Slashdot Mirror
Spamfighters Get A Hold Of Spammers' Incoming Mail
Karin Spaink writes "On July 3 2003, cyberangels.nl was obtained by Spamvrij.nl, a Dutch foundation fighting spam. Previously,
the domain was owned by the infamous Cyberangels, who are majorly involved in spamming. Cyberangels felt forced to drop the domain when the ground under their feet got too hot after BBC journalist Andrew Bomford connected Dutch ISP Megaprovider to Cyberangels.
Since the MX-records for cyberangels.nl now point to spamvrij.nl too, they get all Cyberangels' incoming mail: bounces, spam complaints and what have you. Have a peek: what kind of mail does a major spammer receive in the course of three days? By now, they have a
very precise answer: 6305 mails. Spamvrij.nl published an analysis of those mails on its site."
that they are getting many eCards of sympathy from other spammers? In that business, I would be surprised if they didn't try to sabotage each other now and then.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
These guys are entitled to wear the "I read your email" tshirts.
Or at least immoral? I don't think "the end justifies the means" is really a valid defense, especially as there's no "end" in this case. They are just reading someone else's email. And "White hat hacking" doesn't apply either, as that refers to people who are asked to break in to a computer to test it, not vigilantes like our own Fyodor, who use their skills to merely harass people that annoy them.
Lemme check my email...OH MY GAWD!!!!!
How many of them do you suppose answered the ones for discount Viagra and penis enlargement? Oh, wait, nevermind...
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
2 attempts to subscribe ba@cyberangels to a gay magazine;
The trolls strike again!
--------
Free your mind.
This is probally one of the best news stories I have seen on /. in a while. I went ahead and sent a link to everyone in my address book. Matter of fact I sent it to them all 3 times and then sent 1 additional message advertising how i made 55 thousand dollars in 2 hours. Now if I only knew these people in my address book.
Everyday You see me is the worst day of my life -Office Space
Hmm... My employer's domain filter won't let my browse through this one.
I guess I'll simply check my mail to see what these spammers are up to today.
6305 incoming emails and not one of them contained an order or anything else positive.
So, lessons to be learnt here if you're a spammer:
1. Give up - it's clearly not worth the effort; or
2. Keep at it - if at first you don't succeed, try again!
Now if only we could somehow get them all to learn lesson 1 instead of lesson 2 then we'd be home and dry.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
...what kind of mail does a major spammer receive in the course of three days? By now, we have a very precise answer: 6305 mails.
They are wrong. Look in the page linked:
Introduction: 6305 mails in (basically) one day
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
It's all about a young guy called Martijn Bevelander, there is alot of press now here in Holland because the net is closing around him. Hope he gets banned from the Dutch Internet provider group and his company stops.
Latest news (in Dutch):
http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/15564.phtml
"Introduction: 6305 mails in (basically) one day
;-)
We received 5880 bounces and forwards
We received 12 spams for @cyberangels
We received 40 attempts to annoy Cyberangels
We received 371 complaints about Cyberangels
We received 2 business mails"
In other words, they received 12 spams and 413 legitimate emails (not counting the bounces). That can't be right; everyone knows that most inboxes have a ratio of spam/non spam that is more like 413:12 rather than 12:413. Liars!
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I'll be that about 90% of the email is some variation of:
IF I EVER MEET YOU I WILL KICK YOUR ASS
Is how few emails were for business. I assume this category would include responses to spam. Maybe I do not understand the story, and the CyberAngels people were merely responsible for sending the spam (for other people), and if anyone responded to the offers in the mails it would go to an non-CyberAngels address. Or possibly redirected to a website, where they could make a purchase. Yeah, as I type out my thoughts, the reason for the dearth of business emails becomes clearer.
