Spam Reviews: Dealing with Spam - what not to do

First of all, there are some things you really shouldn't do.

Mailbombing

I have often had the urge to send a multi-megabyte <BLOB file attachment in reply to the junk mailer, to sink their in-box. Or to mailbomb them. It's hard to resist. But, sadly, it's also not very satisfying, once you learn that it just isn't very effective. Junk emailers are getting more savvy. Often mail sent to the return address bounces because the return address is forged. Sometimes (when you're lucky) the system operator has already yanked the account when they discovered that the junk mailer was abusing the net in this way. Sometimes everyone else had the same idea, and all the disk space on the offender's mail server has already been consumed.

There are also unintended consequences and side-effects for this kind of retributive action, which you should consider. First of all, if the address is forged on purpose (not that hard to do), the person in the reply-to might be the hapless victim of a reverse mailbombing.

Even if this is not the case, causing a mail server to crash affects all the other innocent users on that system. Sure, I could rationalize that this will give them some incentive to deal with the offender, but if this happened to me I wouldn't have any idea which of my co-users was junk mailing from my ISP's server. All I'd know is that the mail server was unavailable. In addition, intentionally trying to crash a machine through mailbombing is technically a Denial-of-Service Attack, a computer crime (at least in the United States.)

If the systems operator has done their job and terminated the account, you are just adding to their headache by mailbombing the address. Plus, the sysop is probably much better at it than you are. This means that you might just have your own mailbox squashed like an irritating mosquito.

Phone Calls and Other Abuse

If a junk email has a phone number in it for responses, especially a toll-free 800 or 888 number, it's obvious that the sender is either A) completely clueless about the Internet and its denizens, B) attempting to pull a nasty prank on someone they don't like very much or C) someone who just exploited the owner of the phone number by charging them for a "really good advertising opportunity on the Internet." No one who knows anything about the nature of the Internet would willingly or knowingly open themselves up for the inevitable massive abuse that's about to rain down on them via their telephone or fax machine.

It's certainly acceptable to call once to calmly explain why you object to their junk email, or to send a single, polite fax. But think about this: If the bulk email mailing-list vendors are telling the truth, the lists have over a million supposedly valid email addresses. If the junk email included a toll-free number, suppose just one percent of the recipients were irritated enough to call in a (free, after all) complaint during the following week. That's ten thousand phone calls--more than 1,400 per day! And a lot of those calls are going to be abusive.

I understand how angry junk email can make you. But please don't call the numbers to yell. Don't send 400-page faxes. It's really not a good idea to call the toll-free number repeatedly just to run up their bill. (For one thing, it's a crime to harass over the phone, and your calling number will appear on their bill.)

The owner of that number is almost certainly either a victim of a selfish junk emailer (just like you) or a poor, ignorant fool about to learn a terrible lesson. I have talked to some of these people by phone, and they are usually very apologetic and repentant, and have been fielding angry phone calls all day. Feel sorry for them. Don't lower yourself to the same level as the junk emailers. Don't become an abuser.

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