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jobs.perl.org spammer caught red handed (not?)

Alias on 2005-04-20T12:28:11

So I post a jobs.perl.org job looking for a coder in Sydney. A day later I get an email from a Mr James Radcliff that looks fairly standardised asking about the job.

The odd thing is, my job says immediate start in Sydney and he's currently in America... weirder...

So I've emailed back telling him he's practically got the job and can we meet this week for a start on Monday, think I'll play with him if he's not genuine. I mean, he actually _does_ appear good enough, and if he's willing to fly to Australia on short notice, I'm impressed

After sending the reply, I got more suspicious he's a job spammer... so I take a quick look at the mail headers. Included in the headers are the following...

Message-Id: <E1DOC7o-0006IJ-Mb@host24.root-name-server.net>
Sender: <fallstow@host24.root-name-server.net>
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - host24.root-name-server.net
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - phase-n.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [32208 32003] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - host24.root-name-server.net
X-Source: /usr/bin/perl
X-Source-Args: /usr/bin/perl /home/fallstow/www/Projects/PerlJobs/perljobs.cgi
X-Source-Dir: /home/fallstow
Wait just a second... whatever box he's using is attaching some VERY interesting information.

With an accurate hostname, and an interesting looking /home/fallstow/www/ path, I can make the following...

http://host24.root-name-server.net/user/fallstow/Projects/PerlJobs/perljobs.cgi

And there it is... a slurped copy of jobs.perl.org, with dumped output from an spidering auto-emailer which scans each job for email addresses...

How interesting... but I wonder what happens if I search upwards...

http://host24.root-name-server.net/user/fallstow/Projects/PerlJobs/

Well look here, there's other stuff here as well. Not only has he been job spamming since 2003, but he also has another nitfy job tool here that analyses to find all the jobs that allow remote work.

Now I wonder what would happen if I replied to ALL his spam job posts offering him the job...

2003?

jdavidb on 2005-04-20T14:33:37

Not only has he been job spamming since 2003

That's a long time to be out of work. Sounds like he's forgotten the original point. Which doesn't surprise me.

He applied to me

barbie on 2005-04-20T17:36:35

I never though about it, but I turned him down straight as he wanted to be a web developer. I figured if he couldn't read the job ad properly, then there was little point in even considering him.

Not Spam

falazar on 2005-04-22T12:48:59

Well, I replied with a very large reply first explaining everything and for some reason it didnt stay.

I read in the jobs from here and contracts from a number of other places. It doesnt spam out though, but allows me a more convenient way of searching through the jobs for ones I like, and attaching my resume, as it is a time consuming project.
    I have gotten a number of projects off of there and interviewed with some very large clients as well, it has been very useful.
    I am willing to fly out to most anywhere now that I have my degree, and have went to New York last year, and California this year to work with clients.
    I am still working with one client I got off of here more than a year ago.
    With the jobs in a local database I can easily search through it and pull some interesting statistics as well.
    James