Spammers who hit Russian Deputy Communications Minister Andrei Korotkov last week got hit where they hurt - when Korotkov arranged to hit them with unsolicited telephone calls in retaliation.
Korotkov got fed up with the jam of spam hitting his inbox, not to mention getting no help when he asked one particularly persistent spammer, the American Language Center, to remove him from their target lists.
"I sent them an e-mail thanking them for the offer to teach me English -- which I already know -- and asked them to stop," he told the Moscow Times.
Korotkov got more than just kept on the ALC's list, the Times said - he found himself placed on several more, addressed to him personally. That did it. Korotkov went to the recently-formed anti-spam Group Against Harmful Programs, who helped him record an audio message to be sent nonstop to phone numbers listed on the ALC's own spams. The ALC, the Times said, got clobbered with 1,000 such calls in one morning.
"They wanted to joke us around," Korotkov deadpanned, "so we decided to joke them around, too."
Whether or not the ALC thought it was funny is anyone's guess. They simply blocked and locked their system after the first rounds of Korotkov's counterattack. Korotkov, for his part, didn't think his little idea would eradicate spam in Mother Russia. "What we did isn't a very effective way to fight spam," he told the Times. "But it has drawn attention to the problem."
