Tech Reporter Pursues Spammer

girish writes "Technology reporter extrordinaire, Mike Wendland, is at it again tracking down spammers. Wendland conducted the infamous interview with Alan Ralsky, the alleged mega-spammer, a few years ago. That article spawned a lively discussion on Slashdot and eventually resulted in hundreds of pieces of junk postal mail flooding Ralsky's million-dollar home. Now Wendland is using a new tool from a service called Project Honey Pot to track email address harvesters. He posted on his technology blog this morning about catching a company that is holding itself out as a legitimate bulk mailer, but appears in fact to be sending to harvested addresses and conducting on the side some other seemingly seedy businesses. Interesting stuff."

Comments

OMFG - typical spammer art

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out that typical spammer's site, they always have these damn images of chumps in suits. You're supposed to think to yourself, "damn, it looks like this is the web site of a very professional company". You might wonder if they're damn dirty spammers, but you brush that worry aside because the people in the clipart are dressed so friggin sharp. Fucking marketers 101, they can pester each other in hell for the rest of eternity. Greasy bastards.

Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we be happy when the spammers get spammed? Ponder this.

Lex Talionis, the principle of an eye for an eye, is a morally bankrupt code of law we've been moving away from for the past few thousand years, thankfully. It can't deal with the complexities of the modern legal order, and it ignores all proper justifications for systems of punishment: rehabilitation, prophylaxis, etc. It makes an assertion of rigid judgment in an attempt to avoid judgment itself. We can't live in a world without judgment.

Ask yourself this: should we rape the rapist? If not, why not? (Ignore for a moment that we essentially do rape rapists by committing them to so-called "maximum security" prisons where they get systematically brutalized and raped by guards and other inmates.) It's not a morally tenable position to lower ourselves to the level of brutes just so we can vindicate some idea of retribution.

Therefore, ask yourself why we should be happy when the spammer gets spammed? No one should have to endure the pain and annoyance of spam: it's the scurge of the online world. Not even the spammer, who may be in his business because of factors outside his control like debt or bills for an illness in the family, etc. We should be outraged when anyone is spammed, and we should put the full force of the state and the law against the perpetrator no matter who the victim! Picking and choosing among which victims to protect is something the legal order of former barbaric times did. I'd be disgusted if our government returned to those days.

Spam == bad. Victimization == bad. Why do people conflate the two? What kind of giddy moral superiority to you get from seeing anyone hurt?

Re:I read the article.

[russint]

user@localhost:~ $ traceroute -i eth0 69.6.66.17
traceroute to 69.6.66.17 (69.6.66.17), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets

[.....]

7 ge4-2.mpr2.ams1.nl.above.net (195.69.144.122) 23.186 ms 23.444 ms 20.389 ms
8 pos8-0.mpr1.ams1.nl.above.net (208.184.231.181) 137.125 ms 137.798 ms 134.662 ms
9 pos2-0.cr1.ams2.nl.above.net (208.184.231.54) 134.566 ms 148.010 ms 138.338 ms
10 so-5-0-0.cr1.lhr3.uk.above.net (64.125.31.153) 26.930 ms 27.398 ms 27.490 ms
11 so-7-0-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.31.186) 100.744 ms 103.763 ms 107.792 ms
12 so-5-1-0.cr2.ord2.us.above.net (64.125.30.226) 140.395 ms 135.336 ms 134.762 ms
13 so-3-0-0.mpr1.ord7.us.above.net (64.125.30.141) 139.674 ms 135.197 ms 137.216 ms
14 64.125.129.237.available (64.125.129.237) 132.196 ms 128.587 ms 127.335 ms
15 papa.emcmailserve.net (69.6.66.17) 127.711 ms 128.309 ms 129.021 ms

Re:I know if I had the physical address

[djdavetrouble]

I knew if I had the physical addresses of these spammers blah blah blah, links his moderngeek.com website, /me does a quick google or 2, hilarity ensues
Slashthugz. Listen, bad boy... I don't think that you, or your friends have the spammers quaking in their proverbial boots. I would be more scared of getting pwned, or molotov cocktailed from your types. Nice macquarium, though.