Slashdot Mirror
HOWTO: Annoy a Spammer
Bob writes "I think everyone by now has heard of the millionaire spammer Alan Ralsky. Here's a follow-up to the previous story. It seems that since the story was posted, people have signed him up for every advertising campaign and mailing list out there. And he doesn't like it." They're talking about this Slashdot story.
He can now use all these new adresses to send his own spam...
Colosse.
Is something you find in the dictionary between shit and syphillis.
From the article:
"They've signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is," he told me. "These people are out of their minds. They're harassing me."
Ok, start your bets. When will his mind click, and he understands that this is what he does to people for a living?
My bets on 5 years.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
But I bet he won't stop, the money is too good.
It's the small spiteful things like this that just make life bearable from time to time
- Z
There's a fine line between genius and stupidity. Genius has limits.
Will he repent? Doubt it...
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Interested in AI? MACR
>Robert Harrison to sue the anti-spammers.
Sounds like another "opportunity" for the Slashdot crowd. A spammer's lawyer: is there a lower form of life?
With all that money, he should have bought a house to receive all of the spam snail mail, and kept his home address private.
--
No electrons were harmed in the creation of this post.
Quit your bitching. Why don't you use a couple of those millions you have and buy someone to filter your mail.
"Simon Says, Fuck You" - George Carlin
Maybe that is what should happen to script kiddies and hackers. They should be dos's to death!
I'm all for extrme methods when extrme methods are used against me.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Best schadenfreud since Pets.com and eToys going out of business.
He's going to sue whom? He has to find them first. And then prove that they did it. And prove that he is suffereing damages.
In Soviet Russia, you annoy the spammers.
sign him up to various organizations:
-NAMBLA
-The Klan
-The Rosie O'Donnel Fan club
This is one way to deal with spam, but if you spam a spammer, you will become a spammer (...) So @ the end the whole internet will slow down. I think we can better look for better alternatives.
"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for it's children." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
And he doesn't like it
How can I help him like it even less?
Cool, and kudos to all you guys out there.
His hypocrisy is amazing, though. "You enabled companies to send me lots of stuff in my mailbox that I do not want! I sue j00!" Can anyone say , "Countersuit?"
While this story amuses me greatly, it is illegal to harass someone by publishing his address and encouraging people to call/write/inundate him with offers from mailing lists. Besides, depending on how he got signed onto all those mailing lists, he might be able to claim that whoever did it was impersonating him illegally. Slashdot better get ready to be the focus of a lawsuit, and possibly a criminal prosecution.
IIRC there's an AEsop's fable which holds the moral that "one is usually paid in one's own coin." I doubt anyone will (successfully) argue that this is, in fact, the case here.
'Nuff said.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
Becoming like a spammer makes you no better than he. Is that really what you want to become? Take the high road, turn the other cheek.
first of all, does Mr. Harrison honestly think he's going to sue ALL 300? Second, where does he plan on getting the names of the people to sue? Third, even if somebody DOES get sued, what's to stop said somebody from counter-suing his ass for the very act Ralsky's angry over?
So let me get this straight: This spam monger wants to sue the spammers for spamming him? Does his lawyer have a soul?
Every time I sign up for a ridiculous required acct, say to iMesh, I use an email address of a domain that sends spam so that when the account is spammed the spam is sent to another spammer.
Cyclical spamming!
I would like to send him this three-day-old tuna melt sitting here on my desk.... as a sympathy card of course.
Lawyers please take your places.
On your mark...get set...litigate!!
mmm. pie.
Has he _really_ been signed up for everything?
Im spamming you all to make me a druglord! By sending you here...
"Ralsky is indeed annoyed. He says he's asked Bloomfield Hills attorney Robert Harrison to sue the anti-spammers."
How does he plan to identify who to sue? And is he really going to pay to have his lawyer track down the 300+ slashdot users who posted "anti-Ralsky posts"? This just seems silly.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
You see, he won't get the point.
This is different, this is being done for revenge. He spams because he has useful information to get out, plus it's so easy to just delete an email, it's a lot more work to sort through physical mail and throw it out.
That being said, I don't see how his lawsuit will go as far as the anti spam lawsuits.
at least I think thats how many Dos methods exist at this point.
8==> o
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
...that you can't send 500k JPEGs unannounced through the post AND make them have the same effect on his front door as spam does.
I have two words for him.
Opt Out.
Oh wait, he can't. and neither can I!
Blink
It's stuff like this that proves there is a God. All we need now is for one of those pundits who blame society's ills on violent video games to snap and go on a shooting spree because they were playing too much Pokemon.
just make sure you take him up on all the valuable offers he sends you.
do people actually click on the crap they get. it certainly can't be very effective. if it is, how come?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Spam is profitable if ~.004% of the recipients respond (and buy the product). .004% from responding.
It is impossible to stop this
Is Spamming profitable when 100-1000% of the spams get replies?
If a company sees that it loses several thousand dollars in bandwidth costs, broken equipment AND the people who want to buy can't place orders, AND the spammer demands unreasonable amounts for the millions of replies, said company MUST stop paying for spam. When enough companies stop, spam will stop.
Time to set up a SLASHDDOS effect.
You all realize that this whole thing will blow up into some media thing. I bet in the end he'll write a book titled Spam Wars or some crap like that and make even more money than he did spamming....
This man suffers from a common human ailment. He does not have the ability to see what he does as wrong. Everyone else is a rube for him to exploit. He (in his own mind) can do whatever he wants, but if someone dares try the same stunt on him, they're going DOWN.
That said, he's also a moron. He's been signed up for all that mail under false pretenses. It's mail fraud and a Federal Offense.
Yet the dim bulb is calling a lawyer to file and civil lawsuit instead of a criminal one.
Glad I keep my nose out of this nonsense.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
What about giving a piece of the action to every US lawmaker out there following the same process. It should help a lot the timely writing of an anti-spam law and setup of an efficient police force to go after spammers, don't you think?
....anyone know his address? I'd like to send him a pizza, curry, chinese, thai, etc. delivery every night too.
Try donating a token amount to the most crooked charities in this guy's name and put his phone
number on it. If he thought getting flooded with spam and phones were bad, wait til the telemarketers
gets on his back. good riddance to bad rubbish.
-- I have enough stupid gadgets to know that I can do without -- http://www.modestneeds.org
Hey, IANAL, but methinks this guy is not only an ass hole, but also a naive asshole.
I'm sure all of this spam mail hes getting has the same wonderful opt-out option just like all of his emails. "If you no longer wish to receive our mailings, please contact...", the funny thing is, i'm sure they are just as effective..not at all. Oh well, ive opted out of 100's of spam email, I think it just signs me up for more. Thats why I have a seperate account for that junk..
home of the original cupholder
If you don't want these exciting offers, why don't you just opt out?
I'm sure that Aaron Adams will be happy to stop sending you stuff. Now, whether Aaron Afton will stop sending you stuff, you'll have to ask him to stop, too. But by DMA rules, the opt-out is only good for one person, and for one year. That's okay. By the time you've opted out of Zeke Zjibidan's list of exciting offers, you should have at least a couple of days before Aaron Adams can ask you if you're sure you still wanna be opted out of his Aaron's list.
(Okay, so I admit that opting Ralsky into junk mail isn't quite as much fun as, say, opting him into a service that would have gone all-Vlad-the-Impaler on him in front of Chinanet's headquarters as a warning to the Falun Gong and Level3, but it sounds like it was a delightful bit of revenge. Kudos to whoever came up with the idea and to all who participated. I wish I'd been a part of it.)
...sweet, poetic justice.
Our actions are boomerangs, dude.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
An attempted slashdotting of a physical address?
Got to admit though, it's rather funny...
An open reply to Alan,
Alan,
Sue me bitch. I don't give a care. For years now, you and your have somehow gotten my email and sent me all sorts of shit that takes my time from me. My time is money, and if you want to go down that route, then go ahead.
You take my time, I'll take yours. You can sue the anti-spammers all you want, but your dumb ass will smaked so hard your head will spin and will take you another 5 years just to get over that.
So sue bitch. You take my server space, my bandwidth, and my time and force me to clean up the shit you leave on the internet.
If you don't like it, leave us the hell alone, or find a better way of doing your "job"
"Bastard operators don't win...anyone can win. Bastard operators win and TOTALLY demoralize. That is REAL winning."
What is recourse in this situation? Subpoena slashdot for the user information attached to our screen names? That'll accomplish nothing but give him a list of usable e-mail addresses to add to his bulk-mailer scripts. I feel no remorse here. I personally wish I had signed him up for some great mailers from PETA, NAMBLA, various anti-abortion groups, and pretty much anything from Jerry Falwell. His harrassment is the best schadenfreud I can think of.
I assure you, I'll be sleeping soundly tonight.
I buy my scalp / breast creams and penile enhancements on infomercials like God intendended, and leave the crap on the Internet where it belongs.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Nah, this guy looks nothing like Maron Brando. They would just kick him out.
...is no justice at all. Imagine if everyone felt they had the right to take the law into their own hands and dispense justice as they saw fit our legal system would become unbalanced. Individuals would place differing penalties based on their own moral judgments, not based on a standard of law. Judge, jury, executioner.
Indeed, not a short month or so ago the RIAA was proposing congress pass legislation which would enable them to hunt down and possibly destroy or disable a system they believe to be involved with infringing intellectual property. Judge, jury, executioner.
Many in these forums cried foul against this form of vigilante justice, and rightly so because vigilante justice is no justice at all. Even when the shoe is on the other foot, as it appears to be in this case, it still makes the act of dispensing justice, without the backing of our legal system, wrong.
Poetic Justice.
Vigilante justice would be killing him and all his immediate family, which would be Oh, so sad. Especially if they wrote spammer on his forehead. And stuffed his mouth full of junk mail. Yes, that would be bad.
In the law there is no overlap between theft and copyright infringement whatsoever.
I'm such an anonymous coward. Here's the address.
Alan M Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr
West Bloowfield Township, MI 48322-2663
The ultimate irony would be if they signed Ralsky up for the Spam Fan Club
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Until someone finds his PO BOX where the important mail goes, he'll just torch his street address mail and go on about his business.
OTOH, at least all of his neighbors will now know that he's a complete slimeball and responsible for much of the spam email they receive.
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
Let's send Buzz Aldrin over to his house.
...and they shall know me by my sig.
How much mail arrived at this house? I would love to see a daily amount of the mail picture posted for a good laugh.
He does not deserve to sue for his abuse of the internet community. I hope he chokes on his money someday.
Hey, all they did was take his personal information and give it out to some "partners".
Advertisers do that all the time, don't they?
wonder if he's smart enough to filter his own address out of his spam.
I say we just post his email address everyone and let other spam harvesters take care of it.
wouldn't that be ironic if all the spam he was getting was coming from himself?:)
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
If you want to help, head over to htpp://www.spamhaus.org or more info on Ralsky directly at: http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/search.lasso?evidenc efile=1290
Second of all, does anyone notice any similarities in Al's response and the movie "Bowling for Columbine"? He..just...doesn't...get it!
...from this adolescent spamming (notice I don't say I disapprove -- it qualifies as poetic justice) is there's a weakness to even conservative opt-in spam -- 3rd party abuse. It's been done, to mass-subscribe a target -- even nice guys -- to multiple irritating lists at the click of a script. This could also be used as a cover for spammers to play dumb when someone complains.
... if opt-in is to work, there has to be some add'l layer of caution such as a practical methods of authentication. Suggestions? The snadard now is to send a single email requesting a reply before the opt-in is confirmed. Is there a way to spoof this?
This kind of stunt has been done for years, as by filling out lots of those "tell more more!" business cards with the victim's info. Again, the internet takes a little problem and magnifies it 100-fold. This can be used for evil as well as "good."
So
You know, if we could find some important people's address from the MPAA or the RIAA I'm sure they'd appreciate getting tons of free offers and the like. What about CDs chock full of MP3s and VCDs of Fight Club?
Just a thought-
macshune
...drive 60 miles to his house to complain in person! This is too good to be true, almost like it's been staged like profressional wrestling or something! Thank God for slashdot!
figth the people who want this stuff sent out to begin with. We have software that can identify spam so why not use that to disrupt the businesses soliciting us. We need a filter that recognizes spam and then fires back a few http gets for that companies site. If it could fire off about 10 requests when the spam arrives but not accept the content. If a company sends out 20,000 emails and only 1/4 of the people have the fireback filters, they still get 50,000 requests to their server in a very short time. If there "legitimate" requests cant get through because of all of the false requests, they may be forced to stop spamming just to stay alive.
"Revenge is a dish best served cold".
Can I get a 'HELL YEAH!!!!!"?
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
That's not the right address. That's his old address. I believe the new one is on Minnow Pond in the same city.
Speak truth to power.
Vigilanties are self elected groups (which is the case here) that declare themselves outside of the state and federal courts (not done here) that proclaim the right to arrest, judge and kill or otherwise punish their subjects (also not done here).
What this is a case of is the State and Federal Courts claiming that mass mailing is ok. It is also ok for mass mailers to find email and physical addresses by any means and to send material in bulk without solicitation. All this group of alleged vigilanties did was exactly what the alleged spammer did. They acted as independent agents for legitimate bulk mailing firms and supplied his information to them. The material sent to the alleged spammer was legitimate commercial solicitation, the very same type he himself has proclaimed to make a living sending to others.
The alleged spammer can sue in civil court (which allows suits for almost any reason). There are a variety of tactics he can employ to allege damage and seek retribution. I don't think it will be a very interesting case or at all successful.
It is the type of low-curb protection that tends to get the courts to look at a social problem and then the next thing you know you have government regulation.
Personally, I watched my own email box for a 24 hour period. Of 112 emails recieved, only 9 were actual emails. The rest were a varity of unsolicited commercial mail, many of an extremely purile nature.
I didn't participate in the group that set this guy up for getting all of this unsolicited commercial mail, but I fully sympathize with the group.
ahhhh
another ac
anyway, I dont recall Rob or Cowboy Neal saying "spam this guy." So, Slashdot won't be liable. Also, all posts belong to their respective authors, as per Slashdot.
besides, i don't think that even those posts said "do it!!!" they merely provided the vehicle for the individual to make that "independent" decision.
oh, and as always, IANAL.
cheers
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
Let's see. He sends us advertisements on cheap viagra, 101 ways to make money off soy bean soup, and its just good business and advertising to the customer base who are his target market. We send him catalogs of expensive furniture to fill his $740,000 home, financial advice advertisements so he can save his money wisely, and ways to make even more money off soy bean soup, and we are harassing him? Is it just me or does he not realize that we were trying to do him an enourmous favor. Maybe now we should send him advertisements for legal counsel, since his current one just doesn't get it.
.sig: It's what's for dinner.
OK lets get the AC vote out there how many people did the perfect thing and sent his email to every politician they could find so they could sent him unsolicited political emails (definatly not spam they are political in nature after all) lets see his legal team come back with it tail between it's legs on that one.
BTW get some religion as well after all sep church and state would make it hard to say they had to stop reaching out the those that have not yet been saved and all that.
No sir I dont like it.
I am openly inviting you to sue me.
In order to make your lawyer's job easier, I am providing you with my full name*, telephone number*, and snail mail address*. Please have your lawyer contact me using the information below:
John Poindexter
10 Barrington Fare
Rockville, MD, 20850
(301) 424 6613
Hello pot? This is kettle calling: You're black.
I hope that you continue to receive TONS of snail mail junkmail and TONS of spam in your inbox. You deserve every piece of it. You are the lowest form of pondscum known to mankind.
(* - Not my actual contact info. I make no representations that I am indeed the criminal known as John Poindexter. Some Assembly required. Use only with adult supervision. Do Not taunt Happy Fun Ball)
Isn't it enough that we /. websites, but now we have to do it in the real world too? :-)
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
...and creatures who serve them ? After subtly pointing out a few things in his first article, did you notice that he mentioned name and location of Ralsky's lawyer again this time, in bold letters even ? Weird.
Someone is wrong on the Internet!
Ralsky is indeed annoyed. He says he's asked Bloomfield Hills attorney Robert Harrison to sue the anti-spammers. Maybe we should get his lawyer on those lists too!
....extra AOL CDs!
AOL wants the photo OP. This guy hates snail mail spam. Just back that dump truck onto his lawn.
*You've got mail.*
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I recently received my first off-color spam email at my "main" address (three years, pr0n spam free). There was a "remove-me" link to a blind web-page, but that seemed beyond foolish. I almost just deleted the email, but realized that I didn't want to leave this unanswered.
I opened the html body, then did a whois search on all six domains in the email. Four were owned by the "sender." One was for the content company, another for a payment processing company. I also looked up Virginia spam laws. There is one, section 18.2-152.4: Computer Trespass. It states
A. It shall be unlawful for any person to use a computer or computer network without authority and with the intent to:
7. Falsify or forge electronic mail transmission information or other routing information in any manner in connection with the transmission of unsolicited bulk electronic mail through or into the computer network of an electronic mail service provider or its subscribers.
The offense is a class 6 misdemeanor. In addition section 152.12 has civil relief and damages of legal fees, court costs, and the greater of actual damages or $10 per email (limited to $25,000/day) payable both the receiver and the email provider.
I replied, as the postmaster of my domain, that the email was unwanted, and I was not to receive any transmissions in the future to any emails in this domain. I sent the email to the admin contact of each domain, and to the return-to addressee with a return receipt. I notified them that, should I not receive a response from the return-addressee, the email would be assumed to include "falsified mail transmission information" and would be in violation of the applicable Virginia statute.
