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Spam King Living High in the Bayou
mikey573 writes "Connecticut's main newspaper, The Hartford Courant, decided to bring the issue of spam to the forefront with a top headline front page story Spam King Living High In The Bayou in its Sunday print edition. The article goes into describing the spam marketing company "Opt-In Marketing Services". The article goes too much into glorifying one person's success with spam, while failing to underscore the potential problems he has caused for others."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Noooo!
Now we know he's not just a jerk spammer, but he's also an idiot!
"Hi, I'm one of the most hated people in America. Here's my name, a photo of me, what kind of car I drive, and where I live."
I'm suddenly having Pulp Fiction flashbacks. I need a couple of pipe-hittin bruthas with a pair of pliers and blowtorch.
Did everyone see how Moby is responding people who chose to send him criticism of his work and/or negative views of the internet fanbase? By subscribing them automatically to his mailing list.
Glad he believes in opt-in. I wonder how long until some takes advantage of this to harass people with Moby newsletters.
mention exactly where in the bayou, like, say, an address?
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
They'll eat SPAM, spammers too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Someone else has done their homework on Scelson there is a bunch of info, including tel #s and addresses
here.
His interview makes him seem like an utter chump. Make him pay...
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
He seems to missing a fundamental point: You do not have a Constitutional right to an internet connection. You cannot (or should not be able to) force a company to do business with you if they don't want to. If Qwest sees that they are losing customers because they provide internet access to you, they have a fiduciary duty to terminate their business relationship with you. I think I'll start buying stock in telecoms and ISP's just for the purpose of filing shareholder lawsuits against companies that cave in to spammers like this. Breach of fiduciary duty is extremely serious to large companies, and you can sue individual CEOs/board members/etc as well as the company. He wants to use the courts to force companies to provide services, the shareholders have a right to use the courts to make sure the companies DON'T provide those services to him.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
C'mon. Everybody hates spam. Even the slashdot trolls posted the obligatory net.abuse news group. Thing is, why EXACTLY is he rich?
1: He accepts jobs that ONLY pay 1000$ or more. Even the herbal stuff gets into this bracket.
2: Percentage cut on people who buy goods.
Well, even though people hate it, IT MAKES MONEY. I dont care what it is: drugs, pop, cd's, DVD's, equipment... People do what makes money. Evidently spam makes a lot, even though the heavy equipment required to send it.
If he wants to spend the money to send spam, let him. I see banning it as against the first amendment (speech). However, that doesnt stop ISP's putting spam filters (and low transfer speeds). My ISP even has procmail, so I can make my own.
...if they found him to do an interview, couldn't a crack team of geeks be a 'reputable media outlet' and contact this guy? We go to 'interview' him, and leave him with a token of our appreciation. A small incindiary device should do the trick. Or maybe just have him drawn and quartered.
Stupid Spammers. How many people actually read the crap that's sent? I mean, who wouldn't like a Penis Mighter? Or why go to University when they can just mail you a degree? Spammers could enrich our lives!
And I know there's going to be some troll out there saying "You read them because you know what they're touting!" You know what? I work at an ISP. We read all the spam we get and have a hall of fame for the best stuff. Virii also get one.
PCWORLD did a story on Opt-In suing its ISP so they couldn't be disconnected:
Opt-In Marketing Services, an e-mail advertising firm based in Mandeville, Louisiana, has filed suit against its ISP, the backbone provider, and three antispam organizations claiming restraint of trade and deceptive practices.
Opt-In Marketing Services is one of several commercial e-mailers associated with Ronnie Scelson, a well-known spammer. However, Turner says that his company complies with all federal and state regulations for commercial e-mail and asks consumers for permission before sending advertisements to their in-boxes.
In the suit, Turner claims the three antispam organizations are "sinister entities" that have conspired to put him out of business by blacklisting his Internet addresses. He says the organizations faked many of the complaints received by Qwest and CoVista, use phony names and addresses, and received donations from AOL and MSN in return for ignoring those large ISPs' efforts to send their own unsolicited commercial e-mail.
"They have their own set of rules which have no basis in law," Turner claims in a written statement. "They threaten to blacklist anyone they do not like or who has not worked out a "deal' with them. They hide their identities, refuse to give their true locations, or addresses, [and] generate fake complaints."
Of the three organizations, only Spamcop forwards complaints to ISPs or solicits donations. Julian Haight, president of Seattle-based Spamcop, admits it's possible someone faked the complaints, "but they'd have to be very smart geeks to forge the e-mail headers well enough to fool us." He also says his organization has never received money from any major ISP and does not engage in reciprocal deals, noting that Spamcop recently blacklisted AOL for a few hours after a series of spam complaints.
Spamhaus.org director Steve Linford says it's highly unlikely that anyone sent fake complaints, given that it's possible to easily verify e-mail messages by checking the logs at the ISP from which they're sent. Rather than hide from spammers, Linford has posted explicit instructions on how to locate him on the news.admin.net-abuse.e-mail newsgroup.
Linford adds that Opt-In Marketing might get more than it bargained for. "If a spammer sued us we'd go straight for discovery, find out their real names and addresses, and forward that information to the FTC and their state attorney general," he says
The e-mailer claims that CoVista Communications of Little Falls, New Jersey, was wrong to cut off part of its Internet access on April 30. According to the suit, the shutdown resulted from complaints received by CoVista and its backbone provider, Qwest Communications of Denver, from Spamcop.net, Spamhaus.org, and the Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS). All three organizations operate so-called blacklists that enable subscribers to block e-mail coming from suspected spam operations.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The Infamous 419 Scam
It's a billion dollar industry in Nigeria, and has paid for the careers of much of that nation's government.
