Thankfully the goverment no longer opts for the lowest bidder. While cost is a factor it is no longer the deciding factor. The manufacturers ability, reputation, technical designs (if applicable) as well a host of other factors goes into the decision making process. The original reason for choosing the lowest bidder was centered around government corruption surrounding contracts. I think that they have made the correct decision in choosing the best bid and not necessarily the lowest. A good example of this is the Joint Strike fighter which will be used by all military branches. Lockheed Martin took calculated risks to overcome management, design difficulties that ultimately landed it the contract.
From the article
"The Lockheed Martin team is the winner of the Joint Strike Fighter program on the best value basis," US Air Force Secretary James Roche said.
There is an excellent article about the risks that Lockheed to to win the contract, but I can't find it on the net.
The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said. The Yorktown's Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the data field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the database to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote terminal units, the memo said.
And a little bit later in the article
"If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally is immune to the character of the data it processes," he wrote in the June U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings Magazine. "Your $2.95 calculator, for example, gives you a zero when you try to divide a number by zero, and does not stop executing the next set of instructions. It seems that the computers on the Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure."
Doing a quick google search (technology, disaster history), I found this story with this headline
Twenty-five years ago, the greatest disaster in airline history killed 538 people, in part because of a "heterodyne" radio glitch that still hasn't been fixed.
Looks like Seattle schools are going to have the same problem as you.
From the article
Call Eric Harrison at the Multnomah Educational Service District in Portland, Ore. Since 1997, Harrison has been developing networks based on the free Linux operating system. His latest project links 40 older PCs to a single set of software applications running on a central Linux server computer. The cost: $200 a seat vs. $1,500 a seat for PCs running Microsoft, he says.
Based on the reports coming out of Philadelphia schools if you are considering moving from Microsoft to Linux they may think it's time to do an internal audit of your machines to make sure that you have a license for every box.
Sorry, based on this Register article titled "Microsoft 'killed Dell Linux' - States you are wrong. Pressure from Microsoft similar to what Be experienced help push Linux off Dell desktops.
I frankly like this idea. But it stinks a bit of socialism and communism. Let me explain. I am an anabased pirate, I love my music videos etc and I love getting them for free simply because it is easier than paying for them. Plus I prefer the digital format, it's much easier to find a movie that I just DL and play it rather than hunting for a DVD. A pay when you want to pay model simply doesn't work, there are simply too many people like me around who are willing to get things for free. But if a cost was transferred to the providers of this technology, artist would be compensated. We already see this kind of thing in surcharges/taxes whatever on blank CD to help cover the cost of piracy (only people on the/. community know about that little nugget). I know that artist, as well as programmers need to be compensated. Intellectual property is not generated for free. This brings us to the distribution issue.
How would we know how to pay each artist?
I would have no problem with this fee as long as it reasonable. But how is the money distributed is the big issue. Who gets to decide who gets how much and why. Who sits on that pool of money dooling it out. Have you seen a family fighting over an estate?
If this proposal were to go through we would likely have a quasi-governmental agency in charge of talent, giving out money from this pool, while the masses of computer users (perhaps pirates) pay a talent tax so that they can download all they want. How would we measure the traffic? Would this agency try to encode some information into the file to measure how many times something was transferred within Kazaa's network. Would there be a floor amount of money that would be paid to artist because they are part of this consortium? It seems simpler to "Pay the artist" but there will inevitably be a middle man to deal with.
C:"What!? Cingular is banning phone sex?"
S:"No, they may be censoring your ability to download porn via their wireless web."
C:"Does this mean I can still call cowboyNeal and fantasize about his feet?"
S:"Yes."
C:"Woohoo, go Cingular."
Nadine's Address Escapes Into the General Domain of Spamming Scum
Before the messages below arrived, there was still a slim but tangible pretense that this stream of offal was some how "opt-in". The senders sent from their own equipment at [relatively] stable IP addresses; most of the senders were contactable by one means or another. Some of them even made detectable efforts to be legitimate, ethical businesses. Some of those appear to have failed more through lack of competence than lack of ethics (although it is important to note that the net effect is the same, in the end).
Such is not the case with the senders in this section.
Demonstrably they are fully aware that
Their material is unwanted. The addresses they send to are largely scraped from public forums such as Usenet newsgroups, web pages and user profiles -- places where people reveal their email addresses with no expectation whatever that they will become the victims of postage-due electronic advertisers. System owners will take measures to block their transmissions.
With this set of facts in mind, they take steps to evade, whenever possible, efforts to stop them from blowing their trash into people's mailboxes. These steps include
Sending from "throw-away" dial-up accounts. Eventually enough complaints will arrive at the dialup provider that the account they are using will be deactivated for network abuse. But they expect this, and have opened a large number of such accounts; when one account is cancelled, they merely proceed on to the next. Hijacking email servers -- there are still many email servers that will allow anybody to use them to send email. By setting their spewing software to send through these open relays, spammers gain several benefits, chief amongst which is that they can consume someone else's bandwidth to do their dirty work. By rotating their spews through a large number of servers, they increase the likelihood that they will be able to bypass countermeasures in place at their targets' providers. Adding "filter busters" (strings of nonsense characters) to the subjects and bodies of their messages, in the hope of confusing filters that look for known spam messages.
The "AmyWilson@btamail.net.cn" Spammer
Messages with this "From:" address (and multitudes from other addresses taking the form "[some female name with surname]@btamail.net.cn") have arrived here before, all sent to addresses that either were scraped from Usenet posts or were the targets of spammers before honet.com was even registered as a domain.
In this case, we see a message with classic "spammer" hallmarks -- origination from a dialup, sent through hijacked servers. It claims to have been sent on behalf of Sonix Systems, LLC, an AT&T wireless dealer.
Random spam through ptt.ru
Those who track spammers as a hobby or a full-time job will recognize a number of familiar things here, assuming they want to wade through atrocious quoted-printable-mangled HTML.
Inept Pump-and-Dump Stock Scam from optinservices.com
Here we have an exceptionally incompetent attempt at shady activity. First, the spammer unwisely chose to steal relay services from a Korean server that failed to mask the sending IP address (65.213.157.9), which belongs to optinservices.com, supposedly in Pompano Beach, FL. Then, the HTML payload appears to have been prepared with Microsoft Word, which inserts abominable amounts of cruft but also embeds intriguing information, including the apparent original author's names, which in this case appear to be "Natalie Morgen" and "ECogen". Finally, it was sent with an unreachable domain, offers4utoday.com, in the envelope sender; this will cause lots of well-run systems to reject it immediately. As spammers go, this lot are not leading the league.
And of course, in keeping with the Sacred Traditions of Spamming, the usual "Murkowski" S1618 disclaimer demands that we accept this piece as legitimate communication, even though this legislation was never enacted into law (and even if it had been, this spam doesn't actually comply with it).
Wanting to share the joys this gem has brought, I sent a copy to the "enforcement" mailbox at sec.gov. Perhaps they will find it valuable.
4optinonly.com: The Buffoonery Continues
The next day after the optinservices.com fiasco, we hear directly from 4optinonly.com, the domain that appeared in the "remove from list" link above. Oddly enough the sending server called itself "optinservicesco" when it connected here, even though its IP address carries the whimsical name "optin2.4optinonly.com". Ah, well, at least both of the supposed senders are named "Debra" and they both tell us that Nadine is a subscriber to the eNetwork mailing list.
The overwhelming impressions of honesty and competence here would certainly motivate me to seek an unsecured gold card through their ministrations. I'd probably make some investments, too. Yep.
13-Mar-2002: Not wanting to leave any doubt about who was responsible for the first stock fraud missive, but keen to clean up the MS-Word-to- HTML disaster, they resend a less-crufty version of the original not-from-a-Kim-and-Eddie-Marin-IP tout. Oofta. Hyphen city.
Then on 26 Mar 2002 the menagerie is augmented by a piece from addmeat.com/addmeat.net for quickenloans.quicken.com, and on 29 Mar 2002 a new but still MS-Word-cruft-infested version of the LKNG pump-and-dump stock tout.
The Post-delivere/MatchLogic Late Comers: New Hogs At the Trough
How the list[s] containing Nadine's supposed email address propagated from here on is a matter of conjecture. None of the items received from this point on mention any of the original culprits. It may be that financial challenges accompanying the general bursting of the net.fantasyland bubble caused fire sales of various magnitudes.
Ombramarketing.com
First amongst the new gathering shadows was Ombra Marketing Corp., who began to bombard Nadine with a variety of offers on 18 April, 2001. They sent an average of four blasts per month. They are currently in the local deny lists, and are discussed in a number of other areas of the World Wide Web, for example here.
itsImazing: Is It a Threat or Merely a Menace?
Cometh now the "itsImazing.com Network" by and through its first spewer, (apparently) ted2.net. Especially touching are the parts that thank Nadine for "registering at www.mindsetinteractive.com", proclaiming that these valuable messages will only infest the mailboxes of those "...who have specifically requested or agreed to receive our special offers...". Who can imagine the spewage that might occur should the senders be minded to send their stuff to just any old address? (NOTE: on 13 December 2001 I personally began receiving itsImazing spew from etoll.net, directed to an address used only for registering Palm Pilot software. Time to update the deny list.)
Rumors on various anti-spam forums were that the "ted2" operation encountered some difficulties in maintaining its network connectivity. This is plausible, because subsequent detritus has issued from m-ul.com and TargitMail (see below). We did get one subsequent delivery attempt from ted2.net on 21 December 2001.
m-ul.com are currently in the local block list, but these stout-hearted troupers were not dismayed by this minor contretemps -- until 16-Jan-2002 they continued to exhibit earnest hope that eventually I would let them back in to molest Nadine.
Hah.
Meanwhile, the itsImazing menagerie continues to expand, with coopt.com making its long-expected arrival on 23 December 2001. itsImazing appears also to have attempted to sneak in on 27 December 2001 through the facilities of virtumundo.com. On 17 Jan 2002, PO-1.COM began their spew on behalf of itsImazing.
On 20-Feb-2002 Nadine heard from gossipflash.com. Oh joy. Yet another threat of more "exciting promotional offers".
Without a helpful local deny list, Nadine would be receiving several itsImazing announcements per day. Imazingly prolific and persistent folks.
The Grouplotto Flood
On the same day as the first itsImazing blast came not one but two vital messages from "Grouplotto", sent from networkpromotion.com. This was just the nose of the camel, as more than thirty messages containing the string "grouplotto" arrived between that date and 12 December 2001. (This does not take into account the ones that would have arrived had the senders not been blocked.)
Grouplotto are apparently more resourceful than some of the other contenders, since they appear to share their databases amongst an agglomeration of senders with diverse offerings (although itsImazing definitely gives them some crushing competition here).
