Spam Hunting Season
Posted (February 6, 2004)
by: Annette M. Hall
and Billy G.
Anyone who has an e-mail account today knows the frustration of spam
these days. The stuff just keeps pouring in, without much relief in sight.
Spam, also known as junk e-mail or unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE),
is flooding the Internet. Much of the spam is commercial advertising,
often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, financial solicitations,
quasi-legal services and most alarming, pornography.
We are each left with the decision to filter our e-mail and end up
missing that all important message or simply deal with the problem, one
e-mail at a time.
To say it's frustrating, unproductive and irritating, is the understatement
of the year. To make matters worse, our new spam law, has only added to the
problem.
During a recent discussion about spam, on a homeschool webmasters list
[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hswm/]
a list member had a great. Why not put a bounty on spammers?
Homeschooler Fed-Up
Billy G. writes:
My disgust with spammers grows daily. I used to diligently track
them down and get their e-mail accounts and web sites shut down.
I even showed the kids how to decipher e-mail headers and file abuse
complaints.
Spam Increase
Unfortunately, the volume of spam has increased so much over the
last few years that it would be a full time job to continue to do
the same. The content of much of the spam is such that I don't want
the kids to open it to look for header info. So, I've resorted to using
blocking and filtering techniques.
I know the spam is still there, I just don't have to see as much
of it. But spammers are truly criminal and seem to want to co-opt
everything in the name of money.
It's not bad enough they want to fill my inbox, they seem to want to
ruin the Internet.
For many years, we've had a very open unschooling message board for
www.unschooling.org. People did
not have to register or provide an e-mail address to post. Many newbies
were more comfortable because it was anonymous and they could post
immediately without going through a registration process.
We would get the usual get-rich-quick postings that I would
periodically delete. But then an Escort service started using our
boards. They would post a message that was essentially an ad for
their services. It didn't seem to make much sense, as I imagine
homeschoolers wouldn't be one of their demographics, but when I
checked my server referrer logs I figured out what they were up to.
Ad Hosting By Proxy
After they posted their ad/message on our boards, they were linking
to the message as an ad. Their web site was a listing of services in
different cities and each listing was just a link that took you to
details they had posted on various message boards.
That way, their server wasn't hosting the ads and consumed very
little bandwidth (which they were forcing onto other peoples servers).
They could also flood newsgroups with spam linking to these message board
ads which weren't as directly traceable to their web site.
Taking over our inbox and message boards still wasn't enough. They
have to take over our outbox too! (or at least appear to). I've been
getting bounces from messages we never sent!
Deceit
A recent spam campaign has forged return addresses using our domains.
As anti-spam as we are, I hate to think even one person might be deceived
into believing we sent out any spam. I tracked down the source to an open
mail relay on a university computer and have contacted the administrators
to ask them to secure the relay, but it's taken up a good chunk of my
time. I shouldn't have to spend time on things like this!
We need people to learn never to buy from spammers. Please don't
feed the spammers! It only encourages them.
Bounty Hunters
We also need a bounty system that not only allows spammers to be fined,
but allows "bounty hunters" to collect a big chunk of the fine as a
reward for catching the spammers. That way some people could make a
living tracking down spammers.
As it is now, most people focus on blocking or filtering
spammers because it is easier, less expensive, and less time
consuming than trying to shut them down.
Imagine if companies could make a profit from tracking down spammers.
You'd have people begging you to forward the spam you received so they
could track down the source. As it is now, if you report spam to your
ISP, they might block the originating IP, but not much is likely to
happen to the spammer.
Billy G.
www.FUN-Books.com
www.unschooling.org
