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.
To me spammers are as disruptive to internet growth and society as virus\trojan etc creators.
I liked the comment that he's now unlisted because people kept "driving by" and someone left a box of dog feces on his doorstep.
Think of all the good in the world we can do by leaving a simple box of dog feces on all spammer's doorsteps. If enough people leave enough boxes of dog feces, maybe they'll get the hint and STOP IT!!
This guy's obviously a crook. Kicked out of his previous profession for illegal behaviour. Sorry, what he does is not legal -- its stealing. He steals MY bandwidth, which I paid good money for. I have to download his crap mail wasting MY TIME and MY BANDWIDTH. But the solution to this is simple: make a comprehensive e-mail address list of all people you know, and have your e-mail program delete (or download only the header of) anything which isn't from someone you know.
As for pop-up ads and other crap, you can prevent that by a host file. I currently have images.slashdot.org on my hostfile, along with the locations of other sites that slashdot banners come from. I see no ads on Yahoo, CNET, DOWNLOAD.com, WSJ.com, MSN.com, etc. Other things to do are to disable playing sounds or animations, and to remove Flash from you're computer. As a last resort, you can just disable images altogether.
The technology that this crook described which would flash pop-ups to people connected to the internet is also illegal -- it steals MY resources (my RAM, my CPU time, my GPU power, etc). The way to stop that is to refuse non-requested pop-ups or other such information, to close off ports, and to install a firewall.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Has anyone ever considered organizing a directed attack on known spammers? It seems to me that if I have to spend time deleting penis enlargement spam emails and forwarding them onto ucef@ftc.gov, I am losing productivity which in turn costs money.
Considering that that govt in the US is condsidering allowing recording companies to infect P2P networks legally, why shouldn't the same rights be given to a coalition of ordinary people to do directed attacks on spammers and their ISPs who little about the problem?
Romeo & Juliet for 1337 hax0rz! http://www.redcoat.net/pics/romjul.swf
There's always a bit of a lag as law catches up to society. Sure, some people are duped by email, but some people would also like to burn black people on giant crosses for the crime of being born with a certain skin colour.
We have laws against the burning of people based on skin colour, why aren't there laws stopping spammers yet? Just because you can do something, even to the point of making money at it, it does not mean that it is ethical or moral to do!
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
To all you people saying "I wish I had his address," RTFA.
>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.
The author tells where to get the address.
I control the time!
This "it works" argument is an interesting one. A basic marketing knowledge tells me that the cost per eyeball of spam is around 5 cents, whereas the cost per eyeball for a television commercial is less than a penny (about 0.6 pennies, as I recall.) Spammers are only able to sell their medium by comparing it to direct mailings, which are between $0.20 and $2.00(ish) per eyeball, but that really isn't as apt a comparison.
>Buried in every e-mail he sends is a hidden code that sends back a message every time the e-mail is opened.
Web Bugs are the largest reason I dont view html email messages.
>...that can detect computers that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad
I remember reading about this on slashdot.org awhile back and thinking "crazy", but would someone really waste the time/effort to port scan millions of computers just to send a winpopup? Then it came one day. "Ding!" and my game starts to flicker back to Windows. "What the?!?.. oh." Messenger service got turned off ten seconds later.
Kenny
Almost every single one of these articles includes the name of the spammer. I'm just waiting for the followup article about one of these featured spammers describing how they got the crap beat out of them a la Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, or waking up one night to find a stack of old servers burning in their front yard or soemthing.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I think you raise a fair Q, one I've been thinking about.
OK, spammers should burn in hell (or will, surely, if you don't like it imagine how God feels about spam clogging His inbox). But how do they rate in the great pantheon of scum ranging from, say, serial snipers to NYC "squeegee men"? Or, with a tech theme, relative to the officers of Enron or Worldcom who, it appears, lied and manipulated to deprive thousands of millions, or certain malicious hackers/phreaks who mess with the lives of honest folk for kicks?
Don't get me wrong, I want to see spammers brought under control, but I wonder if the highly emotional denunciations here are over the top or reflect an unusual assessment of naughtiness.
So -- on a scale of 1 to 100, spammers rank (?).
I must admit, I'm curious about this "stealth spam" thing he mentioned. What could it be? Are those sneaky Europeans writing some sort of elaborate VB proggie that exploits Windows Messaging Services? I admit that I've seen one of those pop up once on a friend's machine; we then promptly disabled the messaging service.
Come to think of it, Messaging really should be disabled by default on XP Home, and possibly XP Pro.
Michael C. Hollinger
As I see it there are about 500 000 parties to a spam e-mail: the company that pays for it, the person that is payed for collecting adresses and sending the mail, 10 persons that are happy to get the unique offer and spend money on it, and about 499 988 victims. To stop spam, one group has to be removed from the equation.
