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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."
Well, cry me a river. I'm sure that there are 5-year olds out there whose parents were a bit concerned about their kids receiving penis-enlargement emails and links to porn websites. Oh, and "tons of email lists"... I thought everything these fucks did was "opt-in"? Does he mean to insinuate that that's not the case? Bwahaha.
Cry me a river indeed. Maybe this is a good way to kill them off.
this guy peed his pants becasuse he received 20 phone calls, 5 obscene. unless he forgot a couple zeros there, this should encourage everyone to call the phone numbers of spammers they seeposted. to think that 20 lousy phone calls would actually make a difference. hell i get 20 phone calls a week from telemarketers, and this guy is complaining. but nevertheless, kudos to the antispammers out there clearly they are making a difference.
.. he will devote his time to making linkfarms and other bogus websites with zero content? yeah that sounds like a plan to feed your family.
for the one's that don't know, it involves making sites that attract clicks(by looking like there could be for example emulation roms downloadable, or pron from there) from for example google and link to other sites of the same author to get the authors sites up in the search, thus polluting the search service with meaningless s**t making some fields of 'research' quite impossible to search with google without scripts for filtering that kind of stuff out of the results (doesn't need that much of a work with googleapi, and there's just few of these assholes making these sites and they tend to use the same referral id's on their ads on all of their sites making it a bit easier to filter them this filtering on client side needs a lot of bandwith though,and isn't that fast, obviously).
i'm wondering if somebody has made a decent easy to use program/scripts to use BIG blacklists with google (i hacked something together some time ago but it's not exactly easy to use for everyday stuff)?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I don't think, for the most part, that they are naive in the classical sense of the word; I think that they are closer to delusional. They have been given all the information they need, and they have chosen the interpretation which is going to let them do what they want to do.
However, I have seen a couple of occasions where a SPAM has been followed a couple of days later by an apology, where it truly does appear that someone has had a break-through experience and now understands that SPAM is a bad idea, where they truly did not understand that previously.
The CB App. What's your 20?
-- Don't just delete spam, delete spammers. join SpammerHunters
Actually that sounds like a good strategy. If even a tiny group of all the people who receive spam would give feedback by making a phone call, I think it could make many spammers to reconsider their business. Assuming that you get the right person on the line, it will take them a few seconds or minutes per each caller (as opposed to a mail bounce or a mail reply that won't ever be read by a real person) plus they will get a fair share of verbal abuse they deserve.
I used to think that comparing the Internet to the Wild West was just as bad as that "superhighway" metaphor, but lately I've come to realize how appropriate it's come to be.
You've got a legal vacuum for the most part, considering that most law enforcement authorities won't take action until a certain monetary dollar amount of damage has been done (with some notable exceptions such as child pornography). Thus, the medium is dominated by penis-enlarging snake oil salesmen, grizzled dataminers trying to pass off fool's gold as the real thing, men in black hats, men in white hats, Indians with H1B visas (yeah, I know...), and e-mail programs infected with smallpox.
I only beat the Net Rush of '94 by a couple of years, but I've heard some of the oldtimers tell tales of yore, when the whole community would get together to raise a barn or wire a school with CAT-5, or how you could always rely on your neighbor to help mend a fence or patch sendmail.
"Round up a posse, boys. We'll head 'em off at the router..."
Yeah, it's a stretch. I know. But everytime I look in that Deadman's Gulch I call my inbox, my trigger finger starts to itch and I yearn for a nice
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I think it's:
Atkinson Shane
2 O'Neill Ave Harewood Belfast
0-3-323 6484
But don't call him up and try to annoy him... that would be unethical!
Didn't you forget about the battle with the two year old over the domain Veronica.org?
Fight Spammers!
This is something I don't understand. I hope someone can explain or point me to an explanation of what I will try to describe. We all know there are very few laws against spam, and jurisdiction problems even if such laws exist.
Explain to me why it's not easy to demonstrate that someone that puts explicit spam in a child's mailbox isn't committing some sort of other crime. I don't mean "get a good mortgage rate," I mean some of the bad porn related stuff we all see, at least periodically.
So, hypothetically, let's say it's against the law in California to send some gang-bang smut ad to young Timmy. What is preventing the district attorneys, Timmy's mom, etc. from getting an injunction against John Doe? From a subpoena being issued?
Forget for now that tracing back the originator is tough. I'm asking, can't they be charged with a crime in, say, California? THEN, if they're discovered, OR if they ever travel to California & get caught (say, for a speeding ticket), they'll be in deep doo-doo.
