Exposing Spammers For All They're Worth

llywrch points out this interesting story at Art & Farces in which a "guy fights spammers by occasionally sending an email telling the spammer to leave him alone or he'll bill for time & services. Some take him off their mailing list, some pay the bill, but most don't respond . . . except one guy who was so incensed at receiving this invoice he had his lawyers send a threatening note. Makes it easier for Fraase to collect on his invoice."

Your account is seriously past due...

[rela]

Ha, I just wish I could have seen their faces...someone didn't back down in fear!

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Gabey]

Remember that that virus also went through people's web caches looking for email addresses as well...so if you have yours on your website, it'll appear that you're more popular than you actually are ;>

Don't feel bad, I got my hopes up to when all these people started asking my advice on documents.

-gps

lets do worse

[JohnG]

If they are spamming an ad for a website, you can look at their registars whois database and find the owners mailing address.
I say we all send a pizza to his house. After a few million pizza delivery guys after every spam sending attempt he'll give up.
Not to mention the double effect that you can invest in Pizza Hut and watch the stock go WAY up!
Disclaimer: The post was intended for entertainment. I will not be held accountable for any spammers who die from pepperoni overdose!

Re:Spammers

[spectral]

I dunno, I got one telemarketer to go through all his stuff, then he wanted to send me something, and asked for my address.. so I told him to send it to his own, he wasn't sure how that'd help me.. I told him that I wasn't interested in the literature, I thought he might since he spoke so highly of it. I then paused a second, and asked to be removed from their list. He started swearing at me and telling me he was going to come and kill me and my family and all this other stuff and hung up on me :)

"Asshole fee"

[innocent_white_lamb]

Two years ago, I walked out the door of my business one day at noon and discovered that a roofing contractor had strung a cord across the vacant lot beside my building and had plugged into an outside electrical outlet on the rear of my building. He was using my power to run his roof-tar machine.

I immediately turned around and went back inside and turned off the circuit breaker for that outlet. After a while, though, I thought, "Hey, where does he get off plugging in without permission!" As the fax number for his company was printed on the door of his truck, I wrote up an invoice for one "asshole fee" at $50 plus $3.50 sales tax, and faxed it to his company.

To my surprise, the following week I had a cheque in the mail from them, for $53.50. The payment stub that came with it said, payment enclosed for asshole fee, $50 plus sales tax.

I was amazed. On the other hand, I hotfooted it right to the bank and deposited the cheque, too!

Art & Farces' didn't do anything ...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

"except one guy [farces.com] who was so incensed at receiving this invoice"

That link is already /.ed to death : how's that for spamming the messenger ?

Hmm, terror

[forgoil]

If you could fool the goverment into thinking that spam is terrorism, I bet they would definitly do something about it;)

[Disclaimer, don't even try to take that seriously]

Entertainment Value of Spam

[liquidweb]

I have simply initiated a policy of placing falicious phone calls to spamming organizations.

The last one I made was to another web hosting corporation, I used a deep south accent and kept asking about how many pullups a 'gigerbyte' was.

Ocassionally he's use a three syllable word, and I'd freak out saying, "Ya'll from the future?". It ended when I started calling him boy, and talking about how "I don't done know them fancy reading boy words" while fake yelling at various red neck named children and referencing the fact that I was "Sick a dem computer boys lording their electronic pants over me".

I did this from the office with mixed reactions from employees.

The only event beating this one was when I actually talked a lady into a telemarketing office into checking three cubes down for me. I had her convinced that I was from the same agency and the autodialer had errored out. My next goal is to start a dispute between employees at a given location. It's hard work even to break them out of the script, let alone get them this far.

So...

[gvonk]

What's his phone number?

Re:"Asshole fee"

[cburley]

I wrote up an invoice for one "asshole fee" at $50 plus $3.50 sales tax

That's all it costs??

Man, I've been paying way too much for that privilege!

Spam the Pizza Companies!

[VValdo]

I know this plan is a joke, but maybe there's a way to do it without causing damage to the pizza companies but rather to the spammers themselves.

Maybe the key is to start ordering shitty products from one spam company and sending to another's whois mailing address. We can call this program like "Spam-Swap(TM)" and even make them opt-out of it.

"Sorry if you've received this other spammer's product in error. Reply to be removed from our Spam-Swap(TM) List."

W

(ps. this is a joke too...)

Re:"So you want to sue a spammer"

[sasha328]

Alternatively, you can get yourself a Law Degree:

A University Diploma is waiting for you.

Obtain a prosperous future, money earning power,
and the admiration of all.

Select your field of study from business, computers,
engineering, education, the sciences, liberal arts,
fine arts, social sciences, history, literature,
languages, or any other discipline.

No required tests, classes, books, or interviews.

All levels of diplomas awarded - including bachelors,
masters, PhD's, and MBA's.

Diplomas from prestigious non-accredited universities
based on your present knowledge and life experience.

Open enrollment means that you are already
accepted into this unique program.

Someone is always waiting to take your call -
24 hours a day, 7 days a week including weekends.

All you have to do is call to insure your future!

1 - 2 1 2 - 2 1 4 - 0 6 6 9 (U.S.A)

OR CALL

1 - 4 1 0 - 5 1 0 - 1 0 7 8

All calls kept strictly confidential.


