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Link below contains a colorful communication between two parties :)

http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK7008

I wish it were that simple. Sadly your question is terribly naive.

See: http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=ver izonbusiness.com for example.

Spamhaus shows that Comcast is part of the problem!

There's very little in the actual document which isn't in the published article when it comes to cost.

...I would thihnk that charging comercially[sic] for the service is nessesary to keep it from becoming a spammer tool...

Have you been living on Gilligan's Island?

5eu/month is, as pointed out in the FA, at the current exchange rate: $6.359.

Before Scotty Richter was castrated, he was bringing $2M into his office, yes, two million U$ monthly. And he wasn't the king of the mountain.

Can you explain how $6.359/month going to make a spammer think twice about using the service? Particularly when you consider the anonymity. No more looking for open proxies & relays.

They pay far, far, far more than that to set up shop in China, then send all of that crap back to the US. Most spam originates from the US as the 2003 U-CAN-SPAM law[1] basically gave them free reign, but the big boys still rely upon China.

Here are the top 200 spammers responsible for 80% of the crap which is dropped in your inbox.
Some of these guys (e.g. Ralsky) have substantial setups in their basements or an office (when they-he aren't|isn't getting caught running around in nothing but a black thong -- yes, there's a picture of it in an anti-spam archive.

But seriously. How do you think ~$6/month is going to stop a spammer. I'm not trying to present a loaded question here. I really do want to know your perspective on this because you may have insights no one else has considered.

The only way I can see this not becoming a spam haven is if there's a volume limit for that price and you have to pay $x/volume for each increment after that.

I'm all ears.

_______________________________
[1] Very effective, wouldn't you say? Has your volume of spam decreased (without human intervention to separate the wheat from the chaffe?)

Just as evidence, look at the ROKSO list - almost all Americans.

First, it's Project Gutenberg, not "the Gutenberg Project". If you're gonna lecture for karma then at least get the name right.

Second, it's not always Gutenberg texts. I've seen segments of texts from other copyright-free texts too (including some Russian books translated to English), and even copyrighted ones like Stephen King's Misery -- I guess when someone's already engaged in the utterly selfish and inconsiderate act of spamming, copyright violation is just icing on the cake. The Annie Wilkes treatment is just too good for some of these chaps.

CAN-SPAM killed spam as advertising, in a way that neither the Direct Marketing Association or the anti-spam groups expected. CAN-SPAM has criminal penalties for forged headers, but doesn't restrict "legitimate e-mail marketing", which is what the DMA wanted. But with valid headers, spam filters can immediately discard spam. The result is that "legitimate e-mail marketing" attempts go directly to the bit bucket today. Notice how rarely you see a spam from any legitimate company any more. (This assumes you have reasonable filtering.)

With the legitimate businesses gone, spam became a branch of crime. To be a spammer today, you have to commit felonies. Which means a risk of doing jail time. The famous "Buffalo Spammer" went to jail in 2004, and gets out in 2011. Jeremy Jaynes was sentenced to nine years in prison; he's out on bail pending an appeal, but sooner or later he's going to do those nine years. There's a Registry of Known Spam Operators, and law enforcement reads that list. Most of the people on that list have had visits from law enforcement.

Spammers have tried moving offshore, but that's not working as well as it used to. Few countries want to be known as spam havens. Even in China, it's getting harder; spammers have had to move from the developed coast to more remote provinces, where Beijing has less presence. ("The mountains are high and the emperor is far away") Operating offshore draws the attention of the investigators who follow money-laundering, terrorism, and drug-dealing. There are people doing this, but the risks are high.

What's left is what you'd expect - wannabe crooks, as in any bad neighborhood. They're not very good at crime. They're not making much money. They're what cops call "regular customers". They're a problem, but not a major threat. Those are the ones sending out useless spam.

There are a number of good realtime black lists (RBLs) that do just that. I use them at my mail server and it blocks a huge percentage of spam. Furthermore, I have my mail server (postfix) set up to tarpit those senders. In other words, it holds onto the connection for 20-30 seconds before sending any sort of reply, effectively slowing down the spammer a bit and consuming their resources.

I like the sbl-xbl blacklist at spamhaus.org, which combines several of them together.

http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=ver izonbusiness.com

This is to be expected by a company that bought SpewSpew.net

China has a loose handle on external spammers, both Russian and American as seen in this link

Noted ROKSO spammers like Leo Kuvayev (BadCow) and Christopher Brown / Swank's IP addresses are listed. But there has been little action on China's part to shut out the foreign spamming hordes that besmirch their country's reputation as a haven for the more techno-savvy Russians and Americans who have been raping their unprotected infrastructure with immunity to date.

