Date sent: Tue, 03 Aug 1999 12:47:18 +0100
To: ernie@ernieshouseofwhoopass.com
From: "Ernie's House of Whoop Ass"
Subject: ADMIN: For Your Spam Only
Now, given the overwhelming positive response (hey a few negative ones,
but then again Tracy will have to learn to stop sending spam, right?) and
the requests for personal assistance with combatting spam, I'm going to
share some knowledge with you regarding my never ending quest for the
death of all spammers. Now folks, pay attention. Ern Daddy is going to
give you some words of wisdom and some how-to in the war against spam that
you can't get anywhere else. And I promise I won't swear too much.
Yeah, right.
Now, there's a lot of information swirling around in this fucking rock
noggen of mine, so please be forgiving if I jump around a lot. First, we
must understand our enemy. Sendicus Spammus Mailalious, or 'Spammer' for
short. Contrary to popular belief, those who send spam for a living are
actually very smart individuals. Honestly. See they have a two fold
mission -- first to gather as many e-mail addresses that can because more
addresses equals more potential customers equals more potential money. And
secondly, they have to accomplish goal one without getting caught -- this
posrtion is actually more difficult then the latter.
"Well Ernie, just how does a spammer get my e-mail address."
That's what like. Dont be afraid to ask questions! I would say that
approximately 80-85% of a spammer's distribution list is acquired by
processing and compiling all those e-mail addresses that pile up in chain
letters. Now I've said this before and I can say it over and over until
I'm blue in the face but there's still some of you out there who just
don't fucking get it. So alas, I will say it one more time and try to
explain it in great detail in hopes that overwhelming knowledge will get
through that thick fucking skull of yours.
First, let's define "chain letter". A chain letter is ANY e-mail that
contains instructions to "forward this out to ten of your friends" or
"forward this to everyone you know" or anything else of that nature. Who
creates chain letters? Now you might want to think that when you get an
e-mail telling you there's some sick child with cancer and they will
receive $0.03 for every time this e-mail gets forwarded out, in fact the
mental image may just tug at your heart strings so bad that you forward it
to other news or joke lists that you're on, in hopes of spreading the word
and bring hope to this poor kid. Ok, here's the cold hard truth folks.
Listen closely. There is no sick kid. There is no company out there
willing to give you free clothes. There is no company that is going to
give you a free vacation. There is no company out there with a $100 check
in their hand waiting for you. The sad truth is, these chain letters are
developed by shady fly-by-night internet marketing companies who concoct
some big story to get you to play along and send out their chain letter --
they ask you to forward it to your friends and after awhile the e-mail
makes it back to them and presto, they've got hundreds of e-mail potential
customers and they didn't even have to work for them. You did all the work
for them. In the e-mail I got from Princess Dumbass, there were 337 e-mail
addreses in the forwarding history. And you know what? The dumb bitch at
the bottom of the e-mail had her work address footer on there, including
phone number! (See next week's How To post, "Where Do Telemarketers Come
From").
Perhaps you hope for better luck, perhaps greater wealth, perhaps just to
give an extra $0.03 to some kid who needs kidney dialisis. Maybe you're
just looking for a chuckle by sendin an "electronic snowball fight" to a
friend. But the fact is the only thing you're bringing on is spam. Chain
letters are developed by and for the exclusive use of spammers, in their
never ending efforts to cultivate a nice fertile orchard of e-mail
addresses with which to send offers of facial hair removal cream, viagra,
guarantees for better website hits, stock investments, and yes, even CD's
filled with hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses with which you can
send spam to on your own. Chain letters may be fun, may be sad, may make
ou laugh, may make you cry. But they ARE false, their only purpose IS to
bring you spam.
If my child had really been kidnapped, or if they really needed some
operation I couldn't afford, or any other type of sob story, and I really
wanted to tell my story to the internet... I'd set up a website. A website
-- with its own URL or domain name that doesn't change and that people can
look at 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of where they are or
whether or not they're logged into their e-mail. A website that can be
advertised on post cards and flyers and bumper stickers and billboards and
TV stations. I wouldn't send my story out in a fucking e-mail that can be
changed and made incorrect by any swing dick with a text editor, that'd be
stupid. Again I say this...ALL chain letters, no matter how grave or
desperate sounding are FAKE.
I'll say it again, in its own paragraph for everyone's benefit. ALL chain
letters -- happy or sad -- are fake and are used exclusively to feed spam.
Without exception. From the ones pleading with you to help some family
find their recently abducted baby, to the ten year old dying from
lieukemia, to the forward me to ten friends for good luck. These spamming
companies use stories they know will tug at our emotions and make us
unwilling participants in their mission. You know that "Hello my name is
Alfonzo Merkin" anti-chain letter chain letter? Spam. Without exception
folks.
