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When Spammers Try To Sue You
An Anonymous Coward writes: "I was looking for information about what recourse there is against spammers when I came across this site. It appears that Bernard Shifman sent email to several people trying to solcit employment via spam, and when they replied to him, asking him to stop, and reporting the spam to his ISP he threatend them with a lawsuit. It's a very entertaining read."
When Neil Schwartzman, the person who received the spam, forwarded it to the appropriate places why did he include the spammer on the email?
I hate spammers as much as the next guy. I report them (without copying them on the email) and move on. Although the spam receiver is, of course, blamess in this, I think he could have avoided this whole silly mess.
Free tip for Mr.Shiffman, I hear TimeCanada are looking for a new webmaster.
And, I feel that my sig has never been quite so appropriate.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
No, really I was just replying to someone elses spam, but i guess the reply address was the mailing list. Copy of message follows:
===
Date: 2 Jan 03:34:45 GMT
Subject: Re: Make millions at home!
Why yes, yes I *would* like to MAKE MONEY FAST!
Bernard Shit^Hfman.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
But, the title is misleading, it would seem as though he did not try to file suit, but just threatened. From what I can read, if an attorney did file the attorney would be personally sanctioned under FRCP 11 making a friviolous filing where it could not pass the giggle test.
Fight Spammers!
Once in a while, I'll reply to the solicitors. Of course nine times out of ten it's a bogus email address, but once in a while it actually goes through.
I got that Nigerian money laundering email twice a day for a week from the same guy before I cut him an email threatening to take a squad of tanks to his contry and turn it into rubble. To my amazement, he actually replied! He (sarcastically, obviously) invited me to attempt to destroy his country.
I was expecting a DoS flood of Nigerian solicitations (which caused me to learn how to use procmail really fast), but, again, to my amazement, the spams stopped.
The moral: never underestimate the threat of tanks.
I'm still waiting for a subpoena from back in December 99 from some guy threatening to sue some people on alt.cult-movies.rocky-horror for "slander" (guy claimed to be a software patent lawyer and didn't even know the difference between "slander" and "libel"... it was classic) because we made him lose money on e-bay, as we pointed out that his so called "Super Rare" (which, since then, has become blaspheme on the Rocky Horror newsgroup... but mostly because me and a Frank-N-Furter from Vegas spammed the board one night with a plethora of jokes about "Suck my super-rare schlong" and the like...) Rocky Horror Dolls he was selling on e-bay for $80 were available at your local Spencer's gifts for about $16....
This is just another case of someone threatening with lawsuits when they're really just full of chicken$#!+. Come on. Who here hasn't been threatened with legal action by some moron online?
I still say the coolest part of that whole flame war (which, btw, lasted a good month) was that he kept giving us phone numbers for the Pittsburg department of investigations (being that I'm Canadian, it would've been quite impressive that someone whose jurisdiction I'm not even in the same country as would be investigating me) saying that it was his proof that he was going to see us in court. And then he called us evil viscious [sic] morons.
"Come to think of it, there already are a million monkeys at a million typewriters, and usenet is _NOTHING_ like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Anytime I get a spam, I hit the link that I received when I registered with SpamCop, and paste the email (complete with header) into the provided textbox. SpamCop processes the email, compiles a report of the offending spam, computes the appropriate reporting addresses, and delivers a copy to each one.
It even allows you to add text to the beginning of the report. I always add this: Does that make me a bad person?
--
Tsar's Hypothesis: As the population of the Earth increases, the sum of human intelligence remains constant.
Jesus Christ. I just wasted 30 minutes of my life reading through that whole mess. I want those 30 minutes back!
/.????
Do I have such a miserable life that I'm willing to spend that much time on something that affects me in no way whatsoever AND the few minutes it takes to post about it on
Man. I need to get back to work.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Click here and then each link on the page and the advertisers gets charged the amount shown in small print. But for a permanent solution: I want to charge people who send me email. I would obviously pay back all those people who send stuff I wanted to see, and not pay back those who pissed me off. What's the chance of this happening? It would be good.
