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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."
1) Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
2) Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
please
Do you spam ?
Have you even considered it as an option ?
If you said no its because you posess ethichs and a conscience. Congratulations and my sympathy you have things the typical spammer does not.
There are some companies (and individuals) who send large amounts of e-mail, who are 'spammers' by one definition (as in they send large amounts of commercial mail containing advertisements) but who live by the letter of the law.
Freaks sending incest or rape spam to all the addresses they can find are crossing signficant moral boundaries, but people who've legitimately got access to mailing lists rented out by newsletter companies (to which you signed up, often accepting that you'd receive some ads) don't deserve to be hounded. What they're doing is not illegal, and not morally wrong, since you have accepted to receive this info.
Of course, there are a lot more bad spammers out there, than spammers who have morals, only mail proper lists, and respect remove requests, but that doesn't mean all spammers have to be tarred with the same brush.
The term 'spammer' is as accusatory, and often as false, as 'criminal'. You might think all criminals are bad, but what about the 'criminal' who said something bad about the government and got arrested for it? Likewise, not all 'spammers' are inherently evil scum sending porno ads to your TV-addicted drooling children.
mogorific carpentry experiments
while there are no specific laws in NZ that say "thou shalt not spam" (and the government is looking at introducing something along those lines one of these days), there are plenty of laws already in place to hassle this guy with. The NZ Privacy Act is a powerful tool that says you cannot gather information for one purpose (eg domain name registration) and use it for another (eg spam), so he's probably in breach of that. He's also potentially breaching the health act by selling a product that makes a medical claim without either a: evidence to back it up or b: a licence to sell medicine. He's also probably breaching the Fair Trading Act by offering a product that doesn't do what it says it will.5 E241ED D85A39586CC256D8600210CBB)
InternetNZ (the NZ Internet Society) is laying a complaint with the various bodies about this guy:
(http://computerworld.co.nz/webhome.nsf/nl/
Can't give you a link to the InternetNZ release because they haven't put it on their website yet!
I am a leaf on the wind
For every adult who can succesfully operate a computer, there are 20 5-year olds that have been doing just as long as they have, are more comfortable with it, and already signed up for their own hotmail account.
Space for rent, inquire within
It's not hypocrisy. They're doing it to make the guy realize that hey's being an annoying prick. If you're so simple minded that you can't get past "sending a spammer spam to make spam stop" you shouldn't be reading stuff in the first place. Just watch reality TV. This is like posting John Ashcroft's personal info on the internet to make him think twice about TIA/big brother stuff. It's not hypocrisy when you're doing X solely to the guys who do X to make them realize X is wrong. It's not hypocrisy, it's not ironic, and it's not coincidental. It's a valid way of making certain people realize they're acting like asses.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Rule #1: Spammers always lie.
Rule #2: When a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see rule #1.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
He could ask to be taken off of the caller's call list. Just like the opt-out, ask everyone with your e-mail to opt-out you.
Fight Spammers!
Good job on publishing this guy's name. Now he tasted his own medicine and closed shop.
This is a great way to get rid of spammers. People should be personally responsible for their own actions.
what if, instead, everyone called collect? the phone would still ring and become an incredible annoyance, but at no cost to us, the poor, proletariat spammees.
i know i don't feel like paying just to be an annoyance, but maybe i'd do it for free.
seriously, there's got to be a way to make spam end. i sure hope so.
They're a bit behind the times on things like
Road rage
Locking up the house and having a safe room
Gun Injuries and Murders
Driving on the same side of the road as everyone else going in the same direction
Postcodes - there are no postcodes in NZ
And the fact that there is too much spam!
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
This happens a lot, actually; criminals do it all the time...
It's even worse than that, he sent as many as 100 million spams per day. And got 20 phone calls total.
Isn't it amazing that people like this seem to equate legality with morality?
There are lots of things which one can do which are legal but immoral, or moral but illegal. "I thought it was legal" is never an acceptable excuse for doing something which you know to be immoral.
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
Yes, that was rich - "20 phone calls, five of them obscene." He sent 100 million (!) messages a day, ALL OF THEM OBSCENE.
What really saddens me about this story, though, is finding out that someone like this has children.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
wondering if he and other spammers are as really naive as the article makes out.
