Spamming Scumbags

For the longest time I had "catch-all" email at antiquark.com. Any email to any user, fictional or not, would end up being forwarded to me. At first I thought it was useful for organizing my various registered accounts. For example, I used "weedlover@antiquark.com" for my account at hemp-online.org, I used "kingofcrack@antiquark.com" for my account at plumber-pictures.net, et cetera. It got pretty cunfusing after awhile, I just couldn't remember which name to use for which site. Of course, I hadn't bothered to write them down somewhere -- my memory is infallible you know.

About 6 months ago the spammers decided for me that a catch-all wasn't all that useful. They started using random names, like qxcehfbe or xqpitrre@antiquark as the return addresses for their wares. Suddenly I was getting bounced emails from expired accounts, people on vacation, and automatic spam filters. They were arriving at the rate of several dozen per day.

So I turned off the catch-all, and everything was fine.

Then, a few days ago, I decided to switch hosting companies. Just to do some testing, I turned on the catch-all. I left it on for a few hours, because I was forced to do some normal-people things, like venture outside and interact with my relatives.

When I got back to checking my email, I was surprised to see that I had 3000 mails in my inbox. All of them were bounces to fictional antiquark users. And all of them the result of spammers. It it turns out that I was getting one bounced spam every eight seconds. That works out to:

450 spams an hour, or

10800 spams a day, or

FOUR-F**KING MILLION SPAMS A YEAR!!!

Luckily, thanks to some quick thinking, I was able to turn off the catch-all before my CPU turned into molten slag. The only casualty was my pride as I explained to my wife why I was sitting in a puddle of my own urine.



Future anti-spam toolkit (portable version).

You know, a few years ago, the subject on Slashdot veered towards appropriate punishments for spammers. I posted as an AC, stating that spammers deserve nothing less than an instant roadside castration. The mods gave me a -1, saying it was a rant. It was far from a rant actually. A rant is an emotional outburst; the castration idea was the product of pure logical thought.

Many people think spammers deserve the death penalty. I think castration would be far more effective. Think of it -- a dead spammer (as appealing as the concept may be) is unable to convey a personal message. At least eunuch spammers could travel the high-school circuit, begging students, "please don't become spammers, look at what happened to me" in thier high squeaky voices. The effect would be earth-shaking. Spamming could be wiped out in a generation.

Plus, I love irony, and this idea is so ironic it would make Alanis Morrisette weep. Penis-enlarger salesmen who actually have no nuts? Now that's irony.