Slashdot Mirror
The Life of a Spammer
An anonymous reader writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an interesting article today about the life of a "small time" spammer. It is interesting to note that even a religiously zealous grandmother can mire our inboxes with junk." That's Flo Fox, of Slidell, LA.
Fox, Flo
127 Rue Acadian
Slidell, LA 70461-5203
(985) 646-2225
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
day 1: send emails
repeat
not that difficult, in my opinion
I read this "The Life and Death of a Spammer"
You can bet that this woman is a relative or trailer park neighbor of the "cajun spam gang" that's been operating in the area for awhile. I think most of them have gone out of business though.
I think our society is to quick to judge people and should learn from the African proverb "where one should one kilometre in the other's sandals". What caused the spammer to be so inconsiderate? Perhaps we should blame the people who came up with SMTP RFC who lacked the vision that the mail delivery system could be so easily exploited.
Innate respect for the elderly clashing with innate disgust for people selling me ways to naturally enlarge my cock! AAARGH!!! THE CONFUSION!
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
"It is interesting to note that even a religiously zealous grandmother can mire our inboxes with junk."
The woman's age, grandmother status and religious strength aside, I'd still key her car if I ever saw it.
My home town is on slashdot!
Oh, great, it's about a spammer.
Crap.
I'm all shriveled up now.
Flo Fox, (985) 646-2225, 1517 Maplewood Dr, Slidell, LA 70458
i am not sure if this is the same person mentioned in the story but it was the address that came up in google
It's the fact your product and actions are not wanted.
Simple capitalism- Sell a product people want in a manner people want it and you will make money. Spam does neither as such will eventually die out.
I love Flo's t-shirt! WWJD? Ask if you need a bigger rod and staff, and yea, only He can granteth THAT miracle!
Jesus would prolly open up a can of whoop-ass when he finds out she's sending "XXX HOT LATIN TW1NKS XXX FOR FREE rqewgkjtqwertnb" to random 13 year olds. How about some divine retribution with a vulcan cannon?
Hate me!
the granny that does not like spam would benefit greatly from a whitelist filter, this way she does not ever see ANY spam, she only gets email from her family and friends that are in the whitelist, and ALL the spam gets automatically deleted at the server (granny never sees it)...
as for the spamming granny, the bitch ought to have her computers confiscated and she be put in the homeless shelter where she works so she can serve the poor with her skanky old pussy 24/7/365
Comparing my daily inbox reading routine a year ago and now, I hardly worry about spam nowadays. I have three e-mail boxes, one at yahoo.com, another one for personal e-mails, and the third one spam-only, that I only check when I expect a registration confirmation to come from some site I register at.
Yahoo Mail has its own filters, my Linux mailserver has spamassassin, and the spam e-mail address gets discarded on a weekly basis automatically.
Yeah, occasionally 2-3 letters per day pass though Spamassassin, but they are easy to see right from the subject line and delete right away. Spamassassin and other free (as well as commercial ) products seem to do a pretty decent job at it, and 2-3 spam e-mails per day can be just treated as a cost of using the system.
I'd love to firewall her off preemptively. I dont care how much she thumps her bible, she's still just another piece of trailer trash attempting to abuse my bandwidth and my server. And while we're all here, lets get her address modded up so she can practice turning the other cheek with a flood of snail mail spam.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
To circumvent U.S. Internet companies, spammers may ricochet their e-mail through less secure networks in China, South Korea or South America before the junk winds up in in boxes from Georgia to California. They share or sell information on how to crack various systems.
"Less secure networks"? Riight... They're all equally insecure, the US as much as anyone else.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
$25. A compilation of e-mail addresses of those who have purchased items offered in spam -- known as the "suckers list" -- costs more.
Two interesting things in that paragraph:
1. When someone says "Don't respond to spam", it's really good advice.
2. The spammers themselves don't even believe in the products they sell, labelling their customers "suckers".
I could easily apply everything you've just said to a lot of Christians and it would be exactly as accurate.
-1 Stereotypical, Overgeneralizing Garbage
It is interesting to note that even a religiously zealous [...]
Even? I suggest that's precisely the kind of mental handicap ("disconnect" if you want to be nicer) that's required.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The fact, that spam is still worthwhile goes to show, that one person's spam is another person's valued information (worth clicking on and spending money on).
Therefore efforts (legal and technical) to define spam at the sender side seem inherently dubious to me.
On the other hand, weeding out spam at the receiving end doesn't do anything to conserve the bandwidth and other computing resources wasted on items, which ended up being identified as spam by the respective recipients.
So this is a fundamentally tough nut to crack.
If it's off shore, she originates messags from there, and the bandwidth require would be satisfied with a 14.4k modem. Upload one message, message list stored off shore, fire.
So who does she get her lease line from in the U.S.? Or is all of this just typical spammer lies?
Read the article. She doesn't send porn spam.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
"It's easy to rip people off you have never even seen," Fox says.
You mean just like its easy to steal bandwidth and send annoying or inapporopriate material to people you've never met, bitch?
The real money is in spam-stopping.
The obvious route to make money would be to use the spam as a base for racketeering.
DoS is about to become big business.
Times have see seen that headline... "The Life of a Spammer", "a day in the life of a spammer", "a spammers life".... *sigh*
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I like her "WWJD?" shirt. If Jesus were around today, one thing he would not do is annoy 40 million people with lousy penis-enlargemnet ads...
"If you're ever doing business with a religious son of a bitch, get it in writing! His word ain't worth shit, not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal."
"God fearin'" folk are often the worst because they think they have a right to certain freedoms which harm others.
firewall her off preemptively
You're new in the Internet world? Dontcha know that Spammers will just exploit open relays or have several various internet connections?
Just roll over and take your SPAM like a big boy.
I'm sure I speak for all of us when we'd rather hear about the End of a Life of a Spammer.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
pulling in $4,000 in a good week, $2,000 in a slow week.
Hell yeah. Meager living. I'll bet she's having trouble putting food on the table.
I'm wondering when the first article on just another "small time" serial killer will appear. This has always been an activity that has been burdensome on the public general and now is often criminal
I know I'm at risk at being modded down, but when I'm allowed to legally allowed to carjack or otherwise rob people to make ends meet, I'll have a little sympathy for this sort of person.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
If there are any Slashdot readers in that area, perhaps someone should double check that that this is the person in question. (Does the person living there look like the woman in the article?).
We don't want to give grief to an innocent person.
it's so hard to choose...
http://www.google.com/search?q=flo+fox+slidell&sta rt=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Anyone planning on a cross-country murderous rampage? Allow me to add this stop. Notice that it's just a few minutes off the Route 190 exit of Interstate 10. It even looks like there's a convenient pit nearby to dispose of the body.
Dumbass.
You know, I've been thinking a bit. Spam is becoming a real problem and it's only a matter of time before email itself becomes nearly useless due to the massive amounts of spam. Something has to be done and it has to be done soon in order for it to still be effective enough. Stopping spam itself when it's en-route is not an option, as it will only lead to an arms race between spammer/virus writers and hackers/AV corps. Killing the bandwidth of the computers that send spam isn't an option either as it involves (D)DoSing, which is rather illegal. Killing the spammers themselves, as satisfying and tempting as it may be, is not an option either. Remember, even a spammer is someone's father/mother and/or son/daughter.
