From: Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 08:09:39 +0800
To: Asgaard <asgaard@Cor.sos.sll.se>
Subject: Re: Spamming (Good or Bad?)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.HPP.3.91.960821144412.10644C-100000@cor.sos.sll.se>
Message-ID: <321B4FB3.1CFBAE39@systemics.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Asgaard wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
> 
> > There are technological fixes which I would favor over attempts to ban
> > unwanted messages.
> 
> In the meantime, before these technological fixes are easily implemented,
> what is the proper way to handle unwanted commercial mail?
> 
> 1) delete immediately
> 
> 2) reply with 'Fuck off, morons!'
> 
> 3) as in 2) plus an attachment of some 1Mb file
> 
> 4) as in 3) plus a CC to the postmaster of the sending site
> 
> What if the spam says: 'Do only reply to this if you want
> further contact with us' etc?
> 
> Does anybody have good advice, including risks for retaliation
> from the vendors/postmasters for such 're-spam'?


I always send a quick one liner - "Please send me more information". 
Often I'll ask a stupid question too ("Does your software work in
France?").  If more people did this, then they'd have to choose their
victims a bit more carefully in the future (assuming of course they're
trying to sell something).

Gary
--
pub  1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22  Gary Howland <gary@systemics.com>
Key fingerprint =  0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D  1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06 
^S
^A^Aoft FAT filesytem is extremely robust, ^Mrarely suffering from^T^T