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How to Become A Spammer
permeablepdx points to this story in The Oregonian about
how to become a spammer. Summary: "Local Oregon boy makes big bucks after learning from the Spam masters."
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Steps to become a better spammer:
1. Insert head in ass
2. Click "send"
3. Profit!
Find a product you want to sell or a scam you want to run, find some exploitable mail servers and find a list of email addresses. Then just run a mass emailing program. What's the big deal?
all you need is a database of email addresses, a DSL connection, and a mass mailing program. You can send out a million spams an hour.
Repeal the DMCA!
ex-spammer seems to not understand why they are worse than bulk mail. Email spam cost us money and bandwidth on our end, bulk mail dont. Besides, its much easier to sort out legitimate snail mails from bulk & they always carry some amount of legitimacy with it that email spam can never provide. Fp ?! :)
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
"The idea is it's just like a commercial," Shiels said. "You don't just send it to one address once. You send it to one address five or six times. Do commercials only come on once? You get the same crap in your e-mail more than once. You have to bombard the person."
And they wonder why they get death threats.
Next week its how to be a pimp, followed the week after by "mugging for fun and profit".
"How do you torture a spammer" would be more interesting.
Maybe tie him up on a light post and throw AOL CD's at him?
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
He'd heard enough complaints about spam from his friends, but he never understood them. The junk mail his mail carrier delivers bothers him much more, Shiels said.
"It costs money to be processed. And it's a waste of trees. It's intrusive as hell because you have to go through all of it. People don't get mad about that, and I don't understand why," he mused.
Is anyone else thinking what I am thinking?
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Just what we need! To teach more people this valuable trade.... But really, it won't be worth it. In a few years, so many people will be into it that the companies will have the upper hand on who to hire to get the message out........ and unless you have lists of email addresses in the hundreds of millions it won't be worth it. Besides, your customers will be limited to porn or those sleazy as-seen-on-TV type products. I suggest reading some advertising books, since that is the trade, and finding a more novel way to apply it to the net if you want to make real money.
Where are these things? I'm sure tons of
What I find most interesting about this is that the article says that Sheils made over $1000 a week. That just amazes me that there are that many stupid people out there, that actually purchase products from UCE.
I mean, just on principle alone, I will never purchase something that I get spammed about, and I would think that most people feel the same way, so that just makes me wonder, who DOES buy this stuff? It's those people that are to blame for the continued onslaught of spam. If no one bought their stuff, they wouldn't waste their time(and ours) anymore
Just a thought
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
> Well first I PAY to have an Internet connection, I do not however, pay for the mail that gets sent to me - thats the mailers responsibility. Also it seems a bit more personal being intruded upon in your own home, than having something sitting in your physical mailbox outside on the step, or the entryway to your building. Personally I think snail mail is far more wasteful in terms of actual resources, I just don't directly pay for it and I don't get as much of it and I can recycle it, but the time I spend sifting through hundreds of ridiculous spam emails a day impacts me more directly.
Would you trust this guy if he was part of some sort of committee/organization to stop spam?
There you have it. I wonder if there is a way of applying this cost to every spammer.
"Because the hyperactivity caused a crash about every other day, Shiels monitored the computers all day."
Hmmm I guess the spam software is running on Windows.
Sure its ok to post the source to DeCSS but now all of a sudden you don't like the SPAMMER-HOWTO? Thats odd I thought you didn't have a problem with it just being information and all.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
"Bulk e-mail has the stigma of being trash," he said. "That I don't want to associate with a legitimate business."
So the companies he's whoring for, are illegitmate companies. Now who in their right mind wants to do business with those kinds of company?
Duncan Shiels (support@mousehousestudios.com)X : none
503.702.7466
FA
#301 6663 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy
Portland, OR 97225
US
With the start of young men becoming spammers, drawn into the lure of quick and easy money. Is this the 2003 version of luring high schoolers into brokerage firms and cold calling? Promising them quick and easy cash when they become brokers, just now it's spamming?
Does anybody have a easy and effective way to stop spam mail reach the inbox?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
If he feels that this stuff is so legitimate, why is he using software that abuses open relays and proxies, and forges mail headers, instead of publishing the real address he is sending his spew from? Hmmm?
It's forgery, plain and simple, and there are laws that deal with it. Prosecute the fsckers on it already!!!
Actually what is the cutting edge in stopping spam?
Such as watching DVD movies on operating systems with no DVD playing software. Where as spamming is always a pain in the butt.
Before DeCSS you would not be able to watch a DVD on Linux. Before spamming it was possible to let kids use email with no fears of them seeing obscene things, you can't now. Which is the biggest menace, I'll let you decide.
I have to say that this is a very interesting read. It portrays the spammer's point of view. Some of the points in the article actually make a lot of sense. We do get lots of junk mail from the u.s. post office (they could easily filter that, but they don't), yet we complain about spam the most... why?
I thought that was an interesting point. Although this article doesn't go into too much technical detail, it provided some insight into the business aspects of this which I don't particularly agree with ethically. Sure, it's a very easy way to make money if you know what you're doing, but it's still violating people's privacy by sending them unwanted messages.
Another thought... If your regulary Joe (the guy in this article) can find ways to become a spammer in 5-6 months of research, why can't the government do its own investigations and just put a stop to these facilitating network groups? I thought there were laws against spam in the U.S.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
Okay folks... We need a name, address, satalite photo of home, phone number, and the works for this guy...
Get to work!
"Is anyone else thinking what I am thinking?"
Pinky:"Yes, but were are we going to get rubber pants this hour?"
On another note, anyone got any idea where these "spammer clubs" he mentions might be? I got this new toy I wanna try out...
Carousel is a lie!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How about making it illegal for a company to finance a spammer? They are starting to pass laws that make spam illegal, but why not go to the root of the problem? If you're going to make spam illegal, then making it illegal for a company to finance an illegal activity doesn't seem that much of a stretch. In fact, that's probably already covered under some more generic existing law.
If someone receives spam for a product and it could be shown that the company that makes the product financed the spamming, then fine the company some big bucks. It might be hard to prove, but in a lot of cases the fear that it might happen would be enough to stop companies from doing it.
There were some figures in the article indicating how much the spammer got paid per sale or per inquiry about the product. That has to be showing up (probably under some other name) in some company's advertising budget. With the crackdown on corporate accounting I think some of this could be uncovered.
How is a 41 year old man called a boy?
He claims he abides by the laws, and removes people when requested. And refused porn customers...
Also rather intelligent and well spoken.
