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The Economics of Spam
higgins writes "The Wall Street Journal has the best story I've ever seen on the economics of spam. A self-described "spam queen" (Clean link; should work for non-subscribers) talks about not just the millions of emails she spews, but what it costs per mailing ($250 for 500k emails), what the response rates are (1-2 one-thousandths percent) and what she actually makes. (40% of each sale of one product: anti-spam software)."
Here's a new one for you:
The other day, I got spam via my 'windows messaging service' - someone on my cable modem subnet is sending me pop-up spam with the 'net send' command (Windows only). Obviously this is easy to disable (for someone who knows how to) but...
WTF?
I took a screen shot which indicated time/date AND IP but the cableco tech morons said that they couldn't do anything about it? Right... How about revoking access? Perhaps it was the cableco themselves selling this service?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
"I'm just trying to make a living like everyone else," says Ms. Betterly. Her e-mail marketing operation, she says, allows her to raise her children, Chris, 10, and Craig, 11, and to spend quality time with them. "You can call me spam queen, I don't really care. As long as I'm not breaking any laws, you don't have to love me or like what I do for a living."
Not breaking any laws. Riiiiiiiight. Nice values to instill in those kids, too.
WorldCom lets spammers get away with 'first offence'.
Mr. Connell typed a response: "Problem solved. This guy won't receive anything from us again." He flagged the name of the offended e-mail recipient on Ms. Betterly's list so that person wouldn't be contacted again.
WorldCom helps spammers listwash.
WorldCom says that if problems with a spammer persist, the company will send increasingly stern notices and eventually cut off service.
WorldCom will let spammers get away with spamming several times before actually doing anything about it.
Paging SPEWS. SPEWS to the white courtesy phone, please...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
With 605.6 millions of internet users, worldwide (according to kadius) 1-2 one-thousandths of a percent that's still 6056 replies to spam. With that many replies and close to zero cost one could make a decent business... sadly
40% of each sale of one product: anti-spam software
Geez. This is like sending out virus attachments to people in hopes of getting them to buy your anti-virus software.
Since the early days of my experiences on the 'net, spam has been a problem (1994 is when I first hopped on). Why is this? Obviously, as indicated in the article, spam does indeed make money. Sure, you may get one percent response, but if it only costs a couple hundred $ to send half a million e-mails, at one percent that's 5,000 people replying! Of course we know they're all real net newbies or suckers, but as with anything else, it's 'buyer beware'. In short, people spam because it does indeed work.
Ms. Betterly says she refuses to send e-mails about adult fare, because it "disgraces society."
/dev/null.
Yeah whatever - spammers claiming moral superiority over pornographers. What's next, the RIAA claiming it supports artists?
Thankfullly, Spamassassin means I don't have to deal with her garbage. Unfortunately it just hides the problem, but at least I get the satisfaction of a "fuck you" when it redirects to
If you've got an unfortunate friend stuck in Outlook, Cloudmark does a decent job of cleaning up the mess, and Mozilla's soon-to-be turned on anti-spam features are looking nice.
Here is her website:
http://www.dataresourceconsulting.com
And her email:
laura@dataresourceconsulting.com
You may fire when ready.
The statement contains no non-subjective, non-conditional objective statements, and therefore can't be "proven" wrong.
I don't like spam, but neither do I hate it. It is no more "evil" or indicative of lack of values than commercials. If you're a mother and have found a way to make a living that let's you stay at home and provide a quality, loving and supportive atmosphere for your kids, that's great. You might not have the most noble job in the world, but then, neither do I right now.
This lady's made a trade off, which is a necessary consequence of living in the real world, and it looks like a pretty good one to me. If spam is terrible, then get a spam filter. or lobby your representatives to outlaw it.
She looks like she has a fairly mature, well thought out, and open understanding of what it is she does.
$250 for 500k emails? This morning I was reading about a guy who is selling a million for 20 bucks.
Fun quote:
"I hate spam," he [the spammer, "Steve"] says. "I've gotten death threats. People have threatened to kill my dog. . . . But when you make a thousand bucks in one day, you could care less."
<sarcasm>Hard to argue with that!</sarcasm>
With only 65 people filling out a survey to enter a contest, that's not a unreasonably bad chance of winning. Of course, that's assuming the prizes are bone fide...
A quick search on Switchboard shows that she is listed, please everybody call her with your beliefs on spam:
Laura Betterly
717 Weathersfield Dr
Dunedin, FL 34698-7437
(727)733-5335
Good gawd...
No wonder she chose an 'occupation' that doesn't require interaction with others. She looks like a smacked ass!
Blah. It's even a Photoshop filtered black & white picture, which is usually done to make someone look good. They had to do it to her just to upgrade her face to hideous.
I always figured spammers were ugly.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
With her name and a complaint that she sent us spam, whether she did or not. Let's see how quickly she finds herself permanently without an ISP. :)
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
They'd have to get an awful lot of buys to make back their costs.
I'd wholeheartedly support a 1 cent/email fee to be imposed across the board, by law, everywhere. Would you?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Spam is theft, plain and simple. Spammers need to be punished.
You know who else needs to be punished? Mainline companies like Symantec who hire obvious fly-by-night spammers to slosh crap ads for Noron SystemWorks all over email, and then deny that Norton has anything to do with it.
About twice a week for the last 6 or 8 months I get the same ad from some theiving yellowbellies. I used to send the ads to piracy@symantec.com. After 10 increasingly strident emails, the neanderthal Symantec hired to insult people who write to piracy@symantec.com finally wrote me back, using both fingers, only to deny the obvious connections between Symantec and the spammers. Hey, unibrow! Do you think I was born yesterday?
I have sworn NEVER to buy a Symantec product because of this spamming.
