I say no.

You won't convince anyone.

If they haven't hidden their identity, then they think they aren't doing anything wrong. As such, they'll consider themselves an innocent victim of misdirected "retaliation." If they have hidden their identity, the source can't be identified beyond a reasonable doubt. Even if you can identify someone who knows they've sinned, your retaliation confirms what they already know, and they are again not convinced.

Whoever made the decision to spam you probably will not be who bears the cost of your retaliation. I haven't worked anywhere that such a decision-maker is also the mail systems maintainer.

Where's the police when you need them?

If you think what they're doing is wrong, send the authorities after them. If that's not going to work, maybe it's not really wrong but merely annoying.

An analogy

When driving, a car behind you is following too closely. Do you slam on the brakes to teach the driver a lesson? This is dangerous. The practice of following too closely isn't illegal (I think), merely annoying. If there's a collision, you'd be partly responsible.

A suggestion

Write a polite but firm letter explaining why you think you should not be getting this mail in the first place and urging the organization to stop emailing others in this fashion. Make phone calls if you want. Try to reach whoever it was that actually made this decision. Explain that this is damaging to the organization's image.

If all else fails,

Meditate. Become one with the fundamental 1 and the fundamental 0. Ponder the nature of truth and falsehood. Take deep breaths and be grateful you sought guidance before seeking vengeance.

When driving, a car behind you is following too closely. Do you slam on the brakes to teach the driver a lesson? This is dangerous. The practice of following too closely isn't illegal (I think), merely annoying.

Actually, just like spamming, following too closely is illegal. However, just like spamming it's for the most part unenforceable, except in the most heinous cases.

Thank you.

If someone were to bite the bait- it would be an unsophisticated act. It would be like slashing the neighbor's car tires because they drive too fast down the street.

I don't know why one would stoop so low to entertain the notion even.

Well written and covered a lot of ground in a clear manner. I think you understood that a)I'm not looking for help with spam and b) my comments about karma and 'not doing stup..' was not in reference to the spammer- but to the imaginary other party.

Prosecuting people who violate the law is a matter of the state, not your own business, and IMHO with good reason. It's one of the defining attributes of a constitutional state.

That aside, I doubt that you can retaliate in any way that really makes a difference without committing a crime yourself (unless you happen to own a company that has considerable power over a sector of a market that your "victim" is involved in).

Not that I agree with the what the poster is suggesting; however, it could also be seen an attempt at enforcement of a social norm. More akin to laughing at the kid(=child) who wears funny cloths, then to burning the witch down the street who put a hex on the neighborhood cat. And, to me, spamming (still) feels more like a violation of a social norm than "Doing something wrong"

To continue with the tailgating analogy used in some of the other posts: tailgating is one of those things that is more on the 'not being polite' side of the coin than on the illegal side -- how many people get pulled over just for tailgating... So, sometimes a person will slow down to punish a tailgater even though it will take the person longer to get to h(is|er) destination. http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16090318

Unfortunately, E-Mail in its current implementation is broken. It's probably better for you to set up a rule in your client that just dumps anything from that domain, rather explicitly do something rude.

I assume that you've already ruled out using something like SpamCop.

Put in a rule in your anti-spam software to silently delete their messages and never ever answer to a "unsubscribe me" address. It will identify your e-mail address as active and yourself as someone reading spam-messages. Hence your e-mail address advertised itself for continuing attention from spammers. My wife did so once and within days her in box overflowed with emails advertising matters for which she was physically not equipped to take advantage of.

First I'm with everyone: don't. It's a can of worms and most of what you could do that would hurt would probably be illegal.

It is just not worth the bother

Second, what bother? This is Perl, my Count. I DoSed a phishing site once that ticked me off (they sent mail to my n00b grandmother) with a one-liner that took 1/5th as long to write as this post.

That's a very interesting deduction there.

I've been handling spam incredibly well as of late, it's rare that one actually makes it through, that's why I was so curious!

