Slashdot Mirror
CDT Releases New Report on Origins of Spam
Carnth writes "CDT has released a new report based on a six month project entitled "Why Am I Getting All This Spam?" The results offer Internet users insights about what online behavior results in the most unsolicited commercial email and also debunk some of the myths about spam." A very good report - read it. There's also a story about yet another sleazy spammer in Ohio.
Spam comes in the form of unrequested text, right? So saying "FIRST POST" every time there's a new topic is simply a way of spamming Slashdot?
Chuck
I'm still wondering why when I have my hotmail filter set to "exclusive" (only recieve from those in my address book, which contains 10 addresses), I continue to get loads of spam each day in my inbox, including some very embarassing things that would cause my mom to faint if she walked in.
In other news, it was announced today that after careful study, researchers confirmed that fire is hot and pointy objects hurt.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
I never saw anything in their methodology about how the spam was analyzed. It would have been interesting to see what effect actually opening spam e-mail in a web enabled browser had on the recurrence rate.
I bet the web bugs would have kept the recurrences high even for addresses that were removed...
"I'm just here to regulate funkyness." - James Gandolfini, as Winston in The Mexican
I am sorry, smack me down if you must, but... Aaaahhhhhhhh!!!! Die Spammer, Die! Friggin White Trash sonsabitchin spammers. I feel slightly better now. Ready for Karma extraction.
If this article confuses you, don't worry. It was posted yesterday in a much clearer fashion.
I just got a new domain. ;-)
Which means that every email to that domain goes to me.
Every time I give my Email online I give a diff name, for instance if I buy at yahoo I give "yahoo-shopping@mydomain.com".
If I get spam to this address I know who gave it to the spammers.
- only been doing this for a week, no spam so far but there is still hope
Note: I am not actively looking to be spamed, just doing my usual stuff.
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
1) Sign up on an internet gambling site.
2) Register a domain name.
I have multiple domain names and I know for certain that much of my spam originated from either scanning the whois database, or someone selling the e-mail addresses from there.
I don't gamble, but I noticed that the java applets that were used for 99% of the gambling sites were all from the same place. In other words, if you want to start a gambling site, but you don't want to write software - you can pay to use the java applets of this one company. There is some rebradning that goes on - but in the end, it all goes through their servers and uses their code.
Because of that, I figured if there were any holes in the software, that would mean a whole crapload of open spots out there. So out of curiosity I registered at a gambling site and then looked at the source (you can get the source from a java applet).
After that, my spam increased exponentially - the immediate group was spamming me, as well as selling off the address - which then gets repeated over and over.
I use spamassassin now and I have it tweaked to the point where out of over 100 spams a day, I only have 1 get through - and that is because the code times out and lets it through, not because SA hasn't caught it.
I first installed it in January and in that time have only had it once grab mail that it shouldn't have - from my mom. I added her to the whitelist and have never had a problem since.
I use one of the more recent 2.60 versions, have the spam threshold lowered to 3.5, and I have tweaked a few of the score settings. Workds great for me.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
In the debate over how much spam really costs, one factor that almost never gets discussed is the impact on behavior and openness. How many of us refrain from using our real email addresses in public forums or in correspondence with companies because of a fear of receiving more spam? There may not be a direct economic cost, but it makes the Internet less useful to all of us. Spammers have essentially driven all of us to have unlisted phone numbers on the Internet, which reduces the usefulness of the medium. Off with their heads, I say.
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
I was considering moving into the spam market, but decided that was too controversial. I opted to start pornography business instead.
The FTC already filed a complaint and had a preliminary injunction against Childs back in April. See the press release for more information. The article mentions he lives by Riverside drive in an apartment, could be with Linda Lightfoot, the woman mentioned in the complaints with him?
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin
Argh, Slashdot ate my link.
http://www.visi.com/~rwglynn/030319spamreport.pdf
The promised junk mail control for Mozilla is finally here and I'm loving it. The wait was almost unbearable because all the other guys in the office have had spam filters with their OSX email client for months. I was tempted to switch. But now mail comes in and gets whisked away to the junk folder almost immediatly. It's a beautiful thing.