Your a troll but not a good one :)
... I think in any given day I recieve between 15 and 25 spams either via email or messenger, this is between quite a few accounts (10 email accounts, maybe 6 messenger accounts). Where do my rights not to be bothered with this bullshit start, and "free speech" begin ... Im sure I spend (just) 5 mins a day deleting spams or closing AOL/ICQ spam windows ... Thats 12 seconds per spam if I recieve 25 a day. Do the math, thats 30 *hours* a year dealing with spam.
The problem isn't of course any individual spammer but the problem as a whole
Im sure you'll have lots of trollish responses, but one had best not be "then don't use email."
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Spam is not really an issue of free speech. It's a matter of freedom to listen. When a spammer sends me email, then it costs my ISP (and hence me) money. If the net were truely a free resource then we still have issue that spam wastes my time. Not being immortal, I only have a limited amount of time available, and I don't want to use it reading spam.
Hence the point: Although I strongly believe in freedom of speech, I believe more strongly in the right to control what I listen to. I have no right to force people listen to what I have to say, and I expect the same in return.
Colin Scott If you build it, they will be dumb...
I SUE YOU! I sue you all! I sue the Internet, you bastards!
Bernard Shifman
P.S. (I sue your little dog too. Please tell me what his name is so I can write it on the papers.)
Funniest thing i've read in a long time. Like my new sig?
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Really? Try these versions out:
-
"I hate crackers as much as the next person, but I've also sent my DDoS client out using a nifty little script I bru'd up to a hundred or so companies."
- "I hate RIAA lawyers as much as the next person, but I've also sent my subpoenas out using a nifty little script I bru'd up to a hundred or so companies."
Remember, if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the SPAM.Hi. I'm Bernard Shit^Hfman, and I do computer consultancy services. I'm looking for contract work. I specialize in spam and sue services: I offer advice on how to spam, and then sue for damages. So any time you want to make some money, you can use my phone number as a starting point.
P.S If you don't get back to me within a month, you'll be liable for damages resulting from my going out of work. My lawyers will be getting in touch with you and you could be facing upto $1500 a day
P.P.S wanna fuck me?
But first, he'll do this: The fellow will take your insulting e-mail, find the little address you have attached, and plop it onto as many spam lists as he can find. So, he wakes up in the morning with one insulting letter and the good man gives you 100 messages a day about Free Horny Teens.
After you, sir...
- DaftShadow
Your troll would be so much more convincing if you didn't hide your email adress.
Think: In which world is speach most free:
1) A world where you can send single personal messages to anyone, but can't send multiple copies of the same message to people who haven't authorized you spending their ressources that way.
2) A world where you only can send messages to people who have explicitly authorized you to do so.
If we win the fight against spammers, we get world 1. If we lose, we get world 2.
Some people believe free speach, and thus world 1, is worth fighting for. Some feel the battle is already lost. Personally, my email filtering is now based on a whitelist, i.e. I have already joined world 2. Just like you have, by hiding your email adress.
Problem with your "free speech" and spam metaphor is that it does not cost me anything to hear someone.
Spam is push, not pull like software. It clogs bandwidth, which I pay for, it clogs hard drive space on my mail server, and it also is one of the biggest reasons why e-mail viruses are even still around.
Hows aboot where spam must have a "text/spam" mime type (or something), and I get to choose whether or not I download spam?
The best part about free speech is that I have the freedom to also not listen. But with spam I am forced to have to at the very least read the subject to decipher whether it is a real message.
Spam filters can filter out messages from companies that I have given my e-mail for product updates or announcements.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
French Slashdotters may have heard about David Hirschmann. In short (if you don't like Fish) David Hirschmann was supposed to have some misconception of the corporate world which he shared with one of his female co-workers an inapropriate way. She then would have forwarded it around the Internet and at the end DH may have comitted suicide.
This got covered quite a lot by the French Press but finally appeared to be a hoax as no one of these protagonists actualy existed.
Now in this case I'd also tend to think that it may not be real...
I don't know people as stupid as this b.shifman that would have an internet connection.
There's something extreme here. it smells like comedy...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Too bad Neil didn't give it to him. The email Bernie sent was to an alcor.concordia.ca address.
Concordia is a University.... in Montreal....
I already did this before I started reading comments but his @home address is already down. Try his consulting address instead:
bernard@shifmanconsulting.com
I thanked him for his entertaining read and suggested a more objective course of action... e.g. hide out in the hole you dug your career in to for a while.
