Re: Are spammers subscibing to the lists?
On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, Paul Wade wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, Sudhakar Chandrasekharan wrote:
>
> > Talking of spam - Have you folks ever wondered how they never want to
> > sell anything that is worth buying? All the spam that I have got seem
> > to belong to one of the following categories -
> >
> > * Make money fast (rehash of the old pyramid scheme)
> > * Advertise your site in a gazillion search engine for pennies
> > * Scantily clad persons are waiting for me to visit their pages.
> > * 10,000 "fresh" email addresses are available for 19.95 (this should be
> > the spam equivalent of recursion ;-)
You forgot one type: Some months ago, after posting to this list, a
junkmailer urged me several times to accept Jesus Christ as my personal
saviour. Well, as long as they don't e-mail bibles along with it this kind
of spam is probably the most bearable.
> Dear debian users,
>
> I am looking for a way to make money fast while advertising my website
> in all the search engines. Hopefully, scantily clad persons are waiting
> to sell me thousands of email addresses.
While you're at it, you might want to start a cult too.
> Seriously, I think they are fishing in the wrong place for idiots.
Seriously, why not share some countermeasures with the rest of the list?
For example if I get spam/junkmail and I feel like taking time to react,
I'll spell the message header carefully and traceroute the site.
Depending on where the message came from I'll reply to:
- if the spam is sent by "93d4f6e2@aol.com", send it to abuse@aol.com and
also to postmaster@aol.com - an account that's very likely not aliased to
/dev/null. Most big isp's do reasonably actively maintain an "abuse"
address, though not all do.
- if the spam is coming from an address like "opportunity@roguesite.com",
the output from traceroute becomes very important. I'll email my complaint
to the abuses and postmasters of two or three upstream isp's _and_ I'll
fill the bcc: lines with all account names at the spammer site that I can
think of and care to type.
In the message that I send to complain about the spam, I always include
the full header and relevant parts of the message (often just k's and k's
of predictable drivel, but sometimes they include (web)addresses.)
I clearly state that the message was sent unsollicited and against my
wish. That this is illegal in the US and many other countries (latter is
just a guess by me.) That their systems have been participating in these
breaches of law. That I urge them to take some kind of action so that I
will not undergo further harrassments supported by their systems.
Of course I am not a lawyer and most of the above is pure bluff. I am not
a US citizen and would probably never start a lawsuit in the US - where
most of the spammers and their isp's reside. It is just my impression that
americans tend to be quite paranoid about possible lawsuits.
Naturally I try to word everything in a friendly and concerned tone and I
"dear sirs/ladies" them, but I also try to maximize the suggestion of
liability. This is the reason to bcc: the spammer. Maybe he doen't take
these threats very seriously, he might think that his isp does take it
seriously. To make sure that the spammer notices this, I bcc: him on as
many accounts and hosts/domains as possible.
I bet that pisses the spammers off, because I never get follow-up spams
after I have complained in the above explained manner.
I'm very curious about other methods of fighting back. What does abuse.net
do for example?
Let the spammers know that this is the wrong place to collect spam
victims. If enough debian-related email addresses give them bad feedback,
they might sooner or later figure out that it is better policy for them to
not collect their addresses from this list.
Joost
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