Slashdot Mirror
Spammer Gets Spam Mailed
ssblood noted a story about a spammer getting what he deserves as well as a related story
from the Register.
Essentially the virtual spammer is capable of sending a billion emails a day, and is getting sacks of physical junk mail from irritable folks. Apparently part of this plot was hatched on familiar turf too.
..and first post?
karma...
/. cheapened use of the word.
Ain't it a bitch?
And I don't mean
"Almost 300 anti-Ralsky posts were made on the Slashdot.org Web site..."
Sure that sounds impressive, but how many of those were dupes?
Yeah, keep postning this story every and then as a reminder so the junk mail pressure on this guy does not ease off...
- El riesgo siempre vive - Private J. Vasquez
John Poindexter is also getting a taste of his own medicine. Check out this article. They've got his address and everything.
Let us alll forgive CmdrTaco on this cheerfull Sunday morning, since it's obvious thatCMDR TACO NEEDS TO DRINK HIS #$%#$% COFFEE before posting stories!
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
If anyone is sued by Ralksky, get discovery! Get his spams and make them public so that 1000s of people can file lawsuits against him for spamming.
Fight Spammers!
never reply to your spam mail. sometimes the address will be forged, and you'll be harassing some poor shmuck. sometimes you're just replying to a bot that notes you as a valid email address. plus, if you do wind up on a spammer's bad side, you're probably more likely to be the victim of a forged address.
by replying to spam, you're betting that your spammer is ethical. do you really want to make that bet?
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
2, points:
1) This has to do with sending real (snail) mail to a spammer, not email. It is a lot easier to filter out email then it is to go through 300+ letters a day to figure out if any of them are important.
2) By replying to spam emails, you are probably doing yourself nothing but harm. I agree with your basic point, if everyone replied to every spam and swamped the spammer's network, it would work. Since that isn't the case, the only thing you are doing by replying is letting the spammer know that he has a valid email address.
Sign him up with every mailing list for porn magazines, and several Christoid magazines. Also pay a few bucks for an order of Jack Chick tracts (www.chick.com).
Better still, spoof his IP, and create accounts on known Al Qaeda supporter websites, so the next knock he gets on the door will be from the FBI. Imagine his glee when all his funds are snatched up as money tagged to support terrorism.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Why re-post old news when there's new news available? Interesting new news, as a matter-of-fact. See:
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend13_20021213.h tm
Suff That Matters, eh? Right.
Tracking a package to Santa
South Haven photojournalist David McCreery uses Federal Express a lot and is fascinated with the tracking feature on the FedEx Web site (www.federalexpress.com) that lets you watch as your package makes its way to its destination.
"I send FedEx packages every few weeks," he says. "Once, I sent a package to Bowling Green and watched it leave Michigan via Flint for Memphis, come back to Flint and then drive to Ohio."
So, this being the holiday season, he decided to FedEx a letter to Santa, wondering: "How far would a package to the North Pole go? How would it get there? Where would it end up? Who would sign for it?"
You can follow the progress of his letter on his personal Web site (www.davidm.net), where he posted his letter and the FedEx tracking number.
Read the results, linked from here, over here.
Very interesting and sure to be controversial study that suggests most /. editors don't read the papers they cite. This means that if one paper misreads a work the misreading propagates. It's a very interesting study and has big implications for geeks, in my opinion. /. has a good overview of the work. Given that most attention to work has been in sloppy work on the experimental side (poor methadology or outright fraud) this suggests a whole other problem. A lot of the ultimate problem is that many in /. are concerned more about publishing than in solving the issues they investigate. Ideally the point both in science and in academics in general is to understand the ideas. Yet those of you who've looked up footnotes realize that actually engaging the ideas of other editors typically falls by the wayside. Often footnotes are there simply because references are needed. Engaging others works is secondary. I've always thought that the hard geeks were more immune to that effect than the humanities. I guess not."
Considering that /. listed the lawyer's address as well, what is happening to the lawyer and the law firm?
www.eFax.com are spammers
I wouldnt mind, but not only has it been covered TWICE by /. already, it was BECAUSE it was on /. that the article referenced was even written!!!!
ARRGGHHH!!!!
If you haven't already heard...
