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Write some spam software that works as advertised for a short period, then after every time it is used, it covertly mails out death threats to a hard-coded list of public officials with static email addresses. (such as the President of the United States, etc. The secret service takes death threats
against the president very seriously and will bust their ass if they're in the USA.)
The software should claim that it anonymizes the sender, but for the death threats will use/provide all the personal information about the sender it can collect. (like IP address, time of sending, how much porn they have on their computer, etc)
Make sure the death threat is worded well enough so they don't eventually try and implicate you, the author of the software.
Fsck, i hate spammers. I hate them soooo much.
(thx to my coworker for helping flesh this idea out)
DigiCrime
http://www.digicrime.com/dc.html
Maybe i could get these guys to do it. ;-) [cameron, Oct 17 2004]
Sneakemail
http://www.sneakemail.com/
On the topic of spam - here's a great service for discovering from where spammers are getting your email address. I am not affiliated with them, merely a happy user. [cameron, Oct 17 2004]
A modicum of pedantry
http://www.perl.com...age/misc/virus.html
"Virii is still completely silly, so don't do that; otherwise, everyone will know you're just a blathering script kiddie." Thank you. Please go about your business. [pottedstu, Oct 17 2004]
subDimension Free Email - killed by spammers
http://www.subdimension.com/
Another good and free net service....destroyed by spammers. I am reminded of what is known as "the tragedy of the commons". [cameron, Oct 17 2004]
Costs of Spam
http://www.washingt...yn/A17754-2003Mar12
Will cost $10 billion this year [2003]...40% of all e-mail traffic in the USA...AOL's spam filters now block 1 billion messages per day [cameron, Oct 17 2004]
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If you wrote the spam program, I think it will be you on whose doorbell the FBI/Swat teams will be ringing. |
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Actually, there is a fundamental and original idea here: since many spammers use software they've purchased especially for the purpose, introduction of some new spamware will cause some number of spammers to migrate to it. |
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The goal then is to arrange the software so that it 'turns the tables' on the purchaser after a certain period of time. |
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Unfortunately, even with today's "You can't blame us for anything" software licenses, I think the creator of such software would still likely get sued by any spammers who were harmed thereby. |
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Don't use just a "You can't blame us for anything" phrase in the license agreement. Specifically spell out what the software will do in hard to read language buried in the bottom 2/3 of the license agreement. Also, don't have the software do anything that harms the user directly. |
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Perhaps add an "automatic update" feature that gets installed as a separate application from an encrypted portion of the installation file, and only on 80% of the machines. These steps should make it take longer to find the correlation between your software and this security hole. Then publish information anonymously about a security bug you "found" to an appropriate forum. Stand back and enjoy the show. |
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When they finally trace the security hole to your software, apologize profusely and explain the secrecy of the installation by claiming you were trying to make the automatic update more secure by not making it well known. The 80% thing was just a bug. Be prepared to hire a good lawyer, and make sure you don't have a link to this idea in your internet history file in case the authorities take your computer as evidence. |
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Have to agree. The guy doesn't rant until the last sentence. (Not counting the parenthetical coworker gratitude.) It's a rant when it's mostly rant. This is hardly rant. |
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So spammers are assumed to not have any coding / decoding abilties? |
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Dimandja, as the person placing the mfd, the onus is on you to show how it deserves the label, not tell us we're wrong. You have not done that. I don't get the quotations either... I know what I said. |
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Sleepygrass - I'm glad i wasn't drinking something when i read that! ;-) |
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Dimandja -
I don't see why this might be seen as a rant - two sentences out of many does not a rant make. (everybody else seems to get this) Give me an appropriate forum, and THEN you'll see a rant! ;-) |
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My opinion on spammers should not cloud your mind about the idea to eliminate spammers. I'm annoyed with government overspending, too, but that doesn't make my ideas on monetary efficiency any less valid; Does this example help you understand separating opinions from utilitarian ideas? |
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WAIT! I understand now! Dimandja is a spammer! S/he is quaking in his/her boots after hearing this wonderful idea! <snicker> |
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So anyway, why exactly do you want this marked for deletion? Please elucidate. Should I glance at all the original ideas you've contributed to halfbakery to get an understanding of what is a good idea? |
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My (idea) posts to halfbakery are often exactly that - half baked ideas that i hope might inspire somebody else to have fully baked idea. I try to create in this world rather than destroy. (although in this case i'd like to create something to destroy spam. i just downloaded my email - 16 mails...two weren't spam) |
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I've likely got 400 spams in my 3 hotmail accounts which I no longer use - these apams will all be a week or less old. These spams are all there because hotmail sorta followed yahoo's lead and forgot to tell anyone they had opened the gates of hell. If you're anything like my elf, filters were set high to begin with - it was just those pesky new boxes which were checked by default without my/your approval - *after* accounts had been created, yadayadayada...
