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Re: surge in spam email (fwd)

  • From: Pim van Riezen
  • Date: Wed Aug 09 20:49:36 2000

On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Derek J. Balling wrote:

> While I commend the anti-spam attitude, "prove you had nothing to do 
> with it" is impossible, meaning "if you're an abovenet customer, your 
> connectivity is subject to the whim of any spammer you piss off 
> somehow who decides to get you kicked off by spamming your name 
> around the world."

What Steve Sobol uttered earlier is actually quite true: Spammers are
dumb. Many a bozo in our turf was careful enough to use his dialup ISP to
spamvertize a site, but then made the fatal mistake of checking his pop3
box from the same dialup node around the same time. Baddaboom!

The average spammer we run into is just clueless. Most of the times not
even aware of doing anything wrong. Some 'attitude readjustment' over the
phone (and they usually do call in very quickly once their website goes
404 on them) is usually enough to make them change their tune. Same goes
for subscribe-without-confirm mailinglists. Repeat offenders end up with
their heads stuck to a wooden pike in front of our co-lo PoP to scare away
nosey visitors, of course. Alternatively, if they have good lawyers, we
disband their contract and just imagine the bit about the pike.

Cheers,
Pi

-- 
Odd things animals.  All dogs look up to you.  All cats look down
on you.  Only the pig looks at you as an equal.

                            - Winston Churchill