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

Booo-hooo

[The Bungi]

He had received more than 20 phone calls, five of them obscene. [...] 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.

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.

Re:Booo-hooo

[The Bungi]

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

20 phone calls?

[Champaign]

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"...

Re:20 phone calls?

[GammaTau]

Wow, the guys sends millions of e-mail messages, then he closes up shop after getting 20 unsolicited phone calls.

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.

Re:20 phone calls?

[kudos200]

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.

Re:20 phone calls?

[imnoteddy]

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.

I have an email filter rule that looks for toll-free numbers and puts them in a folder. Every morning I call the (usually 2 or 3) that have come in the last 24 hours and say politely, "I got your email about (whatever) and just wanted to let you know I'm not interested" and then hang up. No abuse, just waste their time and probably confuse them.

Re:20 phone calls?

[optikSmoke]

Hello, this is [insert telco here]. You have a collect call from EAT MY DICK YOU COCKFACE SPAMMER. Press 1 to accept the charges now.

Excellent.....

Re:20 phone calls?

[Steve B]

A spammer might not take phone calls seriously enough. That's why I'd prefer to a put a horse's head in his bed.

At which point the bed would contain an entire horse.

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.

what a maroon

[Jafafa Hots]

"Mr Atkinson said that on a good day he and his associates would send out 100 million messages."

"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? :rolleyes:

Oh, this is so NOT a good idea . . .

[Brad Cossette]

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. ;)

so instead of spamming..

[gl4ss]

.. 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)?

spammers do seem to drink their own kool-aid

[bennomatic]

I've had SPAM-vertisers try to sign up the company I work for as a client, and I've had them try to convince me that it's OK to advertise that way. One guy got really aggrivated when I tried to explain that when it takes 20 minutes a day to delete all the viagra ads you get, 20 minutes for the mortgage ads, etc..., that very very very few people actually feel that they have been provided with a service when they receive SPAM e-mail.

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.

Re:Huh?

[Audent]

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.
InternetNZ (the NZ Internet Society) is laying a complaint with the various bodies about this guy:
(http://computerworld.co.nz/webhome.nsf/nl/5 E241ED D85A39586CC256D8600210CBB)
Can't give you a link to the InternetNZ release because they haven't put it on their website yet!

One down...

[CoffeeDad]

The problem is that *real* spamlords sell/rent/MLM convenient little subscription kits, services, tools and utilities that enable mindless drooling head-bobbers like this to join the ranks of spammers. No way of telling now, whether it was just another spammerzombie, or one of the real kingpins. Shoot 'em all, I say.

-- Don't just delete spam, delete spammers. join SpammerHunters

Re:You hypocrites

[kaltkalt]

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.

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/

Keep in mind

[AndroidCat]

had me wondering if he and other spammers are as really naive as the article makes out.

Rule #1: Spammers always lie.
Rule #2: When a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see rule #1.

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.

Re:Change of Heart?

[z3ngine]

Yes that's right - its very inconsistent.

I see that one of two things could be derived from this:

1) over-exagerative or simply poor journalism or;
2) Atkinson's stance/comments to journalists have been inconsistent

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.

Somebody, please

[Gherald]

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.

Personally

[Hal The Computer]

I'm not worried about Artificial Intelligence, when they invent Artificial Stupidiy, then I'll be scared.

Vigilante justice...

[ktakki]

From the article:

New Zealand does not have specific anti-spam laws.

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 .45-70 Henry rifle.

k.

Smut to children not a crime?

[gbnewby]

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.

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.

Naive?

[Squidgee]

Naive? I doubt it. More likely those comments were to paint him as a kind man; so that way, he doesn't look like the scumbag he is.

This happens a lot, actually; criminals do it all the time...

He got off lightly

[The Famous Brett Wat]

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.

Re:yeah...

[The Wicked Priest]

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.

Calling up spammers

[billstewart]

If one person called up a spammer's toll-free number and sang them the Monty Python Spam Song or Weird Al Yankovic's Spam song, they might think it was a bit odd, but if a whole bunch of people started calling up, singing them a spam song, and hanging up, they might start to think it was a _movement_.

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.

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.