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Spammer Profile: Scott Richter

Posted by michael on from the call-as-often-as-you-like-no-minimum-purchase dept.

prostoalex writes "Westword.com published an article on Scott Richter, the owner of what is supposedly the nation's fastest-growing online marketing company, which mostly specialized in sending out those unsolicited electronic mail messages. Richter is the guy currently being sued by New York Attorney General and Microsoft Corporation for sending out nearly 9000 e-mails only to Hotmail accounts."

6 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. New business? by monstroyer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just yesterday, Microsoft was devising a plan to invoice spammers, now they are suing a spammer. Who needs the operating system business when you got hotmail!

    9000 spam emails doesn't sound like that much. An acquaintance of mine is the developer of si20 and there's more spam than 9000 in a measly half a day of operations.

    Is this merely a symbolic legal pursuit? Or is this considered a lot of spam by the powers that be?

    1. Re:New business? by eln · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's not that it's a lot of spam, it's that this guy is easy to pursue. A lot of spammers are based in unfriendly countries and are very difficult to sue. This guy is easy to sue.

      The basic theory here is to pick the low hanging fruit, and hopefully the others will back down out of fear. Not likely to happen that way, but that's the idea.

  2. Never fails to amaze.... by Epyn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am amazed that you can run an entire business of sending out emails that no one reads. I understand tha overhead = negligable thing, but still...How can he afford the trained monkies to write these things.

  3. I love these guys. by amarodeeps · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "I'm not going to argue that there isn't one person in forty million who didn't subscribe," Richter says. "But we document where the addresses come from, and when people complain, we remove them from our list. What people don't understand is that the Internet isn't free. I make my money by signing you up at my Web site, getting your information, and using that information to figure out what you like."

    Here we see a prime example of self-delusion and self-righteousness substituting for morality. Right, the Internet isn't free. But I didn't realize that I was paying Scott Richter to get online--I thought I was paying Verizon for DSL service.

    It is entertaining to see how much these people hate Steve Linford though.

    It's really simple folks: if what you are doing is legit, why do you have to forge your headers? Why do you have to hide behind false email addresses? If it is legit, why do you have such a hard time getting legitimate ISPs to sell you bandwidth? Figure it out.

  4. Re:Spam time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Email address?

    No, get him with USPS junk mail. That's a whole lot more fun. =) It's been done before with the guy who was #1 at the time (Alan Ralsky or something like that, I beLIEve...)

    Get his home address and have fun...

  5. Slashdot Interview? by GeorgeH · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How about a Slashdot Interview with this guy (or another spammer)? I think it would be really interesting to see what (civilized) questions we could ask him and what his answers would be. He says that he puts himself in front of the media so it shouldn't be too hard to get in touch with him.

    How about it editors? (I tried suggesting an interview with a spammer before, but since I didn't have a name or contact information the editors didn't want to hear it. I wonder why I should do their job for them when they're the ones getting paid...)

    --
    Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?