"Spam King" Agrees to Stop Spamming For Now

Sandman writes "The AP is reporting that so called "Spam King" Sanford Wallace has agreed to stop spamming... at least temporarily until the FTC suit is settled" At best this is a precursor of things to come, and at worst it's a nice break.

Comments

But I won't get my spam :(

[Blapto]

I *need* to know Candy misses me!

Re:But I won't get my spam :(

[soimless]

or how much "Rachel Arlington, a child with brain cancer who is in need of an operation her parents can't afford." Needs me.

But the biggest woe of all is seening wich penis cream gives me the most inch per buck.

Maybe I should be swiching to penis pills, but thoughs are just herbal crap most of the time.

Re:But I won't get my spam :(

[AndroidCat]

I've already got tsunami spam. (I didn't know that Nigera got hit, zow!)

Re:But I won't get my spam :(

[Legion303]

I don't know...I tried some of that cream and I did indeed gain several inches temporarily, just as advertised!

Re:But I won't get my spam :(

[Anonymous Coward]

My Spam is down from 100 a day now to under 7 today...odd :D

Interesting

[b0lt]

My server logs see a slight (4%) decrease in rejected email, but it's probably just noise. When will we see a significant drop in spam?

-b0lt

Re:Interesting

[kaustik]

The article is in reference to spyware, not spam.

Re:Interesting

[krray]

I saw a 30-60% drop (depending on the day) over the holidays.
The holidays are over. Volume is right back up to ~1,500 rejects daily.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

When we have a two-fold systemin place to stop it.

Step 1 is to make all emails tracable to the server (or at least to the ISP) they came from. This can be done by assigning each legitimate email server (or group of servers from one ISP/company) a Public and Private key pair. An special header is encrypted with the server's private key. The email is sent to teh receiving ISP's mail server, which unencrypts the header with the public key (downloaded once, and stored locally. Thsi will take disk space, but not much compared to all the spam out there.) IF it matches the email is queued up for delivery to the recipient. If it doesn't match, the email might be dropped, or at least flagged as spam for the user. Emails without an encrypted header can be handled however the customer wants; dropped, or flagged.

Then, once all email can be reliably tracked to the sending server, you simply institute the Email Death Penalty (similar to the Usenet Death Penalty). Basically, it means that any server sending spam is warned, and if they don't stop it, is cut off from the rest of the 'net. ABCD.com sending spam? Warn them, and if they don't stop the spam, everyone simply drops every single email to/from ABCD.com.
Another posibility is to revoke the key pair ABCD.com uses. Thereafter, all email is let thru, but the receiving server flags it as not having a legitimate header, and it gets dropped at that point.

There's more to it, but I'm just giving you the outline here.

(And one last thing- before some yahoo posts a dumb 'form letter' response saying this won't work- WHY NOT?)

Re:Interesting

[Theatetus]

(couldn't resist, given that last line. The why not is included in the "dumb 'form letter'")

Your post advocates a

(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(X) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
(X) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
(X) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(X) Bandwidth/overhead costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(X) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where
you live and burn your house down!

Now, more specifically, you said:

"Step 1 is to make all emails tracable to the server (or at least to the ISP) they came from. This can be done by assigning each legitimate email server (or group of servers from one ISP/company) a Public and Private key pair."

We already do this: we can tell exactly what IP address (and therefore, what ISP) an email originated from. All the public-private key pair idea adds to this is:
1. additional server and network overhead
2. an additional point of ema

Re:Interesting

[permaculture]

Over the Hols, our Ironmail box was dropping 17 out of every 18 emails sent to our domain.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

(X) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it

WHY will it only stop spam for "two weeks"?

(X) Users of email will not put up with it

It would be effectively invisible to the user. The only thing the user needs to do is tell the system wether to delete the spam, or flag it for manual perusal. All the 'work' is done at the Server level.

(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once

Not at all. ISPs could offer it as an option at first.

(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers

Again, WHY do you think this is a problem??? At first, this would be offered strictly as an OPTION- another way to sort/filter your incoming mail. No one would "lose business" or "alienate potential employers". In a year or two (or three or 10, whatever), everyone will use it, and still no one will "lose business".

(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Um, what?? How?

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

(X) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
(X) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack

This would be an add-on to, not a replacement of, SMTP.

(X) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email

What patches??!? What are you talking about? See, this is why I don't like these dumb-ass 'form letter' things. You simply check off a few boxes, and I have to do all the work explaining.

(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?

My servers? I don't have any servers. Let's look at a simple example:

1) An AOL customer sends an email to an Earthlink customer.
2) AOL's email server uses AOL's private key to encrypt a header line in the email.
3) Earthlink's email server gets the email and says "Gee, I don't yet have a public key for AOL. I'll connect to AOL's Email server directly and download it." (Even a relatively large key should only be about the size of a regular email,and only needs to be DL'd once, so bandwidth is not an issue.)
4) Earthlink's Email server decrypts the header and checks for validity.
4a) Validated Email is sent to the customer's mailbox
4b) Invalidated mail is dealt with according to user settings.
4c) Email that does not contain an encrypted header is dealt with according to user settings.

Where do you see "my servers" in there? The only outside servers are the one's that provide the key pairs. And those can be given out by the the upstream ISP. In other words, if I get my T1 from AT&T, then I ask AT&T for my keys. They check me out, and give me keys if they consider me trustworthy.

All the rest of your 'form letter objections' either don't apply, or have a solution. I'm not going to waste my time explaining it all to you.

Now, more specifically, you said:

"Step 1 is to make all emails tracable to the server (or at least to the ISP) they came from. This can be done by assigning each legitimate email server (or group of servers from one ISP/company) a Public and Private key pair."

We already do this: we can tell exactly what IP address (and therefore, what ISP) an email originated from.

Cool. I thought it was possible to spoof headers or something like that:
http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/email_spoofin g.html
Silly me.

All the public-private key pair idea adds to this is:
1. additional server and network overhead

Which is MORE than compensated for by reduced spam load.

Nothing prevents a spammer from buying a domain, publishing the key, spamming, getting the SMTP Death Penalty, losing about 30 seconds of profitability while he clicks on the button that switches that domain to his next pre-prepared domain

Except for the fact that all the complaints (that point directly back at the spammer) would cause

Re:Interesting

[Lord_Dweomer]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it was because of college students going home. God knows how many infected boxes there are at colleges on broadband connections.

