Anti-Spam Initiative That Floods the Spammers' Servers

According to PC World, one of the companies involved in the battle against spam, Blue Security, has decided to adopt a more aggressive strategy against spammers, by crippling their spreading capacity.

Here is how Blue Security's Blue Frog software and antispam initiative works: When you sign up for a Blue Frog account, you install a piece of software on your PC and get to submit up to three e-mail addresses to Blue Security's Do-Not-Intrude Registry. The company then opens up multiple e-mail accounts on your behalf--accounts you technically own, but never use. Those e-mail accounts are managed by Blue Security and are designed to attract spam.

Blue Frog analyzes the spam that goes into your Blue Frog e-mail accounts (and those of other community members) and identifies messages that are not compliant with the federal Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (known as CAN-SPAM). These include unsolicited marketing messages that don't provide an opt-out option or that have an invalid return address.

Blue Security says it will attempt to warn noncompliant spammers to stop sending e-mail to the accounts it has set up for you, as well as to the real e-mail addresses you provided during registration. If Blue Security can't contact the spammer, or the spam doesn't stop, things start getting nasty.

Blue Security follows the links inside the body of the spam message, which typically lead to a site that wants to sell you prescription medications, porn, a get-rich-quick scheme, or the like. It then identifies the form fields at the spammer's site (where you're asked to input credit card data, for example) and then uses the software you installed to direct your PC to insert in those fields a request to unsubscribe you from the site's mailing list. Also included in the form fields is an invitation to spammers to download a Do-Not-Intrude Registry compliance tool from Blue Security's Web site.

Now, the spammer wouldn't care if only one person did this. Even if a thousand Blue Frog users followed suit, the spammer still might not care. But Blue Frog's software causes all of its connected users to submit the request/complaint simultaneously, and repeatedly, for a period of time.

For more information, visit the company's website at this address http://www.bluesecurity.com/register.