Slashdot Mirror
Spammers Sue Anti-Spam Groups
SuperBanana writes "The Register reports in a story today that spammers have banded together under the name EmarketersAmerica.org to sue various anti-spam groups- days before a large conference on spam hosted by the FTC(which will be attended by many spammers). Anti-spam groups think the timing is not by coincidence, but believe the move may backfire because they will be able to countersue and get access to spammer's internal documents. By the way, if you're wondering who these guys are, check out Spamhaus's directory of top spammers."
Here is what one of America's leading sports pundits has been writing:
Elliott Harris, Chicago Sun-Times: "A fan in Massachusetts, upset at Fox's decision to replace auto racing with Red Sox baseball, faces the possibility of a year in jail for sending more than 530,000 e-mails that shut down Fox's Web site in 2001. Hey, who knew a NASCAR fan would know spam was anything other than something to eat?"
Why do I h8 apple?
GREAT!!! nOw i know what organization to send the bill to for all this crap about giant penises wanting my credit card. PLus, now we all know where to forward our spam to!!! FANTASTIC!!!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Not a big problem but somebody forgot to throw the http:// in front of the url
emarketersamerica.org
Damn, and I thought these guys were dirty bastards before!
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Why must they soil the good name of America by appending it to their dubious business?
eMarketersAmerica, more like eMarketersNigeria
Quick, anyone have any contact info for these people? I have penis enlargements to sell them!
KaZaA users suing the RIAA?
Drug users suing dealers?
Smokers suing tobacco compani.... Oh.
In Soviet Russia, beowulf clusters imagine YOU!
A list of mirrors of the text of the filing in flordia's court:
/.'ed would only make things worse:)
/ fe lstein/slapp.pdfn /slapp.pdfd fp ://jscript.dk/2003/4/slapp.pdfx .net/lxix/slapp.pdf/ slapp.pdfs lapp.pdf/ www.acornhosting.net/spam/slapp.pdfi ocenter.helsinki.fi/~atossava/spam/sl app.pdf/ www.dragonfur.org/peewee/slapp.pdfo cities.com/spammersarestupididioticm orons/slapp.pdf/ slapp.pdfp .pdf
h ttp://www.spamblocked.com/slapp.pdfe chhouse.org/~lou/slapp.pdf/ slapp.pdf
(Spread out which ones you use, these are alot of folks with home machines on DSL lines. Being
http://ares.penguinhosting.net/~leftreveggplant
http://chickenboner.com/felstei
http://cjllewellyn.homeip.net/slapp.p
http://home.earthlink.net/~bbay/slapp.pdf
htt
http://members.co
http://members.shaw.ca/wooly
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/egplant/
http://SteveSobol.com/slapp.pdf
http:/
http://www.b
http://www.conmicro.cx/slapp.pdf
http:/
http://www.ge
http://www.linxnet.com/misc/spam
http://www.north-lincolnshire.com/slap
http://www.pearlgates.net/nanae/slapp.pdf
http://www.t
http://www.tirani.net
There's also been some lively discussion on NANAE about this issue....
You obviously hate spam not quite as much as the next guy.
...
Anyone want to take bets as to when the DoS attacks begin? Secondary action: how long after the DoS ends does the site end up being 0wnz0r3d?
:-)
Of course, for once, we'll see the Slashdot Effect put to good use.
blog |
I found out about this from a friend(Hi Scott!) after I submitted the article. He put it best:
"It is classic... misspellings, copy + paste problems...He named rediculous people as defendents, including the brother of one anti spammer, who apparently lives in Italy and doesn't care about spam at all."
http://chickenboner.com/felstein/slapp.pdf
Please help metamoderate.
a large conference on spam hosted by the FTC(which will be attended by many spammers)
Can we bomb them, Oh please can we bomb them ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Do NOT register for the mailing list at www.emarketersamerica.org.
So, as a followup to this, from the SPAPHAUS website "90% of all spam received by Internet users in North America and Europe is sent by a hard-core group of only 180+ individuals"
It just goes to show how a few incredibly selfish individuals can bring chaos and ruin to society. It obviously does not take many to bring huge costs to business and government, so why is it so hard to prosecute these few individuals for abuse of the internet and indirect theft from business and government (taxpayer) coffers, especially if they are known?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
He means that in theory, if the Internet traffic resulting directly from the activities of these 180 people were to stop, the number of spam emails arriving in your Inbox would drop almost to zero. Only 419s from Nigeria and occasional sporadic one-time spam would remain.