Re:Interesting

[Just-A-Buck]

I used to get between 50 and 70 UCEs a day on my main mail account in 2004 -- meager in comprison to others, I know, but still annyoing. Then suddenly on December the 6th this dropped to 10-15 UCEs a day and stayed there up to now. A drop to ~20% of the original frequency can't be explained with noise, so there's definitely something rotten in the state of Spam.

Anyone else experienced likewise?

Re:Interesting

[cburley]

I believe what you are proposing is similar to something called "MTA mark" or something like that.

SPF, DomainKeys, and "MTA mark" are more sophisticated versions of today's distributed (usually via DNS) blocklists.

As such, they have similar advantages and disadvantages. They are not "solutions" to spam; they do represent steps in the general direction of requiring some combination of authentication and a reputation-management system.

Authentication in your proposal is fundamentally based on IP addresses and domain names. In some ways that's reasonably strong (compared to most forms of analysis of the content of the email or the behavior of the SMTP client, anyway). Weaknesses on the IP-address side include the store-and-forward nature of SMTP (how do you handle an intermediate MTA innocently relaying an evil payload -- can you trust the MTA's claim regarding the IP address from which it received the message?) and NAT (put simply, having many potential SMTP clients on the same IP address). IPv6 probably makes some of this worse, in that the address space becomes vastly larger.

Weaknesses on the domain-name side of things include the practically infinite search space which, combined with the "trustable-parent?" problem (can you trust the entity that delegated the domain name to its owner? how about that entity's delegatee?), presents a significant whack-a-mole problem.

General weaknesses include the fact that all of these systems rely on a reliable distributed third-party data base (usually DNS). When that data base is corrupted or unavailable, the system breaks down.

And since that data base is presently implemented such that it cannot guarantee low fixed-time lookups to all its readers, any system that automatically consults it using keys provided by an untrusted source is prone to exploitation as a means to attack the data base, possibly in order to dDOS the data base itself.

In the short term, as any of these solutions (IP blacklists; SPF, which can be used to blacklist based on envelope senders; DomainKeys, which can be used to blacklist source domains; and MTAmark, which can be used to blacklist MTAs) are implemented, they appear to work fairly well in detecting a substantial percentage of unwanted email -- or, more precisely, email that is "known" to be from an untrusted (or "broken") source or perhaps known to have been transmitted via an untrusted third party, which is orthagonal to whether the content of the email is "unwanted". (My server sends plenty of "wanted" email to sites that reject it as "untrusted" because it uses a "dynamic IP" address -- which hasn't changed in well over a year, though it is always possible it might someday be reassigned to some 0wn3d Win98 box.)

However, as spammers adapt (and they can easily do so, given their incentive and financing), all of these measures are ultimately worked around and attacked.

Therefore, in each case, the rest of us end up expending substantial resources designing and adapting to the "solution" (including adapting to the fact that our own legit outgoing email is falsely tagged as "spam" thanks to these "solutions"), only to find that it wasn't worthwhile in the long run.

In particular, once the "solution" has had the #!@#%@ kicked out of it by spammers and virus authors, not only is it no longer of much use, but we are stuck with maintaining it for many years after its deployment.

There are better ways, or at least ways that rely much less on external, trustable entities such as data bases. But they are much less "impressive", and have their own disadvantages.

Re:Interesting

[Theatetus]

Cool. I thought it was possible to spoof headers or something like that: http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/email_spoofing.html Silly me.

You're not silly, you just missed the point of that link. When the spammer HELOs your mail server, he may well say that he's outgoing.whitehouse.gov delivering a message from president@whitehouse.gov. What he can't fake is that he's coming from IP address 1.2.3.4 (or whatever). You already know what netblock he's actually on, and who's responsible for that netblock.

Only because they find spam-friendly ISPs. These ISP's, after, say, the 3rd spammer warning, would be blocked under my proposal.

But we already know which ISPs are spam friendly, because as I pointed out above IP addresses aren't forged. We already know and they aren't being blocked en masse, probably because these same ISPs carry legitimate traffic and we collectively feel that false positives are worse than false negatives. This is a social and political problem.

Look, we don't need a new technology to tell us what ISP is responsible for a given mailing. You can already find out what ISP hosts the mailer that sent you any mail you received. Better yet, with SPF you can already tell if the owner of the mailing domain has authorized that IP address to send you mail. What you need to do if you want to push for this kind of solution is go out and advocate that we use the knowledge we already have to apply the SMTP Death Penalty you advocate to the bad ISPs

Look at Spamhaus; they essentially advocate what you want. They have some popularity but the ISPs aren't dead yet because A) lots of people don't use spamhaus and B) lots of those who do have to stop using it because they can't get important emails from people who happen to use the same ISP as spammers.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

We already know and they aren't being blocked en masse, probably because these same ISPs carry legitimate traffic and we collectively feel that false positives are worse than false negatives

Then you'll never get rid of spam.

lots of those who do have to stop using it because they can't get important emails from people who happen to use the same ISP as spammers.

Whan people care enough about stopping spam, they'll willingly give up a few emails for a short time to eliminate spam.

Re:Interesting

[Theatetus]

I agree, we can't get rid of spam with this attitude. I'm simply stating the fact that this attitude exists

I think it's very important for people to remember that we know everything we need to know to blacklist spam-friendly ISPs. We know and we don't do it. Technical solutions have given us everything we need, it now just takes the will to do it.

Good luck with that, btw; I personally don't think end users care enough about spam to risk losing emails from clients.

yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope he dies.

Re:yeah

[ch3]

Sooner or later, he will... I promise

one down

[Anonymous Coward]

a billion to go...

but he'll be back

This is a duplicate..

[RonUSMC]

Wasnt this just reported yesterday? But it was under the title.. going to stop sending spyware, for now?

how often have I seen this?

[Anonymous Coward]

How often does this guy agree to stop?

I've been reading stories about how "the ex-spam king" Sanford Wallace is finally stopping for a while now.

Mark this redundant, cause .. well it is.

Spam?

[elid]

It seems from the article that he's going to stop using spyware, not sending spam.

Re:Spam?

[Shag]

Correct. He was forced to stop spamming a few years back.

I just wonder what form of cyber-misbehavior he'll try next. :)

Re:Spam?

[AceCaseOR]

And he kept doing it anyway. I don't believe a word the bastard says. Hell, if the asshole get's whacked tomorrow, I wouldn't beleive the obituary. If I saw the fuck's corpse maybe (and provided it wasn't disfigured - I've listened that episode of The Shadow.)

Re:Spam?

[Wingie]

Even when he's dead his soul will live on, haunting the Internet and trying to sell Viagra.

