Spammers Using Students as Relays

Zendar writes "idg has an article about how students at the 151-year-old Tufts University were paid as little as $20/month to relay spam from computers in their dorms. Interestingly enough, the students approached the spammers about this scheme and not vice-versa."

Comments

Hmm

[shotgunefx]

Daddy's money not enough?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I know students who are spammers making $30,000 a year without much effort.

Re:Hmm

[Patrick13]

I know students who are spammers making $30,000 a year without much effort.

yeah, but not all of us can live here in order to get our expenses paid.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you, this was a few years ago during the dot-com boom, where outrageous income was pretty common. You can (or could) make a lot of money very quickly doing spam. Why else would people do it? The one guy I know making $30k a year doing spam, well, he could've been lying, the guy was a total prick. I'd like to punch him in the gut anyways for being such a bastard.

But $30k/year is not unbelievable. It's pocket change compared to what people with real jobs make.

Re:Hmm

[Patrick13]

The one guy I know making $30k a year doing spam

Yeah, but don't forget that according to the article this guy sold his Uni access for $20/month - that doesn't add up very many pizzas or beers.

My guess is that guy should have sold his connection for more like $200 - $500 per month, or based on the # of mails or something. $20/month is laughable, considering that he now most likely has been forbidden to connect to the University's network with his personal machine and may have some sort of procedural punishment on his University records.

students..

[kangoonisch]

they will be the guys who will control the world later and they spam us already great futur ^^

Little bastards..

[sudog]

Youth these days! You give them an inch, they spam all over you.

Re:Little bastards..

[Gortbusters.org]

Back in our day, we used to walk 15 miles in the snow to deliver our spam... ah, screw these lame jokes.

Re:Little bastards..

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in my day, we finished the jokes we started. None of this giving up in a huff, no sir. We took that joke out into the snow behind our shoddily constructed log cabins and we just kept beating on it till it was good and dead.

Kids these days. You don't know how easy you have it.

Re:Little bastards..

[Anonymous Coward]

You kids have got it so fuckin' easy!

I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a goddamned Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet, we wanted to know something, we had to go to the goddamned library and look it up ourselves!

And there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter-with a pen! And then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the fuckin' mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

And there were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go to the goddamned record store and shoplift it yourself! Or we had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the begining and fuck it all up! You want to hear about hardship?

You couldn't just download porn! You had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! It was either that or jackoff to the lingere section of the JC Penney catalog!Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy shit like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either!

When the the phone rang, you had no idea who it was. It could be your boss,your mom, a collections agent, your drug dealer, you didn't know!!! You just had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! And we didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass!

Your guy was a little square! You had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were screwed!

And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20 channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. D'ya hear what the fuck I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK,you spoiled little bastards!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.You're spoiled, I swear to God! You guys wouldn't last five minutes back in 1984!

Dangerous

[snitty]

It seems that being medical test subjects would be less likely to get them killed.

Re:Dangerous

[DickBreath]

It seems that being medical test subjects would be less likely to get them killed.

Maybe we should re-introduce paddling.

Re:Dangerous

[chef_raekwon]

will you be the first to 'paddle' some 20 year olds' ass? ;)

(or did you mean 'paddle' the spammers?? -- cause Im all for this one!)

Re:Dangerous

[homer_ca]

Maybe we should re-introduce paddling.

I'd say put them in a stock and pillory in the academic quad.

Re:Dangerous

[Mattsson]

Yeah! Throw them out of school, kick them in the face and then leave them to bleed! *Mouahahaha*
(No, I don't hate spammers. Promise! =)

Seriously, people who relay spam *on purpose* should be punished hard.
And people who sell lists of e-mail addresses.
And people who send spam.
*kill, grrrr!*

Re:Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

If she's cute, sure!

Re:Dangerous

[DickBreath]

It had not occured to me that some of them might be female. (Eeeewwwwww!)

Unrest is born. . .

[PerlPunk]

Anything can be turned into a buck.

Re:Unrest is born. . .

[buswolley]

charity groups should do this. if they can't make enough money making us feel guilty maybe they can by making us hate them.

Re:Unrest is born. . .

[Snork Asaurus]

Anything can be turned into a buck.

Bucks urgently required. Please post formula.

Re:Unrest is born. . .

[bradkittenbrink]

hey kids, we should all know this one by now, here's the formula for you:

1. anything
2. ...
3. Profit!

Re:Unrest is born. . .

[dacarr]

For these guys? 1) Open yourself up as a spam relay 2) ... 3) Lose network access! Face it, people, $20/month will get you a shitload of ramen, but is it worth $20/mo to lose your gigabit network access?

Crappy Student Jobs

[ifreakshow]

What happened to the good old days when college students sold blood, sperm or surfed the web to earn beer money!

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[Pxtl]

Or got jobs as telemarketers (hell, most universities even run extensive official telemarketing systems to harass alumni for donations). If you're willing to telemarket, I don't see why you wouldn't be willing to spam. Sure its less money, but its also less work.

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[skwirl42]

And I thought my job working for Vector Marketing, selling Cutco knives was unethical (network marketing... ugh)

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, I almost got into that but I said no to having to front money for a stock of merchandise.

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, I could be selling my blood?

(Actually, I think this is part of the reason the Red Cross now encourages people to "donate" blood - my father told me they used to actually pay the donors.)

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[Hott of the World]

yeah, I cant donate or sell my blood!

I think they banned anyone living in the UK from 1980 onward from donating blood

Link Here

and some HTML http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/423344.stm

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[CharterTerminal]

Haha! I did that. Twice. First was a year-long stint in Portland, OR for a company that did political stumping thinly disguised as a survey. (My favorite question, still etched in my mind ten years later: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote in favor of triple trailer trucks if you knew they were three times more likely to roll over and separate?" Three times more likely than WHAT, I always wondered.)

Second was a two-week stint setting appointments for a vacuum cleaner salesman to come over to your house and throw stuff on your carpet, then vacuum it up while gesticulating wildly and loudly declaiming the many virtues of THIS vacuum over the OTHER vacuum you already own.

I sat down in a folding metal chair, my supervisor dropped a copy of the phone book on the card table in front of me, handed me a script, and told me to get to it. I was pretty much the worst appointment-setter EVER. After two weeks I picked up my check and walked out, never to be seen again.

I'm not proud of having been one of those people who pestered people at dinner. But then again, "being one of those people who pestered you at dinner" ranks pretty low on my list of things to be ashamed of.

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

... handle first, handle first!

Well, that was SlashCo, but you get the idea.

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[CvD]

Yup, you notice this in other countries as well. I donate blood here in the Netherlands, and you're not elligible to donate blood if you've spent a total of 6 months or more in the UK, cause of all the mad cow disease, etc.

Re:Crappy Student Jobs

[srmalloy]

Actually, I think this is part of the reason the Red Cross now encourages people to "donate" blood - my father told me they used to actually pay the donors.

The Red Cross doesn't do it that I know of, but the municipal blood banks still 'pay' the donors; it's not a direct payout, but donors are covered for their blood needs if they have surgery or need blood otherwise. It's more like insurance than getting paid -- but with the cost of a single unit of whole blood, and the way medical insurance seems to be narrowing coverage more and more, it's a bet I'm more than willing to make.

I can think of better uses for them

[petronivs]

I thought college students made all the coin they could ever need with those webcams.

Re:I can think of better uses for them

[scott1853]

I heard they got some VC money a couple years back, but for some reason their website never took off.

Re:I can think of better uses for them

[Anonymous Coward]

i know i don't want to see u naked

Re:I can think of better uses for them

[Anonymous Coward]

but for some reason their website [dorkymalecamwhores.com] never took off

Aw man, slashdotted already.

Re:I can think of better uses for them

[Peterus7]

I think both things qualify as prostitution... Corporate whores!

But then, on the other side of the coin, a lot of the time with this type of thing people think very little of it, because they're just clicking buttons and getting checks. Just like pirating movies that havn't gotten out of theaters, etc. It's just so easy... And when put in a situation like college where every penny counts, people will do anything... And well, I know I only need one kidney...

Re:I can think of better uses for them

[Anonymous Coward]

ONLY if your a chic with a piercing and willing to get naked!

Otherwise there is the endless supply of credit card offers.

Hey, they have bandwidth...

[Anonymous Coward]

And time to waste... and fewer inhibitions (amazing how college does that!)... so it's pretty easy to understand and believe. Oh well, most schools would yank your access for the rest of your time there. Not really worth $20/mo to me.

20 Bucks?

[MisterMook]

Man, I can imagine doing something like this in a dorm but for only 20 bucks? You'd think that it would at least be worth TWO large pizzas a month...

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are you buying pizza? Even not in the dorms, I can get 2 large pizzas for $20. When I was in the dorm, I could get a large 1 topping for $7.

Re:20 Bucks?

[phorm]

It's cheap, yes, but $20 is about 20 boxes of Mac & Cheese. For some students, this could probably feed them for 3/4 of the month.

Realistically though, profit depends on volume. Some few people probably masterminded the idea, and are taking part-profits somehow. If they skimmed $5 from 20 students with relays - that's $100/month. Still not a lot, but cheap for no work.

Re:20 Bucks?

[PhilipMatarese]

Yeah, 80 boxes of Mac&Cheese or about 4 Gumby Dammits.

Re:20 Bucks?

[scott1853]

You must have failed College Math 101. Dollar amounts are to be clearly be represented in Ramen noodle packets. Therefore, $20 = 160 packets = 160/3 meals per day = 1.8 months of good eatin'.

Re:20 Bucks?

[ackthpt]

Man, I can imagine doing something like this in a dorm but for only 20 bucks? You'd think that it would at least be worth TWO large pizzas a month..

Twenty bucks, that's chickenfeed. Granted, if the supply of students willing to sell out is high, that would probably be enough. What bothers me about this is the spam I get that claims I could make $1,500+ a week. If that's what the students replied to, why are they only getting $20?

I wouldn't be surprised to find the $20 comes from a PO box in the Detroit area...

Re:20 Bucks?

[Mr. Sketch]

Lets not forget the special bonus when they go on sale 10 for $1 then $20=200packets/3 = 2.2 months (BONUS!). Then after you can feed yourself for two months on one months salary then maybe next month you can splurge on gourmet meals such as Mac&Cheese.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eating nothing but ramen gets old after about day #3. 50 cent mac and cheese needs milk. I usually had to alternate with a meal of spagetti O's or 69 cent microwave pizza in order not to get sick. I kept a couple of cans of Raviolli around for when I felt like splearging.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're paying thousands of dollars to go to school, you can't afford $20 for food? I don't accept such bullshit supportive arguments. What's next, raping and stealing from other students to pay for gas money? Christ, go beg on the street, you'll get more than $20.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you people really that hard up for cash? I guess I'm spoiled since I have a full time job and also go to school, but god. I spend $10 on lunch without thinking about it. Must suck to be a poor college student. Get a job hippies.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a job. In fact, I had two. They both paid $7/hr...doing C++ and Mac stuff. Just enough to afford beer and Phish shows!

The Hippie.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Hrothgar The Great]

Get a job hippies

I had the shittiest paying jobs while I was in school - but I had fun doing them at least. I worked cashier and pinchaser/mechanic's assistant at a couple of bowling alleys and did tech support for 3 university departments (not all at the same time, naturally).

My jobs at the U would usually only get me 15-20 hours, maximum, and they only paid $6-$7/hr so money got a little tight. Still, $20 was crap and I sure as hell wouldn't relay spam for such a piddly amount of cash.

By the way, working full time and going to school full time might give you more spending $ and so forth, but do you have any time left over for fun?

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anitra]

I can't believe you would work full-time and go to school full-time; by the time you got to your junior or senior year, you wouldn't have any.. free... time........ Oh wait, it's slashdot.

In all seriousness, I am desperately looking for a job, because this is the year the money for school runs out (and I'm not done yet). I've been getting about $80/week as a teaching assistant, but that's really only enough to pay for books and some food.

I calculated it out - i need to be making at least $10/hr, full-time, to pay rent, utilities, food, books, etc. next year. Tuition will (mostly) be covered by loans and such, but SHEESH... where does a non-graduate find a job making that kind of money??

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Gainesville we got our large cheese pizzas for $4, even less when our football team was doing well. That town had the cheapest pizza ever.

2 large pizzas for >= $20, that's some gourmet shit you're eating there.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

then you die of malnutrition.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you people really that hard up for cash? I guess I'm spoiled since I have a full time job and also go to school, but god. I spend $10 on lunch without thinking about it. Must suck to be a poor college student. Get a job hippies.

You fat bastard, I make $60k/year, yet I still don't spend even close to $10 on lunch. Some of us know how to budget and eat healthy, rather than slurge on greasy fat overpriced junk food.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

You were spoiled, considering they dont exactly grow on trees... Its hard trying to find any job with flexable hours that doesn't involve fast food. Dont tell me my standards are too high, either, cause I worked for 5 years in fast food. Its traumatizing.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Mmmrky]

No, you get scurvy, which believe it or not has happened. Regions where there hadn't been a reported case of scurvy in decades get thrown off because some stupid college kid tries the Ramen diet.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't afford $20 for food BECAUSE I'm paying thousands of dollars to go to school, you dolt!

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a loan.
A bank will give you some money, then when you get out of school you have to pay it back.
It's a great system, it allows you to get money now and then, after you get a real job, pay it back.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

50 cent mac and cheese needs milk

You can substitute water and it tastes (basically) the same. Fortunately I was never poor enough to be eating only Mac & Cheese as a meal, but I drink such a small amount of milk that I never had any around when I made my M&C.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont tell me my standards are too high, either, cause I worked for 5 years in fast food.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines that your quality is too low.

Re:20 Bucks?

[Mr. Sketch]

Actually I ate a bit too much Ramen one semester (read: about 3 or 4 times a week), and I just couldn't take it anymore. That was about 4 years ago and I've been ramen-free ever since, not a single packet of ramen since then. But I do remember the days of scrounging for cash and eating everything out of a box, but that was a while ago.

Re:20 Bucks?

[martyn s]

Actually, 10 bucks on lunch is likely to be more healthy than a 5 dollar lunch.

$20/mo?

[sfled]

Damn, they're cheap little wh0r3s aren't they?

Re:$20/mo?

[Malc]

That doesn't even pay for one lunchtime's booze. What kind of students are they?

Re:$20/mo?

[MojoMonkey]

You can make $20/mo go a long way if you drink Scope and Thunderbird for lunch.

Re:$20/mo?

[sfled]

T-bird! That or Blackjack (21 proof orange wine), man the dorm was lit up!

Tracked using MAC address

[monkey_tennis]

Interesting that they tracked the individuals down using MAC addresses for computers in their dorms...

I've never heard of any other Uni having the foresight to record this and it seems like a valid piece of info to have to include in any registration document (as per cable modem setup)

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite easy to fake if you know what you're doing, though. My college could trace each connection back to the router, and knew where each port was.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[sirwired]

No, they probably don't keep track of the MAC's students are using, but it is relatively trivial to ask a managed hub or switch which MAC's are one which port, ergo, which room the offender occupies.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the IT dept of a small California State University school, and we require eveyone who gets on the network to register their MAC addy for their modem and computer.

Helps track down those 1337 kiddies who try to DOS the school's website...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Pxtl]

My university (U of Guelph) attempts to record the MAC adress, but their registration program that you must use when you first log on is buggy as hell and often easier to circumvent then to actually use. So I'm not sure how many MAC adresses they actually record.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Frater 219]

Interesting that they tracked the individuals down using MAC addresses for computers in their dorms...

I've never heard of any other Uni having the foresight to record this and it seems like a valid piece of info to have to include in any registration document (as per cable modem setup)

You don't even need to copy it down at sign-up time ... just take it out of the DHCP server logs, or the ARP tables on the building router, then look for the MAC address on a switch port in the hall switch. Provided you know your wiring -- and know what switch port goes to what dorm room -- you just narrowed your problem down to the spammer and his roommate.

(Why yes, I did used to be a sysadmin at a college with a bandwidth hogs problem.)

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[JackAsh]

Actually, I was a student at Tufts at the time they implemented the student network. At the time, ACS (Acedemic Computing Services) did require students to register MAC addresses, and I think I recall them assigning static IPs via DHCP or BOOTP (This was back in 95, DHCP was not very popular yet). You could let the network take care of everything for you, or you could enter it manually if you knew what you were doing...

I really don't remember if they used managed hubs/switches, but I recall it was a fairly trivial exercise to figure out where people were in a dorm by counting the IPs assigned (they had some pattern).

-Jack Ash
(Miguel if anyone else from Tufts is reading)

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[garcia]

at BGSU they started doing registration for the DHCP server via MAC in 1999 or 2000. When you started up after connecting your computer to the ethernet jack you would get a registration page. You would enter your student ID and your email login/passwd. Your MAC was recorded and a hostname that included your email id was given along w/a static IP. If you logged on from another other port on campus it would show as a "roam" address but it still knew you were authenticated so it still knew your MAC.

If you wanted to register another computer you would either have to use someone else's student ID + login/passwd or call up the people for help.