This costs money, takes time, and doesn't find the spammers, I agree. But it will make a spammer who wants to go to a conference or travel think twice....and maybe open a whole new dot-com business opportunity: bounty hunters for the charged-but-not-yet-caught spammers.
Someone please explain why these people aren't guilty of crimes that are not spam specific, and why they can't be charged in jurisdictions where the spam is received.
I find it amazing that people like him seem quite happy to send 100 million emails out, but if the tables are turned they cry in their beer. Seems that everytime one of the spammers is exposed in the press, they are like roaches running for cover.
Maybe it's time to shine the light on the rest of them out there, lets see how many can take what they dish out.
" I worked briefly as a spammer, but then lost my income as a result of an anti-spam hacker with a chip on his shoulder." Good. You know the reason he had a chip on his shoulder? Probably had something to do with this spam that "people" like you send. Vigilantes in general... bad. Vigilantes taking down spammers... good.
Only 20 or so angry phone calls? I've had my personal phone numbers included in "Joe Job" spam (where a spammer deliberately impersonates you in order to cause you grief), and my phone rang off the hook all day with irate callers. Bit of an uneven playing field, wouldn't you say? I've never sent any spam at all, and I've had it far worse.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I worked briefly as a spammer, but then lost my income as a result of an anti-spam hacker with a chip on his shoulder. Lets just say that it's not a pleasant experience. There's no use for vigilantes on the internet.
Good. You've wasted the time of millions of people. That's "not pleasant," either. Cry me a river.
Web Design & Software Development
He was talking about gaming the search engines -- you know, that silly shit where scores of irrelevant words that are likely to show up in someone's search are added to a page in an attempt to get it more views. This is what he aims to fall back on, since spam backfired on him. Honest work is right out.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The term 'spammer' is as accusatory, and often as false, as 'criminal'.
Perhaps so. However, I know quite a few convicted criminals that I'd be only to happy to socialize with or to invite around to my home for dinner.
I don't believe there's anyone who sends out uninvited commercial email that I'd extend those privileges to.
Give me an honest mugger or burglar over a spammer, any day of the week. At least the former will do their time without whining when they get caught.
Christchurch is a small town and I will run into the jerk at some time in the future and he owes me for every mesage my spam filters had to nuke. He better name every one of his "associates" and do it soon.
Also I'll put up NZ$500 for the 1st person that can provide information to the proper authorites that leads to his arrest and jail time for this jerk. He broke NZ law by selling unlicensed drugs. If you want to claim it, get in touch with me. Any chance we can get this guy extradited someplace where he won't get a slap on the wrist? Maybe the US where peddling adult products to minors as well as selling illegal drugs will show the world that spaming is a bad idea.
While some can read an email header and track down the spammer, most can't. If more education was given on how to track down spammers, more of us angry people would take this matter into our own hands. Teach the people and let the mobs regulate. It seems to work.
What i found most interesting was:
"Mr Atkinson has decided to get out of the spamming business, citing the "negative feedback"".
It's SPAM!!! When has there been positive feedback?! Has he ever stepped outside and asked someone what they thought about spam? Give me a break. The only thing missing was a "I didn't know people didn't like it" comment. Finaly a way to fight spam has been found!
...had me wondering if he and other spammers are as really naive as the article makes out.
No fscking way. I'll believe they weren't aware of anything as they forged headers and return addresses while looking for open relays, changing ISPs every 10 minutes, and paying ISPs 3x the going rate to look the other way for 24 hours as soon as someone believes that I didn't really mean to rob a bank, I just found a gun, happened to wave it around, didn't notice the teller giving me $600k in cash, and didn't realize that I was driving that fast and that all those lights and sirens were for me--I just figured they wanted someone else.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Although I have always been disgusted by the spamming practice, I have always maintained that it wasn't right to stoop to their level. Same reason I don't set up attack-back features on firewalls. Public psting of his ID isn't the same as a campeign to flood his email or intigate DoS on his boxes, but it's a subtle temptation.
Oddly, this article might have me switching sides... Given all of the animosity directed towards spammers I find it amazing that the number of phone calls this guy mentioned was *20*. I would have though we'd be seeing 200+. I'm no one to pass judgement, but 20 calls sure seems a small price to pay for his contribution to Internet pollution. And it is implied that he is stopping now, which seems to increase the merit of this response / pay back.
The cynic in me still wonders if he made those claims to the media in order to decrease his harassment levels while he finds a new prvider. Seems like the shady types always have a plan "B" and this kind of thing is like playing whack-a-mole. Does anyne else really buy-in to him ending his games?