Fun With Spammers

Michael Fraase wrote about his experience with spammers, using one spammer as a representative example. Michael lets spammers know that if they continue to send hime email he will bill them for the time he spends reading them and the server resources they consume. He sends the bills, gets a small claims judgement for non-payment of the bills and then turns them over to collections. It’s a clever way of annoying a spammer. All of the sudden they start getting calls from a collection agency, their credit report is affected, and it really doesn’t cost him much at all.

This time, though, the spammer fought back. He hired a lawyer to send a cease and desist letter to Michael. You see, in Michale’s original story, he posted a copy of the invoice he sent this particular spammer, including the scumbag’s address, phone number, and email address. The lawyers want that removed. Michael, of course isn’t put off by a toothless letter and posted the lawyer’s letter (including their address) and his response on his site.

I’m not surprised that these people want their addresses removed from the site. People have been known to pull nasty pranks on scumbags lke this, including things like subscribing to a few thousand magazines in their name, all with "Bill Me Later" cheched on the subscription card.

Once you are done reading the followup article, read the responses to it at the bottom. I especially like Nick Simicich’s idea.