Receive Spam, Make Money! 275
Bud Dwyer writes "Wired is running the heartening story of Bennett Haselton, who was awarded $2000 from spammers under Washington state's anti-spam law. From the article: 'Spam fighters hope that if enough individuals take spammers to court, it could eventually drive the industry out of business. And, some savvy individuals could make some easy money along the way, and with a clear conscience, too.'"
The most interesting part of the article... (Score:5, Informative)
He gave a form letter, even step by step directions on how to do this. Only thing was that you would have to be living in oregon unless your own state has fun laws like this. That does definately sound like fun.
Spamcop (Score:5, Informative)
I know that it's hard to keep spammers from doing what they're doing due to their using different email addresses and hosts each time they send out some spam mail. But I have found that by using SpamCop regularly, the spam mails eventually stop coming to my inbox. And whether this means that they've been taken out of business or they're removed me from their spam list due to my being a thorn in their side - well, either is good enough for me.
Spambouncer / Bennett's Birthday (Score:2, Informative)
ObCompliment: Go Bennett, it's your birthday, go Bennett, it's your birthday! [1]
-Waldo Jaquith
[1] I am so white.
Re:Procmail regex for Chinese encoding? (Score:3, Informative)
(This is character 0xbe; it displays as 3/4 in my Solaris xterms. It may appear differently in other fonts or locales.)
more info (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Spamcop (Score:2, Informative)
Re:hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
If they fail to show up, they're found guilty by default. If they fail to pay, not only can you pass that info on to credit-reporting and background-check agencies but (if it's anything like a traffic ticket) a bench warrant is issued for their arrest (results of that vary depending on the state).
As an example I have a friend that was arrested in Florida for defaulting on debts in Virginia. The creditors filed suit in Virginia, he never showed, the court found him guilty, he got pulled over in Florida for some reason, and ended up spending the night in jail.
Re:Spamcop (Score:3, Informative)
That process is in two steps -- submitting, then reading the summary of what what Spamcop found and "pulling the trigger," and I wouldn't recommend automating both parts. Quite often Spamcop will respond that the offending ISP "doesn't care," or has already closed the offending account -- in those cases there's no point in tying up Spamcop's resources any further.
I try real hard to ignore spammers, but when one wiggles past my filters you'd better believe I invest the time to ruin his day.
Re:Spamcop (Score:2, Informative)
See, here's what I don't get.. (Score:3, Informative)
After all, if it is just as difficult to chase down the spammer, as it is to try and take advantage of whatever they are offering..
I can see how this might work for some types of spam.. The 'hot stock tip' bit for example simply counts on someone out there buying a stock to drive up the price..
But when there's a product or service involved? Whom do you pay? And if you know whom to pay, you know whom to sue..
I get as much as a few dozen bits of spam each day at my 'public' address.. And these are the ones that I can't 'umbrella' filter by country, domain, etc.. Most of these are not even in English, or from the US.. Spam laws don't work in the areas most responsible for pumping out spam..
Sad waste of bandwith, tis all. And the spammers are counting on the fact that it is much easier to simply delete their crap than compile, research and file suit.
Re:Spammers in the US, sure (Score:3, Informative)
10:49am (chrisf@borg)
346
messages. In that time I've received 2 spam's to my inbox. I don't know what I would do without it.
Re:It's about time (Score:1, Informative)
Re:How did he figure out who to sue? (Score:3, Informative)
The upstream provider? Really, it hacks me off that so many places run open relays, are RFC ignorant, and basically don't give a damn about the use of their networks (regardless of what their AUP's say). Sure, there are good providers that don't dick around when you send them abuse reports, but the amount of crap I'm seeing coming from .ac.somewhere-in-asia (that's international .edu) is staggering.
They're outside your country? Contact them anyway. If they don't respond, and the spam keeps coming, keep moving upstream. Sooner or later you'll hit your own ISP or ASP. Let them know that they're handling packets from RFC ignorant peers, and dump it on them. If that drives costs up, good, I'm sick of hearing that ISPs don't have the resources to deal with spam.
Instead of giving money to lawyers (directly) and courts (through taxes), let's get it to the ISPs instead.
DON'T spam back (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't just boggle down your computer, it also affects your ISP's (innocent) mail server, and all the hosts that happen to be on the route between you and the spammer.
Re:hmmm (Score:2, Informative)
Spam works (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No Inconsistency (Score:3, Informative)
Correct, because YOU SIGNED UP FOR A LIST! You can also unsubscribe. I subscribed to NO list and it is impossible for me to unsubscribe to the spam. Furthermore, legitimate lists are rather easy to block, since they use legit headers, standard formats and usually, standard subject lines. This ain't the case with spam.
then the act of listening and processing what they say requires energy, which ultimately costs me money
Wrong again. If you want to listen, that is your choice. It does not cost you money to *hear* someone, and you are able to walk away. If you are NOT able to walk away, there are a number of harassment and assault laws which cover the subject. As you stated yourself, you can get a restraining order. Not so for spam.
Spam costs ME money. Someone else is advertising and expecting ME to pay for it. This has been made illegal in every other form (and there have been some very interesting postal fraud cases as a result). The New York State junk fax law is most likable to this situation, where costs to the advertiser are negligible and costs to the recipient are not.
You cannot legitimately and logically defend spam based on its own definition. It isn't spam if I ask for the mail, and I've never, ever asked someone to send me any sort of advertisement. Not even when they've been willing to pay me to read it. How can you logically expect me to bear the costs of advertising your scam?
A couple good links (I'm already karma-capped):
New York Law Journal (Sep. 1997!) [law.com]
How to use 47 U.S.C. Section 227(b) [Telephone Consumer Protection Act] against junk faxes [imc.org]
woof.
This is not a sig.
For IMAP Users (Score:2, Informative)
I have set up some spam filters for it, and they generally work very well. Here is my script for removing SPAM - it hasb't caught a bogus one yet:
filter spam or
subject "Cat"
to "unlisted"
to "undisclosed"
from "WeatherBug"
subject "Animals"
body "Nigeria"
body "Virtumundo"
subject "Casino"
subject "Payout"
subject "win"
subject "won"
subject "free"
subject "back"
subject "SaveBig"
subject "Breast"
subject "Natural"
subject "Rates"
subject "teen"
subject "lesbian"
subject "sex"
body "teen"
body "sex"
body "lesbian"
body "Merchant"
subject "Money"
subject "mortgage"
subject "loan"
subject "irs"
from "Cyberworld"
subject "$"
from "Dialpad"
subject "DVD"
subject "Debt"
subject "Judgement"
subject "Dollar"
from "email.ro"
subject "%"
to "Valued"
to ".ru"
from ".ru"
to "$"
from ".ar"
to ".ar"
action move SPAM
Anyways, have fun all.
Re:It's about time (Score:2, Informative)
$filename = 'http://www.overture.com/d/search/?type=topbar&Ke
$fd = fopen ($filename, 'r');
$read = fread($fd, 20000);
fclose($fd);
// preg_match_all ('/f="(.*)"+/', $read, $links);
foreach ($links[1] as $value)
$fd = fopen ($value, 'r');
$read = fread($fd, 20000);
fclose($fd);
}
This code isn't complete of course, it's not working. I hope you don't get into trouble if you modify it enough to do so
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Informative)
you can find several scripts here [lenny.com]