Maybe, MAYBE we have a chance by sicking the BSA on them. Yes, the Business Software Alliance, the same people who use some sort of legalized extortion and raid small businesses that "fail to comply" to their rather variable demands. Think about it, most small time spammers are technological idiots who use home computers. Do you really think every spammer who has 10 PCs churning out email has valid licenses for Windows? Maybe a few, but loads don't. And even if they do, MS licensing is so horrid that whatever the heck you did, you're bound to violate at least 3 licenses anyways, excluding other licenses like the spam software itself. This is how we might go after a few small-time spammers. And hey, it actually makes the BSA people do something useful as well! Maybe an idea?
Hate me!
About the time I switced to the new domain, I began seeing a significant amount of email spam. As of 2000, I began to see my rate doubling about once per year. Last year I got about 150/day -- this year it's up to 300 or so. Even using spamassasin, the emails that get through are a major annoyance, especially if I've been away from email for more than a day or two. At this point, it looks like I'll be switching to using multiple addresses, one semi-public, one for ecommerce, and one given out only to friends and family -- I really see no other way at this point (although even THAT isn't a perfect solution).
Of course, maybe it's because I live in St. Tammany Parish (a parish in LA is like a county in other states) -- the same parish as Slidell. In fact, Ron Scelson was our old babysitter's son in law. Maybe the massive spam load is some kind of weird misdirected digital karma bullet, that just happened to hit me instead of the nearby spammer. Dunno -- but I suspect its just the inevitable consequence of keeping a vary public email address.
In any case -- yes -- spam is a major problem for me, and I'm reasonably savy with most of the available anti-spam tools out there.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Seems like if Moore's law ever stops applying to hardware, it ought to be rewritten to apply for spam. I don't even want to think about how much spam we'll all be getting in ten years, if the law doesn't start mandating draconian penalties against spammers.
What is it that makes these people tick? The taste of Jesus' body? The wine? The church music?
Do they really think that spamming atheists will turn this world into a better place?
Yeah, hooray for our hometown internet heroes... bringing the Blaster worm to the masses. (note sarcasm). Although my first thought when I heard about it was "Cool! We're on the national news!", it's kinda wierd to know the kid down the street's house is being raided by FBI and secret service agents.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Just like in any "Profession" people can actually try to be a good person while doing horrible and annoying things. That is the problem with morality. Part of the problem with spam deals with a larger issue. American Culture will put their money in the larger corps. and less in the mom and pop businesses. Because even though they may not trust larger Corps to do the right thing but at least you know that when you buy a product they will not just take your money and run. But you will get a product with reasonable quality. This level of comfort makes it very difficult for the small business to get a good foot hold, in their own business. Because although their product is better and they are a far more fairer in their practices. But there is a greater chance when you go with a small business that you could get ripped off as well. So now back to Spam, Unfortunately Spam is a result of this so you get both Scammer and Legitimate business men are trying spamming to get at least a couple of customers from a million so they can make enough money so they can use better methods. But unfortunately Spamming is no better or worst then anything else at the same price, but you get these people who figure the "Computer are the way of the future" So they blindly spam thinking that is the only way they can survive.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
My company's mail server was filled and not accepting new messages. I've not had too much problem with spam before (I use yahoo mail, mac Mail, and Thunderbird on the 'Mail PC') My settings are off on the PC, set to not delete messages fast enough.
I finally realized the rage that most /.ers display at spammers - I found mysellf wanting to personally kill each spammer.
The title of this article is "The Life of a Spammer" - If the anger I felt this weekend is similar to others, I'm thinking the title should be "The Very Short, and Very Painful Life of a Spammer After Being Beaten By Angry People Who Don't Need A Larger Penis, Like the Interest Rate They Currently Have, And Don't Need Another Copy of Norton SystemWorks."
I'd like to see some variation. I'd like to see a spam pope.
To be more accurate, I'd like to see a spam pope on a rope.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
she doesn't spam for porn and penis enlargement.
So now we have an AARP member spamming. Does it make any difference to me? It doesn't matter if the theif is a grandma wearing a WWJD T-shirt or a young fella with a ski mask. Theft is theft, and a thief is a thief.
Whats she say to defend her theft - things like "....This (spam) lets the little guy compete". What does she think about the time, energy and costs small providers have to dish out to defend their network against SPAM? How many small guys have had their machines shut down because of false return addresses, or an onslaught of spam that makes mail services crawl? What about those small guys BUZZZZ Wrong answer grandma!
She doesn't stop there, she goes on to say the even more bizzare "When I defend what we do, I talk about free speech". I looked at the constitution to be sure and nowhere did it say "You may steal from others, and then force them to accept your speech into their homes". I believe the consitution protects speech, but doesn't force others to have to accept/listen to ones speech. The amendment is about government cesorship, NOT about theft of services to promote a get rich schemes. BUZZZZ Wrong answer grandma!
So she makes 2000 - 4000 / week. After several years of college I don't make 4k a week, but then again, even if I could improve my economic situation, my personal moral compass wouldn't allow me to what she does. Perhaps she needs to read the bible more. What was it again?? Thou shall not steal?? Thou shall not bear false witness?? - Stuff like that.
With 80% or more of all e-mail being spam, the signal to noise ratio is heading south fast. To stop spam you have to stop spammers.
Here is the towns website
http://www.slidell.la.us
Now can any one let me know which provider provides this type of person with access? I have some IP blocks to add to my blacklist.
According to information -
Flo Fox - Slidell LA
985 646 2225
I don't know if that number is correct - but it's publically listed.
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Pretty short, preferably. I don't think I'm the only one with this preference, either.
You can't have a civil discussion with an Anonymous Coward. Anonymous Cowards like to think of themselves as rational, but if you observe their behavior you'll find they are anything but. They are full of anger and bitterness, and react with frightful outrage whenever they encounter someone with different views from their own. Even people who think that anonymous cowardice is a reasonable philosophy must admit that most Anonymous Cowards did not arrive at their point of view through anything resembling a rational process. Rather, they are poorly socialized individuals who are lashing out angrily at anything which is valued by mainstream society. You really shouldn't take it personally. It is the result of an angry and profoundly unhappy psychological condition on their part, not due to you or your +2 Karma Bonus beliefs.
pulling in $4,000 in a good week, $2,000 in a slow week.
Hell yeah. Meager living. I'll bet she's having trouble putting food on the table.
Is this before or after she pays her personal bodyguard?
Here's the previous article if you don't know what I'm talking about. Probably not that bright of her to announce in public what she does.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I don't know about most people, but isn't this business model just too too tempting ? The act of spamming, by whatever name, is here to stay. And the fact of the matter is that when the Big Boys move in they will edge out the small time spammers. United States set to Legalize Spamming on 1 January 2004 http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=150 Spam by Any Other name will not sound so Odius.
Frankly, I hear the same thing about how much crap there is on TV - but is anyone really doing anything about reducing the crap on it today ? Why because it is the Big Five or Six Companies that control it ....
Here I do disagree. Land's End spends hundreds of thousands designing and illustrating it's catalogs so that they can entice the customer to buy. The spammers don't do any such thing, and their main goal is to design the messages so that it evades the spam filters - that is why the strange characters and mangled words ...
Someday, when the Big Companies start designing Spam with Mega-Budgets, and they can make the eye candy hypnotizing like it is on TV, I am sure few people will complain. I know many people who will spend hours watching nothing on TV, and occasionally complain about it - but then do nothing.
