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I, Spammer
PCOL writes "The Washington Post is reporting on testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by Ronald Scelson, an eighth-grade dropout and self-taught computer programmer from Louisiana, who claims that he sends between 120 million and 180 million e-mails every 12 hours, that he can break sophisticated software filters 24 hours after they are deployed, and that he has no choice but to resort to forging the sender information in his bulk e-mail so he can be anonymous and maintain his connection to the Internet. He added that he obtained all his addresses legally and that AOL gladly sold him the company's entire customer directory which Ted Leonsis, vice chairman of AOL, did not deny." It's a tough life. Here's another story about the Senate committee meeting.
By Jonathan Krim
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 22, 2003; Page A01
As a Senate committee sought answers yesterday on how to curb the overwhelming surge of junk e-mail, one of the nation's most notorious spammers told members just how hard their job would be.
Ronald Scelson, an eighth-grade dropout and self-taught computer programmer from Louisiana, riveted the Commerce Committee hearing room as he explained that he sends between 120 million and 180 million e-mails every 12 hours.
He boasted that in 24 hours he could crack sophisticated software filters designed to block spam.
And he accused Internet providers of hypocrisy in claiming to want to protect their customers from unsolicited messages.
Large Internet companies spam their own members, he said, while other network access providers have signed contracts allowing known spammers to send out mass e-mail.
"I'm probably the most hated person in this room," said an unapologetic Scelson, responding to a parade of technology, government and marketing officials who decried the purveyors of junk e-mail.
Scelson and eight other witnesses testified as Congress grapples with what Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) called a tide of "digital dreck" that threatens e-mail communication, one of the most powerful tools of the Internet age.
With spam now costing U.S. businesses upwards of $10 billion a year, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is co-sponsoring an anti-spam bill with Burns, said it was time for Congress to stop dawdling and pass federal legislation.
All of the witnesses agreed that spam is a complex problem that defies an easy fix. But as executives from leading software companies and online providers fidgeted uncomfortably, the man known to anti-spam tracking groups as the "Cajun Spammer" described how he easily acquires millions of e-mail addresses from publicly available member directories at America Online and other providers.
Moreover, he said, "the same people complaining about spam send e-mail" with solicitations for their own products and services. "AOL spams its members," he said.
This prompted the committee chairman, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), to turn to Ted Leonsis, vice president of AOL.
"Mr. Leonsis, are you a spammer?" McCain asked.
Leonsis, who had testified minutes earlier about how AOL was blocking 2.4 billion pieces of spam per day, did not answer directly.
"We let members opt out" of commercial messages sent by the company and affiliates, he said. And he accused Scelson of violating the company's "terms of use" agreement by using AOL's membership directory as a source for e-mail addresses. Scelson readily agreed.
Scelson also testified about how some Internet access providers signed little-known agreements, called "pink contracts," with known spammers to allow them to send mail in bulk, at prices higher than other commercial clients were charged.
Although the contracts mandated that bulk e-mailers abide by all state laws, Scelson said it did not matter if the e-mailers followed the rules. Most of the providers rip up the contracts and kick spammers off their systems after being threatened by anti-spam organizations that track mass e-mailers and put them on blacklists.
As a result, Scelson said, he has had no choice but to resort to forging the sender information in his bulk e-mail so he can be anonymous and maintain his connection to the Internet.
"This is censorship," he said, arguing that both anti-spam vigilantes and Internet providers that filter out spam are depriving people of their right to see their mail.
"People still buy this stuff," he said, claiming that his clients get a response rate to his e-mail of 1 to 2 percent.
Scelson, who said he does not distribute mail containing pornography, said one of his biggest clients sells a package of anti-virus computer software called Norton SystemWorks at cut-rate prices.
Officials at Symantec Inc., which makes the Norton software
In the few days I have been using TMDA, I have been exceedingly satisfied. It is a much better solution than SpamAssasin. You should try to whitelist most of the people you expect to receive email from ahead of time, but I haven't had any complaints from people having to respond to a message bounced back to them for authentication.
That, in combination with qmail's revokable dash-addresses (howard-amazon@cow.com, howard-slashdot@cow.com, etc.) make it an excellent solution not just for avoiding spam, but for tracking its sources as well.
... is here. He must not be doing all that well if he can't scrape together the dough to get his fat ass out of Slidell, Louisiana, a town I had the misfortune of driving through a year ago and whose only redeeming feature is the Lake Ponchartrain bridge/causeway leading out of it and to New Orleans.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Might as well just link to where all of the information is.
