more details (and a copy of one or more of the spam). They forwarded it on to Microsoft who responded within a day, apologising for the problem, claiming they had never had a copy of the cease-and-desist letter forwarded to their department (quite possible), and explaining what they had done to ensure I would not receive any more spam from them. This certainly seems to have worked so far. I found it sad that a C&D letter didn't work but I'd strongly recommend dealing with eTrust if you can.

Now, I think the company you are dealing with is not an eTrust member. You may still be able to contact eTrust for help, though. I know at least half their complaints are for non-members so it may be worth it, I'm not sure.

Slashdot HAS covered this

[ottothecow]

I think this is it

Man from michigan sued sears and won under a junk fax law

Depends on what state you're in

[MrResistor]

Many states already have anti-spam laws, usually based on the junk fax laws. In CA I believe you can sue the spammer for $500 per spam, for example. check the laws of your state, and perhaps even consult a legal professional. Even if your state doesn't have a specific anti-spam law, you might still be able to get them under the junk fax laws. Most of the difficulty is finding out who is actually sending the spam, but you already know that.

email addresss hijacking?

[josepha48]

What can be done when you get "Mail System Error" mail messages that you did not send? Someone has STOLEN my email address and is using it as the reply to and from. Also lots of mail that says Hi in the subject. Of course it gets filtered out by my spam filter and I just look at the subject and delete.

I HATE SPAM! It's not freedom of speach, its almost DOS'ing mail servers.

Re:Legal Recourse? Why on earth...?

[Jucius Maximus]

"I have been getting spammed by a legitimate company for the last five months. I have gone to their site to ask to be removed, and sent several e-mails to various address asking to be removed from their mailing list. I have been totally ignored."

I had the same problem a few years back and simply could not get them to remove me from their list. The recourse I took was probably not illegal but still satisfying and effective:

Eventually I created a 700K image with nothing but the word REMOVE in it. I sent it to them. I never got another message from them again.

Sue they for "illegal use of private property"

[Via_Patrino]

Sue they for "illegal use of private property": using your computer without your authorization to display their ads.

I've threatened sue some real big company with that and it worked.

Re:tsarkon reports EVERY MUSLIM IS ISLAMIC SATANIC

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

Re:Legal Recourse? Why on earth...? tsarkon hates

[Anonymous Coward]

And I was afraid I would never see this troll again...

REDUNDANT!?

[Valleyman]

I'm trying to HELP people! Guess I'm not allowed to be nice...

Re:Some ways to fight spam fuck you : tsarkon

[Valleyman]

Just joined /. and they already are bowing before my almighty presence :D

Re:Call them tsarkon poops on triumph dog

[Thu Anon Coward]

Simon, Simon, Simon.... you really must get out more often...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/30/index.ht ml

Re:Alternative Contacts tsarkon reports on FUCK

[ooby]

I don't think that comment had anything to do with legally approaching spam companies to ask them to stop sending you email.

Same 'ol spam...

[Anonymous Coward]

It always does seem to be about a pussy in the end.

your AG's office

[stinkycat]

Check w/ your state's Attorney General office. They may have information about any laws re: spam abuse in your state. If your state doesn't have laws in place, your AG may still be interested and helpful. Best wishes for nasty cases of Gonorrhea to all you spammers out there. -C

A bit of a contradiction there

[jamehec]

A legit company that spams? No such animal.