Spammer Hangout's Membership Roster Left Exposed

MikeCapone writes "According to an article at Wired News, spammers feel the need to be part of a community too. The Bulk Club is one such community. A message on the site states that it offers, for a $20 monthly fee, a variety of how-to articles, spamming software, a members' message board area, and 300,000 FRESH e-mails/week. Unsurprisingly, the 'Law & Ethics' section is 'Members Only.' The good part is that, because of a glitch, the membership list of this charming organization was left exposed on the website."

Comments

Send them some mail

[Dancin_Santa]

Maybe they'd be interested in some anti-spam software.

Re:Send them some mail

[FireBreathingDog]

So forge it. Telnet into 25 and issue some commands:

HELO litigation
MAIL FROM: mike@michaelmoore.com
RCPT TO: spammer1@spamscum.com
RCPT TO: spammer2@spamscum.com
RCPT TO: spammerX@spamscum.com
DATA
From: Mike
To: Sleaze Buckets
Subject: Decrease your penis size

How would you like to buy some anti-spam software,
JACKASS???

.

Re:Send them some mail

[ncc74656]

Every one of us should send them 10 e-mails each, preferably more, and we have lots of users.. MUHAHAHAHA

I was thinking a better approach would be to slip their email addresses into comments on a webpage. With the way my websites are set up, a change to one file would get the list sent out with each page on that site...it'd be trivial to include a block like this:

<!-- Spambots, chew on this:
foo@bar.com
joe@spammer.com
...
-->

Addresses in mailto links are obfuscated so that the spambots won't get them...these, of course, would be left alone.

Now...does anyone have the list of spammers extracted from this site? I found real names in an archive linked through the Wired article, but no email addresses. :-|

Re:Send them some mail

[robogun]

Easier to post the list to usenet, or make a geocities page and get it indexed on google. The idiots will be spamming themselves in notime.

Re:Send them some mail

[gklinger]

Ah, but that is what Mailinator is for. It's one of those goofy ideas that amuses me no end and I've actually found useful. If you haven't checked it out, do so. It's really rather interesting.

I have a solution

[mao che minh]

So, 150 spammers huh? I think I'll opt for the HK MP5. Each magazine can hold 32 bullets, which means I'll need 19 fully loaded magazines, or 192 bullets. I figure that I will need this much ammunition because in my zest filled murderous glee I am likely to waste at least four bullets on each spammer, since the intense joy that I will have while firing said bullets in their direction will cause me to miss at least 75% of the time. I think I will also make use of the 10mm automatic cartridges, which deliver up to twice the muzzle energy of the standard 9mm shell (I aim for optimal terminal effect).

Make no mistake, my aim will prove true. I should have this whole "spam" ordeal cleared up by late September.

*as a side note, it wouldn't hurt to sign up and learn how your enemy thinks, and how he employs his tactics. Before you gun him down like a dog in the street, that is.

Re:I have a solution

[Guppy06]

"Make no mistake, my aim will prove true. I should have this whole "spam" ordeal cleared up by late September."

And your name is Mao, hm?

Hey, if they're the first people up against the wall when your revolution comes, sign me up! I'll even carry around a copy of your little red cook book!

Re:I have a solution

[jtheory]

Why go with a low caliber MP5 when you can use This?

Wow, is that thing really made by General Electric?
Makes you wonder about the unspoken correlary to their motto, "we bring good things to life".

Re:I have a solution

[Kufat]

You can use the HK MP5 if you want, but I'm sure they'll listen to Reason.

Re:I have a solution

[the Man in Black]

Massive kudos on the Stephenson quote.

REASON
version 1.0B7
Gatling.type 3.mm hypervelocity railgun system
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE
DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
- ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-

hosting sites

[confusion]

I'd be interested in seeing the list of bulk friendly isp's :)

Re:hosting sites

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.spamhaus.org/

Great quote:

[Saint Aardvark]

Spam? UCE? Opt-In? Double Opt-In?

What's the difference between these remarkle advertising vehicles? Don't be left without the proper knowledge when sending out your offering to the masses. Along with our other various How Tos, learn the difference before any mailing.

I have never felt so good to be part of the Slashdot effect.

BTW, as pointed to in the article, a list of members was posted to Usenet w/a list of memberships. There was also a link to an archive of the contents of the site; here's a link:

http://jscript.dk/2003/8/thebulkclub.com.zip

and a mirror:

http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/thebulkclub.co m/thebulkclub.com.zip

A list of the files in the archive can be found here:

http://saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com/thebulkclub.co m/contents.txt

Grab a copy and post your own links!

