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!
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.
>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
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
And he doesn't like it
How can I help him like it even less?
I have two words for him.
Opt Out.
Oh wait, he can't. and neither can I!
Blink
just make sure you take him up on all the valuable offers he sends you.
More importantly, who has his lawyer's address ?
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.)
An attempted slashdotting of a physical address?
Got to admit though, it's rather funny...
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.
Let's send Buzz Aldrin over to his house.
...and they shall know me by my sig.
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
....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.
"But I bet he won't stop, the money is too good."
1 379570/qid=1039199736/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/103-247312 5-9558250?v=glance&s=books
He's human. No amount of money can cope with excessive annoyance.
It occurs to me that there may be another way to turn the heat up on him: What if a large group of people was to buy cheap used books at Amazon and ship them to him? I got $20 I'd put into that heh.
Here's one we could send him:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/020
I wonder what'd happen if he recieved a few hundred of those.
Does his lawyer have a soul?
Is this a trick question? Lawyers don't have souls =)
Casual Games/Downloads
Taking out the trash has to be the single most troublesome bit of work in my house.
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.
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.
from /. in the electronic world to /. in the physical world, sorry postal carriers.
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();
Golden Rule
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Leaded Rule
Pretend every mutha has a gun and you really don't want to piss them off.
All he has to do is opt-out. Can't he afford to pay someone to do it for him?
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.
HELL YEAH!
You know, they say Revenge is a dish best served cold, and revenge is sweet. So does this mean that Revenge is ice cream? I'd like chocolate revenge, please!
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
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.
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.
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.
Yes, but only when I go camping.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
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.
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
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
Which would lead one to think that the more sophisticated minds who would employ these devices would have learned long ago that they don't go over well on slashdot and abandoned them. Seriously. Don't use sarcasm on slashdot. 97% of sarcastic posts get a reply that indicates a clear failure to pick up on it. One of the things that typifies hyper-rational nerds is an relative inability to understand why anyone would type the opposite of what they mean to say. Most people here have a touch of Asperger's syndrome. Don't make it harder for them.
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
Take a picture of his over flowing mail box, and post it on the internet.
Leaving a single can of Hormel Spam on his doorstep as a calling card.
Synergy is your friend
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.
Thank you, I did my part and signed him up for half a dozen catalogs he might be interested in. I believe him sending me business related e-mails constitutes a prior business relationship with me, which I have taken advantage of to send him these excellent catalogs in which he might find some amazing gifts for his family, or products that he may enjoy using.
Bondage Whores monthly is surely a high quality publication and I hope he gets many hours of use out of the items he is sure to wish to purchase from them!
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. :^)
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...
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.
.... 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
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
Because that's retarded.
Does Depends Diapers still offer free samples?
Anything that says Dept of Revenue is just people begging for money, I dont even open that mail.
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
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.
And in related news, telemarkers don't waste people's time, as the callers are paid an hourly wage to make all those calls.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Just buy whatever he wants to sell with a pre-cancelled check^H^Hque.