Spammers are energy creatures. Don't feed them and they will die.
Now, the other 15-20% of the e-mail addresses spammers collect come from
various places. Your web browser (I.E. or Netscape) for example.... during
its installation it asks you for your e-mail address, POP server, SMTP
server, etc, etc, etc. All of this information that you plug in can be
retrieved from any of the websites that you visit, via a snazzy little
programming language called Javascript. And it will be completely
transparent to you. You won't even know they've recorded your e-mail
address, the last ten websites you've visited, your mail server's name,
and any other info you happen to have stuck in there. Visit a porno
website, and three days later start getting offers in your mailbox for buy
two get one free porno flicks. How do you combat this, you might wonder?
Well, two ways. First, you could disable Java in your browser. Effective,
but then you can't view all the cool (legitimate) stuff that's out there
on the web. My advice, is to do what I do -- give incorrect info to your
browser -- set the e-mail up as User@Domain.Com or User@NoSpam.com. For
those of you who use another package such as Eudora or Outlook as your
primary e-mail package, this will not affect you at all. For those of you
who do use IE or Netscape as your primary e-mail, quick being a fuckhead
-- go to www.eudora.com and download a free copy of Eudora Light.
Following these two simple steps -- don't forward any fucking chain
letters, and put incorrect info in your web browser -- will help to
decrease the amount of new spam that you get. I promise. But, if you're
like the rest of any of us, you probably already get some unwanted 'free'
offers in the mail -- some spammer already has your e-mail address. What
can you do about it?
Well, my advice is to mount a two layer defense, both of which working
very closely together. The first is to maintain a list of "known spammers"
-- set up mail filters in your e-mail package that says "If FROM address =
THEN send to trash." That's what I do. No popups
saying "I'm deleting spam now". No replies to the spammer saying "hey take
me off your list". No filter reports saying "deleted 16 pieces of spam
today." Just poof...gone. Auto-delete. Doesn't even cross my screen. Out
of sight, out of mind. And when I get a piece of spam that is from someone
new and hence makes it through my filters.... a simple cut and paste of
the e-mail address in the FROM field (and also the TO field if the address
there is not mine) into my "Known Spammers" list and poof... their e-mail
and any subsequent ones they send...gone.
Now, the second part of this may suprise you. Here in the US we've passed
some stupid fucking anti-spam law. Let me be the one to tell you that this
law has about as much bite as a seventeen year old malnutritioned stray
dog with stree legs and has just has the hell beat out of him with a sock
full of shit. "per compliance with U.S.C. code blah-blah, simply reply to
this e-mail address with blah-blah in the subject and you will receive no
further mailings from us." Bullshit. Here's what really happens. Let's say
I'm Joe Spammer and I have, eh, let's say five distribution lists that I
send offers of facial hair removal cream to. Now I send out my posting to
List #1 and you're on it. You get an unsolicited commercial e-mail and
you're pissed off and you follow my lame ass instructions to be removed
from my lame ass list and send it off. Now assuming for the sake of
argument the removal e-mail address really exists (trust me, 90% of the
time it doesn't), when I do get your reply now I *know* that I have a
valid e-mail address for at least one potential customer. So I , per
compliance with U.S.C. Number blah-blah, remove you from List #1. And then
turn right around and add you to List #2. See the loophope here folks? As
you keep sending removal requests, Joe Spammer just keeps creating new
lists...3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 22, however many as it takes. Trust me, you will
run out of patience and resources before they do -- many of their tasks
are automated. Not to mention you've just demonstrated to Joe Spammer that
you read every single piece of e-mail that you get -- a prime target for a
spammer. My advice to you? Simply add the FROM field (and again, possibly
the TO field) to your "Known Spammers" list, and quietly auto-trash them.
Spammers are energy creatures. Don't feed them and they will die.
And this brings us to the second part to the spammer's mission. Don't get
caught. Now, as I've said before spammers are intelligent creatures. Given
the fact that technology here in the US, Canada, and Europe has advanced
at a faster pace then say, Singapore, I can assure you that most
commercial spammers don't send from US based accounts. Let us take a look
at this piece of spam that arrived last night...
>Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 18:58:04 -0400 (EDT)
>From: "Fax Blaster"
>To: ProfitableFuture@tiac.net
>Subject: **FREE*-Turn Key Business-*FREE** -TUNF
>X-Reply-To: "Remove_Me"
>
>To no longer receive **FREE** Business Opportunities by email
>simply reply to this message with "remove" in the subject line.