Re:Great quote:

[Ichijo]

I have never felt so good to be part of the Slashdot effect.

I'm still waiting for someone to write a non-virus, volunteer-based DDOS client with a voting system.

What a disappointment:

[Quixo-tastic]

They're not /.ed yet. You call that clicking?

Re:What a disappointment:

[Saint Aardvark]

Oh, it's better now. BTW, responsible people do not do:

bash-2.01 $ while [ true ] ; do wget -O - http://www.thebulkclub.com > /dev/null ; done

That would be wrong.

Re:What a disappointment:

[Sierran]

Hm. While I would *never* wish to disagree with an esteemed /. colleague, I might point out that while the above script is indeed effective at sucking up bandwidth, there's a more efficient answer! Perusing the website indicated shows that the front page is straight HTML, whereas - voila - the 'Benefits' page (http://www.thebulkclub.com/benefits.asp) is, as we can see, an ASP page. So why just look at a boring front page? Determine for yourself the BENEFITS of this organization, and give that poor IIS server a bit o' work to do.

bash-2.01 $ while [ true ] ; do wget -O - http://www.thebulkclub.com/benefits.asp > /dev/null ; done

Re:What a disappointment:

[Istealmymusic]

Why only fetch the FIRST PAGE? Fetch them all!

wget -r -nd --delete-after http://www.thebulkclub.com/

Re:What a disappointment:

[Saint Aardvark]

Truly, you are the better Slashdotter. I bow to your greatness, and I am arranging the transfer of my karma to your Swiss Slashdot account. :-)

Re:What a disappointment:

[ncc74656]

If wget isn't on your system, try this:

c=0; while true; do lynx -dump http://www.thebulkclub.com >/dev/null; c=`expr $c + 1`; echo $c; done

If you don't have Lynx installed either, try this:

c=0; while true; do (echo "GET / HTTP/1.0"; echo "") | nc www.thebulkclub.com 80 >/dev/null; c=`expr $c + 1`; echo $c; done

If you don't have netcat installed, what kind of l4m3r are you? :-)

Re:What a disappointment:

[digidave]

What does that do? I put it in my console and it didn't do anything. I'll leave it running for a few years just to be sure. I'd better try it on all the college computer labs, too, so I can verify any output.

Re:What a disappointment:

[piranha(jpl)]

That would be wrong.

Of course it would be wrong!

while [ true ]

[ true ] returns 0 because true is indeed an existent argument to [. Which is really not the intended application of [. while true is much more to the point. while : makes you look even more savvy.

wget -O - URL > /dev/null

[Shakes head] Why not wget -O /dev/null URL ? Or better yet, curl -o /dev/null URL ?

Let's look at this again:

while :; do curl -o /dev/null http://www.thebulkclub.com/; done

Ahh, much better!

Re:What a disappointment:

[jschank]

Yeah, but 2 Wrights make and airplane.

Re:What a disappointment:

[ChadM]

update: it appears that they have changed their DNS tables to stave of a slashdotting. however, their IP address still points to their server!

while [ true ] ; do wget -O - http://64.78.42.11/benefits.asp > /dev/null ; done

let the slashdotting continue :)

Haiku

[Anonymous Coward]

Agony, pain, burning, acid
Slow death too good for spammer
May spam penis shrink

Naughty!

[AndroidCat]

You know, snooping around a spammers site looking for open files is really fighting abuse with abuse and .. *sporf!* I can't keep typing this without busting a gut! Bwahahaha!

Re:Naughty!

[marko123]

There is an ethical justification in being given no option (by the enemy) to defend yourself in ways other than using unethical means in order to protect yourself and your loved ones. These particular types of enemy tend to be called "truly evil" because they make you break your own morals to fight them.

e.g. having to shoot a person so that he doesn't shoot you.

"Turn the other cheek" doesn't cut it with certain types of enemies. They know this, and you know this.

It'd be deliciously ironic if ...

[tessaiga]

one of those ubiquitous email harvester bots ran into the exposed membership list :)

Hypocrisy

[splinterBR]

Hey, I love their little notice:

The Bulk Club does not promote any portion of this site via bulk email period. It is against our hosting providers terms of service to do so and we will not tolerate anyone who abuses these rules on our web site.

The club for spammers hates spam???