A side note, they were less than familiar about doing it w/alternative OSs that did not automatically bring up the registration page. You either had to use Windows to do it or have them do it manually. I used Windows ;)

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[mjpaci]

Harvard requires you to register your MAC address.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[mike3411]

Here MAC addresses must be entered as part of registering a computer for access to the network - each registration consists of a user's login/pass, their location on the network, the computer's name, and the MAC address. Makes things fairly straightforward when they need to track something down, or assign blame or whatnot.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[garcia]

I was compromised at one point in time my freshman year and had a smurf attack originate from my machine. They were able to track it down in under 2 hours to my specific port. They shut me down immediately. I had to contact the head of IT directly for reinstatement.

Although it was pretty obvious who was using the most bandwith even w/a tool like iptraf.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Student_Tech]

I'm a student at WSU and they serve out addresses using DHCP. You have to have registered your MAC addredd before you get an internet using IP, otherwise it just gives you a 192.168.?.? and redirects you to an internal site to "register" your computer. I haven't had a chance to manually type in an IP address on a "unregistered" card to see how it reacts but when I was in a dorm on a different subnet it wasn't getting the IP address information at all.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

I go to the University Of Massachusetts in Amherst. Our Office of Information Technologies (OIT) does a very good job of running our network. To get on, you must register with you username/password that they issue you and the MAC address is recorded and saved. This also has to be done every semester. In addition, each student is allowed two MAC address (which does translate to two static IPs).

All in all a good system, except that they are starting to limit students to 1GB/day of off campus upload traffic. A friend of mine had to shut down his FTP :(

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't speak for other Universities but at all of the Univ. of Californias students must register their NIC and tie it with their student number, university name and password.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[_xeno_]

Or, if you were a sys-admin at the overly-anal college I go to, you would require the MAC address at signup time, which would then be tied to an individual port in an individual room. Using an unregistered MAC would cause the port to immediately deactivate. So once you have the MAC, you wouldn't just have the room - you'd have the individual student and could immediately deactivate just their port.

This is quite annoying to students who find out the "MAC tied to port" bit by accidently misplugging their computers into the wrong side-by-side ports after rearranging their desks. Fortunately, it was a triple, and my desk stayed where it was. Heheh.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Sabalon]

Unless you're just stringing together some LinkSys hubs, most management software has this ability.

I can go to a console, type an IP or MAC and be show exactly what switch and port on campus that is coming from. Pull up the map for that switch and see where that port physically terminates.

Had someone with a rogue DHCP server years ago causing trouble. Right after the class let out, we were able to go into the room and descend upon him. Pretty much freaked him out. Turns out he downloaded something that he didn't know what all it did (was kinda a windows based router for a home network).

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Student_Tech]

I forgot to also add that they can track and disable the port you are entering the network on the switch. You can still plug into another port but w/o a switch/hub you are dead in the water (1 port per person living capacity in room, and even then a switch doesn't always work either) Some guys that were using high bandwidth out from their machines had this occur to them.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Usquebaugh]

Oh another name dropper eh.

A more subtle way is that the college you attend in Cambridge has already implemented this. The only problem with this approach is that all the alumni from Cambridge Universtiy think you're trying to associate yourself with their older and more established college.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Big Mark]

They do it in the UK as well. At my uni (after forking out fifty quid for the year) you have to submit your MAC address as well as your student ID to the IT monkeys.

They block all sorts of traffic as well, it appears to be that they've denied *all* traffic unless it's explicitly permitted (e.g. outbound connections over socket 80). They stuffed up the socket number used by MSN Messenger at one point last year and it came close to mutiny.

They usually open ports if you ask them nicely enough and it's not for a dodgy purpose (e.g. they let Jabber connect through its port, but not Kazaa on its preffered one... thank fsck that can use port 80 as well!)

-Mark

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Foxxz]

We require MACs to register. We actually have you write them on a peice of paper and then sign it so we have a physical paper trail. From there, we add the MAC to the table of permitted MACs allowed to cross over our transparent cisco router that site between the dorms and the internet gateway and DHCP server. So you cant get to the net even by assigning yourself an IP. However, there are students who will run a SOCKS server for others which is completely agaisnt our polocy so then we can shut them down :)

-Foxxz

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

no, the way to do this is with openbsd gateways and authpf. that way lusers have to tell you who they are before they do bad things. then, when (not if) you get a new bunch of assholes at the beginning of the term, it's a simple matter to ban them (and anyone else who logs the banned person in).

it takes 5 minutes to set up, and works for 1000's of lusers...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[TheCarp]

Youd like to think that wouldn't you.

Nope Tufts a nice database of Mac addresses and who owns them. Its really quite slick. You can't get a DHCP address without registering. Well you CAN but the only thing on all the net that you can get to is the registration server, because unregistereds end up on a private locked down net.

Its all pretty slick and I would like to say that Tufts is unique in it, however, about 7 years ago when I went to WPI they were quite swift about MACs themselves. I remember a fellow student bought a new NIC card and sold his old one...

about 10 mins after both people put their machines back on the net, they got emails from the network admins asking if it was a permanent change.

However your right, they wouldn't have needed such a slick setup to catch this, a simple managed switch (who still uses hubs?) could have done this.

-Steve

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Milican]

Texas A&M's on campus dorms require you to register your port. They know its you by your MAC address. Get a new nic... re-register... hehe

JOhn

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

There's Jesus, but I think that's about it.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[program21]

At Stevens Inst. of Tech., you have to have your MAC address registered to get an IP from DHCP after the first month or so of the semester. Since everyone with other computers is lazy, we just set up static IP addresses in some unused space, and it works just fine.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Fluffy the Cat]

What mechanism prevents students grabbing an unallocated address and setting it up statically, then NATting through a student machine located somewhere else on the physical network? Presumably the external gateway won't pass packets that don't match a registered MAC address?

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Frater 219]

This is quite annoying to students who find out the "MAC tied to port" bit by accidently misplugging their computers into the wrong side-by-side ports after rearranging their desks.

It sounds pretty annoying to students who want to take their laptops down to the library to do research, and plug them in there, too ...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

2 hours is a rather long time. As a netadm at a Unv I can track down damned near anyone in about 5 minutes. That includes looking at our documentation to see where a given interface on a given device is terminated.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[The_K4]

When I was in school they used the MAC address to ID your computer, if you didn't have a registered MAC address you got no network access....the down side, several times in 4 years my MAC address was "cloned" by someone else to use the newtork for porn.....

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, if I was a school sysadmin, I'd block everything, and make people ask for alt.binaries.up.the.plughole or whatever. That way, if they ever become famous, I could blackmail them with the logs (and more salacious posts).

"You think this man should be president? what about his 2,000 posts to alt.perverts.hamsters.up.my.bottom?"

As for Kazaa: "This man is a thief: I have proof of hundreds of CDs he downloaded in clear violation of the law."

A clever sysadmin is watching the port 80 logs and recording what you steal.

dave

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[mjpaci]

I didn't go to Harvard. I was giving a specific example of an institution that required you to register you MAC address. No less, no more.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in halls last year, the only way I could send email to the outside world was from the university email server [other acsess was restricted through the use of a proxy server]. The email server recorded the IP address of my room. When registering for the service I had to give my name, matric number and MAC address of my computer. I would have been easily found if I had started spamming.
http://www.accom.ed.ac.uk/ResNet/Index. htm

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[_xeno_]

They have a separate "roaming" setup for laptops I didn't bother explaining. (I'm posting this from a laptop using the wireless network while in the campus center. Guess the college :))

You still need your MAC to sign up for a "roaming" IP. Once it's been activated, plugging your laptop into any of the ports around campus will get you onto the network. Wireless has the added step of downloading the WEP key over HTTPS.

I believe that a roaming IP can be used in the dorm rooms, but you may need to sign up separately for that as well. I dunno, since I'm using wireless and can't plug the 802.11b card into the ethernet port...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Mr. Firewall]

What mechanism prevents students grabbing an unallocated address and setting it up statically

Most switches allow you to lock out ports when something like this happens. Most switches can also be configured to accept connections only from a certain MAC address -- adding another level of complexity to someone who wants to cause trouble.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[SN74S181]

Heck, the cheap Linksys Cable/DSL router I just bought has a nice friendly dialogue in advanced setup to enter any MAC address you want.

Any football player could figure out how to forge a MAC address with this thing, and use the NAT to do whatever he wanted on the other side.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Spamlent Green]

Heck, when I was there, there was only a handful of terminal rooms. You needed your advisor to sign an approval form just to get an account on the system (pearl? emerald? all the old servers were named after gemstones or something). Needless to say, trying to explain email to my English advisor who used only a typewriter (and probably still does) was challenging to say the least...

Anyway, disappointing to hear of this, but hardly surprising.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Fluffy the Cat]

Most switches can also be configured to accept connections only from a certain MAC address

But that's no use in this case, because you want unregistered MAC addresses to be able to communicate with the registration server.

Most switches allow you to lock out ports when something like this happens

That's more interesting. There are switches that have sufficient intelligence to allow any address from a certain range to be used but only an address that is tied to a specific MAC address from another range?

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[ImpTech]

Boston Univerity started registering MACs this year, ostensibly because they had to do so much work backtracking IPs to shut off all the Nimda-infected boxes last year. Its pretty ingenious, really. Basically, their dhcp servers check each mac that requests an IP against a database of registered macs. If its not there, the server assigns an IP which the routers will auto-redirect all http traffic to a site where the user can register their IP, and presumably drops all other traffic. I'm off campus now, so I didn't experience the system firsthand, but supposedly its worked really well.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anitra]

If you're going to the school I think you are, you're mostly right about the laptop stuff. On their site it states that you can use your laptop for roaming & in the dorm ONLY if you first register it in the dorm network. They still shut off your port if you try to use that laptop on any other port in the dorm, although you can use any port in academic buildings or the campus center.

And don't get me started on the issues involved with hubbing two or more systems in the dorm... (There's a reason why I only use my laptop "on the hill".)

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? Unless it is child porn or something illegal, what is the big deal? At my school, someone wrote a program that scans all samba shares and catalogs them, allows people to search. No matter what you enter, you will get at least twice as much porn as what you are looking for (unless you are looking for porn). Then again, the male population is only 25% or so, so it is hardly unexpected.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[kenydl]

The College that I attend in Cambridge has already implemented this. ;-)

It's true, I go to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, UK.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[kisrael]

Heh! I was on some of the "Tufts Connect" committees when the dorms were being wired, back in 1995-96. In fact on my laptop I sketched the version of the logo (later nicknamed "Frankie" and later retired when the program tried to distance itself from some early bad karma in terms of the required net/cable/long distance packages) -- you can still see it here -- though they removed the angelish wings I gave it.

I was student manager of the PC lab there. That was some great experience for me. Also, I got my first semi-pro programming experience at their Cirricular Software Studio.

Tufts is a good school I think, but man do the students like to bitch. A lot of rich kids who expect privelege and middle class smart kids who didn't get to a higher rung place (It turned out Elaine from "Seinfeld" went there as her safety school)

As for this article, i dunno. They want to chart a middle course between too strict and draconian cracking down of oddball positive uses of the network, and being too la-dee-dah about everything.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[kisrael]

Heck, when I was there, there was only a handful of terminal rooms. You needed your advisor to sign an approval form just to get an account on the system (pearl? emerald? all the old servers were named after gemstones or something). Needless to say, trying to explain email to my English advisor who used only a typewriter (and probably still does) was challenging to say the least...

Well, yeah, in the mid-early-90s, Tufts was little bit slow to the popularization of e-mail. (Remember, this was when the Web was still a little obscure scientific thing from Switzerland and you could grab domains like "mcdonalds.com" and "mtv.com" without much problem.)

So Pearl was this VMS system, mostly around for running Stats programs. As more and more students started getting accounts and dialing in (1200 or 2400 baud for the most part) Pearl got slower and overburdened 'til it couldn't be used for its original purposes. Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as "the email machine", everyone would log in and use Pine, around 93-94.

Things were probably a little worse off because of a previous falling out between "Academic Computing Services" and the Computer Science Department. CS students generally mostly lived on the departments Unix machines (most often named for musical terms, andante, forte, allegro, etc, instead of gemstones.)

Those terminal rooms were kind of fun, I like the little one we set up in Carmichael. I think they spraypainted them really ugly colors so they'd be less likely to be stolen...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[_xeno_]

You're correct :)

I've already got two systems hubbed to the network (primary Windows desktop, secondary Linux server), and I haven't had the need to network the laptop into the mix yet. Mainly because I can unplug the uplink on my hub, plug in the laptop, assign it an IP address (it's amazing how many times I've assigned it the same IP address as my main box, even though I should know better), and then download the files I need.

Since I'm on 3rd floor in Founders, I can't get (reliable) wireless access from up here. On good nights, I occasionally find myself signing onto IM from my room when doing misc crap on the laptop. Usually there's no signal, or it's so bad as to be unusable. (But good enough to repeatedly toggle between "connected" and "unconnected" in the systray.)

I'm debating whether or not I recognize you from your pictures. I'm not sure, so I'll play it safe and guess no. Damnit, you got a better /. UID than me! *hmph*

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[soulsteal]

I was compromised at one point in time my freshman year and had a smurf attack originate from my machine.

I pray that these were not separate occasions.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[The_K4]

The big deal was the massive amount of bandwidth being used. They were gunna shut down my MAC address due to "excessive" ussage for "non-educational" reasons. I real didn't care what they were sharing/downloading, i jsut didn't want MY access pulled (turned out they went to cloning other people's MAC addresses because theirs was already blacklisted).

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I attend Tufts University. To get on the network, you must register your MAC address to get access, they definately keep this information.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Firehawke]

I've been seeing this more and more with cablemodem service. Mediacom just implemented that precise method out here about three months ago. It can be a bit irritating when it comes time to update five machines (but only have two IPs) but you live with it to save $30/month.

Went to Worst Place Imaginable, huh? You have my sympathies.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[TheCarp]

> Went to Worst Place Imaginable, huh? You have my sympathies.

Well I dropped out after 1 year... but I did graduate from their night Unix/C/C++ program a few years later.

That aside, other than being in Worcester, WPI was a pretty nice place. I actually liked it alot and always did figure that if I was going to go back to school for real, thats where I would still want to go.

(assuming I didn't decided to completely change careers and go for law or something equally non-tech)

-Steve

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

i go to tufts and yes we use the same system. secure DHCP registration requires you to log in and then it associates your account with the MAC address and any IP address you use.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[TheCarp]

Trivia time...

> So Pearl was this VMS system, mostly around for running Stats programs.
> As more and more students started getting accounts and dialing in
> (1200 or 2400 baud for the most part) Pearl got slower and overburdened 'til
> it couldn't be used for its original purposes. ... it eventually founds its way to sit on a desk in the TAB basement to
languish powered off until it was revived for a while as an mail test machine
(under a different name) and was finnaly decomissioned again recently.

I bet thats more than you ever wanted to know about it. (and yes, for some period of time the desk it sat on was mine, however it was there before me, so I guess I sat at its desk for a while)

> Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as "the email machine",
> everyone would log in and use Pine, around 93-94.

And remained as such for a while (tho it used to do imap too) until I believe we decomissioned all mail services on it last month. (dragged me kicking and screaming over to trumpeter... how I miss procmail... )

Emerald saw several hardware incarnations over the years. I have seen references from before my time that it was once a Decstation 3000 or some similarly underpowered DEC hardware (even then, or so the old rant we found cleaning out some old boxes states).

The current setup is kinda spiffy and the attached raid array is proof that the Dec enginners were both brillient and crack smokers), but as we have gotten away from that platform and the whole big monolithic servers thing, I can't for the life of me remember what it is (and I am too lazy to look it up)

-Steve

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure hope you didn't do that by hand every time. Tools exist to handle this for you - give it a hostname, it gives you a port reference. If you've mapped switch ports onto patch panel ports (or rooms, or whatever), then you get that too.

About the only thing missing is the blueprint diagram of the site with a big bullseye over the room with the targeted port. That's a little Hollywood, sure, but it keeps the PHBs amused.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

ok and? Oh, you're an idiot. My bad.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[root 66]

> But that's no use in this case, because you want unregistered MAC addresses to be able to communicate with the registration server.

Just use VLANs. I.E. put the reg server and all the unregistered MACs in a seperate VLAN. Servers as well as internet routers should then be in another VLAN to which only registered MACs have access.

You could even further fine grain these setup (i.e. seperate VLANs for different departments).

By the way, the nice switches from Enterasys support even Radius authentification! That's even nicer.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[kisrael]

Ah, old time reminiscing...

> Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as "the email machine",
> everyone would log in and use Pine, around 93-94.

And remained as such for a while (tho it used to do imap too) until I believe we decomissioned all mail services on it last month. (dragged me kicking and screaming over to trumpeter... how I miss procmail... )

Heh, desktop email apps mighta been after my time...I've always been kind of old schooler wrt e-mail, I used Pine 'til I finally wrote my own crappy webmail.

'Course, I was too much of a snob for Pearl (keep wanting to spell it "perl") or Emerald, really...I had a "Jade" account as a UC for a bit, and then usually stuck to the comp sci stuff.

Still, it was fun to be a part of that...as well as on the outskirts of those massive line printers in Eaton, with the print server "Henson" and all the PCs named after muppets. I remember when the big thing was adding those to the LAN and updating to spiffy new 486s--and even some of those brand new Pentiums!

Go Jumbos, and all that...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[eet23]

There's Jesus, but I think that's about it.

At the top of that page:
An introduction to the Jesus College network

Note - this is not an introduction to the Jesus College Network

Note: This is not a post to Slashdot

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[grant12345]

Hey, long time no see, etc...