He has two addresses, (assuming these are both him).
/. community like to show this guy what we consider spam?
These were the only Ronald Scelson's in Louisiana and considering they are both in the same city I would say it's fairly certain.
Ronald Scelson
211 Martin Lane
Slidell, LA 70458
Ronald R Scelson
1711 W Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460
Would the
According to Spamhaus:
d en cefile=1070:
http://www.freedomforum.org/speech/1999/10/20laspa m.aspa ge8.htm ln ths/Feb98 /feb23pr1.htm
(http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/search.lasso?evi
ABUSERS: Ronald R. Scelson
[Birthdate: 12-11-71 or 72, New Orleans, LA, married]
avsrscelson@aol.com / cajunspam@aol.com / avsrscelson2000@yahoo.com / dff@yahoo.com
Amy Hoolahan [wife/sister?]
43 CYPRESS MEADOWS LOOP
SLIDELL, LA 70460 US
Home: (504) 646-2225
Work: 504-649-6248
PHONE NUMBERS: 888-365-0000 ext. 1648 / 800-242-0363 EXT. 2427
888-724-3108 x5413752
504 781 8117 / 504-957-1037 / 504-847-1232 / 504-649-7751
504-781-6615 / 504-649-6248 / 504-781-6655 / 504-831-1595
504-646-2225 / 504-641-0876
FAX: 504 641 0810 / 504-456-0995 / 504-781-6615
MORE INFO: Connelly sues to keep spamming:
http://www.frc.org/legal/lf99j05.html
http://www.mediainst.org/digest/fall1999/p
Wife Florence Fox sued for Nu-Skin Pyramid Scheme:
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/press2/mo
Me, I'm thinking some letters of marque and reprisal are the answer...
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
I think Scelson greatly overstated his response rate. I've seen web pages offering spamming-for-hire services, and the response rates they claimed were generally in the range of 50 to 100 responses per 100,000 sent.
Also, I never saw any statements about the kinds of responses. I'm inclined to think the spammers-for-hire count all kinds of responses (including the death threats) to make their numbers look better.
[ADV] tags would be ok.. and nice for people who have mail accts they can filter... (which is most of us now a days)
But it completely overlooks the other problem with spam... and that's bandwidth. Someone pays for the bandwidth and right now it's not the spammers. If they "go legit" this may become a non-issue, but right now it's at least as important as the wasted worker time deleting the messages.
The Registry of Known Spammers has his contact information, including emails, snail address, toll free phone numbers, etc. Lameness filter prevents posting the whole thing, but here's a peak at it.
http://www.freedomforum.org/speech/1999/10/20laspa m.aspa ge8.htm ln ths/Feb98 /feb23pr1.htm
ABUSERS: Ronald R. Scelson
[Birthdate: 12-11-71 or 72, New Orleans, LA, married]
avsrscelson@aol.com / cajunspam@aol.com / avsrscelson2000@yahoo.com / dff@yahoo.com
Amy Hoolahan [wife/sister?]
43 CYPRESS MEADOWS LOOP
SLIDELL, LA 70460 US
Home: (504) 646-2225
Work: 504-649-6248
PHONE NUMBERS: 888-365-0000 ext. 1648 / 800-242-0363 EXT. 2427
888-724-3108 x5413752
504 781 8117 / 504-957-1037 / 504-847-1232 / 504-649-7751
504-781-6615 / 504-649-6248 / 504-781-6655 / 504-831-1595
504-646-2225 / 504-641-0876
FAX: 504 641 0810 / 504-456-0995 / 504-781-6615
MORE INFO: Connelly sues to keep spamming:
http://www.frc.org/legal/lf99j05.html
http://www.mediainst.org/digest/fall1999/p
Wife Florence Fox sued for Nu-Skin Pyramid Scheme:
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/press2/mo
AKA: RONALD SCELSON (NETBLK-FON-106771046442576)
43 CYPRESS MEADOWS LOOP
SLIDELL, LA 70460 US
SCELSON, RONALD (RS928-ARIN) RSCELSON@AOL.COM
5049571037
So turn the tables on them. That's what USPS Form 1500, Application for Listing & Prohibitory Order (pdf), is for.
Junk mail is usually paid for using bulk pricing systems, subsidized by the rest of the postal audience.