Senders and product types identified so far include:
networkpromotion.com -- Gambling (what else?) and a special product (see below). etracks.com -- Consumer products (phones, Motorola Talkabout radios, VISA cards, satellite TV systems, digital camera [oops, that's a premium for switching long distance service], a sports wagering system, foreclosed merchandise, DVDs from Columbia House, and a "Start A Profitable Home Business and Become Rich Using the Internet" opportunity that would have been hard to pass up. And one additional product, also sent from networkpromotion, which deserves its own separate section below. ProcessRequest.com -- only one from them got through before they were chucked into the deny list: an offer for the American Express(R) Platinum Cash Rebate Card. They made two more tries on 12 December 2001, then nothing more arrived until 10 February 2002, when the envelope sender was "reedscienc@ProcessRequest.com".
All of the senders above are in the local deny list, so there may be other valuable commodities on offer that Nadine will never hear about, at least not from the Grouplotto Borg. etracks.com made multiple tries nearly every day until 13-Feb-2002. networkpromotion.com tried a little less frequently and apparently gave up after 26-Jan-2002.
Miss Cleo's Psychic Insight Blows a Fuse
The GroupLotto product singled out for special treatment was a series of breathlessly vital disclosures from Miss Cleo.
She Who Knows All was so convinced of Nadine's existence that she took the trouble to send a personal note. A short time later, apparently unfazed by the lack of response, Miss Cleo sent another enticing missive.
Perhaps the puzzling lack of response (should we assume that psychics can be puzzled?) led Miss Cleo to send a poorly formatted rerun of Message Two, this time through networkpromotion.com rather than etracks.com.
Who can fathom the mysterious ways of the Gifted? Gumshoes in Florida, perhaps?
TargitMail (GTMI, Walt Rines)
Here we have a true relic of the rip-roaring early days of unsolicited broadcast email. I will make no comments, other than to suggest that the reader who wants to know more may submit the strings "Walt Rines", "IEMMC" and "picklejar" to www.google.com and especially to Google's Usenet Newsgroup search engine, looking in the news.admin.net-abuse.* groups.
TargitMail began sending itsImazing stuff from various tm0[digit].net addresses on 28 November 2001, beginning with tm03.net. They subsequently have sent from tm01.net, tm02.com and tm04.com as well. All of these domains are in the deny list. They made their last successful delivery on 09 Jan 2002 with a nice itsImazing offer of great deals from Fingerhut, sent from the heretofore-not-blocked tm02.com. They were last seen in the server logs on 09 Feb 2002.
customoffers.com
As uninvited spewers go, customoffers.com is pretty unremarkable. They first showed up on 9 November 2001 and managed to blap in 17 messages before I finally blocked them. Like most of the others, however, being rejected with a "553 Depart Ye Cursed Spammers" message initially did not impress their infrastructure.
They appeared to have given up after 22 Dec 2001, but then something arrived from the Scott Hirsch operation claiming to be an advertisement for stuff from Sears.
em5000.com, em5000.net
On 28 November 2001 em5000.com began sending touts for ImazingOffers, winfreestuff, ItsAllAboutGreatOffers, Chase Manhattan Bank, gambling and college scholarships. Five messages in three days caused them immediate admission to the elite ranks of the blocked.
There is reason to believe that this was not the only list they have ended up in, as they changed IP blocks and reappeared as em5000.net, managing to slip two more in on 12 December before I noticed and updated their listing. Like so many others, they tried frequently for quite a spell.
02-Feb-2002: They are now using a new envelope sender, jdrmedia1.net
11-Feb-2002: This time they have decided to abandon even the pretense of using a valid envelope sender, and claim to be something "@bounce.37.121.144". This would appear to be a seriously dim move, given the number of systems that now refuse mail from an invalid envelope sender. But then, the whole operation seems to be characterised by a significant lack of wattage.
intervolved.net
This player sent the usual "thanks for signing up with us" note in late November, 2001. I am personally fascinated by the "if you don't opt out, you have agreed to our terms" bit. I'm also somewhat intrigued by their "This message is not intended for anybody living in a state that has an anti-spam law" clause. What do you suppose that means?
They went into the bozo bin after the third blast on 04 Dec 2001 and were last heard from on 06 Feb 2002.
ixs1.net, ixs2.net
Before joining the Chorus of the Banned, this domain pair sent Nadine four "winfreestuff.com" adverts, beginning with this one, in which the senders claim that Nadine visited their web site and entered a sweepstakes.
I suppose it is indeed possible that the real "Nadine" was still giving out the same wrong email address 613 days after committing the first error. Personally, I have confidence that she would by this time have noticed that nobody ever responded (at least not in a way that she could observe).
After a long hiatus, they made another attempt on 11-Jan-2002.
ROI1.NET (Img Direct)
Their first one is a keeper: entirely HTML, work-from-home opportunity, web tracking bugs. Plucky though blocked, they kept trying until 11 Feb 2002.
oii1.net, oi2.net, oihost.net (Optin Inc)
The first piece is an IMPORTANT NOTICE reminding Nadine that "per our TOS (Terms of Service), you wisely agreed to receive third party promotions from our network's preferred affiliates". I was so overawed by a mention of Terms of Service from this well-known Florida operation that I somehow managed to leave the web bug in while trimming the HTML portion.
A few days later, two copies of a "Confirmation" arrived, identical except that the second one fails to mention "Custom Offers". Perhaps I was too hasty in blocking customoffers.com and missed all of the valuable information about Nadine's voluntary subscription to this wonderful service. Life has its unexpected setbacks.
sendoutmail.com
Nadine received one message and a couple of subsequent blocked delivery attempts originating from this domain. A responsible party from this domain has contacted me personally, and I have responded to his request for the details of the messages sent to Nadine. Being convinced that sendoutmail.com is making a determined effort to adopt the most effective list management practices, I have removed the IP and envelope sender blocks against sendoutmail.com.
topica.com
This message was surprising and profoundly disappointing. I had been led to believe that topica.com were rather strict in their list verification standards. If they would like help in diagnosing the point of failure, I'll be happy to assist. Unfortunately they were still trying to deliver email as of 14- Feb-2002, despite numerous rejections (and several visits to this page from topica's corporate IP space).
DM360.com
The list is sold yet again. On 19 December comes an advert apparently for REI sent by dm360.com on behalf of network60.com. Visiting the link, however, just gets you to www.freebieclub.com, with no obvious REI involvement. What a tangled web.
This sender has made a sufficient number of subsequent attempts after being blocked to rate their own reject log page.
Later on in the piece (30-Jan-2002), we find that their erstwhile client, network60.com, has decided to take things into their own hands and do their own polluting of the general netspace. (Or, perhaps, the two entities are really joined at the hip. Who can fathom these mysteries without buying a programme from a passing vendor?)
Postmaster General (pm0.net)
This sender's customer at least doesn't bother to try the "thanks for signing up at our web site" prevarication or the "you visited a 'marketing partner' and requested drivel" pretense. The lack of HTML is also a redeeming feature. pm0.net was added to the parade of unwelcome intruders, and they hammered away until 02-Jan-2002. I removed them from the deny list on 15-Jan-2002 after having a conversation with the Mindshare Design Standards & Practices people, who convinced me that changes are afoot at pm0. If this turns out to have been an incorrect impression, I will note it here.
Bigfoot Interactive (bfi0.com)
I've always been fascinated by a "this message is confidential -- don't do like we did and send it to a completely unrelated party" clause in email and FAX messages. What exactly does the sending party in this case have to hide, might one ask?
Virtumundo.com / vmadmin.com
Here is an organism that claims that somebody who doesn't exist went to a web site (the same one the itsImazing folks claim she visited) and gave permission for them to send bunches of advertising.
What makes this all the more fascinating is that somebody from Virtumundo apparently visited us here a few hours before the spam started.
Interesting news: Virtumundo has announced a lawsuit against two list vendors, including Mindset Interactive, who provided the list for the message discussed above.
Scott Hirsch (edirect.com, offermail.net, eDirectNetwork, optin-offers.net)
This submission arrived in the wee hours of 30 December 2001. These notes were originally slotted to appear in the "Spamming Scum" section, in view of eDirectNetwork's colorful history of adding unwilling participants to its list of targets for valuable offers. Upon reflection, I decided that eDirectNetwork meets many but not all of the criteria set forth there -- at least, not recently. So, eDirectNetwork joins the other Florida operations here in the slightly more prestigious "Hogs" section.
The apparent proprietor, one Scott Hirsch, has been mentioned in the press from time to time. A brief Google search for this entity nets quite a bit of discussion of their, uh, methods. Those who want an example of the great care taken by this organization to verify that the recipients really want the advertising may observe eDirectNetwork spamming the abuse address here.
As for offermail.net, you have to admire the earnest, honest sincerity of a firm that in its domain registration gives its business address as the White House and its telephone number as toll-free information. Spiffy folks, to be sure. (And not entirely on the mark when it comes to research. An Authoritative Source has sent me tidings to the effect that the White House ZIP is actually 20500.)
I held off chucking offermail into the bozo bin because, I freely confess, I wanted to see what would happen next. I speculated that Scott might read this and spoil my fun. It has been several months since he has hit one of my personal addresses.
However, on 03-Jan-2002 "what happens next" was not at all unusual as spam goes (although I do have to wonder whether the return-path account name is a bit spelling-challenged). So, I blocked offermail and waited to see: would they pay any attention to bou[n]ces?
Nope. (But they did eventually fix Irma La Bouce).
Then, on 09-Jan-2002, our dear comrades at CustomOffers apparently leaped into the hammock with our friends at eDirectNetwork and sent Nadine an important custom offer for Sears Custom Fit Windows. Shades of Diana Mey.
And then, sent to the "Tagged by SPEWS" sump by an incorrect mail sorting filter, there is this gem, in which Scott urges Nadine to consider plastic surgery for breast augmentation.
Time to bung eDirectNetwork into the deny list and give them their own rejection log.
On 13 Jan 2002 another metamorphosis occurred, and stuff started arriving with an envelope sender of optin-offers.net. I was not particularly quick on the deny list entry update, and ol' Scott managed to slip in two more that afternoon. The first was a delightful Path to Sudden Wealth blandishment, which offers yet another Work From Home and Make Big Bux opportunity. The other one was sent apparently on behalf of Gevalia Coffee, who certainly should know better.
PO-1.COM
Yet another itsImazing tentacle put its suckers on the window on 17-Jan-2002, with threats of even more exciting offers soon to festoon the lonely inbox. Into the bin with them.
Mediatrec
Transmissions with an envelope sender of something@MEDIATREC.ROI1.NET were a regular occurrence here until they halted suddenly on 3 January 2002. Then on 19 January 2002 this mysterious piece arrives, with its peculiar "sorry to see you go" clause, but with links that appear to point strictly to an opt-out function.
Curious to see what their list management practices might be, I visited their web page, signed up for their mailings and waited to see what would happen. A short time later this confirmation message arrived, inclining me to the belief that they do indeed practice safe mailing, at least as far as new subscribers at their own web site are concerned. Time will tell.