>********************************************* >A Totaly FREE
Business Building Package !! >Our Elite System "WILL" completely
automate 100% of your >business building efforts by doing all of
your PROSPECTING,
Now upon first look, one might look at it and say, "oh this came from
mailandnews.com" -- piece of cake. But this is not so... let's look at the
additional message headers and see what we can see...
>Received: from 33345.ural.post.tw (33345.ural.post.tw
[99.2.65.223])
by mailnfs0.tiac.net
>(8.8.8/8.8) with ESMTP id SAA12382; Mon, 2 Aug 1999 18:58:08 -0400
(EDT)
Ah-ha! See the .TW? That's Taiwan. It is not uncommon for me to get spam
from Singapore, Cypress, Lavos, Siam, Korea, and Taiwan. Why here? Because
these places are technologically "under-developed" -- their network
administrators may not have the latest training, their servers may not
have the latest security patches applied, and their laws on spam are much
more lax. So a spammer can bounce his e-mails off one, two, sometimes
three of these 'wide open' servers and do so quite anonymously. Trust me
when I say this folks, you will *not* track them down. Let me say this
again, you will *not* track them down. That is unless you have a friend
who works at the CIA and owes you a big fucking favor. Spammers are
intelligent creatures -- you will *not* track them down. Just add them to
your "known spammers" list and push on. Do not spend time and energy on
spammers.
Spammers are energy creatures. Don't feed them and they will die.
Now there are some of you out there who are, believe it or not, impervious
to spam. Anyone with an e-mail address from .ORG or .MIL can be all but
guaranteed to be spam free -- spammers actually filter these addresses out
most of the time. The .ORG accounts are non profit organizations. Non
profit = no money. no money = can't buy anything. Can't buy anything = bad
customer. Spammers won't waste your time on you. Now you .MIL folks for it
made. Spamming you is a felony and the weasly little spammers know that so
they steer clear of you. I also believe that .EDU accounts sit pretty well
too, most likely because of the 'poor college kid' syndrom and the .ORG
rationalization above. Sure you may get some spam, but nowhere near as the
rest of us.
Now, us .COM and .NET people are fucked. See the .COM people are usually
at a place of business, which spammers read as , "Hey you're employed,
would you love to buy some facial hair removal cream for $8?" And then
there are the .NET people, which spammers read as, "Hey you spend $20 a
month on internet access, how about some facial hair removal cream for
$8?"
You AOL.COM people live in balance on a double edged sword. On the one
side, your e-mail addresses are very easy to figure out --
ScreenName@AOL.COM. What spammers will do is go into a chat room, get
screen captures of all the people currently in there and then just keep
moving on to chat room after chat room, harvesting screen names. I'll
guarantee you that whatever screen name you do your most cruising and
cybersexing around with, is the one that gets the most amount of spam
mail. Now, on the flip side AOL has the feature to reject mail from
everyone as default, and only allow mail to be accepted from those you
specify. This is extremely effective in combating spam, but also won't let
that e-mail through from your long lost high school sweetheart who wants
to meet you in Motel 6 for an afternoon romp after having looked you up on
switchboard.com. My advice, wanna go into a chat room and get nasty? Use a
backup screen name, not your primary one.
The same rules apply to forwarding jokes -- I can't tell you how many
times I get joke submissions where I have to page down eighteen times past
the e-mail history to actually get to the fucking joke. This is as bad as
chain letters -- its a collections of hundreds of e-mail addresses which
is going to be a feeding frenzy for spammers. If you get a joke like this
and think its funny and want to forward it out, great.... copy the actual
joke itself and paste it into a NEW e-mail and then put your little joke
list in the BLIND CC (BCC) field so that the e-mail addresses remain
hidden. Why do you think my footer says "And strip off that Fwd: FWD: FW:"
crap? Why do you think I BCC my joke list and not CC them? Spammers feed
off e-mail addresses. Joke forwards, like chain letters, collect many
e-mail addresses very quickly. And what's the cardinal rule?
Spammers are energy creatures. Don't feed them and they will die.
Okay, so I know that's lots of information, so let's review.
Spammer's Missions?
1. Collect e-mail addresses.
-- Chain letters
-- ALL chain letters are fake. ALL of them. Without Exception. --
Products of sleazy internet marketing companies -- Easy way to
gather hundreds of e-mail addresses quickly
-- Web Browser info
-- Give false information
-- Use different mail package for primary e-mail
2. Don't get caught
-- The headers that you origionally see usually aren't really where
it originates from
-- Bounced off several servers internationally
-- You ain't gonna catch em
Your Defense?