This isn't advocating some sort of lynching or suspension of civil rights- it's just a simple statement of fact. The point is that spam isn't something that a large number of people are doing; it's the activities of a very small number of people making us all miserable, and that small number is approximately 180.
It wouldn't really matter anyway, some other people would simply step up to fill in the void. .45 caliber handgun and about 180 loud bangs. Most of the anti-spam groups seem to view spam as equivilent to rape.
As for what, "spirited off internet" means, I think it involves a
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
These days everybody and their dog has a lil website somewhere.
Let's say we ditched the email concept, and messaging just involved people going to eachothers websites and dropping a note via webform. To reply, you simply click the link back to the senders message webform etc...
Then to ensure we don't have web crawling bots auto submitting spam through the forms, you add a dynamically created GIF/jpeg file with a 5 letter code embedded that the subitter needs to type for the form to submit.
Then, problem solved no? Christ the email protocol we've been using for the last 20years is ready for the shitter in my opinion.
--Zuchini
Funny how they keep their address hidden in a Whois lookup. Perhaps they don't want to receive spam either...
Keeping courts busy with unnecessary and pointless lawsuits, thus blocking "real" and important cases and wasting resources is its own form of spam: judicial spam!
The Spamhaus link already doesn't work (at least not for me, YMMV).
.... send more emails.
What's really amazing isn't that spammers continue to spam but that they continue to find people who are willing to pay them to do so. Have you ever read what an email marketer considers fair results? 2% of the emails you buy will be viewed (viewed meaning that someone actually generated an http request based on the HTML inside). How do they guarantee this? If they fall short, they will
This is an amazing comment on the ineffectiveness of spam. More than 98% of all spam messages are deleted unseen (or bounced). Of the remaining 2%, some of those were only "viewed" in the sense that they had active focus when the receiver hit delete. Of those that generate actual click-through, how many generate sales?
How stupid does someone have to be to buy an "email marketing campaign?" One could get better results by sending your $1000 to a local charity and putting out a press release.
Spam --- built on ignorance and stupidity.
So what happens if you send an email to abuse@emarketersamerica.org ?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"If these 180 were somehow spirited off internet - we'd be left with the Nigerians, and companies spamming by mistake. The spam problem would simply disappear," he said.
So... who's got 1,800 feet of rope and an orchard to spare?
Try the asshole attorney's supporting this case. Look at the bottom of the slapp.pdf file:
FELSTEIN & ASSOCIATES, P.A.
Attorneys for EMarketersAmerica.org, Inc.
555 South Federal Highway, Suite 450
Boca Raton, Florida 33432
(561) 367-7990 Phone
(561) 367-7980 Facsimile
mark@EMarketersAmerica.org
Mark E. Felstein, Esq.
FBN: 192139
I think we have a new address for every free cd offer, junk ad, and telemarketer list in the world.
If you click on the link provided, you get the following message:
Dear Customer,
Please key in the password you see displayed to the right in order to obtain the information you requested from our WHOIS database.
In order to protect the privacy of our customers, Go Daddy Software has implemented a process that prevents unscrupulous spammers from running scripts that acquire email addresses from our WHOIS service (which in accordance with ICANN policy must be made available to the public). The password you see is provided in graphic format and cannot be read by a script. Only humans can read it. By taking a moment to key in the password you are doing your part to eliminate SPAM.
Oh wait, that's the case here too... Nevermind.
Think about this the next time you advocate centralizing the Net (in terms of SMTP) on large ISPs in order to "solve" the problem of residental users spewing spam (directly or by relay).
The residential users are annoying because there are so many of them, but if, 10 years from now, the only way you can send mail is to relay through a large ISP's mail servers... who do you think said ISP's best business partners will be?
For an answer to that question look to the US Postal Service's largest customers: The US Federal Government and bulk mailers.
THAT is exactly the business niche that spammers are evolving into. All they need is for users to have slightly less choice and ISPs to have slightly more power to tell their users how the Internet works rather than the other way around.
