At 05:19 PM 9/19/96 EDT, Julie H. Ernstein wrote:
[snip]
>I'm thinking that we have their return e-mail addresses, so it might
>be a bit enlightening for them--particulary our Alex B. Keaton
>pyramid-money-scam friend--to receive untold number of responses
>informing them that such messages might be more appropriately limited
>to their own circle of friends/personal acquaintances.
>
>Let's self-police here and simply tell each sender that he/she is out
>of line.
This is not as easy as it seems. Many of these spammers protect themselves
from such mail bombings by hiding or making inaccessible their place of
origin. The return address of these two latest spams produces undeliverable
messages. The analysis of the headers of these two messages indicate a long
path through many different machines but ending at
s15-pm02.ecu.campus.mci.net [206.155.210.74] for Subject: Need Money and
from J ([151.99.131.50]) for Subject: joy is accepting your joy. The first
of these is a legitimate DNS name, but J is not. However, either one or both
may be faked. It's up to the system administration at histarch to decipher
the relevance and track down the sources.
A good source of information about the problem of spamming and how to
prevent it can be found at:
Spam FAQ or "Figuring out the site the Spam came from"
http://www.bluemarble.net/~scotty/forgery.html
Information on how to trace e-mail messages and who to complain to is detailed.
Here are some notes from the page on the topics of response and revenge:
"
How To Respond to SPAM
===========================
Howard reminds us :
Note to all: NEVER followup to a spam. NEVER. Express your indignation
in mail to the poster and/or the [log in to unmask], but NEVER in
the newsgroups!
Karen asks:
But what about the newbies who look at a group, see lots of spam and ads,
see NO posts decrying them, and conclude that ads are therefore OK?
Ran replies :
When it gets bad, you'll usually see some "What can we do about this?"
threads. That's a good place to attach a reply that tells people why it's
bad, and what they can, in fact, do.
Austin Suggests:
At the risk of attracting flames, let me suggest an exception to Howard's
law. A followup is allowed if the following 3 conditions hold.
1) The offending article is clearly a SCAM (for instance, the *Canada*
calls with the Seychelles Islands phone # scam)
2) No one else has followed-up with a posting identifying it as a scam
(in other words, no 'Me too' warnings)
3) It is unlikely to be canceled soon, either because it seems to be
below the thresholds, or it is in a local hierarchy that doesn't get
cancels, or Chris Lewis is on vacation in the Seychelles Islands. If all
three conditions are met, a followup that X's out the contact information
and identifies the post as a scam is exempt from Wilson's law.
Comments?
Bill's addition :
4) Follow-ups are directed either to an appropriate group (generally
n.a.n-a.m, alas), or to a null group.
Revenge - What to do & not to do
========================================
No matter how much we hate Spam and how much we dislike what the spammers
to our quiet little corner of the Universe known as the Internet, Spam is
not illegal (yet). If you try anything against the spammers, please * do
not * put yourself in risk of breaking the law. It only makes them happy
if you get in trouble because you were trying to get back at them.
The reason why spammers use "throwaway" accounts is because they know the
e-mail account will be used. They usually provide either another e-mail
address or a name / phone number or address so that prospective
"customers" can be contacted. Be sure to complain to the postmaster of
all e-mail names provided to make sure that this route is inhibited."
I think we should encourage the system administration of the listserv to
make a concerted effort to end these latest spam attacks, and take the
advice of the FAQ to limit discussion of it on the list.
Cheers,
--Lenny__
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