.0003%, and insanely high (compared with other forms of direct marketing), like 5%. People can argue for one side or another, but I need more evidence than conjecture to begin to understand the problem. If the response rate is already very low, then relatively simple technological solutions would probably suffice to drive them low enough to make spam unprofitable. If the response rate is high, it is going to take a lot of effort to fix this problem, possibly involving a redesign of the email system.
I had hoped for some accurate stats on the actual response rates to spam. I have heard rumors flying around that they are insanely low, like
Glad to see these spammers were shut down, but we need more insights into the way they operate in order to shut them all down.
6000 emails in 3 days? That doesn't sound like nearly enough for a serious spammer. I had a web server compromised by a spammer last year and I received more than 6000 bounce-backs in less than three days before I found the hole and patched it up. It seems to me like a professional spammer would have several servers at several IP's and get way more spam than that. Especially when you include complaint email.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
They've done a nice job of analyzing the residual influx of email, while not airing all the dirty laundry. They didn't post a complete session log, so there's no information that may get folks upset. The last business email listed as "1 other" is probably sensitive, and shouldn't be posted on the web (though sending them a "we know who you are" message may make them think twice about using spam in the future.)
Spammers intressts me, I hate them. But I do wounder how much the company buying the spamming service actualy to earn in the end. For ones I contacted a company about there wounderful product, and said I was intressed in buying some. My idea was to get hold of a real life person, to send my "I live in a country where its illegal to spam people, so you guys broken the law!".. But ofcourse I didnt mention that on "intressed in your products" mail I sent them (on there official sales email from there site).. Now whats realy make me confused is that they never wrote anything back.. So..
1. Spam me
2. Ignore me if I want to buy there product
3. ???
4. Profit!
"2 attempts to subscribe ba@cyberangels to a gay magazine;"
Yep, it seems that at least two people on the Net know how to fight back, the old "hey, let's sign up the ripe-contact email address for gay porn magazines" routine. Gets 'em every time.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
The sheer volume of messages must mean that most spammers are out for only one thing: credit card information. And the best way to get those is to run some scripts to strip out the necessary information. I cannot believe that they can take the time to actually parse out the information by hand, figure out which non-existent product they are selling, and sell anything. 6,000 per day would be 8 seconds per message in a 12-hour day, more or less. I have heard that 40-60 percent of spammers never ship any product, just take a bite out of your credit card and move on. This goes a long way toward confirming that suspicion.
LOL so you say the now have lots of data on someone (spam e-mail) and got it through an amusingly simple and old tactic. We have a word that: sabatage. Let the spam companies go bankrupt
Since the header shows a return email address that doesn't belong to the spammer, the bounces go to compromised servers like yours was and people who get sent the spam usually can't figure out who to complain to. There's little reason for a spammer to accept incoming email, so they probably don't have any email addresses on their websites and email harvesters don't send them spam.
What I can't believe is that they didn't get more *dictionary* attacks than that, I mean, ba@cyberangels.com should have gotten spammed like crazy with such a short username.
Could it be that since they have so little non-spam-related activity that spambots didn't up the domain? I'm completely guessing here, but the ratio does seem incredibly wrong.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I'm pretty happy about that. According to an article in The Register, One of the board members of spamvrij.nl is Karin Spaink, very likely the same Karin Spaink who has been involved in the battle against $cientology.
Taking on spammers nd $cientologists. Damn. She's got guts.
I suppose the question to you would be how is it illegal? The burden of proof falls on the accuser not the defender. As far as I know there are no federal laws regarding email as there are for regular postal service mail. If you can think of something this violates then let us know.
I imagine it only has something to do with the European location that they didn't get order confirmation requests for hundreds of pizzas too.
I think the word we have for that is actually 'sabotage'.
The text says that his teachers predicted he would end up in the gutter. At age 16 he started his own Internet company. "If I end up in the gutter, it will be my gutter!", he defiantly said.