I can see them rewriting that page now:-

[56ker]

FREE Email Account Companies YES
FREE Autoresponder Companies YES
FREE Online Storage Companies YES
FREE URL Redirection Companies YES
FREE Web Templates YES
Able to withstand slashdotting NO

But hey!

[Geekenstein]

That popup window says we can join their mailing list for FREE!

*signs up his boss*

"Responsible" business practices

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

From the article:
In an e-mail interview, Auman said that the club was dedicated to promoting "responsible" business practices and that it offers information about misleading tactics used by some spammers simply to show why they are improper.

Now, I hate spam and spammers with a passion, but I must admit that the subject lines and stuff I've been getting recently are a lot more appropriate. At least the spam I get, they aren't trying to hide it anymore with stuff like "Re: Your bank account" or "Re: Tech support" and it's about debt management or a second mortgage or my wang. Too bad that their "responsible business practices" include articles about spoofing (probably about spoofing emails and forging headers) and harvesting emails ("opt-in" my ass).

But anyways... down to the real reason I posted. Did anybody manage to get any info about addresses, telephone numbers, etc? I have a baseball bat and some free time in the mornings before work... and late nights are free too! DId I mention I live in Florida, just like this guy:

Among the Bulk Club's list of 159 "active members" was Damon Decrescenzo, one of the operators of Rockin Time Holdings, a Florida junk e-mailer sued by Microsoft in June and by Amazon this month.

I have responsible business practices too! I am responsible for alot of death and destruction...

Spam Nazis

[Bishop923]

According to the Bulk Club's member roster, other subscribers include John Milton, an alias used by Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a former neo-Nazi who became a penis-pill spammer.

Funny how the transition from Neo-Nazi to Spammer doesn't seem like much of a jump...

oops

[mao che minh]

In my feverish anticipation of the hunt, I got my math wrong. You can see how anxious I am to get started on my righteous campaign.

Shhhhhh.

[niko9]

Be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting spammers.

I was refreshing about 100 times a second when...

[Hiigara]

This popup appeared.

"The Bulk Club Mailing List
Join our mailing list for FREE!

Bulk Email Industry News Alerts
Free Tips & Tricks
Updated Bulk Club News
and more..."

Now how stupid do they think we are?

Re:If SPAM is so bad..

[confusion]

It's pretty involved, but there was an expose in one of the media outlets a few weeks ago about this very thing. Basically a reputible company outsources its marketing to a firm. That firm is partially comp'd on how much traffic they drive. Now all good companies do due diligence and would never hire some PR firm that spams. So the PR firm outsources to someone else who does the same until the get to one of the big time spammers. With each step down the ladder, the companies get more and more sleazy. The linkage is so diluted at that point, it's hard for anyone to tell who requested the spam's to be sent on the original company's behalf.

A company like Symantec can easily say 'my gosh, I can't believe it. we'll talk to our vendor right away.' vendor says 'we had no idea out sub contractor was a spam supporter - we've terminated our relationship with them' and no one has dirty hands.

Re:Bah

[Wumpus]

One word: Putty.

But I've already got that list...

[blueforce]

I already have all of those email addresses - they're right there at the top of my emails......the "from" address right?

My spam solution

[Felinoid]

Forget "Don't send" lists.
To enforce industry responsability do a national "must include" list.

Liccens spammers AND every spammer must be on the must include list AND spam to everyone on the must include list.

Here is where the fun begins.
Also on the must include list are spam scounts that track the latest spam to update spam filters.
But it get's better.
Also added to the list is fedral observers who check up to be sure all spam is being sent to the must spam list.

As a member of the must spam list you can opt out IF the spammer honnors the opt out system. Of course opt out to be required.

Fedral agents will randomly test opt outs, randomly test the list.

and the e-mail address given for the "must spam" list must be actively read by the spammer. A fedral agent will occasionally contact the spammer at the address to be sure the spammer is still reading his e-mail if not he must pay a hefty fine and repeated offenses msy cost him his liccesn.

This should inspire spammers to police themselfs quite well and do something about the worst spam tactics.

Re:The disturbing thing is...

[Drakon]

will people please stop generallizing? There is more than one person posting on /., and I guarentee there are more than two opinions about any topic.

Regardless,

Have a heart, people! Sure, spammers are jerks, we can laugh at them and make fun of them, but don't you have any sense of decency?

I beg your pardon?
This is the Network that belongs to the People. These are the people that are abusing the network.

I don't have a sense of decency when it comes to dirty, nasty, polluters that break laws or attempt to break laws.