It has, however, allowed for some very interesting counter-scams:
The "Buddy Weiserman Counter-Scam
The "David Lee Roth" Counter-Scam, with cache
The "Kieron Dykes" Counter-Scam
:^)
Ryan Fenton
He's right - it isn't. But it damn well should be.
If ever there was a sentence that motivates you to support anti-spamming groups, the spammer's words above should be it.
If I didn't ask for it I don't want it.
I joined up just now. You?
I consider his claim of great wealth and money making to have the same level of truthfulness...
I've known this kid for about 7 years from America Online when I started out and spam was starting to get big.. Http://www.pteam.net He pulls in about 250k a year. He gets tons of vacations and toys for spamming for companies.
At 80 million emails per day and 3 seconds average to delete each, that means 7.6 _years_ are wasted of people's lives for each day he blasts his spam.
CNN hasnt said anything on it yet? So I guess there is no confirmation?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone know what happened to that Napster-spinoff that would eradicate spam forever an bring peace and happiness to the masses?
IIRC they would use p2p software connected to mail servers where users could report certain mails as spam. combined with some nifty AI, the p2p network would start filering out spam at the servers when enough people had marked a certain mail as spam.
Or something like that... Sounded pretty cool to me when I first heard about it.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
If he's running such a legitamite business, why does he have to hide who he is when he's conducting business? The last time I got an advertising flyer from Ford, it didn't have Car Sellers, Inc. or Max Cohen Motors as the return address...
This article makes some good points, and so does the guy that runs that company. He says that advertising is everywhere, so why are people getting so pissy about it when it's in e-mail? Good point, I say. We're often handed crap in the street, forced to digest TV ads, or have to face hundreds of billboards, yet we don't whine as much as when we get some e-mail ads. Why?
Scelson sees a big difference between what he does - which he considers proper e-mail marketing - and indiscriminate, anonymous e-mail advertising - which he regards as true spam.
Right again. Getting ads in your e-mail is not, as a concept, bad. I mean, we've all bought something that we've seen in an advert, right? The whole concept of advertising is not just an evil scheme, it's one that customers can find just as useful as the businesses. We need to learn about new deals, and it helps us shop around.
"I've gone into newsgroups and fought to prove that spam can be done right," Scelson says.
This brings me to my main point. Currently, 90% of the spam I receive is 'done wrong'. It's marked up with irrelevant subject lines designed to TRICK me into opening them (things like 'Re: that thing you wanted' or 'Your account is overdue!').
If we're going to have e-mail ads, let the spammers at least 'do it right'. We want all ads to have subjects starting with 'COMM:', 'AD:' or similar, so that we can filter them out or into a different folder if we want to. And then, we want relevant subjects that sell to us!
I mean, come on, if I got a great 0% APR credit card offer in as 'AD: Visa 0% APR Offer from SomeCardCo', I might well be interested! But not if it looks like a scam or some cheesey trick mailer to harvest e-mail addresses.
Ads should also be targeted by location. I live in the UK, and if I receive ads for US credit card companies, what bloody good is that!? Sell me things I want, and that I can buy!
So, I don't think spam, as a concept, is evil.. just the way it's currently sent is.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Dude, you'be been trolled.
Also, dude, you're getting a Dell!
Old ./ Spam, ya know.
Maybe we're going about this all wrong. If every time we click through it costs the sponsor $1, maybe we should ALL click through. Then not buy the product. If the ratio of costs to purchases drops, business won't consider email a viable form of promotion.
/.ers: we should pool our resources and setup a fund to put hits out on people like this.
If this country actually ran on the idea that all speech is protected speech, I would agree with the position that spam could be protected. However, one of the principles that we seem to apply in our society is that speech is not sacroscant. Think slander, libel, obscenity, and harassment laws, and the famous "Shouting fire in a crowded theater" rule of thumb. By these standards, spam absolutely should not be considered to be protected speech.
Spam relies a great deal of public and private resources -- resources that the spammer can never adequately pay for -- and by simply receiving spam I am cost time and money for the privilege of reading somebody's advertisement. Obscenity supposedly causes harm. Slander and libel obviously cause harm. Harassment causes harm. Does spam somehow get a free pass because it involves money changing hands?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Fine, when it stops costing me money. Ever heard of metered bandwidth? His constitutional right to freedom of speech ends when I have to pay for it.
;).
The problem is that unless you receive thousands of messages per day, the bandwidth consumed by spam emails is utterly negligeable compared to the bandwidth you consume doing things like reading Slashdot. Thus, I doubt an argument based on bandwidth costs would fly.
My own argument is that I have to spend time identifying and deleting these things. You could argue that this represents time I could have been spending working, and apply an hourly rate to that for something larger than bandwidth costs would work out to, or if you wanted to be a real bastard you could tally up the total amount of time you waste on spam per year, multiply that by your estimate life span, and then look up how much court settlements have been valued at for other circumstances where someone loses that part of their life (e.g. by exposure to a health hazard that shortens their lifespan).