24-Jan-2002: What time tells us is that they don't practice safe mailing when purchased lists are involved, as they dropped this item in the hopper on behalf of VoiceStream Wireless. So, into the deny list they go. Bon voyage. The record of their rejected delivery attempts is here.
16-Mar-2002: They've been averaging more than one futile attempt per day for quite some time, sending from the myz.com IP block at 65.105.159.*. Perhaps others have blocked myz.com and/or the mediatrec.com envelope sender, and they needed to find something that would temporarily let them get through. Regardless of the reason, they are now sending from mediatreclists.net, from their own IP space. Since they dumped five days of pent-up traffic on Nadine this morning, it seems likely that they saw a high non-delivery rate with myz.com and needed to make up for lost time. Here is one for Full Access Medical, the subject of many a search-engine visit to this site. Those interested in an exclusive money- making program need go no further than here. Maybe a free cellphone? Fancy an unsecured credit card (of unspecified type and issuer)? DVDs from Columbia House? It's all here, whether you have the sense to ask for it or not (assuming that you exist at all, of course).
So, into the Plonk-O-Matic with mediatreclists.net.
These folks have enjoyed some popularity amongst those who receive and report spam. Nadine also received the "Free Chocolates" spam mentioned in some of those reports. In the non-HTML portion, they began their Nadine involvement with no attempt to explain how they came into possession of Nadine's address. Only if you browse down to the web-encumbered portion do you see the shift of blame to "valued marketing partners" and the typical threat to continue the bombardment if no opt-out action is taken.
Before the opportunity arose to add this section to the story, somebody from a network address belonging to dnadv.com spent half an hour or so reading Our Saga. I hope they come back, now that they are a featured character.
NETWORK60.COM
On 30-Jan-2002 there comes a "Membership Confirmation for NADINE" from an already-familiar denizen of the swamp.
We first encountered network60.com as an apparent client of DM360.COM. One is tempted to speculate about the tendency for apparent clients of spewers-for-hire to begin doing their own spewing, as is for example the case with Mediatrec and ROI1.NET.
When the spewing for RadioStakes apparently began in earnest on 08-Feb-2002, the envelope sender "NETWORK60.COM" went into the bozo bin.
Two-River.com (Harvest Marketing, GDTRFB.COM)
On 16-Feb-2002 we first hear from the Two-River Co-op, formerly known as Prime Offers but calling itself Harvest Marketing in the domain registry. We receive the welcome assurance that "Two-River Co-op never sends unsolicited email", but are forced to ponder: if the commercial relationship is launched with such a transparently fraudulent statement, what sort of confidence shall we have in the worth of the commercial offers?
Again on 15-Mar-2002 we see that things haven't changed much.
And on 20-Mar-2002 it would appear that AOL needed some assistance with their sales programme, with a little help from dnadv.com, for reasons best known to those who best know reasons.
Alas, it looks like it is time for the bin for Two-River Co-op. The envelope sender on the most recent atrocity was . River.com is apparently an unrelated domain in Colorado, whereas two-river.com is in New Hampshire and gdtrfb.com claims to be in New Jersey. Considering that the delivering server calls itself "two.river.com" when in fact it is listed as "jupiter.gdtrfb.com" by its own DNS server, and looking at the river.com web site one may perhaps be forgiven for exhibiting a modicum of doubt that river.com has any involvement with these misdeeds. And in fact my communication with the actual owner of river.com confirms that river.com has no connection with two-river.com and has not authorized them to use a river.com address or host name.
mxsys.net (dandyoffers.com, youclickhere.net) on behalf of memolink.com, dreammates.com et al.
Pretty ordinary. First a mailing for memolink.com, then another one that seems less than fully suited to the demographic information that DandyOffers presumably purchased along with a bogus email address.
On 25-Feb-2002 there was another spam for Sonix Systems / AT&T. Since I'm getting spam from mxsys.net for the "imesh" list to another bogus address @honet.com, there's no obvious reason not to award mxsys.net a prime spot in the bin forthwith. And since they've persisted in knocking at the gates, let's give them their own reject log.
sign2002.com
The presence of links to www.opt-track.net in this piece suggests that sign2002.com is just a new disguise for the masters of opt-in-ness, Optin Inc. Regardless, it has the exceedingly tiresome mendacity "This message was not sent unsolicited. You are currently subscribed to the Open2Win mailing list". As if "you are subscribed" somehow transforms an unsolicited message to a nonexistent person into a legitimate, requested communication.
Gag.
Then again, I'm interested in whether the folks at discounts.com, who don't seem to be affiliated with anybody mentioned in this message, would approve of the apparent sender being "HotelDiscountCard@discounts.com". Hmm... staff@webmagic.com seems to be the place to knock. 27-Feb- 2002: Email from webmagic.com gives me the distinct impression that they aren't too happy with this use of their domain name. Imagine that.
Meanwhile, on 26-Feb-2002 the next piece arrives, signaling that The Hour of The Bozo Bin has arrived for sign2002.com.
Exactis
As a proud carrier of the "Motel Six Discount Card" (or AARP membership, as it is sometimes called) I note that in this piece The Hartford makes some sensible use of the demographic information that somebody fraudulently sold them.
Although they wisely chose exactis.com to send their advertisement for an AARP-branded insurance plan, all was not entirely well in this particular shot. For instance, the valuable quartz clock is not available in Nadine's home state (and apparently only in Nadine's home state). One would expect greater diligence from these professionals.
Additionally, this message is the first one in ages to make an explicit reference to delivere.com. The HTML version of the payload attempts to retrieve an image from the server consumer.delivere.com, which is strange, since the name servers for delivere.com are unreachable (at least from any network to which I have access) and have been for quite some time. Odd.
valoffers.com
What can we say about this initial salvo (other than a minor carp about a missing ">" in the Message-ID)? Not much. We'll just have to wait for the inevitable Drizzle of Irresistible Offers.
Which began to arrive on 19-Mar-2002, manifesting as Yet Another Free Cellphone Offer (YAFCO). Time for a new deny list entry.
dartmail3.net
On 22-Mar-2002 Nadine received a "privileged and confidential" offer of magazine subscriptions by Synapse Group Inc, from dartmail3.net, through flonetwork.com.
tinglobal.com
This is apparently an IMG Direct (optin-inc) operation. More information here. Sample here. The "strict Code of Ethics" bit is a hoot.
One is tempted to speculate just who has demanded the email offers, of which Nadine received four in the three days that elapsed before the sender was carefully inserted into the deny list. Since three of them were very similar YAFCO advertisements -- two for AT&T Wireless, one for Voicestream -- on three successive days, the use of the phrase "this recurring mailing" was particularly apt. Sample here.
The Post-delivere/MatchLogic Late Comers: New Hogs At the Trough
How the list[s] containing Nadine's supposed email address propagated from here on is a matter of conjecture. None of the items received from this point on mention any of the original culprits. It may be that financial challenges accompanying the general bursting of the net.fantasyland bubble caused fire sales of various magnitudes.
Ombramarketing.com
First amongst the new gathering shadows was Ombra Marketing Corp., who began to bombard Nadine with a variety of offers on 18 April, 2001. They sent an average of four blasts per month. They are currently in the local deny lists, and are discussed in a number of other areas of the World Wide Web, for example here.
itsImazing: Is It a Threat or Merely a Menace?
Cometh now the "itsImazing.com Network" by and through its first spewer, (apparently) ted2.net. Especially touching are the parts that thank Nadine for "registering at www.mindsetinteractive.com", proclaiming that these valuable messages will only infest the mailboxes of those "...who have specifically requested or agreed to receive our special offers...". Who can imagine the spewage that might occur should the senders be minded to send their stuff to just any old address? (NOTE: on 13 December 2001 I personally began receiving itsImazing spew from etoll.net, directed to an address used only for registering Palm Pilot software. Time to update the deny list.)
Rumors on various anti-spam forums were that the "ted2" operation encountered some difficulties in maintaining its network connectivity. This is plausible, because subsequent detritus has issued from m-ul.com and TargitMail (see below). We did get one subsequent delivery attempt from ted2.net on 21 December 2001.
m-ul.com are currently in the local block list, but these stout-hearted troupers were not dismayed by this minor contretemps -- until 16-Jan-2002 they continued to exhibit earnest hope that eventually I would let them back in to molest Nadine.
Hah.
Meanwhile, the itsImazing menagerie continues to expand, with coopt.com making its long-expected arrival on 23 December 2001. itsImazing appears also to have attempted to sneak in on 27 December 2001 through the facilities of virtumundo.com. On 17 Jan 2002, PO-1.COM began their spew on behalf of itsImazing.
On 20-Feb-2002 Nadine heard from gossipflash.com. Oh joy. Yet another threat of more "exciting promotional offers".
Without a helpful local deny list, Nadine would be receiving several itsImazing announcements per day. Imazingly prolific and persistent folks.
The Grouplotto Flood
On the same day as the first itsImazing blast came not one but two vital messages from "Grouplotto", sent from networkpromotion.com. This was just the nose of the camel, as more than thirty messages containing the string "grouplotto" arrived between that date and 12 December 2001. (This does not take into account the ones that would have arrived had the senders not been blocked.)
Grouplotto are apparently more resourceful than some of the other contenders, since they appear to share their databases amongst an agglomeration of senders with diverse offerings (although itsImazing definitely gives them some crushing competition here).
Senders and product types identified so far include:
networkpromotion.com -- Gambling (what else?) and a special product (see below).
etracks.com -- Consumer products (phones, Motorola Talkabout radios, VISA cards, satellite TV systems, digital camera [oops, that's a premium for switching long distance service], a sports wagering system, foreclosed merchandise, DVDs from Columbia House, and a "Start A Profitable Home Business and Become Rich Using the Internet" opportunity that would have been hard to pass up. And one additional product, also sent from networkpromotion, which deserves its own separate section below.
ProcessRequest.com -- only one from them got through before they were chucked into the deny list: an offer for the American Express(R) Platinum Cash Rebate Card. They made two more tries on 12 December 2001, then nothing more arrived until 10 February 2002, when the envelope sender was "reedscienc@ProcessRequest.com".
All of the senders above are in the local deny list, so there may be other valuable commodities on offer that Nadine will never hear about, at least not from the Grouplotto Borg. etracks.com made multiple tries nearly every day until 13-Feb-2002. networkpromotion.com tried a little less frequently and apparently gave up after 26-Jan-2002.
Miss Cleo's Psychic Insight Blows a Fuse
The GroupLotto product singled out for special treatment was a series of breathlessly vital disclosures from Miss Cleo.
She Who Knows All was so convinced of Nadine's existence that she took the trouble to send a personal note. A short time later, apparently unfazed by the lack of response, Miss Cleo sent another enticing missive.
Perhaps the puzzling lack of response (should we assume that psychics can be puzzled?) led Miss Cleo to send a poorly formatted rerun of Message Two, this time through networkpromotion.com rather than etracks.com.
