Slashdot Mirror
Russian Anti-Spam Advisor Accused of Spamming
Keith noted that Krebs has an interesting story on a Russian businessman being accused of running a spam ring while serving as an anti-spam adviser to the Russian government. It's a strange tale including an investigation in 2007 that was abandoned when the chief investigator was actually hired to work for the spammer. Not suspicious at all, no way.
CEO of ChronoPay, the ultra shady payment "processor" that functioned more like an account hijacker. Looking to partner with Paypal for Russian transactions as well as online Sino-Russian transactions.
If you used the illegitimate MP3 site allofmp3.com you may want to investigate whether or not your transaction went through Chronopay as they might have retained a copy of your records *cough* *cough*. Krebs outed this guy in the first report and Vrublevsky tried to play it off like someone higher was trying to drag his name through the mud for political reasons. I don't need anymore accusations: Vrublevsky's a crook.
My work here is dung.
In Soviet Russia, anti-spam advisor spams you!
In Soviet Russia.... oh wait. Someone else beat me to it. Damn.
Someone who has successfully operated a spam business will understand spam a lot better than someone who has not.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
... make money.
As much as some people like to think otherwise the simple truth of spam is that spammers send spam to make money. And this guy was just taking it to another level; he was working to improve the rate at which his spam gets through. This really shouldn't surprise anyone who has one iota of sense regarding how spam works and why it actually exists.
Hell we could actually call this "a victory for western capitalism in Russia". Alternately you could say he is just a newer iteration of Viktor Bout.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...they managed to find someone that actually knows what he is talking about. I mean, if you want a spam expert, how can you beat a successful spammer?
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
IronPort used to play both sides of the street back in 2002. They sold rackmount "spam filter" boxes, and they also sold, er, "email delivery appliances". These included mechanisms for using hundreds of different IP addresses, to avoid triggering spam filters. IronPort was also behind "Bonded Spammer", a scheme where they paid ISPs to whitelist their spam. They even bought SpamCop and built Bonded Spammer into it.
Cisco finally bought IronPort, and they got out of the spamming business. Bonded Spammer lives on as ReturnPath. If you have anything to do with mail processing, it's worth understanding how to identify ReturnPath email (the IP address is tagged in DNS) so it can be moved to the "bulk" folder. If you use SpamAssassin, it comes with a big negative value for ReturnPath emails to get them through filters. Change that to +2 or so; if somebody paid to use ReturnPath, they're a bulk sender.
You know what the difference is between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to things like this?
Democrats don't run their campaigns talking about how gays will ruin the sanctity of marriage.
I honestly don't care what politicians do behind closed doors. You want to cheat on your wife? You go right ahead, that's a problem between you and your family. But if you campaign by talking about how marriage must be protected because it is sacred, and then you violate that sanctity, it becomes my business.
Living With a Nerd
That's the same kind of "moral equivalence" that labels the Gulf oil spill as "Obama's Katrina". It's not the same thing!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
See, here's the difference: In America, the government guys are a bunch of crooks. In Russia, the crooks are a bunch of government guys.
I am officially gone from