Spam has already won its place as bottomfeeder of the advertising media food-chain. But its reputation is about to sink to a previously unplumbed nadir, should an alleged secret organization's scheme to wipe out all remaining credibility in spam ads go as planned.
In an anonymous statement snailmailed to Wired News, the Fake Spam Club claims to be reposting spam in which the phone numbers and PO boxes have been altered, so that potential customers will not be able to contact the advertisers. The club hopes that people will eventually be so suspicious of the validity of spam, that they'll never bother to reply.
"Ad spammers depend on two things being kept in a delicate balance - anonymity and credibility," stated one of the members, who goes by the handle "Ace." "We realized the two are incompatible: They can't remain anonymous and at the same time defend their credibility. Our fake spam will destroy the credibility and thus ad spamming itself."
Whether the FSC is a real organization, a prank, or a self-actualizing meme, agent provocateurism is the inevitable development of the high-level information war currently being waged between spam kings and diehard Net-abuse activists.
Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters, says, "There's an old saying of war: truth is the first casualty. In information wars like the spam wars, truth starts turning into a half-dead zombie."
Catlett says he's never heard of the FSC, "but it doesn't surprise me. One activist even suggested to Junkbusters that anti-spammers should flood spammers with fake acceptances: Their bulletproof mailboxes would fill with plausible-looking but bogus replies giving the names and phone numbers of nonexistent suckers, rendering the spammer's prospecting uneconomical."
Another above-ground activist, John C. Mozena of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, thinks the statement is a "troll," a message intended to trigger flame wars. He also thinks that it's a waste of time for anyone to try to discredit spam. "Trying to make a spammer look sleazy is like trying to make Bill Gates look rich - the work's already been done for you."
And even if the FSC exists, says Mozena, "one more-or-less invalid PO box isn't going to change anything."
Rich Tietjens, a frequent contributor to news.admin.net-abuse.email, agrees. "I enjoy the intellectual contemplation of the concept - but I think it's just one guy, a little off-center, and it will have little, if any, discernible effect in the long run. Besides, there are more effective weapons in the War on Spam - like direct frontal assault with heavy armor and air support.
"I bet the guy who wrote the original was grinning like a hyena while he did it, though," says Tietjens.