Who can fathom the mysterious ways of the Gifted? Gumshoes in Florida, perhaps?
TargitMail (GTMI, Walt Rines)
Here we have a true relic of the rip-roaring early days of unsolicited broadcast email. I will make no comments, other than to suggest that the reader who wants to know more may submit the strings "Walt Rines", "IEMMC" and "picklejar" to www.google.com and especially to Google's Usenet Newsgroup search engine, looking in the news.admin.net-abuse.* groups.
TargitMail began sending itsImazing stuff from various tm0[digit].net addresses on 28 November 2001, beginning with tm03.net. They subsequently have sent from tm01.net, tm02.com and tm04.com as well. All of these domains are in the deny list. They made their last successful delivery on 09 Jan 2002 with a nice itsImazing offer of great deals from Fingerhut, sent from the heretofore-not-blocked tm02.com. They were last seen in the server logs on 09 Feb 2002.
customoffers.com
As uninvited spewers go, customoffers.com is pretty unremarkable. They first showed up on 9 November 2001 and managed to blap in 17 messages before I finally blocked them. Like most of the others, however, being rejected with a "553 Depart Ye Cursed Spammers" message initially did not impress their infrastructure.
They appeared to have given up after 22 Dec 2001, but then something arrived from the Scott Hirsch operation claiming to be an advertisement for stuff from Sears.
em5000.com, em5000.net
On 28 November 2001 em5000.com began sending touts for ImazingOffers, winfreestuff, ItsAllAboutGreatOffers, Chase Manhattan Bank, gambling and college scholarships. Five messages in three days caused them immediate admission to the elite ranks of the blocked.
There is reason to believe that this was not the only list they have ended up in, as they changed IP blocks and reappeared as em5000.net, managing to slip two more in on 12 December before I noticed and updated their listing. Like so many others, they tried frequently for quite a spell.
02-Feb-2002: They are now using a new envelope sender, jdrmedia1.net
11-Feb-2002: This time they have decided to abandon even the pretense of using a valid envelope sender, and claim to be something "@bounce.37.121.144". This would appear to be a seriously dim move, given the number of systems that now refuse mail from an invalid envelope sender. But then, the whole operation seems to be characterised by a significant lack of wattage.
intervolved.net
This player sent the usual "thanks for signing up with us" note in late November, 2001. I am personally fascinated by the "if you don't opt out, you have agreed to our terms" bit. I'm also somewhat intrigued by their "This message is not intended for anybody living in a state that has an anti-spam law" clause. What do you suppose that means?
They went into the bozo bin after the third blast on 04 Dec 2001 and were last heard from on 06 Feb 2002.
ixs1.net, ixs2.net
Before joining the Chorus of the Banned, this domain pair sent Nadine four "winfreestuff.com" adverts, beginning with this one, in which the senders claim that Nadine visited their web site and entered a sweepstakes.
I suppose it is indeed possible that the real "Nadine" was still giving out the same wrong email address 613 days after committing the first error. Personally, I have confidence that she would by this time have noticed that nobody ever responded (at least not in a way that she could observe).
After a long hiatus, they made another attempt on 11-Jan-2002.
ROI1.NET (Img Direct)
Their first one is a keeper: entirely HTML, work-from-home opportunity, web tracking bugs. Plucky though blocked, they kept trying until 11 Feb 2002.
oii1.net, oi2.net, oihost.net (Optin Inc)
The first piece is an IMPORTANT NOTICE reminding Nadine that "per our TOS (Terms of Service), you wisely agreed to receive third party promotions from our network's preferred affiliates". I was so overawed by a mention of Terms of Service from this well-known Florida operation that I somehow managed to leave the web bug in while trimming the HTML portion.
A few days later, two copies of a "Confirmation" arrived, identical except that the second one fails to mention "Custom Offers". Perhaps I was too hasty in blocking customoffers.com and missed all of the valuable information about Nadine's voluntary subscription to this wonderful service. Life has its unexpected setbacks.
sendoutmail.com
Nadine received one message and a couple of subsequent blocked delivery attempts originating from this domain. A responsible party from this domain has contacted me personally, and I have responded to his request for the details of the messages sent to Nadine. Being convinced that sendoutmail.com is making a determined effort to adopt the most effective list management practices, I have removed the IP and envelope sender blocks against sendoutmail.com.
topica.com
This message was surprising and profoundly disappointing. I had been led to believe that topica.com were rather strict in their list verification standards. If they would like help in diagnosing the point of failure, I'll be happy to assist. Unfortunately they were still trying to deliver email as of 14- Feb-2002, despite numerous rejections (and several visits to this page from topica's corporate IP space).
DM360.com
The list is sold yet again. On 19 December comes an advert apparently for REI sent by dm360.com on behalf of network60.com. Visiting the link, however, just gets you to www.freebieclub.com, with no obvious REI involvement. What a tangled web.
This sender has made a sufficient number of subsequent attempts after being blocked to rate their own reject log page.
Later on in the piece (30-Jan-2002), we find that their erstwhile client, network60.com, has decided to take things into their own hands and do their own polluting of the general netspace. (Or, perhaps, the two entities are really joined at the hip. Who can fathom these mysteries without buying a programme from a passing vendor?)
Postmaster General (pm0.net)
This sender's customer at least doesn't bother to try the "thanks for signing up at our web site" prevarication or the "you visited a 'marketing partner' and requested drivel" pretense. The lack of HTML is also a redeeming feature. pm0.net was added to the parade of unwelcome intruders, and they hammered away until 02-Jan-2002. I removed them from the deny list on 15-Jan-2002 after having a conversation with the Mindshare Design Standards & Practices people, who convinced me that changes are afoot at pm0. If this turns out to have been an incorrect impression, I will note it here.
Bigfoot Interactive (bfi0.com)
I've always been fascinated by a "this message is confidential -- don't do like we did and send it to a completely unrelated party" clause in email and FAX messages. What exactly does the sending party in this case have to hide, might one ask?
Virtumundo.com / vmadmin.com
Here is an organism that claims that somebody who doesn't exist went to a web site (the same one the itsImazing folks claim she visited) and gave permission for them to send bunches of advertising.
What makes this all the more fascinating is that somebody from Virtumundo apparently visited us here a few hours before the spam started.
Interesting news: Virtumundo has announced a lawsuit against two list vendors, including Mindset Interactive, who provided the list for the message discussed above.
Scott Hirsch (edirect.com, offermail.net, eDirectNetwork, optin-offers.net)
This submission arrived in the wee hours of 30 December 2001. These notes were originally slotted to appear in the "Spamming Scum" section, in view of eDirectNetwork's colorful history of adding unwilling participants to its list of targets for valuable offers. Upon reflection, I decided that eDirectNetwork meets many but not all of the criteria set forth there -- at least, not recently. So, eDirectNetwork joins the other Florida operations here in the slightly more prestigious "Hogs" section.
The apparent proprietor, one Scott Hirsch, has been mentioned in the press from time to time. A brief Google search for this entity nets quite a bit of discussion of their, uh, methods. Those who want an example of the great care taken by this organization to verify that the recipients really want the advertising may observe eDirectNetwork spamming the abuse address here.
As for offermail.net, you have to admire the earnest, honest sincerity of a firm that in its domain registration gives its business address as the White House and its telephone number as toll-free information. Spiffy folks, to be sure. (And not entirely on the mark when it comes to research. An Authoritative Source has sent me tidings to the effect that the White House ZIP is actually 20500.)
I held off chucking offermail into the bozo bin because, I freely confess, I wanted to see what would happen next. I speculated that Scott might read this and spoil my fun. It has been several months since he has hit one of my personal addresses.
However, on 03-Jan-2002 "what happens next" was not at all unusual as spam goes (although I do have to wonder whether the return-path account name is a bit spelling-challenged). So, I blocked offermail and waited to see: would they pay any attention to bou[n]ces?
Nope. (But they did eventually fix Irma La Bouce).
Then, on 09-Jan-2002, our dear comrades at CustomOffers apparently leaped into the hammock with our friends at eDirectNetwork and sent Nadine an important custom offer for Sears Custom Fit Windows. Shades of Diana Mey.
And then, sent to the "Tagged by SPEWS" sump by an incorrect mail sorting filter, there is this gem, in which Scott urges Nadine to consider plastic surgery for breast augmentation.
Time to bung eDirectNetwork into the deny list and give them their own rejection log.
On 13 Jan 2002 another metamorphosis occurred, and stuff started arriving with an envelope sender of optin-offers.net. I was not particularly quick on the deny list entry update, and ol' Scott managed to slip in two more that afternoon. The first was a delightful Path to Sudden Wealth blandishment, which offers yet another Work From Home and Make Big Bux opportunity. The other one was sent apparently on behalf of Gevalia Coffee, who certainly should know better.
PO-1.COM
Yet another itsImazing tentacle put its suckers on the window on 17-Jan-2002, with threats of even more exciting offers soon to festoon the lonely inbox. Into the bin with them.
Mediatrec
Transmissions with an envelope sender of something@MEDIATREC.ROI1.NET were a regular occurrence here until they halted suddenly on 3 January 2002. Then on 19 January 2002 this mysterious piece arrives, with its peculiar "sorry to see you go" clause, but with links that appear to point strictly to an opt-out function.
Curious to see what their list management practices might be, I visited their web page, signed up for their mailings and waited to see what would happen. A short time later this confirmation message arrived, inclining me to the belief that they do indeed practice safe mailing, at least as far as new subscribers at their own web site are concerned. Time will tell.
24-Jan-2002: What time tells us is that they don't practice safe mailing when purchased lists are involved, as they dropped this item in the hopper on behalf of VoiceStream Wireless. So, into the deny list they go. Bon voyage. The record of their rejected delivery attempts is here.
16-Mar-2002: They've been averaging more than one futile attempt per day for quite some time, sending from the myz.com IP block at 65.105.159.*. Perhaps others have blocked myz.com and/or the mediatrec.com envelope sender, and they needed to find something that would temporarily let them get through. Regardless of the reason, they are now sending from mediatreclists.net, from their own IP space. Since they dumped five days of pent-up traffic on Nadine this morning, it seems likely that they saw a high non-delivery rate with myz.com and needed to make up for lost time. Here is one for Full Access Medical, the subject of many a search-engine visit to this site. Those interested in an exclusive money- making program need go no further than here. Maybe a free cellphone? Fancy an unsecured credit card (of unspecified type and issuer)? DVDs from Columbia House? It's all here, whether you have the sense to ask for it or not (assuming that you exist at all, of course).
So, into the Plonk-O-Matic with mediatreclists.net.
