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International Spam Ring Shut Down
smooth wombat writes "An international spam ring with ties to Australia, New Zealand, China, India, and the US is in the process of being shut down. Finances of members in the US are being frozen using the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 while the FBI is pursuing criminal charges. The group sent spam advertising male enhancement herbs and other items using a botnet estimated at 35,000 computers, and able to send 10 billion emails per day. The Federal Trade Commission monitored the group's finances and found that they had cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone."
"Of spammy ring"
In the shower we sing,
While suds we fling,
Cleanshaven chin bring...
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
An international spam ring with ties to Australia, New Zealand, China, India, and the US is in the process of being shut down.
China: > 1 billion people.
India: > 1 billion people.
USA: > 300 million people.
Australia: > 21 million people.
New Zealand: > 4 million people.
But the most important thing, we got mentioned!
bash$
Your post advocates a
( ) technical (x) 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
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) 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
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) 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
(x) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
(x) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) 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
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth 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
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
(x) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
(x) 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!
Does anybody know how exactly this spam works?
Say I own a widget company...i want to sell my widgets!! I know of this thing called "internet" that a lot of people are using, and decide that I need to utilize it to sell my widgets.
Do I just google for "email marketing"? Do I contact an advertisement agency?
Is there ANY sort of legitimacy involved in spam trafficking?
Do these spammers operate like real live businesses? Can I demand statistics on penetration from them? Do they have offices with receptionists and accountants and shitty corporate art?
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
If you still have a small penis, simply get a notarized note from your doctor stating it is so, and you can get your money back!
My favorite recent scam (not TFA mentioned above), as reported in the press:
Marge, get me a dozen cans of Spam and your Bundt pan...
Investigators broke the case with a tip from the spam maps.
I'm still trying to figure out how they know that I have a small penis...
In a few years when everyone upgrades to security hardened Windows Vista it will mark the end of spam rings and botnets.
At those rates, for a comfortable living, I could either work 2 weeks out of the year, or work year round and go into full retirement after about 3 years.
The thing that I would really like to know is where all the idiots that buy from spam are. I could easily sell off a few of my surplus bridges and retire.
Note - Liberal use of <sarcasm> tags may or may not need to be applied.
It's the people who have difficulty with penetration who are spending all that money on those pills...
Three Rings spamming the Elven-kings for Cialis to buy,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords to refinance their home of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men lacking in size,
One for the Dark Lord reading his pr0n
In the Land of Mordor where the Spammers lie.
One Ring to spam them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to fleece them all and in their greed bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Spammers lie.
John
Slashdotters don't have a lot of motivation for curing STDs, or you would have got the Informative mod instead of just Funny. However, I did manage to cure my carpal tunnel syndrome with spare condoms and breath mints. And I'm probably not the only one here.
Dugg for 'making love'.
mediocrity rules, man
why would a company pay spammers to send out emails if it doesn't make them money?
I'm glad you asked. You see... I was once like you; confused and uninformed. I worked a 9-5 dead end job. But then I discovered the miracle of "unsolicited guerrilla electronic advertising" and made millions! Wouldn't YOU like to be like ME?!
For the first time ever, I'm willing to let you in on the secrets to my success with my spr0cket-Style Spam Success Strategy. To keep this offer exclusive, I have to charge you $2000 for the kit. But you'll make that back in the first HOUR of working at home, as you learn to apply the spr0cket-Style Spam Success Strategy!
I will even throw in a 3month supply of Herbal Pants Enchancers absolutely FREE. Could I afford to do this if my system wasn't successful?
Order today.
How can you make a Burma Shave joke on Slashdot, where most of the users were born at least a decade after the last sign came down?
Besides, the name of the country has changed since then:
Go back to your wretched hive of scum and villany... digger!
Slashdot is too nerdy for me.
You could use spam "Super Brain Cleaners - they make you SMARTER!"
They come in .22, .357. and ultra deluxe .50 sizes.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Maybe to apply for a credit card, instead of beiing age>=18*, there should be a gullible test.
Did you know that the word "gullible" was omitted from the most recent version of the Oxford English Dictionary? Fact.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
WTF you didn't provide a link to the product?
Okay, the $400K/month was all from me. But you should see the size of my penis now. (Actually, you can. Just look out the window; I'm blocking the sun with it.)
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Bust a couple spam rings Sieze the customer list Send each customer a free sample of cyanide-- labeled "Viagra" The market dries up Less customers means less money flowing to scummy companies. Less money flowing to them means less money being given to spammers. No money in spamming means people stop spamming. And for the inevitable and snarky "here's why your idea won't work list" post to follow: I know that it isn't legal. That's why your hire a plausible deniability, like a merc company, to do it for you. Geez.
Facist! That reeks like something that would happen in Nazi Germany.
Send them LSD instead!
No, I will not work for your startup