China has a loose handle on external spammers, both Russian and American as seen in this link

Noted ROKSO spammers like Leo Kuvayev (BadCow) and Christopher Brown / Swank's IP addresses are listed. But there has been little action on China's part to shut out the foreign spamming hordes that besmirch their country's reputation as a haven for the more techno-savvy Russians and Americans who have been raping their unprotected infrastructure with immunity to date.

See the stats here.

And US is still in the lead:

http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/countries.lasso

Does this mean joker.com can disable/suspended send-safe.com? ROK5500
And gandi.net can stop/suspended clustermailer.com? ROK5611

Does this mean joker.com can disable/suspended send-safe.com? ROK5500
And gandi.net can stop/suspended clustermailer.com? ROK5611

Thank you for contacting customer support. The error message received is related to our anti-phishing software, which blocks known spammer links from being sent through our system. It primarily blocks links from sites listed on http://www.spamhaus.org/ (also blocks our own "spammer" database).

PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 9): 554 Sorry, your mail server (py-out-1112.google.com[64.233.166.178]) is rejected using sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org. See http://postmaster.frontiernet.net/error.html#sbl-x bl [frontiernet.net]

This "evidence" appears to be fabricated. The IP address 64.233.166.178 is in fact not listed on Spamhaus at all:

$ host 178.166.233.64.sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org
Host 178.166.233.64.sbl-xbl.spamhaus.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
$

or see the web lookup query at spamhaus.org.

Rokso keeps track of the major spammers. Most of them reside in the US, though they typically offshore their servers to other countries.

Take a look at for instance
http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/countries.lasso

USA is the #1 spammer. Granted, the EU is not counted as total but I can tell you that most of the EU countries have always had quite strictly regulated telecommunication markets. Some countries practically are not sending any spam at all because the spamming open proxy owners would get cut off in minutes by the core network administrations.

here

When in doubt, blame Microsoft. Screw intelligent research. Maybe somebody somewhere has done some tracking down to see who are the most likely suspects.

The bigger picture on people identified as suspects in the spam and DDOS attacks on Blue Security is painted by Spamhaus / ROKSO. They maintain a global Top 10 list and a global Top 200 list of spammers.

A quick search on "bluesecurity" digs out

ROK6138 - Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov - Main Info

ROK5514 - Christopher J. Brown / Swank AKA Dollar - Main Info

ROK6643 - Joshua Burch - Interactive Adult Solutions / BulkEmailSchool.com - Main Info

ROK4932 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Main Info

ROK5125 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Partner-In-Spam: Vladislav "Vlad" Khokholkov / Apex Systems Ltd.

What's the betting that Spamhaus, who dare to mount the evidence, won't be the next DDOS target? I doubt that the pharmamasters would have any success destroying that evidence. But they will be sure to try. Put your money on it.

When in doubt, blame Microsoft. Screw intelligent research. Maybe somebody somewhere has done some tracking down to see who are the most likely suspects.

The bigger picture on people identified as suspects in the spam and DDOS attacks on Blue Security is painted by Spamhaus / ROKSO. They maintain a global Top 10 list and a global Top 200 list of spammers.

A quick search on "bluesecurity" digs out

ROK6138 - Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov - Main Info

ROK5514 - Christopher J. Brown / Swank AKA Dollar - Main Info

ROK6643 - Joshua Burch - Interactive Adult Solutions / BulkEmailSchool.com - Main Info

ROK4932 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Main Info

ROK5125 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Partner-In-Spam: Vladislav "Vlad" Khokholkov / Apex Systems Ltd.

What's the betting that Spamhaus, who dare to mount the evidence, won't be the next DDOS target? I doubt that the pharmamasters would have any success destroying that evidence. But they will be sure to try. Put your money on it.

When in doubt, blame Microsoft. Screw intelligent research. Maybe somebody somewhere has done some tracking down to see who are the most likely suspects.

The bigger picture on people identified as suspects in the spam and DDOS attacks on Blue Security is painted by Spamhaus / ROKSO. They maintain a global Top 10 list and a global Top 200 list of spammers.

A quick search on "bluesecurity" digs out

ROK6138 - Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov - Main Info

ROK5514 - Christopher J. Brown / Swank AKA Dollar - Main Info

ROK6643 - Joshua Burch - Interactive Adult Solutions / BulkEmailSchool.com - Main Info

ROK4932 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Main Info

ROK5125 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Partner-In-Spam: Vladislav "Vlad" Khokholkov / Apex Systems Ltd.

