Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

stavros.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 188 posts

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#141

Post by [deleted] »

StavrosK wrote: post #136
nercht12 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello Stavros, I'm not sure I understand. Could you go into more detail? *In all seriousness though (lol): You could have different types of personalities, depending on the email address of the person who doesn't want the spam. Like someone pretending mnesty.com is their work address but is still treating it like a personal message. That way the spammer will disregard the fact that the reply email isn't the same as t…

It's too hard to write generalities, I'm afraid. You can only write about 10 different sentences before you start to repeat yourself (or at least I can't do it). Feel free to send me sentences for me to add!

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#142

Post by failrate »

StavrosK wrote: post #136
nercht12 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello Stavros, I'm not sure I understand. Could you go into more detail? *In all seriousness though (lol): You could have different types of personalities, depending on the email address of the person who doesn't want the spam. Like someone pretending mnesty.com is their work address but is still treating it like a personal message. That way the spammer will disregard the fact that the reply email isn't the same as t…

It's too hard to write generalities, I'm afraid. You can only write about 10 different sentences before you start to repeat yourself (or at least I can't do it). Feel free to send me sentences for me to add!

This is amazing. Looping in my supervisor. [add a second email agent to thread. The two email agents will fork the email chain for the spammer and ask similar questions, hopefully wasting more of their time.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#143

Post by StavrosK »

nikanj wrote: post #138
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #9

The problem with Spam has always been the minuscule cost of doing it. If the cost can rise above the profit, spam could become unattractive. Imagine if spam attracted a sudden swarm of bots, just as a new email addy attracts spammers now.

The big money in spam is not in selling Viagra, it's in selling spamming. I'm acquinted with someone who does spamming for a living, mostly in the online casino segment. He does very well, and surprisingly polite company cares more about the money he has, than the way he makes it.

Replace "spamming" with "marketing" and that makes less sense. "The big money in marketing is not in selling Viagra, it's in selling marketing". Spamming is a form of marketing/sales, and Viagra is one of the products being sold.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#145

Post by enraged_camel »

I forwarded a single spam email to Spamnesty at 8:46 AM today. Since then, it has been spamming me saying it received the email...

Timestamps:

8:46 AM - initial receipt email

8:56 AM

9:11 AM

10:11 AM

12:11 AM

The conversations linked in the subsequent receipt emails lack the spammer's email. They only contain the response from the Spamnesty bot.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#146

Post by StavrosK »

gamerDude wrote: post #133

Have you thought of adding in a check in if they haven't responded after a week? Perhaps, "Hi there, I thought we were really making progress, but I haven't heard from you for a week. Is there still a chance I could get in on this great opportunity?"

Yes, but right now it's very event-driven (each email triggers a new one), so it would be more complicated for little benefit (given that spammers wouldn't reply anyway, they only stop replying when they think you're wasting their time, and that wouldn't change with an additional email).

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#147

Post by criddell »

Spooky23 wrote: post #108
criddell wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why smartphone apps don't have better access to the telephone portion of the device. Why is it so difficult to do something as simple as recording calls? It would be neat if I could get apps to change my voice or encrypt the audio.

It's a big liability because call recording is illegal in many circumstances.

I don't buy that argument. What liability would they have when I choose to do something?

They could get around it the same way Toyota limits their liability from me using the touch screen while I drive - pop up a message saying when and how the feature should be used.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#148

Post by criddell »

coldpie wrote: post #109
criddell wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why smartphone apps don't have better access to the telephone portion of the device. Why is it so difficult to do something as simple as recording calls? It would be neat if I could get apps to change my voice or encrypt the audio.

I don't know if this is why, but there are a bunch of laws and stuff about what you can and can't do on a telephone. For example, many states have limitations on who can legally record a phone conversation, with or without various forms of consent. Maybe phone manufacturers don't want to facilitate easily breaking those confusing laws.

They don't seem to mind people using the phone when they drive and that's also illegal in many jurisdictions.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#149

Post by StavrosK »

jnaddef wrote: post #122

There is one major problem : the answers are sent immediatly after receiving the email. This is obviously suspicious, considering most of the mails require at least a few minutes of reading + time to write the mail. I guess adding a delay would improve the bot's credibility by a lot!

It actually has a random delay of 1-8 hours, which shows in the timestamp. It only sends the first email right away, because it presumably took you some time to forward it to Spamnesty.

Re: Show HN: Spamnesty: Waste spammers' time

#150

Post by StavrosK »

enraged_camel wrote: post #145

I forwarded a single spam email to Spamnesty at 8:46 AM today. Since then, it has been spamming me saying it received the email... Timestamps: 8:46 AM - initial receipt email 8:56 AM 9:11 AM 10:11 AM 12:11 AM The conversations linked in the subsequent receipt emails lack the spammer's email. They only contain the response from the Spamnesty bot.

Yes, this is a known issue:

https://gitlab.com/stavros/Spamnesty/issues/6

Can you post the IDs of the emails you received so I can look into the issue?

Post reply on HN