I'm afraid you have it backwards. Bulk mail, even at its reduced rate, is what allows you to send a letter at 39 cents. Bulk mail is presorted so as to make processing time for the post office almost nothing. Your letter with sloppily written address actually takes time to be read and sorted.
ALso, the USPS is a government sponsored monopoly but it doesn't receive any tax payer dollars. It is self funding.
Finally, large glossy catalogs are very expensive for companies and they are not typically sent to people who haven't shopped in the store before or requested the catalog specifically. They therefore are not in the same category as snail spam.
I refer you to rule 14a-8 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. There are (at least) 2 reasons why your proposal would be excluded (see question 9).
Reason 1 - "(5) Relevance: If the proposal relates to operations which account for less than 5 percent of the company's total assets at the end of its most recent fiscal year, and for less than 5 percent of its net earnings and gross sales for its most recent fiscal year, and is not otherwise significantly related to the company's business;"
Remember that AOL is a very small part of AOL TW and the cost of the CD's would be way less than 5%.
Reason 2 - "(7) Management functions: If the proposal deals with a matter relating to the company's ordinary business operations;"
I think deciding on advertising methods falls under the "ordinary business operations."
Just send them to these guys. http://www.nomoreaolcds.com Will they ever hit their goal?? Who knows! But, I personally can't wait to see this cross-country convoy of AOL cds. :-)
-J
Ummm, USPS is NOT a private entity, it is still owned by the government (although it runs pretty independently). There's been talk of spinning it off as a private corporation, but it hasn't happened.
Let's start with AOL. You say there is no way AOL sells their info. Well, I know 3 local businesses here who bought AOL member addresses from AOL, buying only the sections of our local town even. AOL will not only sell you their members, they will offer targeted selections.
Now, I doubt AOL puts this on their site next to their member sign-up, but from what I have seen, they sure do sell your addresses. In fact, I'll bet you did not know AOL tracks where their users go on the web for marketing purposes. Yup, if you visit a mortgage site, they immediately sell your info to their list of mortgage lead buyers. By morning, you will have several offers for mortgages in your inbox. And this happens for all kinds of businesses. I mean, they control your email and your net connection, why not market accordingly. I'm sure a few of you AOL users have experienced this before, or perhaps could try it?
Now, as far as all spammers being liars, I see you are just one of the anti-spam flock, spouting propaganda. It's disappointing no one on /. actually reads the articles, or can remembers ones from a few weeks ago. You might remember a bit on Spamhaus showing the top 200 spammers causing 90% of the spam. Well, I know 2 of those people. I know one because they live 3 towns over from me, running a small PC shop in Halifax, MA. If you email me, I'll send you their business address, directions, even their home info. :) The other one I met because of them. I can tell you they are unscrupulous, a bit dumb, and have no troubles telling lies. The ones I know are total dicks. The issue is the remaining 90% of small time spammers, some of whom who are actually ok guys.
Granted, they should be paying for their use of email, yata-yata. Case in point, the 3 shop owners I know locally who bought those bits of AOL's lists. They offer honest products, they try and target locally, so they don't send people who can't possibly use their service an ad, and they honor remove requests. They even offer their shop info in the email so they can be contacted directly. The system could be better, but at least they try. They do not fit your bill of the evil spammer. Some really are pretty bad. Some are not. Your sweeping statements of ignorance and promises of murder at the end are totally unwarranted.
I will be sure to remember to offer to murder you next time I disagree with the way you do business. How you got modded +5 for this steaming pile of flaimbait is beyond me, but I'll certainly burn some karma to put out an opposing statement. I guess that is what public forums are all about. ::drinks a little more distilled Usenet post evil:: Cheers.
"Victims, aren't we all?"
Unless you use the AOL CD as an artificial vagina, you won't get far with that application.
Wrong! Go read this page. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Now, pay special attention to these sections (emphasis mine):
a. Whoever for himself, or by his agents or assigns, mails or causes to be mailed any pandering advertisement which offers for sale matter which the addressee in his sole discretion believes to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative shall be subject to an order of the Postal Service to refrain from further mailings of such materials to designated addresses thereof.
...and...
Both the absoluteness of the citizen's right under 4009 and its finality are essential; what may not be provocative to one person may well be to another. In operative effect the power of the householder under the statute is unlimited; he may prohibit the mailing of a dry goods catalog because he objects to the contents or indeed the text of the language touting the merchandise. Congress provided this sweeping power not only to protect privacy but to avoid possible constitutional questions that might arise from vesting the power to make any discretionary evaluation of the material in a governmental official.