Re:Spam?

[adeydas]

he will try mass marketing for a change.

Re:Spam?

[SEWilco]

Wallace has said he is being persecuted because of his past involvement in junk Internet mailings.

Saddam has said he is being persecuted because of his past involvement in weapons of mass destruction.

Re:Spam?

[Rick and Roll]

I've listened that episode of The Shadow.

First thing to come to mind, from a comment a couple months back:

"You are about to be eaten a grue"

Re:Spam?

[JuggleGeek]

He was forced to stop spamming a few years back.

He was forced to start hiding his spamming a few years back. Before that, he just said "Yes, I did it, you don't like it, I dont care, I'm Spamford, King of Spam, and I'll never stop."

Then he lost several major lawsuits and said "I've quit the spam business." But he never quit, he just started hiding it and quit bragging about doing it. He never got out of the business.

He's vermin, and won't stop until he's locked up or dead.

Re:Spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

And, sadly, Saddam has a far better case that this weasely pile of snot does.

Re:Spam?

[zeylisse]

I just wonder what form of cyber-misbehavior he'll try next. :)

err.. sending pathes? ;)

I can't express how happy I am right now.

[Kipsaysso]

So happy. So very, very happy.

Yeah yeah...

[monkeymonkey]

You can never change the dog's cross legged peeing style. ... Or will this Spam King disprove that. I think not.

Oh no!!!!

[gremlins]

Where am I going to buy my Penis Enlargement pills now?!?!?

Re:Oh no!!!!

[PabloJones]

Uh....

enzyte.com?

According to their commercials, it also gives you a gigantic grin.

Re:Oh no!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Contains alot of zinc, this has long been said to increase sex drive, buy zinc tablets in health food store.
No growth size wise, but more action.

The idiot

[Knights who say 'INT]

He will just lose space in the profitable spam industry.

When he wants to come back, his place won't be there anymore.

Too little too late

[albn]

They can give restaining orders all day long, but the spyware, adware and other crap is still on many boxes still generating ads for him.

Oh, noes!

[ral315]

How ever will we get our Vioxx and Rolexes????????????????

Re:Oh, noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

noes? Jesus fuck.

This same tired joke, or variations of it, gets regurgitated in every single god damn spam story, and some wanker with his dick in his mitts goes ahead and marks it funny. Are you kidding? This shit isn't funny at all, and it isn't even funny thinking about the sad fuck that things it's funny.

Re:Oh, noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, noes! Some AC asshole is annoyed.

Wait a min... Sanford starting to SPAM AGAIN?!?

[strredwolf]

Whoa whoa whoa... if he's spamming again, then he better have his lawyer on speed dial. He just violated court orders in lawsuits done by AOL, Earthlink, and about half the US ISP's!!!

Re:Wait a min... Sanford starting to SPAM AGAIN?!?

[techno-vampire]

I can't talk about any of the other ISPs, but I was at Earthlink when they sued him. The restraining order prevented him from using our servers to relay his spam. That's all. Of course, now, the Earthlink servers don't allow relaying, so he can't do that anyway unless he had an account with them. (BTW, Earthlink also blocks outgoing port 25 to keep their customers from relaying through other servers.)

Re:Wait a min... Sanford starting to SPAM AGAIN?!?

[qualico]

I know Earthlink's policies all too well.

Could not contact my parents by phone since they were vacationing in US.
So I try to email their Earthlink account.
Earthlink rejected my legit mail because I was running my server on a dynamic IP for cost reasons.

All I wanted to do was inform my parents of the birth of our new baby girl.

They just ignored my every effort to have them pass the email.
Years later though, my parents became friends with an Earthlink employee.

I don't have problems emailing them anymore.

Not sure who is worse, Earthlink or Sanford.

Re:Wait a min... Sanford starting to SPAM AGAIN?!?

[techno-vampire]

Earthlink rejected my legit mail because I was running my server on a dynamic IP for cost reasons.

Don't expect me to try to justify what they did, as their anti-spam efforts have always tended to be a bit heavy-handed. Frankly, if it happened after the Mindspring merger, I wouldn't be a bit surprised. The whole mangement seemed to go into PHB mode after that.

Re:Wait a min... Sanford starting to SPAM AGAIN?!?

[AndroidCat]

Before then they were in LRH mode.

Re:Wait a min... Sanford starting to SPAM AGAIN?!?

[techno-vampire]

Actually, back when I started, they made sure all employees knew that there was to be no proselytizing on company property, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't. Sky was raised as a Scientologist, but it never seems to have taken.

Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't vote for him!

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't vote for spam kings.

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

Well how did he become spam king then?

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

The lady of Hormel, her arm clad in the purest shimmering spyware, held aloft v1agr_a from the bosom of the net, signifying by Divine Providence that he, Spamford Wallace, was to be your spam king

Re:Spam King???

[Raijin Z]

He slew his father, the previous Spam (potted meat product) King, and assumed the throne with none the wiser.

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

listen, strange women lying on the net distributing spam is no basis for a system of government. if i went round sayin i was the spam king just because some tech-savvy bink lobbed some sexual enhancer at me they'd put me away

Re:Spam King???

[stor]

Spyware-infested women surfing the net distributing v1agr_a is no basis for a system of spam government.

Cheers
Stor

Re:Spam King???

[damgx]

How can this be funny?

You don't vote for Kings or Queens, and I'm not too sure about Presidents either according to resent elections around the world)

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to, it's a monarchy.

Re:Spam King???

[nonother]

I'd prefer a farsical aquatic ceremony.

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!

Okay, okay... So, I respond to a Python reference with a Simpsons one. At least I *know* what I'm doing. :-)

For those who won't accept my apology, here's an alternate answer to the parent:

You don't VOTE for Spam Kings!

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

You may have already realized it by now, but it was from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Re:Spam King???

[nacturation]

Tell me more about how we may employ sheep's bladders in the prevention of spyware!

Re:Spam King???

[Lord_Dweomer]

If the youngest teen on the web lobbed a Fleshlight at me and I went around proclaiming I had CONSOLIDATED ALL MY DEBT!!11!!1 they'd put me away!

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

It's from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Granted, the movie is old, but surely even kids of today watch old classics? :)

And actually, Gustav I Vasa of Sweden was elected King in 1523. It wasn't exactly a general nationwide election, but probably some sort of majority decision, at least on a local level... if that makes sense at all. But normally no, one does not vote for Kings or Queens. Normally they recieve swords from strange women lying about in ponds.

Re:Spam King???

[Anonymous Coward]

Help, help, I'm being oppressed!