Wouldn't this make microshaft partially liable for *damages* which they'll weasel out of? |
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i think a comment went missing. (not by my hand) |
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Sorry, [Dimandja], I'll have to agree on the non-rantiness of this. There is a valid idea here; the 'I hate spammers' is simply the spur to proposing the idea, not the 'idea' its elf.
Saying 'I hate supermarkets, they should all be replaced' is a rant; proposing a valid idea for their replacement is an idea.
It's still a silly idea though, for the other reasons stated. |
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Dimandja... a) this idea is not about malicious virii. It's about booby-trapped software. b) Once sentence does not a rant make. If that's all there was, yes, but there is a legitimate idea (agreed not a great one, but still an idea) in the preceeding three paragraphs. Give it up. |
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// when you say " this idea is not about malicious virii. It's about booby-trapped software" you are confusing apples and apples. This is a baked common virus. //
- viruses propagate themselves. this software does not propagate itself by its own hand. the end user (spammer) is free to download it or not, read the TOS or not, and use it or not. Hardly a virus. At best, it has an "undocumented feature". At worst, it resembles a trojan (but isn't). |
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// Not to mention highly illegal. // - well, that's kind of the whole point now, isn't it. The spammer gets in legal trouble for making death threats. Silver star! As for it being illegal for the software writer to make it...that would be an interesting court case. I suspect the outcome would depend heavily upon details and jurisdiction. (but IANAL, and you probably aren't, either) How about a modification where only the source code is provided (obfuscated or not) and the spammer has to compile it themselves. In that case, it's 100% the spammer's fault, IMHO. (but again, IANAL) |
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// You are so keen on hurting spammers that you have forgotten all descency and common sense. // - why be decent to people who are costing us millions of dollars each year? It is spread out across populations, but these leeches steal from *everybody* (on the net) one cent and one second at a time for the end user, and thousands of dollars at a time for ISPs and data network companies. Even indirectly, one mailing list which i use professionally was shut down for at least a day because of spammers hijacking their system, resulting in lost work, which is lost time, which is lost $$$. I could provide countless real-world examples if you want of how spammers are stealing from the world. If somebody comes into your home and steals your television, do you give them a smile, pat on the back, and send them on their way? Maybe you don't frame them for something else, but nonetheless, they do not deserve "decency". |
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As for common sense, a quote i love but for which i couldn't find the attribute is "Common sense is neither." Another i found while searching for the attribute is "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." --Albert Einstein. |
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Maybe this IS a bad idea, but why are you so hot to get it wiped from the system? Obviously it has inspired much discussion and probably will in the future, and by that merit alone is worthy of not being deleted. (personally i don't think any ideas should be deleted except for entries that are obviously not ideas. <eg. Idea: "Hey man, how's it going?">) |
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I can see this topic has touched something within you. Share your pain. |
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I think UnaBubba is right, but it would make them wary of the future. :-) |
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Get behind me, [Dimandja] (pump-action shotgun readying sound). Nobody needs you to tell them why spam is bad, cameron, especially at such length. I suspect that the reason the idea was m-f-d'd as a rant is that it fits the "punish all who do x" rule. If I wrote "tell the government that (people who do so-and-so) are plotting to kill the president," would that not be a rant? |
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snarfyguy - i don't think your idea would qualify as a rant, just a bad (?) idea. However, even a rant can contain a valid idea. |
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// Nobody needs you to tell them why spam is bad, cameron, especially at such length. // - actually, i really don't think most people understand how much spammers really impact us, and they DO need to be told. (but if i did that, it WOULD be a rant! :-) |
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regardless, this idea isn't quite "punish all who do x", but more "provide a tool to do x, that if anybody actually *does* x, something bad happens to them". It's like a free will booby trap or karmic balance. The author did not force them to use it. |
