Protecting Yourself from Spam
Part 4: Other Ways to Hurt Spammers

Last time, we covered Striking Back against spammers who spam you. However, any way you can legally hurt spammers in general, will protect you (and the rest of the world) from spam. So, here are some additional ways:

• Spread the word. Educate people on how bad spam really is, and how to protect themselves from it. If you understand the technical issues, educate people on those -- how to decode headers, analyze domain registration issues, reject spam runs, and close open relays. Educate your legislators -- especially that they should pass the law outlined in my next article, "It's The Law... well, okay, not yet....". At the very least, tell people about anti-spam web pages, such as the spam section of my web site.

• If you have a web page, you can put in a link to WPoison, at http://www.e-scrub.com/spammers-are-leeches/index.htm. This is a CGI script (despite the .htm extension on the filename) to generate fake web pages, containing many mailto links -- to completely bogus email addresses. The idea is that since most spammers get their addresses from newsgroups and web pages, this will clog up spammers' lists with these bogus addresses. When they try to send spam, their own systems are too tied up trying to send to bogus addresses, to hit as many valid addresses.

Next: It's The Law! (Well, okay, not yet....).