DirectNet Advertising (dnadv.com, valudesk.com, valudesk1.com)
These folks have enjoyed some popularity amongst those who receive and report spam. Nadine also received the "Free Chocolates" spam mentioned in some of those reports. In the non-HTML portion, they began their Nadine involvement with no attempt to explain how they came into possession of Nadine's address. Only if you browse down to the web-encumbered portion do you see the shift of blame to "valued marketing partners" and the typical threat to continue the bombardment if no opt-out action is taken.
Before the opportunity arose to add this section to the story, somebody from a network address belonging to dnadv.com spent half an hour or so reading Our Saga. I hope they come back, now that they are a featured character.
NETWORK60.COM
On 30-Jan-2002 there comes a "Membership Confirmation for NADINE" from an already-familiar denizen of the swamp.
We first encountered network60.com as an apparent client of DM360.COM. One is tempted to speculate about the tendency for apparent clients of spewers-for-hire to begin doing their own spewing, as is for example the case with Mediatrec and ROI1.NET.
When the spewing for RadioStakes apparently began in earnest on 08-Feb-2002, the envelope sender "NETWORK60.COM" went into the bozo bin.
Two-River.com (Harvest Marketing, GDTRFB.COM)
On 16-Feb-2002 we first hear from the Two-River Co-op, formerly known as Prime Offers but calling itself Harvest Marketing in the domain registry. We receive the welcome assurance that "Two-River Co-op never sends unsolicited email", but are forced to ponder: if the commercial relationship is launched with such a transparently fraudulent statement, what sort of confidence shall we have in the worth of the commercial offers?
Again on 15-Mar-2002 we see that things haven't changed much.
And on 20-Mar-2002 it would appear that AOL needed some assistance with their sales programme, with a little help from dnadv.com, for reasons best known to those who best know reasons.
Alas, it looks like it is time for the bin for Two-River Co-op. The envelope sender on the most recent atrocity was . River.com is apparently an unrelated domain in Colorado, whereas two-river.com is in New Hampshire and gdtrfb.com claims to be in New Jersey. Considering that the delivering server calls itself "two.river.com" when in fact it is listed as "jupiter.gdtrfb.com" by its own DNS server, and looking at the river.com web site one may perhaps be forgiven for exhibiting a modicum of doubt that river.com has any involvement with these misdeeds. And in fact my communication with the actual owner of river.com confirms that river.com has no connection with two-river.com and has not authorized them to use a river.com address or host name.
mxsys.net (dandyoffers.com, youclickhere.net) on behalf of memolink.com, dreammates.com et al.
Pretty ordinary. First a mailing for memolink.com, then another one that seems less than fully suited to the demographic information that DandyOffers presumably purchased along with a bogus email address.
On 25-Feb-2002 there was another spam for Sonix Systems / AT&T. Since I'm getting spam from mxsys.net for the "imesh" list to another bogus address @honet.com, there's no obvious reason not to award mxsys.net a prime spot in the bin forthwith. And since they've persisted in knocking at the gates, let's give them their own reject log.
sign2002.com
The presence of links to www.opt-track.net in this piece suggests that sign2002.com is just a new disguise for the masters of opt-in-ness, Optin Inc. Regardless, it has the exceedingly tiresome mendacity "This message was not sent unsolicited. You are currently subscribed to the Open2Win mailing list". As if "you are subscribed" somehow transforms an unsolicited message to a nonexistent person into a legitimate, requested communication.
Gag.
Then again, I'm interested in whether the folks at discounts.com, who don't seem to be affiliated with anybody mentioned in this message, would approve of the apparent sender being "HotelDiscountCard@discounts.com". Hmm... staff@webmagic.com seems to be the place to knock. 27-Feb- 2002: Email from webmagic.com gives me the distinct impression that they aren't too happy with this use of their domain name. Imagine that.
Meanwhile, on 26-Feb-2002 the next piece arrives, signaling that The Hour of The Bozo Bin has arrived for sign2002.com.
Exactis
As a proud carrier of the "Motel Six Discount Card" (or AARP membership, as it is sometimes called) I note that in this piece The Hartford makes some sensible use of the demographic information that somebody fraudulently sold them.
Although they wisely chose exactis.com to send their advertisement for an AARP-branded insurance plan, all was not entirely well in this particular shot. For instance, the valuable quartz clock is not available in Nadine's home state (and apparently only in Nadine's home state). One would expect greater diligence from these professionals.
Additionally, this message is the first one in ages to make an explicit reference to delivere.com. The HTML version of the payload attempts to retrieve an image from the server consumer.delivere.com, which is strange, since the name servers for delivere.com are unreachable (at least from any network to which I have access) and have been for quite some time. Odd.
valoffers.com
What can we say about this initial salvo (other than a minor carp about a missing ">" in the Message-ID)? Not much. We'll just have to wait for the inevitable Drizzle of Irresistible Offers.
Which began to arrive on 19-Mar-2002, manifesting as Yet Another Free Cellphone Offer (YAFCO). Time for a new deny list entry.
dartmail3.net
On 22-Mar-2002 Nadine received a "privileged and confidential" offer of magazine subscriptions by Synapse Group Inc, from dartmail3.net, through flonetwork.com.
tinglobal.com
This is apparently an IMG Direct (optin-inc) operation. More information here. Sample here. The "strict Code of Ethics" bit is a hoot.
jobsonline.com (emailoffersondemand, Toplander Corporation)
One is tempted to speculate just who has demanded the email offers, of which Nadine received four in the three days that elapsed before the sender was carefully inserted into the deny list. Since three of them were very similar YAFCO advertisements -- two for AT&T Wireless, one for Voicestream -- on three successive days, the use of the phrase "this recurring mailing" was particularly apt. Sample here.
There was a bit of a lull in the non-Harris onslaught until September 2000, when Home Shopping Network decided to join the party. Note that they obtained Nadine's information just over one month after Nadine had been assured that it would take three to five days to make certain that she would not receive any further mailing from 247Media's "partners". HSN apparently was prepared for this, as the end of their message suggests that opting out of their blasts is not as easy as one would hope. Until their last blast on 14 December 2001 they averaged one message every seven to ten days. Update: on 21-Mar-2002 HSN reappeared. Perhaps we will soon have some idea how effective the bounce processing is at 4at1.com.
Our breathless wait for new material was prolonged until October, when enlist found another sterling client, viz. thirdvoice. Nothing has been heard from them before or since.
In November, it was Hewlett Packard who elected to become the next object of derision. They likewise appear to have chosen other advertising channels.
The parade of one-time enlist.com clients continued with half.com, enews.com and finally SimplyHealth.com. After that, enlist.com sank beneath the waves. The last mention of enlist, matchlogic or delivere came in April, 2001, in a couple of bleats from peopliknow.com, who share a ZIP code with them.
Question: Why send mail to somebody who doesn't exist?
The spam from enlist.com for AT&T finally caused me to do some research. Visiting the enlist.com web site, I found what seemed like an appropriate person to contact, and sent this official-looking message, complete with ticket number and RBL references. Naturally I had some hope that a [possibly fruitful] discussion might ensue.
Once again my hopes were shown to be unrealistic.
Answer: We Believe In You, Even If You Don't.
Some readers might not be astonished by what followed, but I was. In the surreal reply that arrived the next day, the "ePrivacy Coordinator" at 247Media revealed personal information about a subscriber to a complete stranger. The details included full name, complete address with 9-digit ZIP code, and date of birth.
Fortunately, 247Media are "members of both TRUSTe and the Direct Marketing Association" and "strictly adhere to the privacy guidelines they provide". One can only speculate about what horrifying breaches of confidence might have occurred had this not been the case. Also a note of encouragement was the "exclude from future mailings from our partners" promise. As we shall see, alas, that was as empty as the promise of privacy.
Always ready to grab for the last word in any debate, no matter how one-sided, with some asperity I offered a rejoinder.
More Stuff Arrives
Nothing more came in for about two weeks. When the first real advertising payload arrived it went into the "bad message" sump and it was several days before I had enough spare time to deal with the accumulated sludge. Since this was just one of dozens of bogus accounts that receive occasional messages, I made a note of the "nadine" name and archived the message with the intent to take further action if the traffic volume climbed.
Which it did.
Harris Polls
Nadine began to receive messages from other entities. Harris Polls sent their first blast about two weeks later, and swiftly became the most prolific sender. After a few of these arrived, I followed the "how did you end up on our list" link and determined that Harris had apparently obtained Nadine's information from delivere/matchlogic. Now there was a breathtaking surprise.
Harris ignored the "no such user" notice, so after the first four messages I dropped them into the mail server's deny list, where they remained for a number of months. Despite the fact that every message to nadine@honet elicited a "553 domain tesp.com does not accept mail from HARRISPOLLONLINE.COM" response, they were still pounding away months later, when I removed the block in order to collect evidence for some legal proceedings that were under way.
Harris continued to send Nadine several messages per month until 9 August 2001, when the stream unaccountably stopped. In all, 79 messages were received, in addition to the ones that were rejected during the four months when Harris were in the local deny list.
Update: on 23-Jan-2002 a request to confirm arrived, indicating the start of yet another round. Perhaps this time they have instituted real confirmation procedures, and nothing more will arrive.
01-Feb-2002: Apparently no answer doesn't mean a "NO" answer. Is this what is meant by "double opt out"?
Ourhouse.com
Ourhouse.com hired enlist.com to send Nadine a message. A second one, identical to the first, arrived the next day. Perhaps Ourhouse.com changed their minds about this method of advertising, because Nadine never heard from them again.
Webstakes.com
Next to step up to the plate were webstakes.com/idialog.com. They sent a total of five messages, each one entirely HTML, one each in May, July and August, and then two in September. Perhaps they were convinced that Nadine would never use a simple text email client, or they just didn't mind making the recipient wade through crufty HTML to get to the exceedingly valuable content.
SmarterKids.com
smarterkids.com was another one-shot wonder, sent by enlist.com.
AT&T
Only one message was sent (by enlist.com) directly on behalf of AT&T. A few others during the later deluge mentioned AT&T or associated products.
Next: Question: Why send mail to somebody who doesn't exist?
Nadine -- The Story Begins
Once upon a time, there was a senior citizen in one of the Southeastern United States who was apparently confused about what her email address was. Because I have no desire to cause this lady the slightest inconvenience, I will call her "Nadine", which is not her real name. I'm also going to change her surname to "Smith", which is likewise false. (NOTE: Because I have no desire to avoid inconveniencing any of the other players in this tale, hers is the only identity that has been altered in any way.)
On or about the second day of March in the year 2000, Nadine visited a web site belonging to an outfit called delivere.com. While there she apparently entered a sweepstakes, gave delivere.com some personal information and (I presume) agreed to receive email advertisements from various parties from time to time. The email address she gave them consisted of her first name and the domain honet.com. What the actual email address should have been is something about which I can only speculate.
To confirm (to Nadine) that she had signed up, delivere.com sent a message to nadine@honet.com. (This was the First Big Mistake: the message should have asked the real owner of "nadine@honet.com" to confirm that the sign-up was genuine.)
