God I Love SPAM!
God I love spam. Don't you just love spam? I don't mean the lips and peckers that come packaged in a nice little metal can. I'm talking about the ever increasing underbelly of the internet's marketing attempts to better our sex lives with promise of a larger male member or a pill that slows your heart rate by transferring it's much needed blood flow to your dong.
I love it when they are titled something like, “Hey you”. Then when you open it up, you find that you are pre-approved for a mortgage loan that you don't need. Those are great too.
Was that sarcastic enough for you? What makes you think that anyone, anywhere at anytime wants to sit through the wait of their progress bar while downloading email to only find that some spamming schmuck has filled it with expired PayPal notices or deals on affordable prescription pharmaceuticals? No one signs up for it, ever. No one buys it because you sent them 4000 emails, ever. They only want to track you down perform unspeakable, medieval tortures on your most valued body parts... always.
Why does it become worse with every new law that was meant to fight it? Because they only open more loop holes that make it easier to get away with. The law will not help spam any time soon. If you ask me, the only way to fight fire is with a blow torch!
These emails aren't coming from the guilty parties' machines people. They are coming from machines of unsuspecting network administrators and novices who aren't experienced enough to keep their networks locked up tight.
Some people, not me of course, but I know a guy who knows a guy who knows some people who… you get the idea, take it upon them selves to trace these emails as far as they can. Where does it lead? Straight to the credulous persons' machine whose mail server was compromised to do the dirty work of sending these emails and host the sites they point back to.
If a numb nut spammer with no morals or ethics can get in these machines to setup his temp base of operation, why couldn't the everyday hobbyist, who would be referred to in a not-so-perfect world as a “hacker”, find his/her way in as well and reverse the polarity of the molecular structure (or just kill the mail and web services) to bring down the base. While the hero was in there, he/she could easily make sure it's not as easy to come back the next go-round.
Well, they do… everyday. It's becoming one of the more popular extracurricular activities among enthusiasts who are sick of spammers, are sick of waiting on a law that won't help anyway, and have the knowledge and ability to fight back.
Give it a shot the next time you get a plethora of spam in your precious inbox. Take a look at the headers, find out where it's coming from, trace it back and see where it leads. Chances are that it will be easy pickings. After all, the lowlife spammer got in didn't they?
