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

A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

misc.l3m.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 231 posts

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#121

Post by jorgesborges »

dylan604 wrote: post #106
reaperducer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, when a store annoys me for an address or phone number, and won't take "no" for an answer, I look it up on Google Maps and give the clerk the store's information. Edible Arrangements is the most recent place this happened. The store wouldn't sell anything to me without an address and phone number, even though I was paying cash. The manager said the POS wouldn't even let him start a transaction without colle…

1212 Main St, City, St (area code) 515 1212 for phone I gave up trying to explain why I prefer not to have that info, so I just give them obviously bogus info that I can remember. Most people don't even realize what you're telling them. They just robotically enter the numbers. They just want to get on with their day as much as you do, and really don't want to hear your diatribe about big brother tracking blah blah, c…

Yup. When I was signing up at MEC I gave the clerk a fake number but accidentally included both the area codes for my city as the first six digits: “Whoa that’s weird, never seen them together like that before.” It’s easy for me to remember now at least.

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#122

Post by [deleted] »

dylan604 wrote: post #97
sacrosancty wrote: post #92

I used to get spam from a Chinese exporter who conveniently included their actual address in the emails. One day I happened to be visiting their city and went to their office and asked them to unsubscribe me in person. The lady was very confused and first thought I wanted to buy something. I showed her the spam on my phone and she agreed but didn't bother actually removing me. Just seemed to think I was a bit stupid…

There's no better motivater than having an upset customer in your presence. I have camped outside the office of someone until a situation was resolved.

[deleted]

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#123

Post by Analemma_ »

gigel82 wrote: post #110
avodonosov wrote: post #75

I do a similar thing with web crawlers that do not respect the robots.txt https://github.com/cl-test-grid/cl-test-grid/blob/873b2fa978... I don't know if this snippet is really effective, can be improved a little, especially that I noticed a couple of new crawlers that ignore `User-agent: * Disallow: /path` in robots.txt, and do not fix that even after reported.

I'll look into implementing this, nice tip :) archive.org is the worst offender for me; not only do they ignore robots.txt, there is absolutely no way to get something removed once they archived it (despite the data including accidentally leaked PII for example - which can cause actual harm to someone).

I want archive.org to ignore robots.txt and make it as difficult as possible to remove pages from it; it would be a broken archive tool if this were not the case.

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#124

Post by bitbang »

codetrotter wrote: post #13

I wonder if most sites maintain any of the following addresses or not for externally incoming mail: hostmaster@ postmaster@ webmaster@ dns-admin@ info@ contact@ root@ (And if they do, if anyone is actually reading the mail coming to those addresses.) I used to but I got so much spam and 0 actually legit mails to these addresses on my own domains so I stopped accepting externally incoming mails for those names/aliases…

I will often provide the email address postmaster@hashbang.com for people insisting they need an email address who have no legitimate reason doing so. (hashbang.com resolves to localhost. Thanks twocows...)

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#125

Post by MereInterest »

gigel82 wrote: post #110
avodonosov wrote: post #75

I do a similar thing with web crawlers that do not respect the robots.txt https://github.com/cl-test-grid/cl-test-grid/blob/873b2fa978... I don't know if this snippet is really effective, can be improved a little, especially that I noticed a couple of new crawlers that ignore `User-agent: * Disallow: /path` in robots.txt, and do not fix that even after reported.

I'll look into implementing this, nice tip :) archive.org is the worst offender for me; not only do they ignore robots.txt, there is absolutely no way to get something removed once they archived it (despite the data including accidentally leaked PII for example - which can cause actual harm to someone).

Interesting, I've heard of the exact opposite issue with archive.org. That they take down archived pages at the request of the domain owner, even if registration lapsed and was picked up by somebody else since the snapshot was taken.

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#126

Post by twothamendment »

1nd1ansumm3r wrote: post #6

The trick works in analog too. Just stuff the pre-paid business reply mail with other junk mail.

I always do this, but I don't give them back just what they sent (minus anything with an ID or name on it) - I'd stuff it with all kinds of other junk mail, cardboard - anything to bulk it up. Once I dropped in a scrap of floor tile. I don't know if it arrived or not, but I really tried to take "junk" mail to a new level.

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#127

Post by technothrasher »

DonHopkins wrote: post #25

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12951917 DonHopkins on Nov 14, 2016 | parent | context | favorite | on: The NHS's 1.2M employees are trapped in a 'reply-a... Back in the days of ARPANET mailing lists, there used to be an "educational" mailing list called "please-remove-me", that was for people who asked an entire mailing list to remove them, instead of removing themselves, or sending email to the administrative…

> ...Then there was Jordan Hubbard's infamous "rwall incident" in 1987

Not as large, but reminds me of a new freshman when I was a senior in college back in 1993 that got the great idea to "cd /home; mail *" on the main undergrad machine. Complaints to us admins were flooding in for days.

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#128

Post by daine »

danuker wrote: post #51
kibibyte wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a classic. http://bash.org/?127039 I do occasionally wonder if it would still work, but most business reply mail type spam has been supplanted by email nowadays.

I spent hours on bash.org when I found it a few years ago. Thank you for reminding me of it!

Looks like we brought down bash.org...

Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)

#129

Post by dylan604 »

informalo wrote: post #100
dylan604 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no better motivater than having an upset customer in your presence. I have camped outside the office of someone until a situation was resolved.

Details please

It's really not that interesting of a story. The business manager for the apartment complex I was at was not being prompt on responding. So for 2 days, I sat in the lobby so every time he stepped out of his office, there I was just waiting. I also got to have a little chat with anyone and everyone about why I was there. This included new prospective residents coming to visit the complex as well as existing residents.
Post reply on HN