I guess his teachers were right after all...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
rtfa:
if in one day ba@cyberangels receive almost 6000 mails from people who are smart enough to figure that they get bounces because their addresses have been abused by a spammer and who then proceed to redirect those bounces, you can begin to image the volume of bounces that spamruns create, of the sheer volume of those spamruns themselves, and of the that traffic spam creates for decent providers.
translated:
This is not from normal bounces, this is from people whose e-mail was abused and set a forward on the bounces to cyber angels, OR (less) from people who had more intelligent bouncers, and bounced to the correct domain.
So this is very very small percentage of the total e-mail sent.
...assuming cyberangels provided their *new* domain and email addresses. And I swear, none of us will sign them up for a bunch of granny porn. I swear. Okay, so I lied. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
It works so well that even slashdotters are rushing to read spam mail =)
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Did Mr. Joseph Otumba from Nigeria get my response?
... like me, you read the following line:
/home directory? Swap space problems?
Somebody believed that a Cyberangels' dick was too small.
as:
Somebody believed that a Cyberangels' disk was too small.
I was like wtf? Disk too small? Not enough space in the
Then, I re-read the line, and I went:
Oh, THAT thing is too small... =)
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Friday morning, when the NL-zonefiles were updated: the MX-records of cyberangels.nl were now pointing to us. (We made a catch-all for all adresses.) The first few hours, literally thousands of mails reached us: 5919 mails, most of them bounces. By now, the avalanche has dwindled to a trickle.
...
... that looks like more than two days and less than four to me!
Until now - 06-07-2003, 23:00 GMT+1
Friday was 04-07-2003, 6305 messages received on the 4th of July, the 5th of July and the 6th of July
Love this part of the analysis:
Both ba@cyberangels and ripe-contact@cyberangels recieved some spam:
1. Mr. RASHEED BELLO sent ba@ six Nigerian scams;
2. @yahoo.com.cn spammed four times with something rather illegible;
3. Mr. Ken Titoh was hoping to assist Mr. ERASHEED BELLO;
4. Somebody believed that a Cyberangels' dick was too small
That only 12 out of 6305 emails they received were actually spam (i.e., 0.2%)! Actually make that 11; I'd guess a spammer would likely be an opted-in and interested customer as regards penis enlargement.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
I have my own home domain which was setup shortly after college and used (then) to just keep communicating with distant friends. Back in the day UUCP was how it was done for $15/mo which gave me 3 hours of transfers before I had to start paying extra.
:). Hundreds of non-existent users to just harvest spam. Any USENET type postings have a good email for about a week (if at all) before harvesting. Hell, I even like to add in users where they attempted "bob@" that didn't exist.
... we have a problem.
BECAUSE of the spammers I did have to pay extra. Long ago went to broadband type connections starting with ISDN (still backup and my only phone lines) to 10Mbit wireless uplink today (sweet). Funny, but I am STILL paying for the bandwidth and SPAM still annoys the hell out of me personally.
So -- to get it under control I baited the spammers (and still do
Me, myself, and my wife -- here's my stats for the entire month of June:
Outbound (work): 60 (1.74%)
Outbound (personal): 49 (1.42%)
Notes to myself: 89 (2.58%)
Inbound to me: 422 (12.24%)
Inbound to the wife: 14 (0.41%)
System messages: 68 (1.97%)
System ERROR codes: 2 (0.06%)
Just TESTING: 7 (0.20%)
SPAM TRAPPED: 2738 (79.39%)
TOTAL EMAILS: 3449
Um, Houston
It's stupid and immoral to publish other peoples mail-adresses like they have done on their page. They (people responding they don't want spam) will get indexed by even more spam-bots :(
If I move out of the house I rent, and you move in.. the junkmail is yours.. but anything addressed to ME, personally, is not, and the law agrees.
I think it's safe to say that this IS a morally questionable act.. though so is SPAM. I won't go screaming that they did this in a bad way.. but if it was anyone other than spammers.. say it was, I don't know, a doctor's website, and it was a patient mailing.. would taking that mail and publishing it be morally correct? I think we would all agree no.