Well, I also use Linux and NetBSD so it's very unlikely I will ever need Symantec's to fix up a crap Windows installation, but still, I've taken the oath.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
We know:
Her name: Laura Betterly
Her kids names: Chris, 10, and Craig, 11
The city she lives in: DUNEDIN, Fla
What her house is like: 5,000-square-foot home, with a pool
And it even had a picture of her.
A quick Google turns up:
Betterly, Laura
717 Weathersfield Dr.
Dunedin, FL 34698-7437
United States
(1) 727-447-2037
(1) 727-468-2037
-----------
How about someone in Florida drive over there and tell her that the other 99.999% of her email recipients are wishing her bodily harm, and also that they know where she lives.
Hell, why don't we all call her?
`Lex - Find Me Here: Text Appeal
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
...who actually reads the emails ? Even if I was so oblivious that I didn't filter my emails, I would never dream of supporting the spammer. Even if I accidently read a spam and then amazingly found the product/service interesting, I would not respond to anything in the spam.
> He also hunts for new ways to get around
> software that tries to filter out spam and to
> get people to open his e-mails.
With a response rate as low as 0.002%, do they expect that the people that install and run spam filters are the most likely to respond to spam ?
It's depressing to see how irresponsible the ISPs are, letting them off the hook so easily. They owe it to their customers to shut down the spammers, not just warn them if they get many complaints.
Like the "spam queen" said, It's a numbers game. If people bothered complaining, they'd really feel what people think about them.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
I find this odd, because people regularly LOOK and actively search for porn. But almost noone does the same for spam. It's like saying a rude door to door salesman is better than a strip club, even though the strip club doesn't affect anyone that doesn't want to be affected.
"I don't understand why prostitution is illegal. If some girl really needs $5 and some guy really needs a squib job, it sounds like a match made in heaven!" --Random standup comic quote.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
The article showed a pie chart detailing the things spam was selling, and it only indicated "scams" as being 4%.
I'd have to say that only 4% of the spam I get (when I review my spamassassin mailbox for false positives..) to be anything approaching legitimate products and services.
Almost all of it is for penis enhancers (surely fraudulent), fake viagra (ditto), stock schemes (pump 'n' dumps), "financial offers" which are surely either pump-n-dumps or deals so loaded with fees they stretch the definition of legitimate, bogus health products (HGH and the like), and porn, which is far higher than the 12% indicated.
Since this is the WSJ we're talking about, I wonder if this isn't some editorial attempt to de-marginalize spammers and the borderline legal crap they push, with the goal of ultimately softening the opposition so that the big-name direct marketers can start in on this too. Claiming only 4% fraudulent content is stretching the imagination pretty thin.
Two Hundred Thousand a year????
Good god, am I in the wrong job? I'm only a semi-moral person after all...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
C'mon, we can't be hypocritical here. You can't call someone up in the middle of the night unless you have an existing business relationship with them.
That's right, no calls unless you've been the recipient of her SPAM.
[Checking inbox... "You Have 362 Unread Messages"]
Well, guess that's taken care of... What was Ms. Betterly's phone number again?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
In her mind, her time with her children is important, your time, and my time, weeding through UCE is not important.
In her mind, she's a moral and ethical person.
She's not out of her mind; she's just buried too deeply in it.
P.S.:And I am Marie of Roumania.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Money made.
But, being a spammer, she may have someone strip their cars while the door is bolted to keep them inside.
Fight Spammers!
Who can say why he divorced her, but it doesn't appear to be because he has a visceral loathing of spam.
"A friend in Tampa along with her ex-husband keep the company's computers and servers running."
http://www.ezlink.com/~perry/CoS/Wise99/42_United_ States2.txt
:)
Betterly, Laura
717 Weathersfield Dr.
Dunedin, FL 34698-7437
United States
(1) 727-447-2037
(1) 727-468-2037
I personally intend to sell her an Anti-Anti-Spam tool to filter out Anti-Spam mail.
Why stick up for big business?
Ms. Betterly says she refuses to send e-mails about adult fare, because it "disgraces society." She won't take jobs from clients selling products she doesn't think are legitimate. And she only sends bulk e-mails to people who have indicated at some time that they want to hear more about certain products or offers.
So, in short, she's not a "real" spammer at all.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
She might be making $200,000 now, but in a few years when SPAM laws get tighter (and they definitely will), she'll have to move back into the trailer park, and I'll enjoy seeing that. Spam can never be justified for being "right", when it costs some companies so much money in increased time and bandwidth costs.
Laura Betterly
717 Weathersfield Dr
Dunedin, FL 34698-7437
(727)733-5335
How nice that the Pinellas County Property Appraiser's Office let's you do on-line searches. The information for her address is available on-line.
Includes:
Enjoy!
While Betterly is one of the "lesser" spammers, the problem is that in this day in age, people are AFRAID to use opt-out/unsubscribe instructions.
Why?
Because using such instructions is the #1 way to get your email address propagated to more spammers. Anyone who knows anything about dealing with spam is that the #1 rule is not to do ANYTHING that could be used to validate your address. The only response to a spam that won't do more harm than good is a "User unavailable" or other similar delivery failure bounce message. Maybe Betterly actually removes people who wish to opt-out, but most spammers don't, and that's why all of this opt-in and opt-out bullshit will never work.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Well, daytime here. In Europe. No sense in being impolite or immoral with such an outstanding figure in her community.
Funny, since the parent to this message was posted, the number is always engaged. We've slashdotted her phone. Awwwww.
Maybe someone could get her cell phone number as well (a quick search turned up nothing), as americans get charged for incoming cell phone calls.
the AC
[Any Aussies want to pick up the relay?]
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I recently received some spam whose subject line contained just the name of my 4 month old nephew. It is not a common name either.
It seems unlikely they could send spam that was addressed only to me, with a name I had mentioned in several previous emails without some sort of email scanning.
Has any one else had this ?