Re:Spam King???

[deblau]

Sanford: You don't vote for kings!

Peasant: Well, how'd you become king then?

Sanford: The Goddess of the Net, her arm clad in the purest shimmering source code, held aloft Stealth Mass Mailer from the bosom of the data stream, signifying by divine providence that I, Sanford, was to carry Stealth Mass Mailer. THAT is why I am your king.

Peasant [interrupting]: Listen, strange women lyin' in chat rooms distributin' emailers is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical IRC ceremony!

"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before...

[martinbogo]

Most likely, he's working out a way to offshore the whole operation into a shell corporation in the Bahamas, and will (again) laugh his way to the bank.

Infecting the net with spyware, choking the backbones with spam. Making his money in the sleazebag way he always does.

This doesn't change anything.

obvious next step

[ChipMonk]

Don't settle the suit. Drag it on forever.

Re:obvious next step

[Anonymous Coward]

>Don't settle the suit. Drag it on forever.

Yeah, nobody can survive that financially.

Except Microsoft.

Score: +1, off-topic Microsoft bashing

Re:obvious next step

[JuggleGeek]

Don't settle the suit. Drag it on forever.

Sure, because we all know that Spamford can be trusted to fulfill his part. Until he's dead or in jail, he'll continue, regardless of any silly little things like laws or morals.

yeah, right

[elmegil]

at worst it's a nice break.

Because we know there's no way he's passed off his lists and primary business to someone else, a partner or whatever, so that the revenue stream just gets transferred away from him while he's under investigation.

Didn't he listen in Marketing 101?

[JohnnyComeLately]

You gotta keep yourself out there in the market place...building your brand and product image. Errr wait...never mind.

I think he really quit because I finally configured to just delete spam since the false positive rate on Thunderbird is now really low for me :)

Think of all the small penises (peni?) there will now be...

Re:Didn't he listen in Marketing 101?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of all the small penises (peni?) there will now be...

Penes.

Oh, Really...

[ackthpt]

Over the Christmas break my spam went down to only about 50 per 24 hours, now it's up to about 200 again.

Then again, maybe it's an indication most of this sh!t is perpetrated by students...

Re:Oh, Really...

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

We're all adults here, you can swear..

Re:Oh, Really...

[Tezkah]

I wouldn't say it is the students using spam to send things, I'd say its ignorant users allowing their computers to be taken over, many of which are students. I mean, there was an article where a student had no qualms with iMesh routing all of their traffic through their central server. In fact, he got upset when the university blocked the MarketScore servers which his traffic was being routed through:

"This sucks," said a Pennsylvania State University student in an e-mail interview. "I can't surf the web and I can't trade files if I uninstall the spyware. Why can't the college let me do what I want to do with my computer? The school computer security guys are being way more annoying than the spyware was."

If they're willing to accept software that "will record all your credit card numbers, will redirect your emails through their servers, and will record every single web page you visit" for a few mp3s, I'll bet they're gullible enough to let their computers become pawns for the Spam King.

Re:Oh, Really...

[JudgeFurious]

No. see what happened is this. A large number of people recieved new computers as gifts for Christmas and unplugged their old computers. An army of zombies vanished in a single day.

Within a week the new machines were all infected and things returned to "normal".

Re:Oh, Really...

[hughk]

Ah, not for long. The new systems will be infected before they d/l SP2.

Re:Oh, Really...

[rabbit994]

College students are famous for having viruses laden, rooted and adware loaded boxes. I used to do computer repair for people and they would get so mad when I said Kazaa had to go and if it came back, you were SOL, I wasn't helping you out, they used to give me all the BS about "I'm so poor I can't afford music" It ended getting blocked at my school and my pings in Call of Duty went up 10 fold after that. Also, a bunch of computers connected together on the same network, all it takes is one stupid laptop user to bring in the latest virus and every idiot who ignores Windows update is infected.

Re:Oh, Really...

[Meetch]

Hmmm... the drop-off would also correlate reasonably well with the destruction caused by the Tsunami, and how long it would have taken in some cases to get the infrastructure going again(probably more getting power back than network structure). My incoming SPAM dropped about 80% or more for about a week.

Any concrete figures?

holy shit

[Internet_Communist]

"Sanford Wallace and his companies, SmartBot.net Inc. of Richboro, Pa."

WTF! That's where I used to live! I can't believe that. Now I'm sure it's possible there's another richboro in PA but I doubt it....damn that's messed up. I never heard of his company though.

Re:holy shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprising. I would have thought that such a successful advertising company would want the world to beat a path to their door.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[swschrad]

bastard should be ordered to pay every computer user $233.57 for violating their space and wasting their resources... and the owners of every bot he 0wn3d should get $10,000.

that ought to shut his crap down.

remember, this is the same dude who invented the junk fax, who was one of the first into spam, and now proven to be into sinister bots. death is too good for him.

When? When China is Partitioned.

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this fellow is a the "Spam King", the majority of spam comes from China, which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong. There will be no significant drop in spam until we can stop spam that is being ejaculated out of China.

In short, unless we invade, conquer, and partition China into harmless entities (thus liberating Tibet), the spam will never stop and will clog up our Internet fiber and coaxial cables.

A Friendly Reminder

[Lead Butthead]

a. Spammers lie.
b. See "a."

Conclusion: Stop spamming as in stop spamming from US?

Re:A Friendly Reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's supposed to be:

a. Spammers always lie
b. If you think a spammer is telling the truth, see a.

give the gift of bulk mail...

[BobWeiner]

...any laws against bulk mail spamming a spammer?

Interesting article from '99 about Wallace.

[PocketPick]

Gotta love this:

"I'm not spamming again," Wallace said in an interview with CNET News.com. "I am the most antispam person alive because of the trouble my old company got into."

Apparently he didn't mean it.Here's the full article: http://news.com.com/Is+the+king+of+spam+back+in+bu siness/2100-1023_3-220427.html

He's still spamming us...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Now on Slashdot!

I hope no one clicked them links: Read the article? I'm not going to support the spam buisness model.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Anonymous Coward]

remember, this is the same dude who invented the junk fax, who was one of the first into spam, and now proven to be into sinister bots. death is too good for him.

I think you're overreacting just a tad. Maybe the slashdot hive mind thinks it's alright, but I don't see how you could ever equate mass unsolicited e-mail being worth someone, anyone's, life.

I know I'll get modded down (AC, Karma is preciousss), but speaking as someone who was recently robbed, sure, I want financial restitution (I liked the first part of your post), but I don't think the hooligans who did it should pay with their life; and trust me, the burglary bugged me a lot more than the hundreds of spam I got that day.