> Emerald was a Unix system (DEC?) brought in as
> "the email machine", everyone would log in and use
> Pine, around 93-94.

Oh, my. Emerald.

> I've always been kind of old schooler wrt e-mail, I used
> Pine 'til I finally wrote my own crappy webmail.

Hmm. I've never used pine, just foisted it on everyone else. At the time I did mail with emacs/rmail or emacs/gnus; since 96 I've used raw MH.

>Go Jumbos, and all that...

Kind of reminds me of tufts.general. Did that die? I discontinued my tufts.* feed some time back...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[kisrael]

Hey, long time no see, etc...

Is this Grant of the "3 musketeers" Grant? Hiya!

Kind of reminds me of tufts.general. Did that die? I discontinued my tufts.* feed some time back...

Yeah, it's down to...yikes, maybe 2 posts a year of the "where did everybody go?" variety. And the oddball selling something, who doesn't realize how dead it is.

I think the rise of the web and the move to seperate online desktops (rather than shelling into the big servers) removed a big part of Usenet culture at Tufts (and elsewhere)

I think Tufts has some web based messageboards that might be a lot more active these days, or at least last time I looked. Still, i miss tufts.gen and the get-togethers at redbones...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[grant12345]

Is this Grant of the "3 musketeers" Grant? Hiya!

Yes, it's me.

I think the rise of the web and the move to seperate online desktops (rather than shelling into the big servers) removed a big part of Usenet culture at Tufts (and elsewhere)

So it would seem. Still, when I last set up a website it was trivial to offer unified web/list/nntp forums; dunno why everyone puts so much effort into kooky SQL-backed homegrown schemes.

Still, i miss tufts.gen and the get-togethers at redbones...

Indeed. Are you still in Boston? Perhaps we should round up some others and have a meat meet.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Viqsi]

Ha! That less-than-familiarity is their own damn fault. They deliberately refused to hire for residential computing work more than a few folks with alternate OS experience. (I wasn't one of them at the time, but they did turn me down).

I frankly found that place a pain in the butt, especially after the dongle on my laptop's NIC broke and I had to get a new one and it took them two weeks to realize I'd changed (in the meantime I just dumped use of DHCP entirely and demanded the address they always gave; worked like a champ!)

And the resnet was horrifyingly slow; there were more collisions on that net than in a national bumper-cars event. I distinctly remember my old workaround for this - walk over to Olscamp Hall with my laptop, tape an "OUT OF ORDER" sign to one of the iMacs in the hallway, and subsequently "borrow" that iMac's Ethernet port. If anyone asked what I was up to, I just had to say I was from RCC (I knew more than most of their "field techs" at the time anyways, so I could pull it off when necessary; it only was once or twice. Nobody seemed to make the mental connection that RCC didn't handle the academic halls, thankfully. :) ).

Gosh, the memories. :)

(Of course, this was back in 1998-1999 or so; they've likely improved since then (if not, God only help those who go there now). They started the MAC address thing, as far as I can recall, in spring quarter 1999)

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[moyix]

Nearly all do this nowadays (based on a sample size of about 4--Wesleyan, Harvard, Washington University, and Tufts). The way it works here at Wesleyan is this:

When you do a DHCP request, it checks to see if your MAC address is known. If it is, it gives you the address associated with your MAC and nameservers etc.

If you're not in the database, it gives you an address in a specified range (we have a class B here, so there are plenty of free IPs) that the routers facing the outside world know not to route. So you can get to anywhere within campus, but not outside. It also gives you different nameservers that always resolve to the address of the registration server--a server that tells you to enter your username and e-mail password, and then adds you to the database on the DHCP server so that you'll get correct nameservers next time your DHCP lease renews.

-Brendan

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

and? Your point? You were a complete and unadulterated fucking loser? So instead of using one of the many ethernet ports available anywhere (for example the Library), you decided to be an asshole and hook up to iMac's port? Not only that, you were missing incredibly great parties to sit in OLSC and fuck around on the Internet which at that time was on 4xT1s? Wow, you are fucking cool, no, really, you are.

Asshole.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

It was actually enough of a pain to get Harvard Computer Service (or whatever their name was) to change your MAC address that when a roommate and I swapped rooms, we swapped ethernet cards rather than go through the hassle with the administration.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

just one line:

ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:00:ca:fe:ba:be /megaton out

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[geekbox5]

At SIUC, they've been recording MAC addresses for at least a year now. Not only do they record them, though, they restrict Internet access to ONLY those specific MAC addresses. This practice could cause more harm than good, though, since a MAC address can be easily misrecorded, and certain models of routers (which are needed since each dorm room only has one ethernet jack) become useless.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[xixax]

That's why you also need to tie a particular MAC to a particular port on the switch. That way when Joe Footballer tries to ifup using someone else's MAC, the port in his dorm room gets frozen out until he explains to someone what he was doing.

Xix.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[FlippyBoy]

At SUNY Buffalo, to get anything off the campus network, we have to authenticate to the firewall using our unique IT account. The firewall, in turn, keeps a log of all the authetications. This way, we can track usage by user, rather than ip or mac address - no matter what machine the user was using, or in what building. When we find a machine spreading klez, it's a relatively simple task to look up the user that was on that machine at that time, and email that user directly.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

At the University where I attend all MAC addresses in on-campus husing must be registered to a specific student before the switches will recognize them. To facilitate this they have a short grace period at the beginning of each semester when you can actually get on the network to register yourself, otherwise you're stuck going and doing it in a computer lab.

Try telling someone who can barely print out their term paper to write down their MAC address and go reister it in the computer lab.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Reziac]

Oh, thanks loads. Now I've got this mental image of little blue smurfs ravishing college students!!

[g]

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[Anonymous Coward]

They were able to track it down in under 2 hours to my specific port.

A couple years ago, that would make sense.

Nowadays we have automated systems to do this since we have so many comprimises. Almost all of them are Windows machines with no passwords. The kiddies break in using the default administrative shares to upload their daemons and then use psexec (or similar tools) to start them up. Invariably they upload some movie or music files then start iroffer to share them up using IRC/DCC.

Happens every day. We have an automated system so you punch in an IP address and a date and it gives you the MAC address, port and room number. We also have people register their MAC addresses - it makes it easier so we don't have to keep a database of students to rooms (that information is held elsewhere) and there is no question of whose machine it is.

Two or three years ago (when machines were comprimised for smurf attacks and DDOS zombies), we just did it by hand. Get IP, run nmap, call Network Engineering (separate team from network security) to get MAC and port, call Housing to get student, call up student. Now it's all automated.

Also relevant to this story: we've seen a couple cases this year where a machine has been comprimised and was used to send out spam. Same attack vector: scan entire network for Windows machines, run netbios null scan to get accounts, look for accounts with bad passwords, upload daemons using administrative shares and then run psexec or similar. The spammers probably just modified the scripts they stole from some warez channel.

As for those who say firewall off the entire campus - not gonna happen. Each department is more-or-less autonomous, and some of them actually run stuff that requires Internet-visible netbios over TCP. Yeah, stupid, but that's them, not us. Any tiny firewall change that affects someone ends up going up to the deans and then coming down on us. "Registering" machines for poking holes through the firewall isn't going to happen since half the departments don't even have centralized admin staff. There's also the little issue of "politics" - this is a university, not some corporation: we allow any kind of experimentation as long as it doesn't hurt someone else. In a corporation, the head cheese decrees something and it is law; in a university, policy change happens slowly, if at all. And really, a firewall doesn't solve the underlying problem: unsecured Windows machines with bad passwords.

- An anonymous university admin

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[kisrael]

Yeah, still in Boston.

I play darts w/ Gowen (along with a bunch of folk from TErradyne)

Who's still around? Roberto I think...M Cable's in Colorado or something...

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[TheCarp]

>> Is this Grant of the "3 musketeers" Grant? Hiya!
>>
>Yes, it's me.

Can't say as I really know who you are but I sure have seen alot of files you own and my reference to what emerald used to be and an old document we found talking about what emerald used to be...

I believe it was a rant of yours that went out in email about emerald being severely underpowered. Found it in an old box as we cleaned stuff out a while back. (now emerald is severely overpowered for what it does given that email delivery has been turned off... )

-Steve

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[TheCarp]

> I think the rise of the web and the move to seperate online desktops (rather
> than shelling into the big servers) removed a big part of Usenet culture at
> Tufts (and elsewhere)

Sure has. We still have a big honkin news server of course, often joking that its our most reliable service. Never goes down, never needs any attention.

I don't even remember the last time I saw mail to news@ - I think we get a couple of requests a year. (I don't ever remember us getting alot but ive only been here for a few years now and usenet was definitly on its way out by then)

I currently see 49 messages on tufts.general the first apears to be from 12 Sep 2000. The most recent was Jan 17th of last year.

Thats why I can't get into usenet. Its just become all too sad.

-Steve

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[kisrael]

Sure has. We still have a big honkin news server of course, often joking that its our most reliable service. Never goes down, never needs any attention.

Glad to hear it's so stable, hopefully they'll keep it up for a good long time...I use my .cs account for news, so I can get to my .newsrc from anywhere...

[SNIP]
Thats why I can't get into usenet. Its just become all too sad.

I think you may be confusing Usenet @ tufts with Usenet in general.

Clearly, Usenet at Tufts is diminished. And people all over the world are less likely to pick it up. Many groups are falling by the wayside... but many others are prospering. It's all about community...and Usenet is great because it lets you choose your UI and get in touch with people of all sorts of different interests...most groups are fairly tolerant of a non-hobbyist popping in and asking a politely worded question.

The eminent Death of Usenet has been a choke for years, but I'd give it at least decades.

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[TheCarp]

> Glad to hear it's so stable, hopefully they'll keep it up for a good long
> time...I use my .cs account for news, so I can get to my .newsrc from
> anywhere...

There are no plans to get rid of it. Though there has been some murmer of a desire to have somebody (some day, in our copious free time) to try and gauge about how many people actually use the beast.

> Usenet is great because it lets you choose your UI and get in touch
> with people of all sorts of different interests.

I agree, and I like usenet, no really I do.

However it seems to be I dunno. About every year or so I start reading news and keep it up for a week, then lose it. The signal to noise ratio seems low (hell I don't really even read comments on /. anymore unless an article particularly interests me like say, my director being quoted in a news article ;) )

I mean I WANT to read news, maybe I just need a better client? Ive been using slrn and its nice... colorization of stuff, doesn't take up more screen real estate than my 80x24 boarderless Eterm window...

I can read news for as long as I can keep up... after I miss a few days on a group with alot of posts, I get lost and the cost to catch up, seems to just grow exponentially. (that and I can't figure out how to read news from the news server my home ISP gives me... and when it comes to personal news reading and mailing list stuff I don't like ot use my "Tufts" identity - if thats not obvious from my published email here)

In fact, I believe this is probably the first /. thread where I have admitted my employer to being anything other than "A University"... just because I do like to "keep the worlds seprate".

-Steve

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[JackAsh]

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time - it's like a multi-generational meeting. Kirk, didn't you use to take pride in dressing like the evil dude from Indy Jones? (I recall some funny comment on tufts.general about forgetting your anti-ark specs). And Grant Taylor, god of ACS :), living legend at my time...

I worked at Eaton right after Kirk did, with Roman, Merredith & Sarah, and Todd.

I was there when Henson (the machine) nearly died, and remember Jon Rozes going nuts at the keyboard. One of the external hard drives power supply died, and Jon was in a trance getting data out of there every time the disk spun up enough to be used. The funny thing was that I suggested splicing in power from the main power supply inside Henson - and things remained like that with an open case for 3 years!

Henson was retired over time (heck, the OSF/1 license expired!!!), Jumbolaya the NT server brought in, the Pentiums and above were brought up to Win95 in a 28 hour deployment marathon (486s went to Linux)... Good times.

Later, all.

-Miguel

Re:Tracked using MAC address

[kisrael]

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time - it's like a multi-generational meeting. Kirk, didn't you use to take pride in dressing like the evil dude from Indy Jones?

Heh, no, I naturally look like the guy; and for some of my winters at Tufts I wore a darkish fedora hat and an inherited nice cashmere longish coat that I'd wear, which didn't help matters...

And Grant Taylor, god of ACS :), living legend at my time...

Yeah, Grant helped me install Linux, pre-1.0, when getting X to work was a real bear and required cracking the monitor manual. He also was at the center of the Linux Printer HOWTO if memory serves. Among other fine qualities.

I worked at Eaton right after Kirk did, with Roman, Merredith & Sarah, and Todd.

Yeah...wasn't that the group at the core of the CULT OF BACON?

Tufts was in the news again yesterday, with protestors about daddy bush speaking there.

plight

[Joe the Lesser]

An interesting look at one of the things students will lower themselves to do to pay for their $80 calculus book.

Re:plight

[Pxtl]

$80? What school are you at? My textbooks start at $100, unless its a course that requires more then one textbook when they're usually a little cheaper, but still gouging.

Re:plight

[Amroarer]

I bought course textbooks in my first year. Then I noticed that my college had a library.

For some reason, only arts students ever seemed to use the college library - all the scientists would use the main university one. Which meant there was nearly always a free copy of every engineering textbook.

I shudder when I think of how much money that realisation must have saved me.

There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[Max Romantschuk]

These students don't get spam themselves. Or they have hearts made of stone. My guess is still that these people don't even use email, apart from the spam-sending bit.

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[Anonymous Coward]

These students don't get spam themselves. Or they have hearts made of stone.

Or maybe they just understand the concept of the "delete" button. People who whine about spam continually amaze me. Don't get so stressed out! Just delete it, and it goes away forever. Takes about ten seconds. No problem.

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[callipygian-showsyst]

Well, let's see. I just opened my mailbox for an account where I have the email address on a webpage (out of necessity, because I'm trying to conduct business.) There are 72 messages there, and it looks like only 1 is legit.

Here are the first 10 messages (spelling errors are as written):

• Would you like to lose weight while you sleep?
• Copy Rented DVDs
• Extreme Colon Cleanser
• Saw your profile on ICQ
• Turn back your bodies bilogical clock
• Your new credit card app
• Increase the thickness of it
• Dirty Vixens and Sex Kittens
• FREE Bottle of Wine
• improve sense of wellbeing rgn452
• FREE FOR YOU _ THANKS

The problem is only one of the 70+ messages in my box is legit. This means that I sometimes miss real email messages, and it disrupts my wholesome business (selling 3D cam technology to porn sites.)

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[SScorpio]

Except it annoying to have to delete 20-30 messages every morning. That said my spam free accounts I have are nice. If I get a message on one of them. I at least know it's not from some just 18 year old girl trying to smuggle money out of Nigeragawa from her porn site profits.

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam chains you to your email. If I don't clean out my spam every other day, I don't get any new email because my box is full. It's definately a problem. Sometimes I actually go on vacation and don't get to my emails for a week.

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is only one of the 70+ messages in my box is legit. This means that I sometimes miss real email messages, and it disrupts my wholesome business

Aw, poor baby. "I'm lazy and careless, so sometimes I make mistakes. We need either a law or a piece of technology that will solve this problem for me! Waa!"

Suck it up, you yeast-infested cunt. If you can't figure out how to delete unwanted emails without deleting the others, then you need to seriously consider suicide. You're using up valuable resources-- like sweet Arabian oil which is rightfully ours because we found the shit and taught the fucking sandflea-infested ragheads to drill for it-- that the rest of us don't want to share.

Just kill yourself. Please.

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it annoying to have to delete 20-30 messages every morning.

It's annoying to have to walk my dog. It's annoying to have to pay my taxes. It's annoying to have to wipe the spooge off of my chin when I wank. It's annoying to have to be nice to people instead of punching them over and over again in the groin. It's annoying to have to take off my shoes when I go to the airport. It's annoying to have to use a napkin. It's annoying to have to pay my cable TV bill no matter whether I watch it or not. It's annoying to have to deal with people like you on Slashdot.

Life is annoying. Deal with it.

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[haedesch]

Extreme Colon Cleanser


What the hell? Is that colon as in "intestin"? And if so, how the hell do they make it extreme?

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's "colon" as in "intestines".

Americans are stupid, and very willing to try fake medical remedies.

One popular "theory" is that colons fill with toxins and need to be cleaned with enemas. People pay big $$$ to clean their colons.

Aren't you glad you live in the Netherlands with your finger in a dike?

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[Anonymous Coward]

baking soda ;)

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[darien]

On the contrary, students use email 24/7. And when you use email 24/7, you can glance at each piece of email as it comes in, and delete it if it's spam. It's much less of a pain than when you only check your mail once every day or so and you have to wade through everything all in one go.

Personally, I see less than 5% of the spam that gets sent to me anyway, thanks to POPFile.

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dirty Vixens and Sex Kittens...Sounds interesting. Could you send that one on to me?

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[AbRASiON]

If you've read up on it you may well note that the mucus that "protects" the walls of the upper smaller intestine becomes thick and "sets" there - I've seen pictures of 9 feet of "black tar-like substance" come out of a person .......

I don't know for certain how good or bad this whole thing is for your body - but some of the "more extreme anal cleansing enthusiasts" actually eat well as well as do this - aftwerwards they claim they are far more energetic and healthy.

I for one will at least keep an open mind on this one.

However - Joe sixpack eating pizza and pies should not insert a tube into his anus once per 6 months and think all will be well, it has a little more to it.

