Spammer Ducks For Cover

rabidgremlin writes "The New Zealand Herald has an article about a NZ based spammer who has shut up shop after being at the receiving end of an anti-spam campaign. Good riddance I say, but some of his comments ("never intended to break any regulations" and "I'll just stick to search engines and web sites - that's still plenty of fun and money.") had me wondering if he and other spammers are as really naive as the article makes out."

Comments

Re:Booo-hooo

[The Bungi]

Oh, and here's one of the abuse-sightings posts that probably did him in (Google thread).

Video of interview with the spammer

[waynemcdougall]

Mr Atkinson was interview on a 'current affairs' show on the state broadcaster.

What I find most notable is that he can barely suppress the smirk [IMO] when he says he didn't do anything wrong, and also when he said he was going to stop.

RealVideo can be found here: http://www.tvone.co.nz/programmes/holmes/

Change of Heart?

[z3ngine]

This latest report shows a big change of heart from his comments of a few days ago:

"If you don't want to receive spam, don't connect to the Internet, or don't have an e-mail address." - Shane Atkinson, 15th Aug 2003.

See the full story here [stuff.co.nz].


64% of all statistics are totally useless.
z3ngine.

Here it is

[Anonymous Coward]

From my whitepages:

Atkinson Shane
2 O'Neill Ave Harewood Belfast
0-3-323 6484

And that's in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Re:so instead of spamming..

[Klaruz]

I think it's because the default superuser account on phpnuke is god. So god posts a lot of stuff on a lot on phpnuke sites that haven't been that modified.

Re:20 phone calls?

[GordoSlasher]

When you call a toll-free number, the recipient gets your phone number even if you have caller ID blocking. This opens you up for receiving telemarketing calls. Even if you're on the Do Not Call list, the fact that you initiated a call to them might give them the right to call you under the guise of having a business relationship.

The best thing to do with those toll-free numbers is to call them from a pay phone. The recipient pays an extra surcharge for calls from pay phones, and they can't track you.

Re:You hypocrites

[zakezuke]

You cry when someone sends you 1 or 2 spams a day, but then you go ahead and cheer on the people who do stuff like this? That's fucking unbelievable. Have you no sense? It's hypocrisy like this that's going to keep spam a problem forever.

Any responce via phone to spam is a *solisited* responce. "Stop sending me spam" would be a very approperate responce to such a foofoo head.

Because the system is automated, the guy is going to get several million responces to the spam he sent. If you run a business based on this model, you are required in most countries to be taken off their mailing list if you ask.

So, I don't see it as being hyprocritical at all. The guy runs a business of contacting people. If people don't want to be contacted, they have every right to ask him to stop.

Calling out the lawyers (again)

[qtp]

Uppage there are a few of the expected calls for government regulation of email that we see every time there is a story about spam, and there are the obligitory anecdotes about the hundreds of spam emails that some poor souls find every day in thier inbox.

So here is my usual post about how asking the government to regulate everything is a bad idea, and how I have little sympathy for the poor saps who are getting flooded with thousands of spam emails a day that makes it difficult for them to see the one or two legitimate emails that thier friends might send them each year.

First law. Bad idea because it won't work. As long as there are different countries with seperate governments that have differing attitudes towards the internet, commerce, and law it will be impossible to legislate spam out of existance. That is not to say that I am supporting the idea of one government rulling all peoples or that I am advocating any sort if international treaty on regulating email and the internet.

Far from it.

What I am saying is there are good methods of reducing the flow of spam to your in-box to a trickle, possibly blocking the spam flow completely.

Use a provider that is as concerned about stopping the spam as you are. That means no AOL, no MSN, no Hotmail, etc. These companies are notorious for not only allowing you to get spam flooded, but for allowing thier customers to send spam and not discontiuing accounts that are being used as fake "reply to" and "from" addresses. There are other companies that are just as irresponsible as the ones I mentioned, so you should not think that I am saying that these companies are the only ones that should be avoided.

If you like using the same email and access provider (I've been hijacking friends access accounts for years now), then you should know that smaller access providers often are more responsive to user's (knowlegable and legitimate) complaints than large companies. As an added bonus, thier access rates tend to be low, and they are as if not more reliable than thier corporate competitors.

If you like using a separate provider for email, ask around, do some searches, and choose one that has effective filtering/blocking of spam included in thier basic package.

You can filter the mail yourself with one of the many spam blocking services or filters that are readily available on the internet. Here are some links to some of the blacklists and filters that I know about:

ORDB

MAPS

junkfilter

Bogofilter

SpamCop

SpamBouncer

There are others, some services are free, some charge money. If you are going to use a filter on your own machine that is not part of a service, I highly reccomend that you stick with Free Software so you can learn something about how it works.

You should learn as much about the problem and potential solutions as possible by reading articles about spam that may be not quite as sensational as the currently popular "spammer hunting" genre, but are a little richer in detail and technique. Here is a good primer including some good links, and there's lots of good info on dealing with spam around the web.

You should attempt to encourage your provider to take an active role in helping users avoid spam troubles, either by providing information on how users can filter spam on thier own machines, by providing spam blocking/filtering service, or by allowing users to install thier own .procmailrc in thier shell account (if they provide thier subscribers with a shell acc

The Lumber Cartel (tinlc) is not impressed.

[Agent R]

"He said that since the article was published, anti-spam activists had been "having a field day". He had received more than 20 phone calls, five of them obscene."

Obscene ones? Must be "thank-you" kisses from his penis enlargement customers.

His personal information, street address and phone numbers were "plastered all over the web". The article also led to rackshack.com, the US web service that hosts Mr Atkinson's servers, being entered in the Spam Early Warning System list, which many networks use for blocking email traffic.

I mentioned this before. Just remember folks.. SPEWS has your name, number, address, change-of-address, time when you eat, when you sleep, and when you realize your Preparation H is not working.

"Rackshack gave notice that it would shut down two of Mr Atkinson's servers because of the listing, forcing him to move the servers to a different network."

So Rackshack.. exactly how many thousands of abuse reports did you receive and ignore before SPEWS tossed you into the dungeon? I think you love your pink contracts a bit too much.

saying that he "never intended to break any regulations".

Rule #1. Rule #2.

"I sort of feel good now about stopping this," he said.

Rule #1. Rule #2.

"I'll just stick to search engines and web sites - that's still plenty of fun and money."

Rule #1. Rule #2. Rule #3. Russell's Corollary.

Please use your favorite search engine to review the "Rules of Spam" or go here.