Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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fake buyers

Penis pills for I. P. Freely please
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Spammers make money by selling their services to fly-by-night online pharmacies morgtage companies, porn sites, or to people who are abusing ecommerce affiliate programs.

Why not start a task force to respond to spam and purchase the products with posion credit card numbers. Each posion credit card number would be registered with the big credit card companies. Once it is actually billed, the credit card company will black-list the merchant ID. That makes life hard for the spammer's customers, which makes life hard for spammers.

0xdeadc0de, Jul 06 2004

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       The problem with this is that now the people that actually want to buy the product can't with their credit card. Also, how easy is it to get a new merchant ID? And the spammers will quickly be able to identify the poison by setting up accounts in groups. One account will find the poisoned number and the rest of the sites will then not attempt to submit that card. It would result in each poisoned number being used once. Eventually, the CC company would run out of numbers to use.
GenYus, Jul 06 2004
  

       It's hard to get more merchant ID's because they must be tied to ligitimate businesses, who often do not themselves condone spam.   

       The spammers can do a lot to hide their identities, but they are not the ones being directly penalized. They do not even see the CC numbers when someone buys v1agRRa.   

       Ligit businesses are the ones who are forced to pay the price for their poor choice of advertising partners or unmanaged affiliates program. Eventually, the drug manufacturers would realize that it is more profitable to more tightly manage their supply chain and cut out the spamming pharmacies.   

       I don't think the CC companies will run out of numbers. It would only take a few dozen or hundred poison numbers.
0xdeadc0de, Jul 06 2004
  

       I already do something similar from time to time. If a spam links to a web site, I go to the "contact us" part and fill out a request for an extra big order. I use a fake-but-realistic name and phone number. About 5-10 such entries takes only a couple of minutes.   

       If everyone did this, then spam campaigns would generate heaps of enquiries, but it would be almost impossible to find the genuine enquiries from the millions of fake entries.   

       >:o)
not_only_but_also, Jul 06 2004
  

       List of email addresses: $200
Email spam sender: $40
Non-secure mail server subscription: $100
Sending spam with my competitors' information so they cannot accept credit cards:... Priceless.
GenYus, Jul 07 2004
  

       I've seen this suggested in the past (outside of halfbakery) for responses to phishing (e.g. fake paypal and the like).
aguydude, Mar 29 2006
  
      
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