Cisco tells spam victims to reply with abusive emails

Alternatively, clog up the servers

By Team Register • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 12th July 2000 21:46 GMT

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Cisco Systems is urging victims of spam to take the law into their own hands and deliver their own form of vengeance to combat unwanted e-mails.

It claims the best way to deal with spammers is to reply with abusive e-mails and to dump massive files that will clog up their servers.

It's the online equivalent to blowing a whistle down the phone line when dealing with nuisance calls - or flicking the Vs at a motorist before chasing them for five miles after they've carved you up.

The advice is contained in a booklet The Easy Guide to Network Security, which is also published in an ungainly PDF file on Cisco's UK Web site.

Under the heading "Spam", it reads: "Spam is usually harmless, but it can be a nuisance, taking up time and storage space. The solution is to flame the perpetrators by sending them abusive messages, or to reply by dumping a very large and useless file on their Web server."

It's not clear whether this is a corporate-wide policy or just applies to the hard noses in Britain.

It's certainly a different approach from that pursued by British ISP, BiblioTech, which goes to extreme lengths to chase spammers through the courts.

Question is, have you received any spam from Cisco? If so, sounds like they're inviting you to take action. And if you can orchestrate it with other spam victims, then you could even manufacture a denial of service attack. ®

Spam war victory for BiblioTech