Beating the bots, spamming the spammers. Is it possible?

[viking777]

What follows is largely a flight of fancy for my imagination, I have no idea if it makes sense.

Spam bots is what I am talking about. The automated programs that go about harvesting email addresses and other personal information in order to flood you with spam or steal identities or data. They rely on people being careless with their personal information, and they certainly don't have a hard time finding victims.

So let us suppose that I ended this post with the following statement:

If you like this idea, please email me at:

viking777@aol.com

No doubt this would be harvested and used, but it wouldn't work because I don't have an aol email account. Now obviously this post on its own will not make the slightest difference (unless your email address happens to be viking777@aol.com - sorree!). But now suppose that every internet post that has been made today had been 'seeded' with a false email address? How long would it take for the spammers to wade through them? Several lifetimes I would guess. Of course I am not stupid enough to enable somebody else's email address to be spammed by posting it online, I checked it first. There are dozens of email verification websites, the one I used was http://www.validateemailaddress.org/, but it really doesn't matter which one is used, all you need is a unique address to gum up these spammers severely.

Letting my imagination run even wilder, suppose we could seed all internet (or maybe even better social networking) posts with false bank account information, how long would it take for the criminals to sort the wheat from the chaff?

What we need I guess is a 'white knight' to come along and write a cross platform program to invent unique yet plausible email addresses/ bank accounts or any other kind of false personal data that might be collectable and automatically seed it to every post/tweet that we as users issue.

Think of it like a denial of service attack in reverse.

I am sure in time the spammers/criminals would find a way to filter this kind of information out, but if this was workable (and I don't suppose it is or otherwise it would have been tried already) then we would be leading the fight against the enemy instead of reacting to their innovations.

All comments welcome.

[xenopeek]

While I can appreciate the idea, I don't think I'd appreciate a forum where every post was cluttered with false personal data I imagine that email address harvesting from Internet forums accounts for a smaller percentage of spam than, for example, directory harvest attacks or trading of lists of known email addresses.

In the perfect world, people wouldn't click on random links sent to them by email. No clicks = no income = no more reason to spam...

[colyn]

At one time there was a script that could be placed at the bottom of web pages that would "suck" spam bots into which had 100 or more fake emails. This script would cause the bot to harvest each fake email contiuosly till the spammers data base was full and would then start dumping genuine emails. Haven't been able to find it lately..

To prevent bots from harvesting my email I go here http://www.siteup.com/encoder.html to get my email encoded..

[viking777]

At one time there was a script that could be placed at the bottom of web pages that would "suck" spam bots into which had 100 or more fake emails. This script would cause the bot to harvest each fake email contiuosly till the spammers data base was full and would then start dumping genuine emails. Haven't been able to find it lately..

Interesting, at least it proves the idea was not completely daft if someone has already done it. Thanks colyn.

[Garvan]

I never took the idea that there were programs harvesting email addresses from forums like this very seriously. I use my yahoo email address for online contacts. It is posted openly on my web page, and yahoo filter out the spam, 100% without error. I almost never get spam that ends up in my inbox, and when it does get through, I feel like I am contributing when I flag it as spam. Do not bother with fake email addresses on forums, just contribute to good services like yahoo or gmail by reporting spam.

Garvan

[viking777]

I never took the idea that there were programs harvesting email addresses from forums like this very seriously. I use my yahoo email address for online contacts. It is posted openly on my web page, and yahoo filter out the spam, 100% without error. I almost never get spam that ends up in my inbox, and when it does get through, I feel like I am contributing when I flag it as spam. Do not bother with fake email addresses on forums, just contribute to good services like yahoo or gmail by reporting spam.

Garvan

I do that as well, but that is really just reactive - you report the spammer only after they have delivered the spam, too late, they will have already moved on. My idea was proactive you attack them with the same kind of weapons they use to attack us, that is why I though it was good, it is kind of like a bit of revenge

But it was only an idea, probably not a workable one or the script that colyn mentioned would be on the bottom of every web page by now.

[davy51]

The only way to stop a spammer is to return his mail by 10 fold
And that leads to you being the spammer

And most services will report you as spamming when you fill his email box

[xenopeek]

The only way to stop a spammer is to return his mail by 10 fold
And that leads to you being the spammer

And most services will report you as spamming when you fill his email box

And at least a portion of spam is sent from email boxes of another person (not a spammer) than the spammer... So replying to the email will just spam somebody else in turn

[davy51]

Thats usually the way it works then you wind up on a couple spammers lists then your email is closed for spamming

[viking777]

Thats usually the way it works then you wind up on a couple spammers lists then your email is closed for spamming

That is absolutely right, but how did we get onto this? I never suggested deliberately sending emails to spammers (for which you would need a legitimate address, even if it is only a temporary one). What I suggested was letting them harvest false information themselves and thereby gumming up their own works, that is a lot different.

