Spammers should be drawn and quartered [Archive]

Jason Dunn

07-25-2002, 02:48 AM

It seems that about an hour ago, an enterprising spammer decided to sign up for an account with this site, then manually harvested email addresses from the membership list and sent out spam about a web hosting company. I immediately suspended him, sent him an email telling him to burn on the 7th layer of hell, and contacted the hosting company to suspend his affiliate status. What an idiot! <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/images/smiles/icon_evil.gif" /> Apparently we weren't quite "spam proof" enough from people who wanted to harvest manually. Our immediate action was to switch the membership list from listing an email address to having a form for email. This means that the person would have to fill out the form each time to contact you. Tomorrow we're going to modify the membership template to completely remove the email listing - the only way to contact each other will be via the private messaging feature. So technically someone could sign up and spam you via private messages, but they would have to wait a certain number of seconds between each message, and I could suspend them very quickly. I value the privacy of all Thoughts readers, and I deeply apologize for allowing this to happen. Comments welcome. You can flame the idiot yourself ([email protected]) or <a href="http://www.maxipointservers.net/contact.asp">contact the company he was spamming for</a>. It may be that they didn't know about his actions, but they're ultimately responsible for educating their own affiliates about not spamming.

Paragon

07-25-2002, 02:55 AM

It happened on pPCp today as well. Only they did as you mentioned Jason. They used the private message system.

Someone altogether different BTW.

Dave

DaleReeck

07-25-2002, 03:00 AM

I really wish advertising through email would be made illegal. It wouldn't stop offshore spamming, but it would help. Why companies are allowed to flood email boxes with spam is beyond me. I have an email account just to give for signing up for things, downloading etc. I get over 50 junk emails a day - mostly porno even though I don't visit porn sites - which is incredible. Something has to be done.

mclemore

07-25-2002, 03:08 AM

I just want to publicly thank Jason for his efforts in maintaing and keeping this site very informative and user-friendly!!! :D

BTW I was the one who reported the SPAM guy...

TTFN

Douglas K. McLemore

Jason Dunn

07-25-2002, 03:12 AM

They used the private message system. Someone altogether different BTW.

I'm hesitant to completely disable the inter-board communications systems because of one incident, but if it comes down to it, I will (with a vote from the people on the site of course).

Jason Dunn

07-25-2002, 03:13 AM

BTW I was the one who reported the SPAM guy...

You and about 12 others. ;-) Spencer Goad was the first to report it at 6:45 PM...

Brad Adrian

07-25-2002, 03:28 AM

Thanks, Jason, for your quick attention to this. It's an inconvenience to those who get the spam, but a major headache for you to track these people down and modify the site. Your commitment to the community is always appreciated.

heov

07-25-2002, 03:31 AM

You know what you could do... Do it the way brighthand does it...

You send them an email as if you were posting a message; but you don't know the email address. So you type your message right on the boards, and brighthand will send it out without the sender knowing where it goes. You could aslo disable HTML there and limit it to 1 email every 2 minutes or so; and I doubt there will be a spammer that will send a TEXT advertisement every 2 minutes... I mean, it's not like we need to email each other more than 2 minutes...

I think 2 min is better than 30 seconds to be even safer...

Jason Dunn

07-25-2002, 03:48 AM

You send them an email as if you were posting a message; but you don't know the email address. So you type your message right on the boards, and brighthand will send it out without the sender knowing where it goes....I think 2 min is better than 30 seconds to be even safer...

That's the way we have it set right now (as of 30 minutes ago), but regarding the time limit, it applies to everyone, even me, and I need to respond to more than one message every two minutes. :wink:

Ashley Dunn

07-25-2002, 03:51 AM

Unbelievable. Spammers SUCK! :x

Dave Conger

07-25-2002, 04:11 AM

I'm hesitant to completely disable the inter-board communications systems because of one incident, but if it comes down to it, I will (with a vote from the people on the site of course).

If PM's become a problem, couldn't you set it up so you could only send a PM if you have at least X posts. Most people probably don't use the PM feature until after they have made a few posts on the board and it would discourage Spammers.

Paragon

07-25-2002, 04:21 AM

Unbelievable. Spammers SUCK! :x

Newbies are called 'Copy Editors' now are they. :D

The boss lets you post once in a while does he. :wink:

Dave

Foo Fighter

07-25-2002, 04:26 AM

Jeff Rutledge

07-25-2002, 04:29 AM

Paragon

07-25-2002, 04:36 AM

This is like some bad dream. These spamming bastards have taken over my Inbox, and now they are even sending me Private messages!! :x

I'm constantly bombarded by a sea of offers that include Free web hosting...Penis enlargements (*cough*)...DVD Movies...free cell phones....free vacation offers...breast enlargement....free panties (from Fredericks of Hollywood no less)...free sex...long distance service...free prizes...free porn...free software...free spam *(well that comes free already)*. It never ends!!!

