In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stephanie da Silva) wrote:
>
>Got an interesting spam this evening, not to me actually but to a
>list that runs on my LISTSERV (which got to me because I'm the
>LISTSERV owner). After writing the person back, she confirmed my
>suspicion that she was using the PAML as the source of list owners.
>Her service is a mailing list archiving site.
>
>I gave her a list of alternative methods for promoting a site.
>She said she was new to all this but also gave the usual spammer
>excuses, how she was getting a great response to her mailings and
>to "just hit delete." I didn't get the impression I had persuaded
>stop, as if the list owners in the PAML don't get spammed enough
>(which is why I've been removing personal email addresses from the
>listings, sigh).
>
>So I suppose this is a heads-up. The site in question is:
>
>www.listquest.com
I've been trying something new and different in the past few days.
In general, you can't directly communicate with spammers that are out
there hijacking open relays or spamming direct from cheapie dialup lines,
but there does appear to be a growing percentage of folks/companies
spamming (without shame or gamesmanship) direct from their own domains
and from their own dedicated lines.
For these, I've started sending back the following sorts of notices
(with their original spams attached). Note that I use EXAMPLE.COM
here in place of the actual domain name of whoever sent the spam.
======================================================================
Subject: EXAMPLE.COM: Blacklisted
Congratulations!
Due to the ongoing spam arriving here from the EXAMPLE.COM domain, all
mail from all nodes within the EXAMPLE.COM domain are now permanently
banned/blacklisted for the entire monkeys.com domain.
If you have any questions about this blacklisting of the EXAMPLE.COM
domain, please get an e-mail account someplace else (e.g. Hotmail)
and send mail from there to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Have a nice day.
Ron Guilmette
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
======================================================================
Interestingly, this DOES seem to get their attention, at least as long
as I *do* actually drop the relevant domain name into the local blacklist
(which I have indeed been doing).
I suppose that I should mention also that for some strange reason, I do
not feel compelled to divulge to these spammers the number of actual
humans (1) who are actually reachable via e-mail addresses in the
monkeys.com domain.
Their ignorance with respect to this number is my bliss. At least a
couple of them have reacted to these simple notifications as if I had
just disconnected them from the entire known universe. :-)
Moral of the story: Nothing you might say to a spammer is going to
be anywhere near at persuasive as just saying ``Your entire domain has
been permanently blacklisted here. Have a nice day.''