Will
per mere, per terras
Last time I commented on this, I got accused by some idiot of being a troll. Interestingly enough it was still modded to 5 and considered "Insightful".
The biggest problem with spam is ... the response rates. That is users who actually are dumb enough to open up the email and then reply to it.
If everyone in the whole world suddenly got a clue (and it won't happen) then the response rate for junk emails would be nothing, nada, zip, 0 people and 0%.
Exactly how long would a spamming organisation be able to stay in business if they couldn't even guarantee that in a 6 million mailout, they could not get one sale?
With a response rate as low as 0.002%, do they expect that the people that install and run spam filters are the most likely to respond to spam ?
No, because if you've installed it yourself you're too tech savvy and very very unlikely to buy anything from them. They're gunning for the uneducated masses. Those that do reply.
A 0.002% response rate for 3 million emails is 6 thousand responses. Despite the low percentage, that bold figure is enough for many unscrupulus companies to go "hell yeah!".
Email spamming is quick, cheap and it's easy. So quick, so cheap and so easy that it's seen as worthwhile even if you only get 50 responses. Until that number drops to 1 or 2 then we'll all have to look at other ways of stopping the menace.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It's a joke!
I'm sure she has a legitimate fax number that can accept requests for unsubscribe, being such a fine character.
She doesn't forge or falsify the message headers;
But at the far end of the article we read about her computer guy:
Ok, so isn't the "from" line in in some narrow, literal, technical sense, part of the message header? --Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Yeah, or maybe like... uhmm... sending spam to people about spam removal software? I fail to see how your analogy helps to enlighten anyone about anything.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Steal their databases.
I can only imagine the kind of horror they might feel at getting hacked and finding somone had DL'd their precious list of names.
It's sad enough that they have to promote antispam software by the means of spam, but for someone to actually buy it? I mean, who would take the time to read spam in order to stop spam?
Well, at least Ms. Betterly is a "better" person. I am glad to hear that.
Much ado about nothing, anyone? Seems like a lot of damage just to gain $1,555 (ok, I'm a student and $1,555 is a lot of money, but STILL!)
If you're using the Razor you can change your mail filters file to do this. Make sure you bounce the messages as opposed to forwarding them, that way she can't block the addresses, bouncing also doesn't leave a record of where it came from afaik.
I dunno, if only 20 of us did this, that's 20x the normal amount of spam she's receiving. It'd be hard to find the genuine mail amongst all that. I think she'd get the message.
lose your last meal
kill your sex drive for at least a week
cause you to violate several local pr0n ordnances
disturb your sleep for a long time to come
the AC
Don't say I didn't warn you
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Colombian drug lords make a living by selling a real product to a customer. It is very unfair of you to insult them by equating them with parasites like Ms Betterly.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
From the article:
... Or we'll say 'stop' again!
"WorldCom says that if problems with a spammer persist, the company will send increasingly stern notices and eventually cut off service."
Stop!
My
Limekiller
Perhaps I should try again in about 5 seconds by clicking on http://www.dataresourceconsulting.com, and, if it still doesn't work, perhaps keep clicking on http://www.dataresourceconsulting.com until the page eventually loads, if it ever does.
I suppose the hosts of http://www.dataresourceconsulting.com don't have enough bandwidth to accomodate for all that unwanted traffic. Oh well, they are a profitable company, so no doubt they will invest in a better connection so that I will one day be able to view http://www.dataresourceconsulting.com.
... can we get her email address(es) so we can start signing HER up for a boatload of spam? I'd personally like to sign her up for junkamil from Custom Offers..
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
sunbiz.org file for her company. As someone mentioned she's doing biz at home, there seems no problem with this, check here. At least she tries to work legal, however...
From the article:
Ms. Betterly says she follows a lot of the rules laid out by most of the state laws: She doesn't forge or falsify the message headers; she doesn't use a third-party company's Internet address or domain name unknowingly
From the PC in his tidy two-bedroom Tampa apartment, Chris Connell, the company's computer expert, recently launched a large, promising campaign for Ms. Betterly.
He [Chris Connell] labors over a message's subject line; he's found people are more likely to open e-mail if it appears to be from a real person, so he types his friends' names on "from" lines.
So she claims that she doesn't 'forge or falsify' headers, but her employee uses other peoples names in the 'from' header field. That looks very much like falsifying headers (& therefor illegal) to me.
HH
She's a Witch! She's a Witch! Burn Her! Burn Her!
- WorldCom lets spammers get away with 'first offence'.
- WorldCom helps spammers listwash.
- WorldCom will let spammers get away with spamming several times before actually doing anything about it.
Are you people never satisifed? Do you want the FBI raiding at the FIRST sign of trouble, or do you want to follow proper channels?Such an informative post. Where did that customers email address come from? How is Mr. Connell to REALLY know if that person merely clicked-through an agreement (Without reading it) that their email would be shared? Did that person then attempt to use anything posted within the email to remove his/herself from that list?
"And she only sends bulk e-mails to people who have indicated at some time that they want to hear more about certain products or offers. People do that, some unwittingly, when they sign up for free e-mail accounts or create chat-room identities or buy products online. Many Web sites ask users whether they are interested in receiving marketing offers and ask them to check -- or, more likely, uncheck -- an obscure little box if they don't want to receive that kind of e-mail."
So people, in this case, are not paying attention. Strangely, that's also why there's such hubub about cars and cell-phone use.
"He flagged the name of the offended e-mail recipient on Ms. Betterly's list so that person wouldn't be contacted again."
So wait a second, because some places don't abide by their privacy agreements, or don't remove people when requested, then EVEYRONE is bad?
I suppose, then, I should be in prison, because I've circumvented copy protection using a No-CD crack so my kids don't have to touch CD's.
