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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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
So who is the real moron here? The people buying goods. If everybody started boycotting any product advertised by SPAM this would end very very quickly, either by companies stop using the advertising service or filing for chapter 11. Maybe writing a little letter to those advertised resorts might help too. "Hey I really like to visit your pretty island. However as long as you do buisiness with spammers I you don't meet the standards required for me to do buissiness with you". 99.9% of all people boycotting you is a pretty nice argument, isn't it?
Besides SPAM is also Interstate commerce, which congress may regulate. And in most places outside the US this advertising would mostly not be viewed as free speech (I am not promoting that point). E.g. Herbicides can be considered pharmaceuticals which will very quickly subject you to pretty stiff regulations.
Thorsten
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 wants to spend the money to send spam, let him.
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.
That's my point. It works because people allow it to work. Just because it's against the law doesn't mean people won't do it.
Look at the "illicit drug situation". Certain drugs are illegal. DO people still use them? Yes. Have the numbers went down since the enacted idiotic penalties? No.
What I dont like from spam lawsuits is that it forces the court (and future judgements) into 1 way of thinking. I DONT LIKE THIS. I'd much rather have orginazations of spam-fighters killing them at mail servers and gateways rather than in the court-room. And even if the courts say it's bad, what about out-of-country spam? Still sent.
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...
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.
Correct, however if everybody had unilateral metering of Outbound data (perferabally per meg (10^6 bytes), then it would work. If you were hit by a flood, the person who pays outbound will pay for it.
And in this, you pay for what you use. That just happens to be the same for electricity, Gasoline, long-distance telephone time (I know, Britans pay per minute local too), sewage and water (if in town that has them). Many of these fluctiuate on time of purchase (as in telephones). If you use at night when less are using it, you pay less. Only when the internet's data is metered like this, will we be able to get past these issues.
/.ers: we should pool our resources and setup a fund to put hits out on people like this.
Correct, however if everybody had unilateral metering of Outbound data (perferabally per meg (10^6 bytes), then it would work. If you were hit by a flood, the person who pays outbound will pay for it.
AND YOU pay for it. Would people be so tolerant of snail-mail spam if we had to pay for each letter that arrived in our mailbox? I think not.
And in this, you pay for what you use. That just happens to be the same for electricity, Gasoline, long-distance telephone time (I know, Britans pay per minute local too), sewage and water (if in town that has them). Many of these fluctiuate on time of purchase (as in telephones). If you use at night when less are using it, you pay less. Only when the internet's data is metered like this, will we be able to get past these issues.
It's completely different when -YOU- use it. What if advertisers were allowed to remotely turn on your TV so you could watch an advertisement, then you had to wait for it to finish before you could turn it off again.
There's a fine line between you using something intentionally, and someone else forcing you to use something.
99.9% of all people boycotting you is a pretty nice argument, isn't it?
No, actually, it's not. That 0.1% of people buying your services is plenty to make a handy profit, especially when you're sending out millions of e-mails.
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
>Correct, however if everybody had unilateral metering of Outbound data (perferabally per meg (10^6 bytes), then it would work. If you were hit
>by a flood, the person who pays outbound will pay for it.
---AND YOU pay for it. Would people be so tolerant of snail-mail spam if we had to pay for each letter that arrived in our mailbox? I think not.
Wrong. I'm carefully saying OUTBOUND. Going to a POP3 or IMAP server and requesting transfer of mail is INBOUND, not outbound (and I mean relative to you). However, if you received spam, and responded to it, you'd pay for the response.
In the case of metered transfers, if you consider inbound and outbound, you can make somebody "PAY" by flooding him. If I remember correctly, the original mail system was "The Receiver Pays" type. People even then DIDNT LIKE THAT. So, you pay for what you send outbound.
---"The pro-spam people in Congress use the same rationale for their position. Funny that, given that few among their group give a tin shit about our freedom of speech at any other point during their careers. I'm certainly not trying to imply anything about your rationale by bringing this up, of course; John Gilmore is of the same opinion, and he's certainly not profiting from the junk e-mail getting crammed down our throats."
That's ok. Even if you were implying anything, it wouldn't be a big deal. My opinion's that of the minority. In slashdot (where we are the minority when considering the whole US), the small ones are looked down upon.
---"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."
That's the thing. If "spam" has physically hurt people, then fine. Sue them for money lost. However, if you compare your argument to that of physical spam, there is no freeloading. They pay for what they spend. The only current problem is that of metered bandwidth. If all bandwidth was charged for Outgoing connections (stable price), then I have no problem with spamming. They pay for it, I dont. The internet system is still to new for that to take effect. Also I dont like congress/courts take part in something that they have little knowledge about.
---"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?"
That's the thing. The spammer DOES pay for them. If they buy a dedicated T-1 for 1000$ a month (unlimited usage) (cost based on data transfer) , fine, let him spam. I see that the T-1 carrier was charged for X amount of bandwidth and the physical connection. I see that the cost was justified for the data.
