1. As decribed in our site and our weblog, the Do Not Intrude registry is an ethical and effective way for users to complain about spam they receive.

Complaints are not sent by email but are posted by the community on web sites advertised by spam by filling registration or purchase forms with the complaint text.

It is important to stress that the total number of complaints posted by the community is exactly equal to the number of spam messages received and that complaints are posted only after warnings are sent to the spammer and the ISP hosting the spamvertised site.

This method ensures that the complaints will arrive to the advertisers who pay spammers to launch their campaigns and fill our mailboxes with unsolicited bulk mail.

By disrupting the spam economy, the Blue Community will create deterrence such that spammers will no longer profit from sending spam to registered Blue Community members.

Eran Aloni
Director of Marketing
Blue Security

Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Eran Aloni

2. No, that's not a good idea because you can never tell with any degree of certanty whether the spam has been sent via a thrid party, hired by the company who's product is being advertised in it, or whether this is just some idiot trying to generate a DDOS attack on the company by mass-mailing people through an open relay. By emailing the company involved, you could be unwittingly lending yourself to be part of someone's DDOS attack on an innocent company. Although, granted, most spam is genuine, not all of it is. Some of it is just an attempt to 'phish' for your details.

Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by monkey

3. I'm very tempted to toss in my PC with the Blue Frog group - but I'm also skeptical. would I be part of the solution, or just end up as a weak contributor to more problems? I don't know.

Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by sarah gilbert

4. There seems to be some confusion about what Blue Security does.

Most spam attempts to sell a product or service. The seller may or may not be the source of the email containing spam but there must be a link in the spam to the sellers web site or there would be no purpose to the spam. Blue Frog posts complaints on the sellers web site, one for every spam received by the Blue Community. Blue Frog does not complain to the actual mailer of the spam or their ISP.

Personally I think it’s a great idea. I’ve used spam filters and SpamCop for years. SpamCop, although it feels good report the spam to the senders ISP, has not seemed to stem the flow. The filters I have used require continuous attention to see that desired email has not been caught up in the filter. Blue Frog gives sellers real incentive to exclude the Blue Frog Community from their spam mailing lists and I think has a real chance of reducing spam.

Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Phil

5. “worst kind of vigilante approach”

So this is worse than killing them? I love how people label things just to prove a point.

This is just tit for tat. I say go for it.

Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Michael

6. I think Blue Frog is necessary. But spum is strong industry. If spum is crime, then it will be punish.

Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by BuyPiercing

7. 'There seems to be some confusion about what Blue Security does.'

No, no confusion at all. Let me explain what I ment with an example:

Imagine I'm some anoying 17 year old with broadband and too much time on my hands. I don't like Phil's website, www.phillsstuff.com which sells toothpicks. Just because I'm evil, I decide to write a script to net send a message to a block of say, 1000 ip addresses via an anonymous proxy, which says 'hey, come and buy phils toothpicks, for more info, please email phill: phill@someaddress.com'.

Within hours, phills inbox is full of people telling him where to stick his spam - even though he never sent it, never hired me to send it and wouldn't dream of sending it that way.

Posted at 4:51AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Monkey