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Sympathy for the SPAMMER

The International Herald Tribune has an article (hat tip to Kim Kommando) about people responding to scam emails like this one. The idea of baiting the scammers isn't a new one. I seem to remember "Shiver Metimbers" making news about doing this some time ago. What is new is the reactions of some of the people who are meant to be enforcing the law against the people trying to defraud us all.

PARIS: Ever been tempted to respond to that e-mail message offering untold millions from the relatives of a deposed African dictator?

For some, replying is a rewarding hobby.

...

Scambaiters turn the tables and scam the scammer. They antagonize, humiliate and frustrate scammers who think they have an unwary victim.

I think that's a wonderful idea. As one scambaiter said every minute the scammer is having to deal with his scambaiting, is one less minute he's spending scamming the rest of us.

Their motives may be altruistic, but not all law enforcement officials approve of their tactics, which can include entrapment and the public humiliation of having embarrassing photographs posted on the Internet.

"At first you might smile and think the trophy photographs are funny, but I have seen some with fraudsters in highly degrading positions," said Zimmermann of Interpol. "They are fraudsters and they are not good people, but they have their human rights."

I have no sympathy for the SPAMMER. Anti-SPAM laws have no teeth to speak of. Sure we hear about a high profile case being prosecuted every now and then, but the tide of SPAM hasn't ebbed.

These people, motivated solely by greed waste our bandwidth, waste our time, and even defraud some people out of their life savings. They deserve to be put into jail and denied access to computers, the Internet, and even snail mail. Despite the increase in enforcement personnel it's attitudes like that held by "Zimmermann of Interpol" that prevents a lot of them from seeing the hand of justice.

Zimmermann complains that they are put into highly degrading positions, to which I say "Wonderful". He claims that they have their "human rights". I don't give a rat's backside.

These frauds are so motivated by greed that they'll willingly humiliate themselves. Nobody is forcing them to make fools of themselves. They are simply showing that they've been fools all along.

Michael Berry and his fellow scambaiters deserve our praise. If every one of these fools that send out the 419 scam SPAMS and similar trash were to be publicly humiliated we'd probably see a lot less SPAM.

Sadly, there just aren't enough scambaiters, and enforcement is like plugging a hole in a dike with a toothpick.

For all the effort and time spent by scambaiters, not everyone is convinced they make a difference.

"Given the scale of the problem, it is like the scambaiters are cleaning a stadium with a toothbrush," said Suresh Ramasubramanian, who manages anti-spam operations at Outblaze, one of the world's largest e-mail hosting companies. "This may be an entertaining hobby, but it is not saving the world."

Entertaining hobby or not, saving the world or not, it's still a step in the right direction. Firewalls and SPAM filters don't do anything to prevent SPAM, all they do is put it out of sight and out of mind. For some that's enough, but Firewalls and SPAM filters don't stop my bandwidth from being wasted at my Web Host. At least the scambaiters are going to the source of the problem, one SPAMMER at a time.

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