The Face of Spam → Re: Now we have a face to the name

said by MrTangent:

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I encourage everyone to call each phone number he has listed repeatedly, at all hours of the night, selling "Penis Enlargement Products". I also encourage you to sign him up for every known magazine subscription or use this information for other nefarious purposes.

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And how would this help? You don't fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water.

By doing the above, you are opening yourself up to potential legal problems that may last well past the life of this guy's spam campaign. Spam is annoying but it is not worth advocating actions against him such as calling his house. That's just plain dumb.

I must admit that I do not have a proposed solution to this problem at the moment but I know calling his house is not it.

Agreed entirely.

Proposed solution for MrTangent: consider contacting his uplink provider (whoever routes him his netblock(s)) and letting them know of his behaviour. Be persistent (but don't be aggressive), and if after a month they don't answer, try mailing their uplink provider.

I don't recommend going up the chain any higher than that, otherwise you're setting yourself up for the general "Hey guys, get a load of this Email..." office banter. It quickly becomes analogous to an end-user mailing someone's ISP because someone on IRC called them a poo-poo head.

Bottom line: hold a grudge against the bastard, but express your discontent with maturity. In no way, shape, or form harass the spammer. Believe me, he'll have a lot more legal justification than you will, and despite me not believing these bastards make a lot of money, he probably has a well-versed lawyer; I know I would.