What's the betting that Spamhaus, who dare to mount the evidence, won't be the next DDOS target? I doubt that the pharmamasters would have any success destroying that evidence. But they will be sure to try. Put your money on it.

When in doubt, blame Microsoft. Screw intelligent research. Maybe somebody somewhere has done some tracking down to see who are the most likely suspects.

The bigger picture on people identified as suspects in the spam and DDOS attacks on Blue Security is painted by Spamhaus / ROKSO. They maintain a global Top 10 list and a global Top 200 list of spammers.

A quick search on "bluesecurity" digs out

ROK6138 - Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov - Main Info

ROK5514 - Christopher J. Brown / Swank AKA Dollar - Main Info

ROK6643 - Joshua Burch - Interactive Adult Solutions / BulkEmailSchool.com - Main Info

ROK4932 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Main Info

ROK5125 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Partner-In-Spam: Vladislav "Vlad" Khokholkov / Apex Systems Ltd.

What's the betting that Spamhaus, who dare to mount the evidence, won't be the next DDOS target? I doubt that the pharmamasters would have any success destroying that evidence. But they will be sure to try. Put your money on it.

When in doubt, blame Microsoft. Screw intelligent research. Maybe somebody somewhere has done some tracking down to see who are the most likely suspects.

The bigger picture on people identified as suspects in the spam and DDOS attacks on Blue Security is painted by Spamhaus / ROKSO. They maintain a global Top 10 list and a global Top 200 list of spammers.

A quick search on "bluesecurity" digs out

ROK6138 - Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov - Main Info

ROK5514 - Christopher J. Brown / Swank AKA Dollar - Main Info

ROK6643 - Joshua Burch - Interactive Adult Solutions / BulkEmailSchool.com - Main Info

ROK4932 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Main Info

ROK5125 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Partner-In-Spam: Vladislav "Vlad" Khokholkov / Apex Systems Ltd.

What's the betting that Spamhaus, who dare to mount the evidence, won't be the next DDOS target? I doubt that the pharmamasters would have any success destroying that evidence. But they will be sure to try. Put your money on it.

When in doubt, blame Microsoft. Screw intelligent research. Maybe somebody somewhere has done some tracking down to see who are the most likely suspects.

The bigger picture on people identified as suspects in the spam and DDOS attacks on Blue Security is painted by Spamhaus / ROKSO. They maintain a global Top 10 list and a global Top 200 list of spammers.

A quick search on "bluesecurity" digs out

ROK6138 - Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov - Main Info

ROK5514 - Christopher J. Brown / Swank AKA Dollar - Main Info

ROK6643 - Joshua Burch - Interactive Adult Solutions / BulkEmailSchool.com - Main Info

ROK4932 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Main Info

ROK5125 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Partner-In-Spam: Vladislav "Vlad" Khokholkov / Apex Systems Ltd.

What's the betting that Spamhaus, who dare to mount the evidence, won't be the next DDOS target? I doubt that the pharmamasters would have any success destroying that evidence. But they will be sure to try. Put your money on it.

When in doubt, blame Microsoft. Screw intelligent research. Maybe somebody somewhere has done some tracking down to see who are the most likely suspects.

The bigger picture on people identified as suspects in the spam and DDOS attacks on Blue Security is painted by Spamhaus / ROKSO. They maintain a global Top 10 list and a global Top 200 list of spammers.

A quick search on "bluesecurity" digs out

ROK6138 - Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov - Main Info

ROK5514 - Christopher J. Brown / Swank AKA Dollar - Main Info

ROK6643 - Joshua Burch - Interactive Adult Solutions / BulkEmailSchool.com - Main Info

ROK4932 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Main Info

ROK5125 - Leo Kuvayev / BadCow - Partner-In-Spam: Vladislav "Vlad" Khokholkov / Apex Systems Ltd.

What's the betting that Spamhaus, who dare to mount the evidence, won't be the next DDOS target? I doubt that the pharmamasters would have any success destroying that evidence. But they will be sure to try. Put your money on it.

Because these "spam kings" (ok, let's find a new, more acceptable phrase, like "spam dorks") tend to hide out in countries that either have a) no formalized relations with the US or other countries or b) countries that might be allies but will not let us simply go tromping through their country on the hunt for spammers.

Wrong. Of the top 200 spammers, the vast majority is still located in the USofA.