I doubt the second approach would fly either, but it would certainly be fun to try, and a lot more lucrative
Make him pay...
The most reasonable approach to spam that I've heard to date is for ISPs to charge, say, a penny apiece for emails above a (reasonably large) monthly allotment. Normal users who send fifty or a hundred emails a month won't suffer, but the cost will quickly become prohibitive for spammers.
How do we lobby ISPs to implement this?
someday website TOS's will say "links to this site may not appear on slashdot"
google cache
"cogito, ergo sum"
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
this guy is going to get the shit kicked out of him, now that his name and hometown have been posted on an site known for being passionately anti-spam.
I didn't think that article was that positive - they did talk about some of the evils of spam:
"Once merely an annoyance, junk e-mail is quickly reaching epidemic proportions in cyberspace. Billions of such messages regularly crisscross the Internet, pitching everything from herbal remedies to X-rated websites.
The growing flood of e-mail advertising has crashed Internet servers, clogged connections and cost business untold hours of wasted employee time. It has also forced millions of bleary-eyed Internet users to undertake the seemingly endless chore of clearing the electronic clutter from their in-box."
For one, Scelson says, Opt-In Marketing concentrates on sending e-mail to people with accounts at large, consumer-oriented services such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and America Online and tries to avoid e-mail addresses at businesses.
yeah that should be easy with 80 million addresses.
You didn't read the article, did you?
Once merely an annoyance, junk e-mail is quickly reaching epidemic proportions in cyberspace. Billions of such messages regularly crisscross the Internet, pitching everything from herbal remedies to X-rated websites.
The growing flood of e-mail advertising has crashed Internet servers, clogged connections and cost business untold hours of wasted employee time. It has also forced millions of bleary-eyed Internet users to undertake the seemingly endless chore of clearing the electronic clutter from their in-box.
Anybody got his personal or at least his business email address?
If there is somebody out there do, share it. Everytime you guys got spam, just forward it to that email account. You can set a rule for your e-mail client application, so everytime you received junk emails the software will forward and delete them. It will reduce junk mails you will receive.
That's just an idea.
For al the 80plus spam I get EACH day... spam that I do NOT opt in for that all says that I ahve opted in for the service...
Only 'flamers' flame!
ABUSERS: Ronald R. Scelson
[Birthdate: 12-11-71 or 72, New Orleans, LA, married]
cajunspam@aol.com / avsrscelson2000@yahoo.com / dff@yahoo.com
Amy Hoolahan [wife/sister?]
43 CYPRESS MEADOWS LOOP
SLIDELL, LA 70460 US
Home: (504) 646-2225
Work: 504-649-6248
You cannot (or should not be able
to) force a company to do business with you if they don't want to.
Wrong-O. If you're open for business, you must do business with any non-illegal customer that comes along. Federal law. And the anti-spammers who interfere in established business relationships have opened themselves big-time to a federal prison sentence. Not to mention that they're violating the secondary boycott laws, another federal offense.
We need test cases, quick.
With BW caps all the rage now at some ISPs, wouldn't that make for an easier time sueing SPAMmers for wasting your limited resources?
We have the same problem but in my postbox, every mail costs money. If this smartass is forced to pay 37 cents per e-mail, I would love to see if he will be willing to continue spam people. E-mail should cost money, and you should have quotas with it.
why does this vermin still have a pulse?
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
You are so utterly ignorant of the law. Maybe that's why you are keeping yourself anonymous. Wanna cite the federal law you think exists to force businesses to do business with just anyone? You can't, because it doesn't exist.
As for anti-spammers, there is no interference whatsoever. They are simply boycotting. They have a right to boycott any business they choose. Oh, in case you hadn't noticed, they do have the right to refuse to do business with whomever they don't want to. And if they don't want to do business (trade packets) with an ISP that keeps spammers connected, that's their choice and their right. Now the ISP decides whether they want to do business with the spam side of the net, or the non-spam side. Seems more and more are choosing the non-spam side.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
First the article although informative was a little uninformed and written withmucho journalistic license.
Slidell is drained swampland. Not know in Louisiana for its bayous. Bayou towns are a little more south and west of new orleans and run along Highway 90. There is nary a cajun in those parts. Unless they are transplants.
Slidell is where you go to live when you can get outta the double wide. It is a white trash suburb(pardon if youlive there but it is not one of the nicest places in Louisiana. Reclaimed swamp that happens to be near a an ultra rich area, but not included.
Slidell is another case of people moving to the burbs and talking about how great it is. Slidell's greatedt claim to fame is it is a great place to piss off the interstate on your way to New Orleans.
As for the guy, yeah he is a shit. But he probably does make bank. Consider the sheer numbers of the unwashed still out there who still think the internet is a virtual gold mine. Say he gets 20 of those suckers a month to sign up at a grand a pop. Who is the real fool? Do the math 80 million email adresses are 80 potential million customers for him as well.
Sometimes people pay all of us ungodly amounts of cash for tech services(85 bucks an hour to install a printer or put the new Dell box on the lan.) Us tech guys do not have a stellar rep either.
Email campaigns do make money, for the person selling them. I have been offered good money to do them, and haven't, but depending on my job situation you never know.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
ABUSERS: Ronald R. Scelson
http://www.freedomforum.org/speech/1999/10/20laspa m.aspa ge8.htm ln ths/Feb98 / eb23pr1.htm
[Birthdate: 12-11-71 or 72, New Orleans, LA, married]
cajunspam@aol.com / avsrscelson2000@yahoo.com / dff@yahoo.com
Amy Hoolahan [wife/sister?]
