Reply #17: Here are some non-violent ways to strike back at spammers [View All]

[Ian David]

These are some "Anti-Spam Vigilante" methods of dubious morality.

But at least nobody gets bludgeoned to death (sigh).


There's Project Honeypot
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/

and

Blue Frog
http://www.bluesecurity.com/


On edit: one more

WebPoison.org is an open source project, the goal of which is to contaminate internet "spambots" and "spam spiders", by giving them bogus HTML web pages which contain bogus email addresses. (Actually, the real goal is to make spambots and spam spiders obey the HTML "robots" meta element, but we'll get to that later. )
http://www.webpoison.org/about.html



See:


Spam block has its own ethical issues
By Hiawatha Bray | July 25, 2005
A couple of years ago, this column featured the prediction that the junk e-mail problem would be coming under control right about now. So much for clairvoyance.

<snip>

Blue Security's system, called Blue Frog, is available free at bluesecurity.com. Blue Frog registers the user's e-mail address, then creates a dozen or so fake addresses linked to the real address. The phony addresses are ''honeypots," designed solely to trap spam. When junk mail turns up, the Blue Frog system analyzes the spam to identify not its sender, but the advertiser that uses the spam to sell his wares -- cheap Viagra tablets, for instance. These sleazy entrepreneurs put Web links in these e-mail messages, so they're easy to find.

Then Blue Frog generates a program that goes to the site's order page, and types in a message demanding an end to the e-mails. Every time a Blue Frog user gets a spam message at any of the honeypot addresses, the system automatically complains. Reshef is betting that if he can get a critical mass of 100,000 users, Blue Frog will overwhelm spam advertisers with a relentless barrage of complaints, eventually driving them right off the Internet.

It sounds deliciously nasty. But in the view of expert spam warriors, it's a lousy idea, and perhaps even illegal. ''How the heck he got funding for this is a mystery to me," said Anne Mitchell, CEO of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy.

More:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/07/25/spam_block_has_its_own_ethical_issues/





The Do Not Intrude™ Registry

The Do Not Intrude™ Registry puts you in charge of the spam messages you receive in the same way the national Do Not Call Registry gives you a choice about receiving telemarketing calls.

Rather than waiting for spam to arrive and then trying to filter it out, Blue Security’s bold innovative approach actively deters spammers from sending unsolicited e-mail to your mailbox.

With the Do Not Intrude Registry you no longer have to worry about personal messages going to your Junk e-Mail folder, while spam messages continue to flood your Inbox, wasting your time and creating a hostile computing environment that exposes you to offensive content and raises security hazards.

Active Deterrence™

The Do Not Intrude Registry is enforced by the Blue Community and uses Blue Security's Active Deterrence, a patent- pending technology that disrupts the business of merchants, advertisers and spammers who choose to ignore the Do Not Intrude Registry.

For those spammers who ignore the Do Not Intrude Registry, Blue Community members use Blue Security’s visible source Blue Frog client software to automatically send complaints to the advertised Web site about the spam messages reaching their mailboxes.

Due to the sheer number of concurrent complaints from Blue Community members, non-complying spamvertised sites become overloaded, and are unable to respond to customers. As a result revenues sharply decline and both merchants and the spammers they employ are obliged to comply with the Do Not Intrude Registry to stay in business.

Active Deterrence is an ethical solution to spam. The Community reacts to spam it receives and warns advertisers and spammers before posting complaints on their sites. Merchants and spammers can easily avoid the consequences of Active Deterrence by using a simple set of Registry Compliance tools that removes addresses that appear in the Do Not Intrude Registry from their mailing lists.