I know that Pat supports the "flood the spammer" service provided by Blue Security. It's interesting to note that the spammers have been fighting back (which I suppose is testament that the service has some effect). There's an interesting description of the attack posted on the SANS.org Handler's Diary website:
John Meissen snipped-for-privacy@aracnet.com
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, indeed, the internet is becoming less and less friendly every day. All this unfriendlyness began several years ago when the intruders moved into our virtual community. _They_ thought they could change all the rules around; _they_ thought the rest of us were dimwits and imbiciles who would not dare to stop them or say 'NO' to them. They bullied us around for years and years without resistance, or very little resistance. When some of us started to make resistance, the enablers were shocked. Didn't _we_ understand that _they_ (the enablers) were the only ones who knew anything about anything? Didn't we understand that the spammer-scammers had rights also (oh, boo-hoo!) and they might sue us if we offered any resistance? So the enablers began _attempting_ -- and that's all it was, was a half-assed attempt -- to filter email. As the spammer-scammers got more sophisicated, the enablers, like President Bush in 2003, thought this war will be over in short order, also revved up their filters. There was a lot of 'collateral damage'; like any war, many innocent people got hurt, valid email never made it to its destination, etc, legitmate digests never got delivered, etc. Finally some of us decided enough was enough; I think it was about the time the ratio of spam-scam versus legit reached 80-85 percent; we were not going to wait until the ratio reached a hundred percent for even though that is theoretically possible it is quite unlikely since there will always be at least a few (very few!) pieces of legitmate mail in transit in the queue somewhere to shave off a percentage point or two from the level of !absolutely! (allspam-scam). When we saw the ratio reach the 95 percent mark a few times, we said 'that is close enough'.Years ago, some of us began outing the spammer-scammers by revealing lots of personal data about them: for example, their personal telephone numbers, the addresses where they lived in their white-trash trailer park homes, where they were employed, even their driver's records. At that point, we had to start fighting the enablers as well; for after all, even spammer-scammers have 'privacy rights' you know -- oh boo-hoo, this is so sad, and who were _we_ -- how dare we! -- violate their rights. No matter that the rest of us here in the virtual village have not had an unmolested postal system for many years; by God, you better not harm or do DDoS on the spammer-scammers.
As far as I am concerned, there is _no_ realistic expectation where communications on the net are concerned. If the spammer-scammers are doing wholesale DDoS on legitimate sites and the legitimate sites are responding in kind, _to protect what was ours all along_ (and that is the key phrase) that suits me fine. To hell with the enablers and all their fanciful ideas about essentially ignoring it by making feeble and ineffectual attempts to filter it out. PAT]