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.
But I bet he won't stop, the money is too good.
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?"
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.
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?
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.
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
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
Lawyer? Soul?
Are you nuts?
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
...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.
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?
...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
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
If he actually succeeded, wouldn't he open himself up to one giant countersuit?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
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.
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.
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.
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...
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).
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??
The _only_ use for this information should be to write a single personal letter expressing your opinion of the guy he's representing and why you think that he shouldn't represent such slime.
Or make a single personal telephone call similarly.
Stop carpet-bombing, and start thinking.
THL.
Keeping
HINDU: This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others which if done to thee would cause thee pain.
ZOROASTRIAN: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself.
TAOIST: Regard your neighbour's gain as your own gain, and your neighbour's loss as your own loss.
BUDDHIST: Hurt not others in ways that you would find hurtful.
CONFUCIAN: Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.
JAIN: In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self.
JEWISH: Whatever thou hatest thyself, that do not to another.
CHRISTIAN: All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
ISLAMIC: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.
SIKH: As thou deemest thyself, so deem others.
I hate to defend that guy.. but it works both ways.
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.
You're only hurting Anthony, Prasad, Tom (all Chinese restaurant owners are named "Tom" for some reason) and Pitak, since they're the ones who will end up eating (no pun intended) the cost of the food.
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!
... 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?
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
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.
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
Yes, I'm sarcasm impaired and my life really was enriched by the knowledge that most women are unsatisfied in bed and the apparent popularity of pedophile bestiality.
You see it doesn't really matter if the parent poster believes what he said or not. My point was that spammers don't believe what he said either. Spammers KNOW that they are annoying people. They KNOW that nobody is interested in the type of tastless garbage that they hock. But guess what?, they don't care because they have $750,000 houses.
Luckily based on the moderation I can assume that at least MOST of the people understood the point I was trying to make and acknowledge that even sarcasm can be target of rebuttal.
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.
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.
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.
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/
Does she know it's wrong? I doubt it. I think you may be projecting your own sense of right and wrong onto these people and they may not agree with your set of morals and ideals.
I don't think you can speak for Spammers (you aren't one, I presume), nor can you speak for Hilary Rosen.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
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
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.
You may be right. There are certainly lots of people out there who do things that I can't believe they would do because they are sick or wrong (or sick AND wrong). Thing about spammers though is that they themselves have to get flooded with it, and I can say for sure that they don't like it. Nobody likes being on the receiving end of junk email. Therefore it seems logical to assume that they know they are doing something that annoys people. As far as Hilary goes, I think you would have to be a fairly sick person to think it is your right to invade someone else's privacy.
Really, man. If he doesn't want the stuff, he should *JUST OPT OUT*. That's right, unsubscribe. In this case, pick up the phone or write a letter to each magazine publisher and marketing company and request they remove him from their lists. Really, it's very simple.
Now, how many offers do you think he's receiving a day? If it's anything like what my parents get after living in the same place for the last 12 years, with Mom shopping in every mail order catalog she can find, and trust me, I've had to go pick up their mail during their vacations--mail delivery at their house can be a stack a foot high. How it fits in the mailbox is an entirely different question.
I hope he's inundated. I hope he gets a sense of what we all feel when we see his shit. Oh, wait, he says he wants to sue antispammers for "harrassing" him. I see he's got that sense now.
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
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
Maybe, maybe not.
I'm not sure which is worse: 1) The possibility that Hilary Rosen knows that her message is BS, yet has no problems doing it as a day job. 2) The possibility that Hilary actually believes in the crap she spews.
Both are possible and I'm not sure one is necessarily more likely than the other...
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/
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
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.
There are a few nuances (virtual vs. physical, 3rd party signing someone up vs. the catalog company, etc.), but it is an interesting thought.
Maybe then he would think twice about defending the spammer.
Your logic is failed here.
Not at all. The spammer is the one actually engaged in something arguably illegitimate: sending spam. Whether harassment is appropriate or even legal is debatable. But the lawyer is simply being a lawyer. Lawyers are not required to enforce your values, least of all if you attempt to harass them into it. That's coercion, and anonymous at that.
And I wrote elsewhere, if you have don't like it, sent a letter or email communicating that. But activities designed to harass rather than inform, especially against 3rd parties, are not kosher -- and will end up damaging the anti-spam cause.
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.
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.
It wouldn't surprise me at all. I think you make a big mistake assuming that everyone's mind works the same way, that everyone can listen to reason, that everyone has a conscience, etc.