The only way to remove the 499 988 innocent victim is for them to stop using e-mail: not a viable solution. Using e-mail filters may temporarily turn the flood into a stream, but mailers will refine their mail to avoid these sooner rather than later.
The persons getting payed are not going to stop. Legislation against spammers would only move the senders to other countries.
The entities paying will continue as long as it is profitable. Again: legislation would not be effective, IMHO.
The only remaining possibility is to remove the 10 morons paying. How to do that? Barring evolution (accelerated by selective violence >:) ), education of the these people seems the only possibility.
Making everyone understand that buying penile enlargement medicaiton online, is not the best of ideas is not as easy as it sounds. There'll always be someone who thinks it's the best invention since sliced bread. Can the percentage be pushed below the treshold of profitability? I don't think so.
This post is free (as in cheese in a mousetrap).
The FTC, states' Attorneys General and other crimefighting organizations need to start going after the fraud that's behind almost every single SPAM message I've ever seen. The spammers (the people sending the email) are almost always hard to get to, but in order for the whole thing to be worth it there must be some way to get to the sellers, otherwise they couldn't collect money from the rubes that reply.
Why can't we get law enforcement to start nailing the scam artists responsible for the spam being generated in the first place? I mean, putting guys in *jail*, big civil fines, and so on.
We can bitch all we want about the clowns sending email, but if the fraudsters were starting to get locked up on a frequent, regular basis it would dry up the market for spammers and they'd move on to something else.
AND if we bitch too long about spam, we're liable to end up with some icky government mandated "system" about email -- how would you like to have to get a license from the government to run an email service? It's to prevent spam, you know...
The reason spam is so prolific is because it is CHEAP. It costs next to nothing to send a message out. But it got me thinking: is this the right solution?
What if we were charged for the emails that we sent? I don't know anyone that sends out more than 1,000 emails a month, so what if ISPs charged a LOT for sending out more than 1,000 emails per month? Would this work in eliminating spam? Would it be helpful?
1)Gives the FBI other people to go after, besides modem uncappers in Toledo, OH. If the FBI is going to take computers, let them take computers owned by a fucking SPAMMER, not people that uncap cable modems and *don't* spam.
2)Go after jerks like this guy.. and that other "spam queen." Seize their assets. This is the second story in as many weeks telling how spammers have these nice 1/2 million dollar homes and stuff. Makes it seem rather glorious, doesn't it? Perhaps a law in place would make them look like what they are - thieving criminals that care about nothing but money.
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..."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.
Truly, this man has no soul.
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Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! -Kodos
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.
"Isn't technology great?"
Okay. I swear, if I was interviewing this guy when he said that, he would have gotten punched in the face. I am one step away from pulling out my 357 and blowing the computer screen to pieces after reading that. For anyone who thinks that this guy should still be allowed to stay in business for complete invasion of someone elses privacy just so that he can have a $750,000 house and live a life of luxury needs to stop huffin' gasoline and prevent our private lives from being invaded further.
Let me lay down the facts: Spamers steal from other businesses in order to deliver messages cheap. I've said this argument before, and I'll say it again. If you pay the Post Office to deliver a package, between the time it is given to the Post Office and the time it is delivered, it is in the possession of the Post Office 100%. Their handling of it, their processing of it, their delivering of it, is all being paid for by the Post Office. When you pay postage to deliver mail / packages, it is because the Post Office is compensated for all the time it takes to deliver the package.
Spammers do not do this. They do not pay for the bandwidth that they use up. They do not pay for the storage space on servers that their spam waits on. They do not pay for delivery of the messages beyond what leaves their servers. They STEAL. This guy, and every other single person who thinks that they can make a mint off invading the privacy of one's own home should be thrown in jail.
This is an outright exploitation of what the internet was set up to be. Stoic advertisements are one thing, because the webpage that a web surfer views is there for free, so the owner of the website is trying to compensate himself for the services he offers. But Spam, as well as this hell-born Son-of-Satan spinoff that our featured spammer friend concocted, is an outright solicitation. Send it all back from which it came, and jail these people who think that this level of exploitation is legal.
A lot of spam as a web link to click to take advantage of the great offer. Why not build a database of these links and have slashdot "feature" a link each day. Then we can slashdot thier servers.
Ok, here is an idea. How about a class action suite against this guy from the /. community.
/. Which means we get on average one e-mail from this guy a day. /.
- If he is sending out 650,000 messages every hour that is 15.6 million a day.
- There are about 15 million readers of
- We spend about 30 seconds a day to delete this trash. That's about 125,000 hours a day between all the members of
- At an average rate of $50 per hour that's $6,250,000 of our time per day. 365 days that's $2.2 billion is wasted time.
Now if I did my numbers right, even with the Lawyers fees, we could all end up with a small payday. What do you think? Any takers?
