Re: Sudden Spam Epedemic

"Stuart Moore" <stu...@bigfoot.com> writes:

> On my NG feed, we've just received 3 cable box descrambler plans and one
> pornographic binary - is everyone seeing this or are the rest of you lucky
> enough to have decent filters?

They also arrive here (at least the 3 cable TV ones).


> Anything we can do about it?

Most spammers:

Identify the providers of:

- their net access (see the NNTP-Posting-Host: line)
- their usenet access (see the tail of the Path: line)
- their mail boxes (particularly those to anwer to)
  (see the From:, Reply-To: lines and addresses in the text)
- their advertised web sites (see URLs in the text)

and then mail (forward the spam) to abuse@provider and postmaster@provider
and demand to have the net access or mail box or web site closed down.

Repeat this for every spam that makes it through to you. Usenet and Email.
The more people who do this, the faster the spammers net resources disappear,
and the less spamming makes an profit.


This particular cable TV spammer:

He has no mail box and no web site and treats net access as "hit and
run". So the best is to forward them to uc...@ftc.gov so that they
follow up the phone numbers and postal mail boxes to get him.

Note: this is a government agancy mail box (federal trade commission),
so the more people that complain of an particular spammer, the more
likely they are going to take this particular spammer serious. That is
also why you should not distract them with spams where you can go to
the providers.

Alternatively if you are in Florida: follow up the postal address and
find out if local law enables you to privately sue him (for wasting
you resources, see also anti FAX spam laws).


--
Neil Franklin, nei...@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/
Hacker, Unix Guru, El Eng FH/BSc, Sysadmin, Roleplayer, LARPer, Mystic