SPAM IS A BIG HEADACHE FOR EVERY ONE ON THE NET.
“The activities of a small number of people are becoming a bigger problem for the Internet.” via Fight Spam on the Internet
Recently, I found another form of spam, which is becoming more and more popular: NET SEND SPAM.
What is NET SEND SPAM?
It works this way: on any networked Windows computer, anyone can type the following command in command line window:
NET SEND 127.0.0.1 Hello
A message box will appear with the greeting word “Hello”. Looks interesting, isn’t it? However, if you change the IP address to any other valid IP address and change Hello to your advertisement, the IP address owner will receive it. Moreover, a simple script can send the same message to thousands of IP addresses, or millions of, if the sender wants.
Still sounds interesting? Not at all! I don’t want this to inspire anyone to do it. Never do it and never give it a try. I am the angry person here who is fighting back with this kind of spam – NET SEND SPAM.
Net send spam under spotlight
Now Mr. Yan, who owns http://bestyan.vip.sina.com has come on board of the Net Send Spammers. Every two or three days, this guy will send Windows message to my networked computer in my home. I may be working or reading news or composing a weblog – no matter what I am doing – chances are, a gray dialog box pops up and says:
Message from ZMZ to 211.161.107.*** on 2002-9-22 23:28:40
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX http://bestyan.vip.sina.com XXXXXXXX
(Note: XXXXX is garbage characters that I cannot read on my computer)
It is annoying. It made me angry after I received six of such messages. I am almost mad after I receive more than ten of such messages. However, Mr. Yan seems to be a very good evangelist for his web site and does not care too much about my feelings. Later, I found he does not care about the feels of thousands of people. Keep reading to know how many people were affected…
Finally, after six invitations, I decided to visit this web site.
Visit the site
It is a normal personal web page. The owner seems to be fond of poems. It lets me feel not THAT bad since it is not a commercial site.
This guy has a guestbook too. I checked it, and found there are some one already yelling there for the spam they received. Some people said:
Please stop prompting your site using this kind of spam message
Some said:
I am in Korea. I cannot read the characters you sent to me, but I can see the web site address. I am feeling angry since you sent this message to me
I also posted a long message (half screen long? Maybe) to describe the feeling when I receive this message and asked him not to do that. In my post, I also quoted Mark Bernstein‘s suggestions on bloggers:
Though you write with passion about things that matter greatly, always remember that it’s a big world, filled with people and stories. Don’t expect the world to stop and listen
It worked. Within five minutes, my post was deleted from the guestbook, along with other negative posts.
To be honest, I was really shocked when I see people doing this:creating a web site; send messages to thousands of people, millions of, maybe; force them to read; DELETE posts on his personal guestbook when he doesn’t like.
I posted for the second time. This time, I added a note:
This message is deleted by our honored web owner, just as others who protests for his spam. I believe this message will be deleted again, just want those who saw this to know what happened.
What I expected is true. It is deleted within six hours.
Now, on bestyan’s guest book, there are still 21 entries. I found the webmaster will delete anything negitive and leave those compliments. It is bad. Really bad.
I know I can stop any message like this by stop the Messenger service in my computer. But I’d like to be involved in further spam and see how it evolves and how bad it will be.
Would you suggest what we can do to fight against NET SEND SPAM? Write your comments here.
Update
- Stoping Net Send Spam Nov 7, 2002
- Fighting Back for NET SEND SPAM Nov 20, 2002