A week later I received an inquiry from the payment processor asking for the email body in order to identify the spammer. A day after sending the body text, I received a nice email from the same company, apologizing for the inconvenience and informing me that the spammers account had been frozen, as he was in violation of his terms of service.
It's a shame he hadn't sent me a couple hundred emails at once, so I could have filed in civil court for a couple of grand. Spending 30 minutes to piss him off is worth my time, but filing in court for $10 isn't.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This is great news. Though as many others have already commented, he won't give up, money is just too sweet.
...... sign him for more.
But let us tighten the screw not only on him, but those who might replace him, and actually many others who have not yet become as well known as him. Let us find them all and repeat the same tactics, only at a larger scale.
So don't wait, and don't presume someone else will do it,
If he actually succeeded, wouldn't he open himself up to one giant countersuit?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Who said there's no place from vigilantism in the modern world?
Don't know about the phone number.
The point is they want to demonstrate their complaint to this person. Reasonable explanations haven't worked. So they are giving a more practical demonstration.
Their snail mail spam of a few hundred pieces isn't that much different then his billions of pieces of email spam.
The only apparent difference is that he can't understand what he is doing is wrong when he does it. Although he realizes it is wrong when it happens to him.
Revenge is very, very sweet. This made me laugh and feel all warm and fuzzy inside!
What is more, these adresses get posted into Usenet *.test groups. These newsgroups get harvested like crazy, with spam incidents occuring only a few days after posting and hitting several times per day. Since there is no obligation to use realnames for *.test postings, the most effective way to have spammers spam each other is using their addresses as sender ("From" header).
A few weeks ago a 419 scammer annoyed some members of the German anti-spam community with his crap. Usually most 419 scammers spamvertize their email address within the email body, Reply-To or even From. As his address seemed to be valid (to receive answers of fool^Wcustomers), we posted it into quite some *.test newsgroups. A day later, someone with a Nigerian IP address answered "don't mess around with us, read ya". Followup was "Oh, you're spamming each other? Here is some more food" and a list with hundreds of spammer's and spamfriendly people's email addresses.
The occurrence frequency of 419 scam has actually declined since then.
Also included in the article was a blurb about a guy sending a fedex package to Santa Claus, North Pole. Fedex actually delivered it... to Snowmass, CO. Signed for by: S CLAUS
"And like that
The real argument against spam isn't that it's annoying, but that the recipient has to bear the costs. This little stunt has annoyed the spammer, but by loading various companies with unnecessary costs.
If the vigilantes wanted to make a point, they would have sent their own letters, with their own postage. Thousands of pieces of mail is still annoying, but it wouldn't have been punishing the unrelated companies.
I want him to sue and I want the judge to rule that sending spam is harrassment and immediately fine the senders $0.10 per item sent to him. I'll pitch in to help with that. Hell, I'll send him a few myself. But fine him $0.10 per item he has ever sent out. That might relate the two to him so he might finally realize what he's doing.
I do security
Taking out the trash has to be the single most troublesome bit of work in my house.
His ailment == "lack of empathy". Truly a common human deficiency. He will not be missed when the agents of karma take him out.
XML causes global warming.
Ok, I understand how someone might not want to be associated with the Klan or especially the Rosie O'Donnel Fan Club. But the National Association of Marlon Brando Look Alikes?
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
A lot of this mail has got to be addressed to "Current Resident."
If he tries to sell his brand new home, is the fact that the USPS backs a dump truck up to his front porch every day considered a material adverse fact, just like chipping/peeling paint or a faulty foundation?
How is this going to affect his resale value?
When the judge finally screams "Will you stop that ?!?", have the lawyer look the judge straight in the eyes and say calmly: "No."
Ipso facto.
Here is a distributor of said product
Start sending him mail "Postage Due". That's how he's sending spam... you pay for him to send it by paying for your bandwidth which he clogs. So send him mail, and make him pay for each letter you send.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
I have searched the original article, and I can't find anything mentioning an aerial view of his neighborhood. Is there something I am missing?
Oh... That I didn't know, does anyone have his new address?
BTW - Mods, MOD MY OTHER POST DOWN, it was WRONG.
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
He should be thrilled about all the important offers, coupons, and money make making schemes he is seeing.
I know I thank spammers everyday, how else could I enlarge/shrink various body parts, protect my home, speed up my computer.
I would have never heard of these products if it wasn't for the wonderful service I receive from guys/gals like him.
Some people...
Screw catalogs. Sign this guy up for magazines. Every magazine you get has those annoying little cards to subscribe. Most of those have a "bill me later" box to check. Check it, fill in Ralsky's info, and enjoy.
I think it would be advantegeous for the Open Source developer to have access to his $740,000 home. The beautiful curtains, the vast supply of colored paper, and access to high-speed SMTP servers in Bulgaria would inspire the Open Source developer community to transmit their message of sharing all over the earth using 100 million different e-mails.
Only when we harness the power of the cgi-mail-forms can we deploy a multimedia announcement system to rival CNN.
As a a troll in all seriousness: BWAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHA. This made my day! Ralsky, fsck off!
Wearing pants should always be optional.
from /. in the electronic world to /. in the physical world, sorry postal carriers.
Sorry, I should have identified that the middle section is a spammers "defense" of their actions.
I still don't see legal aciton going anywhere.
Check out the background a little bit. From the original article:
So it seems Ralsky is the one who has engaged in illegal activity. Further:
So he also has a history of fraudulent business practices in multiple other businesses before coming to SPAM.
Now from you:
This example is of a company trying to get a law changed to make it legal for them, and only them, to hack into other people's computer systems. The people who signed Ralsky up for all this junk mail did not enter his home or his systems, did not illegally release any information that was not pulicly available, and did not violate -- nor attempt to have changed -- any laws preventing what they did.
How exactly is this the same?
Nope, no sig
Spammers sue YOU!
Wait. That's in America, too...
(the old jokes just aren't what they used to be..)
Did you sign up Alan Ralsky yet ?
* Damn Right
* No...I suck
* Not Yet
* I was busy deleting spam from my inbox
* I signed up CowBoyNeal instead.
getSexySig();
This could be a whole new /. category: Spamback!
The actual address was originally posted at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=45801&cid=4737 646
by an Anonymous Coward
Post quoted below
Ok.. Heres more details on Ralsky's address (courtesy of www.lexisnexis.com -- its nice being a law student)
Buyer: ALAN M RALSKY
Buyer Mailing Address:
6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Seller: BING CONSTRUCTION CO
Property Address: 6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
Sale Date: 8/28/2002
Recorded Date: 9/12/2002
Sale Price: $ 740,000 (Full Amount)
By the way, the patrick road address listed in the other sellers post was sold in 2001 first to Irmengard Ralsky and then to Dan Shammami for $265K
That is the old address.
:)
This is the new one.
836 Mohegan St Birmingham, MI 48009-5667
let's use it creatively, people
So maybe he got signed up for a lot of advertising
But I don't get it
He can piss in everyone's backyard if he feels like it, but when people piss in his own backyard, he wants to sue?
Someone care to explain?
Hormel is now going to embark on a series of lawsuits to stop people from calling bulk mail "Spam", therby belittling their delicious product.
As a side note, do you think the people at Hormel refer to that kind of email as "Spam"?
All he has to do is opt-out. Can't he afford to pay someone to do it for him?
alan has ordered a case of grapefruit, some colon cleanser, and a case of tampons.
Fatwallet is wonderful
and of course he signed up for notification of Internet specials.
busy guy that alan
...that is, if you need an attourney in the Bloomfield Hills, MI area. His atty's addy is:
rsh@rharrisonplc.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who, short of you, is talking about justice and vigilantism?
The guy is receiving nice, legal, commercial offers someone thought he might be interested in. If he doesn't want them, he may well opt-out. It is a very simple process, all he have to do is write or call the senders to be immediately removed from their lists.
And I might also remember you that there are no laws regulating spam, so we are basically talking about a guy who insist on being un-civilised for the sake of a (millions of) buck. If he can be so unpolite as to send me (and millions of people more) hundreds of unsolicited emails a week, why should everyone be nice and treat him as if he was just a regular Joe working hard to make ends meet?
Well, he is not. He belongs to a class of people you won't be inviting over for dinner nor letting your daughter date. He has no clue about online etiquette, nor he want to have.
Your comparison with the RIAA situation is also out of line. RIAA was asking to be exempt from some very severe and important laws. This guy does nothing illegal. Also, nothing illegal was done to him.
As long as the law is concerned, no one was hurt. This is exactly how it should be: he does nothing to hurt us (by sending spam) and we (the whole body of the Internet) do nothing to hurt him (by sending him nice commercial offers through regular mail).
It's called a Dogbert complex.
I know somebody that is a spammer. He makes a LOT of money doing it. I tell him every time I see him how much he is hated by the 'Net community. He makes about $300,000 a year though. I asked him if HE hates spam. he says no. He has Spam Filters on his email box(Spam Assassin, etc) . He says that he doesnt want the people who put up spam filters...he recommends it to everybody..he wants the people who don't have it, and they will always be there. He makes money from companies who pay him. They say it works. Throw spaghetti at the wall, eventually some will stick. He has promised me that he takes out my friends emails from his list. :)
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Ralsky is indeed annoyed. He says he's asked Bloomfield Hills attorney Robert Harrison to sue the anti-spammers.
..
I wonder if that is Robert Harrison of 2550 South Telegraph Rd, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302, (248) 253-1800 -- a business address?
I wonder if thats the same Robert Harrison (52 year old male of the town of South Lyon) who ran an 8K race in 37:52
For snail mail spam, the sender pays, for email spam, the recipient (and the ISPs) pay for the bandwidth and storage space.
...
I think fair's fair that he just accepts the amount of junk mail coming his way
He can try and opt out, after all...
No, gang, please - keep this is mind, nobody is trying to cause trouble. You see, there are hundreds of thousands of businesses throughout the world and they all have lots of great purchasing opportunities. As a volunteer group, we just want him to be aware of those purchase opportunties, that's all. We apologize for the inconvenience, but we simply want him to be a well informed, fully 'opted in' consumer.
Thank you.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I am writing this article to request something for a terminaly ill boy.
Alan M Ralsky is a seven year old boy who has terminal cancer. His ambition before he dies is to be included in the Guinness Book of Records as having the largest collection of post cards.
My request is that EVERYONE who reads this posting send at least one post card to him at:
Alan M Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr
West Bloowfield Township, MI 48322-2663
Please pass this information on to as many people as possible. Let's make a child's dream come true before its too late.
Best wishes.
A hopeful person.
worse, he's RALSKY'S lawyer
and he just signed up for a year's supply of cat chow
There are lawyers that have souls, they're called criminal defense attorneys. They get paid shit, but do their job because they genuinely want to help protect people from the inequities of the criminal "justice" system. The highest level of them are generally found at Public Defender's Offices.
I've sunk to an all-time low. I signed this guy up with the most notoriously evil group of snail mail spammers there are.
That's right...I signed up him up with BMG Music...15 times. He'd better remember to send back all those CDs that come in monthly.
Throw in the fact that BMG Music doesn't know the meaning of "opt-out" and I think that means that I've just one-upped you all!
I have always been wondering about this
possibility. I dunno the legal / other
implications there may be, so I have not
tried it. Plus, it takes time.
Suppose that, instead of deleting the spam,
I read it. Certainly, the spammer wants a
credit card number, or banking account
details. So, I pretend I want to buy whatever
they sell. I give them the information they
are asking for -- but INVALID information.
Invalid credit card number or invalid account
number. "invalid" meaning a number I made up.
Now, if I just make a random sequence of
16 decimal digits, the spammer may be able
to figure out it is not valid.
Probably not any combination of digits is
a valid card number, I dunno. Maybe there
are control digits, or in general the number
has to conform to some criteria to be considered
valid. Suppose that I know these criteria
and I send them a "syntactically" valid card
number, just a fictious one. The spammers
organisation has no way of knowing this number
does not work, unless they check with Master Card
or Visa or AmEx, whoever the owner of the card
is.
I am pretty sure this is going to hurt the
spammers, provided many people do that.
If they (the spammer) make plenty of requests
for money transactions (I dunno the proper term)
to the credit card company with invalid card
numbers, the company will stop doing business
with them (the spammer). This is a wild guess,
of course, but I simply can't imagine that
someone will make hundreds of attempts with
invalid card numbers and there will be no penalty.
Something similar can be done with bank account
numbers - give them an invalid one. The bank
will not appreciate having plenty of requests
for money transactions from inexisting accounts!
As I said, I don't know the legal implications.
For the moment I do once in a while:
for i in `seq 1 100000`; do wget ; rm -f *; \
done
in an empty directory, with the URL the spammer
provided. I have a cable conncetion, so this
works fast. Again, if many people do that, the
spammers' web sites will be brought to their knees.
and let him win. Then we can use his lawsuits (precedent) as ammunition to legally attack back at him and other spammers.
So, sign me up for a lawsuit! Is there a wait list??
why not send him some ... oh ... bricks (used) ... or ... some ... old newspapers ...
... some leaves ...
or
How about fighting spam with spam?
I mean.. i have at least a hundred FREE AOL cds.
Just mail it all to the spam master with AOL return address. IF Ralsky dont get it, AOL will.
Everybody wins!
I'd love Ralsky to try to file a lawsuit.
The defense would be, well his street address is public, all he has to do is to throw the mail in the trash.
When I showed up at a spammer's door, he accused me of tresspassing. I said, "what is wrong, your house is attached to a public street and your gate was not locked?"
Fight Spammers!
What I would do is suscribe this SOB to every paid magazine (those get 3 issues free) :-D
Within days, I was on a mailing list for volunteer fire fighters. Volunteer Firefighters? I'm reaaaaaaaaaaally curious how I ended up with that. heh.
:-D
Simple. You probably got too many +1 Flamebait mods.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Personally, when I get spammed and it makes it's way through my filters, I take the time to scavenge their email, site, and any related service/marketing providers and grab every email address I can find. Then I go to all the lists of "click-here-to- unregister" sites and I pump them all in. That way they all wind up on the most natorious spammers lists there are! ;-)
Life is good...
Who's next? :-D
so.. let us say that 1 out of every 9,000,000 users of email are libiterian homicidal psychopaths just waiting for a cause..
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
AOL sends out CDs and floppy disks to people as bulk mail. There is a large movement to return as many as 100000 of these CDs to AOLs doorstep. I think only 80K have been collected by the crusaders, however. The rest are filling landfills, gracing walls, and being used as dog toys. /.ed every year this time by letters to
The post office is also
Santa Claus
North Pole, Canada
HOH OHO
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
404 error
the organism you are looking for can not be found
the organism may be experiencing technical difficulty or large volumes of mail traffic
(Enforcing the 404 compliance standard for all heavily spammed out sites.)
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
But sadly he replies by email . He has a nice website., but he should consider changing his webmaster .
Way to go Slashdot community. Now he has to live in his own shoes like slumlords do.
...
e Ha HaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHa HeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHe HeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHe HaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHa HaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHa HeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHe
He thinks its not funny. Well my responce would be
HaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeHeHaHaHeH
I don't know how he can sue over the snail mail pileup since all the label information has been munged so he can prove anything [grin].
This makes all my work feel worth it.
"Your having a bad day when the voices in your head put you on hold"
"Several tons of snail mail spam every day might just annoy him as much as his spam annoys me," wrote one of the anti-spammers.
Ralsky is indeed annoyed. He says he's asked Bloomfield Hills attorney Robert Harrison to sue the anti-spammers."
What's the problem Alan? I'm sure that every piece of snail mail spam you are getting has an opt-out option!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
well someone has to support the post office, it should be the person costing them money.
Slightly off topic question here. I know of a spam center here in my city that i'm quite sure is larger than the one this guy is running. They have dozens of servers doing nothing but email spam, 24/7. Wondering how i could convince someone to do a bit of investigative reporting into this place, and expose what's going on in our little town... The people I know who work there hate it, but they claim it's got to be the largest spam provider in the world.
You seem to be sarcasm impaired. The post you replied to was playing devil's advocate for why this gentleman seems unable to understand why what he's doing is wrong.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
He's been signed up for all that mail under false pretenses. It's mail fraud and a Federal Offense.
I don't think it is mail fraud. For it to be mail fraud he would have had to have been defrauded of something. As long as no one bought something and sent him the bill, there has been no fraud. It could be argued that he was defrauded of time or money by way of increased garbage fees, but that's a stretch.
Overall, I just think he's after the money. Threaten people with a lawsuit and hope they settle. He sounds like a pretty amoral person.
Now, you see where I'm going? The class action counter suit rolls in. Based on the precedent set by the previous case, I find that each instance of using an address obtained without consent to send solicitations is harassment. Then, we subpoena all of his mailing lists. For each address in his mailing lists for which he cannot produce a clear and specific opt-in, we charge him $10. This guy probably has tens of millions of addresses, so he gets fined hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, granted, the fines are supposed to go to the injured parties, so we collect money from Ralsky until he's bankrupt for life and set it up in an escrow account until parties appear to claim it. Any money not claimed within like 12 months goes to some worthy cause.
Now I just have to get to be a judge in Michigan in the next couple of weeks. I guess I'd better step up the campaign!
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
WTF?
Robert Harrison (the lawyer that is charged with suing evil conspiring slashdotters) has his website here:
http://harrisonlaw.leadcounsel.com/
It seems an error is generated every time I try to access his site...
As a side note-
We should get all the snail-mail addresses of the major spammers and fight back! One free offer can make a difference...if it's from 20,000 slashdotters!