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
Knowing him... he prolly will. He came after me for simply commenting on the mail in passing convesation. This dude is so full of it! Seeing as it made it on slashdot... among other sites will surely piss him off even more.
Unfortunately, many, many people buy things because of spam. It's actually one of the more effective ways to mass-market all kinds of crap. As long as there's good money in it, we'll have to deal with spam, regardless of what laws are passed (think offshore servers, etc.).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I have his resume in my mail archives also.
From bshifman@ameritech.net Tue Dec 18 05:47:40 2001
Its to a personal email address that I never use at all for the past few years.
The above is not worth reading.
Here
I've had the same thing happen on ebay before.
I found some guy trying to sell a CD with a bunch of GPL'd programs. Clearly visible in the screenshots where The Gimp, Staroffice, and Abiword. He claimed his company, something like
Blah industries, created the programs themselves.
I wrote him an email and let him know that if he didn't change the ad, he would be in violation of the GPL.
HE THREATENED TO SUE ME FOR HARRASMENT!!
He actually had his lawyer email me (yes, it was his lawyer, the email address was from a business and I went to the website and looked).
I wrote the lawyer back, told him what the man was doing, and never got a reply back.
I really wish I would have saved those emails, but I have switched services and computers since.
Are you kidding? I dunno if you're astroturfing or what, but that page is hilarious! That's probably the only article on Slashdot that I've read beginning to end in years, great great stuff.
:)
The funniest bit is where the spammers asks for the address and telephone number to sue. No doubt if that was followed through they'd end up trying to sue a telephone kiosk
Editors and posters, please take care: we're talking about Bernard Shifman (single 'f'), not any of the Bernard Shiffman's (double 'ff') out there.
As Mr Shifman seems to be highly irrascible, it's probably as well to at least get his name correct.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's now just after 5am, Chicago time. Is anyone else fighting the urge to dial *67,773-391-0595 'till someone picks up, act drunk, and try to order a pizza?
Synergy is your friend
You know you're having a bad day when the site trying to lambaste you gets listed on /.
/. effect!
You know you're having a worse day when the site refuses to crash under the
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
"Hmm. It looks like a beautiful morning. I'd like to share it. Let's just walk to my friend's house and and..."
"BEAUTIFUL WOMEN WANT TO MEET YOU!!!"
   "ARE YOU POOR, BROKE, DEEPLY IN DEBT!?!"
 "INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES AWAIT YOU!"
"...or maybe I'll just stay inside again today, so that I can listen to some Garcia and call them instead..."
     "WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN A PREVIEW OF OUR LONG-DISTANCE SERVICES?!"
    "PLEASE DON'T HANG UP, THIS IS NOT A TELEMARKETING MESSAGE!!"
  "HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE COST OF HEALTH CARE FOR THE UNINSURED?!"
"...or not. And I think my member is a perfectly adequate size, thank you very much. Oh well, at least I can just IM them."
    "DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR IT INFRASTRUCTURE IS!?!"
"I BECAME A MILLIONAIRE AND SO CAN YOU!"
 "YOU CAN BE PART OF THE ACTION AND WIN AT LORDOFTHERINGS.COM TODAY!!"
   "I SEND YOU THIS IM IN ORDER TO HAVE YOUR ADVICE."
"ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR RELATIONSHIP?!"
        "SPEND EVERY YEAR IN THE BAHAMAS WITH THIS AMAZING NEW PROGRAM!"
   "HOT YOUNG TEENS WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH YOU!"
"HERE IS THE INFORMATION YOU REQUESTED!!"
 
"...maybe I'll just..."
  "rssn wmn hre cll nw"
"damn, forgot to turn off sms. Maybe I'll just complain on slashdot."
 "YOU HAVE JUST 2 MORE CHANCES TO WIN $10,000 BY MODERATING THIS COMMENT UP TO 5 - INSIGHTFUL."
 
*whimper*
 
The ______ Agenda
...but that's not Spam
Of course it is.
It was unsolicited, it was bulk, it was email. UBE. Spam.
The mail including the headers was valid
Spam isn't about invalid headers. It's about unsolicited bulk email. UBE. Spam.
and Niel decides after recieving one unsolicited message that it's spam.
Yes. Because it was unsolicited, bulk and email. UBE. Spam.