-[ at least if you get your girlfriend to do it, you can ensure your trooper comes out clean after an anal invasion during "no sex week" ]-

Re:There is one conclusion to be drawn from this.

[SScorpio]

>It's annoying to have to walk my dog.
It's YOUR choice to have a dog.

>It's annoying to have to pay my taxes.
YOU choose to live in this country. Go somewhere else if you don't want to pay.

>It's annoying to have to wipe the spooge off of my chin when I wank.
Don't wank... you have a choice.

>It's annoying to have to be nice to people instead of punching them over and over again in the groin.
You punch people in the groin? GAY!!! Seriously whats stopping you from kicking them in the groin over and over again? There are consequences if you do that... but you have a choice.

>It's annoying to have to take off my shoes when I go to the airport.
What airport are you going to? And if you don't want to take them off... don't, just get beatup by security... you have a choice.

>It's annoying to have to use a napkin.
Stop eating messy food... you have a choice

>It's annoying to have to pay my cable TV bill no matter whether I watch it or not.
Stop subscribing to cable... you have a choice.

>It's annoying to have to deal with people like you on Slashdot.
Don't read Slashdot... you have a choice.

Notice how I shot down each of your examples with "YOU HAVE A CHOICE". You don't have a choice with spam.

Go back under your bridge Troll.

When I was in college...

[billmaly]

$20 a month was serious money. That's one week of clean laundry and GOOD pizza on Sunday night (and not the cheap stuff). Back then, $20 a month would have bought a lot of personal ethics. Can't say as I blame them.

Re:When I was in college...

[1000101]

that's true, but now $20 doesn't go very far:

12 pack Coors Light - $9
black ink cartridge - $32
new x-box game - $50
large pizza - $16
CSC 4330 textbook - $110
new Voodoo PC - $2800 , hehe

Re:When I was in college...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that was when slivers of dinosaur were popular on pizza. Inflation's a real bitch, isn't it?

Re:When I was in college...

[Moloch666]

1 ounce of KB - $325

Re:When I was in college...

[Shimbo]

$20 a month was serious money...Back then, $20 a month would have bought a lot of personal ethics.

When I was in college, the authorities would fine students real money if they made a sufficient nuisance of themselves. That generally readjusted their view of things.

Re:When I was in college...

[haedesch]

Ooh don't poo-poo $20, billmaly. $20 will buy you a steak and kidney pie, a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake and a newsreel. With enough change left over to ride the trolley from Battery Park to the polo grounds.

+1, simpsons quote

Re:When I was in college...

[billmaly]

HA!! That's THE FUNNY!!! College for me was early 90's, so $20 bought beer/pizza, or beer/laundry, or pizza/laundry, for one week. The economics back then were so simple, didn't know how good I had it! :)

Re:When I was in college...

[1000101]

ah yes, the KB... how could i forget?.. oh yeah, the KB made me forget :)

Re:When I was in college...

[Amroarer]

Your weekly beer bill would be the same as your weekly laundry bill?

Now, that's a college with a cheap bar!

Interestingly enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

College kids are broke, spammers are fucking rich. That's the sensible way it would've come about, not vice versa.

Computer Nerds Gone Wild

[SirSlud]

This is like the computer nerd equivilent to "College Girls Gone Wild". Anything for a buck.

Except instead of making me want to spank myself, I want to spank them.

Re:Computer Nerds Gone Wild

[GigsVT]

Except instead of making me want to spank myself, I want to spank them.

You want to spank computer nerds? :)

Re:Computer Nerds Gone Wild

[Anonymous Coward]

• Except instead of making me want to spank myself, I want to spank them.

Videotape yourself spanking them and sell copies. You can even advertise during commercial breaks on E! broadcasts of the Howard Stern Show!

Re:Computer Nerds Gone Wild

[SageLikeFool]

Yeah, but the nerds somehow find a way to get more than a shiney plastic necklace out of it...

Re:Computer Nerds Gone Wild

[Anonymous Coward]

Except instead of making me want to spank myself, I want to spank them.

Uhm, no you don't.

Can we say expulsion?

[www.sorehands.com]

Let see, a kid sets up a computer to steal on the college network. If the student hacked in the the dean's computer to get porn, it would be all over the news, the kid would be arrested.

The kid should be charged the same as the person who put the distributed decryption software, that was all over the news, and expelled.

Re:Can we say expulsion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let see, a kid sets up a computer to steal on the college network.

Bzzt. Man, you blew it on the very first sentence. Nobody was stealing. Spam is not theft. It's a nuisance, in the same class as playing your stereo too loudly. Do kids get expelled for playing their stereos too loudly? No.

You just need to put down the crack pipe and get a good, firm grip on reality. Then you'll be able to stop talking about spam in terms of theft.

Re:Can we say expulsion?

[hxnwix]

In most states, sending some email is a slightly more minor transgression than illegally accessing with the dean's pc.

If the student violated a signed contract with the university, then he's in trouble. But not because he's stealing. The university provided him with a connection so he could use a little bandwidth. That's the internet connection's only purpose. He just happen to use it in a way that problably infringes on his usage agreement with the uni.

Toss about hysterical terms such as stealing and arrested and you look like an ass.

Re:Can we say expulsion?

[www.sorehands.com]

Actually, it is stealing. In addition, in most schools, one is not supposed to use the school facilities for individual profit making.

In addition, SPAM is a crime in California. The computer tresspass act makes this a federal crime. Don't you remember the case where a lab admin (or sys admin) was arrested for installing a distributed processing program on all the lab machines?

They got bought cheap!

[FunWithHeadlines]

It sure doesn't take much to compromise a person's self-respect or integrity. $20/month in exchange for contributing to a problem that everyone hates, and knowing full well that everyone hates it? They sold out cheap.

It's sort of like the trend for journalist majors to wind up in PR jobs for corporations doing nasty things. The lure of extra money covers over any hesitation they might have in moving from a supposedly neutral position to one that shills for money.

But $20/month? Man, that's some cheap principles. How about we pay them $21/month to turn against the spammers?
---------

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Anonymous Coward]

It sure doesn't take much to compromise a person's self-respect or integrity. $20/month in exchange for contributing to a problem that everyone hates, and knowing full well that everyone hates it?

Hate to break it to you, pal[*], but of all the people in the world who use email, hardly any of them hate spam. Only Slashdot nerds hate spam, they're the same guys who hate Microsoft "because they're evil" and who think Cartoon Network would be a lot better if they played Japanese cartoons all day and all night.

The rest of us, the normal ones if you will, just click "delete". Poof. Problem solved.

[*]by which I mean "dickhead".

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Beetjebrak]

This is funny.. I actually am/was (have to call my college on that *lol*) a journalism major, and got sick and tired of it very soon. There is NO decent money in journalism. All these jobs demand academic level of thinking, and the reward is the same or less than that of a garbage collector! I didn't study 6 years for that. At least the corps value an academic according to their level of skill and competence.
I just broke out of the world of journalism and now do just about anything that has to do with communications and IT. And it pays me at least fourfold what I earned at this country's largest news network.

Re:They got bought cheap!

[CrayzyJ]

" It sure doesn't take much to compromise a person's self-respect or integrity. ... They sold out cheap."

Let me guess, you were the arsehole who had the porche parked in the school lot. Did you see the old beat up Ford Escort with a different color fender, no muffler, and a broken windshield? The guy that owned the Escort (and I know him well) would have sold his self-respect for a tuna-freakin-fish sandwich. That guy had LESS than $20/mo for food, toiletries, and beer. You wouldn't survive a week in that guys shoes. $20/mo means another case of mac-n-cheese.

Re:They got bought cheap!

[dubiousmike]

Except no one makes money from them NOT renting out their boxes for spamming.

Try putting THAT in your company's IT budget...

Re:They got bought cheap!

[RembrandtX]

college kids have no $$.

I remember being in college and having to scam the washers just to have clean clothes. or carry food out of the dining halls (which was against school policy) because I couldn't afford 0.45 for cupcakes from the vending machine if I was hungry at 3:00 am.

$20 is a lot of money for essentually doing NOTHING to a kid that has to scrounge for nickles to buy a pepsi

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Mithal]

Good troll, but I'll bite.

Fellow slashdotters are probably amongst the net users that hate SPAM the least: they know how to filter it, and can avoid most of it by not giving their e-mail adress on newsgroups or public websites.

I know a few people that are trying to stay away from e-mail because SPAM frustrates them so much!

Slashdotters are just the ones noticing that SPAM is killing e-mail.

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Anitra]

Amen. I would mod you up if I could. I'm about to BE that guy (well, girl). Working full-time while going to school is... well, it's going to suck.

Living on your own is so much more expensive than you would have thought when mommy and daddy were paying your bills.

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn. Spam is killing email? Wrong.

Oh, and by the way, SPAM, in all caps, is a trademark of Hormel Foods. If you want to talk about email, you have to say "spam."

Re:They got bought cheap!

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Let me guess, you were the arsehole who had the porche parked in the school lot."

Bzzzt! Wrong, try again.

"Did you see the old beat up Ford Escort with a different color fender, no muffler, and a broken windshield?"

Ding! Ding! Ding! We've got a winner! That would have been me.

"The guy that owned the Escort (and I know him well) would have sold his self-respect for a tuna-freakin-fish sandwich. That guy had LESS than $20/mo for food, toiletries, and beer. You wouldn't survive a week in that guys shoes. $20/mo means another case of mac-n-cheese."

No excuse. You find other ways of making money rather than blatantly leeching off society and contributing to a problem that is despised. If you sell out for a price, regardless of circumstances, it means you sold out. Some people hold their integrity in high esteem and will find some other way to make the necessary money.
-------

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Valdrax]

Let me guess, you were the arsehole who had the porche parked in the school lot. Did you see the old beat up Ford Escort with a different color fender, no muffler, and a broken windshield? The guy that owned the Escort (and I know him well) would have sold his self-respect for a tuna-freakin-fish sandwich. That guy had LESS than $20/mo for food, toiletries, and beer. You wouldn't survive a week in that guys shoes. $20/mo means another case of mac-n-cheese.

Well, gee, that excuses everything! I see the light now! After that guy broke into my friend's apartment last year and stole all his electronics, I should've excused him too because he was jobless and living in government housing! After all, I "wouldn't have survived a week in that guy's shoes," now would I?

You know what I did in college when I needed money? I got a freaking job; that's what I did. I spent my days sitting at a desk in a computer lab checking student IDs for $5/hour. I didn't throw in with parasites to get by.

Those students did sell themselves cheap. They could've gotten a real job, but instead they decided to let the bottom-feeders of the Internet take advantage of university resources so that they could get a small token sum of money without having to do a damn thing. They whored themselves out probably because they were too damn lazy to actually try to hold down a part time job while in school. As someone who worked for my food, I have absolutely no sympathy for them. They should be kicked out of housing and maybe even expelled for abusing the university network at the expense of others.

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Hittite Creosote]

The guy that owned the Escort (and I know him well) would have sold his self-respect for a tuna-freakin-fish sandwich.

He could afford a car? Bloody hell, I couldn't afford a car as a student. Sometimes I couldn't afford beer either.

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Good comeback! Somebody mod this guy "insightful" already.

Re:They got bought cheap!

[Anonymous Coward]

to a kid that has to scrounge for nickles to buy a pepsi

I'm betting there was free water somewhere.

Re:They got bought cheap!

[rjh]

If you sell out for a price, regardless of circumstances, it means you sold out.

H.L. Mencken was at a high society function and speaking with one of the grande dames of society. After some initial witty small talk, he asked her "Madame, would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"

Much laughter later, she agreed.

"Madame, would you sleep with me for one dollar?"

The dame was grievously offended and asked Mencken what she thought she was--some whore?

"Madame, we've already established that you're a whore," he replied. "Now we're just dickering about your price."

That's it!

[terradyn]

I've just lost all the respect I had for Tufts University.

Granted that's not saying much.

Re:That's it!

[Anonymous Coward]

You generalize the attitude of a few students as the characteristic of an entire organization? There's bad apples everywhere, including my church group. Just because there are several car thefts in New York City, doesn't mean that every New Yorker is a car thief.

Money for using the computer

[Gortbusters.org]

has always been a popular fad. Remember those programs you could install and you would get a 10th of a penny for every website you clicked and it had a banner-system (I believe)? Everyone thought they would make hundreds of dollars a month with that. I wish I could remember the name. People love getting money for doing their normal tasks, i.e. using the computer. If relaying spam could be done with little or no active participation by a computer user, who [average computer user] wouldn't turn down 20 bucks?

Re:Money for using the computer

[Luceo]

AllAdvantage. Ah, how I miss that little program. That plus FakeSurfer with about 10 friends signed up under me amounted to about a fifty dollar check one month, which was a lot of b33r. Those were the days! No wonder that company tanked.

Re:Money for using the computer

[241comp]

Some of us didn't just "think" we'd make hundreds every month. Some of us saw this was a chance to get on top - I was making in excess of $600/mo when AllAdvantage.com shut down (all legitimately too). It was fun right up till I had to pay my taxes the next April. Ugh.

Only 20$ a month?

[djeez]

That's a cheap price to sell your soul!

Re:Only 20$ a month?

[slide-rule]

That's a cheap price to sell your soul!

Nonsense! They're merely selling their sense of ethics. A soul, on the other hand, currently goes for $299.00.
[*rimshot*]

What does it matter...

[mjpaci]

What does it matter that Tufts is 151 years old? Would this be different if it were 310-year-old College of William and Mary in Virginia or 210-year-old Williams College in Williamstown, MA?

--Mike

Re:What does it matter...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but it would be different if it were the 1 year old University of Ave Maria in Florida.

Re:What does it matter...

[mgs1000]

I was thinking the same thing.

Re:What does it matter...

[clarkc3]

I know, or even if you wanted to go techinical school oriented, the 179 year old RPI

Re:What does it matter...

[bourne]

What does it matter that Tufts is 151 years old?

Tufts is an old, prestigious school that is not neccessarily well known. It's just a step below Ivy (was in fact considered for joining the Ivy League in the 60s), but doesn't have anywhere near the same recognition. Pointing out its age is a way of saying that we're not talking about Community College of East Podunk here; slightly higher standards of behavior are expected out of students who have to pass a difficult entrant selection and pay ludicrous amounts of money to go to the school.

Having said that, I'm not suprised by the story. It's well in line with some of the... computer activities... that took place in my days there.

Re:What does it matter...

[dubiousmike]

Mybe it means that wisdom doesn't always come with age...

:P

Re:What does it matter...

[BTWR]

(was in fact considered for joining the Ivy League in the 60s

I have seen this claim by at least a dozen schools (Tufts, Brandeis, NYU, Michigan, to name a few). These are completely untrue, and I always wonder: WHY DO THEY CARE??? I have seen (from 3/4 of those mentioned) web links that claim this to be true, but never from anything more than a professor's heresay or a student newspaper. MIT, Cal Tech and Duke were never considered for the Ivy, and they are way better than Penn, Columbia and arguably even the "big three" Harvard Priceton and Yale.

I have heard this rumor mostly from Tutfts, and I always thought it was sad. Tufts is a fine school and rather than being pissed off they don't have a stupid title they should brag about the qualities that they DO have.

Re:What does it matter...

[bourne]

You hear it so much from Tufts because so many of the students at Tufts applied and got rejected by Ivy League schools. It's completely acknowledged as an "Ivy back-up" school within the student population.

These are completely untrue

Well, I wasn't there in the 60s, and the story seemed credibly described when I saw it. A little Googling supports the "Myth" interpretation, though, so it looks like you're right. I'll avoid spreading the rumor any further ;>

Re:What does it matter...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's Bacardi 151 product placement.

Re:What does it matter...

[Anonymous Coward]

Duke?? Why, is that where YOU went to school? Was Stanford ever considered?

Re:What does it matter...

[Anonymous Coward]

MIT is only better than Penn and Columbia in some areas. This whole "my school is better than your school" business is ridiculous, anyway. For what I wanted to do with my life, my school (the other big school in the Boston area) was perfect; who cares if Tufts and Harvard and MIT have better reputations in different fields?

Re:What does it matter...

[BTWR]

Actually, I went to Cornell - a school that yes, is "overall" not as "good" as Yale, but we don't let that define us... we just keep on truckin' until we get to the Hot Truck.

Computer Terrorists

[Hackura]

Now THESE ppl are the real computer terrorists, or perhaps traitors would be a better description. They better hope that the govt doesnt pull a kevin Mitnick on that ass! I actually hope they do prosecute these little maggots.

Re:Computer Terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

Prosecute them for what? Making a quick buck...freakin' hypocritical "Free Kevin, Send Spammers to Jail" idiot.

Re:Computer Terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

For what? Spam isn't illegal you numfuck. You may not like it. I may not like it. But its not illegal. I get real spam mail too. To fucking bad. Live with it

Re:Computer Terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

You call a few students who don't know what they're doing "computer terrorists"? These kids may be idiots, but the real problem is the people at the top, sending out millions of spam emails a day, and employing naive students to help them.

Oh, me, me, pick me!

[lastberserker]

Dear Mr. Spammer, I wouldn't mind to relay your
spam at all! In fact, I would do it with a full
satisfaction of doing a valuable service to the
community! Please, pretty please, pick (and pay)
me to be your relay!

WBR / lastberserker

.
.
.

[...of course I won't detail on _where_ I would
relay your spam, but what's the matter - noone
would miss it anyways...]