Taken from http://www.spamhaus.org
found here
Alan M. Ralsky
Telephone: 248-926-0688
Current email address: amr777@comcast.net
Address : 6747 MINNOW POND DR Property ID: 18-31-177-002
City/State/Zip: W BLOOMFIELD MI 48322-2663
Owner Name : RALSKY ALAN M Latitude : 42.5460
Taxpayer Addr.: 6747 MINNOW POND DR Longitude : 83.4284
City/State/zip: W BLOOMFIELD MI 48322-2663 Census Tract: 1566.00
Block Group : 9
City/Vill/Twn : WEST BLOOMFIELD
Subdivision : BLOOMFIELD PINES SUB NO 2
School Dist : WALLED LAKE CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS
Prop Category : RESIDENTIAL
Land Use : SI SUBURBAN IMPROVED, TOWNSHIP ONLY
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
Please forward questions, complaints, and replies to:
ALAN M RALSKY
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
I think the best thing to do is to bounce it back to the spammer. I know that both KDE's Kmail and MacOS X's mail.app have this feature.
Essentially, it's better than replying. Not only does it go back to where it came, but it also looks like your email address is invalid, potentially removing it from spammer's lists. (Kind of like the Telezapper works for telespammers...)
Anybody got Taco's snail mail address? ;-)
Fried ice cream is a reality. - George Clinton
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
Let's make 'dup think' work for good, not evil...
Spammer of the week.
Ya' know - a puff piece profile. Who they are, what they do in their spare time, what their favorite color is, name address and phone number, shirt size...
I'm serious. Why not?
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Yeah, but Taco was out with his new bride when the first one was posted. Do you really expect him to be reading his site ON HIS WEDDING NIGHT? I can see it now... carrying her across the threshhold of the honeymoon suite, gruffly depositing her on the bed, whipping out his Zaurus (no, not THAT "Zaurus..." the one with the, er, stylus. I mean, batteries... no, that's certainly no good. Digital screen, yes. The zaurus with the digital screen...) and searching feverishly around the hotel room for a nearby WAP so he can read his website.
CowboyNeal, maybe, but Taco?
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Alan Ralsky, who may just be the world's biggest sender of internet spam, has been getting a taste of his own medicine. But now the tide may be turning, he reports.
"They've signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is." he says. "But, I will get even. I know who they are and I know what to do." he adds with a mischievous grin.
Reports have been coming in from all around the internet about the duplicates. First there was just one or two. Then there was ten. Yesterday there were a few hundred. And today, over twenty five thousand duplicate stories have been posted on the famous geek forum called Slashdot, where the campaign against Ralsky was hatched.
"It's not me." says Ralsky, interviewed outside his home, which is surrounded by hundreds of postal bags because no more room remains inside. He adds "I don't do story submissions. Hell, I didn't even know the place existed until a few weeks ago."
Another truck arrives, and 3 postmen deliver 25 more bags of mail. Over half the yard is covered in bags now.
"I know who these guys are now. My lawyers were looking into this, but I've never heard back from them, so I just had to take matters into my own hands." says Ralsky as small snicker shows up in his grin. "It's all about getting even, and I know what these people hate the most; it's duplicate stories." he goes on saying "In Soviet Russia we didn't have people doing things like this; mail bags would deliver you away."
Ask when all this might come to an end, Ralsky replied "You just wait until I try out all the mod points I managed to get."
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Damn, and I thought this was going to be a story about another dipsh!t getting his due.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I hate to break the news to you, but of all the spams I've received over the past 2 days, not a single one was SENT from the account that is listed on the reply-to address. In fact, if you read the contents of the spam, you'll usually see them point replies to a completely different address, and "remove" requests to another (usually bogus) address. In not a single case does the subnet of the sender, nor the mail server used to relay the message, match any email address contained within the spam.
Now, that's not to say that there are idiots out there who are ignorant enough to send spam with their own return address via their ISP's mail server, nor do I mean to say that there aren't enough spam-friendly ISPs out there loaning bandwidth to spammers running their own server farms (like the scumbag weasel $!@#$@# who's currently getting ever-increasing amounts of old-fashioned junkmail). I'm just saying that it's unlikely your actions will cause the effect you intend, as spammers who operate in the manner you need are in the minority.
Moof!
That's not a taste of his own medicine.
A taste of his medicine would mean everyone keeping track of where he is going and what he is doing. e.g. everyday someone sticks gps modules on his cars and puts the info on a website. Someone pointing a webcam at his front door (not his bedroom window).