Bullshit, if I send this guy an email by mistake am I spamming him?
If your message is easily identified as being a bulk message, thus being an unsolicited bulk email or UBE or spam: Yes. If it wasn't bulk, it wasn't spam and you'd be entirely safe.
Just sending large numbers of the same email out IS NOT spam.
Yes, bulk mail to people who solicited it is ok.
But sending out the same large numbers of the same email to people who haven't asked for it makes it unsolicited bulk email = UBE = Spam.
Do you get the point now?
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
I have lots of different interests. I have a life. Really, even if it doesn't feel that way now and then. ;-)
There are hundreds of organizations and corporations that I have some interest in, that I may buy products from, and who may entitled to assume if they are not doing further checks, that I'll be interested in hearing from.
If only those who have something I might be interested in e-mailed me a couple of times a year, there would be thousands of messages a year. There would be tens of messages every day, that would demand my attention.
Most of the time, I'm not interested, and my attention is the most precious thing I have. They can't just come in here and take it. If I would have to devote attention to tens of messages from companies that I might have an interest in a day, I would stop using e-mail (nowadays, well, I get tens of spams every day, but they are deleted without giving them much attention. I deeply despise spammers nevertheless for the resources they steal). That's why the only way is opt-in. If I am interested, I can go and search for the information. I'm pretty good at that.
This spammer obviously did no research at all when he spammed people. If he even looked at Steve's website, I think he would go away.
Instead of spamming lots of people, those who are interested in giving someone employment would search a database of resumes. It's much more effective for everyone.
It was definitly spamming that was going on.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I can feel the mod-downs coming, but I feel this has to be said. I think these anti-spam zealots teamed up on this poor spammer, and the only reason it went as far as it did (and as hilariously as it did) was because Shifman has a large amount of juvenile pride.
. Laura Atkins, who claimed her company received a spam from Bernard, also weighed in on the whole thing. Laura's company, Blighty.com is a privacy consulting firm: people hire her to find out who spammers are. Laura's name shows up in various anti-spam newsgroups also, including the one that Joe Greco & Bill Carton post in. In this thread, you can see this for yourself.
First off, it should be noted that almost all the players in this little cast (except for Shifman) are members of anti-spam Usenet groups. Do a Google Groups search for "Joe Greco", who claimed to receive one of Bernard's emails, and you'll get some not-so-nice reports of Joe's behavior:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=joe+greco&meta=
In fact, it appears that Joe, Bill, Neil, Laura, and her husband Steve are all active posters on news.admin.net-abuse.email
I believe everyone needs a hobby, and these anti-spam people are no exception. I hate spam as much as the next guy, but I think these people see themselves as anti-spam vigilantes. Most of the time, it's okay because they're doing some good (since spam DOES suck). In this case, it appears that while Bernard's emails were sent in bulk, they were not sent to random emails. He seemed to have made an honest attempt to ensure that only HR Departments receieved his mail. In some cases, he messed up and targeted the wrong people. Since he's trying to find jobs with computer companies, it's not uncommon to send HR requests to a non-HR department; after all, many small computer companies don't HAVE an HR department, but just an admin running the whole show.
I receive a lot of spam, but most of it is for breast-enlargement pills or Make-Money-Fast schemes. If I got an email like Bernard's, I would assume:
1) he probably sent this to companys other than mine
2) he probably found my company on the web, by hand, which is why he knew we were a computer company. If we sold sofas, I wouldn't have gotten the mail.
Thus, the emails were bulk and they were unsolicited, but they were sent to addresses posted on the websites of the target companies STRICTLY for the purpose of receiving job requests and resumes.
I think Neil overreacted, and his anti-spam bully friends took over. These guys cover for each other, and pick on the alleged spammers as a team.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
1) Send an unsolicited resume _everywhere_, not just to places you have researched and have some reason to think you might have a chance at...
2) When they ask you to stop sending resumes, respond with foul language and threats of lawsuit.
And this idiot did it repeatedly!
Really, even McDonald's won't hire you if they are aware of a history like that.
I know there are a lot of you that think spam is no big deal, but for those of us that are dealing with a lot of domains and a lot of email addresses, it is getting unbearable. Yes, I can filter 99% of it, but geez, it is REALLY becoming a waste of my bandwidth even if I throw out my time wasted. Bandwidth = Money.