Re:When? When China is Partitioned.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, US is the source of the majority of spam.

Ya right!

[Anonymous Coward]

spam king's promise not to spam is like promising not to send more emails after clicking the un-subcribe link for rolexes. >.

Idea....

[tuxter]

How about we just take the scum out of the loop all together? anyone know where he lives?

Re:Idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

I like you idea, in the first sentence.

If we can prevent a hacker from even remotely touching computers, why can't we prevent convicted spammers from having ANY internet access? (including using anything connected to the internet)

Re:Idea....

[utlemming]

Perhaps the next anti-spam law should include a provision that people that engage in spamming activites and are convicted are to be excluded from using the internet anything other than personal reasons; if your a spammer and caught you can only use the internet for paying your bills, surfing the internet, etc, but if you use the internet for business purpouses, then your committed a felony and get to become Bubba's Butt Buddy -- again. Also make it part of the sentencing that those convicted can not engage in consoltations or the like. Pretty much make it a life sentence for them to stay away from the internet.

Where's the spam...

[__aaclcg7560]

I have an Earthlink account that use for dial-up when the cable modem is on the blink. (It took the cable company three weeks to figure out why I wasn't getting internet access was because they installed the equipment backwards for a neighbor. Go figure.) I don't use this account at all for email, but I do get a ton of spam.

Lately, there's been a significant decrease in the porn spam. What I'm seeing a lot of these days is home refinancings, free laptops and the Nigerian widow with too much money and no place to spend it.

It could also be that I'm using Pop Tray to manage the spam.

Not to worry...

[murphyslawyer]

The Spam King will eventually be betrayed by his ex-best friend, Mr. Spam, and trapped under an avalanche of junk mail on forbidding Widow's Peak.

Re:Not to worry...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am probably the only person who got that simpsons reference... If I could, I would mod you funny... for those that missed it...
Mr. Plow

Re:Not to worry...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. Spam that's my name...that name again is Mr. Spam!

a new circle of hell has formed

[circletimessquare]

due to the karmic implications of the activities of spammers and spyware operators, asmodeus, mouthpiece of hell, would like to inform us that a new, technologically advanced circle of hell has formed recently. hell has said that over the course of its illustrious history, it has remained up-to-date with the various technological advances that its human fodder have created, and is happy to say hell is now no push over in the cyberspace department. just recently, hell's IT department was able to successfully woo and hire the BSD demon.

asmodeus, on behalf of himself, beelzebub, azazel and baal, would also like to thank spammers and spyware creators for their innovations. they have been having a lot of fun playing with the new gadgets and technological doodads in this new circle and thinking up well, devilish new uses for them. just yesterday baal and azazel, after a rousing game of gta: san andreas, quite proudly demonstrated their wonderful new DDoS nipple clamps and botnet dental drills. The BSD demon cackled and chortled and choked on a packet in appreciation.

the gang down there would also like to remind all spammers and spyware operators that this new circle of hell has amazing bandwidth capacity for eternal delivery of viagara and vioxx offers straight to the frontal cortex, representing a coup in the r&d department of the lost souls there, who will of course, never benefit from the ip capital of their hard work.

spammers and spyware operators, azazel reminds us, will find that a *warm* reception will be awaiting them when they arrive in this new technologically advanced circle of hell.

Re:a new circle of hell has formed

[AceCaseOR]

They're quite happy with the whole arrangemetn in the Dimention of Grief too.

Re:a new circle of hell has formed

[pentalive]

Those sent to the new circle of Hell will be tasked with finding the one email that would release them, amongst thousands of spam messages a minute.

Each time they delete a message without reading it 5 more are sent. They must read each message fully, and even then they may not find the one message. There will also be dummy messages that look like the one but will not be the one.

Re:a new circle of hell has formed

[Lord_Dweomer]

Oh great, so now we get to look forward to

CLICK HERE 2 s3ll ur s0u1 n0w!!!

WE HOPE THIS MESSAGE FINDS YOU IN GOOD HEALTH

[Raijin Z]

VENTILATE YOUR CAROTID ARTERY FOR FASTER OXYGENATION!

From Frank R, of Rhode Island: "I was a busy, on-the-go executive, with no time for breathing. All this breathing and osmosis and hemoglobin is too slow! There has to be a better way! And there is! Thank you, Rustyblunt! Now I have all the time I need to rest in my office while reading the same page of the newspaper for hours until my secretary walks in to find my mutilated corpse!"

From Cynthia S. of Rhode Island: "Oh my god, somebody call 911! Oh god, oh god! Help! There's blood all ovTHANK YOU RUSTYBLUNT BRAND VESSEL ACCESS SYSTEMS!"

Home demonstrations of out Rustyblunt brand vessel access systems are available at no cost to the consumer!

To be removed from this list, please send a blank email to stabmeintheneck@awesomeproducts.tv

Where is he?

[azav]

We know he's in Vegas but where? Anyone interested in collecting donations so we could put a hit on him or at least break his arms so he can't press keys? Maybe a kneecap or two. Is there any Yakuza in the house?

I mean the only way people would notice he is gone is that their email boxes would be more likely to full of their own mail. Strange concept but I think that over time, people may get used to it. Call me crazy but I think they will.

Re:Where is he?

[crazy_pikachu]

hey...keep it on the DL but my cost is cheap and I do a quailty job. I have done many hits before email me if interested (and for all you cops out there that belived me...GOT YA!!)

If only...

[CypherXero]

We could bring down all the spammers.

Re:If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

I fear that the irony of that post is lost on you.

Stop Spamming?

[RockClimb]

Actually the story reads, "Under an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, a man known as the "Spam King" will stop infecting computers with advertising programs until a federal lawsuit against him is resolved."

Installing adware and selling a product to remove it.... To me that would be about like a doctor walking up and shooting you in the leg and then offering to fix it for a fee. ;-)

Re:Stop Spamming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap...he found step 2!

Re:Stop Spamming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like MS selling AV software to me....

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Anonymous Coward]

One can rest easy in the knowledge that someone who desperately wanted to become better endowed will hunt him down with a gelding knife after the product doesn't live up to expectations.

Better colours

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/05/2 333237

Ham story, spam story.

[Chatmag]

Which reminds me. I had so much fun going through the list of famous ham radio operators (last slashdot story), then going through my email inbox (this slashdot story), I forgot to get dinner, later all.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[JimmytheGeek]

Nah - just amputate his limbs and do medical experiments on him.