People calling up his home phone number and pestering him or his wife is something totally different. That's like telemarketing.
BTW the article sucks too. No imagination. Sure you don't like that person or what he's doing, but how does asking members of the public to call his home phone help?
The article also talks about California seceding. Where does CA get water from? They are going to have to build a lot more waterworks from north to south. Not sure if north CA has enough water to cover the south's needs as well as its own. I'm sure some states would be fine with CA leaving, since they'll have a better chance of getting their fair share of water. Mexico might even start seeing the Colorado _river_ again.
The US-ca could start charging California a lot more for electricity from the Hoover Dam too.
Then the US-ca could indulge in a bit of schadenfreude: watching everyone in California battle each other over the power and water issue: the usual "no nuclear power", "no fossil fuel plants", "not in my backyard" etc.
Silly article.
Funny... I thought Groundhog day wasn't until February...
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
Yes, there was an update:
Free Press article:
MIKE WENDLAND: Behind the scenes, spam's even uglier
December 13, 2002
Bloomfield Township spam artist Alan Ralsky is in the midst of yet another controversy, this time involving an anti-spam activist who says someone left him threatening telephone messages after he took photos of Ralsky's brand-new $740,000 house.
The activist, Rich Clark of Warren, said he's reported the threats -- which were left on his answering machine -- to police. He said it all started last weekend when he drove to Ralsky's neighborhood to snap some photos for an anti-spam Web site.
Clark said as he was taking his pictures from the street, someone left Ralsky's house, got into a black car and tried to block him from driving away. Clark said he maneuvered around the vehicle, but was followed.
The next day, the phone calls started.
"You don't know who the hell you were . . . with yesterday," began the first call. "You got the wrong guy. You don't even have the guy you think you do."
The caller then gave details about Clark's home, his driver's license number, even the bank his car was financed through.
A second call said: "I'm going to make your life so miserable you should watch every corner you go into, bro, every second."
The next day, there was still another message. "Just waiting for you," it said. "You haven't heard the beginning of what's going to happen to you yet. Keep your eyes open."
Clark provided me copies of the recordings. Are they from Ralsky? It was hard for me to tell. I asked Ralsky, and he said he knows nothing about it.
"Come on," said Ralsky, "That's ludicrous. I'm not that stupid."
He said he had no idea who was in the black car that Clark said left his driveway. "I don't have a black car," he said. "And I'm 57. I'm not about to go chasing anyone. But what was that guy doing taking pictures of my house for, anyway?"
Clark says he took the pictures to post on an anti-spam Web site (he hasn't decided which one). He now plans to add the audio files from the phone messages.
Warren police said Clark's report is on file, but there is no investigation in progress.
Ralsky, who is one of the biggest senders of unsolicited bulk e-mail in the world, says anti-spammers have been harassing him for the past year. Lately, said Ralsky, anti-spammers started flooding him by snail mail with coupons, brochures and ads. "I just toss them right into the wastebasket," he said. "It doesn't bother me."
You might also want to check the following Usenet thread in news.admin.net-abuse.email:
Google News
which includes links to mp3s of the threats left on his answering machine.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
I guess you're all interested in this, ok, more or less :) Yes, the Jaguar actually followed the spotter and he got threaten on his voice mailbox. Mirrors here.
He's made a few modifications to reflect the business that he runs from his house. (Hope he's got a business licence for that.) Enjoy!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I was looking up some information about Sir Walter Raleigh and I came across a new word!
'Ralsky'
SYLLABICATION:
ralsky
PRONUNCIATION:
ral - skee
ADJECTIVE: Inflected forms: ralskeer , ralskyest 1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse. 2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes. 3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake. 4. Dazed, stunned, or stupefied. 5. Pointless; worthless: a stupid job. 6. Boasting to a newspaper writer ill- advisedly
ex.He ralskyed about his windfall and then the IRS confiscated his belongings Huh! Go figger...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
We don't like direct marketers, but we should have the least amount of venom for the The Direct Marketers Association. They maintain legitimate opt-out lists for email, telephone, and junk mail. Not every "marketer" uese 'em, but those that do use the lists only use them to opt customers out.
If it reduces just some of the harassment, isn't it worth it?