That is always the best spam I get. Makes you wonder how many people actually use this service?

Is /. working?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just 15 posting after several hours? Or is it only me?

Re:I've had things like this happen to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure showed them. And just think, now that you spent 10 minutes writing a reply, sending it to the spammers, and bragging about it on slashdot, you have a lot more in damages to sue them over then the 1 second of your time to hit the delete key.

Re:Spam from an admins view

[Anonymous Coward]

Your slashdot post took at the very least 30 seconds (lameness filter) to post. Assuming all 13K employees of your company were as bad as you, posting on company time, that would be 13K*30=108 hours, or 86 times as much. At your above rate of $221 per hour (you screwed up), if everyone in your company posted a single post to slashdot, that would cost the company $19153. Which still isn't all that much money for a company with 13,000 fucking employees.

Re:"Asshole fee"

[Nickoty]

haha! Couldn't you please scan that stub and put it on the net, along with the story?

Re:An easy way to avoid new spam.

[Anonymous Coward]

spam me [mailto].

This REALLY gets the telemarketers . . .

[div_2n]

When they start into their script, yell STOP until they stop. Then say something like this, "This call my be recorded for contractual purposes. I must politely inform you that I perform most of my work on the phone and I charge an hourly rate of US$100 per hour with a 3 hour minimum for any and all non-personal calls. All calls past 6PM (insert your timezone) are considered overtime and will be charged an additional US$50 per hour. To agree to these terms, please do so by saying yes now . . ."

Take that and run with it. Buy a cheap recorder and actually record it. If they have someone stupid enough to say yes, then you just scored 300 maybe 450 dollars!

root@localhost anti-spam measure

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I'm forced to give an e-mail address over the web I always type in root@localhost

Even if only one spammer gets there own spam, I think it is worth it.

(Yeah I know, but some sysadmins _are_ that stupid)

Re:Spammers lie to net retailers

[camusflage]

God forbid you share your name with Radio Shack.

At least Rat Shack will let you not give your info, when you say you'd rather not. When pressed, I usually start "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue". Most of the time, they take a clue and stop asking. One guy at an appliance store once, however, just didn't get it. "Washington DC, huh? You just visiting here?" It somewhat pained me when I told him that he had the choice of bothering the president, not bothering me, or not making a comission. Needless to say, he took option B.

A more reasoned response would be to do the homework ahead of time. Find out what their corporate headquarters address is, and what the CEO's name is, and use that.

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[Sygnus]

We have successfully /.ed a government site!

I wonder if that would constitute an act of terrorism.

Re:"Asshole fee"

[Merk]

Or Canadian? Remember us? The big country to the north of you? The really big one? We use the dollar sign too, and we have provinces, not states. Sure, we spell things strangely but we're not that bad...

Re:Actually do something and I'll be impressed

[scoove]

One effective way to deal with this is maillist pollution with the Jam the Spammers Maillist Game.

Step 1. Start filling out online registrations (probably something you already avoid) and seek out folks that are looking for this type of marketing data (e.g. Radio Shack, Best Buy).

Step 2. Jam their marketing radar with noise. Noise can be incorrect zip codes for you, creative names and addresses, even brand new people that live in exotic places. For instance, I've always figured that the post office at Manville Wyoming must be quite bored, being in the least populated county of the least populated state. Zip code is 82227, which makes it easy to remember. And best of all, General Delivery helps your mailman by letting him toss the junkmail in a tall pile that can be left for a long time. (For a pretty picture of Wyoming's Niobrara county, see this site. [aaroads.com])

Remember, the more garbage you dump into their maillists, the less effective those mail lists are that they're selling.

Looking at an recent maillist quote for my metropolitan area [infousa.com], InfoUSA wants $5,000 for a list of businesses complete with fax, email, etc. Imagine how frustrated list buyers get when they discover half of these leads are garbage. The greater the background noise, the less effective the marketing campaign, and the more likely other means will be sought in locating customers.

Start your jamming!

*scoove*

Re:Spammers lie to net retailers

[Weaselmancer]

Couldn't agree more. My method was to use a different middle initial for snailmail, and disposable email addresses from flashmail or hotmail or whatever.

But you have to do it each and every time! Never let up. I'll share my best spam story to illustrate.

It had been a while since I'd seen a concert. I live in Ohio, and decided to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers at a local venue. I won't mention its name, but they're local to Akron and a good place for a new band to Blossom. [wink, wink]

Said venue is an outdoor amphitheater. I always loved going there as a teenager. Bands, stars and a blanket. Nothing better.

And I come back years later and it's Corporate. Six dollar beers, and you're not even allowed to bring a blanket in to sit on - put your ass on the grass and deal with it. For free, you also get a half-hour walk back to your car to stash your blanket.

So I get home, and I'm furious. I go to their webpage and type up a well-written but angry letter and send it to The Powers That Be. The gist of the letter is that I will NEVER attend another concert there, even with a personal invitation from Jesus Christ. And what do you suppose happens?

....wait for it....

They put me on a mailing list informing me of exciting new shows coming up and ticket deals!

So everyone, by all means - hinder these marketing morons. Call their 800 numbers, tie up their salespeople...make it expensive and annoying because they're likely to not understand anything else.