Dead Spam

A service provided pro bono (that means free, folks! - although small donations to running costs are welcome) by JonGreen to the Usenet community.

If you apply for a DeadSpam email address to put in your Usenet headers, you also provide a subject line and message contents. Spammers get an automatic response containing those things; you get nothing sent to the address. Blessed peace!

Typically, the message contains a rejoinder to look at the .sig in the sender's Usenet postings, for tips on how to mail them for real. Of course, spammers who've bought a-million-email-addresses CDs won't know how; real people will. Strangely, many of the messages also include personal wishes for spammers. A few of them are even polite...;)

More details at http://www.deadspam.com/ -- enjoy! [BrokenLink 2006/01/20]

[Update 2002/10/14] The DeadSpam service is temporarily not accepting new registrations, whilst I get the Web site rewritten, and recover what I can of the last design from a hard disk head crash. I thought head crashes were a thing of the past ... *sigh*

Check back to the Web site (URL above) every now and then to see when it's back. I'll try to remember to update here when that's done, but apologies if I don't! I'm hoping to get the first cut of the redesign done by the end of October 2002. -- JSG

-- JonGreen

Q1 [Anonymous]: What happens if the from address is actually faked, as is usual with spam?

A1 [JonGreen]: It's a valid comment, and there's not a lot I can do about that, unfortunately. I discourage DeadSpam users from having personally abusive auto-responders for two reasons: (1) if someone "real" accidentally mailed a DeadSpam user's address in good faith, they're not going to feel good about getting a torrent of abuse in return; (2) because of the problem of spammers spoofing "From:" and "Reply-to:" addresses, if someone "real", being victimised by a spammer, gets a flood of complaint mail, at least the stuff auto-replied from DeadSpam users won't be as stressful as some of the flamage they'll get from others. The default reply message, which most DeadSpam users use, is polite to "real" people and fairly damning to spammers.

Q2 [Anonymous]: Nasty Cynical me....

How do i know it not been set up by someone who is convinced that I wish to view Ms Spears medical records?

A2.1 [PaulHudson]: Well, I've worked with JonGreen in the past, and he's straight up. He can be trusted on this one -- PaulHudson

A2.2 [JonGreen]: Thanks, Paul. In reply to the question: I guess that's a bit hard to prove definitively. What I will say is that I'm pretty active in the Net community, and reasonably well known, at least in some places. I'm visible and contactable. That's not the mark of a spammer, nor of someone who gathers addresses for spammers. I do wonder what a spammer would want with addresses of people who are prepared to go to considerable lengths to avoid the stuff and punish its purveyors. Talk about making a rod for your own back!

A2.3 [AndyMorris]: Well I took you on trust, have a dead spam address and have had no problems, so I can reassure anyone who is as cynical as me that its ok. Briliant service many thanks. AndyMorris@DeadSpam.com

Q3 [Anonymous] WhatHappened since last update two years ago? Still relevant? Oct04

A3 [JonGreen] It's gone stale. I've simply not had enough CopiousFreeTime to keep it maintained. It may return sometime in the future, but don't hold your breath. Existing "customers" are still getting service, of course.