Bill Levinson....
Hi Bill....
The kids that pull these email pranks are Internet-savvy beyond belief. They
are, as far as is known by the Internet service I use (MSN, which is my
employer, also, so I DO have an "in" with my ISP), impossible to trace because
they log onto the service using a phony ID and phony credit card numbers.
They often change to another new account - sometimes several a day... making
it even more difficult to trace them.
IF they use an ISP other than MSN, it's not impossible to find out who their
ISP is and to contact them - which I've done on occasion. When the kids are
put on notice by their ISP, it's no biggee for them to just open another new
account and continue on where they left off.
As of yesterday, I found myself receiving obscene message over the ICQ
Internet communications service, which is a first for that heretofore terrific
tool. However both yesterday and today saw me plagued by those damn obscene
messages. When I notified ICQ, they pretty much said "Don't bother US about
that!"
The way to catch these kind of individuals and PROSECUTE is to be able to do a
trace on their phone line via a call back system, however, I've yet to hear of
a major online service having call back devices on their multi-hundreds of
phone lines.
When I had my 16 line BBS (Computer Bulletin Board System), we _ALWAYS_ did a
"voice verification," i.e. physically called EACH and EVERY new user that
logged onto the system within 24 hours of their initial logon to make sure
there was not only a "live body" at the phone number listed in the New User
Registration, and that the live body didn't sound like they were 13 or 14
years old (mine was an 18 and older BBS).
In the 4 years my BBS was online the average of false phone numbers listed at
registration was a strong FIFTY per cent!!! Of the remaining 50 per cent,
OVER half were kids lying about their age!! Since we averaged about 600
subscribing members per month, you can imagine the sheer numbers of incoming
logons we had each day, and the tons of first-time-callers daily.
By the way.... I DID have a call back verifier on my own system's first 5
phone lines and I DID prosecute to the maximum the law allowed in 4 cases.
Each person was convicted, with the cooperation of Pacific Bell, and the Los
Angeles Police Dept., plus some pretty darn tough judges. And each person who
was caught and convicted was under 15 years old.
Barb Mallut
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Parkinson's Information Exchange On Behalf Of William Levinson
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 1997 5:29 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list PARKINSN
Subject: Junk mail\ forged addresses
>Lisa, more likely than not, that may be some kind of system
>problem, rather than a personal attempt to harass you. When I
>think of an email bombing, I picture the ones I've had dumped on
>me that were 2000 and 2800 emails respectively... all requiring
>deletion and taking many hours to download. Each contained the
>same smut, AND each was lists as being SENT BY * ME* TO ME!! In
>other words, there's software out there available to the average
>hacker-type which will rob you of your private email account name
>and enable that hacker to send messages - including pornographic
>ones, to ANYONE on the Internet, under YOUR name! How do ya like
>THEM apples?
>Barb Mallut
Barb,
I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect that sending offensive E-mail
(especially pornography) under someone else's E-mail I.D.
would constitute libel/ defamation of character. If someone
did this with my E-mail I.D., I would sue them... and a
conviction for libel can be VERY expensive.
If someone is harassing you as you describe, their service
provider would be well advised to cancel his account before
they become an accessory... these mailings ARE probably
traceable to the internet service provider at which they
originated.
-Bill
