On Thu, 13 Jul 2000, Steven Lord wrote:
>I think that prosecuting spammers is far too polite. I had a spammer target
>my hotmail account, filling it up with up to 5 of the same e-mail because my
>address was in it 5 times. I tried reasoning with them, and they'd say
>they'd take me of their list but they never did. So one day I found they
>were online at the same time I was because of some e-mails coming in at the
>same time. I got their IP address and nuked them. Then I thought - if I
>configure my mail client at work to automatically run a program when e-mail
>comes in from that person I can do all sorts of things. Over a period of 6
>months, I ended up installing a trojan on his pc - thanks to microsoft vbs
>support - cheers microsoft! - nuked him several thousand times whenever he
>sent an e-mail to me automatically and eventually setup netcat on his pc to
>give me a dos prompt via telnet. I then went on to IRC and asked some people
>in some leet-hacker channel what it means when you telnet to a dos prompt,
>gave them the ip addy and never heard from him again. Apparently they were
>all on his machine, having fun with the format command :)
While I've taken an aggressive approach to SPAM in the past as
well (mailbombs), I've never went as far as you claim to have
done, but I do know one thing... It was a waste of MY time to do
so. Many people said just delete them and ignore, but it is JUST
SO DAMNED HARD to do that when someone is pissing you off.
Human nature has a vengeful aspect with regards to stuff like
SPAM, and we need to feel like we've got our justice.
Mailbombing however can be filtered against, and it can also land
you in court after trashing an ISP's mailserver (an innocent
party). It also wastes MORE bandwidth than the spammer in the
first place...
How to get revenge then? Without getting YOURSELF in
trouble? Another thing is that we are pissed off because SPAM
wastes OUR time and is like someone shoving pamphlets right in
your face. GRR!!!!! However, if the "time" aspect is important
to us, why do we feel the need to spend countless HOURS trying to
"nail the bastard", when in reality, most efforts as such end up
doing nothing really.
Well, I started getting so much spam that I tried spam filters,
and autothis and that, and it caused me to lose MORE time to
first of all GET the software, learn how to use it, and configure
it, and tweak it on a constant basis, and then to deal with all
the FALSE positives it caught and lost mail, and countless other
problems.. GRR!
So I just decided to say "to hell with it". I started deleting
them. Might be path of least resistance, but it works. When I'm
in a decent mood, I just delete SPAM. When I'm in an in between
mood, I save it to a folder called SPAM with which I've got in
the back of the mind "I'll get you later you bastard". ;o)
But I never actually end up doing anything with my SPAM folder,
and usually delete it after 6 months or so.
So how to find the middle ground? Learn how the email system
works, and use it to make the spammer lose their internet
access. It only takes a day or so to learn, and you get a LOT of
satisfaction from it. ;o)
Read RFC822 which tells how SMTP works. It describes all of the
mail headers, and their intended purpose. You can then trace the
mail to the entry point on the net (in about 10 seconds), and
then can lookup who manages those computers, and email their
abuse and postmaster accounts. You usually get back a polite
letter, or an autoresponse, but often I get back personal
response saying that they have removed the offending account.
Even if the ISP is lying - which I doubt, I feel much better
knowing that I might have been responsible for them getting the
boot. And, the good thing is, it usually only takes me about
30-45 seconds to do the work. ;o)
>The moral of the story is - legal action can stop a spammer, but trashing
>their equipment and making their lives hell is more fun - and less
>expensive.
Well, I agree with that as well, it will not stop them from doing
it, and it leaves you in a potential legal situation as
well. You must be very careful doing such deeds as this so that
you don't end up caught yourself. I'll bet that your hacking
efforts do however give a great sense of personal "I got you you
son of a bitch" satisfaction though. ;o) Heheh.
Since you sound like you know enough about the email system
allready, why not try the approach I just suggested? If that
isn't your cup of tea though, it sure would be interesting to see
some screen shots of joe spammers hard drive disappearing via
remote... ;o)
Just be sure to post any such screenshots via a fake email to
cover your butt. ;o) (and not to the list)
TTYL
--
Mike A. Harris Linux advocate
Computer Consultant GNU advocate
Capslock Consulting Open Source advocate
... Our continuing mission: To seek out knowledge of C, to explore
strange UNIX commands, and to boldly code where no one has man page 4.
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