It is quite possible that they are that naive a lot of them may not be on every mailing list on the planet then they get a couple of Spam mails then it seems like a good idea. I doubt that many of them don't realize the scale of the problem. As well many Spammers are the same type of people that read and fall for Spam. So they actually think they can make good money at it and many do. But like with many other things people tend to fail to stop and analysis what they do on a grand scheme of things.
If I had no moral objection to it spamming seems like an interesting area of Work that is really interesting at an intellectual level. Working on methods to optimize bandwidth to maximize the amount of email out. Finding a method of hiding your true identity but allowing people to contact you to purchase. Understanding the limits of computer laws to allow yourself to use other computers without people knowing but still be legal. Finding ways around filters and other things. It would be interesting work in an intellectual level, but so would seeing a child grow up in a completely isolated of any nurture to see what are the true human instinct and what is what we learn. But there are a lot of people who have a hard time understanding more then themselfs and forget to see what they are doing is wrong.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I see that one of two things could be derived from this: If 2) is the go then his actions could be very deliberate in trying to quell some of the hatred headed his way. By openly saying, "OK anti-spam community, you got me, I give up" he may simply be trying to throw people off the scent.
Somehow I imagine that he will simply be more careful in setting up his next spam venture to make sure it can't be tracked back to him.
Cheese is nice.
z3ngine.
I therefore think I am.
".. NZ based spammer who has shut up shop..."
thats just what he wants us think. He is probably just buying time to find out how his details were traced and how to restart operations again...only this time making sure his privacy remains protected.....
'The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist,' -the Usual Suspects
... if he got caught/found out, then he probably is just naive. Any who knew what they were doing wouldn't get caught.
Someone might have already said this, but Oh Boo Hoo Cry me a River. You lost your "income" stealing from everyone else. Boo Hoo. And correction: It is illegal in some states to send unsolicited emails if there isn't a proper return email address, if the return email addresses are forged, or if there is no real way to "remove" someone from the "list"...
What is absolutely sickening is that this POS reproduced... his hellspawn child has probably already absorbed his father's amorality, if not by observation then by direct instruction.
This doubtless continues the chain -- the spammer's parents failed to give their child a conscience and a soul, probably for reasons of lacking those characteristics themselves.
Much like families where domestic violence is a tradition, we can be certain we have not seen the last of this from this family.
<< I worked briefly as a spammer>>
At wich point you lost all rights to complain about anythign to do with your income, career, working conditions, public perception and feelings. You became a pariah, outcast by all who use the internet for more than 20 minutes a day, and some that don't.
<<but then lost my income as a result of an anti-spam hacker>>
Live by the sword, die by the sword. If only all spam-sending computers had a chip built in that could wipe their hard drives remotely. Or better still, crash the heads so they have to go to the inconvenience of buying a new unit every two days.
Your post is mis-modded. Saying you were a spammer should have got you a flamebait mod.
There is nothing more for you here.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
If he's really making tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in gross revenue, do you really think he's going to stop because some people are annoyed at him? Would you, honestly? Let alone if you were someone willing to begin the activity in the first place?
Also, given that his business consists of netting suckers with semi-fraudulent claims (carefully not reproduced on the actual product), do you think he'd have a single qualm that would prevent him from lying about whether he's going to quit?
In order to have a change of heart, one would have to have a heart to begin with. It may make some people feel better to harass this guy, albeit in a nasty-minded sort of way. It's not going to make one iota of difference.
What I find absolutely sickening is that in a world where people starve just blocks from executives and companies worth millions of dollars; where suicide bombers and terrorists and assassins run rampant; where an entire continent goes without AIDS drugs to satisfy the intellectual property "rights" of companies in the US, you're "sickened" by the guy who sends you email you don't want.
Amazing.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
So what are YOU doing about the hungry and AIDs cases? Just Boo-hooing, or just trying to shift the cost to "executives and companies worth millions of dollars"? Or are you actually pulling money out of your OWN pocket to buy food and drugs for these people? If the Whinners of the world put THIER money where thier mouths are, instead of trying to get thier hands in others pockets then a lot of these problems would be lessened if not solved. Of course that assumes that the hungry and sick are a real concern, and not just an excuse to attack those who have more money.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
The presence of other bad things in the world doesn't make something less bad. Spammers still suck.