[NTLUG:Discuss] List $pamming

[Steve Baker]

al_h at technologist.com wrote:
> 
> I remember a news story years back about this man who successfully
> billed all of the telemarketing companies that used his phone line for
> advertising. Perhaps we have an person who knows the method we could use
> to start sending bills to these people. It would be a great boon to our
> treasury ;-)

I havn't heard of anyone who sucessfully did this with a spammer.

This trick *does* work with telephone marketeers - but you do have
to tell them to put you on their "don't call" list - and only if
they call you *after* that can you claim money from them (I think
it's $500 or something).  You are also advised to tape the conversation
in which you tell them to put you on their "don't call list" - so
you can prove that you did so later on....of course you have to ask
their permission to tape the call...and you can just imagine how
much they like *that* idea.

The problem with spammers is that when you tell them to take you
off your mailing list - they do - but then they add you to a list
of 'this-is-a-real-email-address' entries that are a saleable
commodity.

That just brings hoards of other spammers down on your head.

These toner people are particularly noxious. They say in some
of their mails (I didn't read the offending one) that they'll
be happy to remove you from their mailing list - but not if you
reply via email (you have to phone them) - and not if you are
abusive(!).  You can just bet how well manned that phone line
is!

For the lists that *I* maintain, I set them up to disallow
postings from people who are not subscribed to the list. That
gets rid of nearly all spam to the list - and the few spammers
who are enthusiastic enough to subscribe before flooding the
list are pretty easy to ban from the list.  Over the past ~2years,
I've only had to do that once.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjbaker1 at airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sjbaker at hti.com      (work)