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Spam! There’s a Special Place…

Written by Vicki Hinze

On December 26, 2010

Odd that this comes about less than 24-hours after Independence Day, but a spammer has hijacked one of my net mailing addresses to make it appear that the emails are coming from me and so, of course, I get notice of delivery failures.

This morning I awakened to 750 of them–and, in short order, had another logjam in my spam folder, which hijacked my independence and made me a slave to deleting them.

There is, I’m told, no Internet Police to whom I can report this.  Which leaves one to either enduring or pleading for mercy.  I’m not above either, but I am not happy with those choices.  So I pondered a while and came up with an alternative.

I’m spending the morning notifying servers of said abuser’s IP.  Hopefully they’ll share the information with other servers and block that IP.  If they do, then said abuser is going to eventually run into a little challenge–like sending any email whatsoever.

Yes, the abuser can get a different IP.  But if his or her server is annoyed enough perhaps they’ll sever service.  A victim of the abuse can but hope.

These notifications were not the way I’d planned to spend a chunk of my day.  Though I’m pleased with yesterday’s progress, my to-do list is still a multi-pager.  But if my efforts will aid in hindering one spammer, then it’s worth the investment.

And if others adopt this policy, then we’ll get momentum going, and who knows?  Maybe the practice of highjacking others’ emails will become a futile experience that doesn’t benefit these people.  That’s a worthy goal and investment.

I’d prefer jail time, but I’ll take cessation.  ☺

Unfortunately this means that I won’t be doing what I would have done this morning, which is sending out a newsletter.  I have the distinct feeling it wouldn’t be a good time for thousands of my emails to be hitting servers for delivery to opt-in mailboxes.

We all get spam.  Before breakfast every day, we all deal with the weight loss, buying meds, winning millions, and various other intrusions.  Those are bad enough.  But when we and our property is used and abused, and that use and abuse infringes on our ability to do what we do to earn a living, well, the rascals have just crossed the proverbial line.

Last I heard, pretending to be someone you were not was a legal infraction.  And isn’t impacting someone’s ability to earning a living a felony?

You know, I do believe it is…

Blessings,

Vicki, off to file those reports…

©2007, Vicki Hinze

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