43 CYPRESS MEADOWS LOOP
SLIDELL, LA 70460 US
Home: (504) 646-2225
Work: 504-649-6248
PHONE NUMBERS: 888-365-0000 ext. 1648 / 800-242-0363 EXT. 2427
888-724-3108 x5413752
504 781 8117 / 504-957-1037 / 504-847-1232 / 504-649-7751
504-781-6615 / 504-649-6248 / 504-781-6655 / 504-831-1595
504-646-2225 / 504-641-0876
FAX: 504 641 0810 / 504-456-0995 / 504-781-6615
MORE INFO: Connelly sues to keep spamming:
http://www.frc.org/legal/lf99j05.html
http://www.mediainst.org/digest/fall1999/p
Wife Florence Fox sued for Nu-Skin Pyramid Scheme:
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/press2/mo
This little weasel is just the middleman. If he was shut down the sleezeballs that pay him to spam people would just find another little weasel to send out the spam. It's just like trying to stop illegal drugs by arresting street level dealers, someone else steps in as soon as you bust a pusher.
To stop the spamming you have to go after the people paying them. A Good starting point would be ISPs blocking the IP addresses of sites that pay people to spam. Then spamming would result in fewer page hits instead of more hits, and cost them money. It would also stop the spammers that are sending the crap from Russia, Asia, and other areas where ISPs are glad to even get spammer biz. Another way to cut down on spamming would be for the Feds to start arresting the scam artists running Pyramids and other schemes that are allready illegal fraud operations. Scam Spamming with a snail mail return address should ammount to advertising your location so the feds know where to find you.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
The growing flood of e-mail advertising has crashed Internet servers, clogged connections and cost business untold hours of wasted employee time. It has also forced millions of bleary-eyed Internet users to undertake the seemingly endless chore of clearing the electronic clutter from their in-box.
I've yet to see any of us complain about the pop under and other adverts served up along with the ignorant and self rightous article. All forms of advertising on the net represent an abuse of a public resource and undermine it's pull nature. Mozilla refuses to download most of the offensive images, but 90% of home computer users cluelessly suck up all that crap with IE. That crap gets in the way of my email, ssh and sites I want to look at.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Please? Why bomb abortion clinics when there are so many valid targets like this man?
Kill his wife, neuter his children. Shoot his dog. Drag him through the street. Tan his hide and put it on public display.
Put a hit on him.
Send him to Isreal dressed as a Palestinean bomber.
Kill the mother fucker.
Send a message.
Fucking douchebag moron. Spam filters don't "lower" transfer speed, and spam isn't a first ammendment issue. Dipshit.
However, data transmission SHOULD NOT be considered as long as you're paying the correct price for the bandwidth (perferrably per K-packet).
That's crazy. Kiddie porn and death threats are absolutely intolerable. Paying to transmit obviously illegal speech doesn't legitimize it.
Spam is a gray area, but it's certainly not true that you can transmit whatever you like without any limits as long as you've paid for the bandwidth.
---"If Qwest sees that they are losing customers because they provide internet access to you, they have a fiduciary duty to terminate their business relationship with you."
Does the same analogy hold true for the snail mail industry? NO.
Two words: Mail Fraud.
There are plenty of long standing laws and rules that regulate postal mail. Aside from prohibiting fraudulent advertising (as much of today's spam is), correct identification of who sent the letter is also required.
The spam idiots pay for the media, and pay for postage to my house. I just toss it away. Some are crafty and make it look like legit-like bills. Some promise prizes. It all goes to the shredder. My point is, if they pay through the nose for constand bandwidth, give them what they asked.
It's much more accurate to compare electronic spam transmission to other electronic mediums, such as telephone solicitation and advertising by sending "junk" faxes.
For telephone soliciation, a 1992 law regulates callers to identify themselves within 30 seconds. Companies who call are required to maintain "do not call lists", and the FCC imposes harsh penalties on soliciters who repeatedly call after requests to place that number on their do not call list. Many states have laws allowing individuals to sue for $200 to $1000 as well.
For junk faxes, which are the closest analogy to spam email (same or similar message sent to many numbers, to be read by receipient when they notice it later on), JUNK FAXING IS ILLEGAL.
Also illegal under the 1992 act is telephone solicitation (without opt-in or previous relationship) using pre-recorded messages. There are a few folks doing this today, as well as some companies junk faxing, and it is illegal.
Before 1992, junk faxing was not against the law, just as today there is no federal law that prohibits sending unsolicited advertising by email. Today there is no law that regulates usasage of correct headers and identification of the party who transmitted the message. Today there is no (federal) law that requires actually honoring the receipients request to not receive future mailings.
That's today. Soon there will be laws to regulate unsolicited commercial ads by email. Just as some advertisers abused telephones and faxes and lawmakers eventually responded, so they also will with spam.
And they rightly should. Just because you've paid to send some data via an ISP, you should not have any more right to send fraudulent ads with forged headers than you would to send a similarly illegal message via the USPS with a fake return address. Just because you've paid to send that message gives you no more right to ignore "don't send me any more" than a telemarketer has under the 1992 law.
