Fun with spam!

[reddragdiva]

Just saw ladylilith off on the plane. (Heathrow Terminal 4 has a Wetherspoon's.) Now life becomes a flurry of paperwork to bring her back.

To pass the long, dark hours until her return, I've been committing small evil with Nigerian 419 scam email. What you do is post their address to Usenet newsgroups alt.test and misc.test, with an 'ignore' (so that the test post itself is not replied to - let's not give the game away).The reason this is fun is that the *.test newsgroups are regularly scraped by other spammers for addresses. So I've been doing lots of things like:

thingy:~> telnet localhost 119
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 thingy.apana.org.au InterNetNews server INN 2.3.2 ready
mode reader
200 thingy.apana.org.au InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.3.2 ready (posting ok).
post
340 Ok, recommended ID <av2fth$acr$1@thingy.apana.org.au>
From: "AARON MOMODU" <momodu@maktoob.com>
Subject: A LETTER FORM AARON
Newsgroups: alt.test,misc.test
Message-ID: <av2fth$acr$1@maktoob.com>

ignore
.
240 Article posted <av2fth$acr$1@maktoob.com>
post
340 Ok, recommended ID <av2g4q$acr$2@thingy.apana.org.au>
From: "PATRICK KOFI" <patrickkofi4000@ecplaza.net>
Reply-To: patrickkofi4000@ecplaza.net
Newsgroups: alt.test,misc.test
Message-ID: <av2g4q$acr$2@ecplaza.net>
Subject: REPLY NEEDED

ignore
.
240 Article posted <av2g4q$acr$2@ecplaza.net>
post
340 Ok, recommended ID <av2g76$acr$3@thingy.apana.org.au>
From: idris alima <idris.alima@caramail.com>
To: idris.alima@caramail.com
Subject: A Call For Help.
Newsgroups: alt.test,misc.test
Message-ID: <av2g76$acr$3@caramail.com>

ignore
.
240 Article posted <av2g76$acr$3@caramail.com>
quit
205 .
Connection closed by foreign host.
thingy:~>

Message-IDs are derived from the recommended ID and the email domain name, From: and Subject: lines are cut and pasted from the original email. All email addresses in a given piece of spam get a post.

It's profoundly childish. But endlessly amusing.

(Don't try this at home unless you're quite sure your Usenet provider will still love you in the morning.)

Comments

[kraant.livejournal.com]

(Don't try this at home unless you're quite sure your Usenet provider will still love you in the morning.)

Y'know things like this make me wonder whether I should spend the couple of days effort so I'd be my own UseNet provider. Of course it would be more useful if I still read UseNet.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

seems like fun! there's an admirable elegance about it too.

Too bad I've been getting so few spams through the filters lately.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Ooh - Liz gone is bad :(

If y'need a hand with the mounds of red tape (either literally or just to recover afterwards) give a yell.

419 baiting

[lpetersson.livejournal.com]

If you have too much time on your hands...... :)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/28507.html

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Heh. I get heaps of those scams at work, because we are a reputed business :)
Why, the Nigerian scam appears to have spread, for I've had mail from the Phillipines (the former president's wife), Zimbabwae (dispossed whitey farmers), and all over Africa and Asia where there is turmoil.

I await by first ex-Taleban missive.

The sad thing, while the e-mail addys are new, I recognise the names "PATRICK KOFI" and "idris alima".