Paid To Spam

Lathiat writes "It seems that spammers have taken a new distributed approach to sending spam, and you get paid for it. Virtual MDA will pay you $1 per CPU hour their program is running to relay spam around the world. Obviously this is not something you should do, most users are all to familiar with the atrocity of sorting through up to hundreds of spams a day just to find one real email, Although it has been previously reported that some users love spam, I for one don't. Is there any way end users can fight back against people like this?" At $1/hour, this sounds like a low-gain way to infuriate both your friends and perfect strangers.

Comments

ISPs

[Zog The Undeniable]

Most ISPs prohibit this in their T&Cs. So unless you have a direct pipe to the Internet, you're surely going to be cut off as soon as they realise what all that 24/7 traffic is?

CPU hour, not normal hour

[Theatetus]

It runs as a service (or whatever windows calls daemons nowadays) so you're not getting even close to a CPU hour in an hour.

Re:CPU hour, not normal hour

[gerardrj]

You are assuming that a daemon/service is incapable of running at 100% CPU utilization, which is just an entirely erroneous assumption. Background processes can hog just as much CPU time as your newest 3D shooter.
It all depends on what the thing it trying to do. Look at Seti or Folding, bot run as daemon/service/background processes and both will use 100% CPU.

Here's some more free advertising..

[Anonymous Coward]

Including their phone number and mailing address:

Sendmails Corporation
P.O. Box 195
Manchester, NH 03105
TEL: 603.622.6999
FAX: 603.624.9089


Of course what you choose to do with that information is up to you...

And don't forget their WHOIS Info:

[Anonymous Coward]

Atriks, LLC
55 Bridge Street
Manchester, NH 03101-1188
US

Administrative Contact:
Host Master hostmaster@atriks.com
Atriks, LLC
55 Bridge Street
Manchester, NH 03101-1188
US
Phone: 603-624-7008
Fax: 603-624-9089

Technical Contact:
Host Master hostmaster@atriks.com
Atriks, LLC
55 Bridge Street
Manchester, NH 03101-1188
US
Phone: 603-624-7008
Fax: 603-624-9089

Don't get too excited

[Welsh Dwarf]

I hate to blow some people expectations here, but these are _cpu_ hours we're talking about.

Let me demonstrate: here's a section from my ps -ax:

PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
1 ? S 0:05 init [4]

and here's my uptime:
16:45:07 up 4:31, 4 users, load average: 0.09, 0.34, 0.34

(yes I turn my PC off at night, so what...).

To sum it up, init has been running for 4 hours 30 minutes, but only has 5 cpu seconds on the clock. This is an extreme example, X on my laptop has used 15 mins on 2:30 hours uptime, but it get's the point across.

Sending out spam is bandwidth limited, not cpu limited (unless you run this on a 486 over a T1), therefor, you are going to be hammering your connection, whilst only using a small percentage of your cpu, and only earning mabey 2-3 dollars a night (and I'm being optimistic there, it could be a lot less).

So in short, this will work until people realise that there being had, and then it'll just disappear into the mist.

Nice try, but zombies are more effective...

Re:SCAM THEM!

[agentZ]

Of course, signing up with them will also guarentee you a lifetime's worth of spam. Check out this from their "Privacy Policy"

Upon registration our members are required to provide full name, postal address, e-mail address.... Email address is required to provide user login and/or value-added services. In addition, we require user-specific information such as interests, gender, age, household income, and education, which is used to build member profiles that are used for the purposes of targeted advertising and benefit distribution.
Sendmails Corporation will not share, sell, trade, or give away personally identifiable member information to third parties without members' explicit permission. Upon registration, all users grant to Sendmails Corporation their explicit permission (1) to contact them with important information about members' accounts and updates to our services, policies and business practices, and (2) to share members' information with third parties. The users have the option to choose not to be contacted or their information shared by terminating their account.

Re:Fight back!

[The_Mr_Flibble]

You know it only takes 15 mins of elevated mail traffic on our systems before your ip gets locked down.

$1 per *CPU* hour

[Pan T. Hose]

Please read it carefully. It is $1 per CPU hour, not $1 per hour. Sending email is not a CPU-intensive task. One CPU hour can be equivalent to as much as several weeks of saturated modem traffic!

Re:Fight back!

[brassman]

One catch -- if you read through their "agreement," they have the right to round the time you "work" downwards, they have the right to defer payment until you reach a certain amount accrued, and they have the "right" to LOSE YOUR ACCOUNT INFORMATION. Really. "Sorry, we lost your info, so we don't owe you anything."