Diversion and Delusion is the Opium of the masses.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
what the fuck is wrong with you people ?
Is Flo Fox and Fox Television the same thing?
I remember what happened to rodona garst:
t es.com-m irror/RodonasBreastSize.jpg
http://belps.freewebsites.com/
(lots of mirrors, the first one is dead, try pressing directly on the "Behind enemy lines" text)
I hope someone could do a rodona garst on this woman.
They even found a pic of her boobs:
http://www.spamshield.org/belps.freewebsi
Dear Mrs. Fox, Please don't send any spam to taibmaps@astrobastards.net. Thanks! Yours truly,
Get revenge: Unsolicited Commando
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Dec-14 -Sun-2003/news/22615610.html
from ROKSO, Bill Wagggoner
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Interesting that people here call it outrageous when the RIAA sues a grandmother for downloading music (she couldn't possibly be downloading music), but call for blood when a grandmother is a spammer.
Frivolous lawsuits are bad, but on the other hand, anybody is capable of anything
This article got me thinking again. Every time the subject of spam comes up, there are always innumerable people talking about how if spam is left unchecked, it's going to destroy the Internet and\or e-mail as we know it. Thus spammers MUST be stopped for the common good.
Are there, in fact, any NUMBERS backing this hypothesis up? Any statistics showing that at current rates of growth, by 20XX spam will consume so much bandwidth that the Internet will collapse? Or that spam accounts for bandwidth costs which are significantly higher than any other popular form of packets flying around? (I never hear ISPs complaining that popup ads are causing them huge extra bills...) Or that somewhere along the line, the innumerable filters that exist will cease to be of any use, and suddenly everyone really WILL be flooded with more spam than they can ever deal with?
I ask the latter especially, since filtering is becoming more and more common. Some browsers have it built into their mail clients. All of the major webmail clients automatically filter - I get approximately 1 piece of spam in my yahoo box a day. (and the spam folder cleans itself without my even looking at it) And even, increasingly, ISPs are preemptively filtering before the mail even gets past them.
If we want to debate the merits of "freedom to market" versus "intrusive annoyance," that's one thing. But I see on any thread involving spammers a sort of reflexive hatred - and assumption of Evil Intent - which would seem more appropriate for a religious war on some Christian board.
So, I ask, simply - is there any substantial evidence that Spam is truly a threat larger than just being a general annoyance?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Try to be a domain owner, about 48 hours after registering a domain, the first 4-8 spam messages pr. day arrives from Japan to the email in the contact info. It is hell if you are forced to have email adr. available for harvesters and your company does not have any spam filters.
Based on the details of the story, i suspect she is a more "legit" spammer in that she directly spams from her immiedate connection vs the proxy spammers. In any case, the proxy spammers are easily dealt with via rbls such as bl.spamcop.net and dnsbl.sorbs.net. I perfer to firewall off direct spammers because they seem to hammer you over and over and over, no matter how many 550's you wack em with.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
All being religious means is that you have one or more imaginary friends, it doesn't mean you have any ethics.
I'm torn between my hate for spam and my hate for religious zealots...
because what hunting rifle has a bayonet lug
I should send her a bill for all the wasted time it takes me to delete spam in my mailbox. Im sure my employer would be happy to get some money back for the time I take to remove spam on my employers time.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
They only want free speech when it supports their viewpoints, From the article:
Fox and Connelly have their limits. They don't peddle Viagra, breast enlargement pills or smut, they say. "When I defend what we do, I talk about free speech," says Connelly, a rugged man with silver hair and a full beard. "When it comes to porn, I don't care about [the pornographers'] free speech."
So do I interpret the text anyway. Btw, The article have a poll if the new spam law is good, take your time to vote.
So the obvious coutermeasure to spam is to make stolen addresses worthless.
Use spamgourmet and only give disposable addresses to businesses, web sites, forums and friends running Windows.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I don't consider that to be "just folks doing something annoying to earn a living".
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
And tell me again, why "a religiously zealous" anything would be less likely to spam than an atheist?
Sorry, I didn't get the memo.
If people kill in the name of a religion, even if it is expressly forbidden by that religion, then they sure as hell can spam in the name of religion.
Who the fuck wasted mod points on this post?
People spam, to garner enough cash so they don't have to use spam as a way of generating money? They're trying to make a simple buck in this world? Wow, you're one deluded guy, with an annoyingly arrogant sig too. This woman, just like any spammer, is in it for the fucking money. Everything is about fucking money kid. Did the almighty God, or the almighty Ben Franklin, give her the idea to spend money (which she was supposedly tight on), to purchase computer hardware and lease a $1000 Internet connection?
This woman deserves no sympathy, neither does any other spammer or illegitimate business, large or small. I suggest everyone drink a gallon of coffee, shit in a box and send it to this woman now.
I have been thinking about a good way to stop spam and I have convinced myself that the only way that will prove genuinely effective is to make it prohibitively expensive. Not through per email micropayments or any other such scheme, but by doing what the spammers are asking for: visiting their sites.
Imagine if everyone who got a spam visited the site mentioned in it, perhaps reloading periodically. This would be a slashdot effect that would cost the spammer a fortune. Some might say it would be a DDOS - but I'm not talking about flooding them. Just loading their website a few times (obviously one would remove any information from the URL that might indicate that your email address was live).
There are a few solutions out there to do this, such as active spam filters on mail servers. But those would be easily firewalled out by a spammer.
Take a look at http://www.astrobastards.net/uc/ - this is a program that runs in the background and visits spam sites. It gets it's list of sites to visit from a central server. I think this is the sort of thing we need, but it has to be more distributed, not under the control of a single person, and without a single point of failure. This is vital, because it has to be trustworthy, and it has to be impervious to DoS attacks from the spammers.
What are the thoughts of the community on this?
The geeks of the world can certainly build such an anti-spam network. We can make it work, and once enough people are using it, we can make spamming cost a fortune. And we can make it reliable and trustworthy. But will enough people support it for it to work?
There's an old lady that just drove her SpamMobile into the Farmer's Market of my Inbox!
Rationalize this: No group of people, even those "scary" muslims, have been responsible for anywhere near as many murders as the Christians. Even the slavery of Native Americans during English settlement was justified through the church. Slavery of Africans was allowed by the church. They were responsible for the crusades, the inquisition (I don't split hairs, Catholic, Christian, you're the same animal). Hell, America was built on the blood spilled by Christians in the name of God. To this day, Christians travel the globe, infecting the uneducated and uninformed with their "religion". You can't let someone go to God, apparently you need to drag them kicking and screaming.
And what's your proof of your God? You can't give a stitch of evidence that doesn't reference the bible. "Hey, the bible is true, it says so right here in the bible."
And you knock atheism? I don't know of many atheists that have murdered someone simply because they had different beliefs, but history can provide us with a long list of "good" Christians who have.
Rational? Socialized? My ass. Christians are the bane of this planet.
I didn't see in the whole Bible any anti-spam advises. Even more, the whole history of cristian missioneering reminds me a big spam compain to distribute the Bible around the world.
Less is more !
I just got a spam from her about your mom's site the other day.
- much of the problem with spam could be alleviated by holding registrars such as Network Solutions, etc. responsible for ensuring accurate DNS entries... - there are literally millions of falsified entries, which makes tracking down mail abusers more difficult...
