|
|
|
| ||
 |
|
|
|
December 19, 2003Spamming the spammersIn a comment on yesterday's spam posting, a reader named Karl summed up the feelings of many when he wrote of spammers, "I wish there was a way to send something right back at them. I wish I could reach right through the monitor and choke the S%@t out of 'em!" Which made me wonder -- why did Karl feel it necessary to disguise the word snot? OK, actually, his comment made me think of an August column in which the Miami Herald's Dave Barry published the toll-free number of the American Teleservices Association, encouraging people to call and tell the association how they felt about telemarketing calls. In a subsequent column, Barry explained what happened: It turned out that a lot of you were eager to call up the telemarketing industry. Thousands and thousands of you called the ATA. I found out about this when I saw an article in a direct-marketing newspaper, the DM News, which quoted the executive director of the ATA, Tim Searcy. Here's an excerpt from the article: All of which led me to an interesting idea. But before I get to that, it should be noted that the allegations against the alleged spammers are just that -- allegations, which at least one of the companies is adamantly denying. Also, in the past, at least one Microsoft spam suit targeted someone wrongly. At the same time, this weblog obviously has a miniscule readership compared to the readership of Dave Barry's columns, with significantly less ability for its readers to get anyone's attention through sheer volume of response. In addition, e-mail addresses are much more easily changed than telephone numbers are. With that said, it's worth noting that there are quite a few e-mail addresses of alleged spammers in the exhibit filed by the New York Attorney General. I took the liberty of collecting them below, just for the record. (One caveat: If you do happen to e-mail them, a la Dave Barry, you should create a disposable hotmail or yahoo account for the purpose, to protect your own e-mail address.) At the very least, Karl, it might make you feel a little better.
Comments
Well, Karl (if I may address you through this blog) there's something you perhaps can do that is almost as satisfying: run a proxypot. Many spammers still use open proxies to send their spam (and now many don't - the fear of proxypots could be the reason for the switch.) That means the spammers check a bunch of IP's for open proxies and then abuse the ones they find. See how it works? First they look for them, then they abuse the ones they find. Mostly when they "find" an open proxy they've really found one - but nobody gave the spammers a guarantee, did they? That's where your potential fun is centered. Check out the Bubblegum proxypot: http://world.std.com/~pacman/proxypot.html Run that and you might soon be trapping spam sent to your system for delivery elsewhere. Don't worry: the Bubblegum proxypot doesn't deliver the crap, it just makes the spammer think it does. You then find the spammer's IP, find the abuse adress for the ISP in whose space he is, and report him. If the ISP is decent (not all are, sadly) the spammer's account will be terminated and (the best part) he won't be told who turned him in. So off the spammer goes to a new account - and maybe sends you more spam. Who knows how many times you'll hit one. If you have any sort of permanent internet connection you can do this. If a spammer checks your system for being an open proxy system (I get checked about every other day on my link) he may wrongly conclude you've got an open proxy - if you are running something that fools him. Ron Guilmette (Google for him) ran a network of proxypots and in under 3 months got over 100 spammer accounts shut down. (A junior version of this is to check your software firewlall logs for attempts to contact ports 1080, 3128, and 8080 and to report those attempts to the ISP responsible for the IPP form which they came. It may or may not be a spammer but it's almost certainly someone up to no good.) Posted by: Brad Spencer at December 29, 2003 03:27 PMHello fellow spam victims . Here are some email adress for respamming , the fucking spammers , so they taste there owen medecine ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha . USE them ,:) karen@optinbig.com lseligman@synergy6.com Gambler sites who are spamming me Actually Heinz, if you were to complain to the correct parties, it might do you some good. None of the hundreds of emails you have forwarded to us day in and day out have been for any of our mailings. You are not on any of our lists. It would be a better idea to go after the spamming sites as you say, since we're not spamming you to begin with. However, I recommend you not deface them. No sense in getting yourself in trouble. Also, seeing as how we're not responsible for the spam you are receiving, could you please remove info@optinbig.com from your complaint list? Thank you, Karen
> 52 spams I want tocomplaint about , now I have been complaining for 2-3 Replied to Karen at optinbig : You will all be respammed untill , the 50-60 , spams everyday stops Dear Karen Heinz Tomis from Denmark
Suit yourself. I won't see any of them at either of my accounts.
But I am not that stupid , because , why is she complaining over my respamming to info@optinbig.com and asking me to remove them from my complaint list ???? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah this are stock spammers http://www.pinksheets.com/ Well, Karl (if I may address you through this blog) there's something you perhaps can do that is almost as satisfying: run a proxypot. Many spammers still use open proxies to send their spam (and now many don't - the fear of proxypots could be the reason for the switch.) That means the spammers check a bunch of IP's for open proxies and then abuse the ones they find. See how it works? First they look for them, then they abuse the ones they find. Mostly when they "find" an open proxy they've really found one - but nobody gave the spammers a guarantee, did they? That's where your potential fun is centered. Check out the Bubblegum proxypot: I did maked an error , because I did not got any response from Pinksheet and thought by mistake they where lousy Spammers , they are not not spammers , they are a decent company , who are victims of spammers posting there reports and really want to stop it , see the email I got from them and Delete them from the respam list . I repeat the adress for deleting are info@pinksheets.com They are not stock spammers , but spammers are pretending to be them . Innouncement!!! Posted by: Meban at February 20, 2004 03:47 AM |
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |
| Home | Site Map | About the P-I | Contact Us | P-I Jobs | Home Delivery | |
|  |
 101 Elliott Ave. W. Seattle, WA 98119 (206) 448-8000 Home Delivery: (206) 464-2121 or (800) 542-0820 Send comments to newmedia@seattlepi.com ©1996-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer Terms of Service/Privacy Policy
| |