In short, after you sell your soul and your internet access, you get nothing in return. Zero, zilch, nada. Find someone who has received a nickel from these guys, if you can.

Terms of Service

[thebus]

I case you couldn't get to the site like me, here are the terms of service from the google cache.

Terms Of Service
1. ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS OF SERVICE. Atriks, LLC
("ATRIKS") web site, VirtualMDA and other ATRIKS services and web properties ("Service"),
owned and operated by ATRIKS, is provided to the
member community under the following Terms of Service and any operating rules
or policies that may be published by ATRIKS. The Terms of Service comprise the
entire agreement between Member and ATRIKS and supersede all prior agreements
between the parties, regarding the subject matter contained herein. By
participating in the registration process, members are indicating their
agreement to be bound by all of these Terms of Service.

2.Payment. Upon completing the registration procedure, you will be given a unique
identification account number ("UID"). You will be paid by ATRIKS $0.25 for every
Central Processing Unit Hour ("CPU HOUR") used by the VirtualMDA software located
on your personal or business computer(s) (either or both of which shall be the
"Installed Computer(s)") is actively connected to the internet ("Online"). The
Installed Computer may accumulate a maximum of 24 CPU HOUR's in one day. If
your UID logs more than 24 CPU HOURS in one 24 hour period, your account
may be suspended or terminated for unusual or suspicious activity. In order to
receive payment, you must submit a request to ATRIKS using the electronic request
form provided to you via your member account webpage. Your member account webpage
will contain a calculation showing the amount of money accrued in your account.
In case of a dispute as to the amount accrued, the amount shown in your account
is final and binding upon you in all respects. You may only request payment, and
ATRIKS shall only disburse from your account, when your account is equal to or
greater than $50.00 for United States residents and $90.00 for those residents
outside the United States. In the event of technical problems or data loss which
causes a loss of account information, your account will be reset at $0.00, and
you hereby waive any and all claims for any amount previously accrued but not yet
disbursed. All payments shall be by check, made payable to you, and sent to you
at your last known address via the U.S. Postal Service, first class mail. There
will be a check processing fee of $3.00 (three dollars) and any payment returned
to ATRIKS shall be voided, and your account shall be deleted and any accrued
amounts will be forfeited

3. DESCRIPTION OF SERVICE. ATRIKS is providing Member with Internet services and
opportunities to get rewarded while using the Internet in exchange for performing
certain actions as desired by our advertisers. As part of this service ATRIKS provides
Member with proprietary software ("SOFTWARE") for relaying email messages.
In consideration for this Service, Member agrees to: (1) create only
one account per household and, (2) provide certain current, complete, and accurate
information about Member as prompted to do so by the Service and, (3) maintain and
update this information as required to keep it current, complete and accurate and.
All information requested on original sign-up shall be referred to as account
information ("Account Information"). Furthermore, ATRIKS will not share, sell, trade,
or give away personally identifiable Member information to third parties without Members'
explicit permission. Upon registration, all users grant to ATRIKS their explicit
permission (1) to contact them with important information about Members' accounts and
updates to our services, policies and business practices, (2) to access and use the
Installed Computer(s) for relaying permission based (opt-in) email for ATRIKS and/or
third parties, and (4) data gathering activities, without further notice to or permission
from Member. The users have the option to choose not to be contacted or t

Re:$1/hour

[jrcamp]

Assuming they don't seed the list with their own addresses to insure validity (damn gave them the idea)

Not really an original idea. Snail mail mass marketers seed their lists with their own PO Boxes and such to ensure that mails are actually getting sent.

Re:Thousands per year

[aastanna]

From their terms and conditions:
"In the event of technical problems or data loss which causes a loss of account information, your account will be reset at $0.00, and you hereby waive any and all claims for any amount previously accrued but not yet disbursed."

You can't claim until it gets to $50, and your account can be reset to $0 at any time.

Not quite (Also, it has a trojan)

[Guspaz]

I installed the client just for kicks (Don't expect them to pay out, I'm curious):

Time Run: 1:31:14:999
CPU Time Used: 0:01:05:199
CPU % Usage: 1.69%

Oh yeah, did I mention it has a trojan?

Typed screenshot from AVG Antivirus:

AVG Residant shield

Virus
Trojan horse Downloader.4.Small.BT

is found in file
D:\Program Files\VirtualMda\package.exe

To remove this virus, please run AVG for Windows