Re:Oh, me, me, pick me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd relay it to Vipul's Razor / SpamNet.

Re:Oh, me, me, pick me!

[Chasqui]

so that I can better relay your spam, please send me your e-mail address.

Re:Oh, me, me, pick me!

[lastberserker]

Hey, you already have my address - you send
me spam in dozens every freakin' day! ;-D

Re:6th post

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - I got first post instead of sixth, how could this happen... I planned it oh-so-carefully and it's all gone to shit!

Anyhow, let's get back on topic - are students really that stupid? I mean, c'mon, 20 bucks?

I guess geeks can't strip for money (well, I wouldn't have been able to, with my body) so they whore themselves out for less money.

Personally, I'd rather strip than act as a spam relay. Hell, I would rather be a gigalo (sp?). Overall, I'd feel less dirty...

I would guess that these students didn't really know what they were doing. If they did, they'd probably ask for more money. Or maybe I have to much faith in young people...

Incidently, I just love the diagram at the bottom of the article, though it is a bit inaccurate. They forgot the part where the student hands his soul over though - guess it's hard to draw the intangible. And why doesn't the spammer have horns and a pitch fork?

Students selling information

[brejc8]

I have been getting spam addressed to [my_unix_username]@[my_machinename].cs.man.ac.uk
My machine passes the mail to me but I have no idea how the people got this address.
The only way I can think of is if someone used finger @ on the machines in the department and then stuck the username with the machinename.
As far as I am aware the finger@ is blocked to people outside the department so I am starting to suspect that some students are behind this.
Especially as the spam is for local companies.

Re:Students selling information

[pibakic]

Same happened to me, my .cs.man.ac.uk started receiving spam during last semester. Struck me as very strange because my uni address doesn't get used anywhere (well, nowhere that I don't trust).

The irony of receiving "Get your diploma now..." spam on my university mail account...

Re:Students selling information

[gowen]

Oh man, I'm with you. 3 years ago, I had a [username]@ma.man.ac.uk, account, and recently I got it back. Jesus, we get a lot of spam. So much so, in fact, that the sysadmin has just installed Spam Assassin, which (I'm told) is doing a pretty good job...

Re:Students selling information

[igaborf]

That's one possibility. Another is that someone just built a spam list by Googling the domain man.ac.uk:

http://www.google.com/search?q=cb%40cs.man.ac.uk

Moral: Put your email address ANYWHERE on the 'Net and you'll get spam.

Re:Students selling information

[brejc8]

the intresting thing was that it was to my machine and not to just cs.

Re:Students selling information

[Drakonian]

I have the exact same problem with my school Unix account too. I never even use the account and get more spam on it then any of the acocunts I actually use.

I have already tried googling for my domain on the web and nothing shows up. I'm interested, like you, to find out how this is happening. I hadn't thought of finger before, that's a good point.

Re:Students selling information

[str0be]

Me three. Pretty much everyone I know in the department has this problem.

Re:Students selling information

[Erasmus Darwin]

"I have been getting spam addressed to [my_unix_username]@[my_machinename].cs.man.ac.uk"

Do you have ident running? Could a website you connected to have used ident to get your username and then prepended it to the reverse lookup of your IP?

Re:Students selling information

[brejc8]

no i dont but good point.

The university's MIS folks

[fudgefactor7]

Should just kill those kid's connections, or charge them $50 a month for the "privelage" of being a spammer--then this whole problem goes away. Mind you, the network and its resources are the University's, and not the student's.

Re:The university's MIS folks

[CrazyDuke]

If I remember correctly, most universities with a clue have something in the AUP that says they can't use the university network for profit. They don't care about ebayers or the banner bars, but it keeps the students from hosting porn paysites and stuff like this.

has to be done...Monty quote...

[Karem Lore]

Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;

Vikings: Spam spam spam spam...

Waitress: ...spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam...

Vikings: Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!

Waitress: ...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.

The Evil FTP & P2P

[BlkPanther]

"- they were not contacted by the company directly," says Tolman, who adds that the software likely was downloaded via FTP or some other file-sharing protocol.

Damn! The FTP & P2P protocols strike again! Without FTP OR P2P, nobody could download this evil software! BAN FTP!! BAN P2P!! Nobody will download bad software again!

...right...

Re:The Evil FTP & P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

He forgot to mention that it's equally likely that they got it off a website somewhere.

I agree with you, and think they should ban HTTP, then :3

(Hey, imagine the bandwidth we'd save ... *flees* )

The new hazing

[Anonymous Coward]

*Receives SPAM*
"Thank you sir! May I have another?"
*Receives SPAM*
"Thank you sir! May I have another?"
*Receives SPAM*
"Thank you sir! May I have another?"...

"Educating?"

[jbrayton]

I love this line:

Tufts leans toward educating first-time offenders about the downsides of their behavior, saving harsh punishment for repeat delinquents, she says.

If the students sought the business of the spammers, they are probably quite well "educated" on what they were doing how wrong it was. I am shocked that they were not thrown out of the dorms entirely!

Seems like Tufts is looking the other way to me!

Re:"Educating?"

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely, some friend of theirs said "I hear such-and-such company will give you $20 to relay some email," and they downloaded the software and began getting paid, none the wiser about what exactly they were doing. Most students here at Tufts don't even know that allowing Kazaa to share files breaks their network usage agreements...

You know it..

[grub]

!!! MAKE MONEY FAST !!!

Earn as much as $20.00 a month sending out unsolicited email!

Re:You know it..

[Fammy2000]

I think I saw this very same ad last time I was donating plasma...

What's next?

[Honorbound]

Will they be setting up servers to share pirated music and video or something??? Oh, wait...

Re:What's next?

[permaculture]

Since we're on this topic, here's an email I got this morning, F.Y.I.:

-=- -=- -=-
This afternoon [User-Support dude] reported that mail was slow and users were complaining. Cause: [Student's Online Radio Station] relaying spam! This also happened 2 or 3 weeks ago and they found and fixed the problem. (no, it's not an intentional DoS attack) Btw, [Student's Online Radio Station] is the [student] radio station's machine, which is run by students.
We do not have rights to administer it.

Have tried to contact the guys who run the machine to point out the problem, but without success. [Our] email config has become a little spaghetti-like and it was not obvious how to
nicely block the mail from reaching [their machine] without causing knock-on effects, so - have asked [Networks dude] to break a connection
to the machine. He has kindly blocked traffic from outside [Uni] to [Student's Online Radio Station] for me.

Our options were limited because of the add-on network kit on the Student Union subnet, so this is a rather crude way to block spam relaying.

However, cannot allow services to be degraded and they were warned about the problems it causes last time. So, if anyone receives complaint about the block on [this machine], please refer them to myself or Systems Unix. Thank you.

Cheers,
[System Admin Dude]
-=- -=- -=-

Cut them off

[dzelenka]

1. Install an IDE and identify the culprits
2. After one warning, pull their plug
3....
4. Am I a prophet?

(For the benefit of the typical /. reader, when I say "pull their plug" I'm not talking about some sexual act. I mean disconnect them from the network.)

Re:Cut them off

[TheRaven64]

Absolutely! I say remove their... ...Internet connections.

Re:Cut them off

[Anonymous Coward]

After one warning, pull their plug

This isn't 1994. Anyone spamming these days knows exactly what they're doing.

Skip the warning.

Re:Cut them off

[Anonymous Coward]

There are more computer idiots in this world than you imagine. I am a student at Tufts who works on other students' computers, and the vast majority of them (like most students, I suspect) will download and install anything and everything until their computers take half an hour just to start up. And trust me, none of them read the usage agreement.

...but they could be making $50/hour

[callipygian-showsyst]

...if they put a video cam in their dorm room. They sold out cheap!

"image problem"

[gmuslera]

The practice isn't so much a bandwidth hog as it is an image problem for universities, she says.

<p>The "image problem" will be when their domain/ip range became listed in the main RBLs.

<p>Will be fun if is discovered who are the students that did that, then the "Revenge of the Nerds" movie will have a new version.

What?

[arvindn]

... how students at the 151-year-old Tufts University were paid as little as $20/month to relay spam from computers in their dorms.

Until I read the article I was under the impression it was an article complaining that the students were not getting a fair enough price for spamming ;^)

Thank Heavens for Diagrams!

[greenhide]

I didn't understand the article at all. Then I saw the helpful graphic at the bottom of the article. It clearly showed just how the process worked! Without that picture, I would have been in the dark.

Re:Thank Heavens for Diagrams!

[nicedream]

I was thinking the same thing. That diagram does nothing but rehash a condensed version of the article with cute figures. It does nothing to enhance one's understanding of the subject matter (which isn't really that difficult to grasp anyways).

Re:Thank Heavens for Diagrams!

[doorbot.com]

Without that picture, I would have been in the dark.

I agree, the diagram was a necessity. Without it, I wouldn't have known the students were paid in oversized novelty dollars.

Follow the money?

[mjh]

The article mentions that they can't track the original spammers, that all the further that they can get is to the students computers. If they really want to track the spammers can't they track the money?

Which makes me wonder, how do the students get paid? Remaining anonymous is critical to spammers being able to continue doing their thing. How does a spammer actually pay someone w/out being trackable? I can't imagine that they send cash.

Re:Follow the money?

[Viol8]

Well , these students must be pretty dumb anyway to do this for a measly $20 with the risk of being banned permanently from the uni network (or even the uni itself) so maybe the spammers ask for bank details (get them because of the amazing credulity of Simon Student), deposit $20 and then sell those details on to some people in Nigeria who always seem to be desperate for somewhere to deposit $20,000,000 :) Ahem.

Re:Follow the money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Money orders, gift certificates, free passes to a local bar, etc. There are lots of ways to complete that transaction clandestinely.

Re:Follow the money?

[/dev/trash]

Why wouldn't they use cash? For a college student cold hard cash is in high demand.

Re:Follow the money?

[macbot3000]

Probably like the record companies do. They use American Express Gift Cheques to pay the radio stations their payola.

Not traceable or taxable.

Re:Follow the money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares? Without a real source address, how do we know that this is really relayed and not originating from that machine? I say if you can't track it back to the spammer, they are the spammer.

Yikes

[kien]

"The students involved in this found the opportunity themselves - they were not contacted by the company directly," says Tolman, who adds that the software likely was downloaded via FTP or some other file-sharing protocol.

Oh great, just wait until someone from one of the entertainment cartels reads that. Coming soon from a congresscritter near you:
HR 34235, The Federal Ban of the File Transfer Protocol Act of 2003.

--K.

AUP?

[redneck_kiwi]

Doesn't the IT Department at any college, university etc enforce their AUP? Doh! They don't have an AUP.....

Seriously, I would imagine that surely the IT Department has an AUP that would prevent this behavior along with appropriate actions for dealing with violators?

Universities are For Experimentation?

[Tha_Big_Guy23]

From the Article...

"It all sounds like a poor man's grid computing," says Greg Scott, IS manager at Oregon State University College of Business in Corvalis, who had not heard of the spamming-for-pay tactic, but was not surprised. He says Oregon State throttles down bandwidth available to residence halls because of file-sharing and restricts the ports students can use. "Universities are for experimenting, pushing the edge. But some students push harder than others," Scott says.

...and restricts the ports students can use. "Universities are for experimenting,...
Doesn't look like they're experimenting too much, since they're restricted from using certain "ports". Could just be me though.

Foregin exchange program or something

[phrantic]

Gee students today have some really funny names,
What kind of parent are going to call their kid something like "growyourdick", it's just cruel
And as for calling your kid mortgage that is just so sad, but what can you expect with a family name re-finance...
one thing that is bugging me though is "penile" and boys name or a girls name?
I don't know...Students today

Where the heck do you live...

[mjpaci]

If you buy the Stop & Shop variety, that's closer to 80 boxes of Mac and Cheese!

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

...if not for the content, which the Slashdot article summarizes fine, then for the cartoon.
Text below (but it just isn't the same without the pictures):

SPOILER

SPACE

Spam Payola
Tufts University late last month discovered that some of its students were subletting their network access to spammers. Here is how it worked:

1) The student (green) discovers a spammer (orange) willing to pay him to install what amounts to a message transfer agent on his computer.
Graphic: evil spammer shakes student's hand

2) The spammer uses the student's PC to bounce mail from his system to the Internet, covering the trail to the real source of the spam.
Graphic: Evil spammer kicks a message (arrow) into back of student's monitor and it bounces into fuzzy Internet cloud.

3) The student collects a fee for subletting his PC to the spammer.
Graphic: Student, dollar bill in foreground

um, hang the firewall admin?

[Ummagumma]

Having never been in a school enviornment, I don't know how restrictive/open most schools networks are - but shouldn't something like this be firewalled, or at least monitored? I do corporate security where I work now - we allow port 25 open outbound (against my advice), but I monitor it to keep an eye open for abuse, and shut down any abusive client ASAP. I would think *someone* at Tufts should have/would have noticed this, and corrected the situation.

Re:um, hang the firewall admin?

[Anonymous Coward]

They DID notice and correct the situation. He was caught right?

After all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people do kill people for money, some other people declare wars and kill thousands to take control of the global oil market (ie: money).
We already know what place in our society those students will take once they will be in their 40s or 50s.

It could be worse....

[RyoSaeba]

I mean, students could agree to use MS products in exchange of money...
Err, wait...
You mean they pay to use the products ? Or they copy & use them for free ?
Darn, where are we going today....

Free MS bashing, but well, sometimes you just need to have a good laugh ^_-

Re:It could be worse....

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck did that even have to do with anything? It's completely out of left field. Get a better hobby, hobo.

Spoofing MAC addresses

[Anonymous Coward]

He could have been smart enough to spoof his address.

The sysadmin could track down the traffic to his port on the router in the building, but would have to do some digging to prove he was the guilty party.

Re:Spoofing MAC addresses

[Anonymous Coward]

MAC address spoofing eh? How exactly does that work, then?

You could change your MAC address to something else, but the ARP tables on the router would still point directly to the port, and your computer.

You could give a bogus MAC address for outbound packtes, but if your computer doesn't respond with the same MAC address to ARP requests, then no one can send packets to you. Including the SMTP server.

So messing with the MAC might have slow down the admins for a minute or two.

Re:Spoofing MAC addresses

[Quill_28]

If I remember correctly.
You are assuming they are using switches not hubs, because most hubs(at least older ones) have no knowledge of MAC addresses.
Of course, they are probably using switches so it's a mute point.

And I may be wrong...

Congratulations!

[Chocolate Teapot]

After all this time, you have finally figured out why unsolicited bulk email is called spam.

Also, wouldn't it be funny if someone named a scripting language after Monty Python? That would look so good on your resumé...proficient in Monty.

Breath in....breath out...breath in....breath out.....Get the idea? You take over from there.

Re:Congratulations!

[Karem Lore]

Yep, aren't you impressed. Sorry not everyone is as clued up as you and I. However, you assume I didn't know this, whereas all I was merely doing was quoting a very very very funny scene... So, in the words of Monty before you decide to fire some ammunition at someone else: erif dna esra ruoy pu tekcor egral rehtar a evohS

punishment

[sstory]

Confiscate their equipment, kick them all out of school, and prohibit them from entering a publicly funded school anywhere in the State. Whatever the punishment for rape is, give that +10% to them. Then let Cartman kick them in the nuts.

Re:punishment

[Anonymous Coward]

Tufts isn't a public university, I don't see how they can be banned from a publicly funded school by them. Anyway, you are saying that rape is a lesser crime than spamming? You really need to get out more.

Re:punishment

[sstory]

Read more closely next time. I didn't say Tufts should do any of that. I get out plenty, Anonymous Coward.

Spam is worth something

[OECD]

The interesting thing is that the spammers are now paying people to put out their spam. Now each outgoing spam costs something above the overhead costs. Sure, it's something really tiny ($20/??) but it's not zero. I wonder what the price point is that spammers are willing to pay? Would schemes that would charge spammers for their spam really be a deterent? How much would you have to charge?

Re:Spam is worth something

[farnz]

The article states that the cost is $20 per month, for all the spam the spammer could send. $20 pcm is still overhead costs, not per spam costs.

A scheme charging per spam e-mail received might or might not work, but this incident does not indicate whether or not it would.

sick crazy bastards

[Drakon]

Servers should do backchecks to see if someone is running an open relay and refuse to offer services if they do.

one of many solutions to the biggest problem in the world. And don't give me shit about famine and war and such, you know death isn't nearly as annoying as spam

SPAM IS THEFT!

[www.sorehands.com]

You are using other people's resources to force them to listen to your message without paying for those resources.

This is the same as if I call you, say that I am your mother and that I have fallen and can't get up, but I really don't know you and that want to sell you my wireless service.

What part of SPAMMING IS THEFT don't you understand?

Re:SPAM IS THEFT!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are using other people's resources to force them to listen to your message without paying for those resources.

When I get junk mail, they're using MY MAILBOX and TAXPAYER-PAID MAIL CARRIERS to force me to listen to their message.

When I get telemarketing calls, they're using MY TELEPHONE and the PUBLIC SWITCHED TELEPHONE NETWORK to force me to listen to their message.

But most importantly, when anybody sends any email at all, they're using other people's resources, like mail servers, bandwidth, and electricity, to send their message. Without paying for it. So tell me why, again, we should have a double standard for spammers?

The only answer is to make email a metered service. From now on, it's $0.37 per email, regardless of content. Happy now?

What part of SPAMMING IS THEFT don't you understand?

