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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.
1) Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
2) Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
and how does this guy plan on marketing his new websites?
"well, i figure i'll just use my vast email lists and invite everyone to check them out... that can't be illegal, can it?"
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Wow, the guys sends millions of e-mail messages, then he closes up shop after getting 20 unsolicited phone calls.
Guess that's what you call "can dish it out, can't take it"...
"Mr Atkinson said that on a good day he and his associates would send out 100 million messages."
:rolleyes:
"he had received more than 20 phone calls, five of them obscene"
oh for shame. 20 phone calls. some of them obscene! Good golly, why should the poor man have his time wasted in such a way?
This space available.
Since the server was slow even when It first appeared.
Spammer ducks for cover as details published on web
2003-08-19 - By JUHA SAARINEN
A New Zealander who sent billions of junk emails out every day has shut his business after his personal details were posted on the web.
Shane Atkinson - whose business is known as spamming - said the barrage of abuse made him worry about the safety of his children.
His identity as the man behind millions of spam messages promoting penis enlargement pills was revealed in a Herald article last week. Mr Atkinson said that on a good day he and his associates would send out 100 million messages.
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, twenty of them obscene.
His personal information, street address and phone numbers were "plastered all over the web", he had been subscribed to a gay-dating site and his email address had been added to "tons of email lists".
"I have already banned my 5-year-old from answering the phone," he said.
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.
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.
Mr Atkinson has decided to get out of the spamming business, citing the "negative feedback" and saying that he "never intended to break any regulations". He has asked affiliates to stop doing the work for him.
"I sort of feel good now about stopping this," he said.
"I'll just stick to search engines and web sites - that's still plenty of fun and money."
Internet group InternetNZ has said it will file formal complaints against Mr Atkinson with the Commerce Commission, the Ministry of Health and the Privacy Commissioner.
New Zealand does not have specific anti-spam laws.
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.
You realize, Mr. Atkinson, that by backing off now you're encouraging us to continue this kind of behavior on other spammers . . .
;)
In a truely please-don't-blink moment, the man who claimed to send out 100 million messages a day on such wonderful things as penis-enlarging pills complains about receiving 5 obscene phone calls . . . they were probably just disappointed customers.
-- "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" [Oscar Wilde]
.. 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.
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.
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?
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
-- Don't just delete spam, delete spammers. join SpammerHunters
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.
...if only someone would post Shane Atkinson's Address and Phone Number. I don't think 20 phone calls is enough. I think Shane Atkinson needs to experience the power of "internet karma..."
I'll be watching for any details you might post.
-EtA
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/
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
...this guy must have the biggest penis in the world.
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.
This latest report shows a big change of heart from his comments of a few days ago:
See the full story here [stuff.co.nz].
64% of all statistics are totally useless.
z3ngine.
I therefore think I am.
Post his e-mail address and phone number!
No really, this is for legitemate business. I represent a major supplier of penis enlargment pills, and I just want to offer him my company's services.... ten thousand times per day.
The unofficial
I'm not worried about Artificial Intelligence, when they invent Artificial Stupidiy, then I'll be scared.
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.
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" 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.
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.
From my whitepages:
Atkinson Shane
2 O'Neill Ave Harewood Belfast
0-3-323 6484
And that's in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Receiving 100 emails a day for penis enlargement, porn sites, great deals on vacations and a bunch of other crap is not a "pleasant experience" either.
It is not illegal to send unsolicited email, no, but unsolicited email is slowly crippling email itself. Just because it is not illegal does not make the spammers tactics any better than the anti-spammers.
It is legal for me to ride a train and drink a beer, but if I could magically clone myself 100 million times, then all the trains around here would have a bunch of drunk me's running around, and that would make the train system sort of pointless, except that I'd be pretty amused. Your argument would indicate that this would be ok...100 million beer drinking me's...that sounds cool.
man rtfm
This happens a lot, actually; criminals do it all the time...
by the same logic
;-)
if u dont want obscene phone calls disconnect your phone or dont have a phone line.
so start calling
You obviously have not seen the late night informercials advertising how you can have your very own internet marketing business, where you can make money fast in only a few hours per day.
Yes, you can be a spammer - if you sign up todayu!
Scary, No?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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!
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
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.
".. 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.
Aggressive anti-spam activists should be locked up. They do more harm than good. I worked briefly as a spammer
Please post your name, adress, phone number, fax number, and picture here, on slashdot.
I promise you, we WILL do you more harm than good...
You can't take the sky from me...
And if one person called up their toll-free number and left them a phone number they didn't want to talk to, like their ISP's phone number, or Interpol's, or the FBI's anonymous tip line, or their local police office, or their country's government's people-selling-bad-medicine bureaucracy's complaint line, or other spammers' toll-free numbers, or other spammers' ISP contact numbers, they might also start to think they were getting slashdotted.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.
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"...
Nah, the right thing is to have them drive out for a business meeting, and instead of you showing up, have a stream of vendors come in and pitch their wares to the spammers. Perhaps if they realize that being mislead and finding out that they had to listen to advertisements instead of using their time developing opportunities or commmunication, they might take the hint.
It's been 20 days since I've received a penile enlargement ad, though I've received nearly 700 spams on different subjects over that period.
Could it be that one guy was responsible for most of those ads?
Ack! I almost clicked submit having left the word "ad" out of the first paragraph. Glad I caught it.
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.
We pause now for any expressions of sympathy.
(Crickets chirp.)
<< 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
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.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
Damn made a mistake.... Oppose Opt-in should be... Oppose Opt-out. Sorry folks... Checked it several times too... Proposed legislation in the United States makes it your responsibility to Opt-out of a mailing list as opposed to the legislation due to be inacted in the European Union in October. Oppose all government legislation involving the internet! It all goes against the self governance/regulation principle.
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.
.procmailrc in thier shell account (if they provide thier subscribers with a shell acc
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
Read, L
"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.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
But Daddy you told me you provided a very much needed service to the world, why would you be ashamed to let me here about exactly what it is?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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?