A semi-automated process at honet.com noticed the message and sent a "No such user" message to the appropriate addresses (at least one of which was bogus). Normally, that is all it takes to stop any further traffic.
Such was not to be the case here, however.
Chow said one patient, who has had the implant for 9 months, saw his wife's face for the first time in years. The man, who previously could only see hand motions from four to five feet away, can now see cars from half a block away.
Yes but perhaps not in the way you think. While something like this has a possibility of being hacked, it will only be if someone puts backdoors into the low level hardware controlling the electrical signals along with the remote controller.
Fortunately the eye works differently than the typical I/O interface. Retinal neurons adjust quickly to stimilation and adjust firing patterns. Just think how quickly your eyes adjust to stepping out into a dark room from the sunlight or vice versa. Any permanent damage to the eye is usually from something physical rather than electrical. You can only burn out your eyes from looking at the sun and it's UV or whatever.
Also there is something called deploarization block in which the cell will simply not fire even if there is strong enough imput.
The other big factor is that while all the signalling is coming from this mechanical interface, all the interpretation is done in the Occipital Lobe and we don't and I don't think ever will have a great enough understanding of the brain to hack it.
That there is no "blind-community" counterpart to the deaf-community that was up in arms about cochlear implants. Could you imagine Stevie wonder saying that these are bad things?
There are several important factors in determining your circadian rythym but by far the most important is sunlight. Diurnal animals are postively influenced by sunlight, meaning during the daytime you are more likely to be awake. Rats on the other hand are negatively influenced by daylight and are nocturnal, however the same mechanism is in effect, the superchiasmatic nucleus (directly behind and below your eyes). This is one possible explanation, your are not influenced by sunlight like a majority of the population.
Another possibility is that you have a lengthened circadian rythym. In an enviroment without time cues, (no clocks, time specific television shows) our circadian rythym extends to about 24.5 hours. It is the sunlight that corrects the clock on a daily basis. People that have a lenghtend circadian rythym find it harder to wake up in the morning, no matter the time or amount slept because you still feel that the day should be longer (more like 27 hours), waking up later and going to bed later (night owl). People with shortened circadian rythyms "think" that the day is shorter and go to bed earlier and wake up earlier in the morning. Classic morning person.
This of course is overgeneralized information and may not even apply to you at all. Who knows maybe you just have something for the numbers 4 and 10.
Slashdot Mirror
If the newest and the greatest is always being hacked, then Linux for Playstation should be dream for hackers. (Tounge very much in cheeck)
From the article And a little bit later in the article
GO ARMY!!!!!!!
It's a good lengthy article. Worth the read
From the article
There is also another article over at Salon about Philadelphia's woes.
Based on the reports coming out of Philadelphia schools if you are considering moving from Microsoft to Linux they may think it's time to do an internal audit of your machines to make sure that you have a license for every box.
Sorry, based on this Register article titled "Microsoft 'killed Dell Linux' - States you are wrong. Pressure from Microsoft similar to what Be experienced help push Linux off Dell desktops.
How would we know how to pay each artist?
I would have no problem with this fee as long as it reasonable. But how is the money distributed is the big issue. Who gets to decide who gets how much and why. Who sits on that pool of money dooling it out. Have you seen a family fighting over an estate?
If this proposal were to go through we would likely have a quasi-governmental agency in charge of talent, giving out money from this pool, while the masses of computer users (perhaps pirates) pay a talent tax so that they can download all they want. How would we measure the traffic? Would this agency try to encode some information into the file to measure how many times something was transferred within Kazaa's network. Would there be a floor amount of money that would be paid to artist because they are part of this consortium? It seems simpler to "Pay the artist" but there will inevitably be a middle man to deal with.
C:"What!? Cingular is banning phone sex?"
S:"No, they may be censoring your ability to download porn via their wireless web."
C:"Does this mean I can still call cowboyNeal and fantasize about his feet?"
S:"Yes."
C:"Woohoo, go Cingular."
Sorry, the formatting was bad.
C:"What!? Cingular is banning phone sex?" S:"No, they may be censoring your ability to download porn via their wireless web." C:"Does this mean I can still call cowboyNeal and fantasize about his feet?" S:"Yes." C:"Woohoo, go Cingular."
Nadine's Address Escapes Into the General Domain of Spamming Scum
Before the messages below arrived, there was still a slim but tangible pretense that this stream of offal was some how "opt-in". The senders sent from their own equipment at [relatively] stable IP addresses; most of the senders were contactable by one means or another. Some of them even made detectable efforts to be legitimate, ethical businesses. Some of those appear to have failed more through lack of competence than lack of ethics (although it is important to note that the net effect is the same, in the end).
Such is not the case with the senders in this section.
Demonstrably they are fully aware that
Their material is unwanted.
The addresses they send to are largely scraped from public forums such as Usenet newsgroups, web pages and user profiles -- places where people reveal their email addresses with no expectation whatever that they will become the victims of postage-due electronic advertisers.
System owners will take measures to block their transmissions.
With this set of facts in mind, they take steps to evade, whenever possible, efforts to stop them from blowing their trash into people's mailboxes. These steps include
Sending from "throw-away" dial-up accounts. Eventually enough complaints will arrive at the dialup provider that the account they are using will be deactivated for network abuse. But they expect this, and have opened a large number of such accounts; when one account is cancelled, they merely proceed on to the next.
Hijacking email servers -- there are still many email servers that will allow anybody to use them to send email. By setting their spewing software to send through these open relays, spammers gain several benefits, chief amongst which is that they can consume someone else's bandwidth to do their dirty work. By rotating their spews through a large number of servers, they increase the likelihood that they will be able to bypass countermeasures in place at their targets' providers.
Adding "filter busters" (strings of nonsense characters) to the subjects and bodies of their messages, in the hope of confusing filters that look for known spam messages.
The "AmyWilson@btamail.net.cn" Spammer
Messages with this "From:" address (and multitudes from other addresses taking the form "[some female name with surname]@btamail.net.cn") have arrived here before, all sent to addresses that either were scraped from Usenet posts or were the targets of spammers before honet.com was even registered as a domain.
In this case, we see a message with classic "spammer" hallmarks -- origination from a dialup, sent through hijacked servers. It claims to have been sent on behalf of Sonix Systems, LLC, an AT&T wireless dealer.
Random spam through ptt.ru
Those who track spammers as a hobby or a full-time job will recognize a number of familiar things here, assuming they want to wade through atrocious quoted-printable-mangled HTML.
Inept Pump-and-Dump Stock Scam from optinservices.com
Here we have an exceptionally incompetent attempt at shady activity. First, the spammer unwisely chose to steal relay services from a Korean server that failed to mask the sending IP address (65.213.157.9), which belongs to optinservices.com, supposedly in Pompano Beach, FL. Then, the HTML payload appears to have been prepared with Microsoft Word, which inserts abominable amounts of cruft but also embeds intriguing information, including the apparent original author's names, which in this case appear to be "Natalie Morgen" and "ECogen". Finally, it was sent with an unreachable domain, offers4utoday.com, in the envelope sender; this will cause lots of well-run systems to reject it immediately. As spammers go, this lot are not leading the league.
And of course, in keeping with the Sacred Traditions of Spamming, the usual "Murkowski" S1618 disclaimer demands that we accept this piece as legitimate communication, even though this legislation was never enacted into law (and even if it had been, this spam doesn't actually comply with it).
Wanting to share the joys this gem has brought, I sent a copy to the "enforcement" mailbox at sec.gov. Perhaps they will find it valuable.
4optinonly.com: The Buffoonery Continues
The next day after the optinservices.com fiasco, we hear directly from 4optinonly.com, the domain that appeared in the "remove from list" link above. Oddly enough the sending server called itself "optinservicesco" when it connected here, even though its IP address carries the whimsical name "optin2.4optinonly.com". Ah, well, at least both of the supposed senders are named "Debra" and they both tell us that Nadine is a subscriber to the eNetwork mailing list.
The overwhelming impressions of honesty and competence here would certainly motivate me to seek an unsecured gold card through their ministrations. I'd probably make some investments, too. Yep.
13-Mar-2002: Not wanting to leave any doubt about who was responsible for the first stock fraud missive, but keen to clean up the MS-Word-to- HTML disaster, they resend a less-crufty version of the original not-from-a-Kim-and-Eddie-Marin-IP tout. Oofta. Hyphen city.
Then on 26 Mar 2002 the menagerie is augmented by a piece from addmeat.com/addmeat.net for quickenloans.quicken.com, and on 29 Mar 2002 a new but still MS-Word-cruft-infested version of the LKNG pump-and-dump stock tout.
The Post-delivere/MatchLogic Late Comers: New Hogs At the Trough
How the list[s] containing Nadine's supposed email address propagated from here on is a matter of conjecture. None of the items received from this point on mention any of the original culprits. It may be that financial challenges accompanying the general bursting of the net.fantasyland bubble caused fire sales of various magnitudes.
Ombramarketing.com
First amongst the new gathering shadows was Ombra Marketing Corp., who began to bombard Nadine with a variety of offers on 18 April, 2001. They sent an average of four blasts per month. They are currently in the local deny lists, and are discussed in a number of other areas of the World Wide Web, for example here.
itsImazing: Is It a Threat or Merely a Menace?
Cometh now the "itsImazing.com Network" by and through its first spewer, (apparently) ted2.net. Especially touching are the parts that thank Nadine for "registering at www.mindsetinteractive.com", proclaiming that these valuable messages will only infest the mailboxes of those "...who have specifically requested or agreed to receive our special offers...". Who can imagine the spewage that might occur should the senders be minded to send their stuff to just any old address? (NOTE: on 13 December 2001 I personally began receiving itsImazing spew from etoll.net, directed to an address used only for registering Palm Pilot software. Time to update the deny list.)
Rumors on various anti-spam forums were that the "ted2" operation encountered some difficulties in maintaining its network connectivity. This is plausible, because subsequent detritus has issued from m-ul.com and TargitMail (see below). We did get one subsequent delivery attempt from ted2.net on 21 December 2001.
m-ul.com are currently in the local block list, but these stout-hearted troupers were not dismayed by this minor contretemps -- until 16-Jan-2002 they continued to exhibit earnest hope that eventually I would let them back in to molest Nadine.
Hah.
Meanwhile, the itsImazing menagerie continues to expand, with coopt.com making its long-expected arrival on 23 December 2001. itsImazing appears also to have attempted to sneak in on 27 December 2001 through the facilities of virtumundo.com. On 17 Jan 2002, PO-1.COM began their spew on behalf of itsImazing.
On 20-Feb-2002 Nadine heard from gossipflash.com. Oh joy. Yet another threat of more "exciting promotional offers".
Without a helpful local deny list, Nadine would be receiving several itsImazing announcements per day. Imazingly prolific and persistent folks.