They didn't hijack the domain.
But receiving and publishing private correspondence that's destined for someone else is not. When you purchase a domain someone els used, it's NOT the same thing as purchasing their business from them.. it doesn't automatically entitle you to anything.. other than the domain.
Pretend you moved into an office, and got mail delivered to the previous occupant... it's still a federal crime for you to open that mail if it's not addressed to you. Now, I'm not saying it's necessarily as clear cut with email, but it's the same general thing, and it is immoral.
We're not the only country with legal porn and prostitutes I suppose.. although the world famous 'window shopping' in Amsterdam might be rather unique. And for Amstel, well that should be illegal. There's much better beer than that, both in The Netherlands and Belgium.
On a different subject, Karin Spaink was mentioned to belong to the anti-spam group. She is also the one who won the lawsuit that Scientology started against her for publishing excerpts of their trade secrets on the web.
I was going to say doesn't this go against the rights of the spammers to post their emails, blah blah blah... but then I remembered these were spammers, and in my eyes they have no rights and deserve nothing short of genital mutilation...
Spamfighter gets holds of spammers inbox. 99% of it is junk. 1 e-mail is of minor passing interest.
If that's not possible, couldn't someone just host a database that users could add the name (+address/phone info), url, and offending spam-message to? That way an organized boycott/reverse spam/snailmail campaign could be lodged against those who pay to clog the internet with their muck? I couldn't have been the first person to think of this...perhaps something like this already exists?
There is no gravity...the earth just sucks.
I have a question. What occurs to credit cards and payments that scammers receive from their customers?
Spammers are by no means stupid. Above all things they MUST get their money, otherwise none of this is worth doing.
So if the scammers are getting their money, the credit card companies pay them. If the credit card companies pay them...
[1] We have a breach of trust between the credit card companies and the customers. CC companies are not doing their due diligence in brokering payments for product/services. CC companies are issueing clearance of charges to unscrupulous people. We are entrusting them with our financials (whether we choose to "fraud-notify" them or not). They have all the information, both the consumers and the scammers.
[2] The customers complain they never got their product. Report fraud. The credit card companies remove the charge, investigate it or not. This increases cost/risk for the CC companies. Higher interest rates? More cooking the books?
Why is nobody investigating the money side (IMHO the lifeblood of this business) of this problem? As long as we concentrate on the technology, we'll always be distracted from the real solution. It's all about the money in the end.
Anonimity
+ Privacy, Sharing, Voice
- Scams, Theft, Hit/Run
We asked for it.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
um, It's open source, so actualy, there is.
Actually, we had one already - which is analysed at http://www.cyberangels.nl/evidence/mailmartijn.htm l, and only now two news mails arrived. Check the mail analysis page for updates.
I write, therefore I am:
http://www.spaink.net/
So 6305 mails in total, one of which was a valid email from someone wanting to contact them.
Signal to noise ratio of 1/6304
So how is this different to anyones email these days?
I love it.
Is this a way of saying that they've got brass B*lls?
all payload, no delivery system.
(come on, it's not off topic, it's social commentary.)
for a spammer would be cybera**hole.com
My rights don't need management.
If they received the same percentage of spam as the rest of us? Out of 6305 messages, 6000 asking if they need a penis elargement/4% mortgage/Chance to help some third world person transfer some money.
WTF? Over?
Pascalstraat 17
2014KZ Haarlem
(The Netherlands)
Tel.023-5101094
Fax.023-5441982
If you want to give him a call (for example, to explain your appreciation for that penis extension), remember that the country code for the Netherlands is 31.
This is a company address, so you won't actually disturb his neighbours or his cat or something.
Shutting the spammer down took about a month, but ultimately was successful. I got their 24 porno sites, two fake billing sites, and a few other related sites kicked off ISPs from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Brooklyn NY to St. Petersburg, Russia, where they actually were. They've been down for months now, and they are staying down. They don't seem to have come back under a different name; searches for ther subject matter in Google come up empty.
