Fight Spam - Spam them back!

[colr]

Im looking for some views on an action already taken.

Like everybody online we recieve countless spam emails every day. Today I got very fed up with this and took one of the email addresses of a constant re-offender and emailed them back 1000 seperate copies of an email, warning them to stop sending out spam.

I mentioned this to an online friend who told me that in essence I was spamming myself. Personally I think this is not true since technically my mail was in response to a mail they already sent me. He then went on to say that I weas using up valuable email bandwidth.

The way I see it, is that if I can get this person to stop sending out these emails, then the long term benefits far outweight any immediate increase in traffic. And anyway, its not as if 1000 emails is going to choke anybodies server other than the offenders, if it happens at all!

Anybody got any thoughts on this?

C.

[nickc]

Most spammers change email address on a regular basis and I don't they will take much notice of their inboxes filling up - they will just delete it. You are also confirming that your email address is valid which means you will get more spam. In the meantime, you are soaking up valuable bandwidth. Better to report them to their ISP or use an account like AOL or Hotmail that allows you to report the sender with the click of a button.

Nick

[tamra]

Originally Posted by colr

Like everybody online we recieve countless spam emails every day. Today I got very fed up with this and took one of the email addresses of a constant re-offender and emailed them back 1000 seperate copies of an email, warning them to stop sending out spam.

actually, you could be fined for this, and wouldn't that be ironic. the best thing to do is send a copy of the mail with the full headers to the originating network and cc the FTC (uce@ftc.gov) I was just coming here to post a "thank goodness" message about spam and saw this. there is an end to all this spam and it's coming soon! :o)

[colr]

I actually emailed them back from a different address. I used a hotmail account that I just set up so they wouldnt be able to confirm my email address.

I wont do that again, but I have become increasingly aggrevated with my current spam filter which has proved a waste of time.To be fair to the software, it does capture about a few hundred, but it does still let through over 1000 over a weekend.Does anyboy out there suggest a good spam wall within about £500 UK?

The current setup uses a text filtering that does work, but the method itself is flawed. The spam getting through embeds illegal html tags within docs. For example:

<shsfdfsd>vi<Ddfsd>agr<dfdsds>a

shows 'viagra' sinece the illegal html tag is ignored by the browser.

In fact, as I write, I think Ive solved the problem! If all html emails are w3c verified their would be no reason to ignore illegal code, just display them! That would make the spam mail using this method impossible to read, and so only through mailice would people continue!

Altering browsers in this way would pretty much allow lex-based spam filters to operate to full potential and weed out the crap from your inbox purely based on the content.

Perhaps image recognition technology could be used for combatting the purely graphical spam.

[ranjan]

the best thing to do is send a copy of the mail with the full headers to the originating network and cc the FTC (uce@ftc.gov)

This is exactly what I intend to do, ientry spams newsletter to this forum even after unsubscribing!!

To unsubscribe from WebProWorld Go Here.
To unsubscribe from WebProWorld or other iEntry publication,
simply send an email request to: support@ientry.com

The above doesn't help

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=20090

[colr]

Wonder whats going on there then?!??!

[Stevo]

Sometimes if its a legit company (like iEntry) then it may just be a problem with their bot - just tell their webmaster.

A few things regarding the Spam side of things:
Replying to the email doesn't always work cause normally it is a fudged address - its easy to 'send' email that looks like it comes from anyone - just Telnet into the SMTP server! So thats why blocking them doesn't help - but not even replying can do that much, as the address may not exist. Then there is always the idea that you are sinking to their level - not the right way to win an argument.

One option that is becoming common is the reporting of open relays which forward relay the spam so it looks like it comes from a legit server. There are organisations that make blacklists of 'dodgy' servers - which you can subscribe to. I learnt this the hard way as my server once was blacklisted cause it hadn't been setup properly - so I had to change the config. Anyway, this provides a legit degree of action against spammers, and at the same time, if you subscribe, it might serve as a solution to the problem - or help alleviate it. The old idea of filtering for words never works anyway - it just comes back as vi@gra!

Anyway, one url is: http://www.mail-abuse.com/

Cheers,
Steve

[mwagner]

It's easy to say you can fight Spam with Spam. The problem is, you're just confirming your e-mail address so you get more spam.

The best thing to do is delete, delete, delete.

[effisk]

Originally Posted by colr

If all html emails are w3c verified...

...there wouldn't be any html email in your inbox. Who checks his/her HTML newsletters for W3C compliance?

IMHO, you just shoudn't disclose your email address. Use online forms to get people to contact you, only give your email address to people you trust, and above all - and sadly this doesn't only depends on you - when forwarding an email to a large list of recipients, put the recipients' addresses in the BCC field, not the "to" field, so that all these addresses don't end up in some spammer's emailbox, and ask your friends to do so.

The fight against spammers will be won when people will know how to use their email boxes properly. Hearing everyone complaining about spam is so annoying when you know it all depends on us - not the spammers.

I have setup a webpage explaining how to avoid SPAM (in French, maybe I should translate it), and anytime I receive a (forwarded) email with a long list of recipients in the "to" or the "CC" field, I forward them all the URL of the page, and I make sure all their addresses are in the BCC field. Call me a spammer if you like, but it's for a good cause. :)

[Artyom]

I just want to show you the way I deal with spam. I use this software
http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/
don't pay much attention to its spam filtering system, it's not big deal.

One of the reasons I love this software - you can perform dispatch function. I.e. the program reads all new email from your mail server and gives you an emails from/to/subects/dates list so you can bulk check everything you want to receive or delete with a couple of short cuts and that's it.

So you do not even download spam, you can separate it from normal email by its subjects.
I think it's not a problem for you to recognize good and bad emails:-)

[urbanite]

If you really want to hurt the spammers then hit em where it hurts so to speak. You know that their servers are working flat out to get their rubbish to you you also know that everytime someone clicks on their link or views their images, their servers are required to do more work.
Do the math
I dont know whewre it will get you or how you would actually action it but.......

[effisk]

Originally Posted by urbanite

[...]you also know that everytime someone clicks on their link or views their images, their servers are required to do more work.[...]

I'm not going to look at hot asian chicks or even xanax pills all day long just to try to block their servers. :)

And I believe the server that hosts the pics is different from the one that sends you all this crap.