-macshune-
forward all mail addressed to resident to:
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
You didn't read the article. He's getting real, physical mail through the USPS. Lots of it. This has nothing to do with e-mail being sent to him.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
So if this guys sues the spammers and wins, can't his case be used to set precedent against people like himself?
i know that in his case, people signed him up for this crap, but still, wouldn't it be in his best interest not to use legal action?
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
If this got to Ralsky I am sure that other major spammers would be just as happy with their FULL snail mail boxes as I am with my email.
/. members can expose?
Are there any other major spammers the
Heh. I finally found a purpose for goatse.cx. We send it in full colour glory to spammers. Eat somse spam, process it in your stomach, then release it, as depicted in goatse.
I heard her whining on Morning edition yesterday about how put out she has been since they ran an article about her in the WallStreet Journal...
y /0,24330,3407845,00.html/ archive.htm
'Spam Queen' Defends Direct Marketing Via E-Mail
(Morning Edition Audio) Dec. 3, 2002
Direct marketer Laura Betterly speaks to NPR's John Ydstie.
Laura Betterly
717 Weathersfield Dr
Dunedin , FL
(727) 733-5335
Data Resource Consulting Inc.
Remember she has a 5,000-square-foot home, with a pool and a Lexus just begging to be filled with your cards and letters. original slashdot posting
Wall Street Journal Story
other mentions:
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/shownotes/stor
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/mon/business
http://www.angrywhitegirl.com/weblog/weblog.php
Sending mail through the USPS causes the Internet to slow down? That must be why my connection has been so slow lately. I'd better stop buying stamps.
Apparently the mods didn't read the article either.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
in business suit
lawyer and spammers
all dance the poot
are we not men?
we are DEVO!
We ARE devolving into lawyer^H^H^H^H^ower forms of life!!
Do his neighbors know who he is?s .htm
Here's one possible neighbor.
http://www.e-seniorsource.com/Meet%20U
I'd be pretty pissed off if he lived near me.
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
.. his lawsuit. Then we use that precedent and slam him for 1 million times worse than he got.
Mmmm.. Donuts
... and a potential solution. Recently, I read an interview with a spammer. She said that she could make a profit with a response rate of .001 percent. That's right, .001 PERCENT. Our anti-spam measures actually help her target the gullible. But what if she had a response rate of 1 percent? She sends out millions of spams per day. Say she got 10,000 replies (or her customers did.) Not buying their dreck, but instead asking for more info or some such. Would they be able to find the legitimate responses in the deluge?
"Mt. HArrison- My name is XXX XXXX and I have a great deal for you on anti-spam software! CONGRATULATIONS!"
Click.
www.catalogrequest.com
It's a great place to order catalogs for almost any type of goods you need. I recommend it highly. Oh, wait, this is a thread about spammers and their laywers? Please mod me down as off topic, I'm horribly sorry for the oversight.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
That said, he's also a moron. He's been signed up for all that mail under false pretenses. It's mail fraud and a Federal Offense.
;> ), spam should be easy to block.
You're right, it is, and that's a protection that email should enjoy as well. I guess a while back when the US developed a great mail service (for the time), and people started abusing it, there was this huge push to punish people who do so. Hence, all the criminals that the cops can't pin anything on, but they get them for abuse of mails (that and tax evasion).
Point is, he is signing people up for/sending people stuff under false pretenses daily - or does he really think that people have "opted in" to his lists like he claims? If they did, why would he have to use countermeasures to get around anti-spam software?
If we just extended the existing laws, it would reduce spam dramatically. Like when you request an opt-out, they can't resell your name. No forged headers. No disguised opt-ins. If we can get those things (and turn off all of asia
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Ralsky has about 200 cristian music cds on the way from BMG... he needs to find jesus, seemed appropriate. And AOL should be sending him about 20 disks a week now too... not to mention that this guy will love the 100 or so teen, christian, beauty, gun, and hip hop free trial subscriptions he now has. What a POS
... to annoy spammers, or, more exactly, annoy their clients.
SUMERIAN: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a spam for a spam.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Terraserver rockst =1&s=10 &lon=-83.43067008&lat=42.53497312&w=600&h=400&f=Ta homa,Verdana,Sans-serif&fs=10&fc=ffffffff&logo=1&p =2:-83.43067008:42.53497312
http://terraservice.net/GetImageArea.ashx?
Looks like someone took you up on that idea already!
:-)
I was thinking, why not order him a whole lot of food. Tons of food smells. A lot.
The thing to do is start an email chain letter, with a link/copy of the article, the man's address, and an exhortation to forward to everyone in your list...
I almsot can't believe he's not on late at night selling his "plan to make 6000 dollars a week!"
In this case, no one is trying to obtain money or property. Hence, no mail fraud.
Any companies that will airdrop to specified GPS coordinates?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Snail Mail.
Score: -1, Redundant.
Right here
Get ADSL, setup a linux box, point it at his ipstack and domain name, and spam website systems with e-mail addresses pointed at that domain....
Soo...very...tempting...
Candy-Coated Knowledge
This situiation is a good examply of IRONY.
The irony is that one would not expect such a famous spammer to object to receiving spam. One would expect that he would either be indifferent or delighted to receive spam. His annoyance is the source of the irony.
It is not ironic that someone who sends spam receives spam. That is justice.
Rain on your wedding day is not ironic. 10,000 spoons when you need a knife is not ironic. A free ride when you don't need one is not ironic. Those are all examples of bad luck and poor timing, not irony.
This has been a public service announcement
If you inherited this business from Mr. Ralsky and started making hundreds of thousands of dollars, how many of you would shut it down out of the goodness of your heart? You could argue that it was an immoral practice from the start, but human beings are human beings and he saw the opportunity. The real villains are the congressmen who do nothing to curtail it.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Here we go. Please note: None of the postal addresses have been finally verified to belong to this spammer! So please Don't register some innocent guy for something or send them "presents". Many thanks.
That said:
Alan M Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr
West Bloomfield Township, MI 48322-2663
Alan Ralsky
5016 Patrick Rd
West Bloomfield, MI 48322-1543
Phone: (248) 661-5166
Robert Harrison & Assoc
2550 S Telegraph Rd # 275
Bloomfield Hills, MI
248-253-1800
Alan Ralsky
5016 Patrick Rd
West Bloomfield , MI (248) 661-3355
West Bloomfield , MI (248) 661-5166
Al Ralsky
RX Point National Sales Director
<al@rxpoint.com>
RxPoint
5016 Patrick Drive
West Bloomfield, Mi 48322
1-888-531-4793
<info@rxpoint.com>
Alan Ralsky
PO Box 89
Fort Smith, AR 72903
Birmingham
836 Mohegan St., $740,000 (price of the house)
MI 48009-5667
All of this information was taken from publically available Internet sites.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
Now wouldnt that be great?
Relive the BBS Past - One Byte at a Time! www.ssabbs.com
Whichever one of you came up with this idea, the Democratic party is looking for a good candidate for 2004. I'd vote for you.
1. Have people send you their spam and a nominal fee.
:)
2. Repeat the process you describe.
3. Profit!!!
Now if only someone would do it!
Ben
Sounds like an awful waste of paper.....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
So does Harrison have an email address? Is he a sole practitioner, or part of a law firm? It'd sure be nice to only have to contact him about spam we're sure is from Ralsky rather than having to check with him about all the spam we receive....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm sure FTD or Teleflora would be happy to deliver a nice little boquet for an appropriate fee. The nice part is that they ring the doorbell to deliver. I wonder if I can put "You can have a bigger penis" on the card?
Since he likes spam so much, what about sending him some other nice gifts for the holidays, like a Spam coffee mug or a Spam notepad? There are lots of inexpensive items that can be found on www.spamgift.com. Remember, he gives the gift of spam to everyone else. Remember to send a gift to him.
I may or may not encourage you to sign him up to mailing lists using this information (I may or may not have already signed him up for the first 20 listed on google that is why the link starts at 21-30):
Al Ralsky
5016 Patrick Drive
West Bloomfield, Mi 48322
1-888-531-4793
al@rxpoint.com
This info was found here
1. Mail fraud is when you use the mail to commit fraud. Does signing up someone via the Web or an 800 number constitute using the mail to commit fraud?
2. Many catalogs come to me that I never signed up for. Are each of these companies committing mail fraud? What about the people who sold them the lists that suggested I might be interested in their products?
3. If he's a millionaire, he is a prime candidate for a number of lists, and qualifies to receive a number of catalogs he may not presently be receiving. If it's not mail fraud for the catalog firms to buy lists of addresses of potential purchasers, is it fraud when people volunteer addresses of potential purchasers to them without asking for compensation?
4. Many catalog merchants ask for addresses of friends who might also like to receive their catalog. After receiving so much mail from this guy, can't we consider him our friend? Or do our friends commit mail fraud if they sign us up?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
At least he is getting legitmate junk....
All we get are ways to make our penises bigger...
and a great deal on a new morgage.
He still wins.
Dick head. Grr.
...what those cards that fall out of my magazines are for!
How about we take up a collection and send him a truck load of SPAM as in the canned meat like product?
We just have to set up something like a PayPal account to contribute to, and contact Hormel, and have them deliver a truck load to his home.
But in this case, the State cannot or will not protect us against spam. In the view of many people, that means they are no longer bound by the tacit agreement to give up their right to take action on their own.
Of late, the State is showing an interest in only protecting the very wealthy, who don't actually produce much (as an aggregate) over those in the middle. If the wealthy people buying legislation to protect only themselves don't catch on soon, they'll find that lots of people losing respect for the rule of law, and things will get nasty.
The MPAA wants a law making it legal for them to attack your computers. They already got a law making it illegal for you to take apart something you bought and figure out how it works.
Spammers violate the law in many places, and in the rest they violate morality because the law hasn't cought up with them. If the result is anarchy in their mailbox, it is only the result of their own disregard for civility: they have contributed all they could to a decrease in decency. No point complaining about it now.
Build a program/milserver, that automatically takes any mail sent to it, and sends out a polite reply asking for more informainon to be mailed to a bogus snail mail address, and maybe a phone callback. Vary the message every day, so they cant catch on. Any replies sent to the box get a different message, insisting on snail mail. How much bandwidth would this suck? ANd how may of these would have to be set up inorder to take down the spam industry? if they got 10% bogus replies, would that be enough?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Yet the dim bulb is calling a lawyer to file and civil lawsuit instead of a criminal one.
Filing a criminal lawsuit isn't his choice. It is the choice of the prosecutor with jursidiction over the case, in this case I think that is the US Attorney for his region. You know how much of a hassle it is going to be for them, with very little payoff, to actually run this out as a mail fraud case? Like they don't have better things to do. Odds of them paying much attention are about nil.
What he is doing here with the civil suit is the only real option open to him for personal action in this matter.
And, for my money, the guy isn't dimly not getting the point of what is being done to him. He is just making statements that are self-serving to the press. Of course the guy gets it. But what is he going to say, "Uh, well, I guess it is only fair and I repent my evil ways now." Not likely.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Why stop at the spammer, go after the truly responsible, those representatives and senators who allow this to be legal. Spam them mercilessly
From the article...
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?"
I'm sorry, but this just made me lose it. The day this happens (yeah I know it's pretty unlikely with the whole non-circumventableness he claims) I will gladly join the new SETI@HOME/Distributed.net alliance: DDOS Ralsky operations... hell, I'd buy computers to commit to the project. He complains about getting spam letters... well if he does this I think people should start egging his frigging house (they just "pop" up on his Windows!)
What a douchebag!
I don't think this is vigilantism at all. Vigilantism would be direct personal harm to Mr. Ralsky or to his property, etc. Vigilantism is getting a suitable punishment in the vigilante's mind and exacting that punishment.
This is not what those who are sending Mr. Ralsky unsolicited snail mail offers are doing. What they are, in fact, doing is really voting. They're showing Mr. Ralsky that a vast number of people think that what he does for a living and his cavalier attitude about it suck.
Why is this not vigilantism? Because if only one person did this, he'd get a few offers, and probably not be bothered. But because hundreds (more?) of people are doing it, he's getting lots and lots of offers, and is really bothered (yay!).
So I'm considering Mr. Ralsky's mailbox a popular opinion poll. If it's full of offers, and he doesn't like it, he's not in the right line of work. If it has only a few offers that he likes, he should continue on his current path.
Which will he chose?
Actually, opt-outs that are used as opt-ins are fraudulent, and not too long ago there was even a /. post that said the Feds were prosecuting a few of those cases. Also, many states have laws against forged headers. And I think intentionally misleading people to get business (as in the disguised opt-ins) may be illegal too. The problem is, these things are rarely prosecuted.
The only thing I know is that I don't know anything; and I'm not even sure about that.
If it were not for hime I would never get any mail at all :(
...is the poor postal people who have to deliver it. Remember, their last mile is human :)
PLEASE HELP!
The message below has been forwarded to thousands of people on the
Internet, who have responded with an amazing outpouring of love for
little Alan.
Unfortunately, the message has the wrong address! The residents of 6747
Minnow Lake Dr have been flooded with postcards, and while they do their
best to forward them to Alan at 6747 Minnow Pond Dr, they are
overwhelmed! Please forward this to everyone you know, so that people
will start sending their postcards to the right address! This message
needs to reach even MORE people than the last one! (I have changed the
address in the forwarded message as well, to ensure the wrong one
doesn't keep getting sent. Oh, and remember, stop sending this to people
after next year! Little Alan's a smart cookie!)
Make sure you send your postcards to:
Alan M Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr
West Bloowfield Township, MI 48322
> Thank you for showing how much you care!
>
> Forwarded message:
> > By Wallace Spanaway
> > Special to the Recorder
> >
> > Plea for help, or urban legend?
> >
> > This time, it appears genuine, and a little boy with terminal brain cancer
> > take a page out of the playbook of an Internet legend and attempts to
> > set the record for most post card received - but this time, he's doing
> > it right, and ensuring that it doesn't get out of hand.
> >
> > Upon hearing of the incredible recovery of Craig Shergold, the child
> > who set the record, and who's plea for post cards has become somewhat
> > of a legend, Alan decided to do it himself. Alan hopes to receive as
> > many post cards as Craig did, and be cured, again like Craig. But Alan
> > also knows that Craig's message is still being circulated on the Internet,
> > even though Craig is now a healthy adult!
> >
> > "I don't want this to get out of hand," said Alan, demonstrating
> > wisdom beyond his years. His father, William, added, "To make sure
> > that this doesn't go the same way as Craig, we're asking that everyone
> > who passes this along also pass along the date. It's December, 2002.
> > We want to receive post cards throughout the year 2003. But if you see
> > this message after 2003, please don't send any more. Alan should have
> > broken the record by then." William didn't have to add the, "or have
> > passed away." We knew.
> >
> > Alan showed us a few of the post cards he's already received. "I
> > really like this one," he said, holding up a picture of a beautiful
> > sunset over what appears to be a tropical island. "It's from the
> > Bahamas," beamed Alan. His father hopes to take him there one day.
> >
> > We hope Alan makes it. Do your part for this very special boy.
> > Send postcards to:
> >
> > Alan M Ralsky
> > 6747 Minnow Pond Dr
> > West Bloowfield Township, MI 48322
> >
> > Make Alan's day, and try to find a postcard showing your home town.
We already have his address so let's help him with all the extra connection time he's spending reading all the new mail by sending all those marvelous 300 free "fscking" hours AOL Cds.
I've read before that the government can't prosecute spammers because they're not really doing anything "wrong." I was just thinking.. if the federal government regulates interstate trade, the internet is a big tool of that, and spammers send extraordianry amounts of data over the internet, could the government bust them for "interfering" with interstate commerce?
Let me get out my little violin and play a sad, sad song for the Spammer with Too Much Spam.
Did you notice this side link from that story:
Judge Compares Microsoft to Tonya Harding
My name is Carlos Montoya. You share files of my music. Prepare to die.
This guy deserves everything he gets.
In my oppinion, every spammer out there should get a STRONG dose of their own medicine. This is an *excellent* first step!!!
I'm not a lawyer but doesn't that pertain to this? Can a lawyer shed some light? Thanks, -armus
What's this, blood? No, ketchup. Thank goodness. I thought my heart was bleeding for the guy for a moment.
Doesn't like it, eh? I bet he likes it a sight more than we've liked trying to trace his spamming ass all over the Internet for years... Face facts, I know two wrongs don't make a right but these bastards actually think they're not causing a problem, that they don't cost us anything, that our time is worth sod-all. This kind of thing may well go to prove to them that, yes, we do have to take some time to filter out, delete and make sure that your shit isn't legitimate email. Just as he now has to read all the junk being sent him to ensure that it isn't legitimate mail that he needs to read. The problem here is getting the asshole to make the connection between what he's been doing to us and what has been done to him. I think you'll agree that his sins are far worse since he will openly tell you that he "ain't gonna stop".
As for suing, what a moron! Can he quantify financial loss by receiving these mailings? No. But I can bloody well tot up the time and expense of receiving his crap on my servers in real dollars and cents. I sincerely hope he gets an eye-opener from this. Me? I'm pissing myself laughing. It's about time one of these losers got a rude awakening!
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
He should just be glad that no one has been filling out all those Subscription cards in his name asking them to "Bill Me Later". Someone did this to me in college and our house got the most vile magazines/porn/crap for like 6 months. Luckily, it was just one person doing this to us and the damage was easily controlled. I can imagine what would happen if let's say 10,000 pissed off SysAdmin's and Hackers around the world all did this.
He might not even see the billing invoices and cancel the trials, man those bill collection agencies can be a real bitch too.
That would suck almost as much as spam.
DaveC
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.