Missouri's new anti-spam legislation should go into effect with the next couple of weeks but it's not going to be effective without more states getting involved.
For those of you that care, write or email your local representatives and ask what anti-spam measures are in place and what can be done to get more if yours aren't effective. Tell them about the Washington law and it's effectiveness.
At a bare minimum, another thing I would like to see is a federal law that allowed every domain to have some email address (maybe postmaster) that it would be illegal to send spam to. This address would be strictly used for individuals needing to contact the administrator of a machine or domain. Imagine that...
Do any of you know how to trace down these 800 number companies that are sending spam off servers from overseas? Server admin's overseas either can't read my english requests or don't give a crap about spam coming from their servers. I've actually started calling the 800 numbers leaving valid contact information in hopes that they'll call me and I can rip someone's head off for two seconds. Amazingly enough, I haven't even gotten any responses!!!
I think I even got a fraudulent spam the other day. This "company" was claiming to be a non-profit child abuse organization. I'm almost sure they weren't and they were simply suckering money out of people. I tried to report it to both the real company and the FCC but I don't know if I got to the right people or not.
Are there any groups that are actively standing out against spam and lobbying the politicians? If so, I'm ready to join, if not, I need to start one.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I think these anti-spam zealots teamed up on this poor spammer, and the only reason it went as far as it did (and as hilariously as it did) was because Shifman has a large amount of juvenile pride.
A couple of things:
1. I am the spambag.net guy.
2. In my experience, people who use the term 'anti-spam zealots' are either spambags themselves, of members of the mainsleaze spam lobby, (i.e. Ken Magill of the Direct Marketing Associations, or various random clueless marketdroids who occasionally write for mainstream rags).
3. The reason Shifman was piled on was because he deserved it. Nobody cared about him much until he began calling people up on the phone, yelling at them, or leaving crank messages on the answering machine. The initial version of spambag.net was only a few short paragraphs. Then Shifman began calling my voice mail and screaming into my answering machine.
Here's a free clue to wanna-be grubors and speedbumps. Be very careful before you decide to waive your dick around. Someone might just have a bigger one themselves.
From the read it seems readily appearant that their only "provocative" actions were to forward a complaint to the postmaster addresses of whatever ISP Bernie was using at the time. From there this little shithead goes ballistic, threatens legal action, calls people names and generally harasses them. The guy is a moron and deserves every bit of it. Okay, so they don't let up when it becomes obvious that Bernie's full of shit, but big deal..
;-)
I personally think the only appropriate response left is just to have him whacked and be done with it (hey, I know some people in Chicago, you know?)...
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
My definition of the word is more specific than yours for the very reason that people are quick to define any mail that they aren't interested in as spam. When you have a publically accessible medium of communication you are implicitly agreeing that anyone may attempt to contact you at least once. That's just the way it is. Assuming that the headers are correct and there is a way to let the sending party know that you don't want this mail anymore AND they stop sending it, it is not spam. When there is no way to unsubscribe, or no way to contact because of forged headers then it becomes spam. It doesn't matter that it's bulk or not, that's just an attribute usually found with spam. Let me ask you this, if I repeatedly send you a mail trying to sell you something, and I've forged the headers so that you cannot contact me, and my unsubscribe link does not work, am I spamming you? What if I'm only sending to you? It's not bulk and by your definition not spam.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Instead of spamming lots of people, those who are interested in giving someone employment would search a database of resumes. It's much more effective for everyone.
Do you know that spontaneous job applications are common practice ? They are appreciated by many companies and human resources managers who read them and put them in a database even if the company has no job available at the time of reading. Later, if a position needs someone, they usually look first in this database before posting ads or other means of asking for candidates.
I read somewhere that spontaneous job applications account for 50 percent of some hiring.
Of course, the person looking for a job should research the company he is sollicitating and customizing any email he sends. But opt-in only for job sollicitations is not appropriate and even human resources managers would not like it.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Your definition is less specific than mine and explicitely allows email abuse to continue. Just consider Multi Level Marketing / Pyramid schemes ("make money fast"), where everyone does this "once" only, for an example where your definition doesn't help at all.
It's not wether I am interested or might be interested. It's wether it's unsolicited, bulk and email. UBE. Spam. It's just as simple as that.
