One Man's Fight Against Forum Spam 245
JWSmythe writes "Free Internet Press has an interview with 'Random Digilante,' an anonymous hacker who has been taking over forum spammers' email accounts, and notifying forum operators to delete those accounts. It looks like his reasoning is sound, and his methods are safe, where he won't hurt any real users."
Re:Illegal (Score:1, Insightful)
So silly.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I was banned from Free Republic (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a reason why there's a difference between de juris and de facto in these cases. Hell, even if you manage to make it 18 years, there's cases where people get outed and booted anyways.
As for the matter at hand, what he's doing is illegal, and he's ultimately risking the same sort of consequences that those that haxxor other people's machines to send spam face. Assuming they were actually caught.
Sadly, *he'll* probably end up getting in trouble (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spammers are getting good (Score:3, Insightful)
Now the key thing with both of these kinds of spambots is that they do not include any links initially. A couple weeks after posting they come back and change their signature, which results in spam links appearing under all of their previous posts.
You might consider disabling .sigs.
Re:So silly.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I, and lots of other people, read at -1. Don’t assume that just because you’re starting at 0 nobody will read your post; Anonymous Coward posts at 0 by default.
If you want to get your karma back up, here are a few things to keep in mind. They may or may not help, but hey, it’s free advice.
Post early. Don’t post often. Make sure you aren’t just repeating someone else’s post. Funny doesn’t give you karma. Funny+Troll burns karma quickly. Sometimes it’s what you say. Sometimes it’s how you say it.
Re:Illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
I dislike people who have their POP clients set to download email every minute and process it using filters to put any email from me into a special folder. Does that give me the right to then hack their email accounts and take them over? Using the logic RD outlined above, it very much does. Which should show just how spurious his logic is.
The POP using people you describe are taking their email and sorting it how they want to within their own mailbox. You may not like it, but it's their space.
The forum spammers you're comparing them to use their e-mail address and software with the sole purpose of invading his website, which he pays real money for, and spends time maintaining, and which other people use to have conversations. The spammers further use this software to stuff his website with ads for pills, child porn, and other nastiness. This slows down his server (due to the load of fake accounts registering and posting) and can make his forums unreadable, driving away users. If his forums use ads, driving away users means a monetary loss
Your comparison is invalid, and your attempt at logic is laughable. They broke into his property, he kicked them out and took away their crowbar, which they signed up for under false pretenses.
Make a filter (Score:5, Insightful)
Make a filter that detects his notifications and deletes the account automatically.
He is trying to help and he is fighting.
What are you doing about it? You're not helping anyone except of course protecting your advertising on your site.
Re:So silly.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have been on /. for years, have never posted anything remotely spammy, have attempted to participate in discussions... so why is my karma set at "bad"?
Well, it seems that you've only submitted 5 comments in the last couple of years, so you're not exactly participating in a lot of conversations. Thus, you're not really "improving" (term used loosely) any of the comment threads, and therefore not receiving any good karma.
Not trying to be snarky here, I'm genuinely surprised you didn't realize this.
Re:Illegal (Score:3, Insightful)
"There is a reason why the laws are created by the society as whole and not a single person or a group with single interest."
Since when? Most of the laws created since I have been alive have been created by groups with single interests, who get them passed by graft.
Disobeying an unjust law is patriotic.