While his previous 'career' is absolute scum, at least he took it seriously, as a legitimate business..
I'm impressed, too bad not most of the rest don't have his level of 'morality', and 'responsibility'.
As much as we all hate it, ( I know I do, both at home and due to my position at work ) as long as its legal, it will continue to be a large part of net-life.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Here's a quote from the guy: "There's people who sit in their basements and have nothing better to do than get all upset about spam."
What total assholes these people are.
The most satisfying solution would be to hunt down and kill spammers myself, but some courts still erroneously think that spammers are human beings. We need to have more children of judges receive explicit XXX spam. If you know a judge and their kids' email address, you know what you have to do. :-)
Until then, we are forced to put down the ClueBat and resort to financial penalty for spammers and people hiring them.. The article says: Viagra distributors pay spammers per sale -- about $60 for every $150 order -- while financial companies typically pay for every consumer who requests more information -- as much as $12 for mortgage leads and as much as $5 for insurance referrals.
There is something to act upon here. It's already illegal to make a sell through a prohibited third-party. You cannot, say, give a commission to a guy who sells your stuff in Libya.
So how about giving the Federal Trade Commission the power to slap a fine on people who make sales on spam-acquired leads? Enforcement would be easy. Just answer mortage or insurance spam. The would-be insurance or mortagage broker contacts you, proving he has used the services of a spammer. Small claim court, or send the stuff to the FTC. Whammo, big fine, they won't do it again.And since they have a legal front-end in the financial world, they have assets to seize if they try to evade courts.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Here is an idea.. Whenever you get spam mail (the real kind that comes in your mailbox). Take those business reply mail envelopes and fill them with all the spam you can, and send it back. The heavier, the better. I have a few friends that do this. It helps out the postal service by giving them more money and it helps you to get your point across about the junk mailings.
Microsoft Windows runs on stress and frustration.
Now if you just happen to run into him on a lonely road, you know exactly what to do :-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So once Shiels masked his messages through open proxies, he used another program to find "open relays," the messages' last stop before reaching a recipient.
He was using other people's systems and fraudulently identifying himself. That's hardly honest. Would you also commend a murderer because at least he killed his victims quickly?
Another attack of the Sp4m k1dd1es...
-Sean
Wonder what his parents taste like?
and this little piggy went to market.
funny how a former cop tries this bullshit.
The solution to spam is a very difficult one to accomplish, but can be summed up very easily, make it unprofitable for spammers and the companies that use spam. Trying to catch spammers is a nearly impossibly thing to accomplish, so the next best targets are the companies and the consumers. Finding a way to put some ungodly amount of tax on products that are purchased from companies that use spam to advertise would seem to be a good deterant for the companies. After all, if the prices get so high that its cheaper get buy their crappy products in the normal market consumers would be turned off from it, and charging the companies would dry up their profits. Or even outlawing spam from the purchasing stand point, not the sending, which would crack down on the "small" percentage of people who actually buy products from spammers. That might seem unfair, but as one admin said in an interview "This is war". Im willing to take my chances with the law. It might actually be easier to track that small percentage of purchases made from spam ads than try and track and filter the spam itself... Yeah it hurts our online rights, but thats one Im willing to lose if it gets rid of spam since its also one I dont exercise at all.
Mod this guy up... and make it a slashdot article!
Slashdot, for all its whiners and do nothings, could probably net 1k to 10k in volunteers for this.
$60,000 out of other spammers pockets and poisoning a couple of spammers wells should push a couple dozen spammers past the marginalization point..
Why you little...!
Aaaaahhhhg!
I wonder if Spammers use spam filters for their mail.
And since a spammers e-mail list is probably automatically generated with a crawler you might be sending spam to yourself!
Sindri Traustason.
A friend of mine was into the spam game for a while. At the age of 19 he was making much more than any of the unix programmers I knew. He recieved several death threats from basement dwelling geeks and most of them have been tracked down and charged for their heinous crimes. My friend got out of the business after other members of his family were threatened too.
Remember, while spamming is a grey area subject, death threats are illegal. Whatever twisted morals you might have, if you threaten a spammer with violence expect to be tracked down and charged for it.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
I think it is time we find these sites and DOS em. Hunt them down in there homes, seize there puters place a couple gigs worth of metalica and Celene Dion mp3's on there drives. After place an anyonomus tip to the RIAA and let the wolves at the pigs.
For People with an *nix Account:
- Spamassassin ruleset-based mail analizer. Detects spam quite well, especially if you enable access to Razor and Realtime-Blacklists. Newest release includes a bayesian filter.
- bogofilter My favourite
bayesian spam filter. Pro: Very good detection rates after training properly. Con: Needs to be trained.
For everybodyHas anyone actually looked at what the business is that he's now in?
> "Defibworld is an authorized provider
> specializing in state of the art new and
> pre-owned AED's and Defibrillators at
> the lowest prices!"
Just what I want some hospital to be shocking my heart with: a "pre-owned" defibrillator purchased "at the lowest price"!
That site has a "forbidden" /images directory, FYI and FWIW.
heh
heh heh
...All of these replies and people don't get it. Even people who think they know. Read the story again... go back to school... use the force...
LOL!!! losers...
Instead of targetting spammers, perhaps action should be taken against the morons who actually buy the crap spammers advertise?
If it were illegal to buy anything that was advertised in an email message, would this cause spammers problems?
I have no idea how it could be enforced but it's just a thought.
http://www.email2success.com/?hop=gilly031.e2succe ss
+ so ftware
T F-8&oe=UTF- 8&q=email+marketing&meta=
http://www.spamfreedesign.com/
http://itsmyfranchise.com/sfop99/os.cgi
http://www.anconia.com/?r=1&s=email+advertising
http://www.allaccessmarketing.com/clients.htm
Some more by seaching on google where these scumbags advertise
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=U
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Pretty much anything sharp enough, applied at the second knuckle of each of the spammer's fingers, will do the trick....
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
First you get bitten by an existing spammer, then you transform. You'll need to stay out of sunlight and avoid garlic, though.
Yeah, I know we're spineless corporate stooges and supposedly native speakers of Klingon and dirty spammers, but leave us Oregonians alone already!!!!!!!!
If mortgage companies pay spammers $5 for every referral then why can't we spam them back?
Simply create ten million or so "honeypot" email addresses, and have an automated system have them all request information on the mortgage deal.
Once the mortgage company is on the hook for $50 million, they will think again before going to a spam outfit.
This will knock out the mortgage and credit card spams, but won't make a dent in the porn or Viagra spams, as those actually require an order.
