Slashdot Mirror
In Pursuit Of A Spammer
Kyle writes "Over at DSL Reports, We are currently pursuing a spammer from the West Palm Beach, Florida area. This wouldn't normally be news, but we think Slashdot readers may be interested in just how successful we have been. What's more interesting is that the spammer appears to be posting in the thread."
If I bring you back his ears?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It turns out, after I caught a spammer, I wasn't allowed to kill him. Apparently, that's not classified as justifiable homicide. You know how silly I feel now?
"We are currently pursuing a spammer from the West Palm Beach, Florida area."
Will be see this on Fox?
And I've said it before, you're free to do what you wish so long as it doesn't impact on me or my freedoms.
Spam costs me money. Every time I open an email I don't want, every time I have to update my anti-spam software (well, that's free but that's besides the point) it costs me time and money and I object. It's fine if I've signed up for a newsletter or advertising (yes, I've done that - Think Geek sends me notification of stuff even though I'm a dirty foreigner and can't buy any of it) but when I haven't it's costing me. Where can I send the invoice? To you?
I am a leaf on the wind
Pursuit of fleeing vehicles is much more common in LA, but the West Palm Beach folks are very fond of pursuing rental trucks full of votes to be recounted. So now they are just chasing a truck load of canned pork, doesn't really surprise me much.
We've found a spammer, may we burn him?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
t's their right to send it and it's your right to block it.
Sorry, that theory fails when fraud comes into the equation. Rule #1: Spammers LIE.
Lying, in this context (trying to steal your service), is fraud.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
he has an email newsletter. Let's all sign up!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
... who's got a mental picture involving a Benny Hill style chase sequence?
This person spammed a forum which is wrong, but what do they really expect to happen this company? Do they want their domain revoked, a reprimand, a fine? Do they have proof that they spam on a massive scale or send massive bulk e-mails. It's one thing to send 1,000 e-mails a day and another to post an ad in a forum (on the same subject for that matter).
What really bothers me about spam is that they have to be so cowardly about it and spoof source email addresses like kajfaiojiu@iouem.com. I wouldn't mind it if they were honest about where they're sending SPAM from, then I can easily excercise my right to block it.
$cat
Yes, sadly every time I go online it costs me money. Telecom NZ sells its badwidth dearly - 20 cents/MB when I exceed my limit (each month I get a whopping 1000MB to play with to my heart's content. Weehee!). It's not much but as the number of spam I get increases so do my costs. Directly. I'm not billing for my time to open them all, my electricity to power the PC or any other stuff.
It's not just spam, it's any unsolicited use of my bandwidth - and yes, viruses should be included too.
I am a leaf on the wind
Besides annoying the spammer in question, is there REALLY anything they can legally do to him? I doubt it. I have fought with spammers before, trying to get taken off of their lists, and they threatened ME with telling my ISP (a college at that time) that I was harassing HIM. I believe he would have done it, too. So I resigned myself to deleting hundreds of spams per week, and getting used to it. I can't wait until they make RIAA-style computer-nuking legal...we can all just start a computerized World War III.
Not to nit pick,but...
/20 for a $4000 to $10,000, because they are going out of business.
Most big time spammers go right around the "TOS" by becoming an ISP themselves. All you have to do is buy a block of IP's from someone who has them up for sale. Believe me there are plenty of people who will sell you a
Next all you need to do is find a bandwidth provider and you're in business. Most bandwidth providers don't care what you do with your bandwidth as long as it's not illegal. And there isn't a lot of solid case law that spam is illegal. (I know we're all hoping for legislation to come through, but not yet...)
And there you go, no "Terms of Service" to break.
I hate spammers as much as the rest of you, but I really hate zeolots who have no idea how the business even works. The more you know about spammers the easier it will be to combat them.
Maybe I'm just jaded because most of my day is spent blocking this low-lifes.
Here in New Zealand you'll often see mailboxes with "no junk mail" stickers on them. When I worked in retail years ago we made sure our junkmail delivery company avoided stuffing those boxes - it's just not worth the damage to your brand name to upset them.
I am a leaf on the wind
I live in West Palm Beach! I might try bribing his garbage man to dump a truckload of junk in his yard.
Common sense is not so common.
All they have done so far is make a lot of links from one site/organization to another. There has been no action against the spammer. They are not certain of his real name nor his address. I think its great that they're tracking him down, but I would not go so far as to say they have been successful.
Call up your local post office and tell them you want to refuse all fourth class mail.
That will get rid of the majority of your postal problem.
Can someone with a bigger attention span provide a summary?
Notably, the most fervent researcher on the forum (Ameritec Tech) has discovered that the spammer was violating several people's copyrights. One of those people has replied and stated they are taking legal action against the spammer immediately for the violation.
For to end yet again.
Are you using metered bandwidth? How much per kilobyte do you pay?
