[ILUG] [Fwd: I fought the scammer... and I won.]

[Lee Hosty]

David Murphy wrote:

>On Mon, Apr 05, 2004 at 10:59:12AM +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> 
>  
>
>>(1) Wouldn't it be fairly simple to restrict the number of email
>>messages sent out by each customer, to say 10 or 20?
>>Or 5 per hour, or whatever.
>>    
>>
>
>You could do that, but remember, spam and anti-virus tools can examine
>outbound mail too! If I were running a cybercafe, I'd redirect all SMTP
>traffic to a local mailserver, and scan all the mails for spam and
>viruses, saving copies of suspicious traffic for later inspection. This
>  
>
The only drawback being  that there'd be no grounds to prosecute any 419 
scammers who abused your system. Their emails don't delivered; no one 
gets scammed; no grounds for prosecution. Is it better to let the 419ers 
have their fun for a bit so they can be caught and locked up? Or stop 
them in their tracks so that they only send mails where they can't be 
caught / prosecuted ?