Sub-rule: Spammers always lie about pushing pr0n.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Jeffrey Kosseff", jeffkosseff@news.oregonian.com, has written us a wonderful article short on facts and sadly devoid of technical information. This reminds me of one other Jeff K. I know--coincidence? Methinks not.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Many of the posters seem to be unaware that bulk mail sent by the Post Office actually subsidizes the cost of regular First Class mail. Hence, for all its drawbacks, it does provide legitimate benefits - unlike spam, whose costs are passed on to users and service providers.
Bastard, I nearly missed it.
What's so great about the article? The reason this particular spammer quit!
He quit because of hostile, harassing emails from the angry public! They work! Every email you've sent telling a spammer that they're a worthless turd of a human being had some miniscule effect!
Even now, the guy admits no moral qualms about his former job. He's still a thoughtless punk who sees nothing wrong with the practice, and I'd still like to punch him in the nose. But he QUIT, because we made his life miserable in return.
The lesson: keep giving 'em hell. It's not just gratifying, it sometimes works.
Let's see... ten million spam emails a day...
Suppose it wastes an average of one second of someone's time per email.
That means he wastes one year of person time every three days. In six months -- that's sixty years of potentially productive time he's wasted. Same effect as killing someone.
And spammers deserve to live... why?
While I guess its not 100% upfront to hide identity, if he used machines in areas that its legal to do so, ( those areas DO still exist ) then he's still technically legal... ( which was my main point )
Though I don't blame him a bit, if I was doing something LEGAL and was at risk of being sent death threats for doing it.. I would most likely hide too..
And at least lets compare apples to apples, murder doesn't have any comparison to Spam...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...that an ex-cop, who should certainly know the difference between 'Right' and 'Wrong,' would not see spamming for the ongoing theft of bandwidth and resources that it truly is. He got out of it because of all the hate mail and such that he was getting, not because it was just plain unethical.
I still think the best possible defense against spam is to be self-hosted, server-wise. I would also be interested to know how often this guy had to change ISPs thanks to being (rightfully) shut down for abuse of resources.
Then again, if he were hosted on AT&T/Comcast, that might never have happened. AT&T likes spammer money too much.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Good idea, so how do get spamme@our-police.co.uk
on a few spammers lists?
This is the primary method of spam distribution today. If the spammers are smart, they are staying away from the Sobig.a proxies on port 1180/1182 due to the fact they will allow anti-spammers to quickly track down the spammer's real IP address. If it truly is a handful of big time spammers sending the bulk of the email, one could make a pretty big impact on them this way.
If you ask the Post Office to filter out the junk mail, they will. This is not 100% effective, but about 90% of postal junk mail is added on a per address basis by the post office. They can and will stop delivering that if requested.
Also, back when I only got a few spams a week, I used to read them. I never bought anything from them, but I would look at ones I found interesting. The problem is that we have gone from five to ten spams a week to hundreds. My yahoo account (which I mainly use for site registrations) collects hundreds of emails each week in its bulk (spam) folder.
There are several costs to me of that volume. One, I have to spend a certain amount of time checking for legitimate email. Two, what if I incorrectly classify a real email as spam. Three, I don't feel comfortable publishing my email address now, since I don't want to get more spam. In the normal course of business, I would want to publish my email (how much time is spent on taking anti-spam kludges out of email; how much server time is spent trying to send email to these invalid addresses). Four, since spam is sent indiscriminately, it drowns out legitimate uses; if it is a product in which I would be interested, I would like to learn about it. Unfortunately, very little spam is targeted towards my interests (science fiction, fantasy, etc.). Five, when I send email, I am subject to it being indiscriminately deleted because I am not a recognized sender.
Two thirds of the email traffic overall is spam. Without it (and the computationally intense filtering created by it), we could easily cut the infrastructure in half. Think about it. Half the email servers in use could become web servers, etc. instead.
By contrast, postal junk mail does not increase your delivery costs. In fact, postal junk mail fees pay a good portion of the cost of maintaining mail delivery to people. If postal junk mail stopped tomorrow, the post office would have to raise postage to cover the fact that they would then be running the same delivery routes with less mail. Even if there are disposal costs, these are offset by the savings in postage.
There are very few anti-spam laws in the US. The few that do exist are state laws rather than federal laws. Most anti-spam prosecutions are based on fraud and damage claims. Further, in the US, it is not really possible to shut down a group talking about doing something. It's not illegal to discuss how the law could be broken.
"As much as"? So the guy makes a maximum of 52k a year (if you believe a piece of human refuse like a spammer). Sounds like a lot of work just to make middle class wages.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
This guy basically shared his story for a publicity plug for his defibralator Web site (see the last paragraph in the story). This would be synonymous to an ex-Enron exec who joined up with PepsiCola after the Enron fallout sharing his story of deceipt only to start off with saying, "Before I begin, let's all enjoy a Pepsi. Mmmmmm, Pepsi tastes so good and its stock price is very reasonable - buy now!"
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
First rule -- spammers lie. And there are a bunch of inconsistancies in the article that make me wonder.
I'd want to take a look at his books, and his bank account. Get a list of his clients, and see how much stuff they're actually selling. "Spam on commission" sounds seriously odd.
Also keep in mind that $1000/week is $50,000/year -- not all that impressive.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
But that means he only sold Viagra to 20 suckers a week, or mortgage-refinancing contacts to 200 suckers a week (not mortgages, just people who actually contacted a broker.) That's not a lot of suckers, though I've got no idea what fraction of the Viagra-spamming business he contributed.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Postal spam is worse. I've gotten to the point that, whenever I move, I *don't* fill out a change of address card because I'm sick of the fliers following me everywhere I go. I usually get 2 or 3 legitimate items of postal mail a week, versus dozens of bulk-mail ads. I'd simply not check my mailbox (which involves a 6-minute hike to the front of the apartment complex and back) but not checking it for more than a couple days causes my box to be crammed full. So, should I be more annoyed with: A)E-Spam, which takes me a whole 5 seconds to filter every time I check my e-mail, and is almost certainly mixed in with legitimate e-mails or B)A daily 6-minute hike which generally has the sole purpose of emptying my mailbox to physically make room for more bulk mail, with little chance of any practical yeild. See my\his point? (and no comments about needing the exercise, I quite enjoy walking - when it's by my choice out of no other obligation)
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
that's an eight, not a three.
a) we only have his word on it that he refused porn- and his word is worth a lot because he is a spammer (not!)
b) he may be well spoken, but if he was that intelligent he wouldn't have bragged about his spamming past
c) spamming is not a legitimate business; at most it might be legal, but it often isn't (for example he admitted that he didn't used 'ADV:' so he was breaking the law in many jurisdictions.)
d) what morality? He's a spammer.
e) what responsibility? He's a spammer.
