Interview With a Spammer

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Posted by michael on Saturday September 27, 2003 @04:53AM from the need-a-wooden-stake dept.

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."

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I've gotta hand it to this guy... by rwven · 2003-09-27 05:11 · Score: 5, Interesting

LOL, i got a few good laughs out of his story. one of my favorite parts:

'"I was thrown off more BellSouth accounts than half the state of Florida,'' Colbert says. His name was known, and he was a marked and wanted man. But he found a way around the heat. ''Do you remember when American Express came out with temporary credit cards?'' he recalls happily. ''You could go to the 7-11 convenience store and buy a $25 credit card -- sort of like you buy a $25 phone card, only it was good for just $25 worth of credit."

Armed with a dozen of these cards, Colbert would go to the BellSouth Web site and create numerous e-mail accounts from which to send spam, each account with a fictitious name and address. Since the credit card couldn't be connected to him in any way, he could spam away until BellSouth finally got around to canceling that particular account. ''They were great, totally untraceable,'' he says of the credit cards. ''They don't sell them anymore. I think it's because of me.'' '

pretty smart feller ;)
Re:"a second hard drive"? by KillerHamster · 2003-09-27 05:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

"...the nine hard drives bound together with a superfast connection speed..."

Man, I wish I had a RAID setup like that!
Re:Why I love the times by 1u3hr · 2003-09-27 05:27 · Score: 4, Interesting

Note at the end of the article:
He points under his desk to a recent arrival, a second hard drive, precisely what he would need to begin a new network.
''It's a Dell Pentium 233,'' he says. ''I got it for $15, plus $23.95 shipping.''
The reporter seems unable to distinguish between a "hard drive" and an entire computer; one wonders if his grasp of other details is as weak.
Spamming doesn't pay by mabu · 2003-09-27 05:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

This freak has a NOC in a mobile home. He buys his clothes off of ebay. Yea, more evidence of how lucrative spamming really is. That's another myth that needs to be busted: that spamming is profitable. It is not. Spammers can't build a successful business when the business is built around violating the law and stealing computer resources. The people that spam today are the same losers who would be running around slapping illegal signs up on telephone poles promoting Ponzi schemes.
Think yourself lucky by IIH · 2003-09-27 11:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.
I've lost track of the junk text messages I've got, advertising free holidays, premimum rate lines, and the latest one this morning was from a phone number "important" telling me to go to a certain url for a surpise prize.
Unfortunatly, I live in the UK, where despite this being illegal (my cell phone is registered with TPS), trying to get these people fined, never mind shut down, is next to impossible. Hell, I can't even find what company sent it to lodge the iniital complaint!
As an aside, does anyone know if you can get any info from your phone provider on thses "anonymous" text messages, Also, can you do a reverse lookup on premium rate lines? (I know if you register a PO box, your information must be available, is the same for premium rate lines?)

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