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Spammer Alan Ralsky Indicted
Several users have written to tell us that notorious spammer Alan Ralsky has been indicted along with ten others on 41 counts of spam-related illegal activity. Ralsky has had trouble with the law in the past, and the current litany of charges includes mail and wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and violation of federal spamming laws. From the Detroit Free Press:
"The 41-count indictment said Ralsky ... and others used unsolicited e-mail to pump up the price of largely worthless stock in Chinese companies and sold the stock reaping huge profits and leaving Internet subscribers who purchased it holding the bag. The operation also used illegal methods to maximize the amount of spam that could be sent while evading spam-blocking devices and tricked recipients into opening and acting on advertisements, prosecutors said."
Spam has steadily increased on my server to where it is 98%+ of all mail. Virus mail is about 1% so real legitimate email is now less than one per cent of mail. Real mail is just an impurity in the spam stream.
It's crazy and it keeps increasing month after month. It has cost my company thousands of dollars in equipment, tech support and other manpower costs, lost business, and user bad-will for delayed or filtered mail. When you spread that around to all the other mail systems out there, it is clear that spammers have been doing some real damage.
When someone does catch one, they should go medieval on them. In our enlightened times this means mega-fines and long jail terms in the worst prisons that can be found but honestly I would not be bothered by putting their heads on pikes as an example for what happens when you screw over millions of people.