They aren't hiding in the least. We know who they are. But Bush & Co. don't get enough spam, apparently. Otherwise there's be a tank in Alan Ralsky's garden and attack helicopters over Tony Banks' villa.

If this means jail time for the "top" several hundred spammers and scammers on counts of identity theft alone, this is only welcome - and actually at least a decade late!

Crime is best fought by apprehending the criminals, not by gag orders on the organisations who happen to have held enabling information in an insecure manner - which would make it even harder for the individuals affected to show they are completely innocent victims rather than crooks.

So why the fuck haven't the Russian authorities gotten their shit together? I mean, they've been spammer central for years now, well known

Much as I hate to piss on your parade, pal, I urge you to check the raw statistics. One country at the top of the list appears just a wee bit more spammer central, and contributes more than the next 9 all put together.Seems to me the quickest solution to killing the spam from the worst offending country would be to install a blocklist on all of its IP addresses.

Hey, what is this shit that I'm smoking? Gotta go cold turkey. Cough, cough.

• DDOS - Americans,
• Spam attacks - Americans, and Russians with linguistic assistance from people with a better command of English, bar a few telltale spellnig (!) errors.

• DDOS - Americans,
• Spam attacks - Americans, and Russians with linguistic assistance from people with a better command of English, bar a few telltale spellnig (!) errors.

Quote: It seems obvious the perp is an American. It shouldn't be that difficult to track him down, especially since he's IM'ing the victims.

Spamhaus / Rokso nail a couple of Americans up for your pleasure at http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK5514

Use the frog, Luke

Maybe he is there already. There are about 10 famous spammers from Russia. I'm betting that the nickname "PharmaMaster" is only an alias for one of those guys.

Unfortunately, the only witness account of PharmaMaster comes from BlueSecurity themselves, I wonder if the feds could subpoena ICQ to give details of the conversation and see which IP it came from.

Th US most definately is the world leader in the production of spam

treat the disease not the symptoms

Even if they got evey one who operates in the US we would still have a problem overseas
That's a bit short-sighted. It would get rid of the majority of all spam, considering that the U.S. is the main source of all spam. China, although being the most popular non-US relay for spam, doesn't even come close.

From my perspective, if I could reliably block all spam originating from abroad, I'd have 99.9% less spam in my inbox. I'd take the occasional Nigerian scam for granted.

You looked Alan Ralsky up in jail?

It's a good thing you're only his brother.

Otherwise, "Alan Ralsky" might find a name change to "Betty Sue" and become someone's prison beeyitch. (it might still happen)

I wonder if he'll have to mortgage "The House That Spam Built"[1] to pay his lawyer to plea bargin to stay out of prison? What will he do for a job to pay the mortgage? (any assets, including money he might have stashed away and could use to pay the mortgage back off could, and likely would, be confiscated, just as his "toys" were in October, '5.

The DOJ has him in the can and his records are sealed for seventy-two hours.

I'm surprised the story hasn't appeared yet.

There's a story at news.google.com:

Hackers quaking over reported Spam King's arrest

My suggestion on SPAM-L was to use this opportunity to put the DMA on hold this time (they wrote CAN-SPAM and a VP said opt-in wasn't a viable economic model so they wouldn't use it) and have any number of the CongressCritters who later admitted rubber-stamping CAN-SPAM was ineffective at best, get something put into their hands which "Prevents the possibility of another Alan Ralsky" (but I also have said, "...we know there are others, but it makes for a good buzzphrase for them to use as a sales pitch to their peers, not to mention good press for them to toot their own horn. If that'll produce better legislation, such as fighting Ronnie "You Can't Legislate Me Out Of Business" Skelson, I'll let them toot all they want....").

____________________________________

[1]
Here's the original Slashdot story, but the Detroit Free Press link it points to produces a 404. Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has many copies, such as this one.

(I'm dragging this out for those who don't know about the Wayback Machine)

If anyone wants additional info about Alan Ralsky there's plenty there about him.

Verizon is a spam sewer itself.

http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=ver izon.net

Can you elaborate on how you think the ant-spam laws are ineffective?

As far as I can tell the laws have had quite a good effect, apparently spammers have either stopped, or have moved overseas: http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=154, and http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=161

All we need now is a law against fax spamming so that Dell and getawaysdownunder.com.au stop using my equipment and resources for their own marketing campaign.

Can you elaborate on how you think the ant-spam laws are ineffective?

