Hate Spam? Spam them right back!

This is not the first time I have written on this particular topic. If spam bothers you as much as it bothers me, then maybe you should start doing what I have been doing for a while. Spam them right back!

As you may know, the vast majority of spam you are likely to receive is sent using phony e-mail addresses, so you cannot reply to the spam in the traditional sense by simply hitting your ‘Reply’ button to share a few choice words with your favorite spammer.

Up until very recently ‘ today actually ‘ there was a company that was using the collective power of its members to fight back effectively against spammers, by bombarding them with requests to remove spam recipient’s address from their mailing lists.

The company was based in Israel and was called Blue Security. They were using a program called ‘Blue Frog’ that members could install on their computers which would allow them to fight back against the spammers.

Apparently, it was working quite well because the spammers were very angry with the folks at Blue Security. So much so, that they launched a massive denial-of-service attack against Blue Security’s website and managed to take their server down for a day or two.

When Blue Security’s site came back on line they quickly declared victory and assured their members that they were in the fight to stay, etc.

Although the real reasons may never be known, Blue Security threw in the towel today and shut their operation down. They claim that they did not want to get involved in an escalation of the war and cause a strain on Internet resources.

Some folks speculate that the Blue Security people may have been receiving threats. Not at all outside the realm of possibility considering how much money some of the big spammers are making these days.

Having just learned about Blue Security within the last week or so, I was planning on signing on with the service (which was free, by the way) very soon and joining the fight against the spammers. So much for that plan.

I will continue the fight in my own way until I hear about a better way to do it.

What makes me so angry at spammers?

Well, one thing that really ticks me off about these scumbags is that there seems to be no way (other than white listing perhaps, but that’s a hassle as well) to hide from them. But even that is not an option for the kinds of e-mail addresses I am talking about since you cannot possibly know who may try to contact you.

Since I happen to have a few websites on the net, I set up special e-mail addresses so site visitors and customers can contact me. I’m quite accustomed to getting spam on my ‘primary’ e-mail address that is provided by my ISP and that I have been using for years. Most of the time the spam is kept to a minimum by the spam filters employed by my ISP, so it’s not that hard to put up with.

However, when the spammers start sending their useless crap to dedicated e-mail addresses I have set up for contact with web site visitors and customers, that really starts to get under my skin.

I had taken extra precautions on my sites to keep the spam-bots from snagging my e-mail addresses from any of my sites. Still they somehow manage to find out about those addresses and I started receiving spam via one of these dedicated addresses.

I cannot be sure the address was compromised by spam-bots visiting my site since the address must be revealed to web site visitors or customers when I reply to the messages that they have left for me via the contact page on my web site.

The whole idea of using a contact page is to avoid displaying an e-mail address anywhere on the web site so that the spam-bots will not collect it for their master’s collection.

Believe it or not, there are actually other spam-bots that search the web seeking contact pages on whatever web site they can find and then spamming the web site operator through the contact page!

I have seen a number of attempts to spam me through my web site contact pages but so far, they have all failed and have delivered error messages. Apparently, the spammers have a bit more work to do in order to perfect that particular brand of spam-bot.

For whatever reason, a visitor or customer will sometimes do strange and silly things with an e-mail address.

I had one customer who added one of my dedicated addresses to her list of pals that she sends jokes, inspirational messages, cute pictures and the rest of the usual crap of that variety that clogs up the net each and every day.

It’s possible that a spammer somehow got that address when my customer sent out an e-mail to her list of pals and it was forwarded to who-knows-who who-knows-how-many-times. Since that is the address I am having the most spam trouble with, that seems like a very real possibility and perhaps my efforts to keep the spam-bots from plucking it off my sites have been successful so far.

Anyway, to get on with the real point of this message, I strongly encourage you to fight back when you get a piece of spam e-mail that really pushes your buttons, and here’s how:

Every spammer sending spam is trying to sell something and in order to sell something they must provide some way for you to get in touch with them or the sellers of the product they are promoting so you can buy the product!

The vast majority of the time, the spammer is providing you with a web site that you can visit to make your purchase. And because almost every web site needs to provide some way for a customer or potential customer to contact them, they almost all have a contact page. Are you starting to get the picture?

It does not take a lot of time to visit the contact page of the web site in question and leave a few choice comments for the web site operator.

A while back someone commented on a similar post I made here on the same subject and suggested that I was wasting my time since the spammers were not reading my comments. I strongly disagree with that, and here’s why:

I have web sites with contact pages and I always read the messages that arrive. If I want to respond to a question about my products from a potential customer, I have to read those messages. And you can bet the same is true for those sites selling Viagra or any number of other products that are famous for being promoted with spam.

There are a number of things you want to do to be sure your message is actually read by the spammer.

There will always be a spot on the contact form for your e-mail address. This should be quite obvious, but never enter your actual e-mail address there! Also, do not make up an e-mail address that is obviously fake, like spamsucks@ihatespam.com or something like that. Make it look like a real e-mail address to make the web site operator think it is a genuine inquiry.

If there is a place to enter your name, again, don’t use your real name, but make up something that actually sounds like someone’s name.

Many times the contact will provide a ‘drop-down list’ for you to select the subject of your message. Make sure you pick something that will get their attention, like ‘Product Inquiry’ or ‘Payment Problem’ or something like that. Again, you want them to think it is an important message that may lead to a sale or is from someone having a problem making payment or something.

When you get to the body of the message, that is where you can have a little fun and say whatever you want since the web site operator has likely opened the message and is reading it and you have successfully wasted some of their time, and hopefully even pissed them off a bit!

You can save a little time by making up a short text file with a prepared message that you can copy and paste to save time. I often ask them how they like being spammed. And sometimes will paste in the text of the spam they sent to me. Being careful to remove any instance of my e-mail address from the text first!

You want to play the same low-down dirty game they started by making sure you are completely anonymous to them.

Sure, they might be able to obtain your IP address from their logs, but I seriously doubt they are going to employ the resources necessary to launch a denial-of-service attack or anything like that against one little individual internet consumer. It’s not worth their time, especially since they are likely to be receiving angry messages from others that have received their spam.

The only real power we have against the spammers is our numbers. That was the beauty of the Blue Security model. I can only hope some other company picks up the torch and continues the battle where Blue Security left off. I will be sure to join them if they do.

Granted, it does not do the spammer any great harm to spam them back using their contact page, but it gives me some satisfaction knowing I probably deceived the spammer into opening my message and wasting their time just as they did by sending their garbage to me.

Call it pure revenge if you like. That’s just fine with me.

If you get huge volumes of spam, I can easily understand any reluctance on your part to engage in this little game. Since I only respond to spam sent to my dedicated business-related e-mail addresses, it does not take up much of my time. Just enough to give me a little satisfaction from time to time.

If large numbers of people started doing this, it might cause the spammers some significant grief. And since they pretty much have to provide a way for customers and potential customers to contact them, there is not much they could do to stop it.

I’ll gladly spend a minute or two if I think it will help inconvenience some low-life spammer. I urge you to join me and have a little fun at a spammer’s expense.