If it had been a list of alcoholics or political dissidents no one would have any business posting their names anywhere. This is a list of people who can each be charged with trespassing or attempted trespassing, and our government refuses to charge them with these crimes. Now I'm not saying I'M going to go vigilanti on their collective ass, but I'm more than willing to turn a blind eye to anyone who does.

Re:The disturbing thing is...

[marko123]

Spammers deprive me of a fair way to defend myself. I don't like being put in a position where I break my own moral code to fight them off, but by their method of attack they have taken away my ability to fight them fairly.

War fought in this way on these grounds is justified, yet I may still feel a little guilty when I look at their (servers') smoking remains.

I hate people like this all the more because they give me only two choices: lose, or denigrate myself and win.

I hope this explains a little better why people here hate spammers SO MUCH.

(unless I've been trolled :)

Terms of contract

[Anonymous Coward]

From their site.

The Bulk Club does not promote any portion of this site via bulk email period. It is against our hosting providers terms of service to do so and we will not tolerate anyone who abuses these rules on our web site

How Ironic.

Sure, spammers are jerks...

[Infonaut]

Spammers are more than jerks. A jerk is someone who honks at you for only going 70 mph in the slow lane. A jerk is someone who throws trash on the street or makes a big scene in a restaurant when the wine isn't to his liking.

A spammer is someone who comes to your house every day and rings the doorbell every 37 seconds. He makes it difficult for you to go outside because when you do, he'll pin advertisements for Viagra and get-rich-quick schemes all over your clothes. After a while, your mail carrier may not even show up at your house, for fear of this miscreant.

Spammers hide behind legalities, but they are profoundly immoral, in the sense that they don't give a damn about what their actions do to the larger community. The irony is that they are busy bringing down the very edifice that allows them to conduct these activities.

Alchoholics are sick people who can be cured.

Political dissidents may have views I disagree with, but they're not forcing me to listen to them.

Spammers are just people who don't give a damn about anyone else, and are willing to make money off of crippling a mechanism that millions of people depend on every day.

Re:The disturbing thing is...

[swordgeek]

An interesting point, but flawed.

These people aren't political dissidents. They're criminals, and they're perpetrating crimes against ME! Furthermore, the data is a list of the members of a willful collusion. The very fact that they're on this list defines that they are actively, and deliberately trying to commit crimes against me and others.

It's not a level playing field. I'd have sympathy for AA members, even if some of them had caused harm by drunk driving. I have no sympathy for people who gather to discuss and plan how best to commit crimes. I would have no sympathy for an online thieves guild (real thieves, not for games), or a collection of pedophiles who are trying to legitimise their actions.

How much do you pay per month for your internet access? ~30% of that is because of spammers. If you're paying $30/month, then every year you have had $120 stolen from your person by these people.

Do we provide safe harbor to unrepentant criminals? Not in my house, and not on my internet!

Before you go off all half cocked

[cluge]

How many of the "memebers" are actually anti-spam people sniffing around to see who the spammers are? Then again, most fo the anti-spam community is smart enough to use a throw away e-mail address for this sort of thing.

Seriously - to help eliminate the innocent bystander from the spammer who needs to be whacked , start by sending an e-mail.


To: Direct Marketing Vendor
From: Important Sounding Title
cc: legal@fakedomain.com

Dear Sir,

I need you to help me kick off my marketing campaign by sending my message out to 31 million targeted clients. I will pay you 150,000 USD for this service. If you are interested, then please send your company name, a contact name, phone number and address so that I can have a contract drawn up. We will also need to have the name of your bank, and the address of the branch that you use for our contract as well. Please no account numbers, we only need to get the bank name and branch!

Sincerely,
bigcheese@fakedomain.com
Important Sounding Title Goes here


Wait for reply - post reply to slashdot/usenet/etc
include all e-mail headers and or phone
conversations

Constantly remind people that :
A. No one will protect your from these spammers

B. No one will help you pay for the damages they cause.

C. No one will give you back the time that SPAM has wasted in your life.

Show up at the eventual fire with a can of gasoline.

Now go off half cocked, see if I care!

I'm suprised it's so active

[banky]

After all, The First Rule of Bulk Club is, You do not talk about Bulk Club.

Re:Oh ho ho!

[4minus0]

Here you go:
This is the jackass that runs the site bulkclub.com

Drew Auman
The Bulk Club LLC
3867 W. Market St #272
Akron, OH 44333
330-666-7625

Last known home address from yahoo people search (the phone number matches from the contact on a whois on the site registration info):
Drew Auman
113 Hunt Club Dr
Copley, OH 44321-2759
330-666-7625

That prefix is quite fitting don't you think?

