Spamfighting Since the Death of MakeLoveNotSpam?

vacuum_tuber asks: "The now-defunct Lycos anti-spamsite screen saver, MakeLoveNotSpam, was extremely well received despite the whines and hand wringing from the no-one-should-ever-actively-defend-themselves crowd. There was speculation after its demise that Open Source spam-punishing tools would emerge. Other tools such as SpamVampire, LadVampire (punishes fake bank sites), Spam Research Tool and others were mentioned with increasing frequency, but there has been no coherent followup to gauge what people are doing since the death of the Lycos screen saver. What are you doing that you think is effective in punishing spammers or their spam-site sponsors?"

Comments

The best way

[nilbog]

The best way to fight spam is to go home and turn off your mom's zombie computer...

Fight Spam with Spam! Spam Spam Spam

[Brainboy]

I've been spamming the spammy spammers with my anti-spammer spammer. My spam scripts is well suited to spamming spammy spammers with spam. Spaming spammers is the best way to get them to stop spamming. Infact sometimes I use other spammer's spam to spam the spammers.

Now I'm off to eat my breakfast of spam, eggs, bacon, and spam.

Make it illegal.

[koreaman]

Make spam illegal, that is the only real way to stop it.

Write your congressman, if you have some free time try to meet with one of them and lobby them. Few people know how remarkably easy it is to get your congressman to sit down and meet with you.

Spamvampire works

[DogDude]

I use Spamvampire almost constantly. It works great. It sucks up their bandwidth, and while it doesn't DOS them, it does make the business of spam a hell of a lot less financially viable. I regularly pound on spammer sites (the sites actually selling the garbage) for a few days, then the site dies. Now, there's no way to know if it's because these sites are only designed to be live for a week or so at a time, or if I really am hitting them in the pocketbook, but I'd like to think that it works. At the VERY least, it makes me feel better knowing that somebody is going to be very shocked when they see their bandwith bill at the end of the month. And, the info that the guy who wrote the SmapVampire scripts concerning the 97% billing is very true, so the results he describes are actually quite realistic.

My solution

[nizo]

What are you doing that you think is effective in punishing spammers or their spam-site sponsors?

Sending xmas cards to inmates about to be released from prisons in their state with the spammers name and home address as the return address with sincere hopes that they will come visit once they get out. Plus I get to use up all these extra xmas cards instead of packing them away for next year.

Two approaches.. ban buying, hit the websites

[speculatrix]

Why don't we consider the complete opposite: make it illegal to buy from spammers - kill the revenue stream, kill the spammer's business, stop the spam.

Another method is to hit the spammer's website... consider this perl fragment:
while (1)
{

• $sock = new IO::Socket::INET (
• 
  
  • Proto => 'tcp',
  • 
    PeerAddr => 'website',
    PeerPort => '80',
    Reuse => 1
    
  );
  $sock->autoflush(1);
  push @sockArray, $sock;
  

}

Naturally, the above code is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be used in anger :-)

Post URLs here

[Quixote]

and this motley crew shall /. into oblivion...

No, a legal solution.

[www.sorehands.com]

I just returned from serving about 12 lawsuits on Avtech direct. With enough people suing spammers under their state's laws, it will tend to reduce much of the spam -- by making the spammers pay for spammers.

Even though spam may be international, the foreign companies can be sued. When you send spam into the USA (or the particular state) you are subject to the laws of the USA. After I sued Global Web promotions, the FTC sued them and siezed their funds. Even though they are in Australia, they are doing business here by sending spam.

Forward the spam, but not just to the BSA

[IrishMASMS]

There are a few organizations & companies that would love for you to forward on your spam; and Spamcop [http://www.spamcop.net/] would love to help you LART the headers & spam web hosts.

You can tell where the spam comes from; or at least identify the web sites they are spamvertizing. Yes, it is sometimes a BPITA - hence why I use spamcop to help auto LART the headers/email for me. I know with squirrel mail any spam you can auto forward to your spamcop account to be LARTed.

Normally I LART anything that gets past the spam filters, thinking that anything that does get caught is by the big spamhouses. I also report my spam to the Feds for action:
"FTC" uce@ftc.gov,
"US Postal Inspectors service" fraud@uspis.gov

These folks ask for spam, to either tweak their anti-spam tools or for internal investigation:
"junk_brightmail.com" junk@brightmail.com,
"SendUsSpam" spam@sendusspam.com,
"Spamarchive" submit@spamarchive.org,
"Spamrecycle" spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com,

Specific countries have anti-spam efforts:
"Spam from China" spam@ccert.edu.cn,
"Spam from Korea" spamcop@kisa.or.kr,

As already mentioned - any spam offering grey market (aka cheap) software?
"BSA" software@bsa.org,
"SBA" piracy@spa.org

Any 419 scams?
"419@nigeriapolice.org" 419@nigeriapolice.org,
"Central Bank of Nigeria" info@cenbank.org,
"thoselads_scamorama.com" thoselads@scamorama.com,
"Treasury Nigeraian scam reporting" 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov

Child pr0n?
"FBI" iitf.tampa@fbi.gov,
"FBI_Child_porn" complaints.detroit@fbi.gov

Any stock or securities spam?
"cyberfraud@nasaa.org" cyberfraud@nasaa.org,
"nasd Penny stock fraud submittal" ombuds@nasd.com,
"Securities fraud SEC" enforcement@sec.gov

Any food or drug spam?
"FDA_Complaint" webcomplaints@ora.fda.gov,
"FDA_Complaint2" webmail@oc.fda.gov

FYI: there are some anti spam groups I am a member of, where a little bit of research dug up these agencies. It is easy enough to set up an auto forward on your spam folder to report & LART the spammer scum. ;)

HTH!