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
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?"
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?
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!
Lawyers please take your places.
On your mark...get set...litigate!!
mmm. pie.
"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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
I'm such an anonymous coward. Here's the address.
Alan M Ralsky
6747 Minnow Pond Dr
West Bloowfield Township, MI 48322-2663
Let's send Buzz Aldrin over to his house.
...and they shall know me by my sig.
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
...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
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
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.
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?
"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.
If he actually succeeded, wouldn't he open himself up to one giant countersuit?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Does his lawyer have a soul?
Is this a trick question? Lawyers don't have souls =)
Casual Games/Downloads
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
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.
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.
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...
Pretty common journalistic practice to boldface a proper noun first time you use it in an article. Notice he also does it with Ralsky's name and with Apple Computer in the next article.
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
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 take it you've never received the full size JC Penny catalog in the mail? Now thats a big advert =)
Do you Gentoo!?
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();
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
All he has to do is opt-out. Can't he afford to pay someone to do it for him?
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.
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.
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??
Ahem.
Hormel's 'Spam and the Internet' page.
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
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!
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.
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.
Yes, but only when I go camping.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
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-
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!
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
.. 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?
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.
Ha! It's says 'Informative' right now! WTF indeed! :-)
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
Of course they do. OK, so they might have to keep it in a jar most of the time, but just you try fitting the entire law in your head while still leaving room for stuff like souls!
It's like being a geek while still fitting in all those pesky social skills -- it's just not practical.
... 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
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
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?
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
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?
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
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.
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.
...is the poor postal people who have to deliver it. Remember, their last mile is human :)
It doesn't have to be. So much spam is sent around that even if they get less than 1% replies, they still get thousands of new customers.
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?
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.
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
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 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.
> I wonder what'd happen if he recieved a few
> hundred of those.
He'd sell 'em on eBay, what do you think? Just
because he's ethically impaired doesn't mean he
can't spot a business opportunity.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.
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. :^)
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.
This person most likely has a pre-existing business relationship with everyone who has sent him catalogs and whatnot via the business related e-mails which he sends out. I personally have received several from him and in return I signed him up to receive several excellent catalogs which he may be interested in.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
As a highly-ranked post in an earlier thread stated (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=47045&cid=482 8450), that's the whole point. What he does is not illegal, but is just as wrong -- if not MORE wrong, since it costs the RECIPIENT to receive the mail, and because it cannot be filtered en masse once a day. It is both easier to send spam e-mail and more intrusive. This form of harassment may be illegal, but clearly demonstrates the principle for why what he does should also be made illegal.
I'm glad I didn't get involved, because I'm too stupid to have done this without getting caught. But I'm glad someone else did, because it was the right thing to do -- maybe not equivalent in degree to the Boston Tea Party, but equivalent in kind.
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."
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...
Perhaps instead of cheap books, which actually do have some monetary value, we could take a cue from these guys.
"He'd sell 'em on eBay, what do you think? "
I doubt he would.
a.) He is not going to turn a big profit around. The more money you have, the less you worry about piddly amounts like $10. He would not turn enough money around to be worth his time, and he definitely wouldn't say "I enjoy all these books I'm recieving!".
b.) So what if he did? He would not be glad for the opportunity. He'd be annoyed, VERY annoyed. (Hello?! That's the main objective!)
c.) A surge of sales for anti-spam books might be enough to cause some spam-bidnesses to rethink their strategy. I certainly wouldn't be interested in using a spam marketer to sell my product if it riles up people so much they're willing to buy+read books to hide from me.
I'm amazed at the negativity towards my idea. It's a good thing when customers take steps to fight back against SPAM. Rich people aren't dumb. If they realize that scores of people are organizing, it'll make them wonder if it's worth pissing people off.
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.
Scientologists and spammers - a marriage made by Moonies!
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/
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/
...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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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.
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
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.
...on every mailing list I come across.
:)
Harassment? Just desserts for the GOD of harassment
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
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
Um no. I would make $0 if that got Slashdotted. I have absolutely 0 affiliation with Amazon or anybody that deals with a book like that. Your accusation is unfounded.
Here is how I came across that book:
1.) Go to www.amazon.com
2.) Click on 'Books'
3.) Do a Search in the Books section for 'Spam'
4.) Look at #5, the title is "Removing the SPAM"
5.) Click on that link, and you get exactly the same link that I provided. In other words, Amazon has absolutely 0 idea that the book referrals came from me.
I find it interesting that you'd accuse me of that, though. Dontcha think that my choice of books was a little too topical? I mean, did you really think I was lurking around Slashdot for an opportunity to sell books?
Heh.
Hmm..
I owe ya an apology. I think I misread your tone a bit. I thought you were harshly accusing me out of the blue of trying to capitalize on a Slashdot story, but I reread your post and realize you were being nicer than I had originally imagined.
I'm sorry, my response was harsher than it should have been. I should have read what you said a little more closely.
The ref=sr is part of the link that the search came up with. I imagine the sr stands for 'search results'. No idea. I promise you, though, if you follow the same steps I did you'll get the same result.
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 don't buy the argument that people are not responsible for what they do for a living.
Lawyers who file suits to help the clients deprive others of rights puts them lower than the spamers in my view.
