Following the Spam Trail

An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC's Bob Sullivan doggedly follows a spam trail from Alabama to Argentina to find out who actually benefits from spam. The beneficiaries aren't necessarily the pasty faced, high school drop out industrial spammers we have gotten to know, but well known companies."

Comments

Tea bagger

[mao che minh]

The reporter wrote this story as if he actually broke it.

MSNBC: we have known about the relationship between spam, lead generators, and legitimate businesses for years now. For example, when I filled out an add to enlarge my penis 3 years ago, I got all sorts of emails from GNC and other well known health and fitness companies.....oh wait, I mean, when I clicked on the "See Britney Nude XXX HOT Angelina J-Lo-XXX-HOT!" offer I got an ad from her record label and WareHouse Music in the mail. Yea, that's it.

FP

Pick up the phone.

[pontifier]

If you can nail down a domain that seems to profit, use the whois information and call them on the phone. I usually dont get spam after I have complained to a person. If the phone number is bogus you can report them at http://reports.internic.net/cgi/rpt_whois/rpt.cgi

Re:Pick up the phone.

[notfancy]

Don't bother calling. The number is disconnected. I just called (I'm in BA, so it's local) and the earnest recorded-message lady informed me of the fact.

I pity the poor soul that gets assigned that number.

but?

[chloroquine]

But what about us pasty faced social misfits? I mean, I deserve my slice of the pie as well.

This article is written for an ignorant audience. I'm an ignorant audience and its smug tone of condescension even pisses me off.

IC Marketing - InfoClear Marketing ?

[Thinko]

After IC Marketing received our data, it sold our information to a firm named Infoclear Marketing in Dallas, which then sold it to Mleads, which in turn sold it to Quicken, according to Newman.
Infoclear immediately terminated its contract with IC Marketing when it heard about the spam offense, said Patrick Thurmond, who identified himself as a founder of Infoclear.

Doesn't it sound a lot like InfoClear and IC (coincidence?) are actually the same company, but can appear to 'sever ties' whenever anyone anti-spam starts nosing around.. sounds like a nice setup to me, and the investigators won't implicate poor infoclear when tracing this back.
Just my $0.02.

Thinko

"I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a bat'leth contest. They will not concern us again."

I benifitted from spam!

[andy666]

paying attention to the spam i got, i managed to get a great morgage on a house, marry a beautiful russian bride, and i pleasure her every night with my enlarged, viagra powered penis.

now, if only i could get some printer toner...

Re:Obviously

[Arker]

Several times. I couldn't figure out what the scam was so I did some googling. Apparently the guy sending them out is a bit... different. He really seems to believe that some time-traveling bad-guys ruined his life and caused him health and other problems. He seems to believe there are actually many time-travellers on earth at the moment, and wants to get a machine so he can travel back in time and undo the horrid stuff they did to him as a child.

Numerous folk have corresponded with him and he's made the deal many times, but somehow the bad guys always seem to nab his seller at the last moment. Poor guy.

See, I told y'all

[reboot246]

we do have computers in Alabama.

And electricity.

And indoor plumbing.

The way out is through?

[rmarll]

Interesting, if what the article says about the 20 dollar fee is true. Perhaps we can end spam by answering it.

Facinating.

In the end it's the Consumers fault.

[Tailhook]

The story ends with the conclusion that the existence of spam is the consumers fault. The assertion is that if spam didn't generate responses and, in turn, revenue, these business interests wouldn't bother causing it to be created, however indirectly.

That logic is hard to argue with, but I have an additional way to fault the consumer. Why does the consumer continue to tolerate the open sewer that is contemporary email? It's not just spam. Millions of these sheeple have been infected with viruses sent via email. Spam and viruses, and a seaming endless ability to tolerate large quantities of both...

One would think that after enough of this crap occurred, consumers would eventually consider dealing with it. RTFA to discover that you can't count on ISPs to deal with it. They value spammers and the extra money they're willing to pay. RTFA to discover that respectable companies participate via a web of indirection and plausible deniability. The only thing we have is the end user. If the end user isn't willing to deal with the problem, no one will.

If the end user was willing to deal with the problem, then it becomes a simple matter. All that would be needed is a requirement that senders provide a verifiable signature in all messages, and easy to use white lists to remember the 'ok' parties. If the end user were willing to a.) obtain a cert that allows them to sign and b.) tolerate the need to not blindly open mail that hadn't been placed on their white-list previously, spam would not exist.

The key here is the end user. Until they come around spam is inevitable.

Fight spam by replying to it?

[owlmon]

The article describes how "affiliates" get paid for supplying information gleaned from people who respond to spam e-mails.

This suggests that the economics of spamming could be disrupted rather easily if large numbers of folks would helpfully supply the information that the spammers seek.

Think about it. What would happen if every time a slashdotter got a spam, he responded with all the personal information (randomized, of course) that the spammer requested? The article used the example of a web form that the spamee was invited to fill in with his mortgage information.

A perl script could generate a lot of fills to the web form in a short period of time.

In the short term, affiliates would make extra money by selling truckloads of (phony) personal information. But within a few monthes, the large companies that pay for that information would wise up. That's when the spam economy would start to suffer.

This strategy is only interesting to those of us that have good spam filters in place. I'm getting very good results with bogofilter now. I believe that I could "survive" the major spam wave that would result if I employed this strategy. But this strategy would be a lot more effective if I had some company.

Sneakemail.com

[KevinMS]

This is why Sneakemail was created over 3 years ago. You can easily bust whoever benefits from your stolen/sold email address no matter how far down the chain it goes. For those who don't know Sneakemail was the first disposable email address service which was designed both for keeping your address clean and tracking those selling your address. Sneakemail got a mention in this months MIT Technology review magazine.