My Short Life As An Unintentional Porn Spammer 570
Freerange writes "Mike Masnick wrote up his experience getting slammed by a somewhat new kind of spam attack that doesn't get much hype (yet?). A spammer spoofed his personal email address as the 'reply-to' for a batch of spam, with interesting results for Mike: "I can
now answer the questions 'who replies to spam?' and (should anyone ever
wonder) 'what are the hundreds of variations on bounced messages?'" From Politech."
What to do with all that spam you get... (Score:2, Funny)
I tried the first one, and the paper doesn't mix too well, but once the eggs soak through, it cooks up well... not too flavorful. It's more of a filler like Tofu.
What the Internet needs: (Score:5, Funny)
Skynet (Score:5, Funny)
and the conformforting thought:
when spamfilters come alive... their prime directive will be "eliminate anything that is worthless"
No way to contact spammer (Score:5, Funny)
--sex [slashdot.org]
Not happy... (Score:5, Funny)
Way to go!
Who replies to spam (Score:5, Funny)
- Penis emlargements;
- Viagra;
- Boob jobs;
- Sex;
- Porn;
- Rebuilt credit;
- Credit cards;
- Cheap mortgages;
- Cheap health insurance;
- Cheap dental insurance;
- An easy way to make millions from home with little effort!;
- University Diplomas;
- Free anything; and, of course
- Spam lists.
Spammers try to sell (gullible) people what they might buy, never what they won't. I've yet to see a spammer selling flights to Mars - although I do predict it will be a growth area for spammers in 20 years time.Re:Not New @ All (Score:5, Funny)
If the FBI won't take it further, you could always beat seven shades of shit out of him, then when the police arrest you, assume his identity.
Re:No way to contact spammer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Report them to the FBI (Score:2, Funny)
Coming next... (Score:3, Funny)
"So I got this story posted on slashdot after that time gigabytes of bandwidth got used up by that fake porn spam address, and so the site got slashdotted and that used up even more bandwidth until my ISP decided to limit my access, so I got another story posted under 'YRO' on slashdot about that and...."
Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:1, Funny)
You took 4 minutes of my life and I want them back! Oh, I only would have wasted them anyway.
Re:Spam needs a technical solution. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Happened to Me 3 Times (Score:2, Funny)
> First you get millions of bounces. Then you get hundreds of angry replies. "TAKE ME OFF THIS LIST!"
What I hate is when the spam includes all the victims' e-dresses in the header, and a bunch of people reply/all demanding to be taken off the list. Then a bunch more people reply/all saying "you're an idiot", and then a bunch more reply/all saying "so are you, idiot". You could probably bring down the internet if you included enough e-dresses in the header.
Re:Sorry, new? (Score:1, Funny)
i.e. "I'm -1 redundant and I know it!"
Spam Addresses (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:5, Funny)
> The new one i've run into recently is they use some kinda script so that the reply-to address in my address....which makes fintering really easy becuase how often do I send mail from my account TO the same account. However I could see some stuipd user getting very confused.
Better than Disneyland? (Score:5, Funny)
A: I'm going to slashdot my web server!
Killed or Hurt Spammers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, us too (Score:3, Funny)
So I guess you could say spam lowered your productivity? :rimshot:
Re:Skynet (Score:2, Funny)
It wouldn't be all bad; at least we'd be rid of Microsoft once and for all.
Most users too clueless... (Score:3, Funny)
I've given up on most of it. The best way to figure out where junk is coming from is to just view the contents as ASCII, which The Bat does very nicely. (Show kludges shows headers) Most of the time there's a phone number or website and doing a whois on many will reveal the villain.
There are urls which are use just the IP address and those which look like HTTP://434328432849, the number being an IP address, not in the form 127.0.0.1, but the sum of 1+0*2^8+0*2^16+127*2^24, a neat way of masking sites.
Other news... I was just checkin a website I've had for 4+ years and never checked the mailbox that came with it. It filled up Mar 23, 2002 and has 1,669 pieces of mail, mostly spam. Looks like I'll be cleaning it out on Saturday. It would be an interesting project to archive it all and see how many violate California's anti-spam law and see if I can Make $$$$ At Home!
There are 2 cases where I have replied to spam (Score:5, Funny)
The ones that tended to be exactly what I wanted were the Nigerian scam ones. I tried to always reply to them, and if I noticed that they were in the same area as another, I would try to set them up with eachother or recommend that they talk to each other (sometimes one wanted to "give" me money, other times they wanted to "borrow" money - I had a laugh in recommending them to each other).
I think I only once had a conversation with them where they replied once.
2) I am now cocky about spam with spamassassin doing so well - so occassionally if I'm feeling up to it, I just go through my spam and reply to a bunch of it or try to unsubscribe by the method that they suggest.
I do it purposely in hopes of getting more spam to see how spamassassin holds up to it.
Re:It happened to my wife! (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry man. I didn't know.
