| We here at Detritus hate "spam." No...we're
not referring to the delicious Hormel
canned meat. We're referring to the unsolicited,
unwanted, bulk, advertising email that has become a major
problem on the internet. When someone broadcasts
unsolicited mass email or newsgroup postings to spread a
message, it makes it difficult for everyone to find what
they're looking for. It's what has been classically
referred to as the "signal-to-noise ratio," and
we want to help everyone keep the internet's useful
information readily-available, while keeping "junk
mail" to a minimum.
This "junk mail" has been referred to as
"spam," in honor of Monty-Python's
classic Spam skit, in which the customers can only
order a menu item if it contains the processed meat. That
is how most Internet users feel about these types of
messages, and only being able to read newsgroup messages
and email if they're willing to deal with the garbage.
For this reason, our policy is that we don't allow our
network to be used for spamming. We will cancel any
user's email account without notice if he
or she is found to be using our network for sending mass,
unsolicited email & newsgroup posts.
We also do what we can to fight incoming junk email.
Some of the current methods we use to fight
"spam" are...
- We wrote a CGI program to do some serious damage to the
"harvester" spiders, which pull email addresses off of web pages.
Not only does it make the spammers spam other spammers (which ends up making them spam each other!),
it gets their user information and
makes them spam themselves! Plus, it sends their spam directly to their
providers, giving their ISPs an immediate tip to their immoral online
activities. You can check it out on this page. Feel free to
link to this page directly from your own site.
- With the help of www.junkbusters.com,
we have created and published a "Spam Offer," which
effectively gives us the right to take legal
action against spammers. Basically, this allows
us to collect $10 for each piece of junk email
that is sent to any email
address at the "detritus.org" domain.
- We have joined the "Fight Spam on
the Internet" campaign. To see what you
can do to help, please visit the site for
yourself and get involved!
- We constantly maintain a database which both
blocks incoming mail from known spammers, and
disallows known spammers to send their excrement
through our servers to other victims.
- When we are able to find a valid return address
or telephone number in the "spam"
email, we contact the spammer directly, to let
them know that sending out UBE (Unsolicited Bulk
Email) is unappreciated and that it has
potentially hurt their business far more that it
could have helped it.
- We regularly remove all "public" email
addresses from the www.iemmc.org
database, which is partially maintained by the
"Grand Daddy" of all spam promoters, www.cyberpromo.com.
- Some of us use a great shareware product called
"Spam
Hater" which analyses a spam email and
prepares a reply, sending a copy of our
"Notification and Offer" from our
"Spam Offer."
For more information on what you can do to fight
"spam" email, please check out the following
sites.
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