Oh god, here we go with the old "waah why isn't everyone as tough as I am" complaint.
I wonder, does he have children? If not, would he relish the idea of them constantly being hit with sex ads? How about elderly relatives?
The above CDT finding is mildly surprising to me. Is there a reason people haven't built 'smarter' Web scrapers that filter and convert character encodings of things like the '@' sign in email addys? Doesn't seem too difficult, but if the report is to be taken at face value, it seems a simple precaution to take (still). I had always considered it a low-tech defense easily overwhelemed. Guess I was wrong?
Childs blamed the mix-up on a programming accident and said he has since apologized to Smithson [for using her site as an open relay].
Reminds me of the old saying, "I might have believed it was an accident if you hadn't stopped twice to reload and once to chug a couple of beers."
Someone you trust is one of us.
Geez, I sure hope he's right. It sure would be a shame if his physical mailbox overflowed with a gazillion free catalogs.
Did anyone explain to him what happened to Alan Ralsky?
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
I don't want to get myself into any possible legal trouble, so please excuse me if I'm somewhat vague in some respects. IANAL.
About 2 or 3 years ago, my wife visited a store in the Lansing, Michigan area and gave them my email address. From time to time, I would receive email from them. Eventually, I asked them to stop. They stopped.
On November 21, 2002, I received an email from them asking me if I would like to begin receiving advertisements and marketing offers from them again. There was a link to click on, if I didn't want to opt-in. I clicked on that link.
Approximately 2 months later, I received an email from them. They had an option to unsubscribe by sending an email to their unsubscribe address. It said I would be removed immediately. I even received a confirmation stating that I had unsubscribed. For the next month, I continued to get 2-3 emails from them per week. Each time, I clicked unsubscribe and was told that I had indeed been unsubscribed.
After the 2nd email, I contacted customer service and reported the problem. No response. After the fourth time, I contacted them again, and threatened legal action, if they didn't stop. No response. I called customer service, talked to a live person, and was told that I would be removed from all their lists. But the email continued to come.
I filed a lawsuit in Michigan small claims alleging violations of the "junk fax" law, having heard about a Michigan man who had won by doing so. 6 violations for $500 each, resulted in $3,000, the maximum allowable under Michigan Law for small claims. As evidence, I have nearly all of the advertisement emails as well as my requests to be unsubscribed, and their acknowlegements stating that I had been unsubscribed. Additionally, I have the emails I sent to customer service, which never received replies.
About 2 weeks after filing suit, I received an email from their customer service stating that they were finally looking into the problem. I haven't received an email from them in the last 2 weeks, so I assume that I'm finally off their list, and it only cost me $36.50 ($32 small claims, $4.50 certified mail).
However, now their attorneys have demanded that the case be removed from small claims and placed into general civil court (which is their right). Unfortunately, I plan to do just that.
The FTC has publicly stated that not honoring removal requests is illegal. However, I'm not sure I have a private right of action in this situation. Using the Junk Fax law in general civil court is probably a bad idea, and I think I would likely have to claim actual damages in order to pursue it in general civil court.
I don't really want to get in over my head. I'm sure they realize this, which then makes me WANT to get in over my head. However, I'm still not sure that I have a legal basis for my case. Even in a state like Washington, where anti-spam laws exist, half of the cases get dismissed by the judge.
I called a local attorney and was told that I should dismiss, or risk being counter-sued for a frivolous lawsuit. Essentially, what they did is illegal, but there really isn't much I can do about it other than contact the FTC and the state attorney general, and if I pursue my case against them, I could wind up paying them.
--
Slashdolt
Yeah, this guy is a real success story to be immitated.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
When i registered my domain, I gave the address archos@myprivacy.ca. Any mail sent to this address is is held while a challange is sent to the sender. The sender just has to reply to the challange email, and the original will be sent to me. Automated spammers won't reply to the challange. myprivacy.ca is a free service provided mainly for .ca domains, or for domains registered with a participating registrars.