So, to be fair we need to find both the email and brick-and-mortar addresses of the companies that buy spaming services from these schmucks, contact them, and then use those addresses instead.
Get the companies and managers of those companies to spam themselves -- both online and in meatspace.
Wow...that sounds like a good project. Anyone want to start it?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
A few hundred (or thousands) of cans of SPAM (http://www.spam.com/) might be appropriate ;-)
Has he not learned that basic truth. The word is mightier than the sword, and he is getting all the printed words that he deserves!!!
What if Slashdot did an Ask Alan Ralsky? We could make sure that he is truly enjoying all the oportunities that he's being presented with. Maybe CmdrTaco can call during dinner for an "informational survey."
You think he'd actually answer the questions?
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
would be to subscribe his e-mail addresses to his spam servers and let him spam himself.
AOL cd's and Ralsky-
two great tastes that taste great together!
This would be a read world example of "synergy"
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Fresh pigshit is too good for him. Let it ferment a few days to make the flavour good and ripe.
THell get suspicious. Maybe use it for the first 10,000?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I'm all for signing this guy up for all the spam we can send him, but the one major difference between what he does, and what people are doing to him has to do with a lot of DEAD TREES.
:)
If I sign you up for 100 email lists, you'll get lots of email, but no paper delivered to your house. If I subscribe you to 100 paper catalogs, how many trees died because of this?
Maybe we can get the guys who are collecting the 1,000,000 AOL CD's to deliver them to him instead of to AOL!
I was the one who set this all up and organized the whole thing. I take full responsibility, leave ./ out of this.
If you wan't to contact me please go to my site located at www.goatse.cx.
* I am Alan Ralsky, you insensitive clod!
If there is a 1-800 number, always make sure to call it. It's free, you don't have to talk to them, and they pay a few cents for each call.
Really? Mine has to be disposing of the bodies. The earth floor in the cellar made it easy for a while, but I'm running out of space. Maybe I should look into raising pigs.
"Are you being weird, or sarcastic?" said Emma. I said I didn't know because I get the two feelings mixed up.
Kill the spamer! Kill the spamer! Kill the spamer!
How about getting mail-order catalogues and other Snail-Mail-Spam from Canada, Europe, Asia, South-America and Africa?
Someone hook him up with the CO$!
Last time I checked it wasn't mail fraud to sign someone else up for a free catalog. In fact, there are many places which encourage you to sign friends and family up to receive their free catalog. I personally have signed Mr. Ralsky up for 5 or 6 catlogs which I think he might find interesting, one about how to save as much as 66% off of his bills, which may help him since it seems his current business may not sustain its profitibility much longer, one about Jeeps, since I heard he owns a Jeep Wrangler (I may be misinformed), and one about warm weather gear since he lives in Michigan. Hopefully he will find one of these catalogs helpful. And if not, he need only opt out of the service and he shouldn't be bothered any more.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Duuuuude. Put up a webcam showing his mailbox or front door. Let us all see how he enjoys the mail delivery. :^)
I used to co-host a weekend radio show streamed over the internet that included a fun little number involving spammers. We asked listeners to email us spams containing phone numbers. During the week I would then prepare a tape of prank calls and assorted other mayhem done with these numbers. The best were played on the next show weekend. One of our most memorable calls was playing the messages left in a spammers voicemail box (the code was "1234").
It is an ongoing story about blocking popups. I'll get a message from one person. Then another. Then another. Then one from the original person saying it is from the other person's desk. The from the other person saying (in the subject line it is from the first person's desk).
Its like they have some damn narrotive going on and they refer to each other over and over and over again. It drives me crazy that I'm not just being spammed a lot of times at random, but deliberately, over and over, by the same spammer.
I'm sure this, too, will be Alan's justification. "I'd don't single out an email and send to one person over and over and over. But that is what you're doing!" And so he'll use that to justify the differences between what he does and what is done with him.
He thinks its okay when you're spammed at random. He thinks it isn't okay when you're singled out for a barrage of spamming. Well, I get both in my mailbox now, and they're both damn annoying and from the same damn people.
And damn. I probably gave Alan a new spamming tactic. (sigh)
Seriously. It is so sad that so many have a real malformed idea of what being "human" is.
The world today needs some serious work to become even as good a world is was 30 years ago.
The loss of such important concepts like empathy, compassion, respect (especially respect) allows the sickness and cancerous traits take root in the mind and behaviors of society as a whole. No longer are people concerned about others, and it is so wide spread that we see it expressed in the way corporations and businesses are setup as if conceived and executed by robots - where humans are nothing but a consumable. (hence we are now known as consumers - not because we consume - but rather our resources (money, time, mindshare) and in the end, ourselves - is what is consumed by the machine that is the corporate bottom line and profit margin)
Hopefully some slashdotters out there will take a moment in their illusinal lives to stop and realize that everything outside of yourself, your relationships with the people around you and your attitude towards the current reality is the reality - and the only thing that matters. Otherwise - when moving through your life with your whole focus of being on concepts (and remeber that all that exists - exists as concept. Some manifest in physical form - most manifest in rule of conduct through material life) which are not founded on solid principle, you create a meaningless and illusory reality for yourself, your soul - and all whose life you influence and touch.
Please breath for a minute and try to enlighten and raise another persons life - even for just a moment. Then realise that there is only one moment you ever need to do this in, only one moment you ever need to be mindful of. Now.
How about sending him certified mail, with a signauture request. Maybe he'll get carpel tunnel syndrome from all the signing.
It's just the windows messaging feature that your *admin* is supposed to use to send out alerts and whatnot. one of those bastards popped up on my computer after i reinstalled win2k. seems like one of those spammin' buggers has our whole school's IP Block targeted!
It isnt mail fraud. His spam to me obviously creates a prior business relationship, I am just passing his information along to my 'partners' just like he has done and recieved with MY information so many times.
I was happy when AOL started sending out CDs instead of floppies. I turn them over and use them for coasters.
Twenties Retirement
What about the telemarketers that call us at home and work, trying to sell things? Aren't we going to target them too? After all, they interrupt us doing legitimate things like washing dishes, doing laundry, being intimate, etc. That goes for door to door salesmen too. This guy is sending you a message that can be deleted with a single keystroke or mouse click. Annoying ? Sure. Worth multiple /. posts/threads ? Not likely. Hell, I feel guilty just replying.
That being said, I put on my biologist hat and make note of the waste being generated in snail-mail bombing him.
Do people actually think he'll stop spamming because of this ? I can assure you, he won't. As he's marching his junk mail to the curb in garbage bags, he's warming up his car to drive to the bank with his 6-7 figure paycheque.
Oh no, I'm so sorry that this man's precious time is being taken up by unsolicited e-mail! We should all be ashamed of ourselves...right.
p.s.: http://www.spamyousilly.com works like a charm...
I suspect that would be a legal precedent he'd regret.
That being said, Slashdot would be best served by wiping out any logs of who posted what and putting a really strong magnet near the backup tapes....
I think the moderator system might need a revamping... I mean honestly who thinks its a good idea to moderate a post without reading it first. Heck, anyone who moderated the parent post is welcome to email me, ive got a bridge for them, real cheap.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
I would rather offer to fist fight him over the spam, but the other will do till he accepts.
Harassing the lawyer for doing his job is another step altogether. If he himself is harassing people, that's one thing; if he's just protecting the spammer's rights, he's doing his job. For that matter bear in mind that the law frowns on self-help generally.
Remember that excessive harassment will make the antispammers look every bit as contemptible as the spammer. The antispam effort needs the moral high ground. I'm talking about the perceptions of 3rd parties.
Please don't bother to tell me how terrible spammers are; I agree. But I don't think it wise to trample everything in our path to take what we believe to be ours. That's what the spammers do, after all, and "but we're right!" is nice but does not authorize disreagard for the rules of the game.
What's next? Spam anyone who even makes a gesture at fair play that might somehow benefit the spammer? That's one of the reasons I'll never post my email address.
So, just for the sake of argument, say someone orders twenty pizzas be delivered to his house. That would be grounds for a claim of fraud ?
Mmmmmmm.... Pizza.
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
Stop sending this guy spam and so on. Concentrate on fixing bugs in Mozilla 1.3! And we will never see spam again. (=> it will lower the response rate => the guy will go out of business)
As easy as that... So fix bugs!!!
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders.
The most famous is: Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Only slightly less well known is this:
Never go in against a geek when technology is on the line.
Original quote from The Princess Bride.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
Holiday bargain hunters are much more devastating. And they bounce nicely, too.
Much better than mere Critters.
Lemme guess, YANAL?
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
When one signs up for a mailing list with a slightly different name then one gets double/triple/you get the idea the amount of important marketing information which may be useful to you.
I like to use alternate middle initials or spellings on my first or last name...
"How is sending commercial e-mail any worse than the annoying phone calls you get during dinner or letters from Publishers Clearing House saying you've won millions of dollars from Ed McMahon?" Harrison said.a 01 -553425.htm
-- August 4, 2002
http://www.detnews.com/2002/technology/0208/04/
Do unto others as they do unto you.
Heisenberg may have been here.
With the notable exception of "419" spams which expect a reply by a moron^H^H^H^H^Hcustomer, most of the From addresses in spam emails are forged. Most of the time, they are chosen in a list of innocent people. Sometimes, the forged From address points to an anti-spam activist. This is known as a "Joe job". Recent Joe job victims include Spamcop and Spamgourmet addresses.
A 419 spam will include a genuine From address. On another hand, a whole category of messages have a forged From address:
I call these "unreturnable spams".
So "counterspam" will actually increase the amount of spam received mostly by innocent victims. Not quite a solution.
So please limit this "counterspam" to 419 senders. Don't help spammers. Avoid posting From addresses of unreturnable spams on Usenet.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
From randomly generated webpage once around:
Blissfulness? Verdun blackcock.
Indeed.
is that the anti-spammers didn't use any bandwidth
I'm sure most of the other old fogeys will remember the name Craig Shergold...
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
Wouldn't there be double justice in sending something like this to those gullible friends of yours that are always forwarding the most idiotic chain hoaxes. (E.g. forward this email to 20 people and Bill Gates will send you a free $50 give certificate for the Gap, or whatever.)
Just a thought...
...must really be annoying him.
He's a publicity whore. So shush. Just shush now.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This man suffers from a common human ailment. He does not have the ability to see what he does as wrong. Everyone else is a rube for him to exploit. He (in his own mind) can do whatever he wants, but if someone dares try the same stunt on him, they're going DOWN.
It's called a Dogbert [dilbert.com] complex.
Actually, at least according to one of the experts on the subject, if it's inborn it's called "psychopathy" and if it's learned it's called "sociopathy". (Operationally the two are indistinguishable, and other experts use them interchangably or make slightly different distinctions.)
Approximately 1 in 100 (1 in 50 to 1 in 200) are psychopaths - though some of 'em compensate by learning a moral code by rote. Others go on to be crooks, used car salesmen, spammers, crackers, and politicians. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Why do you complain? Members of the Internet community at large honestly thought that you might be interested in such offers...
A gift to you, Mr. Ralsky, from the world at large...
Hey there's something weird with /.: How'd the heading get set to "3rd world countries"? That was the heading for something I responded to a long time ago. Yeah, I shoulda looked over my post more carefully (and fixed typos) before pressing Submit.
I've normally left the forms blank, being willing to settle for sticking them with the return postage. However, this is a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. By using Ralsky's address it drives up the companies costs since they will send more junk to him and Ralsky gets to deal with it. I love it when a plan comes together.
Apologize? , no! We don't need no stinkin' apologies! We're providing this guy with LOTS OF VALUABLE AND INTERESTING INFORMATION AND ALL THE FIREPLACE KINDLING PAPER HE NEEDS! In fact, some of his customers would be very happy to add his name and address to the list of people to send FOUR FREE REPORTS on H0W to M4K3 M0N34 F4$T on the Internet!
It's mail fraud and a Federal Offense.
You're right, it is, and that's a protection that email should enjoy as well.
No, it should not.
Mail fraud is a federal offense because it misuses a FEDERAL SERVICE. That gives the government a nexus to come down on it in a draconian fashion - and also to come down on OTHER uses of the service, like for speech the government doesn't like (i.e. porn). Try to protect email as MAIL and you let the federal censorship camel's nose into the tent.
The way email SHOULD be protected is the same way your fax machine is protected against unsolicted faxes.
The cases are virtually identical: The email and fax spammers both misuse a private interstate communication network to consume your resources (connect time, machine time, fax paper/disk space, eyeball time, etc.) without your permission, reducing its utility and sometimes delaying or causing the loss of other, solicted messages.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
.... real friends help you move bodies.... But nobody helps you move junk mail.
The post office is also /.ed every year this time by letters to
Santa Claus
North Pole, Canada
I think we need to submit a change-of-address from in for Santa. Apparently he has moved to West Bloomfield.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You see, it's awful hard to mail the standard factory issue turd through the mail. It tends to smell up the post office, postal workers notice, and you get popped for mailing poop through the mail... Now, if you have the foresight to freeze said article before shipment, it will remain unthawed and relatively scent free (scent molecules after all being volatile compounds that don't go flying about in significant numbers unless a certain energetic threshold is crossed) until it is already in shipment... Since you live so close, it wouldn't be in the postal system for very long and would probably be reaching maximum ripeness only when the payload was reaching the target...
Bonus points if the payload is constructed of used Hormel Spam.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I just think satellites are cool.
Microsloth TerraServer
Corresponding yahoo map:
Yahoo maps
Obviously poor Mr. Ralsky is in need of salvation due to the continual lack of concern for his fellow members of the human race. I think that having several different sects arrive at the same time would be enough to enlighten anyone's soul. Do the various proseylitizing (too tired to speel) faiths accept web-based appointments?
>:-)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Actually an old address is just as good because after
a while 2nd and 3rd class mail is forwarded
with ADDITIONAL POSTAGE DUE.
If *I* were getting spammed and slashdotted because of one of my clients, unless there were some real strong moral issues for keeping him, there'd either be a fast re-evaluation of whether the client's worth keeping, or a fast re-evaluation of the rates I'd be charging him...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
see you in metamod
sign someone... erm.. myself up for SPAM?
I'm talking massive spam... I know that posting an email to USENET is asking for it... but I haven't been able to find a website that provides an easy way to sign people that I don't like up for spam.
I'm usually left entering emails in those stupide CNET registration things and checking all the spams off the list.
?Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now controls the past.?
I have one question for Alan Ralsky: why do you spammers never remove the email addresses that bounce back? Since my mail servers get your junk mailed over and over and over to email addresses which represent supposed users that have never even existed, it's clear you don't make any attempt whatsoever to clean your lists of bounces. Spam is theft, and this makes it clear that it is willful. Maybe we slashdotters should be asking the Oakland County Prosecuting Attorney's Office to pursue criminal theft charges.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Remember, when you call(ed?) up and asked for brochures to be sent to Mr. Ralsky, you were not pretending to be Mr. Ralsky, you were just asking for the company to send their material to a friend of yours.
Right?
--a programmer pretending to be a defense attorney
http://www.michiganchiefsales.com/ How about we request they demonstrate their fertilizer (read:manure) spreading equipment on his lawn?
to Richard Marcinko, who quoted SEAL instructors.
Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.
The bug in the original has led me into all sorts of problems. There I was at the beach -- when I noticed a gorgeous woman who I would have liked to have lick me all over my body. So I did unto her as I would have her do unto me. Unfortunately, there were a number of people who objected to this: the woman, her husband, and my girlfriend, not to mention the mean, evil, pinched-faced religious crusader under the next umbrella. Needless to say, I was pummeled by all involved, until I was so battered that today I just stay in my room posting to Slashdot.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Please, don't send him any more snail mail. If not for him, then think of the Post Office workers who have to deliver it all.
I mean, if this keeps up, one of them might eventually snap, and go Postal on his...
Oh, wait...
CALLING ALL SPAMBOTS!!!
I think you meant [his addresses as mailto: URLs]
ROTFL!
For those who didn't catch it:
If Ralsky's email address collection operation includes a bot that sucks down email address from web sites - and doesn't honor robots.txt file entries - the above posting will put Ralsky's lawyer on Ralsky's mailing lists. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I had it laying around and was going to recycle it anyway, only cost a couple $$ to ship it to him. I figued he could use it to hold all his mail.
Dear Mr Ralsky,
You are now subscribed to the goatsee.cx newsletter.
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.
I would say this is the last straw, I run both UNIX and Windows 2000 servers. I leave Windows 2000 for weeks by itself, only to login to terminal or to the console for somthing, and I end up with about 20-30 of these messages asking me if I want insurance or a magical diet plan, etc. This is NOT what that protocal was desinged for, we use it over the net to send messages about the network. They really slow down performance, has this happend to anyone else? On UNIX? Maybe if we flood them with the same type of messages, hmm.
Here is the zip code for Robert Harrison & Assoc so you can be sure your gifts get there:
2550 S TELEGRAPH RD STE 275
BLOOMFIELD HILLS MI 48302-0908
This tidbit from the usps.
as we are talking about mail-fraud and not normal fraud, unless those pizzas were delivered to his mailbox by the mailman, no
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Only 2 weeks for him to start getting the stuff? How come it takes me 4-6 weeks to start getting a damn magazine subscription?
-eddy
I sell books on Amazon... ;)
I have a few thousand excess used books that I cant get rid of, mostly cheap romance trash like harlequins.
If anyone is willing to transport them, you can have them to donate to him!
This space available.
Here is an href that will do a couple of things. For starters, it subscribes the address in the href to a spammer's mailing list. It does this everytime the href is accessed. It also will send an e-mail to the address. So all traffic through this link. results in an email being sent from this spam company to the address. That means bots, blind people, etc. will be the perpetrators of signing the addressee up for spam repeatedly and basically email bombing the addressee.
