Interview With a Spammer

Shipud writes "The NYTimes interviewed Richard Colbert, under the title of 'Confessions of a SPAM King'. Richard talks about one-time credit cards, WiFi, 'good' vs. 'bad' spam and more."

Comments

Eh?

[Garrett Combs]

"good spam vs. bad spam" Hrm... Is there such a thing?

Re:Eh?

[jellomizer]

Well in the article he states it this way.

Good Spam. With Proper from line and workable remove links that actually remove your list and not used to verify your address.

Bad Spam. With altered from addresses bounced from every open relay on the planet to hide it origin. Remove links that are broken or use it as a method of verification.

Although I think all Spam is bad. I would focus my energy to getting all Spammers to get the "Good Spam" type first. That is why I forward all my Spam to uce@ftc.gov. That way the Federal Trade Commission checks the legality of their Spam. Usually when it is "Bad Spam" the FTC will go after them. After forwarding all my Spam to use@ftc.gov after many years there has a been a decrease in Spam. When I first got my current email address I had 3 or 4 Spams a day. Now I get 1 or 2 a month. Plus I know at least one of the Major Spammers has gotten hit with the FTC. Which was the Married but Single site. Which was Bad Spam because they Hid their identity their remove was a bad false link. And bounced over a variety of open relays. After I heard that the FTC went after them their Spam magically stopped.

If it is "Good Spam" I can normally handle that much easier without much effort. I just hit my Bounce to Sender feature on my email client and then I send them back a standard bounce-back message saying that my address doesn't exist thus making them take me off the list to save their bandwidth. Or if they are really annoying me I find the contact of the site can call them up by telephone telling them to stop. And most of the time they will be polite about it because they are sending "Good Spam" they have some morals and will follow my request.

So "Good Spam" is Spam that you can easily get off of, and often done by people and companies that don't realize the spam problem, or from Pointy Hair Bosses who don't think it is a problem because their Sysadmins did a good job to blocking them so when one or two gets in they think it is novel Idea.
"Bad Spam" has SCAM written all over it. Where it is just bad news all around.

Finally, confirmed.

[Faust7]

When an "out of the office" auto-reply comes back on one e-mail message, Colbert says: "Oh, we love those. They confirm that the address is active."

This should put to rest any remaining doubts about whether or not "unsubscribing" from spam lists actually works.

"a second hard drive"?

[way2trivial]

Yes, the sent a reporter who refers to the computer itself as "the hard drive", Nice solid reporting.

Oh. Crap.

[CGP314]

More recently, spammers have figured out how to send unwanted text messages to cellphones

I've never endorsed vigilante action against spammers, but the instant I get a text message on my phone from a Nigerian businessman, I'm changing my mind. With my computer, I can run programs like popfile to stop the spam, but with a cell phone, there is nothing I can do.

spam would stop tomorrow if...

[professorhojo]

...people stopped buying their crap.

i mean -- who the HELL buys penis enlargements, weight loss drugs and college diplomas from these sites? obviously -- too many of us.

prof.

Distributive justice

[wytcld]

But the distributive-justice approach is all but dead in Congress, at least in part because of the Republicans' deep antipathy for trial lawyers.

If we empowered individuals to sue spammers, then trial lawyers would make money, so it is bad. Ours is a system of laws, but setting up laws so that individuals can hire lawyers to protect their health, property or privacy is bad, because any lawyer who would profit by helping individuals in those causes is bad. Laws should only provide opportunities for corporations and corporate lawyers, never for individuals and the guns-for-hire they bring to the arena.

Republicans ... beloved of Libertarians ... why?

Re:Why I love the times

[John Miles]

C'mon...just because the reporter isn't up to snuff on computers, doesn't mean they can't write. I hear this all the time from our users at work. It's almost accepted among the non-tech folk.

So what you're saying is that I'm supposed to decide what companies to invest in, whether or not to support various wars, which of several political candidates to vote for, and whether to take an umbrella to work tomorrow based on journalism of this quality?

Here's a question for the NYT apologists: if their reporters don't give a shit about accuracy in matters you can call them on, what makes you think their reporting is worth anything on other, more important topics?

Re:All I want to know is. . .

[Blkdeath]

Hope he really really likes pepperoni.

Nice sentiment and all, but as someone who's worked both for pizza places and as a delivery driver I ask you; please don't. It costs the restaurant money in wasted food and preparation time, costs the delivery driver time and gas to make a round-trip for nothing, and is generally a Very Bad Idea.

If you want to annoy the man, please find a means of doing so that won't affect the pocketbooks of innocents.