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Whatever Happened To Sanford "Spamford" Wallace?
Tackhead writes "People of a certain age — the age before email filters were effective, may remember a few mid-90s buzzwords like 'bulletproof hosting' and 'double opt-in.' People may remember that Hormel itself conceded that although 'SPAM' referred to their potted meat product, the term 'spam' could refer to unsolicited commercial email. People may also remember AGIS, Cyberpromo, Sanford 'Spam King' Wallace, and Walt Rines. Ten years after a 2003 retrospective on Rines and Wallace, Ars Technica reminds us that the more things change, the more they stay the same."
ytcracker may not be a household name, or as well known known as Wallace, but he is the undisputed spam rap king. If ytc taught me anything, it is that every time a spammer is taken down, there are plenty more ready to take his place. The fact is that, even today, spam pays. Until people suddenly wisen up and stop falling for scams and stop being receptive to advertising in general, there will continue to be spam. Spam pays, folks, and leads to hacking.
Number one thing most spammers are most excited about right now: Microsoft's pledge to soon screw people who are still happy with/stuck on Windows XP. You think botnets are bad now, wait until M$ completely stops patching XP. I can't wait to cash in.
He's in debt to the courts for millions, fails to show up for his court appearances and has repeatedly returned to a life of crime. It's not even as if his lawyer is getting him off. He's a continual recidivist and shows no intention of reforming his ways. Even if the cases themselves were merely civil disputes, his failure to live up his court-ordered responsibilities should have consequences.
Why isn't this jackass in jail yet? He's far more deserving than some poor punk who had the bad luck to get caught with a baggie of pot in his pocket.
Americas problem isn't even its sky-high incarceration rate.
It's problems lie is its viciously individualistic culture that entertains no notion of collection action or responsibility; tolerance of regulatory capture; and tolerance of conflicts of interest. This is all enabled by popular myths that pervade American culture, that anybody can get rich if they work hard enough, and that all poor people, by extension, are cunts.
Deal with the conflict-of-interest issue, and then things like the commercial, for-profit school-to-jail pipeline will eventually take care of themselves.
If you thing SPF as made a difference to the amount of spam being sent I have a bridge to sell you.
SPF was never about preventing spam. It has only ever been about preventing your email address being used as the from address in spam. It reduces the amount of blowback to your account and nothing else. The only reason SPF appears to be a effective anti-spam tool is that there is that the number of sites filtering using SPF hasn't risen to the level where the spammers need to stop using SPF protected address as the from addresses.
Another thing SPF does is cause spammers to use hijacked credentials to send spam through legitimate sources.
This shouldn't be seen as a reason to stop using SPF records. But if you think SPF will stop spam you are deluding yourself.