As far as I can tell the laws have had quite a good effect, apparently spammers have either stopped, or have moved overseas: http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=154, and http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=161

All we need now is a law against fax spamming so that Dell and getawaysdownunder.com.au stop using my equipment and resources for their own marketing campaign.

Adam Vitale aka Batch1 arrested by Secret Service

• From what I heard it was a guy named Sean Dunaway (spelled wrong I think). He used to work for AOL, sold out their huge 90+ million members dbase, got jail time, and apperently is working for the man now. This is a big case, pump and dump stock scams can hurt people to the tune of millions of dollars.
  M.
• Yeah pump & dump would seem more like the Secret Service's department... the article just spoke of "promoting computer security software"... perhaps additional charges will be filed later... maybe this was just the SS's way to get him jailed and put pressure on him...
  Saw your other post too.. U r right, whoever isn't mailing compliant these days and is promoting illegal shit like pharm or stocks on top of it, is just asking for the feds to bust through their door...
  Hamster
• From what i hear it wasnt about stocks or spamming, the security spam stuff was just a coverup. What the feds were really after was a botnet the guys were mailing from. Dont know the truth to this but i would not doubt it one bit, it would make sense why the SS was involved.
• Just goes to show swank has ties with the antis look at this http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK4262
  I am not saying this guy didnt scam tons of people which is not right however if swank does not like you for whatever reason he will post you info on his anti friends websites so be very very carefull when dealing with swank and make sure your personal info is kept to you.. Personal revenge is the key to try and recover money that was scammed not whoring shit out to the anti's....
  P.S. swank you know I dont like fake people.. You guys get a kick of this one http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK4021
  Look half way down the message and you will see this
  "Swank"(Chris Brown) and "Batch1"(Adam Vitale) are in a tiff over a spam deal gone bad, and are in a flame-war on spamforum.biz.
  Swank has repeatedly posted "Batch1's contact info that was used in their spam dealings with each other.
  I think this is what I have been explaining all along about how swank has ties to the antis and posts peoples info if he doesnt like them and if you notice reading these articals the anti's really never say anything bad about swank HMMMM I wonder if he is friends with them.. Enjoy guys.....
• Sean Dunaway is spelt correctly and he did not work for AOL and did not receive jail time. Soo sad that people are this missinformed.
• Also the math makes no sense: Spammed 1.2 million AOL users with onbly 47,000 messages? Huh?
  ...
  1200000 / recipients_per_Email = 47,000 emails sent.
  hard to understand isnt it hamster ;)
  also if you've paid any attention to the forum, the informant (sean dunaway) is already notified and you've started a double thread because of your ignorance :P

This is starting to sound like those Mafia wiretap transcripts that came out as the New York Mafia was coming unglued. Law enforcement was doing well enough that the crooks were more afraid than the good guys, and were desperately trying to figure out who was selling out.

Spamming is starting to yield to straightforward police work.

Adam Vitale aka Batch1 arrested by Secret Service

• From what I heard it was a guy named Sean Dunaway (spelled wrong I think). He used to work for AOL, sold out their huge 90+ million members dbase, got jail time, and apperently is working for the man now. This is a big case, pump and dump stock scams can hurt people to the tune of millions of dollars.
  M.
• Yeah pump & dump would seem more like the Secret Service's department... the article just spoke of "promoting computer security software"... perhaps additional charges will be filed later... maybe this was just the SS's way to get him jailed and put pressure on him...
  Saw your other post too.. U r right, whoever isn't mailing compliant these days and is promoting illegal shit like pharm or stocks on top of it, is just asking for the feds to bust through their door...
  Hamster
• From what i hear it wasnt about stocks or spamming, the security spam stuff was just a coverup. What the feds were really after was a botnet the guys were mailing from. Dont know the truth to this but i would not doubt it one bit, it would make sense why the SS was involved.
• Just goes to show swank has ties with the antis look at this http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK4262
  I am not saying this guy didnt scam tons of people which is not right however if swank does not like you for whatever reason he will post you info on his anti friends websites so be very very carefull when dealing with swank and make sure your personal info is kept to you.. Personal revenge is the key to try and recover money that was scammed not whoring shit out to the anti's....
  P.S. swank you know I dont like fake people.. You guys get a kick of this one http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/evidence.lasso?rokso _id=ROK4021
  Look half way down the message and you will see this
  "Swank"(Chris Brown) and "Batch1"(Adam Vitale) are in a tiff over a spam deal gone bad, and are in a flame-war on spamforum.biz.
  Swank has repeatedly posted "Batch1's contact info that was used in their spam dealings with each other.
  I think this is what I have been explaining all along about how swank has ties to the antis and posts peoples info if he doesnt like them and if you notice reading these articals the anti's really never say anything bad about swank HMMMM I wonder if he is friends with them.. Enjoy guys.....
• Sean Dunaway is spelt correctly and he did not work for AOL and did not receive jail time. Soo sad that people are this missinformed.
• Also the math makes no sense: Spammed 1.2 million AOL users with onbly 47,000 messages? Huh?
  ...
  1200000 / recipients_per_Email = 47,000 emails sent.
  hard to understand isnt it hamster ;)
  also if you've paid any attention to the forum, the informant (sean dunaway) is already notified and you've started a double thread because of your ignorance :P