There is quite a bit of legitimate use for email marketing, but at least IMHO, there's no excuse for forged headers, fraudulent advertising, and not properly honoring request to avoid more messages from the same sender. Sooner or later, these acts will be illegal (at least in the USA), and assholes like Ronnie Scelson are only serving to expedite the need for lawmakers to respond.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
And herein lies the problem. Even if we assume that he has 80 million valid registered customers (all legitimately obtained and verified), he is still engaging in tactics that should be illegal. An email, particular a commercial email, should have a real and accurate return and from address, and should have real transmission headers. If these are forged , the email is spam, even if there is an opt in list.
Furthermore, i feel the spammer should get sued by those greatly affected by the act. For instance, if the forged address is a domain not related to the spammer, that domain should have every right to sue the spammer for costs of dealing with the misdirected replies, the cost of dealing with angry customers, and the costs associated with defamation of the domain. The ISP that the spammer is doing business with should be able to cut off the spammer immediately, sue for the costs of resources used to send the spam, and any other costs associated with the spam. Maybe, in both cases, treble costs.
Let me be clear, forged headers should a sufficient condition for a commercial email to be considered spam and invoke any all liabilities associated with spamming.
Scelson, who designed the software, says it will penetrate virtually any system designed to stop ads from reaching the intended mailbox.
Of course this is another problem. I may in fact want to receive commercial email. That does not mean that I want it in my in box. Perhaps I have another place, that I review daily, that I want to filter commercial emails into. It seems reasonable that a reputable sender of commercial email would want to help me in this endevour, and in the process create a positive relationship, by using consistent mail headers. For instance the New York Times does this. On the other hand, a scum of the earth spammer, no disrespect to scum intended, would actively try to thwart my reasonable and rational system of prioritizing emails in hope of forcing me to view a message.
Furthermore, don't we have legislation about programs that actively penetrate systems without the owner's consent? Seems like this might be a good application of that law.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This guy should have interviewed Al Capone. He could have told us how great the protection service was and how it filled a niche in the chicago market.
The author fails to mention what happens when he "bounces" messages off from those "Europeon" servers. Things like, legitimate businesses can't get their e-mail, servers crash, bandwidth charges are paid by the the people that left the relay open. Oh yeah, add to that his quote "I can touch 80 million people". If my mail servers are anything to judge by, I'd say the MOST he can touch is 1 million, generally we get more bounces from spammers than we get actual e-mail.
A liar, a thief and a con man. I sure am glad the Hartford paper decided to write about this guy. Please take a second and tell them how you feel about their article.
The Hartford Courant (CTNOW-DOM)
285 Broad Street
Hartford, CT 06115
US
Domain Name: CTNOW.COM
Administrative Contact:
DNSADMIN (DNS55-ORG) tis-dnsadmin@TRIBUNE.COM
Tribune Company
435 N. Michigan Ave Suite 917
Chicago, IL 60611
US
312-222-2814
Fax- - 312-222-4393
Technical Contact:
TIS IN, TECHNICAL CONTACT (TIT3-ORG) tis-dnsadmin@TRIBUNE.COM
TRIBUNE COMPANY
435 NORTH MICHIGAN AVE Suite 815
CHICAGO, IL 60611
USA
312-222-2814
Fax- 312-222-4393
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Reading this article, I started noticing some similarities between spamming and drug trade (granted, this is on the heals of having seen Traffic recently). Next time a spammer considers describing his or her trade as legitimate, consider these similarities:
-Scott Hutton
---"If Qwest sees that they are losing customers because they provide internet access to you, they have a fiduciary duty to terminate their business relationship with you."
Does the same analogy hold true for the snail mail industry? NO. The spam idiots pay for the media, and pay for postage to my house. I just toss it away. Some are crafty and make it look like legit-like bills. Some promise prizes. It all goes to the shredder. My point is, if they pay through the nose for constand bandwidth, give them what they asked.
Mail advertisers pay the US Postal Service to send ads. While being sent, the advertisement is in the hands of the USPS 100%. Every medium that that advertisement travels through is owned by the USPS. The USPS is adequately compensated for thier work.
This spammer only pays for his connection to Qwest. All the other countless ISPs and Telcos that have to carry his mail traffic don't see a penny.
He's living in a five-bedroom mansion while he leaches off other people's resources.
I say tar-and-feather the loser.
You can also reach him at onlt@yahoo.com His other Yahoo email account
Slashdot sez: "The article goes too much into glorifying one person's success with spam, while failing to underscore the potential problems he has caused for others."
The article sez: "Once merely an annoyance, junk e-mail is quickly reaching epidemic proportions in cyberspace. Billions of such messages regularly crisscross the Internet, pitching everything from herbal remedies to X-rated websites.
The growing flood of e-mail advertising has crashed Internet servers, clogged connections and cost business untold hours of wasted employee time. It has also forced millions of bleary-eyed Internet users to undertake the seemingly endless chore of clearing the electronic clutter from their in-box.
Attempts to stop the surge have met with little success. Meanwhile, with each new message, spam comes closer to threatening e-mail's future as an effective conduit for personal and business communication."
Did you READ the article?
-------------------------
Stupid people suck.