Isn't that ref=sr... a referrer link on Amazon?
If so, quite clever, saying that you have $20 to put in this stunt knowing that if the link gets slashdotted by people buying this book for Ralsky you will get a little bit of money from each, thus making more than the $20 that you won't shell out anyway.
Oh well, given that you put the whole link visible in the post I suppose I will take it as a rather good joke.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I don't think that holds at all - currently, I can write with as much freedom through snailmail as I can email - the difference is the abuse. While certain states have dipshit mail laws (porno, booze, etc) they aren't, I believe, Federal. Thus I have no problem with the snailmail Federal laws being applied. And mail is no longer a federal service - it has been privatized - yet the laws still stand.
The way email SHOULD be protected is the same way your fax machine is protected against unsolicted faxes.
Well, I'd be all for that too, if it happens. Unfortunately, there are ways in which email is more like regular mail - I can forge a return address a lot more easily than a phone number, for instance. For what it's worth, email is somewhere between a fax and mail - and probably needs to be dealt with is such.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Use public records. County Assessor and Tax records are best. They are the most accurate way.
= sindex&qry=&gov=&aud=citizen&sub=prope rty
Looks like Oakland Michigan is the place to start. Unfortunately they charge a fee. Maybe someone who already has an account can look it up.
http://www.co.oakland.mi.us/ocweb/MainServlet?cmd
From randomly generated webpage [devin.com]
I was browsing that site and came across this:
When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
When the hurlyburly's done, freequote@zero.nochill.com When the battle's lost and won.
That will be ere the set of sun.
Where the place? pc2nups@yahoo.comf
Upon the heath.
rankahmed1@mailsurf.com There to meet with Macbeth.
I come, Graymalkin!
Paddock calls. b_rom_s@4enet.b news2@gossipflash.com
Anon.
ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.
It went on for a while like that, babling about a ghost or somthing, then it changed and started talking about a couple of kids commiting suicide. Wierd.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Actually I hate it that they use pressed CDROMs. I think they should use CDRWs.
Floppies were great spam, with modems, and in the mail. I just opened another 3 packs of them yesterday, because I needed some more floppies.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
same way his home address has been 'verified' sign it up, and wait for the resulting news article.
...on every mailing list I come across.
:)
Harassment? Just desserts for the GOD of harassment
Entering that address at http://www.usps.com/zip4/welcome.htm shows that it's valid:
Official Postal Format:
240 E MERRILL ST
BIRMINGHAM MI 48009-6106
Mailing Industry Information:
Carrier Route: C039
County: OAKLAND
Delivery Point: 40
Check Digit: 2
Have an actual computer in the room and have the "you've Got Mail" thing ring out at volume 10 every time a piece of mail is recieved
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
But if he's using the lawyer as an agent in negotiations with his customers, or in preparing contracts with his customers, or in defending him against tort or other civil actions brought by people who claim the spammer's actions has cost them money or damaged their stuff, it's not a civil rights issue, it's just business.
Making insulting phone calls to the *lawyer* for the spam would be inappropriate, but providing the lawyer with a large number of billable-with-15-minute-minimum activities to perform on behalf of his client strikes me as appropriate. After all, his client might very well be interested in friendly calls about ways to make m0n34 f4$t on the Internet, or getting reports analyzing the legality of different internet marketing plans, or market research about the sales of V1agra on the net, and somebody who wants to contract with his client about them would certainly want to ask what forms of contracts they know how to support, or what jurisdiction his client uses to resolve disputes in.
Wasting the lawyer's time would be a mean thing to do, but after all, you only need a 0.04% take rate to justify these things, and his client might really be interested in them. And delivering subpoenas for discovery is never a waste of time :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Subscribing him to all those lists would be wrong - unless of course he needs a copy of all of the postings for his files. But Unsubscribing him would be fine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Whatever parties were involved in initiating and perpetrating this action, you have my whole-hearted thanks. You're my heroes. I like knowing that there's a spammer out there that's getting at least a small sample of what we deal with every day, there's nothing else in the world I could have read this afternoon to bring that kind of smile to my face. If you're discovered and there's ever legal action against you, I'm certain the slashdot community, and the rest of the world that appreciates the plight of spam victims, will band together to provide you with any social, financial, and legal support you might need. I, for one, won't forget the battle you fought for us on the moral front.
Jekler
like i said...
so shut the fuck up
"He's been signed up for all that mail under false pretenses. It's mail fraud and a Federal Offense."
fine, I'll sign up under my own name, c/o that address. if he opens it, he's comitting a federal offense..
Of course, that doesn't mean that for spam that *does* want email responses, you shouldn't give those addresses to other spammers. No need for a chatbot of your own; there are plenty out there run by other spammers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
So, in other words, YAAACWYHSUYA.
(You Are An Anonymous Coward With Your Head Stuck Up Your Ass)
Because that's retarded.
http://www.rxpoint.com/sign_g.htmlp oint.com/cgi-bin/cgiemail/cgiemail_r esources/2 001/Sep/100 2395.html
http://www.rx
http://www.securitytracker.com/alerts/
Do your worst.
You know damn well hes viewing all these slashdot posts about his lame self. Hes to coward to post any replies to any of the threads here on slashdot.
Speak up you little Bitch.
Bingo, fraud is not lying, fraud is lying with a very specific intent, material gain.
When a lawyer files a crank suit for someone it is rarely the case that they go file the wrong crank suit. Filing a civil crank suit is much less likely to lead to problems than filing a criminal one.
However the guy is undoubtedly full of it. How does he claim to know who put him on the mailing lists? OK he can file a suit against John Doe #1 through 69, but recovering damages against them is not going to be happening.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
C'mon, there are other ways to annoy spammers, heres two I've heard of being used to good effect, both involve contacting those who spam you.
.au) who reguluarly has spammers spend over $20 US to send large packages of advertising material, which he promptly bins. This hits spammers where they hurt. In the pocket.
.au).
First way (less vicious): Contact the spammer, tell them you're interested, but would prefer to have hardcopy material - pamphlets, etc. Delivered to your PO box.
I have a friend (in
Second way (more vicious): Do nearly the same thing, but say you'd rather communicate via the postal service. Ask for some information plus reply paid cards (I believe these exist in the US, I've never seen them in
Wait with baited breath for the reply paid cards.
Once you recieve them, find a nice large, heavy brick, bundle it up, and mail it back to the spammers. They get billed for the cost of sending the large, heavy, package.
Apparently this approach works in the US, or so an american friend told me. Their email addresses got removed from quite a few lists after a few iterations of this scenario.
A little overkill never hurt anybody.
I just thought of a excellent idea. :)
Head down to Chapters (big bookstore in Canada LOTS of magazines) or any other big bookstore and take out all the little cards that you find inside the magazines.
Then sign up ralsky for 1000s of those first issue free offers. Then when he is getting 1000s of magazines that he has to "opt-out" of he will really be pissed
Alan M Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr
West Bloowfield Township, MI 48322-2663
Another good idea is to schedule a pickup from his residence from UPS, Airbourne Express, Fedex. Alot of them have online forms to do this with. Have them all show up on the same day looking for tons of packages. Also there are lawn companies, construction companies that also will come out and do on-site estimates. Oh yeah you can sign up on Culigan's Website to have them come out and do a free water test. That should annoy him pretty well.
This program that is able to "get through firewalls", etc...I want to know where he plans to get something like that? Sounds like a script kiddy's dream.
::bad Scottish accent::
Suck it, Ralsky! Suck it long, and suck it hard!
::/bad Scottish accent::
Cecil
Spam email on the other hand does not pay for it's usage of the systems that transport it. It uses valuable and expensive bandwidth but pays nothing for it. Bandwidth is not free...and you and I end up paying the increased costs in order to support the spammers. To me spam email is no different than a junk fax. You send it and someone else has to pay for it.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
Then I go to all the lists of "click-here-to- unregister" sites and I pump them all in
.com. The easiest way to do this is cut-n-paste.
Different technique: Find the 'click-here-to-unregister' boxes and feed in the longest email addresses they'll take. I've fed email addresses into those that are 5 MB long before. Just make sure the address is valid, i.e. it has username, @, domain,
Hubris
Listen, he can't sue any one of you buggers... its bs.
HOWEVER, the Detriot free press article identified him as a spammer AND disclosed his neighborhood, also some nearby streets. From that information he is marked as 1) someone who is not popular, and 2) easily found in this neighborhood.
That might be enough for his lawyer to get a judge to okay the suit against the newspaper.
Now- IANAL, IANALBIPOOT, etc. But think about it, thats his only possible angle.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED ... nuff said!
keeping those disgruntled postal workers employed.
Thank you. I have postal relatives, and they need a job
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
That said, he's also a moron. He's been signed up for all that mail under false pretenses. It's mail fraud and a Federal Offense. Yet the dim bulb is calling a lawyer to file a civil lawsuit instead of a criminal one.
I'll help him out. I just put him on the "Criminal Lawyer's" and "Victims of Fraud" mailing list.
Table-ized A.I.
Hah, you sound like a villian in an Ayn Rand novel...
(That said, I agree with you totally!)
Perhaps my logic is flawed, but if an underage person (18 in some states, 21 in others) receives adult Spam, isn't the person who sent it guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and perhaps several other laws? Does anyone know if this guy sends porn Spam (I must admit that I haven't followed this story that closely). If so, there is NO way he hasn't sent at least some adult Spam to someone underage.
He's going to get to sample Playtex's new line of tampons with NEW PLASTIC APPLICATORS.
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
I belived junk fax analogy was an avenue of hope until about April this year, when a U.S. court ruled that ban on junk faxes violated the firstr amendment. See this Politech post. And fax.com are back in business, check their site.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
This story brings me more joy than any other story I have ever seen on /.
Thank you, for pissing of this asshole.
--meh--
cut off the snake by it's head and kill his internet!
They are the most annoying people around. They just won't leave no matter how often you say no.
This physical reverse spamming is really the ultimate in passive-aggressiveness, and should not be supported.
... it is not yet illegal, and nobody has any right to interfere with this guy's physical mail service because they are so upset about clicking "delete" on messages they don't want. By sending him tonnes of physical mail, nothing is accomplished. Not only that, there are many downsides. To wit:
Look, I recognize that Ralsky might not be someone you'd invite to dinner. I recognize that spam is annoying. I fully realize that it is unsolicited garbage.
But come on people
1. It is environmentally irresponsible in the extreme. All that paper is being wasted because you don't like clicking a mouse 20 more times a day? Seems more than a little selfish.
2. It is in fact illegal. Impersonating someone else in order to sign them up to receive mail is mail fraud.
3. It is a waste of the time and resources of the companies that send out the spam and the people who have to deliver it. Ever think of them? Why should the reverse spammers have the right to use companies' resources and the resources of the public postal service to further their own agenda? Isn't this just what you accuse Ralsky of doing when he "steals bandwidth"?
4. It is a disproportionate response. Because you have to delete some emails each day that takes you all of a few minutes, the appropriate response is to totally shut down one particular spammer's ability to read his own relevant physical mail by ensuring he must sift through thousands of pieces each day? That is absurd.
5. It is totally ineffective. If you have a complaint about receiving spam, take it up with your elected officials. THEY are the ones to stop it. So long as money can be made in this entirely legal business, no matter how annoying it is, there will always be someone who spams. If not Ralsky, then someone else. So even stopping Ralsky (which this surely will not do) does nothing to stop spam, because there will always be someone to deliver a message that a company is paying to have delivered.
And finally, about the comments regarding the "spammer's lawyer" being some low form of life, just remember that everyone in free nations under the rule of law has the right to legal representation. If we ever get to a point in our society where an individual's right to be heard in court (and make no mistake, you cannot effectively represent yourself in court) is judged in advance by the public on the moral value we perceive their case to have, then I don't want to be living in that society.
So to sum, get off your soapboxes and high horses before you all break your necks. This isn't pretty, it isn't effective, and it isn't ethical, no matter how much you may titter away at seeing someone you dislike punished.
~ M
I heard an interesting thing on KGO radio in san francisco the other day.
There was a guy on who was talking about telemarketing and the laws about do not call lists. The host was asking about why the states dont just flat out make it illegal to call anyone on an opt-out list. And why do some states charge for a number to be put on it.
The telemarketing expert stated that the reason the states dont do as much as the general public thinks it should is due to the fact that telemarketing is a major part of the economy. It employs some six million people and generates more than 12 billion dollars per year.
If they made telemarketing basically illegal - this would cause a massive problem for the economy.
The sad part is that the econmoy is in such a state that fraud and BS business models like telemarketing, although hated, are a necessarry yet cancerous column of stability holding the economy in the (albeit crappy) state its in.
Personally, I think that it would be good for this industry to go away - and force us to build our economy on more ethical and true industries.
Apparently the Matrix was correct - 1999 was the peak of our society.
Al is the proud owner of rxpoint.com; one of his major spam subjects.
r xpoint.com/setupc giemail/cgiemail_r esources/t tp://www.rxpoint.com/logs/m /new/
Here's some interesting stuff:
Server is running Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) PHP/4.2.2 FrontPage/4.0.4.3 and is hosted by hostcentric.com
http://www.rxpoint.com/sign_g.html
http://www.
http://www.rxpoint.com/cgi-bin/
http://www.rxpoint.com/formmail.cgi
h
http://www.rxpoint.co
Go to town boys.
Being an enviormental nazi; i hate the snailers and all the credit card offers in the mail even more than i hate spam. Hopefully he will recycle all that bulk mail. Maybe he'll do an idea these guys have. http://www.collusion.org/Article.cfm?ID=288
people who think they can rule the world should start out with a small garden.
Lousy irony!
In Soviet Russia... oh. wait. nevermind.
No no no, you can't just post his email, but a redirect that forwards to him. That way he can't filter it out, since it isn't actually addressed to him :)
-- Gone Crazy, Back Later
how bout just sticking a fish in his mailbox and duct taping it shut. that was always fun to do to the local asshole on our street as kids. especially when it was HOT outside..
---BEGIN SARCASM--- I've seen comments noting that we wanted him to know about lots of pleasant offers other companies have for him, and that's why he got subscribed. I'd just like to note that this is partially incorrect; it's because Alan Ralsky has a little bit of extra flab - yes, love handles, you may call them, but Ralsky, we want you to lose them! How? By lifting magazines, offers, free samples, and junk mail out of your mailbox every day, time and time again. Even if you do it only 15 minutes a day, YOU COULD LOSE 15 POUNDS FAST! In fact, this excersize will give you a LARGER PENIS! NO WEIGHTS, PULLEYS, or PILLS! This will enable you to FUCK HOT COEDS, SHEEP, and LESBIANS. You may even be able to get a FREE UNIVERSITY D.I.P.L.O.M.A. (somehow, I don't know how it ties in.) And if you can't do all that, you sure will get a lot of .000005lb reps on the junk mail, or you could just do it in one big lump sum.
---END SARCASM---
I wonder if he ever reads articles and stuff like this about him? Meh, maybe he'd understand...
Is there a web site out there with spamers email address? Let sign up those spammers so other spammers can send each other junk email!!
ya, personally i would like to move out into some secluded area in BFE and "attune" myself. but thats just not possible in this day and age (IMO). of course, even being able to get away to do something like that i would still have to have a broadband connection and my PC or i think i would go insane.
This is my first posting here at slashdot -- so forgive me if I'm doing something wrong. But it sure seems to me that perhaps our politicians might get the message if they were subjected to this same kind of on-slaught of postal mail and email. I wonder what would happen if the Senate mail room suddenly received every catalog there was for every senator? And what if their email accounts were placed on every spam list there was? I'm sure that politicians also have personal email addresses. I would bet someone here at slashdot could dig a few up. Would the spam laws change then? Of course, it's just a thought.
Ahem! Did everyone see this?
You're a Genius, my good fellow!
Torque off his neighbors... hmmmmm...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Registrant:
Sav-Rx (RXPOINT-DOM)
9439 N Leamington
Skokie
IL,60077
US
Domain Name: RXPOINT.COM
Administrative Contact:
Ralsky, Alan (AR1574) aral@INFICAD.COM
Sav-Rx
9439 N Leamington
Skokie, IL 60077
(847) 677-5516 (FAX) (847) 677-5329
Technical Contact:
Hostmaster, Web2010 (JS1795) HOSTMASTER@WEB2010.COM
WEB2010 Inc
6757 Edgewater Commerce Parkway
Orlando, FL 32810-4211
US
407-445-3033 407-445-2427 407-445-2427
Record expires on 13-Mar-2004.
Record created on 12-Mar-1997.
Database last updated on 6-Dec-2002 22:03:37 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS.WEB2010.COM 216.65.3.100
NS2.WEB2010.COM 216.157.79.246
Here! It's absolutly brilliant!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Mission Accomplished??? NOT! He's hired an attorney. WELL...
a. how many of the people close by have enough legal coverage to take him to small claims court for productivity and other quantifiable losses due to HIS spam? (legal spam)
b. time to MapQuest another name:
Ralsky is indeed annoyed. He says he's asked Bloomfield Hills attorney Robert Harrison to sue the anti-spammers.
Gentlemen, ladies, another fit target for your search-and-debilitate methods. Let it be known that it's not safe to support a spammer.
My opinion, of course. Not that I'd EVER advocate antisocial or illegal actions...
Since we have his address anyway, can somebody get a picture of the pile of junk stacked up outside his house?