Yeah right, so he promises he took people's name off the list if they asked. Big flipping deal. What idiot ever replies to spam? You're a real moron.
Come to think of it, you are supporting a spammer. You sure you're not a spammer yourself?
As much as we all hate it, ( I know I do, both at home and due to my position at work ) as long as its legal, it will continue to be a large part of net-life.
As much as we hate it, it often isn't legal, and it is still a large part of net-life.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I think a very easy solution would be to have an email server accept email by invitation only. Any unknown senders would be rejected with the SMTP message "please see site www.mysite.com to send email to this account..." then all they would half to do is take a turing number test that would take 15 seconds to complete and type in their email address.
A minor distraction for someone who wanted to contact you, but a nightmare for someone trying to send out 9 million emails per day. It wouldn't stop unsolicited email completely, just slow it down enough so it can be managed like telemarketers, door to door salesman, and regular junk mail, because now a persons time would be associated with the cost of sending email.
Where I live, you can sell off stuff like paper and recyclable junk. We actually make money off bulk mail and old magazines =)
It would be most unfortunate if intemporate people used the information in the linked article to email the spammer to suggest that he's somewhat lacking in self-knowledge, and a resembles some low form of pond-life.
So he created and began maintaining an e-commerce Web site, www.defibworld.com, on which they sell the devices worldwide.
Much worse, of course, if someone did a whois to find Mr. Shiels email address.
When a spammer is actually caught, rather than fining them, I submit this incredibly complex formula for determining PRISON time.
1 second in prison, for every email that they've sent.
So if a spammer is caught, and after they raid his computers they figure he did 10 million emails that week, that would be...
10 000 000 / (24 * 3600) = 115 days in prison (roughly 4 months, for that week)
I think that would work out to a managable amount of time (ie something that won't overflow the prisons). It also would make things easier since the authorities would only need to analyze a relatively small set of data to get proof and sentencing (ie this month's ISP logs)
Or even if it wasn't prison-time, they could easily be forced to manual labour for the city the live in or something... (preferably something like cleaning sewers, but basically anywhere that manual labour is needed...)
sound like a good idea?
He claims to have been a cop. And then he claims to have followed the laws regarding spam. Despite his going around those laws and using relays in other countries.
Not to mention I am sure he was in violation of his ISP's Terms of Service.
And he keeps portraying those who oppose his spamming as "living in basements".
What's with that? Doesn't he feel secure enough in his previous profession? Why does he have to keep making such claims about people who oppose his previous profession?
Also, why does he phrase it as "a war" and having to "bombard" people?
No, this isn't like a commercial on television. If I'm not watching that show, I don't get the commercials.
Im pretty sure I got some emails in my inbox about this.
It was buried somewhere between my instructions for degrees and viagra
Ive seen a rehash in this thread of several sensible (and not so sensible) ideas regarding reducing spam, and making life tougher for spammers. One idea this article gave me, however, that i havent seen discussed much, involves these message boards that were alluded to in the article.
A digital social network (in the form of bullitain boards, etc) through which people can trade information about addresses, software, and spamming methods should be a trivial thing for a large digitally sophisticated crowd (ie slashdot) to find and then attack, either by trolling/flooding, or more outright destructive means.
This dosent address the actual hardware involved in sending and receiving spam, but rather constitutes a multi-front assault against a subculture. Maybe it wont stop all spam, but it would make it harder for people to get into the spam business, by either exposing this social infrastructure and diluting it, or disabling it violently by disrupting the virtual real-estate it resides in.
Morally bankrupt he is.
For example, with postal bulk mail every action taken by every player in the process has a price. You can model the process with reasonable accuracy, predicting ahead of time how much everyone will get paid, from the printer to the postal worker.
In contrast, with spam there are variable external costs. If the spammer decides to use your email address as the reply-to, you've now got 1000 messages clogging up your inbox. That hour or two of lost time to restore your inbox to health is pure cost- you didn't even get paid to restore it. (and if you miss out on an important email because you reached your limit...) If an ISP gets a flood of bounces, the fact that they pay someone to fix it (or pay customer support some overtime to calm down irate customers) doesn't make that money spent a net benefit to the economy.
(*)ref: one of the classic examples of externalities: trains that set of forest fires next to the train tracks in England.
"Good," on the other hand, could be debated. I guess $52K/year is good, assuming that's net, after all the thousands he kept spending to join spammer clubs, buy email lists, and buy software.
IIRC, viagra requires a prescription, doesn't it? Isn't it illegal to sell it this way?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Hell even when the economy was good. I wasn't even close to making 20K. Now I'm unemployed and even though I wouldn't do it. I bet you there are people who are looking very closely at what's suggested in the article. Remember we all have to eat.
He's been involved in the spamming business for 6 months
He spent the first 5 months researching and one month of spamming
He spent $10.000 on spam-software
He claims he made $1000 a week.
4 weeks times $1000=$4000 income.
$4000 income minus $10.000 is -$6000. So, the guy loses $6000 on spamming.
Film at eleven...
I don't run Unix myself, but my email is provided by a hosting service that does. They have a Spamassassin option that I've taken up and of the 30-odd spams I get a day, maybe 2 get through to me. The rest get ***SPAM*** added to their subject lines and I filter them into a holding area to check later.
So far I've had to change the config file twice to add mailing lists to it, other that that it's not had a single false positive.
My Journal
Bulk unsolicited email is the exact opposite. It is an unnegotiated public bad- neither you nor your ISP negotiates that 'contract' with the spammers that makes all email / ISP services much more expensive.
...when you opt-out of bulk snail mail, the request is respected, or the sender cops a fine.
This makes sense. In the past month or so, the amount traceable to DSL or cable clients has now pushed over 50% of my spam. I'm slowly automating turfing them to the abuse depts - but some don't even let you send directly - you have to go fill out a form. And they demand the full message- difficult when the email grabs an image as you open it - those don't stay. Seems the cable/dsl companies have this very low on their priority list.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Okay, the above poster is just being stupid.
I thought the goal was to give spammers incentive, whether negative or positive, to stop spamming.
How is abusing someone who gave up spamming going to help?
The message you are saying is:
"Once you've spammed, you're screwed. Doesn't matter if you stop or change."