It is not up to the post office to decide that you can't get aroused by AOL CD's.. In a nutshell, what's offensive to you may be miles apart from what's offensive to me, so the Supreme Court decided it's not up to the postoffice to make the judgement call. If you deem it offensive, form 1500 applies.
I've used it successfully to stop CitiBank's incessant bombardment of "you're pre-approved" credit card offers (I was litterally getting 3 a day for a while). Try it, it works.
Shayne
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
Actually, under 38 US 3008, et seq, the law lets you, the recipient determine what is erotically arousing or sexually provacative. The postmaster is prohibited from making this interpretation. I used this form 1500 to get off of the weekly Pennysaver mailing.
signature pending slashdot approval
This happened to me as well. The penis enlargement spam (indirectly) links to to pillsmedical.net
Their billing is handled by paysystems.com, which is in turn hosted by akamai.
Send your complaint messages (with the bounce messages included) to abuse@akamai.com and abuse@paysystems.com - these are legit companies that sometimes unknowingly provide support to spammers. They may terminate a spammer if they have enough evidence.
Please send them the evidence. Please be polite. Please don't email them to yell at them for supporting spam. It won't help. Concrete evidence of a specific spammer will.
Significant differences separate spam from bulk mail, making them opposites, not just non-equals. In short, bulk mail is a negotiated part of a public good, spam is an unnegotiated public bad that interferes with (or can ruin) a public good. Differences include:
With bulk mail every step of the process involves trade and negotiations. This includes the last step- you receiving mail- because bulk mail subsidizes first class mail. Granted, this last step was negotiated as a group (all people in the US using the US postal service).
Spammers don't negotiate and don't trade with the people affected by their actions- one doesn't hear of them sitting down to say "I'm going to use this stolen credit card to buy an account for $30 and then send out 5,000,000 spams that'll cost you 3 days of sysadmin time and a crashed hard drive. Deal?" or "I'm going to use your return address so that your email box fills every 2 hours with bounces, and you lose important emails from a prospective employer, in return for me not getting antispam complaints. Deal?"
Bulk mail is used by the USPS to have smoothed out, predictable costs and income- again, subsidizing first class mail. From the USPS's point of view, everything is known and predictable *within the system* with standardized costs i.e. "this week in this area we'll be paid $.15 per mail for an average of 200,000 deliveries of ads. If someone wants to send 2x the ads they'll pay 2x the old total. We'll also be paid $.37 for about 20,000 first class mailings. Each postal worker will carry about 20 lbs of mail, except at holidays where it is 30 lbs..." Same from the user's p.o.v. "6 days a week a postal worker'll come by the mailbox. It'll take about 4 days for a letter to arrive, 7 during holidays, and about 1/100,000 will go astray (or whatever the error rate is).
Because spam isn't negotiated and because of the fake return addresses, etc, you have unpredictable and unknown costs, i.e. "every day I'll send an average of 5 mails, receive 10 mails from non-strangers (including annoying ones, but I voluntarily gave my cousin or Microsoft my address), and at random times get horrible pictures, be flooded by bounces or have my ISP crash or be blacklisted." Those costs are externalities- costs (or benefits) that accrue to entities outside of the negotiation process.
I've seen arguments that say that because of peering agreements, ISPs or users should think of a flood of spam bouces the way an 'All-You-Can-Eat' restaurant thinks of Sumo wrestlers: an expensive but expected cost. No, because the wrestler still fits on the bell curve the restaurant uses to predict eating habits, and what the wrestler does is legal. No human can fill their stomach with more than about a gallon of food, and the contract with the restaurant is that it is "All YOU can eat HERE", you don't get to feed two people on one ticket or bring food home using rubber pockets. Spammers cheat- its like one person paying and letting 10 people sneak in the back door. And they break the contract- those peering agreements / contracts usually say no spamming.
spammers cause damage far in excess of the money they put into the system. Its like the flu, a computer virus, forest fire or a traffic accident- the money paid into recovering from it is nowhere near the total damage it caused- you get a net loss to society because it happened. Spam also causes opportunity costs- all that time and money spent recovering from spam could have been spent in more productive ways. Money spent merely to restore you to where you were before is money wasted compared to being able to invest in the future.