Spam, Spam, And (You Guessed It) More Spam
July 9, 2001

Lately, I've witnessed first hand one of the great joys of the Internet: Spam. Now, I've never really had a problem with spam email in the past. I've always heard the complaints from various people about atrocious amounts of spam, but never really given it a second thought. These people must be doing something to entice this barrage of unsolicited sales pitches. They probably enter a lot of contests, give away their email at a moment's notice, or post to Usenet frequently. Either that, or they have an email account with a free providor like Hotmail or Yahoo, which is basically an open invitation for spam.

I do none of these things (With this account, at least), and I've never had any problems.

All that has changed in the past week. In the past few days, I've been subject to a flood of porn and MLM like I've never seen before, and it seems to be getting worse. Consider these statistics of the number of unsolicited emails I've received recently:

July 9th: 2 (And it's only 3:30am as I write this)
July 8th: 4
July 7th: 10
July 6th: 5
July 5th: 7
July 4th: 2
July 3rd: 2
June 29th - July 2nd: 0

Now, some of you might laugh at me and say "Ha ha, that's nothing! I get so much more than that!". But remember, I'm not used to it. (For the record, though, my Hotmail accounts probably get about 20/day). It seems in the last week, I've gotten on somebody's list that has been sold to everybody pushing any scam on the Internet.

Now, I'm faced with a dilemma: Do I click the "Click here to be removed" link, and thus verify that I actually do exist to that particular spammer? Or do I let it slide, and hope that person in particular never mass-mails again?

The first option probably wouldn't work well. Since whatever list I'm on has obviously been sold countless times, and will continue to be sold, this won't really do much for the problem. Plus, I run the risk of confirming my existence to a dishonest spammer (stay with me here, I know they're few & far between) and opening myself to more crap.

If I choose the second option, I obviously don't help my situation any, either.

So what's the solution?

Fake bounces.

Pretty much all spammers use automated programs to send out their propaganda. These programs will automatically handle undeliverable mail returns, and remove the appropriate email from the list, thus saving time and bandwidth next time around (If you don't know what a bounce is, email crap@lyricfind.ca and wait a few minutes). What I need is a program that will simulate those bounces, in a way that is undetectable to spam mass-mailers. I want to be able to right-click on an email in Outlook and choose "Send Bounce". This way, I get removed from that particular list, never to be propagated again.

True, I still don't get at the original source this way - but I do stop it from spreading. And most likely, the original source will frequently send out some crap to verify that the list is still up to date.

If anyone knows of such a program, or feels like writing one, let me know, and I'll be forever indebted to you.

Until then, though, I'll just have to hope my delete key holds out.

UPDATE - October 9, 2001: I recently found a program called "Bounce Spam Mail" which claims to do exactly what I want. It's written by Albert Yale, a good Canadian boy in Montreal (Ahhh, I love Montreal...). I haven't tried installing it yet, but will soon; in the meantime, you can download it here.