The Grouplotto Flood
On the same day as the first itsImazing blast came not one but two vital messages from "Grouplotto", sent from networkpromotion.com. This was just the nose of the camel, as more than thirty messages containing the string "grouplotto" arrived between that date and 12 December 2001. (This does not take into account the ones that would have arrived had the senders not been blocked.)
Grouplotto are apparently more resourceful than some of the other contenders, since they appear to share their databases amongst an agglomeration of senders with diverse offerings (although itsImazing definitely gives them some crushing competition here).
Senders and product types identified so far include:
networkpromotion.com -- Gambling (what else?) and a special product (see below).
etracks.com -- Consumer products (phones, Motorola Talkabout radios, VISA cards, satellite TV systems, digital camera [oops, that's a premium for switching long distance service], a sports wagering system, foreclosed merchandise, DVDs from Columbia House, and a "Start A Profitable Home Business and Become Rich Using the Internet" opportunity that would have been hard to pass up. And one additional product, also sent from networkpromotion, which deserves its own separate section below.
ProcessRequest.com -- only one from them got through before they were chucked into the deny list: an offer for the American Express(R) Platinum Cash Rebate Card. They made two more tries on 12 December 2001, then nothing more arrived until 10 February 2002, when the envelope sender was "reedscienc@ProcessRequest.com".
All of the senders above are in the local deny list, so there may be other valuable commodities on offer that Nadine will never hear about, at least not from the Grouplotto Borg. etracks.com made multiple tries nearly every day until 13-Feb-2002. networkpromotion.com tried a little less frequently and apparently gave up after 26-Jan-2002.
Miss Cleo's Psychic Insight Blows a Fuse
The GroupLotto product singled out for special treatment was a series of breathlessly vital disclosures from Miss Cleo.
She Who Knows All was so convinced of Nadine's existence that she took the trouble to send a personal note. A short time later, apparently unfazed by the lack of response, Miss Cleo sent another enticing missive.
Perhaps the puzzling lack of response (should we assume that psychics can be puzzled?) led Miss Cleo to send a poorly formatted rerun of Message Two, this time through networkpromotion.com rather than etracks.com.
Who can fathom the mysterious ways of the Gifted? Gumshoes in Florida, perhaps?
TargitMail (GTMI, Walt Rines)
Here we have a true relic of the rip-roaring early days of unsolicited broadcast email. I will make no comments, other than to suggest that the reader who wants to know more may submit the strings "Walt Rines", "IEMMC" and "picklejar" to www.google.com and especially to Google's Usenet Newsgroup search engine, looking in the news.admin.net-abuse.* groups.
TargitMail began sending itsImazing stuff from various tm0[digit].net addresses on 28 November 2001, beginning with tm03.net. They subsequently have sent from tm01.net, tm02.com and tm04.com as well. All of these domains are in the deny list. They made their last successful delivery on 09 Jan 2002 with a nice itsImazing offer of great deals from Fingerhut, sent from the heretofore-not-blocked tm02.com. They were last seen in the server logs on 09 Feb 2002.
customoffers.com
As uninvited spewers go, customoffers.com is pretty unremarkable. They first showed up on 9 November 2001 and managed to blap in 17 messages before I finally blocked them. Like most of the others, however, being rejected with a "553 Depart Ye Cursed Spammers" message initially did not impress their infrastructure.
They appeared to have given up after 22 Dec 2001, but then something arrived from the Scott Hirsch operation claiming to be an advertisement for stuff from Sears.
em5000.com, em5000.net
On 28 November 2001 em5000.com began sending touts for ImazingOffers, winfreestuff, ItsAllAboutGreatOffers, Chase Manhattan Bank, gambling and college scholarships. Five messages in three days caused them immediate admission to the elite ranks of the blocked.
There is reason to believe that this was not the only list they have ended up in, as they changed IP blocks and reappeared as em5000.net, managing to slip two more in on 12 December before I noticed and updated their listing. Like so many others, they tried frequently for quite a spell.
02-Feb-2002: They are now using a new envelope sender, jdrmedia1.net
11-Feb-2002: This time they have decided to abandon even the pretense of using a valid envelope sender, and claim to be something "@bounce.37.121.144". This would appear to be a seriously dim move, given the number of systems that now refuse mail from an invalid envelope sender. But then, the whole operation seems to be characterised by a significant lack of wattage.
intervolved.net
This player sent the usual "thanks for signing up with us" note in late November, 2001. I am personally fascinated by the "if you don't opt out, you have agreed to our terms" bit. I'm also somewhat intrigued by their "This message is not intended for anybody living in a state that has an anti-spam law" clause. What do you suppose that means?
They went into the bozo bin after the third blast on 04 Dec 2001 and were last heard from on 06 Feb 2002.
ixs1.net, ixs2.net
Before joining the Chorus of the Banned, this domain pair sent Nadine four "winfreestuff.com" adverts, beginning with this one, in which the senders claim that Nadine visited their web site and entered a sweepstakes.
I suppose it is indeed possible that the real "Nadine" was still giving out the same wrong email address 613 days after committing the first error. Personally, I have confidence that she would by this time have noticed that nobody ever responded (at least not in a way that she could observe).
After a long hiatus, they made another attempt on 11-Jan-2002.
ROI1.NET (Img Direct)
Their first one is a keeper: entirely HTML, work-from-home opportunity, web tracking bugs. Plucky though blocked, they kept trying until 11 Feb 2002.
oii1.net, oi2.net, oihost.net (Optin Inc)
The first piece is an IMPORTANT NOTICE reminding Nadine that "per our TOS (Terms of Service), you wisely agreed to receive third party promotions from our network's preferred affiliates". I was so overawed by a mention of Terms of Service from this well-known Florida operation that I somehow managed to leave the web bug in while trimming the HTML portion.
A few days later, two copies of a "Confirmation" arrived, identical except that the second one fails to mention "Custom Offers". Perhaps I was too hasty in blocking customoffers.com and missed all of the valuable information about Nadine's voluntary subscription to this wonderful service. Life has its unexpected setbacks.
sendoutmail.com
Nadine received one message and a couple of subsequent blocked delivery attempts originating from this domain. A responsible party from this domain has contacted me personally, and I have responded to his request for the details of the messages sent to Nadine. Being convinced that sendoutmail.com is making a determined effort to adopt the most effective list management practices, I have removed the IP and envelope sender blocks against sendoutmail.com.
topica.com
This message was surprising and profoundly disappointing. I had been led to believe that topica.com were rather strict in their list verification standards. If they would like help in diagnosing the point of failure, I'll be happy to assist. Unfortunately they were still trying to deliver email as of 14- Feb-2002, despite numerous rejections (and several visits to this page from topica's corporate IP space).
DM360.com
The list is sold yet again. On 19 December comes an advert apparently for REI sent by dm360.com on behalf of network60.com. Visiting the link, however, just gets you to www.freebieclub.com, with no obvious REI involvement. What a tangled web.
This sender has made a sufficient number of subsequent attempts after being blocked to rate their own reject log page.
Later on in the piece (30-Jan-2002), we find that their erstwhile client, network60.com, has decided to take things into their own hands and do their own polluting of the general netspace. (Or, perhaps, the two entities are really joined at the hip. Who can fathom these mysteries without buying a programme from a passing vendor?)
Postmaster General (pm0.net)
This sender's customer at least doesn't bother to try the "thanks for signing up at our web site" prevarication or the "you visited a 'marketing partner' and requested drivel" pretense. The lack of HTML is also a redeeming feature. pm0.net was added to the parade of unwelcome intruders, and they hammered away until 02-Jan-2002. I removed them from the deny list on 15-Jan-2002 after having a conversation with the Mindshare Design Standards & Practices people, who convinced me that changes are afoot at pm0. If this turns out to have been an incorrect impression, I will note it here.
Bigfoot Interactive (bfi0.com)
I've always been fascinated by a "this message is confidential -- don't do like we did and send it to a completely unrelated party" clause in email and FAX messages. What exactly does the sending party in this case have to hide, might one ask?
Virtumundo.com / vmadmin.com
Here is an organism that claims that somebody who doesn't exist went to a web site (the same one the itsImazing folks claim she visited) and gave permission for them to send bunches of advertising.
What makes this all the more fascinating is that somebody from Virtumundo apparently visited us here a few hours before the spam started.
Interesting news: Virtumundo has announced a lawsuit against two list vendors, including Mindset Interactive, who provided the list for the message discussed above.
Scott Hirsch (edirect.com, offermail.net, eDirectNetwork, optin-offers.net)
This submission arrived in the wee hours of 30 December 2001. These notes were originally slotted to appear in the "Spamming Scum" section, in view of eDirectNetwork's colorful history of adding unwilling participants to its list of targets for valuable offers. Upon reflection, I decided that eDirectNetwork meets many but not all of the criteria set forth there -- at least, not recently. So, eDirectNetwork joins the other Florida operations here in the slightly more prestigious "Hogs" section.
The apparent proprietor, one Scott Hirsch, has been mentioned in the press from time to time. A brief Google search for this entity nets quite a bit of discussion of their, uh, methods. Those who want an example of the great care taken by this organization to verify that the recipients really want the advertising may observe eDirectNetwork spamming the abuse address here.
As for offermail.net, you have to admire the earnest, honest sincerity of a firm that in its domain registration gives its business address as the White House and its telephone number as toll-free information. Spiffy folks, to be sure. (And not entirely on the mark when it comes to research. An Authoritative Source has sent me tidings to the effect that the White House ZIP is actually 20500.)
I held off chucking offermail into the bozo bin because, I freely confess, I wanted to see what would happen next. I speculated that Scott might read this and spoil my fun. It has been several months since he has hit one of my personal addresses.
However, on 03-Jan-2002 "what happens next" was not at all unusual as spam goes (although I do have to wonder whether the return-path account name is a bit spelling-challenged). So, I blocked offermail and waited to see: would they pay any attention to bou[n]ces?
Nope. (But they did eventually fix Irma La Bouce).
Then, on 09-Jan-2002, our dear comrades at CustomOffers apparently leaped into the hammock with our friends at eDirectNetwork and sent Nadine an important custom offer for Sears Custom Fit Windows. Shades of Diana Mey.
And then, sent to the "Tagged by SPEWS" sump by an incorrect mail sorting filter, there is this gem, in which Scott urges Nadine to consider plastic surgery for breast augmentation.
Time to bung eDirectNetwork into the deny list and give them their own rejection log.
On 13 Jan 2002 another metamorphosis occurred, and stuff started arriving with an envelope sender of optin-offers.net. I was not particularly quick on the deny list entry update, and ol' Scott managed to slip in two more that afternoon. The first was a delightful Path to Sudden Wealth blandishment, which offers yet another Work From Home and Make Big Bux opportunity. The other one was sent apparently on behalf of Gevalia Coffee, who certainly should know better.
PO-1.COM
Yet another itsImazing tentacle put its suckers on the window on 17-Jan-2002, with threats of even more exciting offers soon to festoon the lonely inbox. Into the bin with them.