And I wouldn't worry too much about a lawsuit. He'd need a really good lawyer to avoid setting a legal precedent that could then be used against him.
and posted a reply when it shoulda been at the top level...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Here!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
with the good folks across the street...
Calling their 800 number and listening to the pitch costs them money in at least 3 ways:
1. 800 number calls are billed to them
2. It will take up the time of sales people
3. If enough people do it, eventually real customers may not be able to get through.
:) umm... Don't do anything illegal... it makes you as bad as the spammers. there, i'm covered
If there's a snail address listed, send an inquiry to their services... Probably should use a P.O. box for this, so you don't clog up your personal mailbox. Anyway, this would hurt them even more. They've got printing fees, whatever fees for employees making & processing the information, and mailing fees to deal with.
The only problem with this, is that it targets people that use the spamming services... but then again, aren't they just as bad as the spammers?
I'm not sure how legal any of those ideas are... If enough people did it though, it might be somewhat effective
As something of a disclaimer.... dunno if it's necessary, but i wanna save my ass if at all possible
Bryan
telemarketing is a major part of the economy. It employs some six million people and generates more than 12 billion dollars per year.
That would mean a gross revenue of $2000 per employee. Either your stats are way off or telemarketing sucks major ass as a business. Or both.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
i think you made some very valid points *BUT* are you saying that the feds dont look in on emails now? i dont want to open a whole other can of worms and tho im sorta new to /. im sure that its been discussed on here before. the goverment *DOES* check out our emails and i dont care if Carnivore or DCS1000 (or whatever its called) is supposed to only hunt down emails with keywords in them like "BOMB" or "Jihad" or whatever other keywords may be in their list.. call me a paranoid if you want. sorry for going kind of off subject here.
this gives me an idea! they could relocate all the telemarketers into fast food employees.. they would make more money at least :)
There are a few nuances (virtual vs. physical, 3rd party signing someone up vs. the catalog company, etc.), but it is an interesting thought.
Doesn't he wan to support the building of the embassy and the cloning of Rael? Click here!
It would be even easier to detect any 1-800 numbers in the mails, and have your modem call them round robin through the night.
Maybe then he would think twice about defending the spammer.
is the person that runs rxpoint.com the same alan ralsky as the spammer? if it is the whois record is quite interesting.
Domain Name: RXPOINT.COM
Administrative Contact:
Ralsky, Alan (AR1574) aral@INFICAD.COM
Sav-Rx
9439 N Leamington
Skokie, IL 60077
(847) 677-5516 (FAX) (847) 677-5329
Lawyers, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
This sig no verb.
I think thats mean. To protect this poor lawyer, I should preemptively add him to the opt-out and remove links I get at the bottom of so much of my spam.
Oh no no! Haven't you heard?
Ralsky is an opt-in bulk mailer. *sage nod* Also, I have a flying car.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
Does Depends Diapers still offer free samples?
There are no words for how I'm feeling about this. :-D
I'm just having this big smile on my face, and I feel so good. I may not have to suffer so badly from the Coca Cola withdrawal I've had all night so far. This is so good
these companies print a certain ammount of each catalog edition. if people dont sign up and request a catalog, they will just send them to someone else. They dont send in orders for single catalogs, and you arent wasting the companies money. the trees are wasted well before signing ralksy up, only its being put to a better use this time.
WHOIS of RXPOINT.COM.....
Ralsky, Alan (AR1574)
aral@INFICAD.COM
Sav-Rx
9439 N Leamington
Skokie, IL 60077
(847) 677-5516 (FAX) (847) 677-5329
Come on, whoever signed him up for all these mailing lists have just reduced themselves to his level. They should be proud.
Unfortunately in real life, moderators are a little slower to apply that -1 moderation, and it's a little harder to set your threshold to +3.
Odd that we're having a discussion about karma here on Slashdot, don't you think?
I mean, after that other AOL CD project, I'm sure they're going to have a couple million CDs lying around. Send them to this guy.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Sending tons of snail mail spam to Ralsky is too funny... poetic justice to the Nth degree.
Doing the same thing to his attorney? That's a stroke of genius!
God! This is one of the things I love about Slashdot... a quarter of a million geeks, irritable, hyped-up on Bawls and Penguin mints, bent on revenge. Could there be a darker crucible of spite and malice?
Man... my sides hurt from laughing!
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Bullshit. There is no "game", ever. Everything can be exploited and abused, the reason society almost functions is that enough people aren't willing to do it.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Things I have started doing recently include: Mixing up the junk mail so that, for example, Company A receives some junk from Companies B and C in the reply envelope. This way, it's not even useful to them as they cannot simply re-mail the returned items.
One thing I intend to start doing in the future is partially filling out the forms that come with the materials I send back, but, for example, writing VOID where the signature is supposed to go or something. This way, someone will start entering data only to discover that it's bullshit... Or putting X's in all the little boxes and writing "Wasted your time!" Where the signature is supposed to go. Stuff like that. Oh yeah, I always rip my name and address off the documents so they don't know who's doing it. What a waste of time for that company! Hey, they wasted my time. I'm wasting their's back.
(The fine print: I don't actually do any of what I just said I do. It's a joke. Don't take it seriously. Just leave me alone.)
And to think I used to wack off to her! Never again! Eewwww!!
He's a question, what happens to some poor sucker when he moves out. I live in an apartment. The girl before me lived here for 2-3 years... but I'm getting mail addressed to somebody that is not me and not her.
I have a feeling that this spam could persist past the spammer, being a serious annoying for anyone unfortunate enough to buy his house when he next moves.
I think another good way of getting rid of spam is that we(as a community) chose one target company who is doing business with spammer and send them a 1-2 meg email telling them to stop dealling with them thus overloading their server.
If spammer company dont get clients they just wont live long.
Cheers
>Mail fraud is a federal offense because it misuses a FEDERAL SERVICE.
So? Try attempting some fraud through privately-owned UPS or FedEx. If it crosses state lines its a federal offense and probably a state one too. If it doesn't then its a state offense.
I think we each need to start a chain letter with Al's address (both home and work), urging each recipient to send it to 10 other people.
Each recipient is, of course, encouraged to use the addresses to make Al aware of any products and services that might interest him.
By the way, I hope he enjoys his free sample of Serenity pads. Gotta hate that unsightly leakage!
Yes-ANAL? You betcha! I'll come right over and put it up your ass you queer bastard!
OK, well at the very least you could seriously Mame him!
He is pure evil, He deserves it.
--meh--
I don't know what the world 30 years ago was like. I doubt you do either other than from what you read or see on movies. However I don know I am sick and tired of people whining about how things were so much better way back when. I'll bet the people of yesterday were no different basically than people of today. I will also bet some people like yourself 30 years ago were bitching about their current state of affairs and how much nicer it was 30 years before your ideal time.
Johnny Cash basically said the same thing I'm saying right now but a lot more eloquently in his autobiography. God, I'm tired of people whining about the "good old days."
This guy is way out there
I'll take a crack at your challenge. How about the Mormon Church?
" Representatives in your area would like to deliver your copy of the Book of Mormon and share a message about how the teachings of Jesus Christ have helped individuals and families find greater happiness. Their visit will last about an hour. May we arrange to have representatives deliver your free copy of the Book of Mormon?"
Guess what Alan chose?
This guy is way out there
Attorneys can withdraw from representing a client, but not as informally as just telling the client to hit the bricks. Once they have agreed to represent, they are obligated to represent until a judge has granted their motion to withdraw as attorney, IIRC.
Of course, I have seen instances where it appeared that the attorney just chose to do such a lame job that the client left of his/her own volition.
IANAL, but I may go to law school next year. Midlife career change and all.
Bother, said Pooh, as he called in an air strike.
I'd like to sign him up for Ted Kazinski's mailing list. From what I understood, his good were both reliable and of high quality.
yes yes bad me
you do realize the the USPS has been a private corp which enjoys federal protection since the 70's dont you? Not a federal service...
All employees must wash hands before using the bathroom. - The Mgmt.
Oh, hang on. That was crapdusters...
Nevermind...
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
http://www.halo-17.net/?action=retrieve&article=27 43
Touchdown!
I'm sure that you'd be allowed to post as anonymous coward for the purpose of posting it here.
If he is so much your real friend that you aren't willing to turn his ass in, do you hang out with pedos and kiddie pr0nsters as well? How about terrorists? Do you like the enemies of humanity in general or do you just have a soft spot for spammers?
Tech Public Policy stuff
He'd just sell them.
How about someone who lives in his town going to the town council and asking them to pass a strong local law which forbids the sending of spam?
Who knows, maybe someone on the council gets spam too.
Sick of wasting your time finding that 1800 each time you want to help with the program? No worries. Now you can use that handy redial button:
Name: Alan M Ralsky
5016 Patrick Rd. West Bloomfield, MI 48322
248-661-3355
AKA: Jeff Kramer
6567 Long Lake Road
Birmingham, MI 48009 US
Domain Name: cambridgewater.net
Jeff Kramer (COCO-227918) aral54@hotmail.com
AKA: Additional Benefits
2121 Richard Ave
W. Bloomfield, MI 48322
248-200-3492
AKA: Creative Marketing Zone Inc
5016 Patrick Rd
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
AKA: Sam Smith (MAILSVC2-DOM)
200 W. Long Lake Drive
Troy, MI 48332 US
Domain Name: MAILSVC.NET
Smith, Sam (SS9752) aral@ADDITIONALBENEFITS.COM
AKA: William Window (template COCO-265759)
4512 Westside
Royal Oak, Michigan 48098 US
William Window (COCO-265759) aral54@hotmail.com
+1 248 544 4314
AKA: Alan Ralsky, (AR1574) aral@INFICAD.COM
Sav-Rx (RXPOINT-DOM)
Domain Name: RXPOINT.COM
9439 N Leamington
Skokie, IL 60077
(847) 677-5516 (FAX) (847) 677-5329
AKA: Alan M Ralsky, (AMR43) amr1@CONCENTRIC.NET
Additonal Benefits
5016 Patrick Drive
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
1-248-661-3355 (FAX) 1-248-661-3054
AKA: AB Internet
528 S. State St. PMB 523
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
(There is no building face with that address on it.
There *is*, however, a building that accepts that
mail - the University of Michigan Student Union,
and the Mailboxes, Etc. that is housed therein.)
AKA: rxpoint.com
5016 Patrick Rd.
West Bloomfield, MI 48322
AKA: MPI Global
5016 Patrick Road
W Bloomfield, MI 48322
(248) 661-3355
AKA: mpiglobal
25514 Graceland
Dearborn Heights, MI 48125US
AKA: Ray Esseily
mpiglobal.com
25514 Graceland Drive
Dearborn Heights , MI 48125
1-313-278-8845
Did you notice the great suggestive sell partway down that Amazon page?
"Customers who wear clothes also shop for:"
It all goes downhill from first post
"I think I speak for all sober and right-thinking people everywhere when I say: WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"
Does anyone know what prices Hormel charges for bulk shipments of actual SPAM? I'd chip in a few bucks to the "feed Ralsky fund." Let's ensure that he never goes hungry again.
By the way Alan, good luck tracking down and suing those 300 anonymous internet guys.
Well, let me get this straight. He is going to sue us for harrassing us. Clearly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Bring him on. His case is basically centered around a group of "net-fiends" singling him out and inundating him with advertisements--advertisements that he didnt ask for, and at that--they purposefully sought him out to send these advertisements to.
Therefore, the case is simple. Yes, he has a lawyer. Whoopee. If it is legal for him to run scripts, etc to get our personal information to single us out, how is what has happend to him any different? It's not. Therefore, a simple counter-suit can keep his lawyer well paid. He cannot get us all, after all who amoung us is using real information about themselves on the web anymore?
His lawsuit will be thrown out, and at the very least, even if it does go to court, he better have decent security on that firewall of his...
Altho I do enjoy the poetic justice thoroughly, it is conceivable that he could just move to a new location.
....
What happends when he moves... do the next persons that live there suffer for "justice"?
I don't think so...that would be Fort Smith, Arizona? Doesn't sound right, eh?
To those who submit the argument that what he is doing is perfectly legal, I submit the counter consideration that millions if not BILLIONS of dollars are spent by companies large and small to deal with this problem. Even ignore the monetary costs of dealing with it, there's the cost of time and attention better spent elsewhere by everyone and is jsut plain disrespectful to their ability to use email the way they want to.
This guy makes millions at countless cost to others, somehow I really can't find any sympathy for this SOB...
This got modded Informative?? Are you moderators on crack?! "Let it be known that it's not safe to support a spammer"??
//lawyer// is tantamount to suicide!
Encouraging the guy not to pursue the case is one thing, but taking actions like this against a
If we had no business mail (junk mail) at all I would absolutely hate to see the price we would have to pay to mail a letter. Business mail generates probably the largest source of revenue for the US Postal Service and thereby keeps your costs down.
I love how people keep perpetuating that myth. Do you honestly believe that if there were no business mail that our postage would go through the roof? Making a rough estimate that business mail is in the neighborhood of 90% of the mail that goes through the system, its pretty easy to see that the majority of the expensive infrastructure of the mail system is necessitated by the need to deliver business mail. With out all of the business mail, the mail system would get very little usage at all and require very little infrastructure to work.
Yet the dim bulb is calling a lawyer to file and civil lawsuit instead of a criminal one.
You've obviously never taken law 101 or the highschool equivilent. Otherwise, you'd realize that a private citizen can't just up and file a criminal lawsuit. Criminal cases involve individuals being prosecuted by the state. The very nature of his problem is that he wants relief from an individual so his recourse is to file a civil lawsuit or to complain to some state agency in the hopes that they will file a criminal lawsuit against the other people.
Secondly, this is not mail fraud at all seeing as no one has been defrauded of anything.
Or ask the Michigan attorney general to pursue criminal charges under Michigan's Computer Law, MCLA 752.791 et seq.
g e= getObject&objName=mcl-Act-53-of-1979
http://www.michiganlegislature.org/mileg.asp?pa
Section 4 of this act seems to fit Ralsky's conduct precisely, but the section 2 definition of aggregate amount might be difficult, as the AG would have to prove that victims suffered financial losses. But look at section 7 - if enough financial losses were proved this guy could be looking at a felony...
Oh yeah, IANAL (thank god)
Alrite guys ..... now lets hit him at his weakness, with our strengths
....there are other ppl who could, and would. Im ready to go ....
His weakness -
1. Spammers aren't geeks. His knowledge abt computer security is probably as good as a chimpanzee's.
2. He uses Internet explorer (unpatched)
3. He uses MS Outlook
Our strengths -
1. We are aware of all outlook holes
2. Most of the IE holes.
SO...lets mail him the latest viruses, something that will wipe out his h-drive. Or maybe a trojan we can use to remotely login and clear his entire network.
I m talking abt a pro-active approach here. Blood for blood. Eye for eye.
In case you americans are too scared to do this, well
Life is just a conviction.
Fort Smith, Arkansas...Arizona is AZ.
"The world today needs some serious work to become even as good a world is was 30 years ago.
"
cast your mind back...
1972...
Only in the last few years where minorities allowed to ride in the front of a bus.
Automobiles produceed an ungodly amount of polluntant(There are 4 time as many cars on the roads in LA now, but only half the pollution.
Children were beaten regularly and this was considered normal (I'm not talking about a swat here)
It was very near impossible for a woman to get a decent career, and if she did, she ould make half what her male counter part earned.
Wearing seatbeltsd was almost unheard of.
we were very close to a nuclear war.
Now if you go back to the fifties,it gets far worse.
People are more aware of other now, then they have been for a long time.
I think you need to stop pining for "the good ol' days and start think about how you can make tomorrow good.
I suspect you are under 40 and confusing the realities of the early 70's with you fond childhood memories.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is proof that if we band together for issues we can make an impact. Yeah yeah it has been out of revenge, but all he has to do is cancel all those catalogs like we try to cancel his damn mailing lists!
In short here is my immature response to him.
"Fuck em"
And I am sure that none of us would consider anything of the sort. Like Ralsky, we are a law-abiding lot. Like him, we simply wish to exercise our right of freedom of speech.
... the same way e-spam arrives ... so he has to wade through all of it just to find the personal stuff he's looking for.
:-)
/. for reporting the story in the Freep, the freep for posting legitimate news or the civil authorities who make public records, well, public? Or will he go after individuals? I don't think he has a decent target here so I don't think he's going to sue anybody for anything. We are, after all, also simply exercising our legal rights. We can hide behind the same laws he does.
... I didn't send you a single thing. But I find it deeply amusing that others did. Byte me.
I hope the mailman mixes his regular mail in with the unsolicited stuff
If it wasn't for him and others like him, how would I know when viagara was on sale or whether Wanda Bigcock's webcam is working or not?
http://www.livepeekshows.net/ (I hope they don't mind a little extra traffic)
Ralsky has his millions. It's time for him to take an extended vacation / early retirement. Maybe get in some smelt fishing or something.
Since the people who sent that snail mail didn't act in unison, I think his legal saber rattling isn't going to go very far.He's going to have to take a lot of people to court, one at a time, with little hope of anything more than a cease and desist order to gain.
Will he sue
I don't know who came up with the idea of sending him snail mail in abundance, but it looks like a lot of individuals have endorsed the concept and it also sounds like the first tactic to actually get his attention. I know that "click here to unsubscribe" has NEVER worked for me. Now he can send each catalog mailer a request to be dropped off their mailing list only to find that his name has been sold to 15 more like we find when we try to unsubscribe from the spam lists.
Hey Ralsky
I'd hold off on Harrison until he actually files something with the court. I suspect that all he is going to do is lighten Ralsky's wallet for a while before telling him to buckle down and deal with it.