That is plain stupid and the wrong attitude to take. If someone stops spamming, give them the pat on the shoulder and leave them alone. Move onto the next spammer. Why continue to harass someone who has gone legit?
If you abuse people because they spam and you abuse them if they stop, then you are basically telling them and anyone else that hey, once you have started to spam, there is no reason to stop.
I for one would like to see the spamming stop.
Winged Power Photography
I think I should cross that company off my list of potential providers for Defibrillators and AEDs.
He might be reformed, or he might not... but he clearly has not paid ANY of his debt to society, and his ethics are in question.
People tend to surround themselves with people of a similar stripe and philosophy (the old birds-of-a-feather argument). Just the presence of that questionable past makes me not want to do business with the company.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
According to the Oregonian article, ex-spammer Jeffrey Kosseff is now running www.defibworld.com
I'm sure we can all be good slashdotters and take a look...
"I know this all sounds like you're hiding yourself and doing this illegitimately, but the reason you have to do it is everybody tries to shut you down," Shiels said.
And this guy doesn't think that they have good reasons for this? It doesn't sound like he's doing it illegitimately, HE IS! Forging email addresses, maybe not quite misleading subjects but others clearly are guilty of that, abusing open relays overseas, disguising the mail's origins... it's fraud, pal. You'd think as a former cop he'd realize that.
"There's people who sit in their basements and have nothing better to do than get all upset about spam," Shiels said.
I'd love to know what he's basing this data on. I myself never respond to or even READ a piece of spam mail, because most often that mail will never get to them, or they won't care. Reminds me of Homer: "Facts schmacts... you can prove anything remotely true with facts." (or something like that)
"I realized I didn't like to sell anything that nobody wants or needs or despises," he said. "I started to realize people just hate this so much."
Notice he still hasn't realized WHY people hate it so much.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
And needs a few more 'lifestyle enhancing' emails.
I say we give this guy the "royal treatment"...
>:)
Anyone know his mailing address?
Acutally, even if your provider is not as cool, and you are a Windows user you can utilize Spamassassin by using a SpamAssassin Proxy. It works as a local proxy for your POP3 account, running Spamassassin on every mail you download.
Does anyone else find it troubling that this guy was a cop?
Looks like he might be interested in some catalogs:
Registrant Contact:
mousehouse interactive
Duncan Shiels David Danowski (danks@europa.com)
503.289.2536
FAX: none
7709 N. Denver Ave.
Portland, OR 97217
US
I found that SpamNet (yeah, it's for outlook) is most effective because it distributes the effort of identifying spam. Of course it requires a centralized repository, but I am a lot less worried about a personnal mail being tagged as spam without my knowing it because if it was sent to just me, there's little chance that someone else would have tagged it as spam.
I believe this is the best approach even though it certainly isn't for the best e-mail client.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd really like to know what he was paying thousands of dollars for that crashed every day. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I should think it wouldn't be too difficult to have your own mail server that concealed its location rather than scanning for open relays...which he mentioned he also paid a lot for software that did that. These spammers he was talking about obviously don't know too much about what they do.
Duncan Shiels
Address: 115 NW First Ave, Suite 201
Portland, OR 97209
Phone 503 349-5877
800 341-4756
Email info@mousehousestudios.com
duncan@mousehousestudios.com
Get a Unix shell acount (free Unix shell acounts can be found everywhere. You can also get them cheap from many ISPs)
Learn perl (If you were smart you learned perl first but then if you were smart you wouldn't be trying to become a spammer to start with)
Write a perl script that scans Usenet for e-mail addresses and collects them into a big file.
(Today you scan the web instead...
More complex but more effective)
How here is why you really want to use a commertal Unix shell today but a free shell in the past...
Write your advertsment selling your services as a spammer. Give a postal address and phone number.
What happends here is you WILL lose your account once the message is sent. You don't need to worry about the flood of complaints becouse you won't retain the account long enough to read them.
The reason you want to use a free acount is so your out nothing when the account is shut down.
BUT... today's freebe shells are smart enough and your admin will notice what your doing and kill it possably before anything get's sent.
Your likely to face a two way spam filter one that will snag your message before it leaves the server.. or once the third copy leaves your spam job is automaticly terminated and your account locked.
A commertal account will be more forgiving giving you the chance to send out thousands or e-mails before the admin realises what your up to and shuts it down. By then you've shot the batch and it's to late.
Then wait for the phone calls....
Do your research and find a new e-mail account etc.
Start over.. generate a new e-mail list on a new Unix server... but now you've writen your perl scripts.. and keep a local copy.
Refine it a tad maybe so this time you won't be detected. Sending e-mails out once every minute instead of shooting the wad all at once.
The lower load will hopefully go undetected.
Rules for success.
1. Spend as little as possable on your Internet access as it will only be temporary.
2. Use a phone number for primary contact.
3. Don't use this as part of a bigger business. Only act as an advertser for other people.
4. Of course advertise your services via spam. It won't help to use more traditional media.
5. Even when you have a website and established a high bandwith service connection use unix shell acounts to spam. When ever possable use open relays, spoof and use spam friendly (or anti-spam hostile) service providers.
It never hurts to clame support from a major corpration. Be sneaky and establish a "business relationship" that is itself not an endorsement of your business practaces.
For example get a Microsoft cert in something.. or become a Microsoft partnert in something.
Same with AoL or anybody else. It's generally fairly easy to establish a business relationship. I have sevral myself and none of them know what my business dose nore do they actually care so long as I don't connect them to something unethical or unsavory such as spam.
I don't actually exist.
I burn it. If they want to send me firestarter, I will cheerfully burn it. Sending me bulk snail mail actually helps me out. Keeps my house warm.
(No, I don't have central heating, you twit)
Now that it's slashdotted, nobody will be able to read it.
Isn't that the same thing as a lawyer?
I've started taking to subscribing these spammers to other opt-out mailing lists.
Sure, someone does pay, but it is outside of the normal market process.
Are you nuts? Peering agreements are completely inside the normal market process.
For example, with postal bulk mail every action taken by every player in the process has a price.
What action in spam does not have a price?
If the spammer decides to use your email address as the reply-to, you've now got 1000 messages clogging up your inbox.
Likewise if a bulk mailer decides to use your postal address as a return address.
I'm not saying every single spam is identical to every single bulk mail. Obviously there are some methods of spamming which are worse than others. I didn't really despise the spammer in the article until he admitted that he was abusing open relays. Actually up until that point I'd probably be willing to do it myself, if I could make $1000/week.
