Re: tlug: spam

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael Chiu <mchiu@example.com> writes:

    Michael> On Mon, 25 May 1998 16:48:40 +0900 Neil Fergusson
    Michael> <mv124@example.com> wrote:

    >> I have made the mistake of leaving cookies all over the net,
    >> (finally turned off cookies in Netscape) and am currently
    >> receiving heaps of unsolicited mail myself.

procmail helps with this a lot.  If you really want the signal (so to
speak) to noise ratio to go up, sign up at
xemacs-patches-request@example.com  I'll guarantee that unsolicited
spam will be less than 1% of your mailbox.  Solicited irrelevant
patches might not make you feel that much better, though.  :-P

    >> Any way to send some of these clowns an E-mail letter bomb ;-)
    >> ?

Usually not.  Most of them are throw-away IP accounts at large common-
carrier type providers.

You can however make sure that the account actually gets thrown away
by writing to the correct postmaster.  In the case of people using
company or school equipment, you can often get them fired/thrown out
of school.

One spammer (an MLM) in Colorado is now behind bars for making the
mistake of putting a prominent local citizen's name on one of those
"mail $5 to each of the name below and request a report" deals.  The
PLC was not interested in a financial settlement, but went for the
throat, and got it.  (Obviously the person was rich enough to afford a 
very good shark^H^H^H^H^Hlawyer, and there was sufficient evidence of
malicious intent to make it criminal defamation.)

That's not something you want to try until you're very rich, though.

    Michael> I've always wondered about mail bombs and their
    Michael> effectiveness... If you mail bomb an account that doesn't
    Michael> exist, wouldn't it backfire and bounce right back to you,

Not to me.  If you don't know how to avoid it, don't try it yourself.
:-)

    Michael> and in effect, bomb yourself?  I figure most spammers
    Michael> don't use their real e-mail accounts, or depend on a free
    Michael> mail server (ie Hotmail)...

This is a canard.  Recently AOL has come back into the business, for
reasons "Atropos" chooses not to speculate about.  But for several
years now it has been very ineffective to spam from AOHell,
ShotgunMail, Junko, and the like.  The return addresses are 99.44%
forged.

It's an nice warmup exercise in AI to write a header parser that
automatically determines where the spam really got injected into the
Internet.  Also warn the poor sucker whose Linux box got used as the
relay.  It's a difficult exercise in AI to detect spam.

But once you've got that combination, you might even get the
b******d's account yanked before s/he finishes uploading the spam.
(Did that once, felt _good_ >:-} just happened to be online when the
mail came in, and so was the postmaster.)
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