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.
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!
He's going to sue whom? He has to find them first. And then prove that they did it. And prove that he is suffereing damages.
In Soviet Russia, you annoy the spammers.
sign him up to various organizations:
-NAMBLA
-The Klan
-The Rosie O'Donnel Fan club
And he doesn't like it
How can I help him like it even less?
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.
"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
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
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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
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.
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!
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.
An alternative might be to poison his system. Keep in mind that Ralksy sells spamming services. He sells the service of using e-mail to advertise products that other companies sell. He doesn't actually sell penis enlargers and fake diplomas himself.
So we could poison this system by actually responding to every spam and providing erroneous payment details, mailing details, etc to the companies who want to hawk their products by spam. Obviously they would waste plenty of money processing and shipping these orders, only to find out that they are getting no profit for it. This way, Ralksy's customers go under. Essentially, Ralksy's air supply would be cut off.
Yes, but only when I go camping.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
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.
So we could poison this system by actually responding to every spam and providing erroneous payment details, mailing details, etc to the companies who want to hawk their products by spam. Obviously they would waste plenty of money processing and shipping these orders, only to find out that they are getting no profit for it.
When do I get mod points? That is a cool idea. The problem with spam is that it's so easy and cheap. Waste their time and money and maybe they'll find a more legitimate form of advertising. If way less than 1% respond with orders, if we can get just a % or two to respond with fake orders maybe they'd give in.
Wait, there's probably something illegal about this. How can we do this without breaking a law? I know some people won't care, but I do.
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
... 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.
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
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
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.
...is the poor postal people who have to deliver it. Remember, their last mile is human :)
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
Maybe they should rent a helicopter and do an aerial bombardment of his nice new house with a few dozen cases of real SPAM.
Harassing the lawyer for doing his job is another step altogether. If he himself is harassing people, that's one thing; if he's just protecting the spammer's rights, he's doing his job. For that matter bear in mind that the law frowns on self-help generally.
Remember that excessive harassment will make the antispammers look every bit as contemptible as the spammer. The antispam effort needs the moral high ground. I'm talking about the perceptions of 3rd parties.
Please don't bother to tell me how terrible spammers are; I agree. But I don't think it wise to trample everything in our path to take what we believe to be ours. That's what the spammers do, after all, and "but we're right!" is nice but does not authorize disreagard for the rules of the game.
What's next? Spam anyone who even makes a gesture at fair play that might somehow benefit the spammer? That's one of the reasons I'll never post my email address.
With the notable exception of "419" spams which expect a reply by a moron^H^H^H^H^Hcustomer, most of the From addresses in spam emails are forged. Most of the time, they are chosen in a list of innocent people. Sometimes, the forged From address points to an anti-spam activist. This is known as a "Joe job". Recent Joe job victims include Spamcop and Spamgourmet addresses.
A 419 spam will include a genuine From address. On another hand, a whole category of messages have a forged From address:
I call these "unreturnable spams".
So "counterspam" will actually increase the amount of spam received mostly by innocent victims. Not quite a solution.
So please limit this "counterspam" to 419 senders. Don't help spammers. Avoid posting From addresses of unreturnable spams on Usenet.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
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
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
I don't think that holds at all - currently, I can write with as much freedom through snailmail as I can email - the difference is the abuse. While certain states have dipshit mail laws (porno, booze, etc) they aren't, I believe, Federal. Thus I have no problem with the snailmail Federal laws being applied. And mail is no longer a federal service - it has been privatized - yet the laws still stand.
The way email SHOULD be protected is the same way your fax machine is protected against unsolicted faxes.
Well, I'd be all for that too, if it happens. Unfortunately, there are ways in which email is more like regular mail - I can forge a return address a lot more easily than a phone number, for instance. For what it's worth, email is somewhere between a fax and mail - and probably needs to be dealt with is such.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
But if he's using the lawyer as an agent in negotiations with his customers, or in preparing contracts with his customers, or in defending him against tort or other civil actions brought by people who claim the spammer's actions has cost them money or damaged their stuff, it's not a civil rights issue, it's just business.
Making insulting phone calls to the *lawyer* for the spam would be inappropriate, but providing the lawyer with a large number of billable-with-15-minute-minimum activities to perform on behalf of his client strikes me as appropriate. After all, his client might very well be interested in friendly calls about ways to make m0n34 f4$t on the Internet, or getting reports analyzing the legality of different internet marketing plans, or market research about the sales of V1agra on the net, and somebody who wants to contract with his client about them would certainly want to ask what forms of contracts they know how to support, or what jurisdiction his client uses to resolve disputes in.
Wasting the lawyer's time would be a mean thing to do, but after all, you only need a 0.04% take rate to justify these things, and his client might really be interested in them. And delivering subpoenas for discovery is never a waste of time :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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
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/
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...
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.
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.)
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.
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.