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MAP09: SPAMMING AND URBAN LEGENDS


     "Well there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and
      spam; bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon,
      sausage and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam; spam,
      spam, spam, egg and spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam,
      baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam; or lobster thermidor
      aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pate',
      brandy and a fried egg on top of spam." -- Monty Python's Flying
      Circus


It's possible, even easy, to get a list of every Usenet newsgroup and
publicly accessible LISTSERV list.  With very little thought, you can
convert the list into a program that will mail the same message to
every single one of these groups.

Doing this is called "spamming", after the Monty Python sketch quoted
above.

During the past year, there have been three such mailings that have
"succeeded":  One poster said that the end of the world was nigh;
another advertised the services of their law firm in the so-called
"Green Card Lottery" message; and a third, labeled "MAKE.MONEY.FAST"
was the Usenet equivalent of the old chain letter.

Of the three, the one that got the most attention was the Green Card
Lottery spam (1).  According to the Washington Post, the law firm
in question considered the Internet to be "an ideal, low-cost and
perfectly legitimate way to target people likely to be potential
clients."

Many people felt differently, though.  They felt that, first, the
Internet is the wrong place to conduct commercial business.  Many of
the charters of the Usenet newsgroups and LISTSERVS specifically
prohibit offers to do business.  The few that do accept offers
restrict the buyers and sellers to individuals, not businesses.  The
net has had a long tradition of non-commercialism, ever since its
founding days as ARPAnet.

Second, the net isn't free.  One popular newsreader, "trn", displays the
following message before it lets you post:

     This program posts news articles to thousands of machines
     throughout the enter {sic} civilized world.  Your message will cost
     the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send
     everywhere.  Please be sure you know what you are doing.

     Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?  y/n

Since the spammers are alleged to have posted to over 6,000 groups,
they surely spent quite a bit of somebody's money.

Finally, people who gather together to discuss a topic get annoyed when
someone discusses something outside the group's charter.  They often
complain to the newsgroup itself, thereby increasing the traffic
even further.

Note that spams generally aren't crossposted.  That means that every
news host will receive, process, and make available to its readers a
separate copy of the spam for every newsgroup.  Of course, "courteous"
spammers who use crossposting can make things even worse.  In one
recent spam, not only was the spam sent to all sorts of unrelated
newsgroups, but so were the angry replies!  (The people replying were
guilty of not reading their "To:" and "Cc:" lines before they posted).

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU SEE A SPAM:

First, NEVER reply to the group.  The spammer won't read it.  He's
interested in talking, not listening, and he isn't a list member or a
regular reader.  Your angry posting will only annoy the other members
of the group, and won't affect the spammer in the slightest.

Second, if you have a lot of time on your hands, you may read the
responses of members who ignored my first bit of advice.  On
comp.os.vxworks, for example, one (moderately clueless) member posted
(in response to the end of the world spam) "This isn't a religious
newsgroup!"  An old-timer responded "I think that very much depends on
the topic. ;)." (that's a winking smiley)

Third, if you have even more time on your hands, reply to the poster
at his own mailbox.  But you may not get satisfaction.  Quite often
spammers hit and run, and by the time you get back to yell at them,
they've closed out their accounts (or if their site administrator is
on her toes, they'll have had their accounts closed by the administrator).

Fourth, if you're even angrier at the spammer, you can write to the
administrator of his site.  If the spammer is [e-mail], his
administrator is [e-mail].

Fifth, and this is net abuse that can get you removed by your site
administrator, you may want to mailbomb the offender.  That consists of
sending him lots and lots of e-mail until his site or his account
crashes.  And, yes, it is perfectly possible to make a machine crash,
taking down all its users, by sending too much mail to a person on that
machine.  The same thing can happen to gateways processing the mail.

What I do is *think* about mailing offenders the Manhattan telephone
directory.  In PostScript.  I enjoy the thought without abusing the net
myself.  Yes, you have it within your power to spam the world, or to
mailbomb (mostly innocent) people.  You also have it within your power
to buy a gun and start shooting at people.  That doesn't mean you have
to do it.

URBAN LEGENDS (ULs):

Another example of spamming on a much smaller scale, at least in my
mind, are the urban legends that simply refuse to die. There is no
better example of an urban legend than the story surrounding Craig
Shergold (this as a TRUE urban legend, btw).

"There once was a seven-year-old boy named Craig Shergold who was
diagnosed with a seemingly incurable brain tumor. As he lay dying,
he wished only to have friends send him postcards. The local newspapers
got a hold of the tear-jerking story. Soon, the boy's wish had changed:
he now wanted to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the
largest postcard collection. Word spread around the world. People by
the millions sent him postcards.

Miraculously, the boy lived. An American billionaire even flew him
to the U.S. for surgery to remove what remained of the tumor. And
his wish succeeded beyond his wildest dreams -- he made the Guinness
Book of world records.

But with Craig now well into his teens, his dream has turned into
a nightmare for the post office in the small town outside London
where he lives. Like Craig himself, his request for cards just
refuses to die, inundating the post office with millions of cards
every year. Just when it seems like the flow is slowing, along
comes somebody else who starts up a whole new slew of requests
for people to send Craig post cards (or greeting cards or business
cards -- Craig letters have truly taken on a life of their own
and begun to mutate). Even Dear Abby has been powerless to make
it stop." (2)

The current variation on the Craig story that is floating around
the Internet is that you should send your cards to the Make A Wish
foundation in Atlanta, Georgia. Please do not do this. Make A
Wish -- a foundation that grants the dying wish of children with
terminal illnesses -- has enough to worry about.

Other urban legends currently making their way around the Internet
include a story that gangs are driving around at night with their
headlights out and then shooting anyone who "flashes them" with
their high beam headlights, and that there is a "virus" called
CD-IT that is eating the hard-drives of stupid people. The "lights
out" story may be true, but the police departments in Chicago,
New York City, and Los Angeles all told me over the phone that
the story was false (I called). The CD-IT story it true, but
it is FOUR YEARS OLD!!!

I am going to share with you the number one rule for Internet
discussion group survival: only post things that are relevant
to the topic that the discussion group was created to discuss.
The Craig Shergold story would have died a peaceful death years
ago if people had only remembered the "relevant posting" rule.

TOMORROW: Internet Security

HOMEWORK:

1)   If you are really interested in urban legends, there is a
     Usenet newsgroup (alt.folklore.urban) that you should check
     out.

2)   If you want to see a cute example of what a flame war really looks
     like, my dad recently recorded a flame war on a relatively calm
     Usenet group. That file is now on the LISTSERV file server at
     the University of Alabama under the name FLAME WAR

     Please feel free to GET this file (see MAP02: LISTSERV FILE SERVER
     COMMANDS) for a review of the GET command.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

     The November/December 1994 edition of Internet World magazine has
     several good articles about Usenet. The magazine is available
     at most newsstands.

SOURCES:

(1) from "Green Card Lottery -- The Full Story" posted on
    alt.internet.services on June 2, 1994

(2) from the "EFF's Guide to the Internet." Reprinted by permission.


   PATRICK DOUGLAS CRISPEN    THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS LETTER DO NOT
    [e-mail]      NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF THE
  THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA      UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA - TUSCALOOSA

      ROADMAP: COPYRIGHT PATRICK CRISPEN 1994. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.