I had the advantage that I own "Downside" as a registered trademark. This gave me some legal leverage.
One useful tactic was to report phony domain registration info to ICANN. Some domain registrars will then lock the domain against changes until the domain owner provides them with valid ID info. If you do that, and you then get them kicked off an ISP, their domain is locked to an ISP that won't host them, and they can't fix it without disclosing their identity to their registrar.
In this case, the spammer had their own DNS server, so they could quickly move their sites from ISP to ISP. But I managed to get all three of the domains that handled their DNS queries locked, then kicked off ISPs, which took down their entire set of sites.
It turned out that the CEO of their ISP's upstream provider in Russia was somebody I knew from the 1980s, so I was able to get even a Russian ISP to cooperate.
You don't have to sit there and put up with this stuff. You can fight back and win.
I doubt that English is Karin's first language, perhaps we should give her some slack? (As for the Martians at Slashdot... D'OH! I wasn't supposed to say that. Definitely no Martians at Slashdot. Never hearing of Martians from me!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
And for Amstel, well that should be illegal. There's much better beer than that, both in The Netherlands and Belgium.
There's better beer than Amstel made in the USA even.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Fortunately Monkey net spammers mostly do not live in northern Canada otherwise you know what would happen.
...klunk//// the sound of brass balls falling after they freeze then get kicked.
Klunk
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
They list one email as being particularly interesting, as copied below.
For me, the really intriguing bit is that they talk about "hosting" a lot, so much so that it appears to be a codeword for "spamming". Its a fairly obvious thing to do for someone who makes their money off spam - try to keep a low profile and not discuss their business openly.
Don't know my comment is flamebait. I agree it's off-topic. I wasn't assuming that Karin is or is not a native English speaker/writer. I also wasn't being rude, offensive or degrading. I was trying to point out that "a hold of" is poor written English in this situation.
First, a lot of spam is "stock tips" (pump n dump scams) where the spammer wants you to buy shares of the stock, or links to porn sites where the spammer makes money through referral fees. These don't require spammers to collect money from the people they spam.
As for the rest of the spam - if spammers couldn't collect credit card payments, they would switch to paypal, or direct debit from checking accounts, or something else. Sure, the response rate would be less, but given the economics of spam, spamming would still be profitable. That said, if the credit card companies can help reduce the volume of spam, I'm all for it.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
You know, that shirt/sticker always has bothered me.
The problem with it is that "read" is both a present and past tense -- so a perfectly straightforward interpretation is simply that "I have received and read the email you sent me." Not scary at all.
What they really mean is "I can snoop your email," although that's also an admittedly bad formulation.
Yeah, well, anyway...
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Check out this page and scroll down to the link labelled Commentator: Telemarketer's View. This woman actually considers the people who hung up on her to be rude. Given that there are so many fraudulent telemarketers who record everything you say and edit together a tape that has you agreeing to buy a three-year supply of alligator repellent, we have to assume that all telemarketers are criminals and that it is unsafe to say anything to any of them. Hanging up on them is simply self-defense. Since telemarketing is even more intrusive than spamming, I don't think anyone will mourn it if it passes without harsher measures.
Regardless of the payment type, I would expect any institution responsible for the brokering of money to have information about the buyers and sellers of said services or products.
Stocks have their regulations and their governing bodies. Banks for Direct Debit are ultimately responsible for who is making wildrawals from our checking accounts. Paypal must eventually disburse payments through something similar.
My point: I'm ready to start pulling all my money out of banks. I've already canceled 2 out of 3 CCs due to unscrupulous behavior of merchants. One was charging me a monthly. When I tried to track it down I got nowhere. I called them up and they couldn't even tell me what products or services they sold! How the hell did my CC validate a purchase without knowing what business these pogos were in? There is no way to block a merchant from issueing a purchase. You can only declare purchases as fraud. Who wants to do that every month? The other CC I canceled, I did so because I started receiving alot of those class-action notifications against them. Hopefully if enough people react similarly, some money hungry executive will start asking why he's seeing a decline in membership. If consumers sit on their fat ass and take it as business as usual, we will continue to see ripoffs.