You have to admit though, I bet you never expected to see a picture of a guy doing that to to a chicken.
Re:What the Internet needs: (Score:2, Funny)
since they have a threshold (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I hear ya! (Score:1, Funny)
The horrors!!!! *shudder*
You Don't Like The Mail Admin, Do You? (Score:5, Funny)
Given that you just entered the domain name not once, but twice, and your post is likely to be seen my thousands, spidered, and google-cached, I take it that you don't like your mail admin very much, do you?
not just the internet.... (Score:3, Funny)
I bet she wasn't much into sex with animals for a while after that too.
Re:No way to contact spammer (Score:4, Funny)
"We apologize for the previously displayed shenanigans. Those responsible for that ordered list have been sacked."
Re:I hear ya! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:since they have a threshold (Score:1, Funny)
only break $5000 worth of his bones. then you won't be worth investigating either.
Unfortunately, crimlaw for assault and violence doesn't have minimum dollar amount damages. Too bad, really, as a spammer's life isn't worth more than a $1.95.
IQ Test (Score:4, Funny)
Re:IQ Test (Score:5, Funny)
LOCK WORKSTATION, logout, shutDown, _Change Password, TaSK L1st, or Cncel?
I MUST KNWO! Give me answer! Pleez! NOW! Right NOW! PLEAEEHZ! PLEEZ!
Re:No way to contact spammer (Score:3, Funny)
Um, uh... No! Yeah, there's no way to turn off HTML mail in Outlook. Yeah. Outlook has no provisions for safe email reading.
To be completely safe, you should... Uh... delete Outlook entirely. Mmm, yeah, delete it. Outlook gone. Perfectly safe. Yeah, that's it...
Then you can safely install a safe email program, like... Er... Mozilla! [mozilla.org] Yeah! Or Evolution! [ximian.org] Yeah, Evolution. I use it. And so does my wife... Morgan Fairchild...
Schwab
Re:IQ Test (Score:5, Funny)
The *real* IQ test button is hidden on the back of your computer near the power cord.
Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:3, Funny)
Hard to do... Easy solution: just block the bounces at your mailserver, at least then the lusers won't notice the problem any longer...
Re:IQ Test (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of my days as a BBS sysop..
My board forced registration before you could post anything - in the registration sign-up (before it asked for any information) I had it say "Press any key to begin. If you don't know which key is the 'any key, it's the large one on the front of your computer labeled 'reset'
Over the course of the 3 years I had it running, the logs showed two people drop carrier immediately after reading that.
Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:5, Funny)
What kind of a geek ARE you??? Not only do you talk about zip rather than gzip/bzip, then call zip passwording "secure", but you also talk about getting sidetracked by scoring, rather than some more sci-fi reason, like being shot at by storm troopers, attacked by some creature from LOTR, etc. Come on, get it together man! This IS slashdot afterall.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, if Linus can't spell his own last-name...
It happened to me too, but I got a little revenge. (Score:3, Funny)
This is NOT the spammer's page, just a link to a screenshot of their page with the URL included [greenwebdesign.com]
next attack (Score:3, Funny)
Mike Masnick wrote up his experience getting slammed by a somewhat new kind of spam attack that doesn't get much hype
Now he gets to write about a somewhat old type of DOS attack known as "getting slashdotted". Actually, his site seems to be holding up well.
MDC
Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:4, Funny)
The chat logs as people came in fuming and it slowly dawned on people that they had been had were priceless
Spam Radio (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:5, Funny)
That reminds me of when it was cool to tell lusers that there was this huge ftp site at 127.0.0.1, just log in with your existing account...
No, it's "Dude, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid you've been hacked -- the FTP server at 127.0.0.1 has all your personal files. See for yourself; just log in with your normal id..."
Thing is, it only worked when a sufficiently naive person would still be likely to be using a Unix system and be familiar with FTP, whereas now, even having heard of those things is something like a guarantee of knowing too much to fall for it.
Speaking of falling for it, though -- didn't I read here a while back that this particular troll had been used on the Scientologists, with spectacular success? Like, they were in court taking a deposition and their lawyer was shouting at the guy "Tell us who runs the FTP server at 127.0.0.1!"
Re:IQ Test (Score:2, Funny)
This one cracked me up.
Re:IQ Test (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:2, Funny)
Jerking the chain of $cientology is always fun. I had one alt.religion.scientology handler threaten me with legal action unless I immediately took down my site .. hisname.isgay.com, ah my! Another time, I contacted a number of critics by email and we started the rumour of a phantom web site called Umbra Xenu, home of the ARSCC [wdne]. (The joke is that I do have a phantom web site with a dynamic IP and weird ports. I'll have to scan my logs some day.)
Re: Reverse spam really isn't that new... (Score:5, Funny)
It's "How do you keep an idiot busy for hours?" for the new millenium!
Re:Replying can help stop spam... (Score:4, Funny)
To put it simply people..."A DICK"
You've got balls man...