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In my jurisdiction it is illegal to do something like mount razor blades under the dash near your car stereo because you cannot be sure that physical harm will only come to robbers. (that, and losing fingers isn't considered an appropriate punishment for stealing a stereo) However, in the original questionable-ethics idea that started this whole thing, it does not cause physical harm, and the chances of the software exclusively being used by spammers seems pretty high. |
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I like the sneakemail thing, [cameron]. |
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I guess, to be effective, this software would have to be fairly easy to get hold of. Therein lies my problem with the idea. If it's easy to get hold of then it may well entice people into spamming who might not otherwise have done so. As for the rest of it, it's OK with me especially as it has the secondary benefit of drowning the authorities under a tidal wave of spam. They might actually start to take some effective action against spammers as a result.
And what is it with coworkers, eh? There seem to be hundreds of them around the place but you never actually meet one. And i've certainly never orked a cow myself. Not as far as I know, anyway. |
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// I guess, to be effective, this software would have to be fairly easy to get hold of. // |
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Well, as everyone knows (or at least anyone who's seen my inbox knows), the only way to promote your spamming software is via unsolicited commercial email. |
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Which means you'd have to use the software yourself to publicise it, or something, thus bringing down righteous flaming death on your own head. |
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Unbelievable! I just got spam sent to a domain that i just registered literally yesterday. It wasn't even sent to the whois addresses, but a wholly new email address that has never before existed on the internet! (my domain has never been registered before, nor are there currently any variants on it) ...and then they have the stones to tell me that they got my address from an opt-in list! |
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You must have registered it with one of those cheap registrars like GoDaddy. Many of them make extra money by selling the info. |
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I wouldn't have been so suprised if it had been an address that i had used to deal with the registrant or in the whois records - it was just some weird unexpected username ("huddlers@..."). |
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Absurd Theory: there is a list of strings of characters that could likely form valid e-mail addresses. Spammers have the list, which they use to send spam, regardless of the validity of the addresses. When a new address "goes live" it's already getting spam. |
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I'm sorry, but can I just say, the plural of "virus" is not "virii". Nor is it "viri", "vires", "virures", "viz", "vim" or "victim". The word you are looking for is "viruses". "virii" is so not Latin that Julius Caesar should beat the lot of you to death with tomahawks and boomerangs. Where is El Pedanto when you need him? |
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Spam update - after building a small pile of spam coming to specific addresses in my newly registered domain, i figured it *had* to have existed before, even though i couldn't find mention of it anywhere on google. |
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I wound up using the wayback machine and found it shortly existed as a barely used swedish domain three years ago. |
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Funny [1] that invalid email addresses will kick around in spam lists for that long. I guess i shouldn't be surprised - i'm still receiving spam at an address i haven't used in six years. (they mail forward) |
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[1] funny, not so much in a "ha-ha" kind of way...more like a "i never thought the world would end this way" kind of way. |
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Here's another sad story - spammers have caused one of my favourite FREE email locations to perish. http://www.subdimension.com/ offered free web mail AND POP service. Spammers brought it down, as can be seen at their web page (while it is still up). |
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Please use the link function for URLs, [cameron]. Thanks! |
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Snarfyguy: "Absurd Theory"- this may have been sarcasm, but just so others know, spammers do use exactly this technique; it's called a dictionary attack. Once you know there's a domain x.com, try sending mail to aaa@x.com, aab@x.com, aac... etc. This results in thousands to millions of undeliverable messages, but the cost of these (to the spammer) approaches nil. |
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Wow. No, I was kidding, actually. Or I thought I was kidding, or something. |
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