[SpamCop-List] Re: Is mail bombing effective?

[Miss Betsy]

"David Deilley" <integrate> wrote in message
news:b21311$6ba$1
> "Guy Macon" wrote in message
> >
> > I fear the 419 scammers a lot less than I fear someone whio decides
> > to be judge, jury, and executioner.  I don't trust your ability to
> > correctly identify the bad men you wish to punish.
>
> Identifying the bad men in these narrow circumstances is pretty cut and
> dried.
>
> If someone writes an e-mail saying that they have $30 million squirrled
away
> in an African trust account, and they want to give me - a complete
stranger
> with no experience in international money transfers - $4.5 million just
for
> letting him deposit his millions into my personal account in North
America,
> do you really think there is even the remotest, faintest possibility that
he
> is anything but a 419 criminal con-man?
>
> I don't believe in frontier justice where there is a rule-of-law, due
> process in place to deal with criminals.  But the problem with the 419
> scammers is that there isn't.  They are operating out of countries that
are
> run by the local equivilent of the mafia, and using rogue ISP's    There
ARE
> NO "proper channels" with judge and juries in plae to stop these scum, and
> under these circumstances, I'm afraid I have to disagree with your
caution.
>

IIRC, there have been arrests made of 419 scammers.  What they are doing is
against the law and there are proper places to report it.

There is no law against the means they take to send their scam.  There are
no judges and juries to determine who is responsible - the rogue ISP, the
open relay or open proxy, the ISP who receives it and passes it along to his
customer.  The only thing a responsible, decent Internet citizen can do is
to report it to the ISP who allowed the scam email to be sent and to protect
oneself by blocking any further emails from that IP address.  If anyone does
anything else about the situation, s/he is acting as judge and jury and
making up the laws as s/he goes along - that's vigilantism.

Miss Betsy, an almost new spamcop user