Slashdot Mirror
Anti-Spammers Infiltrate Private Online Spam Clubs
Angry_Admin writes " Spammers are now trying to find out which antispammers have infiltrated their ranks and are sharing "sensitive" info with fellow antispammers. According to the story at The Register: 'Online spammer forums like the Pro Bulk Club the Bulk Club and bulkmails.org have been gatecrashed by activists from organisations like Spamhaus. Steve Linford of Spamhaus said spammers know this already but they don't know who amongst their number is working for the other side. In theory the members-only forums of these sites is accessible only by invitation and only to individuals who have a proven track record in spamming. Apart from playing with the paranoia of spammers, the undercover investigation cast light on the latest spammer techniques.' Hopefully the spammers aren't that bright and the antispammers stick around long enough to bring them down."
Some of the "infiltrators" are actually people working at the ISPs hosting these private forums.
If past observations are any guide, then I'd say the answer is a mix of money made selling lists and actual product sales. In the 90's I used to do IT work for an informercial/900 number infomercial outfit. The pitch was "Make money with 900 numbers." Any normal thinking person is going to say BS. And by an large it is BS. But add greed and a low entry cost, and a hard selling telemarketer, through objection/rebuttal rounds can sell "money making guides" (read legal but shady get rich quick scheme) to lots of people. In a nutshell, the infomercial marketeer made a bundle selling info packets and lists. A few who followed the formula made money, but most didn't.
I don't like the business so I got out of doing IT support for it, but I learned a heck of a lot about the informercial/telemarketing biz.
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
But the most popular download these days isn't Kazaa, it is Adaware. http://download.com.com/3101-2001-0-1.html?tag=pop Spybot is No. 3 in the rankings.
The Flynn Effect is the reason why IQ tests are routinely recalibrated. Basically, information and ways of thinking that start out the purview of an elite few eventually become the norm for the average individual in a sort of intellectual trickle-down.
FYI Bayesian Filtering isn't quite the same as a Neural network, a notable difference being that with bayes a much greater portion of the behavior learned by the system is easily available for analysis.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
There was a Slashdot article a while back about a guy who actually wanted more spam. So, people like Mr. Orlando Soto are the reason why the rest of us must suffer. :)
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
> he's going to be running a site selling Brazilian sex tours.
/.)
> he was an aggressively normal guy
Sorry, but "normal guys", aggressive or otherwize, don't sell sex tours to brazil.
And, as somebody who knows brazil quite well, I advise you about taking a sex tour there. The rate of HIV is rediculous, and if you are going there to play among prostitutes you have almost a perfect chance of coming into contact with it.
However, Brazillians are very very friendly people, and a lot of them see sex as something to be shared freely (in comparison to Europe and all of the US except for Daytona beach). Unless you are really ugly, you could go out to any night club and meet a nice girl who will want to play with you*. Or a nice boy if you are so inclined. Why pay a spamming yuppy to be the middle man?
But if you are going there to party, take a balloon.
(I met a lot, but I didn't, because I have one of those spouse things, and it just aint worth putting the relationship on the line for 7 minutes of slap and tickle. No, she doesn't read
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
The Register article points to another article which talks about how the arrest of the PhatBot worm creator may provide some information on the rental of hordes of compromised machine as networks of spam zombies. It lists a common price of $500 for 10,000 machines -- In other words, your box is worth $.05 to a spammer.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.