I have been maniacal about keeping my home email free of spam. I have a throwaway yahoo email that I use for any online transactions or anything else that might even remotely risk spammers getting it. This has worked quite well.
Every once and a while, I do get spam. I delete and then block the address, but before I do I reply with the word REMOVE in all caps and 72- point font pasted about 1000 times. Petulant, but there you go.
Well, today as I was checking my home email from work an email that would be blocked at home got through to my yahoo account, probably because it was still sitting on the ISP server and that filter is not a part of my yahoo account.
Anyway, this pusillanimous toad goes on to admonish my for my overboard reply and snivel that he is only trying to make a living. And, get this, tries to sell me crap again (it was software sales and he was trying to sell me filtering programs or some such crap).
Honestly, not only are our servers, telephones and mailboxes burdened by this crap that no one wants or needs but now one of them has the audacity to admonish me for returning part of the burden? For fuck sake!
I got a spam the other day for some night club, and replied to the people who were in charge of the club’s web site. This is what I got in return:
So, you see, spammers believe that they have every right in the world to e-mail you, but you don’t have any right to e-mail them back. They also believe (after smoking huge amounts of crack, apparently) that they are “respectable” as long as they bought your address from another spammer.
I wrote back to this guy and asked him where he got off e-mailing me in the first place, but of course I never heard back from him.
Thanks to the apathy of a spam-saturated public, they’re probably unaccustomed to hearing back from people. A majority of the people I’ve talked to about spam (around 10, admittedly not a large sample) indicated they usually just delete it.
Hell, most of the time they’re probably right to do so – e-mailing them back is just another big red flag indicating your address is still active, like the “click here to remove” links. Me, I’m just too think-headed and stubborn to let it go that easily.
“Hopeless optimist” defined: those of us who still complain to upstream providers about newsgroup spam.
I’m constantly getting spam that 1) uses a deceptive subject line to try and get me to look at it; 2) comes from a fake address; and 3) can’t be replied to. Who in the world does business with such people?
Yes. That is pretty much all spam. (I’m surprised to see several of the earlier posts indicating that replying to the “Reply To” address got them any kind of response other than (a) error message; (b) flood of more spam.
You can go to: www.spamcop.net
to resolve the actual origin and relaying administrator addresses. I have seen little to no evidence that doing so, and e-mailing these abuse administrators, has <any> effect on the amount of spam you will get (especially when they are, as most of them are, in China or Russia or S. America) – no offense to Spamcop, who is trying to fight the good fight and in the long run has probably succeeded by making legitimate host ISPs and relay networks aware that they were being exploited and needed to crack down on spammers-- as witness the fact that fewer and fewer origin IPs seem to be U.S. based.
Who does business with such people? Well, say 1 in every 20,000 recipients (I made that up) – but when they spam 20 million, that amounts to a thousand sales of whatever crud they’re peddling.
Who else does business with such people? I do, sometimes – or at least I click through to their website or return their solicitation form, using a bogus name and my cellphone no. When they call/e-mail me with their follow up (obviously, their websites and return forms almost never give a clue to who they are), you at least have a live person, and maybe a Caller ID, of whom you can demand to be removed from their spam lists. As some of these clowns are less fly by night than others, this has actually worked in a couple of instances to decrease incoming spam for awhile (example: spam for prepaid legal services, which I pointed out to the company owner was almost certainly a violation of his State Bar’s anti-solicitation rules, and possibly grounds for attorney discipline proceedings if he didn’t see to it that I stopped getting it. I stopped getting it – for awhile). There’s a non-ludicrous argument spam is also federal wire fraud (standard disclaimer: this isn’t legal advice) by virtue of the forged headers and return addresses alone – cf. state deceptive trade practices laws.
More/better legislation/tort remedies may be needed here. The junk fax law really worked to some extent.
In the meantime – and not to advocate reckless behavior – I’d be interested in hearing any more examples or tactics (theoretically of course) of direct action that frustrated spam recipients have taken – not that anyone here would wardial or track down the spammer’s server and deluge it with e-mail, etc.
It’s true that if you reply to spammers, you’re asking for it. I have a throwaway address that I use for that purpose because there’s a certain Usenet group that I work (along with some other people) to keep free from spam. I only write to spammers and their service providers from that address, and don’t use it for anything else, and it gets a truly amazing amount of spam. That doesn’t stop me from using it since I don’t expect to get mail there from anyone else.
We’ve been able to keep our newsgroup almost completely spam-free, and have even gotten some apologies from the perpetrators, but when it comes to e-mail spam it’s like putting frogs in a wheelbarrow. It’s still fun to mess with them sometimes, though.
I’ve also been bitched at by a spammer, and I don’t think there is anything more annoying. Like anyone else, I delete anything that gets through the filter without question, but one spam in particular was worded in a particularly clever way that caused me to question whether I knew the originator. When I replied asking how I might know this person, I got a very heated response in reply. I forwarded on this asshole’s email to his ISP, complete with death threats (seriously) and admission that he harvested email from a public forum (gosh, I wonder which one) and yahoo could not be bothered to even fucking respond.
After getting three or so spam emails a day from the same entity, I used the “unsubscribe” link. Against all advice, I know. But hey, I was feeling dangerous.
It worked though. Never heard from them again. Didn’t have to waste my time composing a rude reply either.
The secret? (apart from not putting your email address anywhere it’s likely to be abused, of course,) Don’t use e-mail from a commercial provider, or your ISP.
I was shocked when I realized that Rogers@Home & Telus both apparently give out your e-mail address to spammers. Had my own email, stuck with that, never peeped to anyone that the e-mail addresses that they’d given to me even existed. Check in on them months later, hundreds of dirty nasty spam-mails. What, my subscription fees aren’t enough, you gotta sell my e-mail address to penis-cream merchants? Dickheads.
I’ve got filters set up based on keywords ( I’ve learned to have these words strictly things like “Viagra”, “Porn”, “Mortgage”, etc. Banning words like “Fuck” meant that, given the friends I keep, I was missing out on personal mail. ). Spam that still gets through takes me probably ten to twenty seconds each day to delete.
I get to use the one email address for everything. I put it online, I sign up for stuff with it. The works. In the end, it makes for an easier life just to have the spam.
If something gets through my relatively rigorous filters (it happens, but rarely) I’ll respond with a remove. If I don’t get an answer I’ll find the company sending the spam, locate an e-mail address for someone in charge, and sign it up for about 40 different porno e-mail lists. Everything from bestiality to bondage to free scat photos. If they do respond, I’ll do the same thing to the original address. If I get more than one from the same source it will become the object of my true hatred, and occupy my spare time at work. Instead of reading my book I’ll google for “sign up for our mailing list” and start making the rounds.
IMHO, they’re reaping what they sow. To the nth power.
You know, phone calls to the 809 area code can be pretty expensive, even though you can dial them like any other call. It would be too bad if some spammer wanted your phone number and you accidentally gave them an 809 number (like the Dominican Republic’s Attorney General’s phone number, for example) instead of your real number. I’m always real careful not to do that.
I have about 35 filters set up, and because they never get a response, I actually receive less spam than I did a year ago, but sometimes it’s still annoying. I can’t believe they were pissed at you for being pissed about spam. Don’t they know how annoying it is?
). Spam that still gets through takes me probably ten to twenty seconds each day to delete.