Regardless of anyone's single belief, SPAM is still not a felony. To make the analogy: Someone spams me today and tomorrow it becomes a federal offense punishable by law. He is subject to the law as it was writtn YESTERDAY. Now, if I killed someone 10 years ago...I'm still going to punished; under the law written 10 years ago. Either way, the laws today should NOT reflect those of 10 years ago, unless an aspiring lawyer wants to set precedent.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
"I'll just give myself one of these *ka-chunk*"
script (far down)
Rats cry when i tell them about my day - Dilbert
Doctor: "I'm sorry, we did everything we could, but the damn defibrillator we bought from a former spammer wouldn't work."
.. but .."
Patients Loved One: "Oh no...
Doctor: "Don't worry, it came with a 30 day warranty, we will get our money back."
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
These people claim to have a list of 25 million PayPal subscribers. Did PayPal sell them their list?
You will need:
1 postage-paid return envelope
1 paper grocery bag
1 brick
some tape
1. Wrap brick in grocery bag (plain side out)
2. Tape postage-paid return envelope to outside of package
3. Drop into public mailbox
There ya go, an 8-dollar plea to stop bulk mail.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
Often spam doesn't have a valid from: address, however, there is always a url in it where you can buy their stuff. So now you know the email addresses of the business who hired the spammer to spam you. Just send some (much) bogus emails back. If everyone who hates spam does that they will have thousands of bogus emails for every serious reaction. I don't think they will hire a spammer again.
You have to figure out how to get past all the filters and stuff. I do think he was ripped off by the spam software people, I doubt it would be that hard to write.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Cops enforce laws - which have nothing to do with right or wrong, and are encouraged to lie to you in the process. Don't believe me? Ask anyone who has been arrested, or their lawyers.
Cops are just gang enforcers - that they have the backing of the "law" is a nice moral justification they can use for themselves - but they'll happily enforce laws that they admit are wrong.
Domain name: mousehousestudios.com Hrm, who'sing for his design studio's addres gives us:
Registrant Contact:
mousehouse interactive
Duncan Shiels David Danowski
(danks@europa.com)
503.289.2536
FAX: none
7709 N. Denver Ave.
Portland, OR 97217
US
When I did a whois on defibworld.com (using whois.enom.com) it didn't come up with anything.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
And it was not until March 1995, that CERN handed over the control of the web to the WWW Consortium run by MIT and INRIA (France). It was only at this point that the Internet was first available for outside use by non-academics.
WTF!? The 'internet' was available for outside use long before that. Intel.com was registered in 1989. There are other uses of the internet besides 'the web'. Like, I donno, email... Also, before the web, people used things like IRC, email, gopher, telnet, ftp, and Usenet (around since the mid-80s).
and not only that, mosaic wasn't the first web browser, it was just the first 'good' one. HTML and hypertext had been around (but in limited use) since 1989.
I'm not saying that this guy isn't full of shit. I'm just saying that you are as well.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
No one said it was the parent to your post said "No i didn't say that spamming is the same as murder, but it is a haneous activity that an individual shouldn't simply be able to walk away from untouched." That is it's a bad thing to spam. and it should be illegal, that it isn't just shows that the law has some catchup to do.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
No if you look closely you'll find it's someone a hell of a lot closer to home who's being "stupid", as for all that clap trap about giving spammers, "incentive" to stop spamming, sadly the only thing that could hope to get through the thick skins of these asholes is abuse etc, get it through your thick skulls Guys only asholes spam, no nice person ever spamed anyone, why? because spaming is "nasty". some one really needs to apply the clue stick to some people.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
The only problem I see is that that these people didn't do a good job of hiding their identities.
If you ask the post office not to recive bulk-rate mail, then they will not give it to you.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Yes, filters keep you from seeing the spam, but the Spammer's already wasted the bandwidth and storage of every ISP between you and them. Not much for an individual spam, but we are talking about billions of messages.
Dunno about you, but my spam has skyrocketed recently. I mean *really* gone through the roof. I used to get a few spam, but now it's epidemic, I get about 5 or 6 spam for every legit email, it's a pain in the ass. At least I know I can blame dumb articles like this for the problem.
I took a slightly different route on becoming a spammer.
.(Roughly 500 alumni members.)
:-)
One day my web design teacher asked me to write a script that will send out e-mails to all the alumni in our MySQL database. I knew exacly how to do this, and with full confidence I opened up notepad and wrote up a neat little PHP script.
Eventually, after the script was done, I hit the 'send' button, and all was well. Except, it was taking a bit long. (The script resided on a rmote webhost from which the emails were sent.) So I waited, I waited. Until I received the email. (I put myself on the list just to be sure it was sent. Well, let's just say it was.) So I'm like, "well, good, it worked."
What I didn't know is it worked about 500 times too much. In a few moments, I received another copy of the email. And another. And another. And another. Within 6 hours, I received roughly 500 copies. So did everyone else on that list
So, I made a small coding mistake in the loop. Ehm. 250,000 emails sent out. 5 gigabytes of traffic. Many angry calls to my school. But fortunately, I'm still the most trusted programmer in the class.
So yeah. Not completely intentional, but I'm pretty sure that fits the definition of spam.
- shazow
Why not go after the compnanies that buy spamming services from those spam lord, and charge them for doing so, then, all spammers are simply going to leave this type of business.
He left his hometown to become a Hollywood stuntman and then a police officer before returning five years ago as a budding Internet entrepreneur.
What the hell is it with ex-cops turning into spammers?
This is the second one we've seen in as many months.
Good plan.
So basically the plan for spammers for that line of logic should be:
1. Spam people relentlessly.
2. Dodge lawsuits.
3. Profit, profit, profit!
4. Retire.
5. Expect pats on back for "repenting" -- while still keeping all the millions you made at the time & expense at others.
Why does that seem flawed to me?....
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
The supreme court has ruled on several occasions that commercial speech (advertisements) are not protected by the first ammendment.
What is the difference - the ads in TV or the ads in Internet ?? We pay to get all those pesky ads that interupt my favorit hockey game or what ever but never complain ?? I hate both - spamming and ads - even in tv. Both bring money to some - so, tell me what's the difference.
Lets get this place shut down.
http://s4d.org (spamming 4 dummies)
And after building up their database, they're starting to charge. No thanks.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
~~~
Asshole.
You forgot the link.
All of that Spam software could have a legitimate purpose as well.
Rumor has it that some of the commercial spam software packages include the full versions of legitimate mail server programs such as Sendmail and Postfix. There's a "substantial legitimate use" right there.