I feel his pain. Now, it's his turn to feel mine.
Even if an attorney does a potty job for a client, they can usually get paid. I don't think Harrison is going to take this anywhere useful to Ralsky.
compassion dun work in this world anymore
help someone being attacked? you'll prolly get hurt yourself and then get sued
help someone with a flat on a country road? chances are it's a setup and u'll be robbed
help someone in the street with some change? take care someone doesn't swipe your wallet while it's out
someone ask you the time? careful they don't bonk you on the head when you look down at your watch.
At the bottom, he points to FedEx tracking of Santa. Someone sent a letter to Santa via FedEx so could track where they sent it to.
A quick Google shows that they sent it to a location where it is known that Santa will arrive on the day after the fortnight before Christmas. So the letter got there early in case it had to wait for him to arrive -- but he apparently is ready and waiting.
But what about all the sollicited post in his area? I mean, several tons of junk mail a day doesn't just affect one person, it could put the postman's back out, or break the suspension on the van, or fill up the sorting office, and then all the other Post Office users will suffer too, and in the end people will board up their post boxes and only accept letters from people they know and it will be the end of life as we know it.
Surely what he should do is ask his post office not to deliver any shrinked-wrapped mail to anyone in his entire postcode range until the /. campaign is halted. And if his neighbours don't like it, they should exercise their right to move house.
I know, I know, it's a stupid idea, it's just that it sounds a lot like SPEWS to me...
Virtually serving coffee
Just buy whatever he wants to sell with a pre-cancelled check^H^Hque.
If he wins he opens the door for "Spam as harrasment" lawsutes.
If he loses this opens the door for an industry of spamming spammers.
I want to sell spam target lists of spammers to postal mass marketers who can spam the spammers offering postal service.
I don't actually exist.
URL error correction :
Now chew on this, there are gigantic asteroids routinely passing by at a distance less than between the earth and moon, and there is an approaching black hole [GRO J1655-40] which could swallow earth in a little as 6000 years
I wanted to respond to a thread on the preveous story but it's gone into archive mode.
Basicly it's a suggestion "Hay let's update the standard to secure email"
"We have the standard larg ISPs just won't use it"
Actually it's a combo of issues.
Secure email uses encryption technology that was illegal to export. Hah.. Secure athentication for incomming and outgoing email.
Most email software don't support it.
The restrictions are gone but the software is intenched.
Email devices and preinstalled software generally don't support it.
MAPS tried to force ISPs to fix this. Orbs as well.
But the defect is nessisary to support custummers around the world.
It would be nice if however sendmail permitted setting or disabling secure email on a user by user basis.
(Fluffy and Joe are insecure so if sender clames to be fluffy or joe then go ahead else send nothing if not secure.)
I don't actually exist.
I read the Freep article and it appears that he has centralized all his top level efforts into one location, his home, via a T-1 installation
Would it now be possible to sniff his network and identify the servers that he is talking to (Southfield et al) and then determine the locations that he is using to relay the email through via his own outbound traffic. At this point you should be able to identify the IP domains that are going to send you spam, before they get the message to send the spam.
Or at least be able to identify signature characteristics that you can then block ahead of their arrival and relay back to his source address. An example might be to identify every forged Envelope or Header Sender address as they exit the top tier and have that information available for lookup at the recipient end similar to RBL/Razor. At this point, you would be able to tag that identified user (SuzyQ132@yahoo.com or whatever) and route all incoming mail from that user back to his postmaster@domain.tld as an undeliverable message or access denied.
It's so much more satisfactory knowing that they're paying to receive a nice, solid paving brick than a flimsy sheet of paper. And if they repeat offend, I use a real brick. I've not had to use a Besser Block or paving slab yet, but I'm sure the day will come. (-:
You have to be rich, though. It takes a lot of glue to be sure the reply-paid envelope (or ReturnToSender with addressee suitably obliterated) stays attached to a paving brick. And about half a day for it to dry.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I think "Paula Betterly" is in bed with Alan.
This story was posted on the Wall Street Journal site on Nov 13. Unfortunately I can't link the story anymore, as they've tucked it away within their member archive.
Luckily I saved the html from the page in anticipation of this.
For Bulk E-Mailer, Pestering
Millions Offers Path to Profit
By MYLENE MANGALINDAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
DUNEDIN, Fla. -- The sun was setting on Laura Betterly's six-bedroom house as she reviewed a pair of outgoing e-mail messages one last time. Satisfied, she moved her cursor to the "send" icon and clicked.
"It's that simple," Ms. Betterly said triumphantly, swiping her palms. She had just dispatched e-mail messages to 500,000 strangers. Half saw the subject line: "Don't miss your chance to win 2002 Lexus RX300." The other half saw: "Win a trip to Nascar!"
Ms. Betterly's messages joined the roughly two billion other unsolicited commercial e-mails that hit in-boxes around the world every day. The company she runs from her home, Data Resource Consulting Inc., sends out as many as 60 million such messages a month. That puts the 41-year-old single mother in the most hated breed on the Internet. She sends spam.
"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."
Bulk e-mailers, as some spammers prefer to be called, are so unpopular that 26 states have banned their messages one way or another. Internet-service providers try to run them off their systems. Technology start-ups with products to filter out spam are attracting lots of venture capital. Consumer groups are pressuring the Federal Trade Commission and Congress to regulate bulk e-mail. Currently, there are no federal laws regarding spam, although the FTC has cracked down on spam that is fraudulent.
There is more of it than ever. Unsolicited messages made up 36% of all e-mail on the Internet in August, up from 8% a year ago, estimates Brightmail, an antispam-software maker whose statistics are often cited by legislators who want to outlaw spam. Antispammers are most outraged by unscrupulous bulk e-mailers who clog in-boxes with promotions for pornography or dubious get-rich-quick schemes and weight-loss plans.
Cottage Industry
While there are large companies that send unsolicited commercial e-mail, most of the hundreds of people who make up the industry are small-business people and entrepreneurs such as Ms. Betterly. A look at Ms. Betterly's business shows why bulk e-mailers, and spam, keep multiplying.
She and three friends started Data Resource Consulting with $15,000 six months ago. Ms. Betterly quickly discovered that she could make a profit if she got as few as 100 responses for every 10 million messages sent for a client, and she figures her income will be $200,000 this year. She has a flexible schedule that allows her to enjoy her children and the 5,000-square-foot home, with a pool, that she shares with them and a roommate.
She isn't breaking any laws. California, Washington and Virginia are among the states with laws that prohibit unsolicited commercial e-mail in some form. Florida, where Ms. Betterly lives, has no such law.
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; she lets people opt out or unsubscribe to future mailings. Still, she doesn't put a specific label ("ADV" for advertisement) at the beginning of her subject lines, which some state laws require.
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. 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.
Not Really Spam
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. WorldCom, like most providers, has an antispam policy. "Sending unsolicited mail messages, including, without limitation, commercial advertising and informational announcements, is explicitly prohibited," WorldCom's policy says.
Even though she tries not to e-mail people who have expressly indicated, on one Web site or another, that they don't want unsolicited messages, recipients do often complain. While some unscrupulous spammers ignore people who ask to be removed from a list, Ms. Betterly says she complies if anyone e-mails back an "unsubscribe" command, sends "opt out" instructions or otherwise asks not to receive future messages.
"What we do for a living is not a bad thing. We're not horrible," she says.
The company that hired Ms. Betterly to send the Lexus RX300 and Nascar trip e-mails was wfsDirect Inc. Based in Omaha, Neb., wfsDirect has been selling what it calls "online marketing services" since 1999. The company compiles consumer profiles for other companies that use them for e-mail pitches of their own. It gets information for the profiles by sponsoring e-mail sweepstakes for big prizes. To be eligible for the prize, an e-mail recipient goes to a wfsDirect Web site to fill out a survey that asks for the person's name, address, income and other personal details.
In other words, this round of spam was a fishing expedition designed to catch names for future rounds of spam.
Ms. Betterly was hired to send out the 500,000 messages, which wfsDirect composed. She negotiated a commission of 75 cents for every completed survey returned and 10 cents for every incomplete survey.
The Lexus and Nascar messages went to mail-server computers in Berkeley, Calif., that spent two hours shooting them around the U.S. Two days later, 275 people had opened the messages. Only 65 completed the surveys, generating just $40 for Ms. Betterly, who says her costs for sending out the messages totaled $250.
'Horrible' Rate
The response rate of 0.013% was "horrible," Ms. Betterly says. A great response rate for Ms. Betterly would be a disaster for a paper-junk mailer, which expects a typical response of about 2%. Depending on what she's pitching, Ms. Betterly says she can break even at a rate as low as 0.001%. It all depends on the commission she negotiates, and she's considering a few jobs that could pay off particularly well: $35 on each sale of a 3D-glasses package; $50 for a mortgage lead; $85 for a cellphone sale.
Ms. Betterly's database is her most precious asset. She bought and bartered its 100 million e-mail addresses from dozens of places, including companies such as Excite (excite.com), About.com (about.com) and Ms. Cleo's psychic Web site. She can fine-tune e-mail runs, hitting just small-business owners, say, or only golfers or music fans. She can cull out certain addresses, to narrow her geographic target. Like most spammers, she also makes money selling her list to other bulk e-mailers, and she keeps adding to her own list.
In August, she heard through a contact at a technology firm about the kind of high-quality list spammers dream of: A database of 16 million addresses, gathered legitimately and held by a high-tech company that she won't name. It had been used successfully before, she knew, to send out newsletters. But she couldn't afford the price: $200,000. Working her contacts, she found someone with an equally attractive list and brokered a trade between the two lists' owners. They paid her by letting her keep both lists.
Ms. Betterly recognized the importance of databases when she went to work as an organizer of music events and corporate parties after her divorce in 2000 and found herself sending bulk e-mail to promote events. As responses poured in, she realized that there might be real money in e-mail marketing if she had a bigger list. "It was like a light," she says. Now, she has one of the biggest lists in the business. "If you have 30 million to 60 million [addresses], you're going to get a certain percentage of [recipients] who think your stuff is cool," she says. "It's a numbers game."
Ms. Betterly, who has an accounting degree from the New York Institute of Technology, says Data Resource Consulting is a profitable concern -- she won't say how profitable -- that pays handsome salaries to its four full-time employees. Her roommate handles administrative tasks and her fiance is chief operations officer. A friend in Tampa along with her ex-husband keep the company's computers and servers running. Ms. Betterly spends most of her time lining up customers, the beauty-cream makers, software houses and e-mail-list compilers that pay her to send e-mails.
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. "New discovery in spam the easy way!" read the subject line on most of the 15.8 million messages he sent out. They promoted antispam software from Triumvirate Technologies Inc. of Pasadena, Calif. In theory, if enough people bought the software and it worked, Data Resource Consulting could go out of business, but Mr. Connell wasn't worried.
Mr. Connell paced the e-mails -- instructing his computer to send them out in batches of 150 -- to stay under the radar screens of the Internet-service providers he channeled the messages through. It took him more than a week to finish the job.
On the eighth day, his computer beeped. "Ooooh, I got a sale!" he crowed. There were two messages, one from Triumvirate Technologies, telling Mr. Connell that someone read the spam about the antispam software and bought the product for $57. Under the terms of the contract, Ms. Betterly's company will get 40% of that, or $22.80.
But the other message was a complaint from WorldCom. A WorldCom customer had reported an "alleged violation" of the company's policy that prohibits spamming. "We request you take whatever measures you deem appropriate which will ensure no further violation will occur," the e-mail from WorldCom said.
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 says that if problems with a spammer persist, the company will send increasingly stern notices and eventually cut off service.
In Data Resource Consulting's six months in business, Internet providers have halted the company's service three times, making it impossible for the company to send e-mail messages over that Internet channel for as long as 30 days. In each case, the provider said the company's e-mails had generated too many complaints from recipients.
Mr. Connell constantly tinkers with ways to avoid that. He says he has learned to limit the outflow to about one million messages a day and to use multiple Internet services to spread the volume around.
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. 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."
In the first week of the Triumvirate Technologies campaign, 81 orders came through from 3.5 million messages, a 0.0023% response rate. Still, that generated $1,555 in commissions, and Ms. Betterly was pleased. At that rate, she expected to clear about $25,000 in the end.
Recently Ms. Betterly opened a message from a woman claiming to be the daughter of former Philippines President Joseph Estrada, asking if Ms. Betterly would like to make some money by helping the woman hide $17.3 million in embezzled funds.
That kind of spam "is why what we do has a bad name," Ms. Betterly says. "People actually fall for this stuff."
Write to Mylene Mangalindan at mylene.mangalindan@wsj.com
Updated November 13, 2002 12:34 p.m. EST
In a nod to the "movement" already started here, I've drudged up the following info:
Laura Betterly
717 Weathersfield Dr
Dunedin, FL 34698-7437
(727)733-5335
laura@dataresourceconsulting.com
Enjoy.
Any others...? His pizza shop, local council, garbage collectors? Federal and state attorneys? Local police station? Local Klan offices?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
OBTW...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Can you see his house from yours? Good moneymaking enterprise there (THIS REALLY WORKS!!!!)...
Also, can you (anonymously) post his licence plates or any other useful details? Pictures would be great, but doing that anonymously might be hard. The names and other details of computery looking service vehicles would be good, too. Keep a log handy for the next story...
Oh, and tell the local JW and LDS depots that they need to visit him. Regularly.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If he has no cameras, anonymise and print out all of the spam you get, seal it with dilute Liquid Nails, and occasionally stick it to his house in the dead of night. Starting with the front door. Return to sender...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
by Robert Anson Heinlen
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Look, these clubs (NAMBLA, Natzi Party, Taliban, KKK, and the Rosie O'Donnel Fan club) are a step up for ralksy.
They have standards, they would not let such low life scum join.
Fight Spammers!
...and had 103,000 as at today.
Unsurprisingly, you can get there by typing "aol cds" into Google and clicking "I'm Feeling Lucky".
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...that really spanged my wazzometer! (-:
My sister and I visited one of said centers together, a very long time ago (OTToMH, maybe 17 years) while we were killing some time down town waiting for an appointment. I scanned the questions like I'd been told not to, and it was pretty obvious that they were after totally ruthless mercenaries. No problem, donned my ruthless-mercenary personality and answered away. Nearly finished the damn thing as well, which alarmed them no end. They marked it, came back and said in awed tones, `You did really well, actually, but we still think we can help you...' my sister, the bleeding heart (bless hers) was in tears and had scored really badly. They gave her a book - she was crying so hard they couldn't bear it - and ushered both of us out again. I read the book, and it looks like a poor copy of Transactional Analysis.
Buy a cheap paperback called What do you say after you say hello? by Eric Berne and you'll know more than at least the first $50,000 of their courses will ever teach you - except about being a ruthless mercenary, of course.
I have a mate who has all of their course materials, E-meter, forbidden one-at-a-time-in-locked-room tapes, the lot. Amazing stuff. If you admitted to doing some of the things they insist that you do, the authorities would lock you in a padded room before a squirrel buried you. Shriners look jober as a sudge by comparison.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The guy's name is Mandy.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It is a disproportionate response. Because you have to delete some emails each day that takes you all of a few minutes, the appropriate response is to totally shut down one particular spammer's ability to read his own relevant physical mail by ensuring he must sift through thousands of pieces each day? That is absurd.
You're right! Millions of people having the utility of their email diminished and having to go through the trouble of finding out which messages are real (and which ones are really trying to look "real") is in no way balanced by a person who is responsible for the misery having to go through some extra physical mail himself. He should, in fact, be receiving millions of letters, phone calls, and knocks on the door each day for the response to be much more proportionate to the damage he causes.
I'm sure he is receiving several orders of magnitude less than what he is dishing out. And you know what? If a federal law was created that required spammers to list their primary business address and phone number as part of their advertisements, you can bet that this whole spam problem would take care of itself very quickly.
In short, spammers play a very stupid game. What is it, they expect 9 out of every million emails sent to actually result in a sale? Now, what are the chances, after emailing just one million people, that you find a lunatic who really really hates this behavior? And what are the chances, after mail bombing the same millions of people over and over and over and over, without stop, that a sizable portion of them would grow resentful? Would want to take action? Its just a matter of time.
If the game is 9 one-time sells in a million annoyances which build over time, it is a scorched-earth approach that is credible in the long-term.
2. It is in fact illegal. Impersonating someone else in order to sign them up to receive mail is mail fraud.
Now what kind of behavior could enrage and motivate a large number of people to commit mail fraud, without so much as a second thought? Right. The scorched earth marketing approach, isn't it?
1. It is environmentally irresponsible in the extreme. All that paper is being wasted because you don't like clicking a mouse 20 more times a day? Seems more than a little selfish.
Two responses. All that paper is being wasted because millions of people don't like clicking a mouse 20 more times a day? Yup. Sounds like a bargin, actually.
The other response would be that the scorched earth policy has so enraged these people, it superceedes their environmental beliefs. Amazing how a continual pissing-off campaign against consumers will do that, huh?
Why should the reverse spammers have the right to use companies' resources and the resources of the public postal service to further their own agenda? Isn't this just what you accuse Ralsky of doing when he "steals bandwidth"?
I think that is the point. He does it. He gets away with it. The people say, "this really is the best way to express ourselves." It contrasts, interestingly, with one man using computers to send unwanted messages to millions. Instead, you have an approach where a number of people use computers to send a number of unwanted messages to one person.
5. It is totally ineffective. If you have a complaint about receiving spam, take it up with your elected officials. THEY are the ones to stop it. So long as money can be made in this entirely legal business, no matter how annoying it is, there will always be someone who spams. If not Ralsky, then someone else.
