Can I deliberately infect a fraudulant website?

[drummerman]

I've received, for the second time in a month, one of those mails informing me there are fraudulant activities on a bank account I dont have with a bank I dont bank with  ... could i please confirm my bank details etc.

Clearly a lot of bullsxxx.

Does anyone here know how I could cause them a few problems?

Thanks

[Pondus]

Does anyone here know how I could cause them a few problems?

well... here is one that had fun with a Nigeria letter
http://419eater.com/html/user_subs/konrad/fun_with_peter.htm

and you find more if you google. 

http://www.google.no/search?q=have+fun+with+nigeria+letter&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=nb&client=safari

[!Donovan]

Hmm..?

Nothing here with Gmail..

[drummerman]

Hotmail.

Thanks for the funny links Pondus. - I dont think I can be bothered to enter into lengthy mailing with these idiots but was kind of hoping that somebody here has either a nicely packaged, clever, nasty and stealthy gremlin I could send them in reply or, failing that, is knowledgeable enough to trace the origin and wreck some havock in the process?

Honestly, I am actually in a good mood today. Unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable enough to come up with my own creation of deadly bacteria.

[Pondus]

or you report it..

http://www.google.no/search?q=ip.spam+block&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=nb&client=safari#sclient=tablet-gws&hl=no&client=safari&tbo=d&q=where+to+report+scam+mail&oq=where+to+report+scam+mail&gs_l=tablet-gws.12...5514.8263.3.11178.9.5.0.4.0.0.91.362.5.5.0...0.0...1ac.D-6V_a_mN9Y&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=2f9f4c94ad1bc2a6&biw=1024&bih=672

[drummerman]

Thanks. Yes I got that option its just that it's so ... so ... very civilised.

[mchain]

Hi drummerman,

Unless you are running your system as a virtual one, retaliation and damage to your real system is a possibility.  All kinds of havoc can be done to you, so may not be worth the risk.  Once a hacker knows of you, hard to disengage from.  Suggest leaving it to the pros here.

EDIT:  As DavidR says below, any action not legal can get you in serious trouble.  To clarify, going after a hacker/spammer is not a good idea.  Bad idea, in fact.

[DavidR]

@ drummerman
You have no idea who sent the email and the from address is commonly faked and may be that of some poor sap whose email address has been harvested. So if you tried to send it to the sender/from address you could be sending it to an innocent party.

Resorting to malicious tactics could see you prosecuted rather than the miscreants.

This is still spam/phishing and the answer is never respond, don't open it (which you appear to have done), don't click links or open attachments in unsolicited emails. In short delete them and save yourself the hassle, life's too short and you are unlikely to trouble them very much.

That said, get yourself an anti-spam application, that can delete the email at source so you don't have to download them. I use MailWasher Pro (not free) and within that I can report spam to an organisation (just by checking a box) and allow them to deal with it.

[drummerman]

Advise taken everyone.

Thanks