I am moving this post into its own folder as it seems to have been buried. I believe this information has merit and will be of use to everyone that uses Instant Messaging programs whether it be AIM, Yahoo!, ICQ, MSN Messenger etc.
In reading through these forums it is apparent that a great many users are having difficulty with persons who boot them offline, steal their passwords and IDs etc.
This is harassment and laws exist in many US states and foreign countries that strictly forbid this kind of activity.
I live in Texas and this is the law in my state. Your state, county, city, parish, province or country probably has similar laws.
This is an
excerpt from Texas State Law
77(R) SB 139 Enrolled version - Bill Text 1-1
AN ACT relating to the prosecution of and punishment for the offenses of
harassment and stalking.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
SECTION 1. Section 42.07, Penal Code, is amended to read as follows:
Sec. 42.07. HARASSMENT. (a) A person commits an offense if, with intent to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, or embarrass another, he:
(7) sends repeated electronic communications in a manner reasonably likely to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment,embarrass, or offend another.
(1) "Electronic communication" means a transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photoelectronic, or photo-optical system. The term includes:
(A) a communication initiated by electronic mail, instant message, network call, or facsimile machine; and (B) a communication made to a pager.
Seeing as this is against the law, it empowers us to take action. You pay to be online and chat with friends or family and you have a right to do so without being harassed.
Track down as many booter web sites as you can and look up the web host through traceroute. If you need further instruction on how to do this just post here and I will instruct you. I know that there are many designers, webmasters, techs etc that post on these forums that are well aware that this sort of activity is not acceptable on their systems and I am surprised that no one has moved to stop this at the source.
A good tool for locating the host of offending web sites is located here,
www.network-tools.com
E-mail the web host and complain that the boot programs, password stealers, account lockers etc. made available on these web sites are denying you access to the Internet service that you pay for. This is in flagrant violation of any reputable web hosts acceptable use policy against harrassment or attempting to penetrate the security of another user's account.
If someone were outside your home tampering with your phonelines so that you could not place a call, what would you do? Would you just hope that it goes away or would you take action? You would probably call the phone company or the police wouldn't you? This is no different.
This will not stop people from trading boot codes in e-mail or on P2P programs but it sure does make it hard for people to just type "booters" into a search box and start downloading.
As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
