check it out, I just got spammed by another team

[Wiz]

Here is the entire text of the email I just received:

* * * * * * * * * ********************* * * * * * * * * * *
Hiya Rick Bastedo,

My name is Zain Upton, and I am a SETI enthusiast living in Adelaide Australia, studying a Bachelor of Medicine/Surgery (it is a long story how I eventually took this path as I started out finishing a Computing Science/Maths degree). I have been running SETI since the start of 2001, and love the project even after all this time. Lets face it my computer does most of the work now, and I just sit back and let it... one of the great things about it really.

You are receiving because I found your email address at the official SETI@Home personal profile section as I was looking thru them earlier today. To be honest the whole reason you are getting this email is I hope you will consider joining our SETI@Home team. Our team site can be found at:

http://seti.vr9.com

If you are already in a team and happily crunching away I am sorry for bothering you and you can delete this message now. If you don't care about teams at ALL you can do the same. If on the other hand you are bored with your team, or not in one please read on...


Why did we pick you?
====================

1. Over the last month or so, I have looking at ALL profiles (starting with the letter "Z"). I have a quick skim read (cause some of them are VERY VERY funny) and for each person that has an email address listed (as shameless as it is) I copy and paste their name and email address into this email.

2. We love new members from around the world, people that love the SETI project and are keen and enthusiastic. Our team has been growing ever since we first started early this year... each week getting a few more members. Now we have over 200 members from 25 countries around the world, and are approaching the TOP 200 teams of ALL SETI!

3. We want MORE enthusiasts in our team. Our members love our web page, and with over 95% of teams not even have a web page we are one step ahead. Not only that but we think our SETI page is great, and is continually being updated with member suggestions. Some of those sections at our site are:

Comprehensive updates and stats and rankings, congratulations going out to milestone getters, a forum board, Gaussian rankings and tables for those that run SETI SPY, team subgroups to join (very popular), a HALL of FAME for all members over 1000 Work Units that includes a web page at our site and much more.



Well I have rambled on way too long as it is. Just for your information, if you are not in a group currently joining a group does NOTHING to your individual stats, you still accumulate Work Units as normal... all it does mean is your units are ADDED to the team/group total as well.

Like I said, if you ARE in a group already, then I wish you well and keep crunching hard. If you ever do decide that you are bored with your group feel free to consider us if you change.


Just in case you forgot our site can be found at: http://seti.vr9.com


We would love you as a member our team, I hope you consider it. Please reply to me if you are in ANY way interested, or want to ask any questions (SETI related or not).

Cheers,
Zain Upton (founder of our team and web page designer)

PS if you did want to join just complete STEP 3 and STEP 4 at this page: http://seti.vr9.com/setijoin.htm

PPS even if you don't want to join feel free to write back, nothing like talking to total strangers half way around the world.


..
|\_/| D\___/\
(0_0) (0_o)
==(Y)== (V)
--------------(u)---(u)---------------oOo--U--oOo---------------
|______________________________________________________________|
| Zain Upton |
| Email: zain.upton@seti.vr9.com |
| Flinders University School of Medicine (GEMP III) |
| Adelaide TAFE Lecturer of Information Technology |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| Is there ALIEN LIFE in another Universe? |
| Help global space research by running SETI@Home |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| A small FREE program that runs as a very pretty screensaver |
| (or not so pretty background mode) that analyses sound data |
| recorded from deep space, helping Berkley Unis SETI project. |
| Over 3 MILLION people currenty help! |
| More info at our team site - http://seti.vr9.com |
----------------------------------------------------------------

 

[bot2600]

That blows.

Bot

 

[Orange Kid]

spam the dude back and have his whole team join ours

 

[zeruty]

god I hate those jerks that spam like that :\
you should write him back and chew him out...

 

[Wiz]

I've truly had enough talking to people about spamming over the past ten days.
Wanna get really P.O.'d just go to news.admin.net-abuse.email usegroup and read a few threads.
I had to spend a week there getting the data center where my server lives out of SPEWS & Spamhaus.
What a pain in the arse.
Some of them mean well, but that's not the way the spam problem will finally be solved.

 

[ys]

<< 1. Over the last month or so, I have looking at ALL profiles (starting with the letter "Z"). I have a quick skim read (cause some of them are VERY VERY funny) and for each person that has an email address listed (as shameless as it is) I copy and paste their name and email address into this email. >>



I guess there's not much to do as a surgeon

He looked through 3585690 profiles :Q

 

[aphoenixrises]

Nope he only went through the Z's. Guess the rest of the team dropped the ball, what happened to A-Y.
I say we all spam him withhis own letter and just change the parts that give his name or his team name to ours.
BA wawawa....................
J/K

 

[conjur]

Nah...run the letter thru Babelfish and say you're from Hardware Fr...maybe that will tick him off and he'll spam them or something.

 

[Wiz]

heh, please remove my name first

 

[RigorousT]

Didn't see his email addy.. If you pass it along I'll be sure he gets his daily horoscope, stock picks, offers for diplomas and natural breast enhancers, ect..



--RT

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Did you hit a MileStone recently? I remember someone got a similar spam e-mail trying to recruit them right after they hit a MileStone, and showed up on the Daily MileStone Achievers (Or whatever it is called) at Berkeley.

 

[Wolfie]

I also got spammed from the same team. And I havn't touched Seti for a while. Go figure...

Wolfie

 

[KCjeeper]

As far as SPAM goes, I think this is pretty harmless. What I hate are the computer generated mass mailings that I receive every friggin day. I think this guy is harmless and we shouldn't bother him too much. Maybe just some good-natured ribbing.