Someone else will take up the slack

[Anonymous Coward]

...and offer to "Enrage Your Pennies!"

Spamford and his IE exploitz

[BMcWilliams]

The preliminary injunction is over spyware, and specifically states that Wallace won't exploit two vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer to install his spyware on the computers of people who visit his web sites.

Liar.

[Elwood P Dowd]

Rule 1. Spammers lie.

Rule 2. If spammer seems to be telling the truth, see Rule 1.

Rule 3. Spammers are stupid.

Re:Liar.

[Anonymous Coward]

how in the hell did this get modded informative?

funny.. i get more now than ever

[Elminst]

Starting on almost exactly December 1st, 2004, I started receiving approx 30-40% MORE spam every day...
I now get on average about 80-90 spam per day, whereas prior to thankgsgiving/dec 1st, I was getting around 50-60. (yes I know many here get way more)

Lot of good this is doing.

Article refers to passthison.com

[Serveert]

passthison.com would set your homepage in order to generate impressions and get more revenue. The homepage would give you anti-virus/trojan ads.

Re:Article refers to passthison.com

[Serveert]

All the gory details of how he does this are here:

http://okaygood.com/index.cgi?okay=get_topic&top ic _id=433024&page=0

Re:Article refers to passthison.com

[Serveert]

correct url:
http://okaygood.com/index.cgi?okay=get_topic&topic _id=433024&page=0

Re:Article refers to passthison.com

[JuggleGeek]

http://www.whitis.com/mailwiper.htm will give you a lot more detail than you probably want, and a lot more history. Spamford wasn't involved (that I knew of - apparently, though, he was) when I first started this page.

Overheard Spamford talking with alien cockroach

[AtariAmarok]

Here is how spamford agreed not to send spam anymore:

Spamford: "You can take my spam relay when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers!"

Alien Cockroach: "Your proposal is acceptible"

Re:Overheard Spamford talking with alien cockroach

[harikiri]

MIB reference for those who can't place it.

Interesting tactics

[E IS mC(Square)]

Here is the link to the complaint filed by FTC.

The best part is the description of the tactics and messages used by the Spam king! Its stupid, but effective way to fool most of the surfers!

One advertisement mimics the "Notepad" feature of the IE web browser and displays a message stating:
If your NOTEPAD launched and is displaying this message. . . Then 'Spyware' programmers can ontrol applications on YOUR computer and it is URGENT that you download SPY WIPER immediately. Do not allow spyware programs to damage your insecure computer!! (See other window).
[Exhibit 1, as of August 30, 2004]
A separate advertisement causes the computer's CD-ROM tray to open and states:
FINAL WARNING ! !
If your cd-rom drive(s) open . . .
You DESPERATELY NEED to rid your system of spyware pop-ups IMMEDIATELY!
Spyware programmers can control your computer hardware if you failed to protect your computer right at this moment!

Re:Interesting tactics

[crimson30]

You DESPERATELY NEED to rid your system of spyware pop-ups IMMEDIATELY!

Makes me want to break into the Spam King's house in the middle of the night, wake him up, slap him around a bit and yell, "HOLY SHIT! SOMEONE JUST BROKE INTO YOUR HOUSE!".

Re:Interesting tactics

[Lord_Dweomer]

Yeah....but when you think about it, lots of advertising can be effective when you break advertising law.

I mean, who wouldn't buy a product that claimed to give you immortality, a 10" penis, the ability to sleep with a girl just by looking at her, and the ability to lose as much weight as you want by just eating junkfood. Thats why advertising law exists in the first place.

Re:Interesting tactics

[Lost Race]

He DESPERATELY NEEDS to be slapped around a bit IMMEDIATELY!

She misses *something*!

[teneighty]

I don't think she's missing you very much. She emails me several hundred times a day.

I do get a bit tired of her hints that I'm not, ahem... virile enough for her though.

...And Who Gets Hurt The Most By All The Spammers?

[Maxim Kovalenko]

Hormel ;)

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Anonymous Coward]

Relax, it's called hyperbole..

Do you think the OP is even *capable* of killing anyone?

Haven't you thought to yourself "I'd like to KILL that guy"? Which means "I want him out of my life/my house/my girlfriend" or whatever is appropriate.

He'll go to the Caymand Islands

[Man in Spandex]

I'm sure it won't be long until he moves to the Cayman Islands, buys a white suit, gains some pounds and answer a certain phonecall regarding one of his customer's transactions regarding enlargement pills.

Wallace: I'm sorry, I cannot divulge information about that customer's secret illegal account.
Oh crap. I shouldn't of said he was our customer.
Oh crap! I shouldn't of said it was a secret.
Oh crap! I certainly shouldn't of said it was illegal.
Ah.. it's too hot today.

Re:He'll go to the Caymand Islands

[Anonymous Coward]

good Simpsons ref... shoulda tagged it as such

Re:He'll go to the Caymand Islands

[crazy_pikachu]

hey do you hear that I am hearing a man quoting the simpsons with out the written consent of FOX Boadcasting company you know what we might just have to report you

Re:He'll go to the Caymand Islands

[Anonymous Coward]

Caymand Islands? Where they?

...I shouldn't of said... etc.etc.

English 101: shouldn't have (it's a verb)

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[hendridm]

What we need is to establish a spam czar and declare war on spammers.

Sombody needs

[Anonymous Coward]

To Punch this guy's ticket and collect all those frequent Spammer miles.

I don't get it...

[Game Genie]

I understand that only one person in several thousand has to reply in order for these scams to be profitable, but really who actually replies? Do any of you antually know any one who has given money to a spammer?

Re:I don't get it...

[fdrebin]

Actually, I know someone who responds to spam ads. Believe it or not, she was one of the best PC/Linux tech supports I ever met. Go figure.

If she didn't have MS now :( I'd have strangled her already.
/F

Re:I don't get it...

[MarcQuadra]

Where I work (a private school) the faculty like to take advantage of the 'discount software' spam. They ask us all the time if they should finally upgrade to XP by ordering it from the junk messages (at a huge discount), we tell them that if they order it from SPAM we won't support it.

A lot of them do it anyway, then they wonder why they get so much SPAM.

It really boils down to money for these people, if they think they can save $100 on Office XP or Norton Utilities they'll do it.

Re:I don't get it...

[hughk]

A lot of that software is pirated. It will work but may have upgrade issues. A proportion may be OEM, but a large number is just pirated.

Abdicates?