The reaction here is exactly why spammers get away with their obscene art and profits.

If all the recipients of their fallacious outpourings got together and reciprocated, their lives and practices would become impossible.

For the most part, so called legal remedies are impossible. Even if the perpetrators live and operate in your own legal jurisdiction, proving they are responsible is nigh impossible. If they live or operate outside your jurisdiction, forget any possibility of legal redress.

Comparisons with vigilantism are puerile. A better analogy is the residence of streets plagued with drug dealers and vice that took back their streets by observing, and filming and generally being noticed.

If the knowledgeable recipients of spam put their heads and resources together, they could out-spam the spammers and render the positives of their practices so drowned in negatives that winnowing the wheat from the chaff would become impossible.

Whilst the knowledgeable stand by and do nothing but look the other way--I'm all right jack, I've got XYZ to stop me from seeing the crap--then the profit margins from responses by the less knowledgeable will mean the spam will continue, and the weak will continue to be ripped off.

The spammers aren't clever, just callous and persistent and reliant on nobody bothering, or feeling they have the right to fight back. A concerted effort by the knowledgeable could render them impotent.

Re "The reaction here is exactly why spammers get away with their obscene art and profits."

Do spammers actually make any money? I mean the kind who delights in tricking you to accept and read the mail, not the "opt out" newsletters that actually contain words and stuff.

Is it ethical if someone were to possibly do something back?

The question is too vague. Is "something"

• bringing them to court?
• bringing attention to the company's practices?
• unsubscribing?
• spamming them back?
• sending bomb threats?
• ...?

I use a different email address for each online shopping adventure or newsletter, so if I get something else I know exactly who shared my address, and I take them to task on it.

Maybe even something like suing for the lost time and the time taken to adjust your email client to deal with their threat (hey, much spam is a security threat and companies that have server breaches use this expense in court all the time). Then get everyone they've spammed certified as a class, move for discovery of every address they've spammed, and multiply your losses times the number of people involved. Then, make sure they pay for the notifications to everyone in the class. That'll stop one spammer, and maybe make a few others slightly nervous. It should only take three or four years of your attention and attorney's fees.

You can sometimes, by identifying the IP block and contacting the upstream provider, get a spammer's access to the Net cut for violating a usage agreement. That's a minor pain for them to find another ISP.

You can sometimes write their registrar and ask that their domain names be revoked for violating the registrar's terms of service.

In severe cases in which the ISP doesn't care about the spammers, you can get the ISP's upstream and domain names cancelled, too.

If these options are too much of a hassle, then just get better filtering going.

I hate spam as much as the next guy, but I choose to render it ineffective by filtering and deleting spam. Doing anything else validates your email address, making you an even more desirable target. If you truly need vengeance and really want to put the effort into it, you might want to read these articles first. Most spam is against the law in the US, but the FCC isn't putting much effort into regulating it.

Since you don't believe in karma I wouldn't worry about being targeted by even more spam once it's made public you're going after the spammers.

Spam FAQ

Sue the spammers

There are a lot of good anti-spamming info resources on the web, but from personal experience, it takes a lot of effort and is usually futile to fight. The sheer volume of spam makes this a losing proposition regarding your time. On a monthly basis I receive over 30K bounce messages in my postmaster boxes just due to spamming of invalid addresses. Since there is no way I have time to parse them for legitimate problems, I just run a chron job to periodically clear the boxes. My users know how to contact me if they need to.

IMHO, your best bet is to become a moving target. It'll keep you sane, and keep your blood pressure down. Maintain a batch of throwaway e-mail addresses to use for transactions over the web, and kill any addresses that start receiving spam. Only give your real address to those you trust. Also, if you haven't already, learn how to configure your spam filter.

I understand you said "I do believe in honor". Honor, imho, has traditionally been used as a cover for doing things one wants to do that one cannot justify in any other way.

Honor is not an objective term.

You must be new around here (the Internet).

Just delete it and move on. ObPerl: Install SpamAssassin.