Spamming is totally ineffective too, isn't it? I mean, what is accomplished by pissing off millions of people in order to get at the gullible 9?
Really, I think this will be a self-correcting behavior in the long term. The resentment they create in these one-time sells will build and build. The number of people affected by this spam will build. As the pressure increases, the number of people who are pushed 'over the border' will increase. (Remember, we are talking about MILLIONS of people here. Just like you have 9 who'll buy, you'll have 100 who are resentful.) If those 100 people go away, they will be replaced by another 100. And 200. And 300. And far more.
Spam is just not credible in the long-term. Really, this entire episode has given me a lot of empathy for the anti-spam groups. I realize that, in the long term, they've got credibility. That, and the story is entertaining.
He's not on my Special Friends list yet?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
...his property has just drastically reduced in value.
It employs some six million people and generates more than 12 billion dollars per year.
The US Census webpage shows that there are 288,653,483 Americans. Take that number and divide by 6,000,000 and you get 48.10. I have a very hard time believing that 1 out of every 48 Americans is a telemarketer.
Suppose 10,000 people all filed lawsuits against Ralsky in small-claims court, each in his own local jurisdiction.
If he doesn't show up, you'll get a default judgement, which you can then sell to a bill collector.
Hmm... 10,000 * $500 judgment = $5 million bucks, = one bankrupt motherfucker.
Hell, if the clams could bring the IRS to its knees by filing thousands of individual lawsuits, imagine what a lot of annoyed spamees could do to one greasy little insurance fraud perp.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't even know what you're tring to say...
And if I had some mod points, you'd be -1 right now...
I directed my comments at rational people. You are not one. And to the mod who labelled this a troll post, remember that even nerds can sometimes disagree without being disagreeable. If you don't agree with what I had to say, then argue with me, but don't just label me a troll because you don't like what I said. People who don't appreciate the vast efforts that are being taken wasted and used in a fradulent and illegal way must be trolls? Get a grip.
~ M
No jury in the world would convict me!!
You are an idiot. You're entire argument comes down to "he does it, so we can too".
Actually, I'm not. My entire argument comes down to, "spamming is ultimately self-defeating and is not a long-term credible activity in its current form". Its all in the numbers. Just like the profit from spamming is.
You ignore the fact that you are doing something illegal while he is not...
I am doing something illegal? I thought you were interested in making a rational argument. I haven't done anything, so I'm a little confused here why you're striking out at me here? Help me understand.
I directed my comments at rational people. You are not one. And to the mod who labelled this a troll post, remember that even nerds can sometimes disagree without being disagreeable.
You mean disagree without being agreeable, yes?
If you don't agree with what I had to say, then argue with me, but don't just label me a troll because you don't like what I said.
But I thought you just got through calling me an idiot and saying I was not a rational person? You're not making much sense here, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Listen, the case I am making is this. They've found a new form of marketing. This form of marketing is unique in that the cost per person is extremely low. However, both due to its content (in trying to impersonate "real" email) and its overwhelming volume (because the cost per person is so low), it is also unique in that it is significantly more irratating to the average person.
Say, for example, a car goes down a neighborhood street and spews commercial offers from a bullhorn. "Free speech! Perfectly legal!", one would say. (For the sake of argument, let's say that it IS perfectly legal.) That, in itself, is annoying. However, if it is only one car, in one city, and it isn't covering the same stretch of road over and over, they're likely to be able to continue their behavior.
Actually, in my city, we've got this freak on a bicycle who does this (by pulling a large advertisement banner behind him) and ties up traffic. His behavior is annoying.
Now, what is this mobile car with an audio bullhorn actually turned out to be really cheap and really fast? All the sudden, they're swarming the entire city. People are constantly being bombarded by these marketing messages, all perfectly legal. Why, a common stretch of road would get about twenty of these a day. Some would get more, some would get less.
As this activity, resentment builds. People may find their own 'creative solutions' to dealing with the problem. And considering the size of the city being bombarded, let's say a million people, you're going to find some people who are creative with their solutions. Sure, some quite illegal.
My personal belief is that, after some period of time, either people are going to make it so terribly uncomfortable for these roving spammers, or the government is going to step in and do something. The reason is that this behavior is not credible in the long-term. The model simply doesn't work.
So, what you are seeing here, a counter-spam, is only a natural progression of a non-credible system working itself out. Quite logical and predictable. Illegal? Depends on what they are doing, I suppose. Some legal, some certainly not, I'd hazard to guess.
But utterly predictable and obvious behavior. I would imagine that it would intensify from here.
Several states have specific anti-spam laws, and the applicability of the federal junk-fax law remains to be definitively determined. You might lose, but the case can't be thrown out or penalized as frivolous.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
If you want exact proportionality, I like a proposal by a friend of mine. Spammers should be imprisoned in a cell with a computer. The computer would receive a flood of spam, and the spammer would "just hit delete". Every so often, the computer would recieve a legitimate message informing the spammer that he would be let out for a meal, excersize break, potty break, etc. If the spammer accidentally deleted one of those messages, he'd miss that meal (or whatever). Of course, some of the spam would be disguised to look like the legitimate messages (just like "on the outside").
The sentence would end when the spammer deleted a number of messages equal to the spam e-mails he sent or caused to be sent.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
In Malakye's world, ISPs are Glorious People's Collective Communes.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The loss of such important concepts like empathy, compassion,...
Aren't you forgetting the "compassionate conservatives" in the white house?
By the way GWB can eat a dick... wait a minute, that should have been under the control of a Dick (Cheney).
Yet the dim bulb is calling a lawyer to file and civil lawsuit instead of a criminal one.
It might also make out the tort of deceit, and collectively (but not individually) the tort of nuisance. He might at least be able to get past summary judgement.
A spammer is essentially a declared enemy of humanity with his only justification being that of profit. Is he the moral equal of a terrorist or pedophile or kiddie pornographer? I assume a spammer would sell kiddie porn or commit terrorist acts instead of spamming if he thought he could get away with it and there was more money than in kiddie porn or terror.
In fact, if your friend is a mega-spammer, he probably is spam-promoting kiddie porn regardless of what he's telling you. Presumably, the people who sell the hot young Lolita ads pay in cash and on time. Is he promoting terrorism? That probably depends on whether or not any terrorists have offered him money to do this or not. Has he showed you his customer lists? Than how do you know what he does and doesn't do? You're taking his word for it?
If you willingly associate with people like that, I'm glad I'm not your friend.
Tech Public Policy stuff
People have posted the snail an email addresses, what about ip address for his "server farm"?
I wonder if he has an "abuse@spammer.com" address? That would be funny, eh.
i go to the local book store, take all of the subscription cards i can find and write haiku on them, then drop them in the mail.
A blog about stuff.
ugh!! people like this need some good solid time with a nice hard math book, and a few good linux boxen. :) I luv my life...
For email opt-in, it's pretty easy. You send the subscribee a confirmation mail containing a random number string, and if they send it back (just hit 'reply' and quote the whole thing) they're confirmed.
There's a snag here. Some systems out there on the Internet allow users to set "out of office" notifications. Said systems are not always intelligent enough to notice that their "response" is not to a human.
The generally accepted best practice is to offer both a "click here to confirm" link, and "reply to this message, keeping just the line that starts with 'subscribe' if you don't have web access". There are too many systems out there that will tickle the return address without user intervention.
Some spammers are dumb as bricks, and think their audience is of the same mental composition.
I loved the message that asserted that "you" opted in from IP address 10.0.0.12. Who was this "you"? A guy called "MAILER-DAEMON@example.com. Yeah right, that convinced me that Mailer daemon subscribed to the penis enlarger info. My Mailer Daemon doesn't even _have_ a penis, dunno about theirs.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
My next door neighbour is a "telemarketer". She sits in a call center all day *receiving* phone calls from pensioners who have just received prescriptions and want her employer to fill them. She calls herself a telemarketer, the industry calls her a telemarketer, and the rest of the world calls her a salesperson or an operator or half a dozen things that are not "telemarketer".
Any time you pick up the phone to call a company's consumer sales line, you're trying to get through to what the industry refer to as a telemarketer. And, with this misuse of the English language, the TMA can get away with all manner of sophestry. Did you know that most people appreciate the services of telemarketers? Did you know most people want to talk to them? And did you know that six million people are employed by the telemarketing industry and that it generates 12 billion dollars in revenues every year?
Just as long as you realise they're not talking about AT&T/MCI, Crapital One, and the fucking Cop's Charidy Baseball Game Fund...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
... figure out how to attach a Bayesian filter to his letterbox.
Hey let's go further, let's give his phone number to telemarketers. He is a supposed millionaire, I am sure he would be delighted to receive wonderful business opportunities by phone.
I'm sure some slashdot reader knows someone who can insert him in some databases of people to "telemarket".
Oh wait, why not sell his information. After all, others do it every day otherwise I wouldn't receive those calls for a security for my house.
(Sorry if this post is redundant, I haven't read all the posts)
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Got sarcasm?
I just hope that they're still in business...
I clicked on the above link, and glanced at the story...I could have sworn it said, "There are human feces behind the direct marketing campaigns..."
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
If you live in the UK, you know those postage paid envelopes that you get with the junk? Just cut out the top corner with the license number and stuff on and stick it you your normal letters as a stamp. The company has already paid for it so this is perfectly legal.
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Everybody knows that the "dead planet" was severely bombarded by the borg with melting meteorites during the astro date 201939102.123 because its citizens refused to comply with the Borg plan for terrorism, after inspectors found "mustard gas" in the craters of the planet. The beautiful craters and valleys of the "dead planet" which were its major tourist attraction, were badly damaged with the bombing then.
next or previous
(Posted by UncleRomulus, official registration in progress. I'm no anonymous coward!)
I don't know if it's mail fraud or not. Remember that selling (or giving) someone's address to bulk snail-mailers is not illegal. DMA members do it all the time. It might be illegal, though, to represent oneself as Ralsky to get him onto a mailing list.
Not legal advice, I am not an attorney.
If Ralsky does sue anyone and the defense lawyers want a complete file of Yellowsun01.com spams (for which Ralsky is believed responsible), I still have a file on that. I keep good records on spammers who get my attention.
Of course, many people find the Witnesses annoying.
Interesting, though, are the free speech rights they have helped enforce not only here in the U.S. (recently here USA Today and here
Freedom Forum web site), but also around the world.
Of course, many people find the Witnesses annoying.
Interesting, though, are the free speech rights they have helped enforce not only here in the U.S. (recently here USA Today and here
Freedom Forum web site), but also around the world.
A few comments on this. 1. It might be illegal to misuse the Federal Mail system in USA, but if you arent from the USA .. WHO CARES :) he's got sweet FA chance of tracking you down or having you busted for it. Infact I wonder if he's interested in some ads we have down here in Australia :D.. not that I'd bother signing him up to him as you folks seem to have done a fine enough job to cause the baby to cry .. so to speak.
I get SHITLOADS of spam a week (30 odd emails).. its bastards like Alan Ralsky that make ME waste time in my day, simply to delete shit he's sent me.
Oh .. and Hacking of Mail servers is a worldwide crime .. so he can be in shit if traced back .. so lets hope the FBI knock on his door real soon.
I have traced back and reported a number of spammers to their ISPS, and most have either had accounts terminated with their ISP, or info passed on to the FBI.. After all 95% of spam comes from overseas.
Alan Ralsky I hope you get your equipment taken from you.. You are prolly that sick bastard distributing child porn links that I get all TOO often and report.
My response to all those warm-hearted, kind, loving, caring, yet misunderstood business that have "great purchasing opportunities": Piss off!
When I, or any other internet user in this world wants "great purchasing opportunities", we'll come looking for them. Just because somebody has something they are trying to palm off doesn't give them the f**king RIGHT to jew-peddle my personal e-mail addresses and fill it up with crap. If I want something from you, I'll opt-in, you will not opt me in for myself. Until you worthless f**ks get this through that thick blockade of stone you call a skull, it's open season on spammers and YOU shall be the first!
We had fun last week dissing Alan Ralsky, the spammer that everybody's now signing up for spam. Previous Slashdot articles on harassing spammers point out that Overture.com accepts bids from advertisers for top positions in their search results, and the top three positions get sold on Google, MSN, etc. - So if you search for "bulk email" and click the first couple of links, each one costs the advertiser (who's presumably a spammer) whatever their bid is - typically a few bucks. For some reason, "bulk email" is having a bidding war - today's prices were over $25. The system is designed to detect multiple clickthroughs by the same person (which is why I'm not providing a direct link), but once you've got all those ads for spamware on your screen, you might as well give them the name of a promising lead - like Ralsky...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
hmmm, if he succeeded in suing anyone, it would make it possible to sue him...... wouldn't it? :)
I call computer-illiteracy job security
oh, i don't dispute their right to be annoying, I'm just suggesting a target for their free speech. ;-)
Yes, without Direct Marketing the Post Office would be bankrupt. BTW, (to the parent of your post) the USPO is no longer a "Federal Service" it is a private entity (mostly). The mail still has federal protection, but the service is private.
Starting in the late 90's, this all started to change. Pretty soon, the number of "free" services skyrocketed. How many of you use Yahoo, or Hotmail? The former survives almost entirely on advertisements in the form of banners on their site while the latter supports itself partially from ads as well. The number of totally free services has exploded due to the high amount of advertisements there are. Many e-businesses survived solely off of ads. This practice is very faulty, as quickly, the number of buyers who responded to the ads declined, and many firms went belly-up due to the lack of ad-buyers. Spam was also "introduced" at this time, as more and more people got e-mail accounts to the extent where everyone who had an internet connection or access to one could get an account.
The so called free services we use today are funded entirely by ads(even Slashdot), and spam is just another prong on the pitchfork of internet advertisement. Would it be better to just get annoyed by spam and advertisements, or would it be better to shell out cash from your own pocket? For me, I would rather get annoyed by spam, because I remember back when I was a kid, when I had no money at all. The internet was a closed realm for those who had no credit card until the introduction of ads and spam. In a way, these are now fundemental aspects that keep the internet going. After all, how many of you even considered to use the subscribe option in Slashdot to buy ad-free pages?
As a matter of fact I've been thinking about something like that to counter the nigerian e-mail scams. It would probably work even more efficiently against them I think. The scammers try to manually keep track of many victims and if they would all of a sudden have a great deal of trouble if they get 2k semi-sensible replies (such as "I might be interested in your business proposal, please give me more information") and have a hard time determining which victims have really fallen for it (and thus they would hopefully fail). Some people of course have fun with fooling the scammers check some examples. The best one was a "scammer scam" where the scammer was persuaded to send 5 g of gold as a sample to the "victim" (so the scammers are not very clever). So creating such a reply-to-scam-and-spam-program might indeed be a very good project for slashdot. Anybody else interested?
Karma. Moderation. Is my
I don't know if these links have been posted before.
The BBC mentions slashdot and its role in making Mr. Ralsky's life a junk mail hell.
A quote in the Detroit Free Press "These people are out of their minds. They're harassing me." The original article on the site is here.
So in case you were wondering, yes, you're reaching him.
And I get sick of this anti corporate and anti rich people drivel. My health care is paid by the companies I work for, and I've been given generous tips and opportunities by rich folk in this life. I don't buy your gloom and doom terminator 2 movie crap. Everyone I know who is doing well is hardworking and a bit lucky, and they feel lucky because they were endorsed by someone, probably better off than themselves, and this was the inroad to their success. Kissing a little ass and then performing when you get your foot in the door does wonders to one's lifestyle.
Have you come out to your friends and family yet?
This effort could be combined to the creation of a database grouping and rating (by qty) the companies that uses spam services and their associated friendly SSP (Spam Service Provider), if it can be found. With these info in hand, the now "enlightened" consummer can now choose to boycot, take revenge or at least know who to hate most. ;)
____
"Il faut confronter des idées vagues avec des images claires."
-Godard
That is part of what spamcop does.
I was thinking of a more passive, but displayed way of doing it. A freely browsable directory of companies ordered by annoyance level. Then anyone, even the simplest form of 'pebkac', can know who to target, instead of targeting their isp by default.
he's got a lot more coming his way than a bunch of junk post, its only just the begining as far as i'm concerned.
the answer is simple enough to eradicate spam. make a filter for unresolvable email addresses to be automatically trashed before it hits your computer ~ i notice hotmail and similar don't have this... wonder why ("_>
In the last 5 years I've seen compassion slide downhill. Everyone's obsessed with getting on in the "real world". Abandon caring for others, screw anyone that gets in the way to enter the dog-eat-dog market way. Success is defined financially and not in any other way. Life's no longer about who we are, it's about what we have. First in a financial sense and then w.r.t. status :- an illusionary hierarchy created for the drones.
I've just created my account, my alias is fragment24.
IANAL, but as I recall in California lawyers are not allowed in small claims court. For $30 filing fee you can know what court room he will show up in particular day or win your case against him (up to $5000) by default. If it's only $10 in VA...
Each and everyone forward website URL's, complaints, information, etc to:
The O'Reilly Factor
Oreilly@foxnews.com
O'Reilly will make sure punishment happens if they get enough mail to attract thier attention to the story.
Here is an example of the new technology Ralsky have been talking about.
Might be a good starting point to think about instaling Linux on my lap-top. Wich was not long before considered as a lot of pain because of proprietary hardware inside (Gericom). But now I'll think again.
...a stunned silence fell upon the hall.
If someone can point me to a good and _FREE_ backup software that keeps
track of which files get stored on which tape, we can change to it.
-- Mike Neuffer, admin of i-Connect Corp.
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