DIE SPAMMERS>>>>>DIE!!!!!!! :twisted:

So...ah...Foo....Which free offer did you take them up on?

I think pdadave had a great idea having to post a minimum amount before you can use the private message syste. There are a few drawbacks. Perhaps you can only spam...ah sorry PM 'site admins' for the first few.

Dave

Foo Fighter

07-25-2002, 04:39 AM

At least caller ID allow me to all but eliminate telemarketing, but there's no way to bounce a lot of these in time. It's infuriating.

The return e-mail address is usually a dead give-away. Anything with the .emailhello.com or e-mazingoffers.com address goes right into the old trash bin.

What I find most frustrating are the faux subject headers. One piece of spam I received had "You raped my daughter!" as the subject. It turned out to be an offer for Web hosting. Now ask yourself...would you sign up with a hosting firm that welcomes you aboard by accusing you of being a child molester? I think not. Can you imagine if brick and mortar companies marketed their services this way? "Hi, welcome to Best Buy...you sorry ass loser!" :roll:

Jason Dunn

07-25-2002, 04:42 AM

If PM's become a problem, couldn't you set it up so you could only send a PM if you have at least X posts. Most people probably don't use the PM feature until after they have made a few posts on the board and it would discourage Spammers.

Good idea - I'll keep that in mind.

Ashley Dunn

07-25-2002, 04:43 AM

Yeah, the boss lets me get a few words in every now and then. :wink:

I do believe that Jason actually changed my posting name because of my role as the site's editor, not because I'm a "newbie". I've been here from day one. :) Hard to believe it's been nearly two years.

I love reading the stuff that's posted, and the threads that follow. It's really a privilege to be a part of this great site!

Jason Dunn

07-25-2002, 04:45 AM

"Hi, welcome to Best Buy...you sorry ass loser!"

I could have SWORN I saw that on a banner flying over a store one time... :lol:

wastl

07-25-2002, 05:45 AM

Wes Salmon

07-25-2002, 06:43 AM

*sigh* ... I wish all I had to deal with was spam in my inbox. These days my biggest problem is SMS spam. UGH.

jsolin

07-25-2002, 07:46 AM

Thanks for posting his e-mail address. I sent him a few hundred "spam sucks" messages.

- Joe

Sslixtis

07-25-2002, 08:06 AM

You go Joe :lol: I agree Spam Sucks! But would you believe I actually know people that like it! I kid you not. They are sad, miserable, lonely little people and it is the only mail they get. They also like the 2lbs of junk mail they get via snail mail too :wink: Takes all kinds I guess.

Andrew Duffy

07-25-2002, 08:17 AM

The SMS spam I get is getting worse every day. I'm pretty sure that the operators give out details, but finding where you were opted in to receive "sponsor's messages" when the company you signed up with has changed hands several times since is impossible. Calling the customer service reps is infuriating, and won't achieve anything if the network sells lists of numbers rather than an advertising service.
Believe it or not, there are now premium rate SMS numbers, which cost up to €1.50 to send an SMS to, and talk of making messages that cost money to receive! Imaging being charged to receive spam?

DrtyBlvd

07-25-2002, 08:45 AM

No-ones' mentioned Postal Inspector - does what it should do, and very effectively - free trial persuaded me and I'm very happy with it! One thing though - I used to think I got lots of email - I always seemed to be checking it - and I didn't realise just how much of the mail I got was spam - try it and see.

I also wish that it would be illegal for the postman to dump 5 adverts a day through my letter box with my post, as well as opening any magazine and having 5 adverts fall on my feet.

At least with email you press a button, or let a program do it for you!

Mobile text ads are, i think, going to become more prevalent in the future, and that will be somthing else entirely - especially with regard to smartphones - Postal Inspector for PDA's anyone?

http://www.giantcompany.com/

Something just occured to me - how come spam doesn't get through to my work address? Better filtering?

DrtyBlvd

07-25-2002, 08:53 AM

http://www.theonion.com/onion3825/anti-spam_legislation.html

DrtyBlvd

07-25-2002, 09:04 AM

BTW - Mr Duffy - is that avatar Basil Brush? Or a womble??

st63z

07-25-2002, 12:29 PM

New Version avilabale now :SpamNet beta 4
Address: http://www.cloudmark.com/
For Programs: MS Outlook 2000 & 2002 ONLY

The best Anti Spam I have come across!!!!!!

Mine says: 825 Emails checked - 732 Spams caught AND they automaticly
go in the Delete Folder!!