Some may say the CC are not at fault, but I say they are at fault for not knowing who these merchants are and allowing them to bill consumers. I can no longer trust banks to act in ANY small interest of the consumer.
My conclusion is these spammers are being protected by the prince of dakness. MS and gov chasing phantoms at the misdirection of those that know better, may prolong this war for the profit of all involved. Not for any silly naive principle any of us are hoping for. Shed them.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
If I receive all this e-mail and the sender(s) own it, then their property is occupying space on my hard drive. I own that space, therefore I am entitled to charge rent, as documented in my SMTP banner. Don't like my rates ($50 processing fee + $5 per byte per month)? Don't use my space. Legally binding proof that the sender owns the e-mail is most of what I would need to initiate collection actions against all of my favorite spammers. I don't see how this logic is any shakier than the standard EULA.
It always helps if you read the article.
Cyberangles was a pure spamm operation.
No real persons Email is involved here.
All Cyberangles existed for was sending spam.
Any email to Cyberangles is property of the current domain owner in any case.
Your Email is not private. If you think it is you are a noob. If you want privacy don't use Email.
Use the postal service.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
http://cisar.org/trn0453.htm
Jesus christ you people got taken in. I mean with a name like "Physics Genius"... and then the backhanded Fyodor reference.
Someone mod the parent and all gag-reflex replies into the floor. Thanks. HAND
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
The paste tense should be be "I have read your e-mail". At least that
is how I say it.
I don't want to give them a clue, I'm just feeling vindictive. It's like those Japanese game shows or Fear Factor where they punish the slow-witted.
I just don't want to see the replies. >:{
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
you might be surprised to know that what you consider technically private is not necessairly what the courts or the common person considers private.
There is a difference between "private" and "top secret". Saying something is private does not imply it's impossible for someone to read it.
If you address some communication to an individual, and it's not in a place where the general public can access, it's generally considered private. There is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
If you are shouting in a restaurant, you have no expectation of privacy. If you are whispering to someone outside, you DO have an expectation of privacy.. the fact that someone can listen in with a parabolic microphone because you are "emitting sound waves" does not negate your right to privacy.
With regards to SECURITY, yes, you should treate email like a postcard; that does not imply it's the legal equivalent of one.
And if we forget technical details.. knowingly publishing something you KNOW was not meant for you to read, how can you say there was no expectation of privacy?
I'm not stupid, I realize this is not about the US. Notice I ended with saying it was morally wrong? I suppose I use the word "Federal crime" to point out that certain things are most definately, for a good reason, illegal.
,of course, is also true.
The point that there is no actual envelope to open is a valid one... however..
So they read it. Fine. Found it wasn't for them. But then.. publishing it once you realize it's not? It's ethically wrong.
What happens when you let a domain expire, and someone sends you a letter, some long lost person, and it's private, just for you.. and the new owners publish it, and it hurts you financially, or personally.. you won' feel the same way. People ought to have respect for privacy, regardless of what the law says.
I'm talking more about morals and ethics than I am about laws... just because it's not illegal doesn't make it morally right. The opposite,
You are not entitled to anyhting if you do not leave a forwarding address; however, it is still a crime for the current occupant to open mail addressed to you personally.
Makes sense right?
Forcible Darwinization (i.e., testicle removal with a rusty butterknife, and a biaxial penis quadriception, for good measure) of spammers, companies advertizing using them and those who actually buy from those companies is mandatory, under the Freedom from Idiocy Act of 2000. It is every citizen's patriotic duty!
Actually, both are correct. One is the simple past tense, the other the present perfect tense.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
And not a single one is interested in the product/service/scam being offered in the spam.
