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Tracking Down A Spammer, To 'Get University Degree'
Posted By: Atnevon - March.20.2008, 08:03AM - Comments (7283)

This all started as fun and games over at Second Shifters, but now it's turned into something really big after ISP Management, the company I work for, caught on to the idea and wanted to link to it to show that we do more than the average Joe (or Jimmy Joe as the case may be) to fight spam.

So, for those of you who missed out on the beginning of this all, here's a recap of what's happened so far:

After debuting our Interview Podcast Series over at Second Shifters, the station started to get an influx of junk email, the likes of which we had never seen before. After mixing this with the constant flood of spam that hits the webmaster box at ISP Management, I had finally had enough and decided to start to go after some of our spammer friends in a much more direct approach than I had before.

One particular email flagged me as a great place to start, as it included a phone number:

QUOTE
1-***-230-1849

University Degree

Get University Degree within weeks without stress, exams, and long years of studying.

Confidentiality Assured

1-***-230-1849

24 hours a day, 7 days a week including Sundays and Holidays


Since I'm always interested in furthering my knowledge in the world, this seemed like a great opportunity for me to follow up on, so... I gave them a call to get more details.

Sadly, though, I wasn't able to get through to anyone right away, and I was instructed to leave a message with my name and number, so that I could receive a call back in 3 to 5 business days. (This is, of course, a great new twist on the idea of 24/7 service). Because I didn't want to give out my real phone number, I quickly registered one through the good people at Gizmo5 (for a very affordable rate I might add), and I left that number for them along with a message to tell them how genuinely interested I was in their program.

After that, it was time to wait for their call... with my new line all set to record it.

Three business days went by, and I still hadn't heard word back, but faithful to their voice mail message, they contacted me late at night on the fifth business day to follow up. My first call from them was from what must have been a call screener to make sure someone really was at my phone number and to make sure I was legitimately interested. When she had grabbed some basic information from me, I was told that I would be receiving another call from a professor in 15 minutes. True to their word, fifteen minutes later my phone rang... and here is my call:

http://www.atnevon.com/university.mp3


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