Acts 13:10. "You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?"
Matthew 19:19. "Jesus replied, 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'"
John 10:1. "[T]he man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber." (It's a slight stretch, but it's a little applicable.)
Mark 4:18-19. "Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful."
Matthew 19:23-24. "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Revelations 3:16-17. "So, because you are lukewarm -- neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked."
1 Timothy 6:17. "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment."
Might want to tell her to read her Bible a little more carefully.
If she tells you, "The Devil can quote Scripture to his purpose," then point out that that's Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene iii), not Holy Writ.
(However, if Satan's on the Internet, Bible.Gospelcom.Net would sure let him do it.)
I didn't see in the whole Bible any anti-spam advises.
Even more, the whole history of cristian missioneering reminds me a big spam compain to distribute the Bible around the world.
Less is more !
Here it is: 127.0.0.1
... that's a good 'un
Place collect calls to this number.
Sign her up for every catalog and physical mailing list you can find!
I'm sending her a Christmas card as we speak. It will bring tidings of comfort and joy. There will also be a wish that she gets colon cancer and that her granddaughters are raped by pedophiles.
(Why wish bad things happen to her granddaughters? Well, they obviously carry her defective genetics. But, more importantly, it's one of the few things you can write which will probably upset her very badly.)
Why is it that so many fundamentalist members of organized religions can fail to see blatant hypocrisy in their own actions? Can't she spot her own violation of "do unto others"? Forget the lowering of the signal to noise ratio in her mailbox, can't she figure out that it's crap being delivered postage due and that she's merely making everyone's ISP bills higher? Would she like it if people were sending her millions of viagara ads and cranking up her ISP bills?
Why is it that the poorer and less educated someone is, the stronger they embrace religion? If, as lots of them claim, "God helps those who help themselves", I'm sure God would be thrilled if she put down the Bible long enough to read a book which would teach her a useful skill. This is no different than kids in Afghanistan being forced to memorize the Koran - if they can memorize that, surely memorizing something useful would be easy *and* help them feed their fellow countrymen.
[sigh] This just infuriates me.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Old lady or not, poor or not she is still a bottom feeding scum sucker.
Two weeks ago someone started spamming taiwan using my email address as the spoofed source. Now they are branching out to yahoo.com
I know this as I get all the bounce mail. Spammers get a lot of bounce mail, and 300+ mails an hour is enough to kill the inbox. Then there is all the 'stop spamming me' responses, or the 'j.user is out the office messages' -this is brutally hard to filter without destroying all useful content (like my own bounce mail)
So I have just been evicted from an email address (on my own domain) that I have had for five years, having to notify friends that is has moved, and generally suffer from trying to clean up the damage.
That is what spam does.
[Why do I get the feeling the AC who posted the parent is a spammer?]
From the article:
But Fox and Connelly have their limits. They don't peddle Viagra, breast enlargement pills or smut, they say. "When I defend what we do, I talk about free speech," says Connelly, a rugged man with silver hair and a full beard.
Spam is commercial speech and as such does not enjoy unfettered First Amendment protection. This is a property rights issue no matter how you slice it, and the First Amendment does not apply to spam any more than it does to spray painted graffiti.
"When it comes to porn, I don't care about [the pornographers'] free speech."
This makes me hate them even more. Pornographic spam may be more offensive (and politically useful for getting people riled about the issue of spam in general), but strictly speaking, whether or not the spam is pornographic is irrelevant. Spam is not free speech, and your spam gains no legitimacy for not being pornographic. And legitimate free speech doesn't lose its free speech status simply because you don't like pornography. Who are you, a pair of spammers with creepy pictures of Jesus all over your walls, to be announcing which forms of free speech you "don't care about"? What nerve!
Plus, this whole defense of "letting the little guy compete" is just as appropriate for pornography as it is for spam. All you need for pornography is a girl, a camera, and a room! (Plus a T1 and a few other things.) And unlike spam, porn is an honest living- as long as you don't market through spammers. Larry Flynt had way more insight into free speech than these guys. (Although Larry went through his own creepy Jesus pictures phase.)
I have to admit I got a smile when I saw she gets migraines. My poor wife gets migraines and she never spammed anybody. If I had this woman's email address, I'd arrange for her to receive several hundred special offers a day for Imitrex.
Just talk to the marketing department at any American business! I work for a large company located in downtown Chicago (1 N. Dearborn) and we send out thousands of unsolicited spam e-mails daily!
A1 E Services is Bruce Connelly and Flo Fox aka Mrs. Bruce Connelly.
& rq sdta=34331685D
A1E_Services (NETBLK-BRW-5021-A1ESERVICES)
1711 West Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460
US
Netname: BRW-5021-A1ESERVICES
Netblock: 67.96.78.0 - 67.96.79.255
Coordinator:
Hostmaster (ZB13-ARIN) hostmaster@broadwing.com
512-427-3700
Domain System inverse mapping provided by:
NS3.BROADWING.NET 216.140.16.252
NS4.BROADWING.NET 216.140.17.252
Connelly, Bruce (BC891-ARIN) a1esupport@aol.com
A1E SERVICES
1711 W Hall Avenue
Slidell, LA 70460
(504) 649 - 6248
http://www.sec.state.la.us/cgibin?rqstyp=crpdtl
34331685D
Name: FOXC, INC.
Type Entity: Business Corporation
Status: Active
Domicile Address: 1711 WEST HALL AVENUE, SLIDELL, LA 70460
Incorporated: 05/19/1989 | Effective: 05/17/1989
Registered Agent (Appointed 5/19/1989): FLORENCE F. FOX, 1711 WEST
HALL AVENUE, SLIDELL, LA 70460
Officer(s)/Director(s): FLORENCE F. FOX | CAROLYN J. FREDERICK |
BRUCE
D. CONNELLY
Incorporator(s): FLORENCE F. FOX
Holy shit! That's a Valiant Brougham there with the hood up! I'd *kill* for another one of those! They have the world's most comfortable seats, get great gas mileage for a car of their size and weight, and the Slant-6 under the hood is probably the single toughest car engine ever made.
Mine's a '74 with 300,000 miles on it. It's not a quick car, but it's my favorite car for long trips. I'm gradually restoring it.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Just do a Google search if you're intersted in what Assassination Politics is about. While I have no interest in promoting murder, how many people can one person infuriate before it becomes justifiable homicide? People kill misquitoes every day, but no one misquito is much of an annoyance...right?
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
SMTP was designed to be a robust mail protocol in an environment in which trust was perfectly reasonable. The environment changed, the protocol was retained. Fine - but then you have to do something about the lost appropriateness of trust. Some things have been done - they've been inadequate. That's not the fault of SMTP or of the designers.
It isn't just SMTP that is abused: open proxy abuse is a big contributor to the spam problem. There, again, trust is inappropriate - but still exists. Spammers take advantage of other system and human vulnerabilities to set up spam zombie servers. Too much inappropriate trust yet again.