Isn't opening and reading this mail potentially illegal or at least morally bankrupt? If you moved in to a new house and some mail for the previous owner gets delivered, you are not allowed to open it just because you now own the mail box it was delivered too.
I'm just sayin... all the talk about morality around here and yet, this seems pretty repugnant to go through someone elses mail, spammer or no. If you are not morally superior, then you are not better.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
New Zealand legalised prostitution a few weeks ago. The funniest part was when an owner of a brothel complained that the givernment's job placement program was refusing to refer the jobless to prostitution.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
We just managed. They dumped it at 15:something, word got out, reached a netzine, somebody mentioned it to us and we pulled a credit card. 22 minutes after it was dropped, the Dutch Internet Internet Domain Registration sold it to us.
Perhaps they liked the idea of the domain getting into other hands. They had been receiving complaints, too, I assume.
I write, therefore I am:
http://www.spaink.net/
For instance (to use courtesy instead of morality), a telemarketter knows that it is common courtesy that neither person hang up the phone until both parties have signalled the end of the conversation. Since telemarketters are not courteous this gives them an advantage over the courteous - the courteous person cannot hang up the phone until the telemarketer has signalled that they've said everything they wanted to (which won't happen until a sale is made).
What's a courteous person to do?
Obviously, we make the Telemarketter play on the playing field they created, by foregoing courtesy and hang up.
Likewise, for any business that will disregard a moral course of action every time a more favourable alternative is present that is still legal, it is your moral duty to ensure that you do not give that business the benifit of moral treatment over legal treatment in the situations that favour you at its expense. To act otherwise would be to give competitive advanges to immoral behaviour.
By all means, turn the other cheek in life - just don't do it for someone is counting on you to do so and will take advantage of it when you do.
Spammers should be made to play on the playing field they created.
And do tell, as an acquirer, what occurs in these businesses? Enlighten the dark spot on the presumtion that these penis enlargement, viagra sellers, fast-cash makers, go about their business without any issues with their acquirers?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Yeah, well, maybe I'm just slow and/or humor impaired.
But I didn't find it particularly funny as a double entendre.
For some really good double entendres, do a Google search for "Falstaff"...
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Hehe. Ya caught me. I do make mistakes. Yes the correct word is "your".
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Firstly to those that would rate the above as flamebait, please note the :P in the subject which is meant to be a face sticking a tongue out. In other words the comment is tongue in cheek and meant as light commentary.
Secondly, if you're "interested" (not interesting) in linguistics, then I'd expect you to understand that if someone writes a word mispelled or conjured one up, it doesn't mean they are "stupid". "Virii makes no sense"? What's your point? You don't need to establish a religious order to gratify your superiority. All you need to do is put someone else down to do that. The guy who wrote "virii" might have been silly to attempt a latin plural, but damn, cut the guy a break. LOL (This means Laughing Out Loud, meant also to be light hearted). I might laugh at the guy, but "it's all good, baby!"
Original post by Ilvatar...
The first thing that popped out on the Cyberangels site is the word "virii". Looks like there is no end to the number of stupid people in the world. First of: the Latin word "virus" means "mucus" or "slime". Which means the words do not relate. The plural of this particular Latin word is "viri". Not "virii". "Virii" simply does not exist. Since the word "virus" in its present form is not at all related to our Roman friends it is pointless to make up your own little Latin plural form. Get a clue people.
My point? "stupid people in the world" is a bit harsh for someone who used the "incorrect" word "virii". "Get a clue people"? You don't feel at all like you've slighted someone?
This is the serious meat of the matter. Attitudes. What I've learned is that it doesn't matter anymore who's right and who's wrong. Only how we treat each other. Please, I beg of you to reconsider next time you feel the urge to berate someone this way. It only encourages others to follow the example and make elitist comments. Beg I will, for pride is only an inhibitor of better understanding among us.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp