This is totally off-topic but this is the kind of thing you all can appreciate, and it may even help some of you. For the last several months I have constantly been spammed by what can be described as Son-of-Spamford. There's some spam e-mail software marketing company in Los Angeles that sends out millions of these messages I guess. They use web crawlers that steal e-mail addresses from web pages. They then send out this spam letter with forged headers and false return addresses. Very annoying. However, they do include a phone number and address at the end of the spam. Interesting. I've included the message at the end of this message so you can see if you've been spammed by these assholes as well. I was so incensed at one point that I was almost going to buy a plane ticket, fly down to L.A. with a box full of this spam e-mail printed out, kick the door open to the office that these guys are in, find the president of this "company", beat the shit out of him (or pimp-slap her), then start shoving the printouts down this person's throat (yes, this is rather violent :) But I soon figured out that the address was merely a private mailbox, and the phone number rings into a voicemail box. Hmmm. Well, I have the resources to find out where this number rings in to, possibly track down the service provider, but then what? Then I realized, "Hey, I have a PBX, a T-1 and a voicemail system with 16 ports...its time to have some fun." Thus sprang forth the Spaminator! The Spaminator is something I threw together in about 10 minutes. What the Spaminator does is call the offendor's number, wait for the voicemail to answer, dial a digit to cut thru the outgoing message, then it starts singing simple tunes by playing "spam" in different notes. I recorded a "spam" scale with my own voice. Basically I sang "spam" starting from A and going to G. I created 10 different song files, with simple tunes such as "Mary Had a Little Spam", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Spam", "Happy Spamday", "We Shall Overcome (the spam)", "Jingle Spam", "Popeye the Sailor Spam", and a few others. The Spaminator randomly selects three spam tunes to play for each call. It plays the tunes, then hangs up and calls right back up again. The Spaminator is currently running, filling up the spammers voicemail box with spam tunes. Hopefully, it will fill up the voicemail box and they won't be able to receive any other messages. Also, it will bring them much anguish as they constantly try to delete these messages that don't stop coming. The last I checked the Spaminator had played over 100 spam tunes into their voicemail box. I am ecstatic. The Spaminator will continue to run over night. Tomorrow morning I will check its progress (it keeps a log of all tunes it plays so I know how many it did). If anyone is interested in utilizing the Spaminator for spaminating other egregious spammers, let me know. I can easily program it to simultaneously call out to other phone numbers and sing a symphony of spam for them as well. I hope that my simple solution brings some manner of grief to these idiots, whoever they are. Ideally it will give them more anguish than their constant barrage of spam has brought me. I will not relent. My next step is to try and track down the actual owners of this "business", try to find out their other phone numbers (preferrably home numbers) and unleash the Spaminator on those numbers as well. Thanks for letting me vent. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ever onward. September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! [Last web page update: 07/05/98] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 16:16:46 -0700 From: "***Bull*sEye)*" <33rq2w(a)att.net> To: vcoffey(a)bu.edu Authenticated sender is <33rq2w(a)att.net> Subject: ++BullsEye-*Targeting*Software*)+ Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit EMAIL MARKETING WORKS!! Bull's Eye Gold is the PREMIER email address collection tool. This program allows you to develop TARGETED lists of email addresses. Doctors, florists, MLM, biz opp,...you can collect anything...you are only limited by your imagination! You can even collect email addresses for specific states, cities, and even countries! All you need is your web browser and this program. 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