Less junk mail
Fewer telemarketers
Less spam
And BTW: don't be lazy and use the $5 Internet option. Print out the page and pop it in the post for less than 10% of the cost.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Whoah...Taco's Zarus has a digital screen? That's like, waaaay too much information.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
I was always impressed by Steve Job's comment to the guy who was writing the Mac bootstrap code. The guy was complaining that it wasn't worth optimising the bootstrap loader any more because it was fast enough already. I don't Steve's exact words - but it was something like: We will sell 100 million of these machines - if each of those people boots their machine once a day for five years - then that's 15 billion reboots. If you can save just one second from the reboot time of the Mac then that's 480 YEARS saved.
So shaving one second of the boot time is like saving the lives of 50 people. What
could be a more noble activity than saving human lives like this.
So - applying that math to this spammer: If he sends out ten million spams a day and it takes 1 second to delete each one - and if this guy does that every day for five years - then that's morally equivelent to murdering 50 people.
Just because the damage he does to each individual is small, the cumulative damage is huge.
There is another story (probably apochryphal) about the guy writing the banking system software who changed the code to take the roundoff error (less than a half cent) from every interest calculation and direct it into his personal account. The story goes that he made tens of thousands of dollars a week. This story probably isn't true - but should such a person be considered any less a criminal because the money he stole was spread so thinly? Obviously not - he stole those thousands of dollars and that's that.
This spammer deprived the people of the world of 50 human lives - he should be considered a mass murderer and treated accordingly.
www.sjbaker.org
Hehe - I just ran a e-mail validation on that mail-adress:
[Contacting mx00.comcast.net [24.153.64.1]...]
[Connected]
220-mtain01 -- Server ESMTP ("Comcast Messaging System")
220 Unsolicted bulk mail prohibited; spammers will be prosecuted
HELO Network-Tools.com
250 mtain01 OK, [66.46.181.116].
VRFY amr777
252 2.5.0 Possible remote address not checked.
RSET
250 2.5.0 Ok.
EXPN amr777
550 5.7.2 EXPN command has been disabled.
RSET
250 2.5.0 Ok.
MAIL FROM:
250 2.5.0 Address Ok.
RCPT TO:
250 2.1.5 amr777@comcast.net OK.
QUIT
221 2.3.0 Bye received. Goodbye.
[Connection closed]
"If you keep an open mind people will throw a lot of garbage in it."
In particular note the bit about the fish and seaweed being mailed: "postal supervisor warned our mailing specialist that he could be fined for mail service abuse, even as a recipient, should this happen again."
I think just signing the guy up for mailing lists is missing out on the truly beautiful possibilities offered by the USPS.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
On a more serious note, however, I have just right now been struck by a great (original) idea, and have decided to write this, a spontaneous and completely original, post:
Meta-discussion here. Note the signatures of Gorge Bush and Oliver White displayed prominently at top right.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Send a bounce to all of the addresses listed, if it succeeds, add the email address to a list, poison a few random fake blogs with it, and auto-subscribe it to every web site with a form on it that you've found from spidering links in spam. Fight spam with spam, excellent idea! Just sending the bounce will make the bouncing address a spam target, so after a while you wouldn't even need user intervention, since most of the weird form field questions would have been answered and your addresses would really be out there. Your spam-harvesting spammer introduction agency would have hit critical mass. (-:
As a side issue, you could listen for worms and email viruses, sending the attacking machines a gratis copy of the Debian installer, with a suitably educated, er, bootloader. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
`here' is a unique, randomly-generated email link like this one: `Bill-Me-USD1000-and-Read-This.-1243363468-3707143 8@$COMPANY' and `payable' is a link to a page describing terms:
Never once had a second piece of spam to those addresses, and that domain's got the least spam of any in my possession. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
> the satisfaction of signing Mr. Ralsky up for a few more mass
> mailers
Signing him up for mass mailers lacks imagination and is easy for
him to counter. (Bulk mail is usually obvious and easy to sort
out.) Some better ideas...
* Send him a personal letter in a hand-addressed envelope.
(Don't be nasty; that would just be grounds for a lawsuit.
You could explain why you don't like spam, though, and ask
to be taken off all his lists. But be courteous about it.)
* Send "pen pal" mail to a few hundred thousand third-graders
with his name and return address. (This one might be illegal;
consult a lawyer first. IANAL, just brainstorming here.)
* Send him a can of Hormel product, nicely wrapped, with a
gift card.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.