Will I retire or break 10K?
With spam, a single spammer can force someone else to pay out (time or money) without any type of trade being involved. Peering agreements account for only some of the costs of spam.
For example, that example where I gave of someone spending an hour or two to clean up their inbox because they were falsely used as the return address: that is an unpredictable, unnegotiated cost. If an entire system gets clogged up and slowed down because of spam, the loss of time doesn't get recovered elsewhere in the system, it is a net loss. It is similar to an automobile accident. One accident that blocks highway lanes can easily cause 3,000 people to lose 1 hour of time. The highway patrol and towtruck operators might get paid $500 during that time, and the car repair place might get $2000. The payments into the local system because of that accident could be $3k, which doesn't make up for those 3,000 person-hours lost. Spam is similar.
As another example, take antiviral software. If a new virus comes out, the antivirus company might pay $2000 in overtime to get a patch out, and perhaps antivirus companies get another $500,000 in new customers. That won't make up for the 100,000 lost person-hours due to that virus.
Here's a data point. As of 8 PM Pacific time (11 PM Eastern) on Sunday night, user dknj has 12 people listed as "freaks" (vs. 4 fans).
I'll have to check back in a few hours- but I suspect that after that parent post up there, the freak to fan ratio may be rising very soon. It might be interesting to watch.
Notice a name, an address, at least one email.
They are already receiving Sears, Speigel, and others catalogs.
Can you help them get more free information?
Alansis is located at 505 Montgomery Street, 11th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111
To date, thousands of sale's professionals have taken advantage of our automatic lead retrieval system and found high quality leads that close. I encourage you to perform your free search. Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Regards,
Tabathia
Alansis Customer Care
customercare@alansis.com
415-874-3524
Alansis is not licensed as a mortgage solicitor, mortgage broker or mortgage lender in any state. Alansis provides a free service to consumers interested in obtaining information regarding mortgage, purchase or debt consolidation loans by introducing consumers to financial professionals. This e-mail is an advertisement for Alansis sent to you on 5/5/2003 at 3:59:44 PM and is intended to confirm your information. If you would prefer not to receive any additional e-mail information from Alansis, please email remove@alansis.com. Please allow a reasonable response time not to exceed three (3) days after which you will be removed from our e-mail database. Alansis is located at 505 Montgomery Street, 11th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111. Alansis may be contacted by e-mail at support@alansis.com.
"I think so Brain, but me and Polyanna... what would the children look like?"
I just showed this post to my brother, and he thought it should be immortalized in the Slashdot Hall of Fame.
It's both incredibly hilarious, and incredibly sad [bordering on tragic].
on second thought, spammers should be kicked off the net for good.
Bag, tag and blacklist them. Make damn sure they *never* get on the net again.
The message should be loud and clear:
Don't spam ever. It is not worth it.
Blogging because I can...
As much as I hate spam, I disagree.
The article shows various interesting things, one of them being that spammers are hated like beelzebub himself. If that does not prevent one from starting it, what does?
I must admit I was tempted about the idea of "taking revenge" on a spammer, but no. Stop spamming and repent, that is good enough for me.
Alex
P.S.: Then again... he raked in $4.000/mo. Maybe he should donate some of that money to spamhaus.org
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
All SPAM is postage-due junk mail.
Rule No. 1: Spammers lie.
Your post sounds like any of the 150+ spams that arrive in my inbox each day. "My friend... making more money..."
You spammers just don't get it. You are spamming us absolutely silly. If you get blown away, no jury would convict, after being shown exactly what it is you spew here several hundred times a day. Sooner or later, it will happen, my friend. And I will laugh. And dance on your grave. And probably have to get in line to do it.
Some people who posted responses made many good points. They mainly center around one of the following:
1) The person wronged the online community and profited from it. "Just" letting them go would be wrong!
We all want satisfaction. That is the difference between enforcement of Law and dealing out of Justice. Persons who abuse online resources would be in violation of the law. The anguish they cause people isn't as clearly defined by the Laws. That leaves us without satisfaction. Without closure.
Taking it unto yourself to right what you percieve to be a wrong by taking the law into your own hands is called vigilantism(sp?). Those actions typically land outside of what is condoned by the Law as it currently stands.
I do believe that people should be penalized for doing something which is wrong and costs everyone in the community. Spam and Spamming falls under this kind of community abuse.
If you want satisfaction, change the Laws so that Spamming and Spammers will be penalized and not just slapped on the wrists.
2) "Spammers will think it is okay to spam and quit when they have made their money if we take the 'give them an out' attitude!"
The real problem here is that there is the question of satisfaction of our sense of justice being served. When a person goes to prison and serves their term and are released, we believe them to have repaid their debt to society. If they are repeat offenders, we consider them to be lost causes. (Sorry, I'm generalizing here.) And then, there are those who commit crimes and get away with it. They decide to quit while they are ahead and try to be productive elsewhere. If they slip back into the lifestyle, they will eventually screw up.
I guess my point is: Here is an example of someone who tried it out. Saw it was profitable, but due to the stream of hate mail and just having to dodge the proverbial bullet, has decided to quit the lifestyle and earn a living in a more accepted way.
He's already quit the spamming life. Harassing him more doesn't make him quit spamming any more than he has. Nor will it set an example for others to quit. Quite the opposite.
Then, you have those who are career spammers. They are the ones raking in 5+ digit earnings per month and they escape the reach of the law. Given death threats and harassment, they continue on.
I see them as the repeat offender criminal. The lost causes. They will continue to commit crimes both legally and socially. They should be the ones hatred and "requests to stop" be directed at. Not at people who have already stopped.
When you try to bring someone out of a life of crime or who has taken the wrong path, you don't continually harass them after they have stopped. That just pushes them back into the life. You don't pat them on the back either. You watch them carefully to make sure they don't repeat their offense. They ask for forgiveness from the community and work to re-earn the communities' trust. They are in essence, the little fish who have a future.
The repeat spammers who have been at it for years are the ones which deserve a lifetime of punishment for the ill they have caused and willingly continue to cause.
What we all want is spam to go away. So give them a reason to stop if they are spamming. Give them a reason to stay stopped if they have decided to stop. And get the law/government in on it if they refuse to stop.
Winged Power Photography
"heinous", you muppet
even on the very rare occasion that I want the product! For example (well, the only example really) there was a spam advert for the iraqi pack of cards. I'd like to get that. But since it was advertised via spam i'd rather buy it at a dodgy "car-boot" sale. At least there its only financing crack cocaine distribution, not spammers!