Oh, I understand it. I just realize that it's not true. What part of "spamming is at worst a nuisance" do you not understand?

Don't answer. It's a rhetorical question. The whole Slashdot-reading world already knows that you're an idiot. It's not necessary for you to prove it to them.

Re:SPAM IS THEFT!

[www.sorehands.com]

When I get junk mail, they're using MY MAILBOX and TAXPAYER-PAID MAIL CARRIERS to force me to listen to their message.

Mail carriers are not taxpayer paid. Postage is what pays the mail carriers. And, it is illegal to place any items in the mailbox unless postage has been paid.

Re:SPAM IS THEFT!

[Mr. Firewall]

When I get junk mail, they're using MY MAILBOX and TAXPAYER-PAID MAIL CARRIERS to force me to listen to their message.

Wrong. Letter carriers are not supported by taxpayers. The U.S. Postal Service is self-supporting... and the junk-mailers PAY to send their garbage. According to sources I once had within the postal system, the junk-mail postage is actually an important revenue stream to them (i.e., without it, we would have to pay even more to send letters).

I agree with you about "telemarketing" (read: phone solicitors) though.

What a shame....

[Ghengis]

You'd think there would be some self-respecting HaX0rs who've matriculated to Tufts who could take care of the problem by bringing these soul-less sellouts' machines to a screeching halt! Or at least they could set up a CS or Cp.Eng. class in hacking to TEACH some kids how to bring down the spammers!

The School is very liberal..this isn't surprising

[Migelikor1]

I'm a current student at tufts, and I'm not that surprised that there is some abuse of the system. The University is overall pretty laid back about student computing. The only things the sysadmins monitor for is virii that may cause systemwide problems (they send a person to your room with virus software if one's detected) and excessive bandwidth usage (over a gig per day for more than 3 days in month.)
While it is troubling to know that some of my fellow students abused the policy, it really isn't that hard. Though it pisses me off a little that they used University bandwidth for their little endeavor, the school has plenty, due to massive infrastructure installation in the late nineties. It hadn't caused any issues for the school (nobody I know has complained about a slowdown) so it's my opinion that the fact it's a university isn't a big deal. The kids are entrepreneurs, even if it's in a business I despise, taking advantage of the resources they've paid for. The real question is wether the school will add a clause to the acceptable use policy and start to monitor for spammers. Wouldn't be surprising.

Bandwidth Hog?

[scottennis]

I think it's interesting that Tufts said it wasn't causing a bandwidth problem for them.

Usually bandwidth is one of the arguments used against spammers.

Re:Bandwidth Hog?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth is a problem for the ISP that is receiving gigabytes upon gigabytes of spam from sources around the world for their million users. Bandwidth is NOT a problem where the spam is created--that's why it is often sent on a dial-up connection. That is exactly why spam is a problem: It causes a problem for the recipient in time AND bandwidth, whereas it takes very little of both for the sender.

Re:Bandwidth Hog?

[Anonymous Coward]

tufts has a gigabit connection which is not even half used, and smtp isn't exactly the most bandwidth-intensive protocal. it would not even make a dent. also, resnet has 10mbit connections (connected via gigabit) so the most one person could use is 10mbit, which, on this network, is hardly anything.

Well

[Kourino]

The University of Minnesota also does this; you have to register MAC addresses under your X.500 account, and you're given up to 6. (That's just about all I need ... NICs in three computers, LAN connection on my Linksys, and 802.11b card in my laptop.)

The DHCP servers only give out IPs to MAC addresses that are registered thus. Also, you have to authenticate with your X.500 account to get an IP from the campus wireless service. This seems so obvious to me I'm surprised more people don't do it ^^;

(Also, for those who read the article, the guy from UofM that says that "we don't allow clients to act as servers" ... this basically means they block port 80 incoming traffic. Nothing more. Although the service agreement for res hall networking does say that you're not allowed to serve stuff.)

Look! the 27th '20 Bucks?!? Outrageous!' Post

[teamhasnoi]

Everyone has said how 20 bucks isn't anything, but it's pure profit! I'm assuming these kids don't have to click 'Send' 1.6 million times, and they don't pay for bandwidth.

Another shining example of the 'me first' attitude that permeates society. (Especially in the US) -

Crap! It's free money, with no responsibillity attached, and poor college students would stand in line at the finger-smelling factory if they didn't have to work.

I'm surprised it took 20 bucks.

Flashbacks

[fizbin]

Cutco....

Must... sell... knives...

The whole experience still makes me shudder.

Re:Flashbacks

[dubiousmike]

you and EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERSON I have ever spoken to that either sold them or made it through thte first day of "oreintation".

Though one could make a little money on it, it still smacked of a scam. What salesperson in their right mond would pay $500 to get started to sell anything door to door AND have to generate you OWN LEADS!!!

utterly rediculous.

Re:Flashbacks

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

I agree..... I used to sell them also....

However, I didn't have to spend any more than $150 to get started (I must have had a benevolent leader).

It didn't take me long to quit. I still don't care for their marketing practices. However, the products are great (more than I can say about Amway's product line). I still have mine 12 years since I got them. They're still as sharp and shiny as ever. I even have an inherited set that's over 20 years old. They're in great shape also.

I'm going to risk sounding like a hypocrite. I say if you never bought Cutco knives, and someone approaches you to buy them, give them a try. Money worth spending. However, don't jump at the first offer. Make it a hard sell for them and get the maximum discount you can. Even offer a single amount, take it or leave it, just slightly below their final offer. You'll get a good set of knives, but at the same time you'll effectively discourage the wayward soul from continuing on that dastardly path. You'd be doing them a favor. There's plenty of youth around for Vector Marketing to continue the practice, just don't allow someone get stuck in it.

Re:Flashbacks

[dubiousmike]

My mom sold them. My mother-in-law gave us a few "extra" ones she had lying around.

They are great knives and I have no complaints what so ever about their quality. If I had the money, I might even buy some myself.

But their tactics, not only for marketing, but especially recruiting is what p1ssed me off to no end. As a teen looking for a job, I called an ad for $15 an hour. They would not tell me what the job was. Perhaps this is a necessary tactic on their part as I NEVER would have bothered to waste my day to go to their seminar.

I likely would buy a couple of knives, but only when one of my friend or realatives corners me into buying them or risk bad feelings between us. Frankly, there are other high-end-ish knives out there that don't rely upon sales and lead generation by guilt.

:P

Re:Flashbacks

[Thing 1]

Nice, thanks for the flashback. I sold Cutco knives for a couple months back in college. Made back what I paid to enter and a bit more but delivering pizzas was better pay (and steadier).

I still have my knives, and they still work great decades later (man I'm old).

Re:Flashbacks

[quintessent]

Are they the ones who sell the "world's best knives"?

A friend in college asked me if I'd heard of the world's best knives. I told him no, but I owned the world's cheapest knives, so if they ever broke or went dull, it would cost me nothing to replace them.

Re:Flashbacks

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck does "rediculous" mean? I couldn't find it in the dictionary.

Re:Flashbacks

[geekbox5]

I almost started doing that. Then, the manager tried to convince me that it was okay to drive on a suspended license, with no restricted permit. I still have nightmares about the "Double-D" edge.

Re:Flashbacks

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU HAVE got to be kidding.

Let me clue you into something. Knives do not go 'dull' that easy. You have to try at it. Using them to cut food is not trying at it.

My parents recived a set of knives for a wedding present. Not the brand you are talking about. Just some random knives that was purchased as a gift from a store. They STILL have them. They are still sharp. They are still shiny. Metal does not usually just 'go bad'.

The only ones I have ever had a problem with are the ones that have cheap plastic handles and are rivited together to hold the blade on. The knife is fine the handle broke. But guess what it was a 10 dollar set of flatware. Dont spend TOO much on flatware. They usually last awhile...

Re:Flashbacks

[sonatinas]

yea my bosses were like the office space boss so in responise i had an office space moment and quit, trying to sell a 900$ set of knives to people who cant afford it is silly, let alone a 20$ knife,, but the spatula spreader does kick ass

protip: almost slice your finger off when doing a demo on a grapefruit with the carver u will get a sale, along with a scar

Re:Flashbacks

[Reziac]

Once upon a long time ago, I went to a recruiting seminar for some such marketing concern. They touted how much money we could all make selling their product, yadda yadda, the usual.

Now, as it happened, I was sitting where I could see the previous week's paycheck records someone had left laying open on the manager's desk. The records were sorted by amount paid to each employee (er, independent contractor).

ONE person (out of abut 30 on that page) made the "several hundred dollars" in a week that we were promised if only we did good. ONE other person made $100. Everyone else made $35 to $40 for the entire WEEK.

Yep, helluva career.

Re:Flashbacks

[Anonymous Coward]

haha... A woman I worked with grew up in Olean, NY, where CutCo knives are made. Apparently the whole town is based around this knife factory, and is kinda the Mecca of the CutCo cult.

-Dan.

Re:Flashbacks

[shepd]

>Let me clue you into something. Knives do not go 'dull' that easy. You have to try at it. Using them to cut food is not trying at it.

Then, pray tell me, why do professional restaurants have their knives professionally sharpened if knives stay sharp forever without abuse? Are all those thousands of companies scammers? Isn't it hard to scam someone when checking if the problem exists is as simple as resting your knife on a tomato?

YOU HAVE got to be kidding me if you're going to tell me professional chefs haven't a clue how to use knives properly.

Only shitty "laser" knives last forever. Yes, I know that doesn't make sense, but what I mean is that "laser" knives remain at their mediocre sharpness level forever. Real knives, the type that you normally sharpen, go dull from use.

Re:Flashbacks

[msim]

Strange that, even I made it.

I went to it as it was advertised mysteriously in the local paper as a genuine job. I sat and listened, it took all of 10 minutes for me to realise it was a sales pitch to me. To this day I dont know why i didn't walk outta there, I guess "morbid curiosity" really.

After i left i was swearing my ass off, they wasted my time, wasted my petrol, and for fuck sake, i dry cleaned my fecking SUIT!

This is news???

[JonKatzIsAnIdiot]

What? University students who show extremely poor judgement and are ignorant of the true cost of their actions are news? The rest of the world has known this for years, on Slashdot, they're just clueing into it now.

Complete stupidity

[skermit]

Who in their right mind (much less college students) would jeopardize a multi-tens-of-thousand dollar education for what amounts to less than $250 a year? Not to mention violating most university TOS'es, this goes against the scruples and general netiquette. *sigh* Try to imagine what it would be like if college students pulled this crap outside a mall dropping little gifts on everybody's windshield. I think these fools should have their digital lingam neutered.

College days economics

[JSkills]

While I certainly understand the need for extra money while in college (for example, many students I knew at Fordham U were addicted to crack so they stole each others text books and sold them back to the bookstore), relaying spam is really low!

Blacklists work

[frankie]

The university I work for has found itself on various spam blacklists each September for the past 3 years. The reason has been the same each time: underclassmen in the dorms installing old RH distros or whatever that includes an open mail relay.

This spring SMTP will be restricted to only approved departmental servers. Anyone else gets dropped at the firewall. It's a shame (academic freedom and all that) but really necessary.

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[ericesposito]

The plural of virus is viruses, not virii. Even if it were the Latin plural, it would be viri, not virii.

20 boxes?

[feed_me_cereal]

only 20 boxes of mac & cheese? I'm a college student and I sure as hell don't buy that kind of extravagant mac & cheese. Kroger regularly puts its "kroger brand" mac & cheese on sale for 25 cents a box!

Spam

[deadmongrel]

another reason why the minimum wage should be raised!

At my University.

[MarvinMouse]

Where I am at now, they have a very strict rule on that. If you spam, or are caught spamming, or are caught passing on chain mail letters, or a whole list of rules. They'll punish you in one of three ways (likely)

Slap on the wrist. Basically translates into loss of marks for CS majors, or banishement from facilities for a short period, or a whole list of things.

Banishment from computing facilities on campus. Thus, if you are a CS major or basically any major that requires computer systems use. You pretty much just failed yourself out of university.

Expulsion. This has happened with a few people who were really abusing the system and even had warnings.

Personally, I think if anyone even considers sending a spam on the network to bypass the filters, that they should be expelled immediately, or at very least banished from the facilities permanently. It is a priviledge, not a right to use those facilities. If you abuse them, you should lose that priviledge.

Re:At my University.

[deadmongrel]

punishment for spam is okay. but for chain letters? i know they are stupid and I do hate them. but punishment for chainletters is bad and stupid

Re:At my University.

[kindbud]

English not your major? "Privilege" does not contain the letter "d" (unless your privvy is on a cliff, I guess).

Now...

[Mysticalfruit]

This just proves that Tuff's has a better business school than Harvards...

Re:Now...

[CaptMonkeyDLuffy]

No, the Harvard students held out for fifty bucks a month.

An important lesson.

[dr_eaerth]

College is not about the lessons you take in class, but the lessons you learn in life. These students have learned the financial benefits of being a whore to shady business interests.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the future of the United States Congress. [applause]

Sick of spam?

[Junky191]

Stop buying the things they are selling in spam. It will disappear overnight if everyone does this. No more laws or new bloated govenment enforcement programs required.

Re:Sick of spam?

[Kombat]

Impossible. If even just one, single, ignorant white trash loser ponies up his almost-maxxed-out Visa for a bottle of Penis Enlarger for every 9,999 people you convince to ignore it, they'll continue.

Re:Sick of spam?

[RedWolves2]

almost-maxxed-out Visa

And this same person is using the get out of debt spam mails to fix his visa card. Will the cycle never end?

Re:Sick of spam?

[mikehilly]

Its not that one person out of 10000 buys the product. Its all about clicking on the link and getting the person to the web site. A lot of spam email that claims to sell something really is just a trip to get you to click to a web site that is full of ads. So the spammers don't care if you buy or not, they usually get paid if the ad site gets enough hits. The best option is to set up Rules to filter and get used to the delete key. I have found that setting up two email accounts is best. One that I only give out to people on my trust list (very few) and then another that I give out to most anyone who asks and/or when I need to give an email to sign up for something "free." This way you can keep your sanity with an In-box that maybe only have 2 or 3 spam messages in it per day rather than 20+. Also (most likely) no important message will get deleted unintentionally. Delete it and move on.

How clever can you get?

[Pointy_Hair]

One would think these aspiring students would try something a bit more profitable like a pr0n site instead of a dumb spam relay.

Sheeesh! what's happening with these damn kids anyway?

Re:6th post

[Anonymous Coward]

MBA students would relay spam for much less money. Unfortunately, they don't know how to configure a relay.

Maybe someone should come up with an easy to install spam relay: "Spam Drone 1.0".

Re:Hmm.. and for the other side.

[buswolley]

How about, financial aid isn't enough.

How about having to live in the dorm basement to hide from credit debt collectors? . yes. I managed it for three months.

if they only the price of weed was lower....

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[Anonymous Coward]

...and if you know who they are it's your duty to rat. Sorry to say, but by knowing and not ratting, your'e aiding and abeting!

Calculus book = $121

[Anonymous Coward]

Calc I, II, and III

You know you are old when....

[gosand]

What happened to the good old days when college students sold blood, sperm or surfed the web to earn beer money!

You know you are old when:

You had to work a real job to get money in college

People refer to the "good old days" and in your mind it was yesterday

There was no World Wide Web when you were in college (unless you count FTP, BBSs, and Gopher sites)

Your final paper in Computer Hardware Design was on the Pentium processor, and you could only find three sources because it wasn't due to be released for another 6 months.

You post on Slashdot recounting how old you are, hoping someone will think you are cool

Re:You know you are old when....

[Snotnose]

You know you are really old when:

You didn't have time to work in college, the coursework was too tough.

The Apple ][ hadn't been invented yet, let alone the BBS.

Your final paper in Computer Hardware Design had a footnote referencing something called an IC.

CmdrTaco wasn't born when you graduated.

Sometimes I feel like the 1 was new fangled when I was in college, before everything was 0's.

Re:You know you are old when....

[kalidasa]

You know you are old when:

You see a posting that seems to elide the distinction between WWW and Internet, and it takes you a minute to realize that the poster does know the difference, he's just trying to be funny.

Either that, or it means that you read slashdot too much.

(PS: I did my final paper in script on an IBM mainframe. At home, I had an 8088 and thought I was the bee's knees. Beat that, gosand.)

Re:You know you are old when....

[marko123]

You remember the job you worked to get money in college as a real job.

People refer to the "good old days" and in your mind it was a a long while ago.

You mathematically proved the NP completeness of the universal Turing machine with a paper and pencil.

In Engineering lounges, they just installed a complete library of books on steam boiler design.

Your final paper in Business Machine Construction was on Babbage's Analytical Engine

You read Slashdot in between giving free lectures to fellow veterans at the University of the Third Age.

Re:You know you are old when....

[Dan B.]

You missed one...

You have a slashdot ID under 10,000

Re:You know you are old when....

[gosand]

PS: I did my final paper in script on an IBM mainframe. At home, I had an 8088 and thought I was the bee's knees. Beat that, gosand.)

Obviously, I cannot compete with someone who is old enough to use the phrase "bee's knees". :-)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why [insert deity here] Why?

[korny69]

What I do not understand is why don't they just block all incoming traffic to the dorms and labs? Why is it that they allow for this traffic to even make it to the PC in the first place?