Think about it.
Let me ask you this, if I repeatedly send you a mail trying to sell you something, and I've forged the headers so that you cannot contact me, and my unsubscribe link does not work, am I spamming you? What if I'm only sending to you? It's not bulk and by your definition not spam.
Then you'd be harassing me, which is also abuse of email and a violation of the AUP at practically every provider on the planet.
Well then, good luck with your view on spam. Just don't try to use it as an excuse once you send your first spam, since no provider will agree with you.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
When you have a publically accessible medium of communication you are implicitly agreeing that anyone may attempt to contact you at least once.
I disagree. How many business companies are there in the world ? If all of them send you an email for advertising, will you take the time to unsuscribe a few million times ? And if they are really nasty, they can even make the unsubscribe process a bit complicated or long.
So the basic question to ask is not who can send you an email but how did they get your email ?. It's a matter of privacy. If you give your email to one company, they should be prevented by law to give or sell your private records except if you authorize it.
Furthermore, you should have the right to see and edit your records for any company that have anything about you. I don't know for the US but, in Belgium, that's the way it works and I am happy with it.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Has anybody gone through his resume and attempted to contact his (supposed) former employers to hear what they have to say about him, if anything? Did he really work for who he said he did? Is he committing fraud?
Forget the law, I think we can eliminate most SPAM very simply with as small change to current technology I've outlined before:
"I can't figure out who to open a discussion with about this, but I have this simple idea that should at least eliminate the anonymous/spoofed spam, which is all I get.
You simply modify the mail servers to query the sending server whether a received mail actually came from that server. The query is a key based on the contents of the message and a key included with the message, which is itself based on the same contents and a private key of the sending server. If the sending server has been upgraded with this feature, it can validate, or not, the message. If it's not validated, the message is bounced. For backwards compatibility, if the sending server hasn't been upgraded, the message always goes through. [Here's the beauty of the idea:] But as more servers are upgraded, fewer and fewer servers will be able to be used as scapegoats for spoofed spam, and pressure will mount to upgrade these servers as well.
Eventually, the only spam you will get will be from a valid return address, which can be handled more effectively in more conventional ways. In fact, adding manual bouncing at this stage might be helpful as well, since now it really will bounce back to the sender.
I realize I've glossed over some details here, and someone much more experienced in mail servers will have to massage this approach to make it practical, but I think the germ of a very simple but effective idea is here."
Xesdeeni
I recall an online altercation that I had a few years back. A post appeared in one of the UK ISP groups advertising a "too good to be true" service. This was at the time when narrowband access was going nuts in the UK, with companies taking a year's money off of people, then going bust the next day.
As a warning to the terminally gullible, I posted the whois info for the domain, and noted that it didn't match the trading address on the website.
A few hours later I received a vicious email from the poster threatening legal action because I had posted his home address on the group, when he was only the admin for the site, and threatening to post my home details all over the place.
Well, fuck me sideways, I thought, and let loose with a tirade about how anyone could possibly call themselves an admin when they didn't even understand that whois records are public - which mine were, and so I couldn't give a damn about what he did with them.
Two minutes after I sent it, I thought... wait a minute. There's a real human being receiving this.
And so I hammered out an apology, a genuine and heartfelt and sincere apology. Oh, I didn't mean a word of it, of course. The guy had screwed up, and was too stubborn to admit it. But I screw up every day, and don't like having it pointed out, and it was simply cruel to heap any further misery on this poster.
So I apologised for posting his address, and he replied in a calmer manner, and we had a chat, and he turned out to be a decent (if slightly clueless) bloke. He declined my offer to post a public apology on the group. I would have had no qualms about doing so, because knowing that I was absolutely in the right meant that I really didn't have anything to prove, and that my priority was to reduce the amount of human suffering in the world (in a small way, but every little helps, right?).
It's a shame that Bill didn't take the opportunity to defuse this situation. It's so obvious that Shifman is in the wrong that it really doesn't need to be laboured. He's clearly not very bright, and so it's rather cruel (funny, yes, but cruel) to taunt him so. I'm sure that Bill could just send a without-prejudice apology and walk away from this, and we'd understand that he's doing it from kindness and generosity, to dig Shifman out of the hole that he's dug for himself.
