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.
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!
>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?
And he doesn't like it
How can I help him like it even less?
"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.
-The Rosie O'Donnel Fan club
Don't you think that last one is going too far? We'd be worse than he is!!
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.
If you don't want these exciting offers, why don't you just opt out?
I'm sure that Aaron Adams will be happy to stop sending you stuff. Now, whether Aaron Afton will stop sending you stuff, you'll have to ask him to stop, too. But by DMA rules, the opt-out is only good for one person, and for one year. That's okay. By the time you've opted out of Zeke Zjibidan's list of exciting offers, you should have at least a couple of days before Aaron Adams can ask you if you're sure you still wanna be opted out of his Aaron's list.
(Okay, so I admit that opting Ralsky into junk mail isn't quite as much fun as, say, opting him into a service that would have gone all-Vlad-the-Impaler on him in front of Chinanet's headquarters as a warning to the Falun Gong and Level3, but it sounds like it was a delightful bit of revenge. Kudos to whoever came up with the idea and to all who participated. I wish I'd been a part of it.)
An attempted slashdotting of a physical address?
Got to admit though, it's rather funny...
I'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
Is something you find in the dictionary between shit and syphillis.
So's "spammer".
Shit, syphillis, and spammers.
If I had to choose any two, I'd take the shit and the syph.
At least we can get rid of the first two.
Anybody know a place where we can order 12 tons of fresh pig shite?
- Have a picture
"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."
Hopefully when he thinks about that, he'll realize the fundamental problem with a business like that: There's no verification process.
Let me give you an example: I did an experiment with Slashdot a few weeks ago. I created a brand new, never before used email address and made it visible in my info w/o the anti-spam armor. 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.
It's too easy to sign up anonymously. Because of that, it's too hard to sue somebody over a stunt like that. Want my opinion? Blast a few other people in the same way until they realize that the only way to deal with this problem is to make the signup process more secure. When that happens, (hopefully) we'll see less unsolicited advertisements.
Maybe I'm too optimistic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Really! I know I personally don't know how I ever lived without knowing that 66% of all women are unsatisfied with their lover penis size, or that the president of Nigeria is desperate to smuggle 10 million dollars out of his country, or that hot underage girls have sex with beasts! What wonderful people these spammers are!
"plus it's so easy to just delete an email"
As opposed to throwing a letter in a big empty can?
"it's a lot more work to sort through physical mail and throw it out."
Are you serious? This is absurd. You got get physical mail ONCE per day. When you expect alot of important emails like me you end up checking every new message that comes in. In the mornings there are usually about 20 emails for me to ciphter through, with another 30 or so coming in during the day. 90% of them are junk.
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.
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();
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.
Vigilante justice (AKA blood-feud) is the best foundation for real justice. Far better than law made by politicians and enforced without the individual's consent.
I'll explain...
The supposition you seem to be working from is that unopposed vigilante justice would result in innocent folks being harmed. But, you forget that blood-feud cuts both ways - commit an injustice and you could be next on somebody's hit list.
It takes people very little time to realise that starting a war this way is to nobody's benefit. Thus spring up voluntary courts based on customary, not fiat, law. The aim of which, is to repair the harm done by one person to another. This voluntary legal system has market-forces that prevent the kinds of abuse to which legislative law is prone. Too harsh a fine, and the crook refuses to follow the judgement, preferring to shoot it out or at least negotiate for a different judge. Too soft, and the victim does likewise. And in no case can a law suit be brought where there has been no harm - the defendant would refuse to come to court, the judge would refuse to try it. Thus are avoided bread-and-circuses laws that steal from some and give favors to others, thus are avoided bans on victimless "crimes".
That was pretty much how it worked in viking Iceland - a system which lasted for 300 years (more than the USA thus far). They have sagas about their heroic lawyers, rather than hating them as pond scum as this culture does.
Not only does the law belong "in your own hands", but that's the only way to get honest justice.
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?
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.
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
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
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
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., $740,000 (price of the house)
MI 48009-5667
All of this information was taken from publically available Internet sites.
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
I agree that this is different:
Junk mail costs him absolutely no money to have delivered to his door.
His @#$#$ing spam mail costs me MY MONEY every time it eats up my bandwidth! Even if it costs me 1/1,000,000th of a cent for every one, it is still *MY MONEY* that he is *stealing* from me, that bastard.
As I see it, he's not only an unwelcomed guest, but he's a god @#$# @#$@#$ing thief as well, and should get *sued* for stealing MY MONEY!
Yeah, I have some *serious* issues with spammers.
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.
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
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.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
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.
C'mon now, we did a bad thing. . . I didn't see a mention of magazines anywhere in the article. Didn't anyone think to set him up with some house warming gifts from Publisher's Clearing House?
I (like many others) can't. From outside the US, calling a 1-800 either costs quite a lot of money or is just impossible (Europe speaking here).
And by far the most spam arriving here clearly advertises for US products.
(According to what kind of ads you get over here, you have to think that all US Americans are a bunch of low-earning people with little dicks that would pay a fortune to watch pre-recorded porn on the 'net and haven't found out how to MAKE MONEY FAST yet. Blame the spammers.)
42. Easy. What is 32 + 8 + 2?
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
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