Re: [tlug] B2B e-mail solicitation response

[Godwin Stewart <gstewart@example.com>]

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 01:12:28 +0100 , patrick.niessen@example.com wrote:

> I think in order to qualify for SPAM (capitalised on purpose)
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Why?

> you need also apply another criteria besides content: untargeted mass
> mailing....[snip]
> 
> What only pissed me off is that he not only sent it to our general
> addresss: solutions@  but also to internship-tech@  which is reserved for
> applications from students as the name clearly indicates.

Correct. It's untargeted. QED.

> A bit harsh innit?  So instead of police warning a burglar to "freeze" and
> drop his weapons, they should just shoot him?

Huh?

Dumping the perp's IP range into your DNSBL is not the cyber-equivalent of
shooting the perp. All you're doing is locking it out of your house. What's
to stop the same twat spamming someone else?

> How long would the community continue to support a tough policy on crime
> if the reality looks like that. Its important that you first determine
> that there is a real, serious and repeated abuse of the mail system, and I
> understand that the appropriate procedure is : 1. warn, 2. If repeated
> abuse complain to provider, 3. Provider may escalate if not and abuse
> continues report to lists, right?

In an ideal world, yes. In the real world, no.

First of all, you can't allow the abuse to become repeated. If you give
everyone a bite at the apple before thwapping them your network will
eventually become saturated. At 11:03 this morning I had already fended off
241 attempts to spam me since midnight, most from an IP address on Genuity
which has resulted in me dumping 4.0.0.0/8 in the firewall. Nothing
legitimate ever comes from that part of Genuity anyway (or from anywhere on
Genuity for that matter) so it will achieve lossless compression of my logs.

Secondly, never warn a spammer about anything. Any communications from you
will be interpreted as a confirmation that your e-mail address is live and
read and it will be sold to other spammers on "millions" CD-ROMs.

Thirdly, depending on the provider, complaining is worse than useless.
Verio, for example, is *KNOWN* to pass complaints back to the spammers,
which often results in revenge attacks. Others such as MCI/Worldcom/UUnet
simply hardwire the abuse mailbox to /dev/null and others such as most of
the Chinese networks bounce anything going to postmaster/abuse.

Please wake up and smell the coffee. The Internet is no longer the
cooperative playground it used to be.

http://linxnet.com/misc/spam/thank_spammers.html

> > Well done. You've just opted in to receiving yet more spam.
> 
> Rubbish! There was a real person behind this mail not an automatic fraud
> spam registration.

And the relevance of this is....?

> I am not talking about personal spam, but about unwanted real business
> solicitations, made in an inappropriate manner.

Sounds pretty much like the definition of commercial spam to me.

> > Mr Niessen
> > Thank you for your email and I am sorry to put you to
> > inconvience. I am removing your email address from our 
> > records as requested. Regards/XXX

...and adding them to the next "millions" CD-ROM to be released next
week, sucker.

-- 
G. Stewart   --   gstewart@example.com -- gstewart@example.com
Registered Linux user #284683 (Slackware 9.0, Linux 2.4.25)
--------------------------------------------------------------
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

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