 

[Smoke]

His pitch is pretty effective. In the last 1.5 weeks he has gotten 27 new members which amounts to a 11.7% increase in total membership which now totals 257. He's pretty up front about ignoring the message if you are already on a team.

I've heard of "rules of etiquette" but have never actually seen any ... could someone point me to them?

I think I'll try to recruit his whole team as a mini-team for Team AnandTech. Or is that not "cricket"? :Q j/k

 

[Rattledagger]

<< I guess there's not much to do as a surgeon

He looked through 3585690 profiles :Q >>



No, he's only looking on the Personal Profiles. Taking a quick count, less than 4% of Team Anandtech has a personal profile.

 

[narzy]

forward it to the seti guys, they look down on this sorta thing and will most likely DQ the guy, and or his team...

 

[networkman]

I got one too! :disgust:

My email back to him:

Mr. Upton,

While I appreciate your enthusiasm for the SETI project, I am only going to say this once: Do NOT SPAM me again! It's quite obvious that this is a SPAM email as it has been sent to numerous other people including members of my own team. If you think I'm the only member who is very disappointed with people resorting to this, look here: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=39&threadid=735449

Others are nowhere near as forgiving as I am.

I wish you luck on your non-SPAMMING endeavors, but I strongly suggest you find another way of recruiting. If I receive another un-solicited email, I will take further action - you have been warned.

Cordially,
Rich Nagel

aka "networkman"
---
"Chance is irrelevant, we will succeed."
- Seven of Nine (ST:Voyager)

 

[networkman]

Response to my email to Zain.. hopefully, we won't get anymore of this stuff:

Hello Rich,

First off, before I say anything else, I do apologize for causing you
any anger or grief with the last email. It was not at all its intention
at all. So far from the profiles "Z" to "R" I have waded through in the
last month and a half or so, I have received 2 emails saying "ah heck
off", and yours which is written in a much more polite format. And for
that I thank you.

But what I compared that with is the 60ish emails from people in groups,
that dont want to change groups, but do enjoy talking and meeting other
SETI members. Many of these members are from around the world, and many
of them I now write to on a regular basis.

I can assure you that this was a once of email, I dont actually store
the email addresses anywhere (well they are in my sent box until the end
of the month), and I have no intentions of writing anything more. The
email just serves to let people know about the group. About 50ish
members in the past month have joined up, 47 of which were not in groups
before hand. Of those 3 people I let them know strongly that joining
our group would leave them from the old group.

I did have a read of the forum posts. If people feel it necessary to
spam me in retaliation I cant say I wont understand. I have not tried
to hide my email address at all. I just hope this sheds some light from
my perspective.

Feel free to post this on your forum as well. Like I said, I am sorry
for the inconvenience.

Yours Sincerely
Zain.

 

[narzy]

by his last E-mail it seems he has no intention of stopping, I still say report him but thats just me.

 

[networkman]

I leave it to the rest of you to decide what to do - I've politely given him fair warning - if he continues on in this endeavor then he'll need to be prepared for the consequences.

 

[barbary]

I get this all the time. probably about two a month.

 

[Wiz]

Here's the general guidlines as I have heard them for what to do about this kind of thing.

1. try to email the sender and ask that they stop

(if that fails)

2. try to email abuse@their_domain and ask them to look into it

(if that fails)

3. go to news.admin.net-abuse.email and try to get their netblock listed in SPEWS, Spamhaus, Spamcop and the rest
This will of course not only cause them harm but it will also hurt everyone around them to the point that they will kick him out of the building.

Lets say that you find a spammer operating on an IP of (just for example) 0.0.0.0
You would start a new message titled something like:

SPEWS: 0.0.0.0 please list these spammers

Then in the message show that you had contacted the spammer, include any response from them indicating they don't intend to stop, include any response from abuse@their_domain (or the fact that after repeated mailing to abuse there was no reply or the address didn't exist)

At this point the "good fairies" at SPEWS who lurk at the newsgroup will do their own check on that abuser and if they deem it worthy the netblock or all netblocks at the NOC where that offender sends out their spam will be listed.

Then all those who subscribe to and use that list will begin blocking all email eminating from that center, until someone there notices and takes action (boots the spammer out the door).


Personally I don't like or endorse the listing of entire blocks of IP addresses because one IP is infected by a spammer. I think it is an extreme reaction to the problem. I can see that some think this is the only way though, as listing only the offenders IP doens't do much beyond blocking email from that IP. Whey you list all the netblocks at a NOC you are much more likely to get someones attention and the ultimate result is that the spammer has to flee.
Unfortunately there is always another place available for them to get hosted, so they plop their domain down on some other unsuspecting web host and the cycle repeats itself.
After my experience with SPEWS I will always go to google and do a search on any domain transfer request before I take their money. If the domain has been mentioned in relation to spam I just won't take them.

 

[Dantoo]

Maybe it's just me but I thought "good on him".

He cares enough about his hobby to take a risk. He replies to individuals. He seems a nice guy.

Sending an email of this sort doesn't at all qualify in the same league as the sleazy "Meet teen Asian Girls Online" sort of crap.

I keep trying to think of an alternative for him. He doesn't have a web site like DSLR or TA to gather a team around. He wants to start a "Seti Club" and talk Seti to like minded people. Don't really have any ideas on how he could do it any other way. Imagine the response if he posted anywhere on the Anandtech site and issued the invite! Smoke would drift through here for months!

After seeing the way Georgia tried to "teach a lesson" to a DC enthusiast I am wary of being judgemental about the activities of one guy who wants to talk and breathe Seti.