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by lgeek 4833 days ago
It reminds me of another project to fight off spam[0], by automatically replying to each spam message. That one didn't end too well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Frog

1 comments

Voted up, but this is really worth reading -- not because it failed (it did), but because before it failed, it was really working.

The spammers put incredible effort into quashing BlueFrog...

I was an early user of BlueFrog (and can confirm that the spammers didn't gain access to any addresses they didn't already have on their lists), and tried to contribute to followup efforts... it's a hard problem to solve, though -- how to make this kind of retaliation without exposing yourself to (possibly very serious) attack. We're all quite vulnerable online; it's surprisingly trivial for "the bad guys" to decide to permanently take your website (or the site of your company, etc.) offline.