Obviously, you belive that if SOMEONE is doing something illegal in a certain area (hacking government systems), then EVERYONE must be doing that. I guess we shouldn't have access to source code either. Who KNOWS what we could do with that!
Please. Tell us. Some of us want to know which side of the double standard you really stand at.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
"He labors over a message's subject line; he's found people are more likely to open e-mail if it appears to be from a real person, so he types his friends' names on "from" lines. "The trick is to make it look personal," he said as he tapped out commands on his computer. "You want to make it look like it comes from the guy in the cubicle down the hall."
They must be very lucky to be friends with this nice guy. I bet they get all kinds of exotic offers like "sleeping with the fishes" and stuff.
I have always said that Slashdot is cyberspace's Mos Eisley Cantina. This is a new low for us! Loving it!
I think we should all spam her inbox! Please post her email so that it can be bombed....err spammed rather. After all, she thinks that it is perfectly legal.
Thanks in advance.
Spamming or Slashdotting her is just as bad a crime as her spamming us. If you do send her Spam, or you do try to participate in trying to DOS her, then you have no right complaining about the Spam in the first place.
I know this will not work very well for the spammers who forge their return e-mail addy, but.... Is it possible to make a list of spam messages and spammers and send a professional letter to the ISP saying that one of their user sent X number of messages in the last week (possibly attach the message as well)?
If an ISP gets one complaint from a user - that's one thing. If the ISP gets a messge saying that 23,000 spam messages were sent out in the last week by one of their customers - that's another.
First I bought my own domain name. This allows me to enable new email addresses at any point. I have an unlimited supply. I can create a new email address for anything that I want. Anytime I buy something, I enable an email address with some number and the name of the company in it. Anytime I post to usenet or ask somebody for help from somebody I create a new email address for that purpose. I give all my friends a private email address and ask them to be careful with it.
This means that I can also disable email addresses. I send an autoreponse to any disabled email address saying, "You attempted to send deadsea email, but you used an address that gets too much spam". I then can give them a URL for a contact form if they really need to contact me.
The contact form is the best part though. If you go to my website, the contact form lets you send me email but never reveals my address. It uses an alias system. That means that my addresses won't be harvested to begin with. I made the contact form available under the GPL so you can use it too.
So people can email me, but if I start getting spammed, I can disable an address and people can still contact me. Sure its a pain to have to use the contact form, but it doesn't happen that often. When it does happen, I reply with an email address that can actually be used to contact me.
I'll dispute that - companies often spend (sometimes amazingly huge) amounts of money on advertising because of groupthink - they all learned exactly the same thing in buisness school, and advertising costs are often NOT looked at for any strict return on investment.
Perhaps (and perhaps not) abortion is immoral, unethical, wrong, etc. Well, so is spam, but spam also happens to be illegal . That's all the difference in the world.
One of the most damning comments in the article seems to have been overlooked.
"Two days later, 275 messages were opened (out of a half million, remember) and 65 surveys completed...." (paraphrased). Gee, how the hell did she know how many messages had been read?
Maybe she's just counting the number of hits on a specific image on her server... but it seems much more likely that she's using a mailbug. If only 275 people, out of 500,000, even opened the message then these are the morons you want to include in all future mailings.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
As for your illegal use of CDs, that's your lookout - you have chosen to put your family at legal risk just to save a couple of bucks on CDs. Or maybe you are taking a moral stand, but you are still choosing to take a risk. Mayhap that's an OK risk for you, but it's still there, don't pretend you aren't breaking a law for your own convenience.
As for the spammers, I have NEVER EVER EVER given "opt-in" permission on my tech contact Email to any business. It was stolen from the Internic "whois" database over ten years ago, and now receives thousands of spams (ironically, I maintain that address as a spam trap now to help me keep a strong access.db) from hundreds of spammers, all of whom make exactly the same claims as Betterly.
It should be obvious that with individuals rapidly and constantly trading lists of as many as 60 million addresses, it is effectively impossible to get "opted out" permanently once one is on such a list. It is equally obvious that there is tremendous financial incentive to create lists without any regard for the wishes of those on the lists, and to represent those lists as "opt-in" when trading with other spammers.
At least you are consistent; you, an admitted scofflaw, are defending other scofflaws. Kudos to you for that, I respect a consistent code of ethics.
It's true that advertising automatically makes the advertized products more expensive, but at the same time it can make other things cheaper (sporting events, television channels, newspapers, magazines, ...). So with classic advertising, there's also always a positive aspect (whether or not it's worth it, is another question), which you don't have with spam (the only one that gets better from it the spammer and possibly the seller).
Donate free food here
You stop right now, or we'll issue an ultimatum!
If I was charged for the mails send by these mailing lists, I'd probably have to close them down. Or rather, the nice site hosting the lists would probably stop that service.
Nice to know that not only can I avoid looking at the spam, I can flat out refuse to accept it when it comes in! Mind you, it does save it to let me look at it before I /dev/null it, but gives me much more satisfaction than just dropping it in a different folder.
I believe personally that the bell is tolling for spam and here's why: Most of the people responding are senior citizens. I visit an older widow from time to time who just loves the Internet. She's always calling the numbers or responding to the emails. I tell her that she shouldn't do that but she always says "But that man was just so nice ... ". They are so trusting, I guess 50 years ago you didn't have a reason not to trust people.
That said, people from that generation are steadly leaving us. As older generations are more and more tech saavy and younger ones are taught to know better in the first place then we should see a significant decline in Spam as it should become less and less profitable.
Then again as the saying goes "There's a sucker born every minute"
The Anti-Blog
No, ISPs should NOT be blocking ANY ports. I pay them for a connection. Perhaps email, news, etc. Securing my machine is my responsibility. If there is a machine on their net causing a problem, then yes, they should kill THAT machine's connection. Filtering anything is not the right thing for them to be doing.