Even on unmetered bandwidth, due you think that the ISP will soak up additional costs by cutting their salaries/profits? Chances are they will pass the increased costs onto the customer. And certainly, it won't be the spammer who pays.
Yes, but free speech is also somewhat limited. For instance, commercial speech can be regulated. Spam for the most part is commercial speech and thus should be put under the same regulations as any other advertisment.
.Robots file on their website or subscribe to a DoNotCall List, email is an invitation to ones home and the decision to allow it into your home should be yours to make and the gov't should be able to help one regulate this. If you are paying for something and others are invading its sancitity, you should be able to ask the gov't to help you out. If folks are not willing to respect this privacy before you have to say back off, the gov't should give you the ability to tell these guys to fuck off before they even get there.
That and freedom of speech is not something that is regulated by the gov't in someone elses home. It is limited to public properties. On private properties, you still have what ever limits of the freedom of speech that apply as well as those of the folks that regulate the private area.
By these two limits, email can and should be regulated. Much the same way one can place a
Again, freedom of speech is not an unlimited freedom. I'm sick of folks that think if it. If Taco wanted to edit my posts here on his site, its NOT infringing against my freedom of speech to do so...at least from a constitutional stand point.
blah
The First Amendment has been interpreted by the US courts to me the protection of personal expression. .. E-mail could be considered to be therefore protected.
While the text of an email can be considered "speech", it's irrelevant - it can still (and should) be regulated, as the first amendment only guarantees that you have the right to speech, it doesn't guarantee that you have the right to any and every method of expressing that speech - especially when it's the receiver, or some other third party, which is paying for it.
Think about it - should you be able to walk into a TV station and demand to be given airtime to talk about your "100% natural penis enhancment" product? Of course not! Why should email be any different?
The first amendment gives you the right to say what you want. It does NOT guarantee you the right to force people to listen, nor the right to force someone else to pay for your speech.
Whats worse? Constantly reading about SPAM prevention or receiving it ?
Duh. Receiving spam. You chose to go to Slashdot, read the article and post in its forum.
It's unfortunate that your comments were modded down to -1. Given the opportunity, I would have modded your statements Interesting even though I disagree with you.
This really drills down to the core issue of spam: money. Based upon what I've read on the subject, I (via my subscription fee) am subsidizing the cost of a spammer's business. I welcome any evidence that contradicts this, but until that time I would analogize your statement as follows: "It is their right to barge into your home and shove an ad in your face and it's your right to stop them....and by the way, this process will cost you $$."
That kind of thinking doesn't work because I can't legally put a bullet into a spammer's head. One's right to free speech ends at my doorstep. Any alternative interpretation of the First Amendment opens up a number of conflicts with the Fourth Amendment.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
So if the spammer weighs as much as a duck....
then he's made of wood?
and therefore?
A WITCH!
BURN HIM! BURN HIM!
THe best revenge is a weblog post with his own info being higher in ranking than his own website :)
I should know I killed a spammer called Bruce Cullen(a movie extra-Outbreak one of the invefected victims that died in the movie) with this technique..
It was so bad that he stopped spamming altogether..:)
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Now you have the IPs, the URLs, the company names, etc.
So report these to every blackhole list available, report the hijacked material on the sites to the original publishers, check his providers for more spammers like him, and report the provider if necessary (so they start taking an active part in this as well) and get on to the next guy.
If ISPs began taking basic measures to block spam, refuse services to spammers, contact the providers of spammers, and blackhole domains, IP's, and networks that spam or encourage spammers, the spammers would eventually end up in a spammers ghetto of unscrupulous providers that could be easily blocked or filtered.
If it is left up to law enforcement and legislation, there will be loopholes as there are in the National Do-Not-Call Registry, and we will have opened up the door to congess regulating the use of email.
Read, L
...having served in the military for a significant period of time, when I saw the 'patriotic business statement' by Heckman I did a 'quick and dirty' search of some databases -no listing of a Brad or Bradley Heckman deployed as member of the U.S. Army during Operation Desert Shield or Desert Storm. Someone tell the #1 spam hunter at DSL report webpage to try and get a unit ID from Heckman? For some reason I can't post to that forum and I couldn't find an email address for the #1 spam hunter guy. The best way to sink a fraudulent business that preys on patriotic people is to show them he's a fraud.
"Just an idea".
-Anonymous Cowardly Good Guy
Cool! Can I come to your house and exercise my right to kick you in the nuts? Of course, you have the right to block it.
How do you feel about the hundreds of internet worms and script kiddies and failed spam relay attempts that are interfering with the bandwidth you pay for? Is that OK too? Mind if I run an extension cord to the outlet on your patio so I don't have to pay for my own electricity? Of course, you have to right to unplug it, but I'll just come back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. And I'll tunnel under your house and tap into the wiring in your basement where you don't see. But you have the right to spend every waking hour trying to stop me from leeching off the stuff you pay for. I hope you don't waste too much time fighting me, though... I need you to go to work and earn money to pay for the stuff that I'm stealing from you, so that I don't have to go to work myself and earn an honest living. Wow, I love your attitude! Maybe I can hook myself up to your water and gas lines, too.