I guessI dont buy into the same group-think as everybody else here on Slashdot. I look it as 2 problems:
1: The lack of a stable, OutStream abndwidth metering
2: The lack of the same ruleset when compare to physical spam.
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."
Wrong. I'm carefully saying OUTBOUND. Going to a POP3 or IMAP server and requesting transfer of mail is INBOUND, not outbound (and I mean relative to you). However, if you received spam, and responded to it, you'd pay for the response.
So, in the event that you ONLY paid for outbound traffic, it would be different. Problem is, that's not how it works, you pay for traffic both ways.
So your whole defense is relying on a specific "what if" case that doesn't exist, and hence, fails in current times.
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
If they buy a crobar for $24.98 (cost based on size), fine, let him burgle.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Your moronic analogy doesnt cut it. This argument is between the standards of the same practice in a differnt medium. You have all these open-source free-data types who want everything to be really cheap. However, when somebody abuses the system, you call "Kill the * " Spammers are the cost of a "free Internet-like system". I like that cost. I'll just let my filters take care of the crap.
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
Having the government ban the spam content might well be in violation of the 1st amendment. Banning fraud (e.g. using someone else's identity, or a fictional one) isn't. That won't cut out spam, but it can at least narrow the scope of what originates in the USA (or another country if they have a similar law).
Of cource spam makes money. But not for everyone. There aren't enough consumers available for the practice of spamming to reach into the thousands of people doing what Scelson does. At that point the net just grinds to a halt from overload (despite being designed to resist military attacks during war).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
Hey, robbing banks pays pretty well too.
I don't understand what you're saying. Is it that anti-spammers should lay off Scelson because what he's doing is so profitable for him? That doesn't even begin to make sense.
What are you saying?
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.
Before 1992, a lot of folks made money sending out lots and lots of unsolicited fax advertising.
That didn't make it right, but it did create an annoyance, disrupt legitimate business fax machines (which ran out of paper), and ultimate lawmakers responded and made it illegal.
Soon, lawmakers will probably respond to scumbags like Ronnie Scelson, probably not be outlawing email advertising, but it's almost certain that forged headers, fraudlent ads, and not actually honoring removal requests will be illegal shortly. We can only hope that abusing open relays will also go on the list of banned activities....
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
---"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.
Look at the "illicit drug situation". Certain drugs are illegal. DO people still use them? Yes. Have the numbers went down since the enacted idiotic penalties? No.
The 1992 telecommunications act almost completely wiped out junk faxes, and the few folks who left doing it illegally are getting found and fined by the FCC.
It also greatly cleaned up telemarketing calls. Callers are required to truthfully required to identify themselves within 30 seconds. It estabilished a strong legal requirement for "do not call lists".
The "war on drugs" may not have had much impact on illegal drug usage, but previous federal laws regulating telecommunications have been very effective.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I just wish i could come up with something as creative to piss off the real spammers.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
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.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Spam inevitably progresses to become worldwide. How many spams do you get that you cannot READ because they're in a language you don't speak? And yet, you still get them.
By its nature, spam expands without any set limit of relevance. If you read them, it expands to where you cannot read every one because there isn't time in the day- it's coming in faster than you can read it. If you delete them, it expands to where it's coming in faster than you can hit the delete key (assuming you do other things in life besides sit pressing a delete key). If you set up a filter and they all use ADV:, it expands to where it's coming in faster than your modem can operate, or your cable modem. There's no point where it stops.
So it is evil, in the sense of being an 'ecological disaster'. You can't make allowances for it, because it's like holding off the tide with a shovel. Either you destroy it, or it destroys you, inevitably.
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.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Hint: it's called incurring massive debt to present the appearance of wealth, and boy does it work! Works for Ponzi scammers too.
It's no wonder you're confused if the original poster's main point was still nonsense :)
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
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/
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.
Nope. Legitimate advertising, that people are willing to (and should) put up with, partially or fully subsidizes things that people want. TV, newspapers, web sites, even the postal system. If it weren't for that kind of advertising, we would lose a lot of our entertainment, information, even transportation sources, or they would cost or be more expensive.
All advertising that does not subsidize anything, and which the cost is mostly assumed by the recipient, is inherently evil. That includes ALL spam and even telemarketing (it costs you in time and frustration).
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
Yes the spammer pays, but so do those who recieve the spew. Why does a spammer paying for a T1 have the right to connect to my network? Or any other network he hasn't paid for? It's a priviledge, and no way in hell does his paying for his connection allow him to block up my connection and my mail server.
Junk post mailers pay to send those, but you don't pay to recieve them. With spam you do pay. You pay for the bandwidth on your mail server, the bandwidth to get the mails, the disk space on the server and client, and the time taken to hit delete. Are you willing to pay for the physical junkmail you get? Are you willing to pay for advertisments showing "REAL RAPE PHOTOS", "ANIMAL SEX" or "MAKE YOUR DICK BIGGER" in your physical post box every day?
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.
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.
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.
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Time is on my side