You pay for a connection, but the ISP owns the infrastructure, and it's their network you are connecting to. While it would be nice if they did not block any ports, they have every right to do so on their own network. If you don't like that, you are always free to take your business elsewhere.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Tell her to go back to direct mailing. Then, at least she pays for the postage, the printing costs, and all that other stuff, instead of making me pay for the bandwidth to download crap she generates, the time it takes to set up yet another spam filter on my e-mail addresses, and the storage space the message will inevitably take up before I send it to digital oblivion. I mean, at least junk mail you can just toss in the recycle bin and it doesn't really cost you anything.
Oh, yeah, and leave your real address out of the letter. No sense in making her life easier. That's also the reason not to phone her or e-mail her. If I worked in a seamy business like that, I'd have Caller ID. And if I worked in a seamy business like that, I'd be precisely unscrupulous enough to take the e-mail addresses out of the barrage of complaints and add them to my database.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Ah even better the double reply CC trick....
2 computers with forwarders set up and one attempts to wangle them to fire an email back and fwd to each other, while cc'ing each time to that email.
In about ten minutes she should receive about 1000 emails saying "Your a bad lady, but I forgive you, so I've attached a core dump file to this email as a present". Catch... May kill your own mailer machines too.
I once sent a 'Get fcked' email to a spammer once and copped an autoreply...
So I sent another one, with the header forged so that it said it came from the machine account autoresponding.(Causing autoresponder loop death) The machine responded to pings for about 2 minutes, and then fell off the earth. Infinite loop email death. THAT'L LEARN YA , YA NUTTY SPAMMER!!!!!!!!
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Well, this will be the most unpopular message in the thread, but this woman is not a spammer. People have signed up to receive email, she sends them email. They request to be taken off the list, she takes them off. She doesn't forge headers, use open relays, or advertise for fake products. Where exactly is she wrong here? If you sign up to receive email, you should expect to receive email. These people requested to be put on the list (if they aren't smart enough to uncheck the "send me additional email" box it's their own fault), and they can get taken off her list by faollowing the instructions in the email. Sorry, nothing she is doing is wrong.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
um...er....0.002% of 3 million is 60, not 6 thousand (0.002% x 3million = 0.00002 x 3million).
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
What, you think I can make over $200K as a prostitute? Have you seen my body lately?
As for drugs, I dunno. It's dangerous and tough to break into.
In both those cases it would take a lot of good fortune to make more than my current salary I think, which is less than half of that $200K figure.
[devil's advocate]
I get hassled by Spam all the time, since in the past (and present) I've had my email spattered on my various websites and whast not. I've learned to deal with it, with a whitelist system it's not too bad. So why shouldn't I see a piece of that action?
[/devil's advocate]
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
For what it's worth, No-CD cracks are not illegal, although you may be liable for civil penalties for using them.
Posting the names of the kids? You're an ass. They've done nothing other than being born to idiotic parentage, and now do you know how many times they'll get beaten up and have their lunch money stolen?
Little Johnny: My dad said your mom is a filthy spammer
Craig: Is not!!!!
Johnny: Is too, give me your lunch money or I'll beatchya!
Visit a spammer's website and gather some contact information, then fire off an email. Don't be shy about including your phone number, suggesting you might be interested in mass mailing.
A couple minutes with pen and paper and you can probably come up with enough questions to keep them busy for an hour, asking about the effectiveness of their marketing technique, options, haggling on payment, so on and so on. If this type thinks there's any chance of completing the transaction, they will stay on the line for a long time. Never tell them off, leave them constantly wondering if you're another perspective client.
It's not dull. You learn quite a few things about the type of person who will do something like this. It's an insight into a pretty twisted world, and it's several million spams they won't get out.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
Not really - there are a handfull of anonymous web-based remailers that can be used. Remember: Google is our friend.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
Actually 3,000000 * 0.002% = 120
3,000000 * 0.2% = 6000
Thus to get 120 sales, that means irritating 3 million people. Fscking evil & horrifying business.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
not the price of manufacture / production
You don't think you get to be the richest person in the world with "cost of production + 10%" do you?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Anyone seen the new Hormel TV ads? They crack me up every time I see them. But really, who wants more Spam -- whether it be luncheon meatlike substance or UCE?
And who says TiVo users never watch ads?
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
DOnt kill the poor little doggie. Kill his owner, and then fed him to the dog. Its not the dogs fault. This way, you stop spam, make the dog happy and well fed, and dispose of evidence all in one fell swoop.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Seriously, here's an idea:
This stupid woman gave her real name and the city in which she lives to a national news company... Why doesn't someone rent a van and get a few friends to drive over to her house (where she operates a commercial entity, possibly against zoning regulations) and throw actual SPAM at her house? Maybe find some kids in that neighborhood to make fun of her kids... maybe take all of those AOL cd's we all microwaved and spell out "you = teh sucks" on her lawn.
IANAL, but I play one on
Filtering anything is not the right thing for them to be doing.
While I personally prefer to implement my own firewall, and enjoy the freedom to do more or less what I want, I think it would be better all round if the standard "problem" ports (netbios,http,smtp,dns etc) were blocked by default for all new subscribers to a service, but could be unblocked if the subscriber so requested.
For the vast majority of people, it's in their best interests to block, they likely have no idea what a "port" is, and they'd never need to allow incoming connections anyway - but anyone with a clue, and other requirements could fend for themselves.
I'm all for freedom, but compromised machines, run by clueless idiots on DSL lines are a serious problem these days.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
$50 to anyone who goes around to her spam-house and cuts her connection with a pair of pliers.
;-)
$10 bonus for taking a baseball bat to her PC...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
If it's a small business with only one employee the zoning laws probably don't apply. Otherwise telecommuting would be largely illegal.
Best Slashdot Co
If you found yourself on a jury at the trial of someone who had murdering a spammer, would you convict?