We hear so much (and, logically, experience so much) regarding spam in its email incarnation, but what about the new, even-more-obnoxious variants? I speak, of course, of random IRC spam (most of which are porn-related, but I've seen the "travel package" ones as well), AIM spam, and the old standby of Usenet spam. While much is said about spam threatening email as a permanent communications medium, not much attention tends to be lavished on these abuses of other, usually less-controllable communications media. Little Johnny only has to open an AIM account to start receiving unsolicited IMs from "Maggie 03421."
-D
Thing is, why EXACTLY is he rich? 1: He accepts jobs that ONLY pay 1000$ or more. Even the herbal stuff gets into this bracket. 2: Percentage cut on people who buy goods.
Wrong, bucko. He's been shut down. "His" house and corvette may have been paid for by scam victims.
Here's a quote from the article:
Pulling The Plug
It happened again last month, not long after Scelson brought in some new partners to help finance and manage Opt-In Marketing.
Which means to me that he is not able to run his spamhaus without asking for handouts and management help.
I would much rather get spam on the internet than get it in my home mail box, or "pre approved credit car enclosed" i didnt opt in for this. i dont see what the huge fuss is about, yeah its a pain in the butt, but atleast the post office is profiting from their spam, just charge a small fee, say 1 cents a spam, 80 million emails, thats just $800,000 that yahoo, aol, and hotmail get to split up amongst themselves. i see a market for this, there is a way of doing it that is profession, and we are not seeing it being done now. Imagine 5 peices of junk email per day, nothing more, you get free email and 2mb of storage, why not go for it. its free, it takes 10 seconds to delete the mail. atleast spam isnt causeing people to cut down hundreds of trees to deliver thousands of 3 page catalog coupons to people that throw it away.
Btw: Ronnie can make all the claims he wants about how he can get by any filtering mechanism, but I know for a fact that very little, if any, of Ronnie's spewage gets through my filters. And my false-positive rate is very, very low.
Ultimately people may go to a mechanism I think of as "reverse-opt-in." "Reverse-opt-in" works like this: each time someone emails you, an email header signature is compared against a database. If the signature is unknown, the sender is sent a "please confirm" email that might include, amongst other things, a "no solicitation" notice. If the sender is legitimate, they'll respond. Then the original email is delivered. If they fail to respond, the original email expires-out without ever being seen. The user will have the option of marking known, good signatures as "accept," so future emails from that entity just go on through. The system will likewise have mechanisms and entries for "reject out-right w/o asking" signatures.
A spammer could get by such a system by responding to the "please confirm" email, but then the spammer has to maintain a known, valid email address. As soon as that got shut down due to complaints, they're done. Plus this mechanism would slow spammers way down. And as anybody who is familiar with spamming knows: time is of the essence.
It's pretty simple, laws designed to stop something that one (or more) of the parties involved disagrees with tend to work pretty well. (At least as long as the parties in favor aren't large enough to buy of the politicians and/or enforcers of the law)
However laws designed to stop something that all parties involved agree to tend to fail miserably. If i got sent a junk fax i would be upset and call the FCC and get the spammers ass busted. If i was into drugs and some guy offers to sell me drugs, am i going to turn him?
Laws that protect people's rights work. Laws that try to enforce some arbitrary and unwanted sense of morality don't.
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No, but the Spamhaus Project has it - and more!
Check out their "Cajun Spamming gang" page. Quite the operation!
Oh, oh - committing illegal acts? In an organized group? Illegal acts committed nationwide? Can someone say "RICO?"
Personaly, I wish one or more state AG's offices along with the feds (FTC), would hang this sucker from the tallest bayou swamp cypress!
This kind of reminds me of a scam to make money as a "psychic" i heard awhile ago. You send off mass mailings to lots of people "predicting" an even that has 50/50 probability of happening, saying it will happen to half the people, and it won't to the other half. Keep track of what you tell which people, and after the event happens (or doesn't) then repeat with the people that you got it right for the first time. After the third or fourth mailing, you can start charging them for your amazing psychic insights.
Presumably the psychic hotlines work the same way. The small percent that are given an accurate (though accidental) prediction rave about it more than enough to make up for the majority who grumble about lost money and walk away.
Come to think of it, this is also the exact same principle behind trolling and flamebaiting on the web. Doesn't matter how many people resist the temptation to respond as long as some small percentage give in.
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The commercial opens with a distant establishing shot of a verdant country pasture bathed in early morning mists. Cut to a close-up of Steven's smiling face. We see that Steven is animated, his tongue darting out of his mouth and his eyes rolling up into his head. Cut to a medium shot. We see that Steven is fucking the Gateway cow in the ass. The cow turns and looks at the camera and says "moo". Behind a tree we see Teddy, that Gateway ponytail poofster voyeuristically wanking off. Just as Steven is about to cum he blurts out to the cow "Dude, you're getting a Dell!", followed by an explosive orgasm.
Puts a new meaning to the phrase "farmer in the Dell".
Since he's so dedicated to the idea of using email freely, how about we ALL hook up to our favorite anonymous remailers and send him personal letters about how spam makes us feel!
Hey, I even made the "mailto:" links for you! :)
Zman
The article says "Scelson says, Opt-In Marketing concentrates on sending e-mail to people with accounts at large, consumer-oriented services such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and America Online and tries to avoid e-mail addresses at businesses.." I know for a fact that we block email from the opt-in network on our mx and it is a problem. This guy is so full of crap that his eyes are brown. He is just like any other spammer. Doesn't care what others go through as long as he makes a buck or $1000.
