Ask HN: Public shaming of startup spammers | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Public shaming of startup spammers

2 pointslenkendall2 comments

Almost on a daily basis, I receive spam emails from startup founders trying to get me to try out their app.

As a founder myself (and someone who works hard to earn every customer) this pisses me off big time. Especially because spamming hundreds or thousands of people with unsolicited and impersonal emails makes it harder for me to send genuine 1 on 1 cold calls to people I'd like to work with.

My question/idea is this:

Would it be harsh to create a simple public list of startup founders doing this shady practice? I'm 100% sure other people are experiencing the same thing as me, and I thought it would be helpful to lightly shame perpetrators into stopping.

Your honest feedback would be appreciated. Ultimately I want a positive solution to something I think is a serious problem.

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And here's a blog post with a perfect case study: https://medium.com/how-to-use-the-internet/45dbd26ae4f2

> Would it be harsh to create a simple public list of startup founders doing this shady practice?

There are more effective methods to stop this practice:

* If the email doesn't have an opt-out link, or if the opt-out link either is complicated to use, requires a signup or results in more mailings from anyone, it's spam as defined by the Can-Spam Act and the sender can be prosecuted. To get the ball rolling, forward the e-mail to spam@uce.gov -- remember, just click "forward" in your email client program. A forwarded email has all the headers and information that the original did, allowing the sender to be identified and traced.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/07/newspamemail.shtm

If the sender has a gmail address, try forwarding it to abuse@gmail.com also. This might work, but over the years I have begun to suspect that Google doesn't think businesses that have gmail accounts are capable of being spammers.

Finally, there's SpamHaus, which does what to can to list and sanction abusers of the email system:

http://www.spamhaus.org/

How effective is SpamHaus? Hard to say, but someone thinks they're effecrive -- someone has been thrown in jail for trying to DDOS them out of existence:

http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/spamhaus-ddo...

Quote: "Police in the Netherlands Friday announced the arrest of a 35-year-old Dutchman on charges of having launched 'unprecedented heavy attacks on the non-profit organization Spamhaus.'"

> Ultimately I want a positive solution to something I think is a serious problem.

I suspect being thrown in jail might put a damper on this practice.

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