[Lusa]

.. and the Spam Prince sneaks in the middle of the night to take over punishing us poor folks.

Article

[obeythefist]

According to the article, he just said he wouldn't infect anyone with spyware or send spam to anyone... *unless* they had ever visited any of his websites or if he had "prior business dealings" with them. From a spammer, "prior business dealings" probably means "are on my email spam target list somewhere".

great.

[Anonymous Coward]

One guy stops. But what's with this new spam I am getting with fake bounced emails from servers? I had close to 400 emails today with various 'bounced' messages with convienent links to online perscription medications. I don't need a rolex, erection, or MORE porn.

Follow the Bouncing Malware!

[Cef]

The Internet Storm Centre's "Follow the Bouncing Malware" diary entries (written by Tom Liston) covers passthison.com (which belongs to Spamford). Quite a good read.

Following the Bouncing Malware: Part I
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-07-23

Following the Bouncing Malware: Part II
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-08-23

Following the Bouncing Malware: Part III
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-11-04

Following the Bouncing Malware: Part IV
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-11-24

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Burger King Agrees to Stop Burgering for Now.

Oh, please, we know when this is going to happen.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sanford,
How much would you pay to extend your life an extra year? How much have you already cost the world in wasted wages and enjoyment?

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Juanvaldes]

and then we can dream we will be as successful in the "War on SPAM(TM)" as we are in our "War on Terror(TM)" and "War on Drugs(TM)"

Here is another one

[billsoxs]

this is from a 'Phisher' - i.e a scam artist Their web site is http://www.luciu.com/wamu/ or http://217.76.130.83/wamu/ They are faking a Washington Mutual website to steal peoples bank info I keep getting trash from them so I have gone to the web site and taken revenge. (writing un printables) It feels good I just wish I knew how to hack in and really trash the thing.

An alternative solution

[fdrebin]

For you Law Enforcement types out there, you must realize that my tongue is (mostly) in cheek, but:

Remember all those old retired CIA 'specialists' from Cold War days? Maybe we can find, um, new assignments for them...

/F

Spam.. still.. spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wonder how people are still able to get money off of Spam these days.

I man, who's going to "find the url" and actually go out and paste it in a browser... and.. well buy medicine from.. this? (knowing many users wouldn't just be able to "see" the url with all the anti-filter garbage.)

eg:

79677638703044687127907151637602811282915263422965 0079600430659314218801902355121 1[1-40 6151133775630116247083022322109367 38191542232 575523056195572233556 2[1-40
÷cIâLI

L
I
N
K
gio.uuhjkjj.com




95052693322348009750710554747926 314674488549163423281759941 713013625979334689512 109630598747141156

death

[crazy_pikachu]

HE'S A WITCH, KILL HIM!!!

It was all a lie!

[moe613]

So does this mean that hot lesbians *dont* really want my c*ck? It was all a lie!

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[pipingguy]

Now, now, let's not be too harsh. What career opportunities exist for reformed spammers? No, seriously. We should be looking at rehabilitating them, possibly in a role that is inversely proportional to the annoyance and frustration that they have collectively foisted on the billions that they have plagued.

PS Does my use of the word, "foist" earn extra points?

hmm...

[Baka_kun]

here i was sitting wondering how come my mail amount had decreased by 50% the last day.... thank god for slashdot....

thought it was more of an autonomous collective...

[billstewart]

oh, come on now, do I really need a message body after you hand me a straight line like that?

Anyway, no, spammers don't have anyone in charge, though there seem to be about 200 big bad actors who contribute most of it, plus a large number of anklebiters.

what USA law says?

[netdur]

"Sanford Wallace has agreed to stop spamming" you mean "Sanford Wallace has FORCED to stop spamming" and "Richboro, Pa" it's USA... why not jail for him? didn't break the law anyway?

Re:what USA law says?

[gregmckone]

So how does USA law get imposed on the Internet. The Internet is not an american property. DARPA was. The Internet may have started in the US, but it was International long before it was commercially "mainstream" in the states... It was educational, linking Universities worldwide who sold access to others (before the ISPs got on board).

So if the USA says he can't spam etc... how is that enforced? Does he simply register a company in some foreign nation like Mexico and continue on as if nothing changed? It wasn't me, it was a company that is at arms length...

Ideas?
Greg.

umm...

[Sheepdot]

At best this is a precursor of things to come, and at worst it's a nice break.

The day we stop spammers is the day we stop file traders. I'd rather keep both. I can mitigate spam.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[XSforMe]

Guys, I know spammers are not nice people, but *please* make sure you do not sign his business address (11 Farmington Road, Rochester, New Hampshire 03867. (extracted from the FTC complaint)) for any sweepstakes, printed catalogs, gay literature or any other thing that might overload his postal address.

After all, spammers have already expressed their discontent with this practice, and Im certain none of us would like to upset these outstanding individuals any further.

Again, that is 11 Farmington Road, Rochester, New Hampshire 03867.

Kevin Mitnick

[dexomn]

If the federal prosecutors should add up all the bandwidth and PC 'repair' costs that this gentleman has accumulated/inflicted upon Joe-Sixpack-Walmart-HP(and those who paid way too much for a Dell), he would end up in federal prison for approximately 5,734 years without trial. The sad thing is that he didn't even do anything useful or interesting.

...and in related news...

[rjch]

The AP is reporting that so called "Spam King" Sanford Wallace has agreed to stop spamming...

...and in related news, the RIAA promises not to sue you for any P2P activity if you contact them with your name, address, contact details and an apology.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that you don't get hundreds of spam just "that day", you get it every day. What if your house was burglarized every day, and by the same person? And what if millions of other people were also burglerized by that person every day? And what if that person forced millions of kids to look at pornography? And what if that person took over thousands of houses without the homeowners' knowledges and used them as a base to launch his burglaries? Don't you think that the world would be a much better place if someone were to initiate violence against that person of sufficient savagery that that person's normal biological processes ceased and were replaced by the biological process known as "a rotting, festering corpse that got what it deserved"?

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Lord_Dweomer]

"PS Does my use of the word, "foist" earn extra points?"

Well, seeing as how you were modded down a point by the time I clicked reply...no.

Agreed?

[Anne Thwacks]

Hopefully he also consented to death by lethal injection.

Personally, I believe that cruel and inhuman torture would be more appropriate.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[IngramJames]

and then we can dream we will be as successful in the "War on SPAM(TM)" as we are in our "War on Terror(TM)" and "War on Drugs(TM)"

As long as it involves invading another country and re-electing a nazi, I don't see what your problem is.