Give me an inch and I'll take a mile...

[MoeMoe]

Well while we're on the subject of revenge served cold... **Oops! SPAM SITES LIST**

Seems I accidentally dropped a link... No what can we do to slashd- I mean 'fix' that?

Re:Oh ho ho!

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap, forgot to include what the OP wanted. :D
I'll reply to my own comment anonymously so as not to whore.
Auman's email contact for bulkmail.com is: aumaninc@hotmail.com
aumaninc@aol.com is the one listed with yahoo.

Re:Sadness:

[EverDense]

I bet they can't bunnyhop.

Yeah, let's see if they can ROCKET JUMP. ;-)

Re:The disturbing thing is...

[swordgeek]

"No, they're not. As long as they don't forge headers or falsely advertise (under the false advertising laws), they're not breaking the law."

Yes they ARE! Clearly, using an open mail relay is theft, no matter how irresponsible the mail admin is (and this is still how most spam gets sent today). However, even if they're not...

Your ISP is paying real amounts of money for bandwidth. Not dial-up or DSL connections, but really big pipes that they share amongst their subscribers. They're also paying for disk space to store their customers' mail.

Now if spam takes up 20% of their bandwidth and 40% of their mail spooler's disk space before they have an opportunity to filter it, who do you think pays for it?

You do. And I do. Our monthly costs are in effect renting a tiny fragment of the resources of the internet, and roughly a third of the internet is now spam. (email and newsgroups, which translates to bandwidth, time, computing power, and storage)

Spammers do NOT pay for their bandwidth! If they did, then spam wouldn't be a problem.

Speaking of Spam

[sinjayde]

Speaking of spam, yesterday I submitted a story to /. which was published. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to include my email address in the story. Today I had over 100 virus' and spam sent to me, whereas in the last 3 months of using the address, I have had 0 spam. Just a warning to anyone else who wants to submit an article. I also wrote an email to Rob about this asking that a warning be put on the submission page about using email addresses on the site.

Catalogs

[gregmac]

Drew Auman
113 Hunt Club Dr
Copley, OH 44321-2759
330-666-7625

Just to save you some time.. randomly pick a couple.. it only takes a couple minutes. And what better use of the /. effect can you think of?

catalog request

Sue Slashdot!

[alexborges]

C. No one will give you back the time that SPAM has wasted in your life.


Who will pay me for the time slashdot has wasted in my life?

Apache Benchmark

[CapS]

You may also not want to recommend people use a web server benchmarking tool (such as Apache Benchmark, which comes on Mac OS X and most Linux distros, probably available for Windows):

ab -c 60 -n 50000 http://www.thebulkclub.com/benefits.asp

Running this will send 60 requests at a time for 50000 times. Since the benchmarking tool is used for testing the performance of web servers, it really taxes them; doing this can really slow down a web server, so I wouldn't recommend doing it. I also wouldn't recommend making either of those numbers larger.

Major assignment for the year

[darnok]

It's a slow, quiet day - one of those where the afternoon drags on and on and on - so I log into Slashdot.

Bingo! A gaggle of spammers exposed to the public eye! I start scrolling through the discussion, my heart filled with glee at the wizard japes my fellow /.'ers will be indulging in at this very moment.

Bzzzt! All that's there is several variations on a wget script, pointers to a few last-known home addresses, pointers to lists of users etc. All good, solid work, but nothing that's going to get you bonus marks.

Students, here's your work assignment for the next 30 minutes: I want to see Slashdot subjects like "Their hosting service has now lost power", "Just sent 50 tonnes of dung to this guy's home address", "Just ordered 5000 pizzas sent to this guy's house", "Server is now engulfed in flame - I've seen it!", "This guy's credit history has now been destroyed", "Hosting computer room now under 18 inches of water", and so on.

This assignment will form a SIGNIFICANT component of your end-of-year grade. Any references supplied will be checked; photographic evidence should be supplied where available.

Thanks for your attention, and good luck in your endeavours

Re:Mailinator

[filenabber]

If you like Mailinator, check out a program I recently wrote called Nator - it uses Mailinator as a backend and it can scrape the email on mailinator.com and send it to your home email address. It also does some cool things with random usernames. Details here. It's free, written in Java, and is open source (or will be once we're out of the beta phase) Brian