- Yes
- No
- Only if Cowboy Neal was the accused
As it happens, I would vote "No".
I got the exact same thing yesterday in my school lab. It is not ironic since the act is intentional. It is called targeted advertising.
e s/ popupspam/index.htm
The message is being listed as being sent from 'WEBPOPUP' since that is the name someone used for their system. Most of these diploma traces so far go to ev1.net, though after a lot of complaints they refuse to do anything. Check out a little information concerning this issue here:
http://www.mynetwatchman.com/kb/security/articl
The program being used is called "Direct Advertiser". If you have NetBIOS bound to your interface, someone using net send will, by default, pipe the message over SMB to TCP 139. But if NetBIOS is not bound to the interface, net send will use UDP 135 instead. It takes the "net" command a bit longer to figure this out, but it does work.
The Direct Advertiser product just skips the preliminaries, knowing that smart system administrators close TCP 139, and goes right for the undocumented back door.
The 'Direct Advertiser' web site even tells you how to not receive these kind of things any more.
How to set up your system not to receive netbios messages
To deliver the message our program uses a NetBios call built into the Windows API.
Click Start->Setings -> Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services
Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK
Windows XP
Click Start->Control Panel
Click Performance and Maintenance
Click Administrative Tools
Double click Services
Scroll down and highlight "Messenger"
Right-click the highlighted line and choose Properties.
Click the STOP button.
Select Disable or Manual in the Startup Type scroll bar
Click OK
Windows 98/ME
Remove or disable the file and printer sharing from your network configuration.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Simple. With junk snail-mail, the spammer is paying. They have to pay for printing costs for the material, and they have to pay for each piece mailed. That limits the volume, and gives them an incentive to make at least some effort to not waste money on people who won't respond.
E-mail spam, OTOH, is primarily paid for by me. I'm sorry, but my connection bandwidth is not a negligible cost. Neither is the time I spend sorting out the spam that gets past my filters (at the rates my company would bill me out at, spam costs me about $30/day). As for the argument that making my e-mail address public somehow justifies spamming it, well, you probably made your phone number public by having it published in the phone book, I suppose that would make it perfectly fine for me to keep calling you, tying up your phone line so you couldn't get any other calls, right? Sauce for the gander.
Final note: just because someone wants to sell their product does not give them unlimited rights to shove it down everyone's throat.
Everyone is railing on her and positing her number etc ..
fx: 360-323-1929
what about the tech guy.
www.dataresourceconsulting.com
Data Resource Consulting
Steve Blom (Steve@dataresourceconsulting.com)
727-773-5335
717 Weathersfield Dr.
Dunedin FL 34698
Name Servers
NS1.NOVASTATE.COM
NS2.NOVASTATE.COM
registration ends on 08/09/2003
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Well, I could "make a living" selling small boys to pedophiles, or gassing kittens or beating up people on the street for gangsters, but that doesn't make it right.
help yourself:
BETTERLY, LAURA A
717 WEATHERSFIELD DRIVE
DUNEDIN FL 34698
See:
sunbiz.com
Maybe somebody should sign her up for all sorts of neat stuf...
hmm..
She doesn't like pr0n, huh..
hmm..
heh..
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
No it isn't. Advertising pays for all free to air television except the BBC. It pays for a lot of very useful web sites. It reduces the price of magazines and newspapers. It pays for expensive sporting and arts events. Effective advertising leads to increased product sales directly benefitting the company's shareholders and sometimes its employees. For certain products such as software the price is related to the number of units sold so effective advertising can lead to cheaper prices for the consumer.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
If they were, then you should also expect them to police your activities. Forget porn, forget warez, forget your MP3s, forget violent multiplayer online games, etc. Forget anything society currently deems questionable.
Do you really want that? Me neither...
An ISP will react to the economics of the situation though. If they get too many complaints, that costs them money. The spammer in question gets whacked for costing the ISP money.
Once spam becomes too expensive to send, it won't be sent. Let's face it though, when the scams are cleaned up (they're already dropping off somewhat I think), spammer reputations will improve. Then spam itself becomes less odious. Complaints will drop. Spam's not going away...
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I don't 'just press delete'. I spend time and effort in an attempt to have the spammers' connectivity revoked and their webpages terminated, up to and including contacting the registrar over false information in their WHOIS lookup. When killing spammers is legal (as it should be, as it wouldn't be like killing productive members of society like prostitutes or drug dealers), I'll spend my time doing that.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Ms. Betterly says she refuses to send e-mails about adult fare, because it "disgraces society."
porn is purely opt-in. spam is not. the minute I start projecting images of a 70-year old whore getting anal treatment from a 3-legged husky through her dining room window during dinnre is the day she has the right to send unsolicited shit to my inbox.
Fundamentally, her process is to make other people pay for her business. That is unacceptable.
The notion that people can "opt-out" is absurd; trying to opt-out of many lists will add you to the "sucker" list, and there's no way for a recipient to know if they'll be opted out or in fact added more.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I deal with a lot of Realtors and some of them print off every piece of spam and wait for me to come around to ask me about them.
Sure spam should get less and less effective over time, but there will always be stupid people.
If I could go back in time, I would setup a company that would allow people to sign up to receive spam and simply split X% of what I'd charge companies to send out marketing material. I guess it's not too late but such a service wouldn't be trusted and would be blackholed everywhere instantly.
Hmmm, maybe I'll create the site. In fact, I could make part of the business model to give X% of the profit to FSF or some other beneficial foundation.
The ideas are flowing now. I'd probably be too scared of being labeled as a spammer.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
You just caused me to have a flashback to Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman" speech. Please don't do that.
Try comparing this to bulk mailings
Yes, let's. Postal mail is sent at the sender's expense, and is thus limited by economic constraints. Spam e-mail is sent at the recipient's expense, and would thus grow to choke out all legitimate e-mail unless firmly suppressed.
