[wplug] OT -- Hoax Information Websites

[Brent M. Rust]

He he.... Been there, done (almost) that.....and now have a (mostly)
empty inbox.

~b 

-----Original Message-----
From: wplug-bounces+rust=lucasware.com at wplug.org
[mailto:wplug-bounces+rust=lucasware.com at wplug.org] On Behalf Of Bill
Moran
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 10:32 AM
To: General user list
Cc: diego96 at mac.com
Subject: Re: [wplug] OT -- Hoax Information Websites


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
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > wplug mailing list
> > wplug at wplug.org
> > http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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--
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com
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