Push to keep the Internet a network of peers while establishing a system of identity, trust and responsibility (which should in turn also by non-centralized, but rooted on an arbitrary number of certificate authorities and trust databases), and you will do yourself and the rest of the world a large favor!
Okay, I read the first few pages of the lawsuit, and then I couldnt stomach the legalese anymore... I'm not a lawyer, after all...
anyway, the way it sounds is that they are being sued because they sell products/list information that people use to stop the flow of "crap" from these companies. From what I read, they didnt attack these companies, they didnt DoS them, they merely provided tools that people could use to stop spammers from contacting them.
The people that are using these tools probably never would have purchased anything from them anyway, and if they are like most of us, the emails are blocked/auto deleted/instantly trashed when they do get through, so its a moot point anyway.
I think these people are just ticked off because their scummy business is being threatened by people who are intelligent enough to "work the internet", not just "use" it.
thats just my thoughts, I could be wrong...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Here's the full dope on Eddy Marin, spammer, and why South Florida (especially Boca Raton) is now a haven for spammers.
r es s&searchString=209.203.192.0%2F19
Eddy uses a front company, "PG&C Leasing Inc." (aka lauderdale.net) to disguise his activity. This company buys the bandwidth for him to spam through. He then sets up dummy companies to act as "customers" of PG&C. If the heat gets too hot he'll "terminate" a "customer". Of course the spam just continues under another name.
He's operated like this since 1998. He's had a long time to develope a reputation among his spamming pals, and since he brings money into the local economy, Boca Raton loves him.
Here's just ONE of his netblocks:
http://www.senderbase.com/search?searchBy=ipadd
The bulk of the spam from that netblock is from "OmniPoint Marketing". If you've been paying good attention. Spam also goes out from "justdous.com, prefersavings.com, dealstwoyou.com, and tlck.net". These are registered to things like "M.M.COMMERCE,INC", and "OptIn LLC" (which is Terry Williams, another Eddy Marin flunkie)
stealthemail.com ??? Give me a break!
--Og
sunbiz
We know which companies sell their email listings, right?
More than a few of us can write a script...
A clandestine server running in an undisclosed location--perhaps a public wireless hotspot--can go forever properly filling out the forms of these companies with complete and total gibberish.
It won't crash servers... nobody will even know until it's pretty much too late and the offended databases are loaded with utter garbage.
Recently, I wrote about passively doing this to spambots. I keep the page on the server for good measure.
My tech articles are geared to a nontech audience so don't give me crap if they sound lame. I don't preach to the choir except when hanging out at Slashdot.
That said, I don't see why this concept can't be expanded. They have no defense against form scripts.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Well, we should protect his privacy, and not post his email then. Please don't post this link anywhere.
mefels@aol.com
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
From the filing:
"Should the Defendants, be allowed to continue their assault upon the Plaintiff and the Plaintiff's industry, the Plaintiff's industry will cease to exist."
Yay. Now there's an incentive for a judge to issue an injunction if I ever heard one: the preservation of spam.
When the laws are reformed so that the "cost of spam" includes 2-5 as the Bride of Bubba, then it will become unprofitable -- it doesn't bring in the kind of money that will get people to accept that level of risk (unlike, for example, the illegal drug trade).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The spam blockers are selling/giving away a tool that lets system administrators and individual users ignore messages that they do not wish to receive. If I started a doorbell-removal business, would certain religious groups sue me for ruining their business?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
DOS, schmoss. Why the hell aren't each and every one of the spammers' filter-evasion tricks prosecutable under the computer-cracking laws, as they are clearly deliberate actions aimed at bypassing the access security placed on a computer by its owner?
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Several things point to this being a joke. If it's not a joke, their lawyer is the most incompetent lawyer on the planet.
I have difficulty believing that a lawyer coud really have drafted this crud.
They make money from it. If they did 'magically' disapear, then 180 more would replace them and make they money they were making.
The spammers are bad, but they are only permitted to be so by those that pay them. If we stop those that pay them, there'd be a whole lot less spam. [a bit like the war on drugs, drug lords replace killed drug lords... but at the end of the day if there we could stop the addicts being the addicts there'd be no drug lords... a bit circular].
Of course, removing the source is not easy.