[wplug] OT -- Hoax Information Websites

[Greg Simkins]

On the other hand....

These things are harmless and they comprise the minority of the junk that I 
receive in my mailbox, so I ignore them.

Greg


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brent M. Rust" <rust at lucasware.com>
To: "General user list" <wplug at wplug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 11:42 AM
Subject: RE: [wplug] OT -- Hoax Information Websites


> 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
>> >
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>>
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>
>
> --
> Bill Moran
> Potential Technologies
> http://www.potentialtech.com
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