Frank Grewe, manager of Internet services for the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis-St. Paul, also wasn't surprised. He says the university does not let client machines be used as servers, employs static IP addresses and tracks the amount of traffic going to and from those addresses.

Why track ... just do not allow it in the first place and it will be a whole lot easier. I just do not see a reason in allowing inbound traffic to a static IP address on a campus unless it is a server owned (no pun intended) and operated by the staff. When you allow anyone and everyone to do as they please, all hell will break lose.

I can see the point of some PCs and not others, but it should always be a special case when a PC needs access to it from the outside. This is how most corporate companies run their network. I just do not understand why in most cases all I have to do is 'host -l -t any uni-net.edu' and get a list of hosts to look at and forward my spam on from.

As for the out-sourcing of CS to someone else, I would have to disagree, because it is incidents like this that usually teach people. And when they go on to the corporate world, hopefully, they will remember that they need to lock their network down . It teaches fundamentals, and in this industry, unlike a lot of others and what a lot of corporate big-heads think, it is experience more than education that counts in the long run.

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[travisd]

Because blocking incoming connections will not stop the problem. The spammers are using custom written relays to do this - there's nothing stopping them from writing the app so that it actually "phones homes" to get it's workload for the day and then sends the spam.

Blocking incoming connections is good for preventing unintentional use - like when most major MTA's came pre-configured to relay anything. That's not the case now so the use from a stanpoint of preventing intentional unauthorized use by internal users it's really not an effective measure.

A more effective method would be to prevent the workstations from actually sending any mail directly - instead forcing them thru a corporate/university managed relay that can do appropriate anti-spam measures, including throttling excessive senders. This is the tactic that man commercial ISP's are taking the the exact same reasons.

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[Brock Lee]

What I do not understand is why don't they just block all incoming traffic to the dorms and labs? Why is it that they allow for this traffic to even make it to the PC in the first place?

That would not have helped here. The student would simply have to run an application which originated the network connection from campus to the spammers server. With TCP, once the connection is established, the traffic is two-way.

Sincerely,

[insert deity here]

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[jchernia]

One reason to allow incoming connections is for games without a central server (I'm thinking of Quake here). It may not be a particularly edifying use, but I wouldn't call it abuse.

-John

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[korny69]

A more effective method would be to prevent the workstations from actually sending any mail directly - instead forcing them thru a corporate/university managed relay that can do appropriate anti-spam measures, including throttling excessive senders. This is the tactic that man commercial ISP's are taking the the exact same reasons.

I do agree that all outgoing and incoming mail should be scrutinized. But I do not see this solution working for very well in the long run. How would you block all the differing protocols used to send spam. You cannot (without a shadow of doubt) bet on every spam being sent from source as SMTP traffic. So as soon as you block SMTP, they will use HTTP to send the mail through a HTTP spam server. So what now -- are you talking about a total proxy solution, that would check all traffic and determine if it is mail or not -- and if so, it will determine if it is SPAM? And this is coming in an age where we cannot 100% filter ALL spam running through just one protocol (SMTP).

All I am stating is that the incorrect thing to do is assume everyone will play nice and account for a 1TB logfile every week of mail traffic to go through incase something happens (and leave it at that).

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[ftobin]

Jeez, what an awful road to go down. The very idea that you cannot be a participant in the internet, and provide your own services, is abhorrent. There should be no problem with a student having his own webserver, mail server (as long as it's not an open relay), finger server, or whatever. Solve problems with specific solutions, not these broad, sweeping, castrating ones.

The way of thinking that you suggest, that only "powers that be" may provide services, promotes consumerism, and prohibits the freedom of individuals.

Your suggestions are antithetical to the very principles that the net was built on, end-to-end.

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you allow anyone and everyone to do as they please, all hell will break lose.

True, how true, and applicable to every aspect of life. For too long people have been allowed to do as they please; fortunately our government has finally decided to correct that problem. Thank [deity]!

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[korny69]

If you think the entire network of a University should be open to any and all traffic, then by all means become a netadmin of a University and do it. Good Luck to ya buddy :/

I have no problem allowing access -- to certain people and trusted networks/machines. Not laying some kind of ground work for security, which includes the filtering, monitoring, and blocking of data being passed through it, opens you up to a bigger mess than just SPAM.

Students who have little or no experience using, much less installing and securifing, a network have no business using network traffic they do not own, administer, and share with others on campus for their own personal uses. This is why most universities have strong policies about personal websites and other servers being hosted on their network.

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[ftobin]

I have no problem allowing access -- to certain people and trusted networks/machines.

DEFAULT DENY policies at large organizations never let the little guy (e.g., student) who is capable of proving himself show that he can operate trustfully. The bureaucracy is just too thick. Just look at how cable companies block all incoming port 80 and 8080, instituted when Code Red or whatever came out, supposedly for the purpose of blocking webserver worms. But the worms have dwindled, and servers patched. And those who were running Apache and not IIS were affected. Yet the blocks remain. Such blocks are not done for technical reasons; that is just an excuse. And the same comes of almost any institution who imposes DEFAULT DENY blocks, saying it's for a technical solution. The block is not going to be held in place because of technical reasons; it will be held in place because of a prevailing mindset that users shouldn't be given power and freedom to provide services to others; they all be filtered through an on-high hierarchy.

Somehow, you then lump a whole bunch of solutions together:

• filtering
• monitoring
• blocking

Monitoring is one thing. Filtering and blocking (the same thing, in essence), is a completely different problem. With DEFAULT DENY (read: DEFAULT BLOCK) policies, you are really going to stifle a lot of creative, technical people. Monitoring can be implemented in a civil manner and a DEFAULT ACCEPT environment, where it finds bad players, and then blocks on a per-case basis.

I pray for the day of host-to-host ipsec, so that middlemen who block based on content (e.g., port-filtering) are thwarted.

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Mr. Ashcroft for your views.

Re:Why [insert deity here] Why?

[bapink01]

The next thing you know, other important infrastructure will be regulated, like roads. I won't be able to drive my homemade jet powered CR2 on america's highway system. And the "Man" will make us get drivers certificates cause too many drunk people were driving. Next will come rules against making my own white lighting. (sarcasm, sarcasm, sarcasm)

This must be common...

[wowbagger]

Given the large amount of spam I get originating from various DSL providers, I would conjecture this sort of thing is pretty common.

The spammers send out a
<voice type="jethro">
U 2 kin make $$$$ width you're computer!!!!!!
</voice> spam, and get multiple morons who figger (sic) "Gorsh! I kin pays fur my DeeEssEll with dis!" and run the spamware.

dupes

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday February 25, @11:13AM

from the i've-seen-this-before dept.

Hm... maybe CmdrTaco should consider posting all his stories under this dept.

So let me get this straight...

[JWyner]

All you have to do is dance, look at porn of the spammer dancing on a cloud, and you recieve a gigantic dollar bill?

Message to Spammers:

[cybermace5]

To the Man in the Can:

I am willing in the utmost confidence and secret to help your with some certain relaying needs. My server does waits idle at my residence in an yet to be disclosed location, ready to relay your messages to the considerate masses. In exchange for your sum of $20 per month, my server will confidentiality flood the Internet with your excellent offerings.

I can personally and utmost attest to guarantee that you messages will pass through entire unaltered, and not be redirected to /dev/null, or replaced with the text "I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR X PERCENT OF ALL YOUR SPAM" and your home address & phone number. I would most certainly not monitor every spam you attempted to send at your discretion, and report each and every instance to the immediately authorities.

I trust you to and maintain the highest level of integrity & confidence in this matter.

--- Ham Nbu Jahir, Supreme Commander of Nigerian National Space Fleet

$45 for calc 1

[jellomizer]

Well it depends a lot on how the book was made. My Calc I book was $45 but it was also a paperback book with no colors and little amount of diagrams. The cost goes up when you get these text books with a bunch of colors, Hard Covers, Full color digrams, photographic pictures, CDROM, and suplment workbook. If you want to pay less for school books partition for the professors to make more consious desisions on the books they require and ask them to take cost into conser. My CS Professor never really thought much about the cost of book for college untill his son enter college himself and he got the bill for the books. After that he was more consious on what books he needed for his class.

Re:$45 for calc 1

[mibat]

If you want to pay less for school books partition for the professors to make more consious desisions on the books they require and ask them to take cost into conser.

....only on slashdot. :)

Re:Bullshit, get a life

[Kombat]

If some kids can earn a few dollars because some nut is willing to pay them for the privilege of using their bandwidth

And therein lies your folly. It's not their bandwidth; it's the school's.

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[Anonymous Coward]

...and if you know who they are it's your duty to rat. Sorry to say, but by knowing and not ratting, your'e aiding and abeting!

Bullshit. I knew people like you in school, when they weren't busy sucking some administrator's or professor's dick, and they were all losers, socially. I hope they (and you) enjoy a life of success gained through irritating brown-nosing, the consequence of which is of course their (and your) lack of interesting friends.

Figures...

[Anonymous Coward]

I also expected this was the case of all those "make $$$ from your computer" signs that are spammed on every telephone post, abandond yards, etc.

The only explaination is that you are either running a spam relaying, address harvisting software, or both.

It was either spamming..

[Anonymous Coward]

Rr telemarketing. Just goes to show how bad ethics and students are getting.

Besides if I was an admin I wouldn't allow this to happen. Makes you wonder what shitty networks and policys the shools have if they allow this to happen.

Let me have your address.

[www.sorehands.com]

Let me have your home address so that I can come by your house and use your TV, computer, phone, etc.

It's ok, you could always put on more locks on your doors and bars on your windows.

Spam detection programs always fail to some extent.

Today relays, tomorrow. . . semiconductors!

[kfg]

This is a pretty cool advancement of technology. It just goes to show that with a little development DNA computers might well move out of the realm of proof of concept into real world usable devices. ( If one assumes, without much justification I must admit, that students are "useful")

So if we make a beowulf cluster of students in a cascading sequence we can make a clock.

Or a pretty weird party.

KFG

"Students approached?"

[fishbowl]

When the students "approached" them, were they responding to flyers that claimed you could "make extra money working at home on the internet?"

I see those EVERYWHERE on my local college campus, and I assume they are exactly something like this. The students got the contact information from somewhere -- they did not all suddenly, independently, decide to offer their services to these folks.

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[rhizome]

The kids are entrepreneurs, even if it's in a business I despise, taking advantage of the resources they've paid for.

Are we supposed to believe that university network resources are completely supported by tuition? I would venture (though in typical Slashdot fashion I have no numbers) that there's a certain amount of taxpayer money involved. Furthermore, it's very common for end-user bandwidth agreements to include a clause prohibiting the resale of any portion of a connection.

Those spammers must be Canadians

[LePrince]

Heck, to a Canadian student, 20$ USD is REALLY a lot of money in the pale comparison of what mommy and daddy sends with their pityful Canadian money... ;-)

(Yes, I am canadian, and this is humor. Laugh. I SAID LAUGH.)

:-)))

The pictograph at the end of the article?

[way2trivial]

Thank god for that,
I'm a Windows user, and without that little GUI
I wouldn't have understood the article at all!

Real world

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait til they have to pay for their broadband-assuming they don't steal that also.

YOU TOO !?!

[Brigadier]

I got suckered in like you it lasted two months until I got tired of getting hit on by old house wifes.

Though the worst experience i've heard was being shipped across the country to sell books door to door.

No, you get a life dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

Comercial speach isn't free speach, and I am not taking any advice from a spammer so shut up.

Tufts is a private school isnt it ?

[RembrandtX]

private schools get very little if no state funding.

[at least when I went to school]

Re:Tufts is a private school isnt it ?

[Mr.Phil]

Private schools get little direct state funding, but students bring federal and state money in the form of scholarships, grants, loans, and other forms of aid.

There are some private schools that do not accept even those forms of goverment funding, but they are few and far between.

Re:Bullshit, get a life

[Anonymous Coward]

Who pays for the bandwidth? On a res net the bandwidth is allocated for the students. Why is it suddenly not theirs to use?

I got an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the last spammer, why don't we pay them a visit and show them just what we think of spammer?

Better yet, everyone who gets spammed by them demand $20+ from them for cleaning up their spam.

If they don't pay up then grab any vailubles they have in their room, then they can really use the "I am a poor student with nothing and doing this to make a living" excuse.

Physical Connection is easy

[MatthewNewberg]

What will happen when the spammer is on one of the Wireless Networks popping up at schools. I think it might be a little bit harder to track down and stop from spamming.

Could they...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some how get the students to confess or tell them who is paying them for this?

They are abiding in the theft of the university's resources, and legal threats might get some of them to tell all that they know about the spammer or set up a sting operation.

Spamming from Athens (Georgia)

[Fulton Green]

Back when I tried to manually track down spammers (before it became more effective to simply filter out spams), I looked up the registry info for one of the domains from which I received one of those post-once, submit-everywhere re'sume' services (you know which ones I'm talking about). Turns out the domain was registered to a postal box in Athens, Georgia. While this could have been anyone, I can't help but think that this was a Net-savvy University of Georgia student needing cash for tuition or rent ...

haha

[Anonymous Coward]

i just find it really funny what people my age will do for money

Spoofing Authenticating DHCP Servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that *I* ever read 2600, but there is an article in the current issue (19:4) about spoofing a DHCP server which tries to authenticate using MAC addresses. The process boils down to finding out which Windows machines are on your sub-net, using Netbios to query those machines for their MAC, and then waiting for those machines to go offline. Then you setup your ethernet card to be configured with one of the above (i.e. valid and authenticated) MAC address. The authenticating DHCP server will give you a new IP address and off you go.

Yeah sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

And they have 12in dicks, make money FAST$$$, have a low rate morgage, and access to the hottest porn site on the net.

Oh, wait a minute that can't be right because spammers lie.

Hope they are enjoying the six pack all their spamming has earned them.

Noodle accounting

[Anonymous Coward]

Scott: Don't you know that no-one uses ramen numerals for accounting anymore?

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[Anonymous Coward]

Tufts is private, so there is no taxpayer money involved. Also, I wouldn't be suprised at all if the entire resnet (I am not positive about tufts, but many schools have a seperate residential network and academic network) is tuition funded, especially considering how expensive tufts is.

So, when did ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bernard Shifman go back to college?

Re:You worry that you are old when....

[Anonymous Coward]

You remember the job you worked to get money in college as a real job

People refer to the "good old days" and in your mind it was a while ago

There was no FTP, BBSs, and Gopher and you fondly remember the green text on the terminals in the campus computer centers that you could still see 30 minutes later as you walked home in the dark at midnight and contemplated how to hack your account to get more computer time for the fun stuff.

In the Engineering lounges they installed a cool new video game called "Pong".

You thought you were cool because you used an interactive terminal instead of punch cards like the freshpersons.

Your final paper in Computer Hardware Design was on an 8-bit microprocessor known as the 8088, with only one source who didn't give a damn about students' interest in their parts.

You read Slashdot in the hopes of finding evidence that not everyone your age has gone over to the dark side (management).

Yeah..

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at the bulge in their pants. The spam must be true, is earning them lots of cash, and they would never lie that it is just $20 dollars worth of rolls of quarters.

you knew it was coming

[Anonymous Coward]

1: set up spam relay
2: ??????
3: profit!

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[AndroidCat]

The kids are entrepreneurs, even if it's in a business I despise, taking advantage of the resources they've paid for.

You could say the same about the campus drug dealer. (The nasty drugs, that is. :^)

Look out!

[Anonymous Coward]

The whores have mod points and read slashdot.

Spammers, don't take it out on us when it is your falult that you got spanked.

Re:Look out!

[sfled]

Hehehe. That would be wh0r3z to you...

Re:Bullshit, get a life

[Anonymous Coward]

Freedom of speech is not theft

This has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech guarantees you the right to say whatever you want. It does not guarantee you the right to charge people if you speak.

Besides you don't have to listen.

No, just as long as you pay for it, right?

I strongly suspect that one of these numbers is absolutely dwarfed by the other.

Yes, so just because it's a small amount, that makes it OK, right? If I steal a chocolate bar from a store, I shouldn't be prosecuted, because it's only a tiny portion of the store's total inventory, right?

Grow the fuck up.

Any ISP claiming that spam is taking 50% of their bandwidth should get a clue and install the appropriate software to address the problem

Spoken like someone who's never run an ISP. I have DNSBLs installed - and 50% of my bandwidth _IS_ spam. There is no other way to block spam without paying for it first (in order to block it with a filter, you have to receive it first - so you've already paid for it.)

Spam is a _REAL_ problem. Just because you're too stupid to realize it, don't assume everyone else is.

Re:Bullshit, get a life

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam is a _REAL_ problem.

Spam is *NOT* a real problem. War is a real problem. The continued erosion of our civil liberties is a real problem. AIDS is a real problem. That kid in the US who got a fucked up heart transplant, and then got another heart transplant, and then sixteen people who could have used that heart died, and then she died anyway, and then her parents wouldn't let anybody take her organs for other transplants... THAT is a real problem.

Just because you're too stupid to realize it, don't assume ANYONE else is.

Read between the lines.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the message this diagram conveys is, "We have a graphic designer on the payroll, and we need to stop her from going home at 1PM every day."

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[schon]

(they send a person to your room with virus software if one's detected)

Yikes!

Wouldn't anti-virus software be a better solution?

lets be realistic

[Anonymous Coward]

spam is the equivalent of getting a pizza delivery advert on your doornob or on you car windshield.

but then again, you do seem to be crazy, complaining about people ashing out their windows is pretty silly too.