Wow, you get close to a 1000 emails a day and the large majority is spam? I guess some people have it much worse than I do :) :)

You know, I don't remember the last time I got spam at my work email, too. And it's not like we run any special anti-spam filters (I know, I manage the servers). I guess it's mostly all the activities online you do where you register your email and it gets harvested (since I don't use my work email for that). Then again, many of my users do get spam, so maybe I should start thinking about this...

st63z

07-25-2002, 12:40 PM

Congress should draft a legislation granting angry users immunity in hacking spammers, instead of giving that immunity to RIAA and MPAA in hacking P2P users ;)

Jimmy Dodd

07-25-2002, 12:59 PM

"Hi, welcome to Best Buy...you sorry ass loser!"

I could have SWORN I saw that on a banner flying over a store one time... :lol:

It actually hangs over the return counter.

---
Bwana Jim

Jonathon Watkins

07-25-2002, 01:03 PM

BTW - Mr Duffy - is that avatar Basil Brush? Or a womble??
Definitely looks like a Womble to me :)

I am getting 20 spams a day in my main hotmail account, 15 a day in one of my unused hotmail accounts and 0 in another unused account. I have not given out either of the last 2 accounts to anyone - yet on one I was getting 15 spams a day - FROM DAY 1!!!!

Weird. - Hard to make spam illegal though. :(

JMountford

07-25-2002, 02:14 PM

Well I am ambivilant when it comes to Spam. Kinda like procreation, it is a fact of life. At least Spam says Procreation is a fact of life. My Hotmail acount gets tons of it and it seams like the more I say take me off your lists the more I get so I just have my Hotmail filter set to Rediculously High.

BTW I know My Local BestBuy's motto is pretty close to "Welcome to Bestbuy you sorry ass looser"

spg

07-25-2002, 02:37 PM

It almost seems like no e-mail address is immune to spam any more. I have an address I just started using 2 months ago and already I get almost as much spam as I got with my old account. Even my account at work gets more than its share. :evil:

For this particular instance, I agree with PDADave. If the action already taken don't stop it completely (or almost anyway), and people use PM to spam. Set it so that people cannot PM until they have posted X amount of posts. Some people wouldn't like that, but at least it would prevent them from signing up just to spam people.

DrtyBlvd

07-25-2002, 02:40 PM

Well - there's always the aspect that says if you reply to a spam, unsubscribe me sorta thing, then they harvest the address as a 'live' one; PI allows me to bounce the mail with an 'unknown receipient' message, so if it actually IS a return address, maybe they'll do something about it (I doubt it)

The answer of having more than one email and giving one of the addresses out to friends only is (and I may be being a bit paranoid about this) not much help, as eventually someone forwards one of the "Bill Gates is giving away his fortune" messages to everyone they know, by cc rather than bcc, and volia; harvested from an email you might get up to 100 addresses - assuming it finds it's way to someone who makes use of it in such a way....

I take the point that it's a part of life, but isn't the ultimate point that it is our life, and if we have no choice in the receipt of spam then it's not really our life anymore?

I find it hard to accept that unsolicited mail cannot be stopped; and difficult to see a solution when we are ultimately to blame for allowing the ease of it's dispersal; the ability to be anonymous is a hard one to limit. :(

Jason Dunn

07-25-2002, 03:08 PM

These days my biggest problem is SMS spam. UGH.

That would drive me bonkers, considering that you usually have to pay to receive an SMS. I can't believe the carriers are allowing it! Oh wait, I know why - THEY MAKE MONEY OFF OF IT! Bastards. :evil:

DrtyBlvd

07-25-2002, 03:42 PM

Huh. Go figure.

We don't however, have to pay to receive them over here - which is why they will happen.

You guys are hardly going to just accept someone sending you a message you have to pay for are you?

ricksfiona

07-25-2002, 04:08 PM

I just fixed an e-mail account that a client of mine hasn't used in 2 years and 2 months. It has approximately 7800 e-mails, 99.9% of it, being spam. 100% of that SPAM being sex/financial type of stuff.

How much time do you think it would take to go through all that? Something should be done to stop this....

Jonathan1

07-25-2002, 04:47 PM

I would suggest reading this

Bernard Shifman Is A Moron Spammer

http://www.petemoss.com/spamflames/ShifmanIsAMoronSpammer.html

It is quite possibly the funniest thing you will ever read in regards to spamming. :lol:

Oh and to add to my 2 cents. I think it should be legal to be able to hunt these people down and beat them to near death. It use to be that spam on the internet was an annoyance. Now it's killing the net, killing bandwidth, killing users productivity. There should be legislation passed that allows the spam-e to go after the spamer with a baseball bat to the kneecaps. :twisted:

karen

07-25-2002, 05:01 PM

If any of you are interested in lending your voice to efforts to do just that -- assist in the development and implementation of legislation to make sending of unsolicited commercial/bulk e-mail, sign up for free membership in the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE.ORG). There are offshoot organizations for non-US countries as well.

I'm active in CAUCE Canada. We are just forming our membership lists. CAUCE Canada is a grassroots organization, with no paid staff, no budget, just a group of internet user who are mad as Hell and... well, you know.