There's cyber-libertarianism, and then there's advocating total lawlessness. When everybody has a "right" to do whatever they want to anybody, that's the same as nobody having any rights at all.
2: It's an unrepentant spammer. That is grounds for permanent disconnection. Find out as much as possible about them and do what is necessary to insure that they are never able to connect to any ISP ever again. Unrepentant repeat criminals are removed from society, and unrepentant repeat spammers should be removed from the Internet.
3: It's an unrepentant spammer sending spam about some kind of service to fight spam... I don't even know where to begin on that one.
4: It's a story about how a slimeball spammer is being tracked down and is obviously nervous about it. It's a how-to. It's a recipe. It's inspirational. It is very much Stuff That Matters.
I think we should just do a Slashdot story linking to Spammer websites every couple of days, the DoS attack should be brutal.
On behalf of my good friend Kaj Faiojiu, webmaster of iouem.com, I'd like to ask you not to post his email address in public.
Thanks.
Please tell me the "SPAMMER" did more then post 2 messages in an forum which actually shares the same topic as his posts?
Or is it just enough that someone labeled him a "Spammer" that we have to "dump garbage on his lawn"?
Was it just an AD? IF this really was only about 2 posts in a FORUM, not emails, not anything else, something that the forum moderator could delete if requested, then this actually makes me sick.
I mean, I dislike spammers just as much as the next guy. But why is this a newsworthy story? Allegedly, someone posts a message about their anti-spam product on an anti-spamming message board. The claim is made that the poster is a spammer. So the story becomes that a spammer posts an advert to an anti-spamming message board.
Aside from it being a bit uncooth, why is this suddenly The Hunt for Red October? Sure, it was kind of a stupid thing, but what's the big wreck that I should be rubbernecking over?
At best this will result in a reduction of spam that's too small to measure.
/.'rs have also had enough, and quite a few decide that this is a good method of pulling the bugs out from under the rocks.
It only takes one snowflake to start an avalanche.
Visualize this:
One man decides he has had enough, and pursues this spammer with all the tools at his disposal, including posting an article on Slashdot. Now, consider that the vast majority of
At this point, the grassroot movement starts, and the spammers start scrambling for other rocks. As momentum grows, the word about this methodology reaches more and more people, who likewise have had enough. Eventually, by starting with this one snowflake, spam can become an abberation, instead of the norm.
So why should anybody care?
Because there is hope, and apathy/acceptance gives them the victory. I'd rather take them out of the game, myself.
Let's pick this one apart piece by piece.
And spam, like junk mail, is protected by the constitution. So although it may be a great inconvenience, the First Amendment will never fall to inconvenience.
I don't think so. Only because unsolicited faxes, soliciting in public and business areas and other solicitation laws are in effect.
Also, anti-spam laws tend to hurt small businesses far more than established companies.
Yeah, usually Spammer businesses. It's like saying, "But banning small and cute rodent killing will hurt small rabbit killing businesses!"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Solution: Don't buy anything you get a spam for.
But you might not know how the spammer gets paid? Again I do know because I used to work for these people. There are three different contracts a client can make with a spammer. First is paying a set amount of money per each email sent, this is very small amount, 1/100 of a cent. So the money to be made for a spammer is in the number of unique email address he/she can send email to. The second contract type is page views. You know the spam with the pretty graphics. Under this contract type, each time you open one of these emails the spammer gets paid. And just how does the spammer know you opened one of his/her email? The images come from the spammer's web servers and logs you image request. It is a little more complicated than that but you get the picture. And last contract type is web traffic to the client's site that results in a sale, again not going into details. Cha-ching, they both get paid.
Before you start whining that you don't buy any thing that was spammed;
1) Someone out there does and you can't stop them.
2) I don't care.
The only other recourse is to try to get the spammer booted off of his up stream provider. The spammer's provider(s) could be some little Podunk ISP or leased lines from the big boys. And the only way to get them booted is to complain to the right people, and no the /. forum is not the place.
How is this done?
Forget about doing whois on any domain or machine names you find in the email headers, they are most likely forged or just plain crap string of characters. Grab the first IP address of the smtp server closest to the origin of the message. Take that IP address and go to www.arin.com and pug it into the (IP) whois search. (ARIN assigns the IP addresss in the US and knows whom they are assigned to.) If the IP address is assigned to a US company it will give who and how to contact them. If the IP address is assigned in another country then the registry will be listed and just follow the link and repeat the (IP) whois search there.
Usually an abuse@the_ip_owners email address is listed. Now you have to do is forward a copy of the spam to that address. If enough people forward email/complain spammers get the boot.
Will you take the blue pill or the red pill?
Hey, two out of three ain't that bad, for a spam apologist.