The fact that Bill doesn't do this, and that he's taking care to avoid actionable statements even though he claims that Shifman has no case rather implies that Bill isn't entirely confident that he's in the right here. And that's a shame, because he could end this with one brave and courteous gesture, for pity's sake, and out of strength, not weakness.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I like to save the SPAM that I get from the people that want to tell me how to make millions, and then forward it to the SPAMmers that are supposedly representing charities and are asking for money. I figure I should cut out the middle-man and just let these "charities" make the millions for themselves!
If the governement taxed email, say a penny a piece, legitimate users would harly notice, but spammers would be tanked.
Better yet, if they charged 34 cents per spam -nobody- would -ever- send out unsolicited messages to people in mass quantities. <roll eyes>
Aside from that the government has no business taxing what goes over a privately owned network. If high speed bandwidth came along with being a tax paying citizen of the US I could see email as being taxable -- but there's no way something like that can, should, or would go through.
If it does next I'll expect a tax on swearing to keep me from doing that too.
The thing that bothers me about this is that I don't see anyone saying how many e-mails Mr. Shifman sent out. The original message posted on this site has one name in the "To:" line, and no mention of a "CC:" line. That suggests that it was sent to exactly one person. My question is, did Mr. Schwartzman know that Mr Shifman was sending out multiple e-mails when he made his complaint to Mr. Shifman's ISP. If so, how did he know? (I know that he found out later on when other people got involved, but at the time that he registered his complaint, how did he know?) From the page itself, it looks like Mr. Schwartzman got a single email (one sent to an inappropriate address, true) and got the sender's e-mail account cancelled. Is there more to the story? Because if not, it sounds like Mr. Schwartzman was in the wrong. Sending out one e-mail to the wrong person is annoying, but it's not spam.
This is Bernie. I wanted to let you know that this is the last straw. This post and all the others like it are slander and I'm suing you, slashdot and all of its ussers who read it for making a major big mistake with me.
Attention everyone: you must send the name of your attorney to me by 5 PM today or I will sue you for not letting me sue you and will have a major big law suit on your ass. If you really piss me off I will sue the entire country of Canada which deserves it anyways because it is not as smart as an expert IT guru from Chicago like me.
This post cost me $2 million to write so I'm suing slashdot for my costs.
BERNIE
I am humbled by the mastery demonstrated here. ;+)
And I quote:
YEAH, BUT HOW DO YOU REALLY FEEL?
Matt from The Culprits' Open Letter to Spammers
From: "Matt Hiltner"
To: "'Neil Schwartzman'"
Subject: Open letter to spammers
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 00:57:00 -0600
Mr. Spammer, you swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As they say in Texas. I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.
You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.
You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.
I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?
Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.
You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.
You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.
And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake? You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.
On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.
You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill.
You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you my not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.
The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.
P.S.
You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine,conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good.
In other words, go away.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
- The address listed on his domain registration is over four miles from city hall (source: MapQuest.com). Granted I know nothing about Chicago's layout, but I would assume this is not in the high-rise district.
- There are no less than nine schools and nine supermarkets within the immediate vicinity of his location (source: MapQuest.com).
- In his block alone there are 164 housing units of which nearly 50% are single occupant dwellings. In addition, nearly half of the housing in that same block are rentals. (source for both: US Census for 2000)
- Again, his block alone is only about 1/4 of a mile long (source: US Census for 2000).
Now, the "suite" number listed on his domain registration is in the 400's, implying it's on the fourth floor. The fact that there even exists a unit number in the address proves it's a multi-occupant building. Taking into consideration all of the above information along with the type of work he claims to do, it's my opinion (possibly incorrect) the address listed in his domain records is most likely a single-family apartment.I seriously doubt his claims of the greatness of his career. He's probably just some wannabe compulsive liar who screwed up and refuses to bow out gracefully.
BTW, I'm not infallible (wait a minute, yes I am) so I would appreciate others checking my figures. :)
Folks, take a look at this. Mr. Shifman hasn't sued anyone for responding to his spam, and I'll wager he never will. He's made baseless threats, referring to non-existent lawyers. That's common among people who feel backed into a corner and don't understand law.
The site is mirrorred on spamflames.com. As the domain reseller for that domain, I also received a legal threat from Mr. Shifman. I have no intention of responding, and don't feel even slightly threatened by it. When I get court papers, I'll take it seriously.
