Get even with junk mailers

revenge

[definitivedoodle]

hahah

[Jaguär]

Dupek, we must be on the same wavelength!            
 
 I swear, earlier I had planned to come in here and ask about an evil little plan that I had concerning email spammers.
 
 You lawyer types, please let me know if this would be legal.
 
 First off, open up a junk Gmail account that you plan to use solely for this project and probably only for maybe 6 months or so.
 
 If you go into Gmail and look at the Gmail functions, there is an option for "Forward it to: [email address]". Just before you get to this choice, you have a variety of choices to use including "From".
 
 Now, here's my evil little plan. Takes some work but could be fun just for the revenge factor.
 
 Take the address from all of your spammers and enter them in the "From" slot. As far as I know, these will all have to be done individually. Then, save in a special folder that you create, a list or a few individual spam mails of the spammers of your choice. Preferably, the most offensive to you. Use these spammers to forward each spam address to. Better yet, include their very own address.       :p      
 
 To make sure these bastards actually get spam, also include some key words, especially related to that spammer, into the slot that says "Has Words:". Penis, pics, pain, drugs, online, lottery and hot are always good ones to use. Of course, you will have to use that particular account to sign up to a few crap sites that are bound to send you loads of spam.
 
 I don't know if any of this would work but there has to be some fun you can get into with those bastards without it generating more spam for you, other than maybe in the junk spam account created just for this purpose.

[Bags]

I think a stumbling block is that the spammers make up one-time only addresses, so you'd be emailing back to a dead account.  They do that so you can't 'block' their address from your email, because it's a new address every time they send something.  Clever little bastards, eh?

[Bombay Chutney]

Not to mention they often use addresses of innocent people in the "From:"  header.  You'd probably just end up mailing some poor soul that's already getting thousands of failed-mail messages and screaming complaints.

[Jaguär]

Damn!
 
 Foiled again.    
 
 There has to be something evil to do for a few of the bad ones. Something.

[vansmack]

Originally posted by Jaguär:
  You lawyer types, please let me know if this would be legal.
 

While the others are correct, it would have little effect because the science of spamming is an art form as well thought out as virus writing these days, technically what you are attempting to do is not (yet) illegal.
 
 The prevailing law on SPAM email is the CAN-SPAM Act, which sets requirements for Commercial Emailers, but you're not selling anything so you wouldn't fit into these requirements because you're not commercial.  You're a consumer and I don't know of any law that stops consumers from sending non-threatening emails to commercial entities.  At least that's the argument I would make for you before the judge (pro bono of course).

[Jaguär]