Lending your voice to these groups will give them (us) more leverage when it comes time to implement legislation that actually works.

www.cauce.org
www.cauce.ca
www.caube.au
www.euro.cauce.org
www.india.cauce.org

Now, to be realistic, most spam comes from afar, so legislation won't make much difference there. But I'm noticing a disturbing trend of more UCE from legitimate companies to which I've never opted in. Legislation would keep those hundreds of organizations with which you have a relationship from spamming your inbox...and it might discourage others as well.

I really wish advertising through email would be made illegal. It wouldn't stop offshore spamming, but it would help. Why companies are allowed to flood email boxes with spam is beyond me. I have an email account just to give for signing up for things, downloading etc. I get over 50 junk emails a day - mostly porno even though I don't visit porn sites - which is incredible. Something has to be done.

I agree completely. At least caller ID allow me to all but eliminate telemarketing, but there's no way to bounce a lot of these in time. It's infuriating.

Ed Hansberry

07-25-2002, 06:06 PM

*sigh* ... I wish all I had to deal with was spam in my inbox. These days my biggest problem is SMS spam. UGH.
LOL! I suspect we will have SMS software soon enough that will allow you to only get messages from people in your contact book. I hope.

Janak Parekh

07-25-2002, 08:37 PM

LOL! I suspect we will have SMS software soon enough that will allow you to only get messages from people in your contact book. I hope.
The problem with client-side filtering of SMS, though, is that you've still received a message, which costs you a certain number of cents from the wireless carrier.

--bdj

Rob Alexander

07-26-2002, 03:01 AM

"Hi, welcome to Best Buy...you sorry ass loser!" :roll:

No, they save that for when you try to return something to their customer service desk! :agrue:

(Later)
Hats off to Bwanajim. I didn't see his post before writing this one. I guess we've both had that experience (along with everyone else who's ever tried to return anything to them)! :2gunfire:

Rob Alexander

07-26-2002, 03:28 AM

I'm more convinced all the time that the only solution to this will have to come from us and that it will require a fundamental change in how we use email. Here's an idea of how something like this could work. I'd be interested in whether anyone else thinks it could be viable.

Individuals and businesses register with an authentication service for an email-only account. (Such doesn't exist as far as I know and would have to be very cheap... maybe like $5 / year.) Using a plug-in for your email program, your authentication code and verified return address gets tagged onto all your emails. That code would have some sort of checksum properties so that real ones could be told from fake ones with a public key. This authentication guarantees that you have a valid reachable email address and the plug-in guarantees that the reply to address in the email is your authenticated address. You could be required to reply to an automated message from the authentication company at irregular intervals (every couple of months) to re-verify your address in order to maintain your authetication.

Now, on the receiver end, either your email server (best option) or email program (next option) simply rejects any email that lacks a valid identification code. There's something of a sacrifice here initially. That is, we have to be strong enough to tell the world (including friends and family) that spam is enough of a problem that we won't take anyone's email who isn't willing to be authenticated. In fact, the system could automatically send an explanation of the rejection to the reply to of any rejected message along with instructions of how to get authenticated.

Of course, this doesn't guarantee that someone won't send you spam, but it does guarantee that 1) you know who it is, and 2) you have the right of reply to a valid email address that this person has to keep checking in order to keep authenticated. A legitimate business shouldn't have any problem with a system like this. Scum-sucking low-life spammers would be stopped in their tracks.

Would you pay $5 a year to be rid of spam? Would something like this work? (Of course I recognise the size of the task of getting something like this implemented, but if it were, would it work?) :?:

sobert

07-26-2002, 04:06 AM

Does anybody actually buy stuff from a spam email?

I think if we can educate everyone to not EVER reply, contact or buy anything from these people they will eventually go away.

Question: How many of you get messages from someplace like Nigeria that want to ship you a trunk of money?

Dave Conger

07-26-2002, 07:45 AM

Question: How many of you get messages from someplace like Nigeria that want to ship you a trunk of money?

Daily. I couldn't believe how many I got while I was on vacation. I hadn't installed a SPAM filter...boy was there a lot of "people that needed MY help"...

Some people from my church have a son that hooked up police and FBI to try and stop one of those.

DrtyBlvd

07-26-2002, 11:56 AM

What, you mean there isn't 567 million waiting to be transferred into my bank account?

Really??

Rob - Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you really talking about the verisign kind of thing? I think the problem that any of this faces is always going to be one of anonymity - people probably won't want to be 'registered' sort of thing? I know the argument about not having anything to hide etc, but what is the reason that digital ID's haven't taken off? Cost? Or the fact that it doesn't matter if you are or not?

Now, set a filter to only accept digital id'd email, and you're onto something - make the digital issuer responsible for there customers, akin to an ISP with it's content maybe?