Does anyone know of any other services like this?
Spam needs legitimization. Hear me out, now, before you add that -1, Troll. By legitimizing spam we put ourselves in control. We need laws on a national level defining exactly what is valid spam and what is illegal.
We need the ISPs to work WITH the spammers ( or vice cersa). Make it trvial to filter, and only send it once. Give everybody a shared "Spam box", as place to go and see if they really need to acclerate their dialup to new levels, or a vacation, or whatever (I'm assuming 18" Penis and XXX TEEN LESBIANS will not be considered legit). We need stiff penalties to those who violate the law. We can't enforce the law in other spammer friendly countries, but we can enforce the law in our own. The company marketing should also be held responsible for violations, preventing American companies from just outsourcing their spam. Any spammer friendly ISP's either deal with their spammers or risk the entire range being blocked (voluntarily) by American ISPs. I know 99% of service providers would have no problem blocking out spammers voluntarily, especially if they are being good Americans while they are doing so. Let's not forget that as rapidly as it's changing, a majority of popular sites are American based. I know all you Norwiglians out there would probably drop your ISP if you couldn't get to slashdot just because your ISP supported spam.
The DMA has too much money to let spam die, and apart from the slashdot crowd a majority of people don't find spam to be a big problem in their daily lives (albeit mostly thhanks to us busting ass). Some people actually enjoy getting spam. I don't understand it either, but to each his own. As an option in a recent poll said, grey areas definately exist.
I think spam is a fact of life. Sometimes I get emails from business friends who include a small ad as their sig. We can't kill spam but we can change the face of it to be ever os less intrusive. We're going to have to compromise our "FUCK YOU AND YOUR GOD DAMN SPAM" attitudes if we plan on giving our credibility to our cause.
We want complete restriciton, and they want no restriciton. Somewhere in the middle there's a feasible solution for both of us.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Here's what I presume to be home address of the spammer named in the article.
ABUSERS: C. Fielding Childs
cf_childs@yahoo.com
Bulker's Paradise
4132 Pompton Ct.
Dayton, Ohio 45405
FAX: (937) 275-3741
ALSO: Charles Fielding Childs, Jr.
"MAIL ORDER ALLIED COMPANY"
2936 Melbourne Ave.
Dayton, OH 45417
The Dayton Daily News article discusses Charles F. Childs, an Ohio native. Last year I testified before the Ohio Senate Commerce Committe regarding a proposed spam bill. That bill was later passed into law . Among other things, the bill has opt-out requirements, requires a pre-existing business relationship, and makes it a feleny to forge headers and/or abuse open relays or proxies to send email. I would imagine that Mr. Childs, and another Ohio spammer, Tom Crowles, are in violation of some or all of the provisions of the Ohio spam law. Here's a new get rich quick scheme for you: hire an attorney and start collecting damages from these scum (up to $100 per email plus legal expenses).
Ahem.
I represent the Cetacean Fecal Matter Anti-Defamation League. Please retract at once your defamatory comments against whale dreck.
I have also been informed by the Head Maggot of the Fly Larva Anti-Defamation League that although his members will gleefully chow down on any form of cetacean poop ranging from Dolphin Doo to Blue Whale Bombs, they'd definitely draw the line at Ralsky's carcass. They've got standards, y'know.
I've also noticed that lately spammers have been putting a 1 pixel wide image in the email message itself. (I.e. img src=spammers_server/pixel.gif?email=youremailaddre ss )
If the message gets opened or previewed - the pixel is pulled from the spammers server and a web log is created with your email address in it. Even viewing a potential spam email can verify your email address to the spammer as a valid account.
A man, regardless or age, is old when regrets of the past replace hopes of the future.
I have posted an HTML version of the report at http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.sh tml . Thanks for your interesting comments, I am collecting them for ideas for future research projects. Mike