Tom Geller
Considering how many spams are sent through open relays, which are usually caused by someone (often in east Asia) doing a default install which includes a five-year-old version of Sendmail, or using some broken utility to generate their sendmail.cf file (which can also result in an open relay, since that stuff gets upgraded along with Sendmail), and of which the person running the computer may not even know is running (thanks to the glory days of RedHat turning every inet daemon on by default), the number of broken servers will probably increase at a much higher rate than the servers that get upgraded.
Every time I go to a used book store, or a thrift store, and see years-old distros of Linux on the shelf, I shudder at the thought of how much 'sploitable stuff is permanently etched into those old CD-ROMs.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
[linuxho@faramir linuxho] $ telnet mail.relay.com 25
Trying 63.192.100.60...
Connected to mail.relay.com (63.192.100.60).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 CheckPoint FireWall-1 secure SMTP server
HELO mail.microsoft.com
250 Hello mail.microsoft.com, pleased to meet you
MAIL FROM: bill.gates@microsoft.com
250 2.1.0 bill.gates@microsoft.com... Sender OK
RCPT TO: bernard@shifmanconsulting.com
250 2.1.5 bernard@shifmanconsulting.com... Recipient OK
DATA
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
Hi Bernard,
I suppose having your name posted on Slashdot and having practically everyone in the IT industry know your name must be pretty humiliating given the context it was published in.
I'm sure you've learned a lesson about when it is a good idea to back off and apologize, even when you feel you are in the right. This is probably the most expensive way I have ever seen anyone learn that lesson.
I am offering you a job at Microsoft, mostly out of pity. Please send your resume to HR@microsoft.com with a cover letter indicating your areas of expertise, and attach a copy of this e-mail to it.
Bill Gates
Chief Visionary
Microsoft Corp.
^D
include $sig;
1;
Bernie has done all of us slashdotters a great benefit by helping instill a meme that simplifies our lives. Just think of the ways we can save time now by immortalizing his name when we refer to disease of high-esteem, nonexistent competency fools that bark empty threats every time their useless lives are recognized for what they are.
/. poster boy for arrogant incompetence.
/. fame? Hey Bernie, your fifteen minutes are ticking!
For example, someone sent you a totally bogus loser resume?
"Oh geez, get rid of that resume. It's a Bernie Shifman."
Spending the weekend cleaning up a totally fscked up wiring or server job? "Yea, I'm working late on a Bernie Shifman job."
Bernie deserves to be imortalized as the
*scoove*
p.s. Anyone hear if Bernie's learned of his
His web sites, here and especially here have images that are surely copyrighted.
I wonder if the copyright owner would be interested in a lawsuit?
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Harassing phone calls are still recorded at the phone company even if you "disable" caller ID with *67
Two harassing phone calls from the same phone number constitutes telephone harassment.
Moral. Use a pay phone. Use several of them.
I think the point is to (1) have a way by which servers can be set to recognize & reject bogus return addresses, and (2) get enough servers running this way so that the ones that don't download the patches can be blocked without major disruptions. Spam aside, if we keep giving equal rights on the net to insecure boxes and outdated server programs, eventually any 10 year old with a DDOS script is going to be able to recruit enough zombies to bring the net down world-wide. So at some point we've got to black-hole those that aren't even making an effort...
OTOH, I really don't want to rule out anonymous mail entirely. Let's make an exception: false-names get black-holed, but return address = "anonymous.coward" (say) gets passed through the backbone. Individual users can choose whether or not to bounce anonymous mail, and if a server is getting overloaded those may go first.
The other issue is that there are some legitimate reasons for wanting responses to come back to a different IP address than the sender. So it should be possible for you to convince the server that you do own an alternate return address, and have it accept that as legitimate, or even do the address change for you. But I'm not sure the extra code complexity would be acceptable in all server installations...
Dial "0" to call collect. DON'T save him a buck or two.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
"Coffee & Cat"? Haven't seen this before. Does it imply laughing so hard you spill your coffee on the cat?
Yep, that's exactly what it refers to. I've gotten a few kooky lawsuite threats too...
Actually, what's odd about the loser in question is that he spelled "lawsuit" correctly. Usually they do spell it "lawsuite".
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!