[CS-FSLUG] Creating a Black list of Christian Spammers

[Timothy R. Butler]

Hi everyone,
	I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but I've found a really troubling 
occurrence  over the past year. Christians using spam as a medium for 
advertising. And, I'm not talking about variations of the Nigerian 
scam.

	For instance, I've been signed up for several "Christian" newsletters 
that appear to be genuine, and even one from a well known Christian 
publisher, without my consent. One sends me three copies of each issue 
of the newsletter.

	I could just unsubscribe, but I think that -- in the long run, anyway 
-- fails to accomplish anything. These organizations are still using 
very disturbing means to get out their message. Thus I got an idea: a 
blacklist of Christian Spammers. I'll create a list of all of the 
organizations who seem to be doing this and place them on them on the 
web. The page will encourage Christians to avoid these organizations, 
or at least their e-mail services, until such time as they "repent" of 
this. I will then contact them and provide them with a simple way to be 
removed: delete any and all subscribers they have added through means 
other than legitimate opt-in sign ups.

	Obviously, they could lie and fail to delete all of the subscribers, 
but there is a simple way to test this: I will contact them using an 
address other than one that they presently have. Thus, the only way 
they can remove me (and thus convince me that they have "done the right 
thing") is to remove all unsolicited subscribers (well, there are other 
means, but at least I won't make it easy).

	The reason I'm posting this, is that I'm hoping to get some more 
reports of Christian spammers. Especially ones who repeatedly send spam 
out -- the kind that perhaps spam you every week or every day (as some 
do to me). It is my hope that when they are publicly confronted about 
this, they will relent (my attempts at private correspondence have 
failed to get the desired results).

	There are two reasons I see for doing this: (1) I just really despise 
spam. I get so much of it, my mailbox would be useless if not for 
client side spam filtering and SpamAssassin on the server. (2) I don't 
want non-Christians to be getting spammed by Christian organizations 
and thus start grouping Christians with the less tasteful groups that 
USUALLY spam. I'm sure some mean well by this, but its wrong all the 
same, and I think it would be good to put a stop to it before it gets 
any worse.

	So, what do you say? Would you send those spammers' organizational web 
sites, e-mail addresses, etc. my way?

	-Tim

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Timothy R. Butler       Universal Networks      www.uninet.info
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