Officially.. I'm away from all this for some while, but I thought I'd respond to this.
I don't recommend physically or financially hurting these people. It's sad to say that authority figures would actually care about these bastards. but they do. So you can only get yourself into more trouble by doing that. Yeah, probably not what you wanted to hear but it's the truth.
As far as what to do for spam... Let me recommend some things for avoiding it in the future. I came up with these and I think they are pretty effective, or at least helps quite a bit. This list goes for EVERYONE...
1. If you have friends that forward things to you and others, request (read: demand) that they put you in BCC (blind carbon copy). Why ? Because the truth is.. if it keeps getting forwarded... some greedy bastard will see it, be it in an archive in a website, or in the email itself. They will take the oppurtunity to either sell your email to others OR use it themselves to spam the hell out of you.
2. Keep more than one email address for different reasons. If you have a private and a work or general 'public' email address, then if you give only a small amount of your private one (The most important one really), less likely for you to be spammed in the long run. Of course, RULE 1 applies here too. BCC is your friend, folks!
3. Forward addresses are heros! What you do is create one normal POP3 address and one forward address. You then have the forward address forward to your main POP3 addy. Now, you set it so your client shows your FORWARD address and not your pop3 address. You also change reply-to so it is even more 'official'. Now, when someone spams your forward and you get tired of it.. you simply change the address and od the same thing. Of course there are variations of this and I think you can all figure it out. REMEMBER: keep the other rules in mind.
4. Is there a link to email you on *any* website ? If so, you might want to reconsider it... Spam bots can go through and check for links of email and copy it to their spam list. If you want your email on a website, make sure you don't have a link. Here is a good way of doing it:
name[at]domain.com
sure it may confuse some people, but what's better ? spam or confusing those who can't figure much of anything out ?
You could also just have it as in.. 'name@domain.com' but no link. Just think about the fact that links are a bad idea if you care about spam bots.
And once again, follow the other rules!
I am sure I have come up with other ideas, but this is a start. These tips really do help.
One that of course I did not come up with ...
Simple one we all know: NEVER reply to a spammer or click a link to get off the list. You'll be spammed even more.
Cheers,
Met.
