Unspam: undoing the efforts of spammers

Hate spam? Well there is something you can do about it. Think of it as a hobby ...

• First, be sure you understand that spam is unsolicited commercial email. See this page for links to useful spam information sites.
• Then report it to spamcop.net.
• NEVER BUY FROM A SPAMMER!! I will never buy from a spammer for the rest of my life. I discourage everyone else from supporting them. Don't be the lowlife that pay them money.
• Next you can give the spammer something to chew on. Consider this. If the spammer sends out a million emails expecting to get 0.01% positive responses, then if each person who got a spam spent a little bit of time complaining directly some of the the spammers, the spammers would get flooded and this would wipe out their business. For example, since they already have your email address, you can send a number of complaints to them. This can be easily automated under Unix, but I leave it to you to devise tools yourself. (I will not supply you with tools, learn some Unix.) I suggest that you do this for companies that are supposedly above board, such as a biotech company. Note that spammers often give a link to a web site. You can find email addresses from contact pages on the web site. Send a copy of your complaint to everyone in the company so that they know that they are working for unethical people.
• Every spammer leaves a trail since they need business. All you need to do is follow the trail. For example, http://www.oneratenow.com sent me a spam. They have a toll free phone number there. All I would need to do is call and leave a polite message that they should not be spamming. If you want, you could forget to hang up, so the message will the maximum length that their system can take (you may have to wait for the system to ask what to do, it depends on the phone system). Now imagine if 1 out of 100 people who got spammed did this. That would leave them with thousands of useless messages!

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