1. Don't send out chain letters
-- No matter how sincere they sound
-- ALL chain letters are fake
2. Don't request to be removed from commercial spam
-- This just verified that your e-mail address is good
-- They just add you to another list -- never ending
3. Use "Known Spammers" list
-- LOGIC: if from address = 'known spammers list' then send to trash
-- Use the HELP to set up a filter, not me -- Do not reply
4. Protect those you send e-mails to
-- Copy and paste the real text of your message into a new e-mail,
leaving out the previous forward history
-- Use the Blind CC field (BCC) to hide their e-mail addresses of
those you send to
-- Use a backup account, such as hotmail or yahoo, when you register
to download software
Spammers are energy creatures. Don't feed them and they will die.
No, don't even think of sending me an e-mail and going , "how do I set up
mail filters?" -- for specific instructions on how to set up mail filters
for whatever mail package you're using, read the fucking manual.
Now, one more thing before I depart.
For those of you who wrote in offering you own collection of "known
spammers" -- thanks but no thanks. Two reasons. One, my mail filters may
pick you up as a spammer and you'll get your e-mail address auto-pasted
into an e-mail to the list telling everyone what a spammer you are. Well,
we all know no good comes from that. Two, if I were to take everyone's
submissions I'd have a fucking list that's as long as my cock (and some of
you have seen it too). When those people on your list spam me, I'll add
them to mine as the need requires. But thanks anyway. If you want a copy
of my current "known spammers" list, then send a BLANK e-mail to
nospam@ernieshouseofwhoopass.com and you'll get an auto reply with the up
to date list. Don't write to any of these accounts and yell at them
because they're spammers and you're angry. Listen to what the fuck I've
writtenm over the last two fucking pages. Just add them to your list to
ignore and be done with it.
Now, please take this knowledge that I have tried to depart to you and use
it. Many of you write in and say, "I'm getting spam mail, can you help
me?". I have done all I can...now thew only person who can help you is
you. Follow the guidelines that I've explained, stop forwarding out those
fucking chain letters, and I'm sure you'll see a marked improvement.
Spammers are energy creatures. Don't feed them and they will die.
Now I have made it very clear to everyone, in this post and in several
past -- I've also updated the joke footer and subscription disclaimer. Do
NOT send me chain letters. If you do, I WILL post your e-mail to the
list. NO exceptions. I don't care how long you've been a subscriber,
whether or not I've seen your tits, whether or not you honestly thought it
was true. I don't care. Zero Tolerance. No Exceptions. I've made this VERY
clear to everyone, so when you do see your address posted two days after
you send me a "free Disney vacation' e-mail, you have no one to blame but
yourself. If you have any doubts on whether or not I'll consider a certain
post as a spam chain letter -- error on the side of caution. Send it to me
cleaned up in a you-to-me only e-mail, and I'll let you know in a
me-to-you only e-mail.
And for the record, one of the guys from yesterday's posting
'mtnmedia' has taken care of his spam. Apparently this is some sort of a
common mailbox and the GAP clothes e-mail I got from him was done by one
of their pee-on people. The guy in charge has taken care of it, and
assured me it won't happen again.
And with that, you are smarter having known me.
Ernie, The Spaminator
PS. And you know the funny part? There's going to be at least a dozen of
you who will say to yourself, "Wow this is good information, I guess I'd
better forward it on to ten friends."
USE THE FUCKING BCC field!
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========== Ernie's House of Whoop Ass =========
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============== Nemo me impune lacessit! =================
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You must be 18 to join the list. You can NOT subscribe someone else's
account to the list. Do NOT send attachments. Please strip off the "FWD:
Fwd: Fwd:" crap as well. No chain letters, good luck charms, free stuff
offers, virus warnings, etc. I DO NOT tolerate spam, at all. You have been
warned.
Please note this is a very POLITICALLY INCORRECT funny list, (i.e. sexual,
ethnics, religion, whale-killing, dog-kicking, seal-clubbing,
wife-beating, colon-cowboys, nose-picking, etc). If you think you're going
to be offended, don't subscribe.
To be ADDED to the list send an e-mail to
mailto:subscribe@ernieshouseofwhoopass.com -- in the BODY of the message
you MUST include your e-mail address, age, geographic location, and
contribute a joke. *No info = No add* Chicks must also include their bra
size.
To be REMOVED from the list, send to
mailto:unsubscribe@ernieshouseofwhoopass.com -- with your e-mail address
in the BODY of the e-mail. You must be ON the fucking list to be removed
from the fucking list. Duh.
I claim no authoring or copyright protection with any of these postings
sent out on my humor list, as I only collect and distribute them. Any
original material written by me in this posting is not copyrighted and you
can do whatever the flying fuck you want with it.
Check out the House of Whoop Ass at http://www.ernieshouseofwhoopass.com
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