Slashdot Mirror
Another Millionaire Spammer Story
An anonymous reader writes "Here's another story about a millionaire spammer who thinks he is doing nothing wrong and can't wait to get his hands on the next generation of spamming software." See also the last installment.
Here's more information on this scum bag:
scum bag info
I'm still looking for the physical adress of his *new* home/data center. If anyone finds it as well as his phone number, or his email *he* uses. Post it!
That the reporter doesn't really like spammers either, don't you? Consider this quote:
Today, Ralsky says he is trying to keep a lower profile, operating through cell phones and unlisted numbers. Ralsky agreed to this interview and the tour of his operation only if I promised not to print the address of his new home, which I found in Oakland County real estate records.
Or, in other words, "I promised not to reveal the address, but if you want to look it up, here's how to do so..."
Subtle no? ;)
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
He has been sued before. I don't think it has stoped him at all.
Michael Loves Me!
Firstly, can anyone envision what could possibly do this? Does your browser have to be trojoned to accomplish this feat? Could it be an IE-only kind of design bug?
I can envision what would do this - there's been stories about this already. It's those popup messages that come up from Windows Messenger. Easy enough to turn off and block, but most people don't.
Firstly, can anyone envision what could possibly do this?
The MS windows messaging service. With knowledge of an IP, you can send a message a computer that's just sitting on the network, with no software aside from the system + middleware running.
You can turn off the service, use any one of a dozen windows software firewalls, or just uninstall the bugger if you don't use it.
Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam. It is intricate computer software, said Ralsky, that can detect computers that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad, much like the kind that display whenever a particular Web site is opened. "This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything.
I seriously doubt that this guy has some new revolutionary technology that will allow him to force ads to pop up no matter what we are doing. This sounds like the typical spyware that comes with kazaa and other similar programs. There is a great cure for this: Ad-Aware. This could also be the IE bug that was mentioned on slashdot yesterday.
Whatever this guy is talking about, it can be easily defeated by ad-aware, using mozilla, or disabling activex in IE.
This kind of "stealth spam" he's talking about sounds a lot like the Microsoft Messenger Service spam that we've already seen, and dealt with by closing those ports off to outside traffic.
That's his old address (see also SpamHaus's record of his addresses) - if you read the article you'll know that's he's just moved house and the new address can be found in the in Oakland County real estate records.
A simpole Yahoo! People Search reveals that there is indeed an Alan Ralsky in West Bloomfield, MI (search results are here). Looks like he's got two phone lines (presumably one for home and one for work), and he apparently has a couple of Yahoo e-mail addresses as well. Send him your spam.
There is software to stop mass mailings. It's just that there are loads of dumb schmucks out there who haven't bothered to see if anything actually exists to do the job.
r ceforge.net/c c/h an.com/itymbi/archives/000656.html
Course, it's the same dumb schmucks who get all the spam mail, which suits me just fine.
The *real* problem is all these bloody spam stories on Slashdot. You only get spam these days because you want spam or are too dumb to do anything about it...
http://pyzor.sourceforge.net/
http://razor.sou
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/d
http://www.spamassassin.org/
http://www.zant
etc etc etc etc.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It's already being used -- it's the messaging pop-ups in Windows. No way to stop it except shutting down the messaging service (which may or may not break other stuff) on the local machine. Univerisities have all ready been hit pretty hard with it. I know it affects Win2k & XP, don't know about anything older.
Here's a picture, from a story about him settling a lawsuit with Verizon last month.
here its his business, err, "real" business.
I want 2D games back.
It's called a winpopup.
You can send one with:
echo -n "Hi, I'm an annoying winpopup" | smbclient -M host
It's already being used -- it's the messaging pop-ups in Windows. No way to stop it except shutting down the messaging service
You mean except firewalling TCP port 139 and UDP 137?
This newsgroup article describes what happened to one of Ralsky's associates in China when someone complained, included the message "thank you for your support of Falun Gong" in the complaint, and CC'd it to someone in the Chinese government.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.