Here is an analogy. During the second world war, bomber aircraft (from both sides of the conflict I believe) used to eject strips of aluminium out of their aircraft in order to confuse the fairly primitive radar installations of the time and this is fairly similar to what I am suggesting - confuse the enemy radar into thinking they have detected something that isn't there.

Incidentally, the British bombers used to call this tactic to confuse and deceive people - 'window'. You might like to draw your own conclusions about that name, but I couldn't possibly comment.

[DrHu]

They rely on people being careless with their personal information

Not that sure that email phishing or other spamming requires careless action on the part of users, although it obviously helps.

Consider that Google now aggregates all user data from any Google service available, facebook and others are no different, it is just a matter of how much reach they will have on the internet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing.

There was only one company (Canada (nyms --internet alias names..)) that had anything like annonymous internet access, and after 911 events all that disappeared..

If you paid by cash in montreal, no identity checks at that time..

http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/ ... kspin.html

All email services (gmail, hotmail, yahoo -- free) provide spam email protection and if you are on yyouir own ISP connection, the ISP also provides anti-virus/email spam prevention, one method was to disallow port 25 fro email sertvices, cut down email blasting
--and these days with no annonymity available, spammers are in for a rough time: without the users taking any preventative measures..

[RETNUH]

At one time there was a script that could be placed at the bottom of web pages that would "suck" spam bots into which had 100 or more fake emails. This script would cause the bot to harvest each fake email contiuosly till the spammers data base was full and would then start dumping genuine emails.

I have seen something like this before. The page had lots of fake emails like auhah@ksjiahg.com and there was a refresh button at the bottom which would refresh the page which would now have different fake email addresses on it.

[Lumikki]

Nope, it's not possible to beat them.

They rely on people being careless with their personal information

Or they rely on caress security in internet places where is a lot of accounts.

Spammers does only what they are paid to do, by people in business.
There is allways people who are ready to do others dirty work for money.

[RETNUH]

Nope, it's not possible to beat them.

We could at least keep them on their toes, slow them down a little.

[xenopeek]

vrkalak just shared the following, I though it would fit in this topic also:

Wouldn't it be wonderful if banning spam were as easy as, well, saying "we banned it"?

Japan actually HAS an existing law governing junk (and other) e-mail, known as the Law on the Regulation of Transmission of Specified Electronic Mail. Whew! This latest bill just modifies that law, presumably because it did squat to stem the stream of spam. The revisions, in a nutshell, prohibit the sending of spam to Japanese e-mail addresses unless the addressees had previously agreed to receive them.

The bill also permits Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications to "ask foreign governments to crack down on spammers in their territories by providing them with the e-mail addresses of the spammers." That should stop the problem dead in its tracks... just kidding, it won't do a darned thing. The number one rule of being a spammer is not to let those you are spamming know who you are or where you're e-mailing from. Have to ask The Wife how to say "duh" in Japanese.

Well, we have to at least give the Japanese government props for trying, right? Of course the next step is to make moves against Japanese spammers, not just the foreign devils.

Full Article: http://inventorspot.com/articles/japan_ ... usly_14120

[viking777]

Nice try, but no coconut I think. Unfortunately the law in general and governments in particular have long been overtaken by the speed at which the internet and digital life evolves, and have no idea how to deal with it. Look at the incongruous situation on digital content. I know for a fact that in the UK you can buy a book, and once you have bought it you own it, but you cannot buy an ebook, you can only buy a licence to read one and usually only on one device or platform. (there have been some moves to restrain this type of drm lunacy, but not to any great extent as yet). You would really have thought that if any government in the world might be close to coming to terms with what is actually happening, it might be the Japanese, but as vrkalak points out this legislation " won't do a darned thing".

I go back to my original title and idea the only way to defeat these people is to play them at their own game.

[xenopeek]

As long as it is profitable to do, it will continue Average computer users are basically stupid when it comes to detecting spam... "It sounds too good to be true? It must be true! I'll just enter my credit card details, teeheehee ..." So, unless we restrict computer use to people who have passed some basic "computer savviness" test, like a drivers license for computers, I think spam will be ageless. Email harvesting is only one of the ways to get email addresses, so putting in place some way to spread fake email addresses to spam bots doesn't make spam go away. "Counter attacking" email addresses from which spam was sent will often target innocent people whose email addresses were faked to send the spam

The best alternative I can think of is to use an outgoing connection filter on your computer, preventing you (or some malicious program) from accessing known spam servers (like, where any stolen personal details are sent by the malicious program, or the fake website for phishing, or the website where you can buy fake goods)... Peer Guardian Linux might work for that, it has some spam blocklists. Setup: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 88#p539688 But even if that would work, I guess it would only shift focus to other ways to obtain your credit card details, like cracking into consumer websites' databases