From: kfl@clark.net (Keith Lynch)
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email
Subject: Re: The rantings of a MORON
Date: 27 Mar 1998 04:50:26 GMT
Keywords: Free Speach (tm)

It's true!  It's all true!  The only reason I have an account on the
net is to entrap poor innocent spammers.  All those helpful postings
of mine in the science, math, and computer newsgroups?  Just a
smokescreen.  And a dastardly ploy on my part.  You see, by posting
about neutrinos on a physics newsgroup, I've falsely led hundreds of
spammers to believe that I would be interested in joining a pyramid
scheme.  By posting about C++ pointers in a computer newsgroup, I
tricked bulksters into thinking I would be interested in pornographic
web pages.  By posting about quaternions in a math newsgroup, I fooled
e-mail commerce pioneers into thinking I really wanted to buy a list of
80 million e-mail addresses, together with "stealth" spamming software.

Less than an hour ago, I managed to cleverly snare three more spammers
by the cunning ploy of logging in and checking my e-mail.  Those
spammers were just minding their own business, not bothering anyone,
when suddenly I started e-mailing complaints just because a dozen
identical copies of their once-in-a-lifetme one-time-only opportunities
had somehow gotten into my mailbox.

Not only that, but I compounded my infamy by violating their
copyrights.  That's right, I took their forged headers, that they
slaved over for milliseconds (well, ok, that their "stealth" spamming
software slaved over for milliseconds), and not only made a copy for
my own use (by loading my mail), but actually "published" them, by
including them whole in my complaints!  Does my villany know no bounds?

Why should people like me be allowed on the net, anyway?  All I do is
post the occasional helpful, informative, or entertaining message.  But
I do so so *slowly*, and only to a handful of individuals or newsgroups.
Even the most basic spammer -- err, e-commerce pioneer -- can send more
e-mail in one minute than I have sent in my 21 years on the net.  And
can post to more newsgroups in ten seconds than I have in ten years.

Not only that, but while my few messages promise at best to give a
moment's entertainment, a bit of insight, or a solution to a minor
and well-undersood problem such as how to calculate the position of
planets, spammers' many messages promise fabulous wealth, long flowing
hair for the bald, fantastic orgasms for the impotent, perfect health
for those dying of cancer, list of tens of millions of people who
*want* spam, and spamming software that will totally hide your identity
even from the NSA, even if you put your name, street address, and phone
number in your spam.

And while I've only had accounts on two ISPs, one company, and one
university in more than two decades online, spammers often go through
more accounts than that in a single week.

I see that while I was writing the above, yet another spammer has
fallen into my ingenious trap (i.e. having an e-mail address and not
keeping it secret).  I think I'll go ruin his day for no reason at
all.  After all, how could he have possibly known that I didn't
want to get five identical messages about unspecified "investment
opportunies"?  Well, I suppose in theory he could have figured it out
from the vehement complaint I CCd him after the first time he sent me
the same messages.  Or perhaps from even more vehement complaint I CCd
him after the second time he sent me the same messages.  Or maybe from
the phone calls I made to his toll-free number.  Or maybe from the
three times I registered with his remove list.  But really, why should
someone have to be Sherlock Holmes just to repeatedly flood millions
of mailboxes all over the net with trash -- err, I mean to send one-
time-only investment opportunities to a select few?

After all, I must confess I have never *once* lost any money on any
investment opportunity advertised via spam.  Nor have I ever been
disappointed by any other product or service they've offered.