There, that wasn't so difficult....
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Because Ms. Betterly's e-mails aren't, in the strictest sense, unsolicited, she doesn't consider them spam. So she isn't breaking any rules when she sends hundreds of thousands of messages through, say, WorldCom Inc., one of her many service providers.
What are they talking about? How is her spam not, in the strictest sense, unsolicited?
You might not see the problem, but that's becuase spammers have a bad reputation. This is why I do not like this article - when spammers do have a good reputation and anyone thinks nothing about sending email, what will you will have, is useless ineffective computers.
Bottom line is this: sending email costs the sender a fixed flat, neglible cost. Receiving email is a sunken cost of wiring up computers, paying for system admins or software to set it up. The rewards of this system lies in maximizing the gain associated with having good quality, desired email. If you let the noise in, you only stand to lose.
There - I've just phrased the argument succinctly in the businessspeak of cost-benefit-analysis for all managers and businessmen out there.
Not convinced? Must we actually wait until there is a real problem of one having to sift through junkmail, missing out on your time and business opportunity, before you can act?
So although, spam may never be wpied out totally, but efforts towards that are GOOD. Taking "the spam can be good" is the WRONG attitude.
Please learn some grammar. That subject is very confusing. Possessive is "their" - "there" is a place.
Sorry to be language nazi but I had to read that subject line 4 times to decipher what the heck you were trying to say.
Thats not from spamcop - its from spammers trying to give a bad rep to spamcop. Similar to the recent emails pro-zionists forged so as to make it look like pro-palestinians were spamming them.
no sig.
Contact: Laura Betterly
;) You should too.
President, Data Resource Consulting
Phone: 727-733-5335
I called her, got her voice mail... Left her a warm message from the heart
Who said anything about sendnig her e-mail. Have you never seen an e-mail field on a web form before?
"Filtering anything is not the right thing for them to be doing."
Like hell they shouldn't!
They should block incoming traffic based on blacklist rules. There is no reason anything anywhere should be sending incoming traffic to SUNRPC or NetBIOS ports! None!!! I'm sure we can agree on not blocking ports above 1024, because those are dynamically assigned, but WELL KNOWN services under 1024 have every reason to be blocked, because they are WELL ABUSED services!
The internet is a commons. If any one system is insecure, it can be used to bash other systems -- everyone loses security because of one screwup. There should be laws against it the same way there are laws against throwing toxic waste into rivers.
What can ISPs do to be proactive about things like this once laws are in place? Well, they can block known traffic patterns that match a black-list of disabled traffic patterns (such as FIN scanning). That's not something you'll have a problem with, because you won't be FIN scanning. And your machine is less likely broken in to by someone who might be FIN scanning because commonly insecure services are filtered at the ISP!
AOL's not about to blast some AOLer off of a connection because my machine says it's being attacked by it. Why shouldn't my ISP just drop the packets at their location, rather than wasting bandwidth I could be using?
Filtering makes a lot of sense. Besides, if you're a consumer interent person, how likely are you to be wanting to run a webserver? Joe Sixpack sure doesn't want to be accidently running IIS's latest worm, so they block it. If you want to host a website, you'll probably talk to them about a different connection package, or go to a different ISP where such a package exists. But that's not a technical problem, that's a social/business problem.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
This is a 5????
Why - what is insightful here?
Paragraph 1 is an inaccurate[1] and personal attack on the previous poster - no insight here.
Paragraph 2 is the usual bleating of 'how did my email get out' - no insight here.
Paragraph 3 is a BGO, Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious - no insight here.
Paragraph 4 is a plain and simple personal attack - no insight here
====
[1] Why Inaccurate?
1) Because enabling a program to run without using its CD as a key does not AUTOMATICALLY mean the poster does not own the original.
2) Because while the use of the no-cd crack for any reason may be illeagal under the DMCA in the US, elsewhere it is not, and will be decided on intent.
3) The poster's family is not at any legal risk - in most juristrictions (Not US due to DMCA) this is a CIVIL not a CRIMINAL risk, no-one is going to chase you for a few bucks because they will have to pay for the case, the state will not. Even in a juristriction where this is a crminial offence it will almost certainly not be prosecuted by the state as it will not be in the pbulic interest.
Additionally they can only chase the poster, not thier family. Why be personal and bring thier family into the argument. Not surely because they took the trouble to explain they'd used the no-cd crack to protect the original cd's when his kids played with them? If thats the true explanation then that is perfectly morally and ethically defensible thing to do with something you own that in certain juristrictions is being criminilized by poor legislation
Here's my mirror.
To the poster who located this, that's just beautiful! I particularly love the crosshair right over her home. You can almost see the smartbomb falling down her chimney in the next instant...
Note to John Ashcroft and freinds: I'm just kidding with the part about the bomb. Really. I'm a pacifist. It's a JOKE.
Actually, 3,000,000 * 0.002% = 60.
Thus, to get 120 sales, that means irritating 6 million people.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
The ISP has the same obligation to suppress spam by its subscriber regardless of whether the target is on or off their service. The victim should use all means of complaint available; he or she suffers an economic injury from these intrusions. Even if it only takes fifteen minutes to learn about and implement port blocking, my time is worth money.
Practically, the ISP is going to deal with this unwelcoming messaging after enough annoyed complaints come in. But how?
Before everyone launches a game of Internet doorbell-ditch: it is legitimate to send a real email or make a phone call criticizing what she does (politely -- remember, you're with the good guys). Collectively /. should be able to produce a lot of feedback, at one per person. If she just gets snowed by abuse, so you really think she'll going to think, golly, my ways are in error and I better change jobs? Or just, there are a lot of jerks out there and I better never give another interview?
Harassment is no better than spam. It's using illegitimate needs to get what you want. She is doing something wrong (ethically if not legally; and in many states, legally too) but that entitles us to complain, not retaliate. Two wrongs don't make a right, something like that.
