Subject: we know you needed this , so . . . .

greetings , this email is about fighting spam , and winning . > > please forward to your friends , family and co-workers to people that want to get spam out of their email : read this , you ' ll like what i am doing . . . . : ) to people that want to flame me for whatever reason : do n't be an egomaniac , i have a right to free speech , and the right to say it to a lot of people , so buzz off . - - - - - first let me tell you who i am and what i do . my name is robert young , i live in moscow , idaho , u . s . a . , and i have been using the internet since 1990 . i have watched the internet go from a small community of serious professionals to a roaring civilization of over 100 million people . until 8 months ago i had been a private investigator specializing in the apprehension of criminal fugitives . after 8 years of doing that i started getting burned out and decided to turn my life long hobby of programming computers into a full time job . now i write specialized applications for investigating and locating information on the internet . this summer , during the last week of july , i finally got fed up with the fact that i could not seem to get my 5 year old email address off of spam lists . i would reply to their emails with the word " remove " like most of them say and the next day i would get more . i sent my email address to remove lists , complained to administrators , postmasters , and my friends . none of it seemed to make a bit of difference . i decided to investigate the bulk email business . what i found made me so angry i almost blew a fuse . did you know : 1 . spammers steal valid email addresses and use them for return addresses . you could get the blame ! 2 . spammers purposely deceive filters designed to protect your email address . 3 . spammers " hijack " mail servers that are meant to relay messages from computer to computer . when they overload these servers , your legitimate email can be lost ! 4 . congress is not going to pass any laws in the united states anytime in the near future to stop this garbage , and they may never do so . some members of congress have actually campaigned through email . ( does that - really - surprise you ? ) 5 . when spammers register domain names with internic they never pay their bills because they know that the domain will be blocked and useless within 30 days , and interring gives them that long to pay before cutting them off . 6 . some spammers buy lists of accounts from hackers that have broken into internet service providers and use these accounts , that belong to other people , so they can connect to the internet without being concerned about losing the account . again , you get the blame , you lose your account . most of these spammers are genuine , authentic , certified jerks . i decided to get even , i took all of this very personally . within 3 weeks , the spam had dropped to a trickle . now i only get 2 or 3 a week instead of 7 or 8 each day . update : as of 02-oct - 1998 i have not gotten a single spam for 5 days . that 's a fact . i am starting to get comments from people that joined me two weeks ago that have noticed drops in their spam count of as much as 70 % . that is a fact as well . my list of active spammers is over 80 individuals now and it is growing every day . it does n't take government intervention , we all know that our government could n't feed a cat without spending $ 400 on a bag of cat food and starting 8 committees . what it does take is someone with the guts to take action , now ! what did i do ? first i recognized that spammers are not going to just quit , they make too much money doing it . the self righteous " anti-spammers " only wipeout mostly innocent business people with poor judgment . they have not put a single spam mailer out of business yet . not a one ! they just pop up with a different domain name , and dialup account the next day . the anti spammers have actually wiped out several potentially successful remove lists . you know why ? they do n't want it to end because then they would n't have a crusade anymore . think i ' m kidding ? i know who the anti-spammers are as well and believe me , their motivations are purely egotistical . in my opinion they have made spam worse by driving it underground and ruining the web based remove lists . try to go to www . remove-list . com , it is n't there anymore . so i am doing it different . human nature matters . . . i used my investigative experience to hunt down the - actual people - that were sending me spam . names , phone numbers , addresses , etc . it was n't easy but i had the background and knowledge to do it . i called each of these people and told them that if they did not immediately cease and desist sending mail to my address that i was going to give their name , address , phone number and anything else i had on them to every service provider in the country . that i would publish their information on the internet via the web , and that i would give their information to every ( legitimate ) anti - spam group i could find . i was polite and adult about the issue but i made it very clear that i was dead serious . nothing else has worked . people have been trying to get rid of spam for several years with no success . this method works ! ! ! if i told you i could do the same thing for you would you be interested ? i thought so . here is what you need to do : first : start your text editor ( notepad , vi , whatever ) second : type the following information and print it . first name last name primary email address ( remember your email may have two forms such as : joe @ isp . com and joe @ mail . isp . com . include both , contact your isp if you are n't sure ) family member ' s addresses ( one per line please ! ) third : mail this information to me : robert young attn : no more spam please ! ! ! c / o super fast services 116 e . 3rd . st . suite 206 moscow , id 83843 we need donations to support this fight . i started out doing this for friends and family , then their friends and family , and now it is starting to cost us a lot of money . please include a donation of five dollars either a five dollar bill , or a check made out to me . we are hoping that there are enough decent people out there that appreciate what we are doing and will pitch in a few bucks to help us pay for the phone calls , computer time , database searches , and hiring people to do the data entry for the 600 plus letters we are getting every day . p l e a s e h e l p ! i guarantee you will think it is the best five bucks you have ever spent if you are sick of spam . thanks for taking the time to reply to this letter , i hope to hear from you soon . working together we can defeat unwanted spam for good .