- There is a difference between personal speech
and commercial speech
- The right to speak does not imply a right to
be heard, or to force others to pay for your
speach
- Private individuals and corporations are not
subject to the same restrictions as governments
- spam is theft of service, theft by conversion and trespass to chattel.
The fact that he makes money at it does not make it ethical, legal or moral. A burglar also makes money at his trade; are you content to let him break into your house?Calculate how much money your company is loosing because your workers has to delete these crap emails, send it to this MoFo. There is a lot of money to get here. Well worth a shot, especially if the jury has email addresses...
The telematketer who interrupts your business doesn't call collect. Junk snail mail is a nuisance, but spam is theft (the judeges used the terms theft of service, theft by conversion and trespass to chattel.
I think we should make some changes to how the DNS and smtp systems work to stop faked email headers.
u gh_dns.html
for more information.
If we require a DNS lookup when mail is sent we can check to see if the sending server is authorized to send mail for the particular domain.
For example, if I run yahoo.com I enter the IP addresses of each of my mail servers into DNS then anyone else in the world can refuse to accept email with a return address at yahoo.com if my DNS says that the sending IP is not a valid yahoo.com email sending server.
See http://www.vorteon.com/papers/spam_reduction_thro
Coding Blog
Everyone who lives within 10 miles of him should get a cinder block, write their favorite spam on it("MAKE MONEY FAST!"), and drop it on his property. On a weekly basis.
After 20,000 or so maybe he'll start seeing the point.
It's fine and dandy for him to pay quest for their services and send whatever he wants over their lines... It's the companies on the receiving end taking a hit.
My company is forced to buy a full T1 line vs a burstable T1 due to the amount of bandwidth sucked up by spam. (Yes, literally, it's that bad.)
I get hundreds of spams a day on email addresses that have been around since 1995 such as webmaster, info, billing, support, postmaster, root@
Not a single one of those addresses has ever been opt-in to any list.
Software is going to be the only way to stop spam. Legislation is only going to cause more problems in the long run.
Spam should never ever be sent with invalid or mis-leading headers. There is a big difference from receiving a message from your favorite mailing list and receiving one from 587dajajkl@bbcidel.com.
Why should I even have to pay for the extra electricity used for every single spam that enters my network? If one of my users requested it fine, they're paying for their service. But all the crap that goes to random accounts really sucks for us.
It even forces me to turn off catchall accounts on certain domains.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I don't see anything wrong with branding his forehead with the word "SPAMMER"
Just in case the police are tracing this message down... I'm JUST KIDDING!!!! I think...
"There's advertising everywhere you look. I don't care if you open a book or a magazine or walk down the street, it's everywhere," he says.
While this is true, it isn't a valid reason for spamming. Billboards, magazine ads, etc are a passive medium which I can ignore. Spam is an active medium because I have to actively deal with it (open it, skim it, delete it) rather than just ignore it.
A further problem is that spam costs the targeted viewers money (bandwidth, time) while billboards and mag ads do not. Billboard/mag ads bring revenue to companies which publish them and at least provide the magazine with revenue with which to continue publishing material which you enjoy purchasing and reading. Spam does not provide money to keep the internet running or provide revenue to companies which you enjoy receiving survices from (ie - it is unsolicited).
If you've seen Minority Report you will realize how bad spam could potentially get. Billboard and mag ads are shown in Report as active mediums, spam!
Satanists get good grades too...suspiciously good grades
.. and one word came up... WHORE.
Don't waste your time... none of these addresses are valid anymore. Expecially after being on /.
Scelson has had a series of "pink contracts" with ISPs ("we pay more, and you ignore the complaints").
As each of those has been exposed, the ISPs involved have hurriedly shut him off and he's then threatened to sue them unless they pay him off.
The rumor mill says that the house and car came from a $100k payment made by PSInet after Scelson's spam farm was hacked into, rootkitted and all the ISP contracts extracted, then made public.
That was a few weeks after he'd been removed from AT&T after it'd come out he had paid them off too.
Mod me down as a troll if you wish. The pink contracts are detailed in his spamhaus.org ROKSO entries and were covered in media at the time.
Though there has been appeals court cases on the issue of state court jurisdiction (on SPAM,, via email), no appeals court has been asked to rule that SPAM email to a computer is not covered under the TCPA.
Fight Spammers!
Junk mail gets a massive subsidy because the companies that do bulk mailings buy influence in Congress. The cost savings from automation are nowhere near large enough to cover the breaks junk mailers get.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Not only does my inbox fill up everyday with spam, usually it's spam for stuff I couldn't even buy if I wanted to, in the rare cases where there is actually some real product to buy, I have to be in the US to do so.
I think I'm right saying that there is a US law against DoS attacks, so why isn't this being stopped?
Anonymous computer programs from all over the world blasting my inbox constantly with random junk making it more difficult to read the legitimate data certainly looks like denial of service to me.
Hitler's in the fridge.
About a year ago, I checked the box to omit Katz' lip-flapping from my homepage.
Since then, I've stopped losing my hair, got promoted at work, and women return my phone calls now.
JonKatz ruins lives, but you can escape...
They will revise the price down after they notice and that's it: some people will still buy the stuff they advertize.
End result? They'll get even more exposure for free and their revenue mdel will still work.
They NEED to be charged per email sent. How much? Just in the amount of the expected revenue from the spam + 1 dollar. Only that will stop spam alltogether...