Free E - Mail Accounts, Oops they are growing!!

[Indian Joe]

Companies like yahoo, rediffmail and google increaed their Email Account size at the right moment - in the wake of the glory of SPAM - when SPAM floods your inbox causing havoc and preventing impoartant mails from turning in to your inbox.

I guess Email providers noticed this phenomenon and as a sign of good gesture, increased the space instead as we are unfortunately on the losing side in the war against SPAM

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[armb]

> What career opportunities exist for reformed spammers?

Reactor shielding?

New Slashdot Poll!

[955301]

What else should the Sanford Wallace should stop doing:
1. Pro-creating.
2. Wearing his seatbelt.
3. Looking both ways before crossing the street.
4. Complaining about all of those unexplained magazine subscriptions.
5. Breathing.
6. CowboyNeal.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Ernesto Alvarez]

I've been googling around, and I've found that the address given by the parent post is listed as an automobile dealership.

Check it out, it's the fifth on the right column

Could someone check that?

We are looking for beta users

[jmilgram]

We are looking for beta users to test out a secure communications platform we developed called allAware Secure. It runs on mainframe computers using Linux Virtual Servers and grid technology. Go to http://www.allaware.com to sign-up. The platform is spam, spoof, and phish free. Testers get a free allAware Secure mouse pad.

Re:We are looking for beta users

[cburley]

Go to http://www.allaware.com to sign-up

Hmm -- tempting, but, no thanks. No evidence of privacy policy, no information on what makes the platform "spam, spoof, and phish free", and so on.

Just not clear enough what it is all about. Sorry!

Re:We are looking for beta users

[jmilgram]

Understand... we won't be able to talk to why this platform is unique until April or May, although mainframes, Linux Virtual servers and grid technology might give a general idea. We've had almost 100 sign-ups so far from a banner ad on Insecure.org - site of the Nmap security scanning tool. You are right about the privacy policy though...we will add that in the next several days. If you change your mind, we'd love to get your feedback on the beta client. Thanks!

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[XSforMe]

Actually, it seems to be a typo. According to Beranger Volkswagen Car Dealership Webpage their business address is 20 Farmington Rd (check the "about us" tab).

Could Hormel sue for brand dilution...

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL but,

Shouldn't the maker of SPAM go after all of these spammers?
(If he really is the Spam King he should be able to eat 600 cans in less than 5 minutes.)

Such a tasty spicy canned ham!

The Three Laws of Spambotics

[Lost Race]

The rules of spam

Yeah, it's grown a bit beyond three. #0 and #4 were added later. Didn't Asimov do something like that too?

Noo!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of those poor neutrons.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[mink]

As someone who used usenet long before slashdot was even an idea, death is too good for him.
Maybe a fight to the death with usenet's other bane, head of the UFF, John Grubor

Alright who the moron buy stuff using spam

[ZeroReality]

two reason spam is everywhere.

1) it is real cheap to send large amount of email.

2) people are dump enough not only to respond to the email but to actualy buy something.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4084871.stm/

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[UpnAtom]

You got hundreds of spam that day. So did millions of other people from the same spammers.

Add together the collective cost of stress, lost time, lost emails, support & software costs, you might say death was too good for them.

Spamming spamers

[lordbja]

OK here is and idea to end spam... Someone needs to find out the physical addresses of mass spammers and post it up on /. then all the pissed off people here on /. can print off each spam e-mail they receive and post them to these addresses. Maybe include a covering note stating that you no longer wish to receive further unsolicited mail and that any further mail sent will be returned... yours may be morn colourful though.
Note. Do not provide a return address!!!!!!!
Spam e-mail is a pain but you can always just delete it but what do you do with a mountain of spam on your lawn :)
They send mail to our personal addresses I dont see why we cant do the same.

Re:Spamming spamers

[gregmckone]

Posting mail at $.50 per letter here in Canada would hardly be economically enticing for spam victims... People collectively would have to spend $1000s of dollars to send him that much mail.

However signing the offenders up for free trial subscriptions etc... That might work.
Of course there is still the cost of ones time. Today I had fun for an hour with spamVampire, but usually spam fighting isn't fun and shouldn't take up much of my time.

Greg.

Someone I know lives right near this guy!

[DragonHawk]

I was pretty much ignoring this story (knowing that he will just start right back up again) until I heard that his place of business is in Barrington, NH. I know people who live in that town. So I do a Google search and find that his address in the legal complaint is:

495 Route 9
Barrington, NH

That's within a few minutes walk of these people. Just down the street. They practically live next door to him!

My $DEITY. I don't know what I would do if I found out I was living next door to Sanford "Spamford" Wallace, but I expect I would have serious problems curbing violent tendencies. As it is, I'm fighting the urge to go visit those people and do something nasty on the way by this guy's place.

Hit spammers in the pocket book non-destructively

[gregmckone]

Fun with spam.
Don't be malicious, we don't want the web to be like that, but do make a point of using an automated tool to "educate" spammers that spam won't be tolerated by the community.

If they give a URL. Use a tool like spamVampire to "visit" their site for what seems reasonable (10MB of bandwidth)... Then leave it alone for the rest of the spammed to take their turn visiting.

If they use a real - non disposable email address you can send them your auto-reply "this looks like spam, don't let this happen again. Because receiving unsolicited email is not very fun" You could use your webserver to spoof the sending address (use theirs) and let the mailer script send them several hundred copies of the email reply so they are sure to read it and understand that it really isn't not random email, but is actually intended for them.

Phone Numbers.
If they use a toll-free number, use a dialer program or script to call their number (try it in person first to make sure you aren't harassing the inocent because of a typo. If you get a real person tell them how you feel about spam. If you get a voicemail system inevitably there will be an "incorrect" button on your phone which will require the message to start all over again and explain which button you SHOULD HAVE PRESSED..(dumb users) OOPS.. look we're starting again... and again and again. I actually had fun with spam today dialing the following number (yes this has been verified, feel free to try it out :-) )

*67 - hide your number
1866 - avoid paying long distance
, - wait a sec
0 - invalid keystroke that replays message
= - 1-2 Minutes of phone time.

*6718663223376,,,0,,,,0,,,,0,,,,0,,,,0,,,,0,,,,0 ,, ,,0,,,,0,,,,0,,,,0,,,,0

Greg.

Re:"Spamford" Wallace has promised to stop before.

[Ernesto Alvarez]

I'm glad you checked (haven't thought about checking the webpage, I should have known better).

It gives you some peace of mind knowing that we're not ./ some innocent guy's mailbox.