Re:lets be realistic

[www.sorehands.com]

spam is the equivalent of getting a pizza delivery advert on your doornob or on you car windshield.

You are close.

It is the equivelent of 200 people each day, walking across your flower garden and taping the each advertisements to the door. Or, those 200 people breaking your winshield wiper, while using your duct tape to take those advertisements to your car.

Re:Bullshit, get a life

[Anonymous Coward]

Spam is *NOT* a real problem.

The real problem is:

• 1. The people who SPAM. If they don't spam, they would be committing some other fraud of theft.
• 
  The people who hire spammers, thinking they can get business by stealing from others.
• 
  The people who provide services to spammers.

interesting, but

[ptrangerv8]

no big suprise... When I was in college, not that long ago, I'd have sold just about anything... True, I'd have asked for more than $20 for it, but I'd have done it...
To me it's no suprise that peopel would do that... as stated a ways above, $20/ mo is a lot of food money!!!

**** sig ****

Why do all my comments get modded down?

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll give you $20 to post the spam sender's names, addresses, and phone #s here on /.

That way, you can earn $20 in a POSITIVE manner.

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get spam on my account for four years, and then I become president of a club and get my email put on the website. Sheesh. Good thing I'm out of school and don't use that address anymore.

Business Plan

[Skjellifetti]

1. Hire Tufts students to sell Cutco knives to Anti-Spammers.
2. Set up webcam to watch Anti-Spammers carve up Tufts students.
3. ???
4. Cleanup.

Re:Business Plan

[darqchild]

What good is a business plan if it doesn't make "Profit!!!" ?

Two points...

[ivanandre]

I think there are two points is this article that are worthless of mention:

The universitys age.
The salary... $35.000 a year

provide their names so we can blackball them

[Anonymous Coward]

Scumbags that aid and abet spammers don't deserve a successful career in the computer industry. Provide their names so we can blackball them.

Peanuts

[dubiousmike]

This just proves these students aren't as resourceful as they could be. I for one, would have placed some sort of trojan on as many people's computers I could find, then sell ALL of their machine's use for spamming. I mean, I'm certainly not condoning spamming and I dislike it myself, but if you are going to do it, do it right....

Re:Peanuts

[mattfish]

Ya, you do have a point. If your goning to do somehting for that cheap might as well have fun for it. Or maybe brighten up and try and get some more money. Like how far can $20 go, where I come from a 2-4 is $35!

Expensive Calc Book(S) ... plural...

[Anonymous Coward]

Love my university.. they change Calc books almost every semester... Wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to take each class 3-5 times to pass!!! I got many many generations of Calc Books... And they were all $100+ expensive!!!!

Spammers using the public for their agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to let people know that some a group of spammers (Avenue A, DoubleClick, 24/7, Real Media, ValueClick and Digital Impact) who are trying to redefine spam as that the kind they don't do set up this yahoo group. The group is called "I did not recive my email."

The catch here is that not only does the group allow them to be ACs, allowing them ot astroturff and push their agenda, but it is also members only. Just another example of their "it is ok for us, but not for you" hypocrisy.

Cornell does it too

[Andy Dodd]

Well, they do now.

My freshman year, everyone had static IPs assigned to them and set up manually in the hardware. The $80 or so/year ResNet fee got your port activated.

One or two years later, they moved to DHCP. You registered your MAC (If you had an unregistered MAC, you got routed to the registration website), and then you would be given an essentially static IP address assigned by DHCP. I heard that you could even plug in your machine into a dorm network across campus and retain the same IP (I'm not sure about that, the routing would be nasty... But you'd at least get access.) I'm not sure since I had already moved off campus at this point.

Might work...

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't get a comission on using the books the require.

There are also cases of those who write their own books and use that. Wouldn't be surpised if they make sure they last at least 2 semesters, and then say "I am sorry, we will no longer use that book and the store will not buy it back."

Punishment too leanient

[youBastrd]

Tufts leans toward educating first-time offenders about the downsides of their behavior, saving harsh punishment for repeat delinquents, she says.

This isn't much of a deterrant for someone that has gone out of their way to be involved in the something that should be criminalized. In cases where running this software is not accidental, they knew what they were doing, they cannot plead ignorance and dare I say, they won't learn anything other than "Don't get caught next time."

First offence of deliberate abuse against a network == ban from that network.

TOS

[Anonymous Coward]

The school must have a Terms Of Service clause that does not permit the use of the schools property for personal gain?

NO! Tar and feather them now, before it's too late

[frost22]

Apparently the University in question plans to give the students a slap on the wrist and not persue the matter further. But this is unacceptable - under no circiumstance can these people allowed to proceed in their chosen path.

I've got a few alternative suggestions. Let's start with the more reasonable, modest ones:

• Get Law enforcement involved. Get the FBI. This is 1. a conspiracy, 2. intention to commit wire fraud 3. most likely committed across state borders. So they should offer the students leniency for full cooperation, and then haul the real spammer's ass to court and get him into the slammer for years ! Make it RICO, make it organized crime! Consider the renaming of the mail relay software encryption, and use that as aggravating circumstance. Throw the whole book at him, and then do it again! Use whatever you can get, to put this miserable worthless piece of human DNA garbage into a hole and throw the key away.
• you also might want to punish the student offenders slightly more severe. Expulsion from the university comes to mind. And make them compensate the University's expenses to the last dime. Including admin time spent to handle complaints, track them down, etc.
• you could increase that by banning them from any university in this state, or from higher education in the US in general.
• lets get more serious now. The above mentioned conspiration thing might applied to the students as well. Put them to jail for a few year, and then ban them from using the Internet for another 5 or 10 years. If you can do that to some harmless trespasser like Kevin Mitnick, you certainly can do it to criminal scum like these!
• Now let's explore more universally just and moral options. One of these would of course be execute the students on the spot. Grant them their right to a speedy trial (of, say, one day or so), foreclose any appeals and then bring them to a fast and merciful death. Execute them publicly (say, on a market place) so their sorry fate can at least serve the moral enlightenment of others. Of course, for universal justice, you would have to administer a more severe punishment to the master spammer. There are a number of time proven methods, but if you're out of ideas, ask Mr. Ascroft - he's got some people on a cuban base, that know numerous ways to put a man into a state where he practically begs for a fast death.
• Now we leave the enlightened 19th century and draw from resources originating in more medieval times. Back then, prison sentences didn't play a role. Anything that couldn't be handled by monetary compensation (or bribery) would be handled by corporal punishment. But, underlying philosophy was that the punishment hat to fit the crime - even if only in a symbolic way. The real challenge for the medieval judical systems, of course, was to invent fitting punishments. Most of those invloved rose to the challenge. And most punishments shomehow involved the death of the perpetrator, thereby reducing the chance for repeat offense to zero. Unfortunately, none of them knew spammers, so we have to come up with fitting punishments ourselves. For a first time offender, who didn't relay more than, say, 100 messages, we might suggest something lenient, like cuting off their two typing fingers, or removing their tongues (highly symbolic - those who poison the well of communication shall be prevented from using it). For a more serious offender, a number of punishments come to mind, all alluring to some of the distasteful missives they sent out. Ideas involve death by overdoses of Viagra, deathly penile enlargement by help of fluid (molten) metal, getting beaten to death with a roulette kettle (from an internet gambling operation) or beeing suffocated-by/squeezed-under/force-fed-with a truckload of worthless spam-hyped pennystocks. And, of course, all kinds of deaths involving long, sharp wooden poles (in highly symbolic reference to the "teenage girls getting it up the ass" type of spam). Once you are in the right mood, you'll probably come with a few more poetic ideas of your own. Just read your daily dose of spam

Of course, there are few minor legal obstacles to solve for one or two of these points, but, after all, now that the US has officially reintroduced torture and abolished habeas corpus, those can be considered minor problems, which can be solved with minimal legislative effort.

Did I mention I hate spammers ?

I'm disappointed...

[ludeyork]

I could see whoring yourself like that for $50-$100 bucks... but $20 a month?? That's less than a cheap, domestic can of beer a day.

Comic included!

[MavEtJu]

Wow, that website has support for people who don't understand written stories! At the bottom, you can see exactly how it happens!

Heh, watch how fast

[bruns]

Watch how fast DNSbl maintainers start shitcanning whole edu networks because of shit like this. So much for running a personal server off the dorm networks!

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[Anonymous Coward]

... virii ...

Does Tufts teach you kids to be idiots, or is there some kind of nerve toxin in the water?

Re:Flashbacks SPAM

[rodney dill]

How did this piece of SPAM get in here?

How will they feel when .....

[Kaotiq]

.... they send their CV to an employer and they don't get the job because the employer blackholed the spammer IPs ?

The Cutco Cult

[mikeclark]

I was also abducted for a short time in the cutco cult... I sat through a 3 hour group interview and didnt even know what the job was until the last 10 minutes. It took all the friends and my family to un=hypnotise me. :) Thou shalt cutith ropith

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, fuckwad! Don't you go to a university... err, sorry, college?

Simple solution

[sik puppy]

This incident has happened once. All new and returning students should be given an updated school policy with the following addendum:

Any use of the schools network for the purposes of aiding or supporting spam will result in immediate expulsion. No exceptions.

Simple, brutal, efficient. No more problem.

I'M A TUFTS STUDENT - AND THEY DO

[Ieshan]

Post title pretty much says it all. Every network registered computer is required to register with it's MAC address, which is kept in a big system, which controls access.

I know this is how it works, because people ask me all the time, "Dan, can you hook my internet back up?", and I tell them, "No, not without switching your ethernet card or calling ITS (information technology services)."

Scary!

[Funkitup]

I have visions of micro payments and kazaa style networks of spam being sent out. If enough people are generating spam then there's little people can do. It won't even look like spam if it's like 20 emails a day per computer.

It could become like a mafia protection racket, either send out spam and not get any on your email - or you will get loads.

Not Exactly Bright, Are They?

[Guppy06]

"Interestingly enough, the students approached the spammers about this scheme and not vice-versa."

Let's see... For just enough to cover the cost of the average ISP, these students are opening themselves up to litigation from the university for violating their network policies (could be considered cracking), state anti-spam laws, and federal anti-junk-fax laws? I can see two possibilities:

• They're art majors
• They're ivy-league law majors

I mean, come on! If these are supposed to be college students, I fear for our future. Heck, drinking yourself to alchohol poisoning is smarter than that.

ifconfig eth0 hw ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

[xixax]

I'll wait until that annoying prat in the next dorm takes his laptop to a lecture and use his MAC to get him expelled for sending spam and downloading MP3s.... Bwhahahaaaa....

Of course they could be locking ports at the switch to MAC addresses as well so that using something other than your own MAC would lock that port. "So why were you using Annoying Prat's MAC?".

Xix.

I'm afraid I must call Bullsh*t

[The Tyro]

yes... it sucks to be a poor college student. But call a spade a spade... these students are whores.

At one time I too was a poor college student.

I sold plasma right alongside the homeless guys at the plasma center down in the ghetto. I took a telemarketing job (*shudder* yeah, I still feel unclean. Even to this day, I sometimes wake in the dark of the night, shaking, in a cold sweat...No! Not the Phones! Noooo! The horror... the horror...).

I had to eat ramen, do my own car repairs (because I couldn't afford to pay somebody else) and lived in a smelly hole with a bunch of other guys for cheap rent.

What I didn't do was spam; even as an ex-telemarketer, I have to draw the line somewhere. At least in the telemarketing gig, people got the chance to give me a piece of their mind (and boy, did they!). I took my lumps... but spammers don't even get that little bit of comeuppance.

I'd like to withold judgement on this one, but I'm afraid that's just not possible. Rationalize it any way you like, but these students are ripping people off.

Twenty bucks? At least Judas got 30 pieces of silver...

Re:I'm afraid I must call Bullsh*t

[CrayzyJ]

I'm only responded because I lost karma on this exchange...

I agree these guys are whores. I agree they should be reprimanded. My ONLY comment was to the parent poster who said "they sold out cheap". My point is that when you are f-ing poor, you'll sell out for a tuna-freakin-fish sandwich.

I, too, got a shitty job. That *may* not have been on option for these students in the current job market.

Moderators: read the context before modding flamebiat. arg

punishment: double their tuition

[hhknighter]

I personally hate spam. If spam is ever illegal, these punks should be shot.

It's amazing what college students will do for money. I will admit to a previous post, I remember the days of web surfing for money. I also remember lots of my peers would use an auto redirect program for netscape. The mindset is, everything now is automatic, so why not automatically generate money?

Funny how these students actually pursued the spammers (now guessing we'll see more of these in the cable modem/adsl sectors). Kids with minds like these are those who generally come up with filthy ideas like the Nigerian Scams and exploiting stupid/gullible of Patent Office.

Already happening

[Anonymous Coward]

This is already happening... Spammers are using holes like the ones used by Nimda and Slammer to install promiscuous proxies like AnalogX on cable modem and DSL customer machines (or possibly, using a back door installed by a virus).

Of course, that way the spammer gets to keep the money instead of having to give it to students :-)

beat my neighborhood spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

I live right near tufts, and am constantly barraged by spam, it takes hours of effort a week to get through it all. I am sick of this.

Please, someone post the names and addresses of these students. I will go beat them up. They deserve it. Yeah.

Johnny D.

Whoah!

[Lovejoy]

You sir, wield a wicked pen. (well, er.. keyboard)

Hats off to you and more power to you.

I couldn't agree with you more. If we only had to contend with evil people, life would be so much easier. Instead we have to deal with laziness, apathy, sloth, and cluelessness. These Tufts students are a perfect example. This is more insidious and far more common. It is harder to identify but it is still truly evil.

Southpark elementary

[driehuis]

Yeah, it is a shame that it is necessary to block outbound port 25 from dorm room PC's. I too prefer to live in a world where such measures aren't necessary.

Yet, I wonder how academic freedom could be affected by forcing students to send their outbound mail through the appointed outbound mail gateway.

One of the nastiest and hidden side effect of the current levels of spam is that many corporate sysadmins will not think twice about blocking all of a university's netspace when they get complaints from their users.

Many companies block all of Asia at the firewall. Universities might be next.

Actually, K12 institutions are a worse source of spam relay than universities are. I sometimes get visions of Mr Hat managing the security of Southpark Elementary internet access. Now, I also have to worry about Kenny. Ohmygawd! Those... bastards!

Interesting

[Itchyban]

Of course $20/month isn't a whole lot of money but then again, it could be. These people might desperate for money and it kind of looks like it. Then there's always the aspect of how they're staying in the college. Either they got a scholarship (most likely a sports scholarship), parents are oblivious and they're paying for tuition or there's something else and I just remember it. Hmmmm......

Can't think of anything and is brain dead.

Re:Hmm.. and for the other side.

[shotgunefx]

Point taken. I agree that education is ridiculously expensive. I wasn't thinking of the kid with 3 jobs putting himself through school. More like the kids I knew at UMASS drinking 24/7, doing naked beer slides and otherwise wasting the money their parents spent on them.

Re:The School is very liberal..this isn't surprisi

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the bill yer parents are paying!

Hurrah! Hurrah! For the dear old brown and blue

The old-fashioned way

[BillX]

At my Uni, there was no (paper) registration to fill out. When a user was causing problems, the network folks found 'em as follows:

Get the IP/MAC of the user
Pull the plug on half the network and see if the machine disappears
Continue working down to smaller segments (dorm, floor, switch) until the user's wire is found and yank it
Wait for user to come down to the computer center and complain they can't get online :)

This, of course, gets much more difficult when the offending user shuts the machine off...

Employees - old hat.

[_Sprocket_]

The interesting thing is that the spammers are now paying people to put out their spam. Now each outgoing spam costs something above the overhead costs.

Spamming is a business. There is money to be made. And anywhere that there's a business making money, there's a possibility that those running that business will expand that operation. Which leads to employees, agents, etc.

This is nothing new. Occasionally, those on the outside of spammer operations get a glimpse of the inner workings of one. Paying others to do (or at least help do) one's dirty work is old hat.

Of course, this glimpse also portrays a "business" that will go to any end to remain in operation. Such an organization would simply seek ways to circumvent fees just as they attempt to circumvent AUPs.

YHBT HAND

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you

Incomplete

[Paul E. Loeb]

Apparently John Fontana only interviewed one witness who was kept quiet until his article was published yesterday. A more complete article can be found on the Tuft's Daily Newspaper, here.

Re:Flashbacks SPAM

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

How did this piece of SPAM get in here?

Well, how did this troll get in here?

If it was a SPAM message, you'd think I would put a link in there to tell you where you could buy the things. I'm certainly not going to profit off that post. I just want people to know that Bad Marketing != Bad Product.

BTW, General Abu is still waiting for your account information for that $50M transfer. You better hurry.

Re:NO! Tar and feather them now, before it's too l

[hplasm]

You have had some trouble with spam, then?

Last Post!

[alpg]

MVS Air Lines:
The passengers all gather in the hangar, watching hundreds of technicians
check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at
least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers; bigger models in the fleet
can have more engines than anyone can count and fly even more passengers
than there are on Earth. It is claimed to cost less per passenger mile to
operate these humungous planes than any other aircraft ever built, unless
you personally have to pay for the ticket. All the passengers scramble
aboard, as do the 200 technicians needed to keep it from crashing. The pilot
takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to
realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors.

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...