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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."
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.
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.
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"
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.
Actually, junk mailers are largely subsidized by first class mail
I worked in Engineering for the USPS for almost a decade total and you have got this one backwards. It is the bulk mailers who subsidize First Class mail. Bulk business mailers pre-sort their mail, making processing and delivery much easier. They pre-print barcodes (Postnet) on the mail, so that automated sortation equipment can sort it without human intervention. They interact with the USPS's computerized forwarding system to get change of address information promptly.
Contrast that to grandma's chicken scratch handwriting on an envelope. The carrier comes to her house and, hooray, gets one letter to mail for his (and the USPS's) time, gas, etc. The address is handwritten and, thus, can't be read by the OCR equipment. So someone processes it by hand, entering the ZIP code so that the barcode can be sprayed on the envelope. Then it get sorted but, not surprisingly, grandma switched two digits of the ZIP code and that's not caught until the letter shows up 1,500 miles away from where it belongs, at which point someone has to look-up and correct the ZIP code and put it back into the outgoing mail.
Look at it another way: Suppose there was no bulk business mail and the only revenue the USPS got was from First Class mail sent by individuals. How profitable would that be? Do you think that the USPS could afford to buy automated, computerized sorting equipment for that? Do you even think that they would make even enough money to cover their delivery costs? (Hint: No)
What you are suggesting is analogous to stating the individuals who buy 500 sheets of copier paper at a time must be subsidizing IBM, because IBM pays so much less for copier paper -- which they purchase by the pallet load.
From he NANAE FAQ
[Rule #0: Spam is theft.]
Rule #1: Spammers lie.
Rule #2: If you think a spammer is telling the truth, see Rule #1.
Rule #3: Spammers are stupid.
(Krugel's Corollary: Spammer lies are really stupid.)
"Opt-In Marketing" hits Rule #1, Rule #2 and the corollary - in its name alone. And by getting that far with just its name, I'd say that trips Rule #3 to boot.
There's a fascinating thread in news.admin.net-abuse.email ("COURT: Opt in Marketing vs [SPEWS, SPAMHAUS, SPAMCOP, QUEST(sic), COVISTA and Steve Linford(of Idaho?)]" about what Scelson's up to. This article in nanae provides an interesting perspective.
Between Scelson biting off more than he can chew (and what a coincidence, now showing up on the press's radar), and Alan Ralsky being sued by Verizon, this could be a long, hot summer for the spammers.
Me? I'm keeping a bag of popcorn handy whenever I read nanae. Seeing these two go down in court will be a delight. I can only hope a certain Mr. Haberli is next on the docket. That'd be three major spam rings in serious d00d00.
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.
Yes, we can dream about it... but that is all I recommend that we ever do about it.
:)
I do, however, advocate criminal mischief such as throwing eggs at his house and car... picketting his place of business is also a good thing to do... actually, that's probably exactly what should be done. If we actually made it bigger than Mardi Gras, it could get some serious attention from the public. From that, we can convince the 80,000 people out there who will apparently buy anything, to not answer SPAM and therefore not to pay the spammers for their misdeeds.
So let's talk about public gatherings instead of lynching.
I do believe that if one spammer dies as a result of being a spammer, it would make a serious statement but it wouldn't slow anything down... you'd have to kill two or three of them to make your cause serious. I can't get behind that though... who knows what I might be doing that pisses people off enough to make them kill me.
(BTW, I've heard that pulling out wires is an effective method of disconnection... just a thought)
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 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.