Some basic human behavior needs to change - and the ISPs should be in the lead. They aren't. The security experts might be in the lead. They aren't. Many security experts appear to believe that securing a small fraction of systems and bitching about all the rest is adeqaute. Well, take a look - is it? Few security experts do anything towards identifying and stopping the abusers who constantly search the internet for vulnerabilites. It's like a city is plagued by burglars and the security experts simply make sure the doors and windows of their buildings can't be forced. They could put in cameras to get pictures of the burglars when they try the window - but instead merely complain about those who don't secure their windows. Of course in this case it's spam, not burglary, and the abuse commited on the other guy's system can hit the security experts own system, in the form of spam. If the security expert would help rid the community of the abusers then the abuse would be reduced. The security expert would rather point fingers at others and hurl blame than do what he himself could do beyond excluding just one form of abuse. Some expert - he doesn't even look to see how allowing the abusers to continue hurts him.
Who is better placed than an ISP to watch for attempted proxy port abuse? What ISP do you know of that watches? Recent actual experience by someone who did watch showed that many spammers commit the abuse form their own IPs. Watch for the abuse and you find the spammers' IPs (so much for the much-vaunted "anonymity" of the spammers.) The spammers aren't that particularly clever: it's mostly that those who could act don't.
Fox might not send any XXX spam. What she did is not condemned by the church.
Sure it is! Do Unto Others.
She sends a million spams. She knows that it costs her nearly nothing and that the recipient is therefore paying to receive it. By her own stated understanding of response rate, she's making millions of people pay for something they don't want.
Is that doing unto others?
Not in my books.
Therefore, it *is* condemned by the church, and it demonstrates her hypocrisy.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
The federal legislation imposes criminal and civil penalties for faking the "from" line.
I run a online forum/bulletin board, and I periodically sed out informative emails to all of my members. The "from" line on those emails is typically donotreply@domainname.com. Would this make me criminally punishable under this law?
The legislation, as written now, is full of loopholes, backdoors, and is woefully indequate. I'm begining to think that Yahoo's new scheme might be a good idea.
Crude, but right on the money.
Obviously not enough to buy a nice computer - from the picture it looks like a Gateway Slimline - Pentium I era. Nice blank word document - I figured that would be minimized to show her I 3 JESUS wallpaper. The monitor still has the old "Gateway 2000" logo that they did away with in 1997.
It's great to know that you can send 40 million emails with an ancient piece of shit.
I have only this to say: WWJD? JWSTFU.
irb(main):001:0>
Will somebody *please* turn down the sounds of Dualling Banjos that are emanating from this thread?
It's the people who actually pay spammers, that should be shot on sight.
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
WWJS ... well, maybe all of us!
I'm surprised that I haven't yet recieved any religious spam, after all, many of the pamphlets handed to me on the street are printed variations of the spam concept, and some of the conversations with evangelicals have come close to the verbal equivelent of spam!
maybe they all know this would backfire, but that sort of logic hasn't prevented so much of the rest of evangelists behaviour!
If you work from home, and host a web site that might become the target of a fanatic's ire, it's really nice not to have your full name, telephone number, and address available to anyone with an Internet connection. Would you really like to limit 'safe' domain registration to companies large enough to have an office, receptionist, and security?
If a registrar needs to find you (because of, say, a warrant) they can track you down by your credit card information.
I noticed the article mentions she pays $1000 a month for her internet connection, but through WHICH company, and why has that company not taken the responsibility to withdraw her account for abuse? I don't care how much you pay a month to your ISP, if you're using your service in an abusive manner such as spam it should be taken away from you.
Anyone have any info on her internet provider? There should really be laws against allowing this behavior at all in the U.S.
I have two accounts on Hotmail that usually get 30-50 spam messages a day.
Now, 3 messages in each, total, for the last two days.
Did MS finally start filtering this stuff out?
*Still* negative function...
Go out and make some of your own."
Scoop Nisker
Tech Public Policy stuff
The Catholics are all about forgiveness? As long as she (as a woman) doesn't try to become a priest, gay, or give out condoms to any third worlders, I doubt she'll be excommunicated
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
See it here
Wouldn't that make it pretty easy getting a verified address?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
" Fox doesn't own the stuff she sells, but gets paid to pitch it for people who do."
People like Flo Fox and all the other spammers can be blamed a little bit, but are not the bad guys. Think about it, its not like they get some sadistical pleasure out of doing it, they do it for money . That money doesnt come out of thin air. There are companies that pay people to spam other people, the COMPANIES are to blame, not the spammers themselves (as much). Without certain companies and organizations funding spam there is only one place for it to go, away.
Don't give them any ideas. Before you know it, we'll be seeing Jesus spam alongside cock-enlargement spam. Along with raging on-line battles between all the different factions of the Jesus business. Now that you mention it, I'm surprised they haven't started already.
Sorry, that won't help. The vast majority of spam these days comes from completely compromized systems. Along with the viruses, another thing you can thank Microsoft's shitty security for. The spam problem won't be solved untill teh vast majority of computers are completly un-hackable, or untill SMTP is improved
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Make sure you get a copy of their sheet music first.
The "W Hall" address seems to be the correct one.
A Google newsgroup search ("flo fox" slidell) turns up a few references to this address dating back a few years.
The Holy Bitch has been at it a long time.
WWW
Wow, this is a really good book. Whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, it really explains human ideological beliefs in a way I have never even thought of before. Truely a must read for any rational minded person.
Yes yes, we all feel sad for the poor religious granny etc. Moving on: it's clear that spammers are feeling the burn. What we need to do now is to come out with better spam filters; something like PopFile, but so easy to use that even the granny (the nice one who deletes penis spam, not the nasty spammy one) can use it... Perhaps a version of PopFile that does not require training at all, due to a large p2p corpus database, with a one-click installer. Then, the spammers will eventually shrivel up and die, because no one will actually look at their spam long enough to buy anything.
>|<*:=
Nopw that we have her address, can you sue her for harassment for ruining what was a very productive tool? I had 69 messages in my inbox today, of which 1 was an actual message, the rest was spam. So depressing......
I live in New Orleans and I just had to laugh at this crap. Slidell is 99% percent populated with stupid white flight jesus nerds, almost all of them wear those stupid "WWJD" shirts or bandannas or whatever. Fucking morons. I hate slidell, as does everyone who lives in New Orleans.
But the old grandma catholic lady sending out viagra spams, that just takes the cake. South LA is full of these old rosary praying catholic ladies, with Virgin Mary crap all over their walls, consantly talking about angels and shit when their not busy collecting the little porcelain bastards. Oh, and then there's the pro life crap. Fuck this lady, she's no better than any other assh0le spammer.
I RUN ANTI-SPAM PROCEEDURES ON MY MACHINES, AND WORK TO PREVENT SPAM. that said.
spammers are being chased into the dirty market because the white market is closed to them. which in turn drives up the rates, which in turn creates higher profits on the activity for the telcos.
i think it's unethical to harvest drones for spam, but that goes for virii and SPYWARE. i will denounce the evils of drive-by-spyware installs (like using IE holes to install them) all day and night.
again, this is all a result of the market closures. if spam wasn't persecuted, they would send less for the same response levels, instead they act aggresively. just like the war on drugs. doesn't that make you feel bad, to think that you are prohibitionists? ? ? ?
shame on the moderators who killed my parent. try to silence dissent all you want, but its a dirty war on both sides. . . . .
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
"If you don't have a scoring system, get one :)"
:)
I see you're spamming Slashdot with your opinions: Score -999
I believe that the article talks about the economy being bad there, and that's why some people spam. So how much of the spam increase is due to the economy being the state it's in, and will it increase as the US economy goes down? How many former techs are now spammers, and what does that mean for the future of anti-spam technology?