She honestly appears not to get it, or is in serious denial. (By contrast, some spammers do appear to have struck a deal with the Dark Prince.) Explain to her, and everyone else, that spam is a serious problem and not just another form of junk mail.
And most important of all, support laws to regulate spam at the national level, as was done for junk faxes. Make it unquestionable that this hijacking of our tiem and resources is illegal.
(I do detest spam. When email arrives, half the time I switch apps over it's for junk. Currently 2/3 of my unfiltered inbox is spam, and the number keeps growing. I don't even want to think of the theoretical maximum to daily spam.)
Your post was bad form... (Smack Nose) BAD FORM!
I didn't think I deserved to be modded up, but modded DOWN???
Are we modding down comments just because we don't agree with them?
PS, Go ahead, Mod me down. You're waisting your points, I'll just post it again.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
There's your business opportunity. Create a central DB with opt-in users (say from that survey site). Then sell subscriptions to 'direct marketers'. By allowing the users to remove themselves from the central database, the direct marketers will get a constantly refined list of more 'receptive' people - more people willing to buy - than they would just buying a list once. More income for them, because less email is automatically getting discarded.
Of course, that somewhat relies on people removing themselves from that list. If it's a good list, the word will get out, and most marketers would then use your database (because your hit percentage is higher than others').
If that happens, then there IS only one place for someone to remove their email address.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Refs at Here and and here as well as a Laura Betterly on the 1997 WISE list. (Co$ organization.)
Yet another scientology spammer, what a surprise!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
http://www.wordsinarow.com/email_lists.html
Laura Betterly
laura@dataresourceconsulting.com
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
I thought about switching to the new bayesian filters I'd read about on Slashdot, but they don't seem that mature yet
:)
They're mature, they work and they get rid of over 90% of my spam. Check out spamprobe and bogofilter, in my oppinion the most mature of the bunch. spamprobe does have more features
She doesn't forge headers.
That's what she said; and technically it's correct, she doesn't do it, but her computer guy does, from the article:
He labors over a message's subject line; he's found people are more likely to open e-mail if it appears to be from a real person, so he types his friends' names on "from" lines.
That IS forging headers. That's using deception to try to get me to open her e-mails. You say she's not a spammer; I say, not only is she a spammer, she's also a natural born liar. Not the kind of people I'd like to deal with. Fortunately I have spamprobe to take care of spam for me.
Yeah but the same person who might opt out of the Penis Pump spam might click the Breast Enhancing Pills spam. These guys intentionally try to make it difficult to opt out by not having a central system.
You're assuming you new central database doesn't have seperate tables based on who is interested in what. If they opt in, and don't pay attention to what else they will be automatically signed up for, they can be added to BOTH the Penis Pill, and Breast Enhance tables.
The previous post still applies. People completely uninterested in Penis Pill can/will opt out, leaving those who ignore, and those who are interested - trimming your table, and increasing the 'hit ratio'.
Everything is still opt-in, AND opt-out. The person initially giving away their email address has to be careful about what rights they've granted the new holder of their address - that's the key.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Given attempts at legal throttling of free speech such as the CDA and the recent Australian efforts (as mentioned on slashdot) and the European Community efforts (slashdot again) and
A Brave New World indeed, where spam is legal but not much else is. Something for us all to look forward to.
You really think this professional mail abuser publicized an address she uses much? And you don't think she has adequate precautions against inbound mail abuse?
I assume that any email address she actually cares about is kept well insulated from her spamming business. And her ex-husband will probably grind this publicized account through some scripts to discard the automated abuse and find the one or two messages from potential spam sponsors, which was probably her goal in cooperating with the WSJ.
Am I the only person who thinks this woman might have just as well put an ad in the newspaper saying "sniper wanted"?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
As for the spam in my inbox, that's indeed not something like a burglary. Maybe a better analogy in that case would be tresspassing and leaving thrash behind, which I then have to clean up. Using your dog anology, it's as if 20 people a day would let their dog drop its, well, droppings in your garden. With the addition that you would have to pay part of the transportation cost of the droppings from the owners house to yours (bandwidth usage).
We're definitely using different interpretations of the word "evil"Donate free food here
I can liken it instead to smoking. I smokeed for quite some time. When I did, I wouldn't smoke in non-smokers' houses, I wouldn't smoke at restaurants if I was the only smoker there - in other words, I didn't allow my bad habit to impact my friends, family, colleagues and aquaintances. Now that I've quit, I expect people to not smoke in my home - even the ones who used to do so when I still smoked (now they stand on the porch).
Since I don't like smoke being blown in my face, I won't blow it in other peoples' faces. Simple as that. I can't understand how so many people who claim to be people of integrity would break their principles so casually. They're always hiring at donut shops and restaurants. Everybody has to eat, and last I checked, it's not a terrible inconvenience to the masses to feed people.
So because it's not at the top of your list, it makes it acceptable?BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Mod this up! This is a very nice detective work!
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
While I agree with you in principle, I feel obligated to point out a flaw in your logic: What if there is no "elsewhere"?
I am fortuate enough to have a cable modem through TimeWarner. Do I want a cable modem? No. Do I want TimeWarner? No. Do I have a choice? No.
What I want is broadband. Just a pipe and no screwing around with ports. Oh, and I don't want to pay hundreds of dallars. See, I can't get DSL, and there is no wireless within range, and I can't do satellite (even if I wanted to) because I face the wrong way and my apartment community has rules about dishes anyway...
Now, I realize I could move. I realize I don't have a divine right to broadband in my house at a decent price. At the same time, I would really love to be able to do something other than whine about it.
I thought part of the "deal" with the telco/cable comglomerates was that they get to merge and use a lot of public resources and in exchange they had to provide access to competitors. So, where is that?