I got a great comment the other day: one that confirms that my work here is having an effect on the world! Unfortunately, the commenter had their account shut down by xanga--I guess it was a spam account. Or else they really believed what they were saying and these ignorant beliefs left them vulnerable to being attacked by spammers.

Either way, here is my response to his comment.

1. "you are giving other people's email addresses away and telling people to spam those accounts." Correction: giving away *spammers* email addresses. Spammers aren't people. I know what I am doing and I am careful not to do this with spoofed addresses. Spammers usually put somebody elses email address as the "from" email. I do not take these: I take emails from when the spammer provides an actual email address that they intend to get responses in, or when I can research the email address and verify that it is the active account of a spammer. By having spam sent to spammer accounts, their time is wasted and they might have less time to steal money from someone. This is a good thing.

2. "You should just report it to the proper authorities." This is actually ineffective, as everyone knows. However, I do indeed report all spam to the proper authorities. For example, one thing I do is forward spam to spam@uce.gov.

3. "Please don't give other people's information away." You mean don't give spammers email addresses away. Why? Why on earth not???

4. "Also, you need to realize that when you subscribe to a newsletter or for free information about something, you are also subscribing to all of that companies partner's newsletters or product offers. Some people are affiliates of these companies and get leads from the company." That's the point. They'll get more spam.

5. "Not every spammer knows that they are spamming." Ignorance is no excuse when it comes to crimes of this sort. You have a responsibility to ensure that you aren't spamming: just as you have a responsibility to ensure that you don't accidentally kill people through carelessness.

6. " You could just reply for them to not email you anymore, or click the unsubscribe link within the email. If you do not stop receiving the emails then report the spam." And this is why I truly believe that garydelaney was a spammer. Everyone in the world knows that replying to spam is evil, and that it just validates your account so that they can send you more spam. Same thing with clicking on the unsubscribe link. They just confirm your account and send you more spam, or at worst, you could go to a phishing site.

The body of this scam email speaks for itself. Hopefully we can make this particular spammers email address useless before anyone is fooled into responding.

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Congratulation You Have Won £1,200,000!!!!!!!!


The National Lottery
P O Box 1010
Liverpool, L70 1NL
UNITED KINGDOM
(Customer Services)
Ref: UK/9420X2/90
Batch: 08005/ZY369

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