It is one thing to provide a defense for a scumbag client, quite another to help them attack.
Just my opinion on the profession as a whole rather than this instance.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
> 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.
True. But feel free to research the meaning of the word ``barratry". I'd say that if any lawyer who takes up this spammer's case, & does not quickly move to trial on any suit he raises, should be hit hard & repeatedly with this charge.
Find a friendly lawyer who will help you research this. I figure that after our spammer loses the first couple of cases, if his lawyer is ethical, he'll tell him to give up this fight. And if he doesn't, *he* will find himself caught in the same quicksand. And our spammer will be forced to find another lawyer to continue his campaign.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Until this spammer finds himself without anyone willing to accept his cases. And, strange to mention, I bet a lot of other spammers will find that they are unable to locate willing consel to sue for this alleged harrassment.
But then, IANAL. But it might be fun to watch autodarwination in process.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
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
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.
Look, no doubt the lawyer has a penis, right? Well, he's going to need extensive details of enlargement techniques, viagra, xxx porn.
Besides, none of the material he will get sent qualifies as spam, because he can opt out at any time. Many of these opportunities really are once in a lifetime...I'd hate to think he would miss out.
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
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.
Ahem! Did everyone see this?
You're a Genius, my good fellow!
Torque off his neighbors... hmmmmm...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
You can easily disable this service:
net stop messenger
Or just firewall port 135 (or whatever the messenger runs on, maybe 139) so that any address outside your network can't access it.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
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!
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.
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.
Lawyers, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
This sig no verb.
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?
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.
No, and I"ll tell you why. This will give him insight into how to stop it. Workaround, anybody?
This sig no verb.
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.)
Find a friendly lawyer who will help you research this.
I don't need to. I am one.
Legal harassment is something one can sue or countersue over, and it is done often. Abuse of legal process can lead to sanctions against the attorney. It's a shady practice, no doubt about it.
And if the spam harassment is actionable -- it's hard because you have so many people making a small contribution, so you'd probably go after any organizers -- then it's probably a good case under a theory of tortious interferance with business relations, etc. Paralyzing someone's email could clearly cause business losses. Yeah, that's what spammers are doing to others, but not in a focused way designed to coerce.
In judging the propriety of something like harassment, pick a cause you're sympathetic with and picture their enemies doing the same not just to them, but anyone they sought out. My concern is not so much that that sort of thing is illegal, as it is crass and uncivil. Send an email or letter of complaint, but don't orchestrate an anonymous game of doorbell ditch. As I said, the moral high ground is worthwhile.
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.
>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 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
If I'm going to give credit, it would be to my Dad, who was saying that before Richard Marcinko was born...but since it's an old saying, since gone out of use, I don't feel a need to give credit.
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
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.
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.
"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
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.
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
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.
> it certainly can't be very effective. if it is, how come?
The ROI can be significant as a percentage, only because the per-unit
cost of sending is so very low. Consequently, if somebody is making
millions spamming, you can bet they've sent trillions of messages to
make those millions. Makes you want to... oh, wait, somebody did.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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
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.
Impersonating someone else in order to sign them up to receive mail is mail fraud.
It's not necessary to impersonate someone to add them to a mailing list.
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?
Yes, I think of them every time I get another fucking catalog I never asked for because they bought my address from the USPS. I will shed NO tears for the paper-mail spammers.
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.
No, it's eminently reasonable and just. It lets the perp know exactly what tort he's committing against everyone else. Frankly, Ralsky is lucky he's not getting the shit kicked out of him on a regular basis.
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
It is NOT an "entirely legal" business. It is theft of services on a massive scale. Stealing a million bucks 1/100th of a penny at a time is still stealing a million bucks.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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."
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.
This is both untrue and irrelevant:
Untrue: Wasting several hours of one person's time is trivial compared to the cumulative waste of several man-years by the millions of Ralsky's spam victims.
Irrelevant: The use of retaliatory force is not weighed by exact equality to the original offense (though it sometimes happens to come out that way), but rather by its sufficiency to punish the offense and to deter future offenses.
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.
And everyone in free nations under the rule of law has the right to form, and express, an opinion about a person's actions (including those of low-life like Ralsky and his lawyer).
/. 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.
-1 Redundant: We already know that Ralsky embodies essence of criminal behaviour.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
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
"Anyway, no bad feelings I hope, because there are none here."
:) Happy Holidays!
No worries.
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.
As a member of the legal system, I'm quite sure your blind hatred is misplaced. I have known many fine attorneys, and I encourage you to get to know some of them, and to learn more about this "screwed up" legal system of ours. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that 95% of lawyers don't go anywhere near a courtroom or sue anyone.
Even the worst slimeball deserves the benefit of legal counsel. It is one of the strengths of our society that we don't condone the vigilante justice that may give you warm fuzzy feelings but has been used to justify everything down to lynchings. Don't bother to share your opinion of those.
Aside from that, I won't bite on your troll. I know better.
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
Isn't that ref=sr... a referrer link on Amazon?
1 379570/associate_id_here
Nope. An associate link to that book would look like this:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/020
I believe the ref=sr tells the Amazon system which page you came to the current page from.
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
Thanks for the info.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,