Please excuse this intrusion. Last year there was a noticeable increase of
individuals probing our servers for Matt Wright's formmail script, in the
hopes of using our systems for the transmission of Bulk / UCE. As a web
hosting provider that does not tolerate spam, we decided to direct all
attempts to a php script that causes the spammer to report themselves to their
ISP. Over the past six months we have had tremendous success hitting spammers
where it hurts by getting their ISP to drop their accounts.

Because of this success we have modified our php script to allow other web
hosting companies or even individual web sites the ability to apply this same
success on their systems. Below you will find a description of what the script
actually does.

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Description:
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This formmail.php script will send a complaint report to a visitors ISP
and/or just to you when a visitor triggers it in the following ways.

/cgi-bin/formmail.pl
/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi

Returns a formmail web page and reports to you a possible mistake with the
visitors IP number. No report is sent to their ISP to protect mistake made
by an innocent surfer. A spammer will now try the following to check for a
improperly configured formmail.pl script.

/cgi-bin/formmail.pl?recipient=someone@some_ISP.com
/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi?recipient=someone@some_ISP.com

If this is the first time the visitors has tried this they will receive the
e-mail to the recipient listed. The script writes their IP number into the
ip.txt file and blocks any further attempts using the format above. This
protects your server from being used as a spam machine after the initial
trap is set. The script will also send a complaint to their ISP and one to you
for your records. This acts as a formmail trap to get them to report
themselves even more.

/cgi-bin/formmail.pl?recipient=someone@some_ISP.com,another_address@some_ISP.com
/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi?recipient=someone@some_ISP.com,another_address@some_ISP.com

To save time a spammer will use multiple recipients from their collection of
e-mail address. This type of visitor / spammer is hooked and will now try to
send out large amounts of Bulk / UCE using your server to protect themselves.
Each attempt is reported to their ISP as Network Abuse from their IP and also
reported to you for your records.

If you want to set this up Globally on the server and some of your clients use
Matt Wright's formmail script, just have them rename it to something else and
reference that new name in their forms. We mention the use of this spam trap
in our setup e-mail and advise them to do the above if they intend to use
formmail for processing forms.

The script is freely available from the following URL:

http://www.home-port.net/formmail/

Some ISP's are slow in responding to the complaint, but once you have a
spammer hooked and they report themselves a couple of thousand times. The ISP
eventually get's the message and disconnects them.

Sincerely,
Michael West, CEO
Home-port.net Inc.