I've often wondered how much job satisfaction a spammer gets.
Imagine what it must be like: you wake up thinking "Today I'm going to piss off 100,000 people. Thank God they don't know where I live, so they won't be throwing bricks through my windows."
Pushing doorbells for Jehova's Witnesses sounds more satisfying than that. But I guess it helps if you have no morale.
"Do Unto Others, As You'd Want Them To Do Unto You"..
That's the Golden Rule(tm), not one of the 10 Commandments. So technically she isn't condemned by the church..
I would compare her to Zacchaeus, if you're unfamiliar with him, here's a children's song about him:
Zacchaeus was a wee little man, A wee little man was he.
He climbed up in the sycamore tree, the Savior for to see.
And when the Savior passed that way, He looked up in the tree,
And he said, "Zacchaeus, you come down from there; For I'm going to your house today, for I'm going to your house today." And Zacchaeus came down from that tree, and he said,
"What a better man I'll be. I'll give my money to the poor. What a better man I'll be. What a better man I'll be."
And then Zacchaeus DIED, but he also turned from his Tax Stealing ways before that. This woman is just doomed.
I didn't forward of course. Since then I am persistently thinking and asking myself that was I right when I've deleted those messages or not. And that annoying stinky thinking doesn't make me happy. Perhaps I should have forwarded them... Or not?
Less is more !
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Now be nice. I am sure she drops off cases of of Viagra, Penis Enlargement pills, Breast Increasing pills, and Xtreme Weight loss pills. (Now just picture what that will do to the local homeless population.)"
Horny Anorexic Big-breasted Hemaphrodites.
The only people who spam me ARE my parents...
Do you have SA sort all spam into catagories based on the score?
I have three thresholds for sorting non-list, personal email. 'low' 'medium' and 'high'. I use x2, 2x8, and 8x. The 'high' folder gets a very quick glance, the medium gets a short glance for an occasional FP commercial mail. Low gets a longer glance to detect occasional FP's. Since the low threshold is so low, only a few spams in a thousand make it through to my personal inbox. Since the 'low' box only gets about 15% of the spam, its easier to go through looking for FP's.
Also, I should add that I'm using a 6 month old version of SA without Bayes. Since I save all spam, already sorted into low/medium/high *and* have a seperate folder for missed spam, I believe that training would be particularily effective.
Similar to that idea that someone has presented about spidering every link in a spam message to consume spammer/spammer user bandwidth.
Why not a tool that will filter spam, and also reply with a basic reply - make every they use appear a sucker? Right now, they are already sending johna, johnb,johnc...johnz emails to every domain they know, so why not make all thoss CD's of 'guaranteed valid' email addresses totally useless?
Her area code changed but the 646-2225 number IS part of the Cajun Asshole Spamming Gang. Fire up Roboform and send them some smut, send a lot of smut. Notice the Christian trappings behind her in the photo? She/they deserve no less...make sure it is SNAIL MAIL... they have to deliver that crap.
no where in the Bible does it say "thou shalt not spam"
And your verse would only apply if she got upset from getting spammed herself.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
She's spamming unto you so spam unto her.
I really hate it when people try to drag the Bible into every facet of life. There are many a things that are neither commanded nor condemed by the Bible. You have to think for yourself.
However the Bible does command you to follow the government so long as it doesn't contradict God's word. Since God has nothing to say about spam, she's at the whims of the government on this one.
If she is breaking the law, THEN the church should condemn her for it.
Not because the Bible says "do unto" but because she disobeyed the government which God has established and commanded her to follow.
So yes, the Bible does apply but not in the way you twisted it to.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
then she would know how many are possibly praying that she doesn't even make it to purgatory." Oh the horror, the horror"..as she suddenly realizes just what 'real' people think of her and her addled notions of filthy lucre endeavors.
...Jimmy the Swag said when caught. "Send me a million bucks" said Oral "or I go to die in that tower yonder." "How about we install some more gold faucets Tammy" .. Jimm said. Its all a business you see and as a catholic she has seen enough of the swineish priest's affairs with the alterlads and knows its all bullshit anyway.
What would Jesus do? Slap the shit out of her if she sent him some spam and likely his email address is on one of her lists.
Lots of reprobates hide behind the shield of religion and sadly most are in front of congregations. "I'm just a man
Why is the banner of religion always hoisted as though its somehow meaningful to the depraved case ? Even convicts know this script doesn't work too well as that lassie in Texas found out a while back.
Hey, anyone down there in Louisiana, go pay this fucking whore a visit and cut her power and phone lines and any backup generators she's got laying around.
Then maybe you could also "persuade" her to stop breathing.
I read the article and I thought, "OMG, this is a Nigerian living in the US!". America has many spots that either have been, or are, sinking into a Third World economy and mentality. Desperation fires their intents, and those who do well at their immoral actions become a model for the rest of the desperate. How else did Amway get anywhere?
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
interesting that the site the article is posted on SPAMS you with popup windows as you leave...
from the AJC arti: "Fox shares her small one-story house with her two grown children, a young grandson, and her husband, Bruce Connelly." A1 E Services certainly seems to be at that addy: A1E_Services (NETBLK-BRW-5021-A1ESERVICES) 1711 West Hall Ave Slidell, LA 70460 US Netname: BRW-5021-A1ESERVICES Netblock: 67.96.78.0 - 67.96.79.255 Coordinator: Hostmaster (ZB13-ARIN) hostmaster@broadwing.com 512-427-3700 Domain System inverse mapping provided by: NS3.BROADWING.NET 216.140.16.252 NS4.BROADWING.NET 216.140.17.252 Connelly, Bruce (BC891-ARIN) a1esupport@aol.com A1E SERVICES 1711 W Hall Avenue Slidell, LA 70460 (504) 649 - 6248
[KARMA]a man's character is his fate - Heraclitius[/KARMA]
I'm sure this has been discussed to death, but why not design an email client that charges money to receive an email? If it cost $.001 to send most email, regular people could ignore it, but sending a million emails would cost $1000 and stop this "grandmother" in her tracks.
It seems easy to implement this on the receiver side -- when a message arrives, the email-client would look for an online-micropayment-account-number in the email headers to debit. If no online-micropayment-account-number exists, the email is rejected. (And you could make a whitelist of people who you wouldn't charge, and different people could charge more or less to receive email, but the basic idea seems simple.)
If you are an email sender, you would have to be aware that many potential recipients won't see your email unless you are prepared to pay for it. If you're just emailing friends, you might be sure you're on your friend's whitelist, but otherwise it would be a good idea to include an online-micropayment-account-number for receivers to debit -- and your email client could automatically set one up for you.
The sender's email would set a limit on how much he was willing to pay of course. And the sender's account would have to make sure that he was only charged once, if he was sending an email to only one person -- or N times if he was sending to a mailing list with several people on it -- so it looks like there's plenty of work needed to avoid fraud on all sides.
In this model, every email delivered is a purchase -- the sender's mail-client "buys" from the receiver the privilege of showing up on the receiver's inbox. This model makes it crystal clear that the receiver's attention has value . By putting a monetary amount on that, you invite negotiation about who shoulders the cost of that attention.
Surely this has been thought about before?