I'm willing to PAY for just sending emails. Maybe the charges will have to be invested in child famine or cancer cure research. I don't want people profiting from hard earned money that I have to spent to block spam...
unfinished: (adj.)
This article gives me an idea ... it says "Opt-In Marketing sends out 80 million e-mails offering vacation packages. For each person who clicks on the e-mail to visit the travel company's website, the company earns $1 - a fee roughly in line with industry norms." What if instead of sending spam to the Deleted folder or filtering it to the bit bucket, filters were written to "click back" to any links in a spam first ... after a while, someone would figure out that the $2000 campaign is now costing $400,000 but generating the same amount of business as ever before.
Sounds like a job for SpamCop.
Our good old boy here doesn't seem to have that problem - he's not scamming most of his customers, unless they're dumb enough to believe that he's actually got permission from 80 million email recipients who are really interested in the junk they're selling. He's just providing services to people who are doing the scamming. (I have heard of one spammer getting busted for fraud for claiming that his email lists were valid suckers who wanted to receive advertising, and that would certainly be an interesting legal approach to take to shut down the worst offenders, but most of them would switch over to claiming that they were just selling lists of valid addresses.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
if they can't stand up to the school bully, how are they supposed to kneecap anyone?
While this may not sound like much its still two quid a week I could spend on beer. Instead its stolen from me by spammers selling products I don't want (and usually can't get as the spam is American in origin).
Personally I think there should be a concerted DDOS of all spammers' websites and email servers until the cost of hosting a spammer becomes more than any ISP is willing to take on (extra points if the spammer is charged for all this unsolicited bandwidth use :).
It seems to me that a good way to fight spam would be to get hold of one of these "Super Duper Master Email Marketing 100% Guaranteed Opt-In Lists" and spam the email addresses with an email informing them about spam, and how to fight against it. If Ronnie Scelson claims to get a 1% response rate from commercial adverts, it should be possible to get something higher than that from a mail telling them about how their privacy is being abused. If it got even a 5% response rate, 50,000 people writing / emailing / faxing their representatives would get quite a bit of attention. Something to think about ...
The Hartford Courant has released additional articles today (Monday, July 1) that follow up the Sunday's Bayou article.
I've only had a chance this morning to read a little bit of For The Anti-Spammers, It's All-Out E-War which is an interview with Martin Roth of SWAT. Once again, this story has too much focus on a particular person and not enough coverage of the basic issues of the problems involved.
Scum like Scelson will never stop spamming until they are physically unable to do so.
He has to be forcefully removed from having access to computers and the Internet for him to stop.
From what I gather you can do that either by killing him (please, some psycho do this, please!) or getting him in jail. The latter is unlikely to happen.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers!
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I am curious how much spam he likes receiving? I would be curious how many are tempted to add him up to their distribution lists and send tons of spam to him until his email boxes are overflowing.
It's time to start playing the game with them.
If someone is inclined to stoop to his level, bounce a "few" anonymous junk mails to his boxes for the rest of us. I'm sick of idiots like this.
They NEED to be charged per email sent. How much? Just in the amount of the expected revenue from the spam + 1 dollar. Only that will stop spam alltogether...
You're an optimist. People still fall for the MLM scams in droves, although they never make any money off them. I know people who jump to a different MLM thing every year or two, convinced this one will be the next one. They are perfectly willing to blow money on signs, postage, imprinted pens, and all sorts of other mainly useless marketing expenses; they'll happily keep spamming as well, even if they have to pay.
The only cash-related solution that will likely work is one that I first saw mentioned in Brin's Earth: Each person gets to say how much they must be payed to accept mail from an unfamiliar sender. The custom is then to refund the money if they mail is non-commercial.
Instead, try the CTNow letter to the Editor form.
http://chickenboner.com/scelson/
The public resource would be the right of way all those corps utilize to run their "private" cables and fibers. Using that public space is a privalidge not a right and it entails responsiblities.
I have a public ftp site that I make available to my friends.
Adverts take up space that could be occupied by real content. I generally avoid sites that have too much of it and block the rest. Still, I have little choice about where M$ decides to send it's hords of slaves.
I expect most advert backed sevices to tank, unless some evil oligarchy gains control of the internet and turns it into an inferior version of cable TV. Ut-oh, looks like that is happening. The last laugh will be had by folks like me. As the oligarchy makes the net suck, Joe Sixpacks will leave it high and dry. I'll get completely out of it with some combination of wireless or optical. Greedy pigs can't stop the information revolution that's just gotten started.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Now all we need to do is find ourselves a couple of rabid telemarketers who really hate spam in their mailboxes.
We got to find a way to get these two kids together.
No way to mod this "Dipshit Monkey Fucker".
I'm saddened by that somehow.
sure i didnt research what the '985' area code is, but calling his business line plays a recording that says the area code has changed to 985...........
the home number just rings and rings..
this leads me to suspect that he has simply put a pseudo-official sounding recording on the business number and the '985' number is really in one of those asshole countries that seem like USA numbers but are really off in some island that charges 75 bucks a minute to call.. this sort of thing wouldnt be beneath a piece of turd like this guy..
1- Spam is theft
2- Spammers lie.
3- If a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see rule 2.
4- Spammers are stupid. Otherwise they would not be spamming.
--
Time is on my side