[wplug] OT -- Hoax Information Websites

[Bill Moran]

I've been debating on whether or not I should describe the solution that
worked for me.  I figure, what the heck ...

This was back in the 2000 time-frame, and I had a lot of people forwarding
me these kinds of hoaxes ... I had spent a lot of time politely trying
to educate my circle of friends on these hoaxes, and it wasn't stopping
the problem ... somehow, I was getting added to more folks lists and people
I had never met (friend of a friend of a friend) were sending me this stuff.

So I got outright rude.

The success of my method was heavily dependent on the fact that the CC:
lines of the forwarded hoaxes had everyone's email on it that the hoax
had been forwarded to.  So when I did a "reply all", everyone heard my
rant.

I called the person who had forwarded the rant an idiot.  I accused him
of being unable to understand my simply-worded explanations.  I told him
I would complain to his ISP if he didn't quit it.  I told him there were
hundreds of resources available to keep him from sounding stupid, but
apparently he _liked_ sounding stupid.  I said a lot of other nasty things
about him and people like him that I won't repeat here in public.

Keep in mind that this went out to 30 people or so.  One or two emailed
me back, congratulating me on having the balls to tell these people off
(they were sick of the emails as well).  But a lot more emailed me back
to tell me what a jerk I was for being so mean, including the person who
had forwarded the hoax.  In each case, I replied to additional emails with
more rants, more accusations of stupidity, and I contintued to include
everyone on the replies.  Over the course of about a month, we had a
small, private flame war.  During this time, I _did_ complain to several
ISPs about some of the people, although I doubt that accomplished anything.

In the end, these folks seemed to come to the conclusion that I was an
aloof, arrogant jerk.  And they quit emailing me, or talking to me at all.
Honestly, I don't miss any of them ... I hardly knew some of them, and
didn't know the rest at all.

Since that time, I haven't gotten these hoaxes any more.  I'm not
recommending this approach to everyone, but it worked for me.

Doug Green <diego96 at mac.com> wrote:
> I also get some of this garbage, so I'd love to see some kind of reasonable
> solution. Currently, I "bounce" each spam-mail back to the sender so that it
> looks like the message didn't go through (it doesn't work very well).
> 
> I think it would be cool to have a script keep track of the number of spams
> sent from an individual. It could then send an email reply (after a bounce)
> that says (more/less) "this is spam, please don't send me this stuff, here's
> a list of websites for information". It would then increase the number of
> replies for each new spam sent by the person (so on offense #2, they get 2
> replies, etc). Eventually one would hope that the perp would actually read
> the replies. 
> 
> Obviously, this wouldn't work for the "real" spammers out there, but it
> seems like a reasonable way to fend off the unintentional ones. Besides,
> it's always easier to blame your computer about such things than to be
> informing/confrontational ("yeah, my computer just does that automatically,
> nothing I can do about it"). :)
> 
> -Doug
> 
> 
> On 4/20/05 9:18 AM, "Brent M. Rust" <rust at lucasware.com> wrote:
> 
> > "Ideally, the parent will eventually become educated. "
> > 
> > Ideally, they will, but in reality, they won't.
> > 
> > ~b
> > 
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> 
> 
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-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com