Add to that the issue of "bugging" the e-mail. From what I understand, this may be considered an "illegal wiretap". Bugging 117,000 people a day. Sounds like the FBI would be interested in this.
Do I hate spam? Of course I do, its annoying to delete and sort through and it has gotten so bad some times I have needed to change e-mail addresses. My current solution is to have one primary email address and a SPAM address from a free e-mail server. Anything I register for on the web gets the SPAM address.
America's legal system works with people pushing the law. There would be no judicial branch in government if people did not stretch the limits of the law. Until them, getting unsolicitaed e-mail, phone calls, and mass mailing will occur. Personally I find mass mailings annoying as hell because I have to carry my junk mail, credit cards applications, coupon books, and newspapers up three flights of stairs which in turn fill my garbage which I need to bring down three flights for no apparent reason. Until it is outlawed, let the government fight the fight, I would think you would want the same rights as an individual, whether you make the decision to program for a living or make porn sites or be a police officer.
Here's the problem with stories like this: spammers lie. So, just because this guy says he's a millionaire, doesn't mean he is. Spammers have been trying to 'legitimize' spam for years by telling everyone how successful it is, how much money they make, how much people really really WANT spam.
But saying it don't make it so. I find it hard to believe that there's really any long-term profit in spam. The cost of running around from isp to isp has to be high and, with so many spammers out there competing, the total profits of the industry are going to be spread pretty thin.
Maybe I'm wrong but, as a sysadmin and entrepreneur, all the offers I've received to do spam have never amounted to much. I turn them down for ideological reasons but, even if I had no ethics, I still wouldn't do it because it doesn't look financially viable.
The meta tags on the site include "insurance broker". I thought his license was revoked for fraud. Isn't there something wrong with listing yourself as an insurance broker when you aren't?
Seriously, I know that it is not just nerds who get pissed off by spam, I wonder how many organized crime participants are pissed off enough about spam that they would put out a hit, or at least threaten him in ways that those of us without connections can't...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
#1: I live in this idiots area.
#2: Who the hell are the idiots providing service to him? I think it's time service providers who allow this are dragged through the same penalties as the spammer himself.
Fucking idiots.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
This works for telemarketers too. When I get a computer-generated phone message that leaves an 800 number, I call it, chat for a while, and then ask to be put on the do not call list. This costs the phone-spammer about a dollar, maybe 50 cents. Do you think they'll keep phone-spamming if thousands of victims do the same thing?
One measly dollar? You do know that since prerecorded solicitation calls are for the most part illegal, you can get them for five hundred dollars, right?
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
If spammers had sent mail only to the people who actually wanted it, we might not have any of this discussion we have today. But the sad fact is, a response rate of 0.01% in email campaigns is considered a good response because of the extremely low cost of sending the same message over and over. There's no financial incentive to spammers to clean their lists of anyone other than the few who complain enough to ISPs to get them terminated. So that means 99.99% get bombarded by junk intended for 0.01%. So resources are being wasted to "serve" a tiny fraction of the internet base, but the spammer doesn't pay for that waste.
Advertising like superimposing images on football fields or race tracks may be disgusting or annoying, but it isn't like spam. Those ads don't waste your network bandwidth. They do pay for the TV programming you get. They don't grow exponentially. They are limited by the TV executives who do insist on the advertisers paying high prices for them. And it's better the ad be on the field or the track rather than cutting away for a 30 second spot where you might miss a piece of the action. Please don't compare that to spam. The reasons each are disliked are entirely different.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Problem is that the average person doesn't have any idea how to find the responsible party or to report the spam.
I'd love to see the next version of Outlook/Outlook Express include a spam button. Upon clicking the button, O/OE would parse the message header, lookup the source IP in WHOIS and contact all necessary parties to report the spam.
The only way for this to work is for MS to put in directly in Outlook/Outlook Express (or AOL putting it in). That is what the majority of users are using, and you can't expect them to know about or install a 3rd party utility.
Imagine how the admins at ISPs would react to a veritable flood of spam reports.
Why not just tell the feds about a way that terrorists could send their encoded messages over the internet and just put the idea in a few public forums, so we know that the idea is publicly known and could be getting used by (GASP) terrorist networks.
The idea...
Put the addresses of all of your cell members on the internet, so that the spam harvesters get the address, and then BL hires Ralsky and other spammers through some front to send email (with a hidden message) to his entire list. The feds can no longer tell which receiver of the email was the intended one, and have no idea how to pursue this primary recipient of the email. Spam has no become a possible channel for terrorist communications, and Ashcroft will have it made illegal...
I know it is a stretch, but so is most of the crap that Ashcroft wants done.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I think it was Carlin who pointed out, "Obviously crime DOES pay. If it didn't, there would be no crime."