This is starting to sound like those Mafia wiretap transcripts that came out as the New York Mafia was coming unglued. Law enforcement was doing well enough that the crooks were more afraid than the good guys, and were desperately trying to figure out who was selling out.

Spamming is starting to yield to straightforward police work.

According to Spamhaus, hius eMail address was "hustlen4life@hotmail.com"

This guy's crime was just sending a billion e-mails? Why, that's hardly illegal at all. There must be something else going on here, like he kicked a senator's dog or something, because nothing's happened to any of the other spammers for whom there is plenty of evidence to put them away - at least, if the government had any real interest in doing so.

This guy's crime was just sending a billion e-mails? Why, that's hardly illegal at all. There must be something else going on here, like he kicked a senator's dog or something, because nothing's happened to any of the other spammers for whom there is plenty of evidence to put them away - at least, if the government had any real interest in doing so.

This guy's crime was just sending a billion e-mails? Why, that's hardly illegal at all. There must be something else going on here, like he kicked a senator's dog or something, because nothing's happened to any of the other spammers for whom there is plenty of evidence to put them away - at least, if the government had any real interest in doing so.

"Running mail at home is a waste of my time. It can be done, but you get nothing but hassle out of it..."

• Mail clients are filtered through my firewall: I blackhole bogons for example, and certain abusive networks.
• RBLs of my choice: There are good RBLs and bad RBLs. I like the ORDB list, DSBL list, the Spamhaus SBL and XBL lists, the SORBS DUL list, and the Spamcop blocking list.
• Greylisting: This is effective for eliminating the remaining spam that makes it through your SMTP-time filters.
• Challenge-response: Yeah, I know... love 'em or hate 'em. TMDA has been useful to me in the past, though I'm not sure I'm going to keep it much longer.
• One-time email addresses: If you maintain your own server and domain, then you can have as many email addresses as you want. Expire them on your schedule, or perform special processing for mail received at those addresses.
• Forget about artificial mail-size limits: My ISP's email accounts cut off attachments at something like 2MB. So much for that camping video my friend wanted to send me. My personal mail server is much more forgiving.
• Flexible and secure access: My mail clients use POP3 and IMAP inside the firewall, and IMAP via SSH port-forwarding from the outside.

"Running mail at home is a waste of my time. It can be done, but you get nothing but hassle out of it..."

• Mail clients are filtered through my firewall: I blackhole bogons for example, and certain abusive networks.
• RBLs of my choice: There are good RBLs and bad RBLs. I like the ORDB list, DSBL list, the Spamhaus SBL and XBL lists, the SORBS DUL list, and the Spamcop blocking list.
• Greylisting: This is effective for eliminating the remaining spam that makes it through your SMTP-time filters.
• Challenge-response: Yeah, I know... love 'em or hate 'em. TMDA has been useful to me in the past, though I'm not sure I'm going to keep it much longer.
• One-time email addresses: If you maintain your own server and domain, then you can have as many email addresses as you want. Expire them on your schedule, or perform special processing for mail received at those addresses.
• Forget about artificial mail-size limits: My ISP's email accounts cut off attachments at something like 2MB. So much for that camping video my friend wanted to send me. My personal mail server is much more forgiving.
• Flexible and secure access: My mail clients use POP3 and IMAP inside the firewall, and IMAP via SSH port-forwarding from the outside.

the Americans will make a mess of it....oh wait

Spamhaus's Register of Known Spam Operations contains quite alot of detail on some known spammers.

Filtering the email is usually more effective because the mail itself follows more determinate patterns, such as key words, obfuscation, originating IP's, fake headers and malformed HTML whereas most of these 'companies' operate from shadey websites that move around alot that are hard and expensive to trace and punish. It's also difficult to prove they had a any direct involvement with the spamming.