Sean Breheny wrote:
> <snipped>
> Just a quick question, what is the origin of the term LART?! I assume it
> refers to your message to the spammer's ISP? I never heard that term before.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sean

  Exactly!  (Side note - Don't mistake "SPAM" as anything like
censorship, either - it's about someone else making your choices FOR
you;  I'm quite for freedom of speech, myself - I'm not pro-theft, and
I'm pro-choice on the consumers' part, so I am pro "Opt-In", which means
I'm against SPAM.  IName is not Opt-In, is why the victims who were
subscribed to the PICList by someone else were unable to even tell WHY
they suddenly started to get all of this list's messages.  In an ideal
world, IName would send you a message "If and only if you reply to this
message in the following way, IName will start forwarding this account
(xyzzy@IName.Com) to your account (user@domain.com);  User
(plugh@colossalcave.com), IP Address [1.2.3.4] requested this at (date,
time)" followed by a method to follow to opt IN.  Then you have the
CHOICE to opt in, and don't get stuck on the list at someone else's
whim.  And if you didn't reply, IName's computers would time out after 3
days & figure you didn't want to do that after all.  I rather like
Opt-In!)

  LART was first used by system administrators & picked up by
anti-SPAMmers, I think;  Stands for:

  L: Luser              (From luser, UNIX term for Local User; the
  A: Attitude            parallel to SPAMmers is, um, obvious <G>)
  R: Re-Adjustment
  T: Tool

  It's a one syllable, quick way to write (I think someone put it this
way:)

  "Letter to someone's ISP and possibly their upstream providers, asking
that they turn a SPAMmer or other Internet Abuser into roadkill, morph a
SPAMvertized web page into a smoking, glowing crater, or asking them to
fix a configuration problem on their machines."

  Obviously, Anti-SPAMmers can have a sense of humor <G>

  (I think we've all noticed that humans love short concise terms for
everything - some say to be efficient, others to be lazy, I just use the
terms & try to use them correctly.)

  There's an anti-SPAMmer Jargon file at:
  http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/ip/freenet/subs/complaints/spam/jargon.txt

  There's a pretty thorough Internet Jargon file at:
  http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html

  There's a better one somewhere but I can't find it tonight (Sorta in
shock here <G>)

  For SPAM tracking, I'll recommend a few sites I found helpful;
  http://www.ao.net/waytosuccess/nospam.html (Tutorials etc.)
  http://www.spamfree.org/
  http://www.cauce.org/
  http://samspade.org/ (tools for finding source of SPAM)

  Sooner or later, the ao.net site will move to the spamfree.org site,
the lady who runs it is having Real Life interfere with her Internet
time <G>

  Mark