The junk mail his mail carrier delivers bothers him much more, Shiels said.
"It costs money to be processed. And it's a waste of trees. It's intrusive as hell because you have to go through all of it. People don't get mad about that, and I don't understand why," he mused.
Well, I get annoyed with junk mail, just not as annoyed. Lots of reasons:
1: It arrives once a day (sometimes as little as once a week). SPAM interupts me on average every 30 minutes 24 hours a day.
2: I get a lot less of it, about one a day averaged out. Good enough reason to be 20-100 times less bothered by it.
3: When I complain I've got a real address to shout at and I can cost them real money every time I do. It may not be much but any revenge feels good. And it works, pissing the parasites off does discourage them. Hell, it worked for this SPAM merchant.
If you send emails to ten million people, at least some of them can be expected to be psychos or murderers. One can't be surprised of getting death threats
That should be enough incentive never to spam again... Just think - some of these guys dont really care about your viagra ad- they just wanna stalk your family and kill them anyway... There really are psychos like that out there... And you wanna give them extra reasons to come find you?
Hehe.... Now I am just hoping that I have made it that little bit harder for spammers to sleep at night...
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
I'm currently working for a spam-filtering company, so I see a LOT of spam, and I've seen pretty much every trick in the book. Spammers generally can be broken down into three catagories. What you described would be the first catagory:
1. The amature. This is some guy who runs a mail server out of their basement. Mostly just hawking for their own business of running a fraudulant store (ie selling HGH or viagra), or some sort of scam to get users bank accounts or credit cards. These are DEAD EASY to block. Usually it takes all of about 10 seconds to block this sort of spammer. They might get a few thousand messages out in the first 10-20 minutes or so before their spam is spotted, but everything after that will be blocked.
2. The "legitimate business" spammer. These are the people who claim to be some sort of legitimate business. These are the people like 00Fun.com or Joke-of-the-day.com, as well as the people selling you wonderful new kitchen utensils, etc. They all claim that they are in full compliance with the law and that they only send to opt-in mailing lists. The trouble with these spammers is that it's sometimes hard to tell these people appart from some real legitimate businesses mass e-mails. What's worse, I've encountered many services where the spammer clearly used web harvesting software to get their addresses, but they also have had real users sign up to request the e-mails (mailing lists selling religion related products are the worst for this). When you figure out that these people are spammers though, it's usually dead-easy to block them.
3. The professional spammer who doesn't even bother hidding he fact that they're spamming. This is mostly porn, penis enlargement, loan sharks and HGH sellers. This is the only type of spam that is tough to block. These people will use every trick in the book to avoid spam filters. Given enough time, all of these messages can be blocked, the big question is just how much gets through before the filters are in place and how much time it will take to create those filters (often it's just not worthwhile to spend too much time on a single spam, even if it's not being filtered, simply because there's so much more than can easily be blocked).
The one upside to all of this is that, generally speaking the harder it is to block spam, the less likely it is that some moron is actually going to buy the stuff. While you would have to be REALLY incredibly dumb to buy HGH (Human Growth Hormone, aka snake oil) from a message with the subject: "Reverse the Effects of Aging!", you would have to be even stupider to buy HGH from a message with the Subject: "alksjdflksjdffhhfggf sjhdhfhfdsgfd Get Young!!!alosjdfalsdjfklsdjflsdfhhffg jdsjsdfd"
As a bit of a side note, I find that spam paints a REALLY sad picture of our society. Not so much so because there are people so lacking in morals that they think spamming is a legitimate business, but rather because some people actually BUY this crap! Honestly you have to be really REALLY dumb to buy anything from spam. It's blatently obvious that these products are not legitimate to anyone with an IQ above the freezing temperature of water (and I'm talking in degrees C here). But not only are people buying this stuff, but it would seem that there are hundreds of thousands of people buying this stuff. There are approximately 20 billion spam messages sent every day (rough estimate for, but a fairly conservative rough estimate given that Hotmail and AOL alone receive nearly 5 billion spams a day). A good 10% of those are penis enlargement spams. Thats 2 billion penis enlargement spams sent every day. Now, if we figure that it only costs $10 per million spams (it's actually probably at least $100 to send a million spams, when all costs are counted). That's at least $10,000 a day that is spent sending penis enlargement spams. If it costs $50 per dose, that means that at least 500 people need to buy penis enlargement pills every day just to break even (assuming zero costs to process the sale and no cost to supply the pills, which is a reasonable assumption since I doubt that spammers would worry about actually sending any products they sell).
Just some food for thought.
Strangely enough, I am not getting nearly as much spam as I used to.
.lv .
It used to be about 20-40 spam emails per day.
I changed my email address once.
You will not get any of my emails from any of my websites. Instead there are web forms allowing people to mail to me via web, without knowing my email.
I do not post my e-mail to any public forums, and I evaluate carefully any websites which require me to register, before deciding to submit my email or not.
I am now getting about 1 spam letter per week.
As I am not American, most amusing to me is that spammers are sending the emails about tax reduction and other U.S.-only spamcrap, although my email ends on
Spammers would do themselves credit, (besides shooting themselves dead), if they tailored the spam sending to only target the potential victims.
Wide glasses, light brown hair and a neatly trimmed goatee frame a genial face ....
.. for a moment I thought they said GENITAL Face .. No wonder people call these guys pr**ks ...
Whew
What you didn't include is how did this get them to take you off their list?
sol
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Reading about people who go out of their way to annoy or to people's lives more difficult like this guy, just need to die.
God, this stuff makes me sick..
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Screw spamming...I wanna know how to become a Hollywood stuntman!
-BK
Chemical Blog
What if every slashdotter were to run a mass mailing program 24/7, send random bits (Lots of them) that no spam filter can catch. How long before the whole Internet crashes?
Republicans are idiots.
"I think so Brain, but if they called them 'Sad Meals' the kids wouldn't buy them!"
Span is a felony by any state's laws (save La). If you steal $1000.00 it is "grand theft". If the theft is only the costs of conection spent retrieving spam from the serer, after a 10 or 20 meg spam campaign @ $0.001 / per receipant cost, the spammer has still stolen access in an amount in excess of $1,000.00 - s/he has just done it to millions of people. Still, it is stealing by deceit. A crime anywhere. If your local kids each steal a brick from your drive, sooner or later you don't have any bricks left. This is codified common law (arising from pickpocketing) and it was more than 1000 years old when it was passed on to the British common law colonies....