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.
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.
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?
tip - if you have a scoring system like spamassassin, set two thresholds. One which sends mail to the spam box, and a second, higher one which sends to /dev/null
:)
On my system, (spapassassin + spamass-milter) I file at 6, and reject mail at 14
I waited a while to ensure that the bayes was tuned properly before adding the reject rule, but if I didn't have it my mail'd be totally unusable...
If you don't have a scoring system, get one
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.
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.
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
Well, I'll give you my own numbers.
73% of all the mail hitting my servers during the last week were either rejected via RBL, via access.db, or via SA. For the mail that was actually allowed to be delivered, 48% was tagged as SPAM -- meaning it met SA criteria for the thresholds I have set to be SPAM.
In the last month I've spent ~30hrs (not all at once) dealing with spam and spam-related tasks such as user Q&A, dealing with false-positives, dealing with false-negatives, RBL related, server maintenence and patching, etc. That's almost 4 working days.
Do I feel it's 'worth it'? YES. It's necessary at any rate. I'd rather cull out the crap or block it entirely, and my users are much happier, my backup jobs are quicker, and my servers are healthier for it. Do I enjoy it? NO! Are there other things I could do or that my employer would like done? YES!
I know you know this, and no it's not always a huge time-sink, but when it is it's a big one.
Nearly all the software advertised in spam is counterfeit, so you can forward spam that advertises software to the BSA. Selling illegal copies of software is something that law-enforcement takes more seriously than spam itself.
A few software companies actually ask you to forward them spam that advertises their products. See Symantec's Spamwatch site as an example.
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...
See it here
Wouldn't that make it pretty easy getting a verified address?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.