Filtering algorithms for content matching can still go quite a bit farther than anything else I've seen out there now.
For instance improved filtering that can support tens of thousands of regexp or substring rules at insane performance levels (automata matching & Aho Corasick matching), deal with obfuscations (programmed transformations of regexps), perform much more accurate fuzzy matching (rolling hashes), and mostly automatically identifying new prospective signatures (tableau/bloom filter methods of rolling hashes).
In general, learning mechanisms to find prospective rules combined with advanced and high performance analysis to verify accuracy of the rules.
An AOL email address is in there, eh? I'm sure AOL would love to disconnect them, sue and/or fine them. Take that for polluting my mailbox!
How about some divine retribution with a vulcan cannon?
Close, but how about a more practical solution. PLAN A:
+ ~1 million slash dotters
+ Real address for all those spammers
+ Directions for construction of HERF guns (EMP guns) http://www.voltsamps.com
= No body gets hurt, hard to catch & we disable the spamming computers. (I prefer to call it "opting out".)
They can route as much of their spamming operations overseas, but if they can't connect to them they are still SOL.
Here is a novel idea. Since she claims to be religious (and she just might be). Maybe ONE of us who is local should find out what church she goes to contact her local pastor/priest/preacher etc and POLITELY ask him to have a talk with her about doing something that pisses off 99.9% of the population that has e-mail. And maybe talk with her about the Golden-Rule. It just might make some headway.
You know what I would have done?
Taken careful note of the e-mail address, destroyed it, waited a week or two, then e-mail them back and tell them how you've been waiting for God to reveal himself and kick your ass, and how it hasn't happened. Then launch into a standard athiest argument or what have you.
See, the beautiful part is, either God will kick your ass (thus providing final proof as to whether or not religious people are kidding themselves) or nothing will happen and you get to laugh at spammers.
Perfect!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
- Most spammers are involved in fraudulent activities.
- Most spammers are stupid.
- The only thing stopping the government from going after these people are time & evidence.
- Instead of trying to track these people down via computers & trying to connect them with the fraudulent scams they are pumping out at us, how about we pick up their garbage (legal in almost all states) collect their papers, notes, old hard drives (we can recover deleted information in most cases, if not I am sure your local 2600 would love to help out).
- When you have enough evidence to nail them on some sort of fraud, pass it on to the most interested government body.
but that has nothing to do with the top parent's misuse of the Bible claiming it's a "do unto others" issue and accusation she's a hypocrite.
If you're going to accuse people, accuse accuratly. Otherwise you lose any semblence of credibility. It just looks like he's trying to attack her with her religion out of ignorace.
Which is far from insightful.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
"Flo Fox" my keester! Given the location (Slidell), that's gotta be Ronnie Scelson in drag!!
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
those kind of people don't have access to "teh interweb~"
I can't believe this goes on in every spam story without anyone having the shred of maturity it takes to say "this is wrong". Physically assaulting other people is wrong. I don't care if they're spammers. I don't care if they're child molesters or genocidal dictators. We're living in the year 2003, and we've seen what happens when we use violence as a solution to our problems. We've built countries with laws and courts and all that other good stuff so we wouldn't feel a need to engage in such vigilante barbarism. Everyone deserves a fair trial and a fair punishment. If you don't like what someone does, work to change it but work under the rule of law. Don't encourage people to beat up other people. It's not civilized.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Watch for the abuse and you find the spammers' IPs
:)
:)
Yup - a machine I've recently become admin for started to receive a significant increase of incoming traffic (without a massive increase in outgoing traffic). It was also starting to slow down, misbehave, etc.
I was able to monitor it during one such session and found that DNS was being raped by three machines from an ISP in the US. They were using our DNS to obtain the MX records for shitloads of domains, not just ones this machine hosts. I gathered a bit of evidence and emailed abuse@ the ISP in question.
With the help of our colo hosting providers, I had the offending IPs blocked. I then changed our DNS config to limit the number of connections it'd try to process and to refuse lookups for any domain not hosted on that machine. Go find someone else's baby to rape, you bastards!
The best bit was when the ISP responded to my email and advised that I had tipped them off to a spammer that was using open proxies to send spam. They had no idea the bastards were there because they don't monitor what people do with their links. So, due to violation of the ISP's AUP, the spammer had their link terminated immediately, without refund of their "paid in advance" account.
Small moment of satisfaction but I doubt it stopped the spammer (unless the money they lost due to termination of their "paid in advance" account wiped out any money they might make from spamming
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Also, since she's not selling drugs and porn, that means she's mostly selling scams and fraud. That guy who stiffed her for $7K that she's so burned about was promising 48% return on investments of $5K - she couldn't figure out that he was a thief? I feel _so_ sad for her that she got ripped off.....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
She says she doesn't deal with Viagra or porn. She's pretty strictly into scams and fraud and theft, and maybe the occasional vacation scam. The guy she complained about stiffing her on a $7K payment was offering suckers 48% returns if they invested $5K.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Anyway, I use Spamassassin on our company mail server with spam going to /dev/null and automatically deleted and then use the Junk filter in Mac Mail. I know before I installed spamassassin we were getting about 3500 spam emails per day between the six of us in the office. Now maybe 1 a day gets to my inbox and about 4 are in my Junk filter. Funny thing is the filter takes mods and replys from slashdot and marks them as spam.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
She complained about getting stiffed out of a $7K payment by somebody who was promising suckers 48% return on $5K investment. She's dealing with thieves and scammers. She's not murdering people, and she's mostly not promoting porn, but she's promoting greed and theft and lies. Leave aside the fact that she's ripping off people's mail servers to relay her spam, and ripping off the bandwidth of ISPs, and disrespecting the people she's sending spam to, her customers alone make what she's doing reprehensible.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
just nuke all of her eletronics.
put together a herf gun, and zap anything that is plugged in - in her trailer.
Look at the parent articles - this is the WRONG one, you want the on who lives on West Hall.
"The spammers aren't that particularly clever"
Woah.
But most of these spammers _are_ breaking laws. Flo may not sell fake viagra pills, and I don't know if she deals with other real or fake medicine sellers, but she complained in the article about getting stiffed out of $7K by one of her customers, who was promoting the ability for suckers to get a 48% return on investment if they invested $5K or more. That says that she either knows her customers are thieves, or is so blazingly stupid that she can't figure it out, so she needs to be put on notice about it. You don't have to be a Nigerian cybercafe to profit from customers who run criminal scams.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
She doesn't even pass the "What would Scooby Do?" test, much less WWJD....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Bill Waggoner has an internet radio show, doing right-wing talk/rant radio, and you can read about it at his web site www.billwaggoner.com/ The website lists his show's toll-free number, 1-800-903-0443. The show's on from 1-3am EDT (10pm-1am PDT) Monday-Friday, and says it's Politically Incorrect Extreme Talk. So y'all might could call him up and give him some politically incorrect extreme talk of your own... I'm sure he'd like to hear about honest marketing. Best if you can do it from a pay phone, not only because he might get annoyed, but also because it costs him more.
You've got the wrong Flo Fox - you want the other one. Making many collect calls to the wrong person is extremely rude...
RTFA - she isn't Ronnie, but there are a few good ol' buddy trailer trash spammers down there, and they've worked with each other.
127.0.0.3 is always good, or 255.255.255.255, or 192.168.255.255, or 169.254.255.255. If you've got a BGP feed, so you can figure out their upstream provider, you could always hand them that provider's main mail server.
