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."

Comments

Scelson data

[Patrick13]

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...

Rights -vs- privileges

[the_rev_matt]

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.

Re:Rights -vs- privileges

[fmaxwell]

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.

Opt-In is the spammer that sued its ISP..

[User 956]

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.

He's got one thing right...

[Howzer]

The spammer speaks: "... If they didn't ask for it, they don't want it. And it's not that simple of a business."

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?

Time wasted deleting emails

[qazxsw]

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.

Re:May be hated, but it works..

[unformed]

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.

Cost them some money

[gentlewizard]

"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."

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.

Yes, it matters a LOT

[pjrc]

---"He seems to missing a fundamental point: You do not have a Constitutional right to an internet connection."

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.

And this guys interview with al capone?

[cluge]

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)
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Hartford, CT 06115
US

Domain Name: CTNOW.COM

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cluge