If they're an open relay, though, an obvious IP address to hand them is the address of another open relay. So it'll send the mail there, and that relay will try to send it - so it'll look up your-fake-domain.com, which you'll respond to with the address of another open relay... I realize that open relays are passe, and all the cool spammers use open proxies these days, but you can still have fun letting misconfigured Korean relays bounce the spam around each other, and you'll only have to do the occasional DNS lookup until they get the addresses cached.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There are a couple of things the government can do which are useful, though. One of them is making some exceptions to the current computer crime laws to allow for self-defense. If somebody's sending your computer unfriendly bits that you don't want, like spam, you should be able to send them unfriendly bits that they don't want, like the Ping of Death. This has to be done carefully (Joe jobs are bad, and obviously forging a spam from someone shouldn't give you carte blanche to crackker their machine), but it can be done.
Also, a large fraction of spam is for things that are illegal, such as the various scams to get you to "invest" your money in dubious enterprises. Governments can help bust those people. That doesn't apply to spammers selling porn or other things that aren't illegal, but busting the illegal ones is a good start.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I have never noticed much of a positive correlation between religious zeal and moral behavior toward other people. If anything, I often notice a negative correlation.
If you can somehow tie a spam to a scientology insult, I'd bet there'd be some action.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Two points:
* Who cares if SMTP was an excellent protocol in the environment it was designed in. What matters is that it is completely inadequate today - I'm not blaming the designers, it's the fault of people who still think SMTP is good and we should bolt more shit onto it instead of using a protocol that works in todays environment.
* It's not just about trying to add security to make up for the "lost appropriateness of trust", the problems with SMTP are more fundamental than that. SMTP places the burden of delivery upon the receipient and there will be no significant answers to the spam problem while this remains the case. Internet Mail 2000 is one example of an attempt at that problem - the sender (rather than the recipient) provides a server for the recipient to retrieve their email from, the sender can't fake the IP because then their message can't be retrieved, the sender must also keep the server online for the message to be retrieved. Not a spam solution in of itself, however it is an infrastructure than a working spam solution (either legal or technical) could actually be built on.
Personally I think email is a dead duck, the adoption problem will prevent people from switching away from SMTP, and SMTP will prevent the elimination of spam. Centrally controlled Instant Messaging, or some other spam free technology will slowly replace email. A shame really.
I'm surprised I haven't heard of anyone running an operation to automatically read those addresses and fill in lots of webforms requesting free catalogues!
I remember seeing that feature on Yahoo Mail months ago. But since for various reasons Hotmail is what I use, I'm glad to see it done.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Ive signed her up to 6 catalogue lists (snail mail), I hope she likes getting crap in the post.
So I did; and what I found there was:
"What you should look out for: Warning Signs"
And clicking on that I found this, from which I quote:
"Users should exercise caution in the following circumstances:
If the bottom of the browser window is intentionally hidden."
Now try clicking on the thumbnails at the bottom and see how many of their examples appear to be from evil spammers, based on Symantech's own advice.
Hoo-haa! A chance for /. to slam spammers and religion!! In one story :)
Next up: Mother Teresa, and her sinister link with popup ads ...
see above
...the home she's living in is where one of my best friends grew up. I spent many, many hours there! That was REALLY wierd to see someone post that address on slashdot.
If she bought it, then she ain't doin that bad with the spamming. It's a two story, roughly 6,000 sq. ft., on an acre lot. I think it's valued somewhere around $250k.
BTW, interesting fact... sometime in the mid to late 70's, Slidell was the fastest growing city in the nation; Johnny Carson even mentioned it in his monologue. The Louisiana economy fell apart in the early 80's with the collapse of OPEC, and they've never quite recovered.
Thanks for the link! I still have an unopened bottle of Black Lemonade in the cupboard, and always wondered if I could get more after they all went MIA. Mmm, peppery soda goodness...
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
What makes it funnier is that she is described (and shown) wearing a "What would Jesus do?" shirt. Apparently, Jesus would spam.
I love this 'pushing costs on ISPs' crap. Here is the deal, I used to be a spammer (or worked for some of the bigger ones rather), and I've worked for ISPs blocking it too. During that entire time and even now, I hate spam just as much as the average slashdotter. I know it was wrong, and I don't like that I had to do it. But it paid the bills. That said:
The cost of sending spam is higher for the sender than it is for the ISP. Providers only have to store spam.
Spammers have to pay for the outgoing bandwidth to send the spam (100+ meg circuits are not uncommon), they have to pay for the spamming software (even the cheapest software is $125/m sent), they have to pay for email lists, insecure proxy/relay lists, and the biggest cost of all is you need circuits for your servers to land the hits/image loads. The hosting circuits (4 BGP'ed T3s in my former case) are 3x to 10x the cost of what a whitehat user would pay.
Spamming is'nt as profitable as it used to be. RBLs and filters have taken mailing to the point that a lot of people that I used to know are getting out of the game.
Enough ranting. You anti-spammers are doing a good job and getting closer to your goal. But you really need to quit spreading FUD. And keep after the people who provide services to spammers.
You need not even integrate this functionality into the email client -- a simple smtp proxy with access to the whitelist could do the trick in an email client-agnostic way. This is actually on my "stuff to do in my non-existent spare time" list -- and smtp proxy that handles automagically updating the spamassasin per-user or system whitelist.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Does her church know what she does?
We'd better inform all the churches in the state.
Many elderly deserve innate respect. *All* spammers are disgusting sub-human creatures. Therefore this spammer is not one of the elderly who deserve respect.
is to bounce it during the SMTP transaction. That way the spammer thinks the mailbox doesn't exist.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I've had an address since 1995, which had become useless due to 98% of the traffic being crap.
:-)
spambayes from sourceforge along with a little custom code on my web host means I now only download messages where spam makes up 5% or so, and thats dropping as spambayes gets better at detection.
My custom code connects to spambayes, lists all messages, downloads, saves to disk and deletes from the server any flagged as spam, and leaves legit messages on the server for latter download. Easy-peasy.
Its nice, reminds me of what the pre-spam world was like
USD$250,000 fine and 30 years in a federal lockup should be enough to deter the subhuman spamming vermin.
It's either that or email dies. There is no third option.
Time to get tough on these leeches. DAMN tough.
This post made with the Dvorak layout.
"Friends don't let friends use QWERTY"
How about requesting the Pope to declare spamming as a sin? May be that will help. Ethics have nothing to do with religion. In fact, as some one here has pointed out, it is the unethical who need religion most.
wtf? You just don't get it man!! Every morning I delete not less than 20-30 spam mails. Over the rest of the day I delete another 40-50. I recently noticed multiple times that I was deleting legitimate emails from new people who were trying to reach me. A few days ago I almost deleted one that had information about a new job offer!~~ I don't give out my email address anywhere. I have a separate lycos address for giving to online merchants. (Funny enough, I don't get as much spam there as I do with my ISP one). Wherever I have web-pages, I put a jpeg with my email address instead of text. I use anti-spam software (gave up on .procmailrc ages ago). My mail client has tonnes of blocked email addresses. Nothing on the planet seems to help. IMO, spammers are scumbags that need to be cleaned up. And anyone who expresses anything short of antipathy towards them should wake up or go down along with the them.