Mediatrec
Transmissions with an envelope sender of something@MEDIATREC.ROI1.NET were a regular occurrence here until they halted suddenly on 3 January 2002. Then on 19 January 2002 this mysterious piece arrives, with its peculiar "sorry to see you go" clause, but with links that appear to point strictly to an opt-out function.
Curious to see what their list management practices might be, I visited their web page, signed up for their mailings and waited to see what would happen. A short time later this confirmation message arrived, inclining me to the belief that they do indeed practice safe mailing, at least as far as new subscribers at their own web site are concerned. Time will tell.
24-Jan-2002: What time tells us is that they don't practice safe mailing when purchased lists are involved, as they dropped this item in the hopper on behalf of VoiceStream Wireless. So, into the deny list they go. Bon voyage. The record of their rejected delivery attempts is here.
16-Mar-2002: They've been averaging more than one futile attempt per day for quite some time, sending from the myz.com IP block at 65.105.159.*. Perhaps others have blocked myz.com and/or the mediatrec.com envelope sender, and they needed to find something that would temporarily let them get through. Regardless of the reason, they are now sending from mediatreclists.net, from their own IP space. Since they dumped five days of pent-up traffic on Nadine this morning, it seems likely that they saw a high non-delivery rate with myz.com and needed to make up for lost time. Here is one for Full Access Medical, the subject of many a search-engine visit to this site. Those interested in an exclusive money- making program need go no further than here. Maybe a free cellphone? Fancy an unsecured credit card (of unspecified type and issuer)? DVDs from Columbia House? It's all here, whether you have the sense to ask for it or not (assuming that you exist at all, of course).
So, into the Plonk-O-Matic with mediatreclists.net.
DirectNet Advertising (dnadv.com, valudesk.com, valudesk1.com)
These folks have enjoyed some popularity amongst those who receive and report spam. Nadine also received the "Free Chocolates" spam mentioned in some of those reports. In the non-HTML portion, they began their Nadine involvement with no attempt to explain how they came into possession of Nadine's address. Only if you browse down to the web-encumbered portion do you see the shift of blame to "valued marketing partners" and the typical threat to continue the bombardment if no opt-out action is taken.
Before the opportunity arose to add this section to the story, somebody from a network address belonging to dnadv.com spent half an hour or so reading Our Saga. I hope they come back, now that they are a featured character.
NETWORK60.COM
On 30-Jan-2002 there comes a "Membership Confirmation for NADINE" from an already-familiar denizen of the swamp.
We first encountered network60.com as an apparent client of DM360.COM. One is tempted to speculate about the tendency for apparent clients of spewers-for-hire to begin doing their own spewing, as is for example the case with Mediatrec and ROI1.NET.
When the spewing for RadioStakes apparently began in earnest on 08-Feb-2002, the envelope sender "NETWORK60.COM" went into the bozo bin.
Two-River.com (Harvest Marketing, GDTRFB.COM)
On 16-Feb-2002 we first hear from the Two-River Co-op, formerly known as Prime Offers but calling itself Harvest Marketing in the domain registry. We receive the welcome assurance that "Two-River Co-op never sends unsolicited email", but are forced to ponder: if the commercial relationship is launched with such a transparently fraudulent statement, what sort of confidence shall we have in the worth of the commercial offers?
Again on 15-Mar-2002 we see that things haven't changed much.
And on 20-Mar-2002 it would appear that AOL needed some assistance with their sales programme, with a little help from dnadv.com, for reasons best known to those who best know reasons.
Alas, it looks like it is time for the bin for Two-River Co-op. The envelope sender on the most recent atrocity was . River.com is apparently an unrelated domain in Colorado, whereas two-river.com is in New Hampshire and gdtrfb.com claims to be in New Jersey. Considering that the delivering server calls itself "two.river.com" when in fact it is listed as "jupiter.gdtrfb.com" by its own DNS server, and looking at the river.com web site one may perhaps be forgiven for exhibiting a modicum of doubt that river.com has any involvement with these misdeeds. And in fact my communication with the actual owner of river.com confirms that river.com has no connection with two-river.com and has not authorized them to use a river.com address or host name.
mxsys.net (dandyoffers.com, youclickhere.net) on behalf of memolink.com, dreammates.com et al.
Pretty ordinary. First a mailing for memolink.com, then another one that seems less than fully suited to the demographic information that DandyOffers presumably purchased along with a bogus email address.
On 25-Feb-2002 there was another spam for Sonix Systems / AT&T. Since I'm getting spam from mxsys.net for the "imesh" list to another bogus address @honet.com, there's no obvious reason not to award mxsys.net a prime spot in the bin forthwith. And since they've persisted in knocking at the gates, let's give them their own reject log.
sign2002.com
The presence of links to www.opt-track.net in this piece suggests that sign2002.com is just a new disguise for the masters of opt-in-ness, Optin Inc. Regardless, it has the exceedingly tiresome mendacity "This message was not sent unsolicited. You are currently subscribed to the Open2Win mailing list". As if "you are subscribed" somehow transforms an unsolicited message to a nonexistent person into a legitimate, requested communication.
Gag.
Then again, I'm interested in whether the folks at discounts.com, who don't seem to be affiliated with anybody mentioned in this message, would approve of the apparent sender being "HotelDiscountCard@discounts.com". Hmm... staff@webmagic.com seems to be the place to knock. 27-Feb- 2002: Email from webmagic.com gives me the distinct impression that they aren't too happy with this use of their domain name. Imagine that.
Meanwhile, on 26-Feb-2002 the next piece arrives, signaling that The Hour of The Bozo Bin has arrived for sign2002.com.
Exactis
As a proud carrier of the "Motel Six Discount Card" (or AARP membership, as it is sometimes called) I note that in this piece The Hartford makes some sensible use of the demographic information that somebody fraudulently sold them.
Although they wisely chose exactis.com to send their advertisement for an AARP-branded insurance plan, all was not entirely well in this particular shot. For instance, the valuable quartz clock is not available in Nadine's home state (and apparently only in Nadine's home state). One would expect greater diligence from these professionals.
Additionally, this message is the first one in ages to make an explicit reference to delivere.com. The HTML version of the payload attempts to retrieve an image from the server consumer.delivere.com, which is strange, since the name servers for delivere.com are unreachable (at least from any network to which I have access) and have been for quite some time. Odd.
valoffers.com
What can we say about this initial salvo (other than a minor carp about a missing ">" in the Message-ID)? Not much. We'll just have to wait for the inevitable Drizzle of Irresistible Offers.
Which began to arrive on 19-Mar-2002, manifesting as Yet Another Free Cellphone Offer (YAFCO). Time for a new deny list entry.
dartmail3.net
On 22-Mar-2002 Nadine received a "privileged and confidential" offer of magazine subscriptions by Synapse Group Inc, from dartmail3.net, through flonetwork.com.
tinglobal.com
This is apparently an IMG Direct (optin-inc) operation. More information here. Sample here. The "strict Code of Ethics" bit is a hoot.
jobsonline.com (emailoffersondemand, Toplander Corporation)
One is tempted to speculate just who has demanded the email offers, of which Nadine received four in the three days that elapsed before the sender was carefully inserted into the deny list. Since three of them were very similar YAFCO advertisements -- two for AT&T Wireless, one for Voicestream -- on three successive days, the use of the phrase "this recurring mailing" was particularly apt. Sample here.
The Post-delivere/MatchLogic Late Comers: New Hogs At the Trough How the list[s] containing Nadine's supposed email address propagated from here on is a matter of conjecture. None of the items received from this point on mention any of the original culprits. It may be that financial challenges accompanying the general bursting of the net.fantasyland bubble caused fire sales of various magnitudes. Ombramarketing.com First amongst the new gathering shadows was Ombra Marketing Corp., who began to bombard Nadine with a variety of offers on 18 April, 2001. They sent an average of four blasts per month. They are currently in the local deny lists, and are discussed in a number of other areas of the World Wide Web, for example here. itsImazing: Is It a Threat or Merely a Menace? Cometh now the "itsImazing.com Network" by and through its first spewer, (apparently) ted2.net. Especially touching are the parts that thank Nadine for "registering at www.mindsetinteractive.com", proclaiming that these valuable messages will only infest the mailboxes of those "...who have specifically requested or agreed to receive our special offers...". Who can imagine the spewage that might occur should the senders be minded to send their stuff to just any old address? (NOTE: on 13 December 2001 I personally began receiving itsImazing spew from etoll.net, directed to an address used only for registering Palm Pilot software. Time to update the deny list.) Rumors on various anti-spam forums were that the "ted2" operation encountered some difficulties in maintaining its network connectivity. This is plausible, because subsequent detritus has issued from m-ul.com and TargitMail (see below). We did get one subsequent delivery attempt from ted2.net on 21 December 2001. m-ul.com are currently in the local block list, but these stout-hearted troupers were not dismayed by this minor contretemps -- until 16-Jan-2002 they continued to exhibit earnest hope that eventually I would let them back in to molest Nadine. Hah. Meanwhile, the itsImazing menagerie continues to expand, with coopt.com making its long-expected arrival on 23 December 2001. itsImazing appears also to have attempted to sneak in on 27 December 2001 through the facilities of virtumundo.com. On 17 Jan 2002, PO-1.COM began their spew on behalf of itsImazing. On 20-Feb-2002 Nadine heard from gossipflash.com. Oh joy. Yet another threat of more "exciting promotional offers". Without a helpful local deny list, Nadine would be receiving several itsImazing announcements per day. Imazingly prolific and persistent folks. The Grouplotto Flood On the same day as the first itsImazing blast came not one but two vital messages from "Grouplotto", sent from networkpromotion.com. This was just the nose of the camel, as more than thirty messages containing the string "grouplotto" arrived between that date and 12 December 2001. (This does not take into account the ones that would have arrived had the senders not been blocked.) Grouplotto are apparently more resourceful than some of the other contenders, since they appear to share their databases amongst an agglomeration of senders with diverse offerings (although itsImazing definitely gives them some crushing competition here). Senders and product types identified so far include: networkpromotion.com -- Gambling (what else?) and a special product (see below). etracks.com -- Consumer products (phones, Motorola Talkabout radios, VISA cards, satellite TV systems, digital camera [oops, that's a premium for switching long distance service], a sports wagering system, foreclosed merchandise, DVDs from Columbia House, and a "Start A Profitable Home Business and Become Rich Using the Internet" opportunity that would have been hard to pass up. And one additional product, also sent from networkpromotion, which deserves its own separate section below. ProcessRequest.com -- only one from them got through before they were chucked into the deny list: an offer for the American Express(R) Platinum Cash Rebate Card. They made two more tries on 12 December 2001, then nothing more arrived until 10 February 2002, when the envelope sender was "reedscienc@ProcessRequest.com". All of the senders above are in the local deny list, so there may be other valuable commodities on offer that Nadine will never hear about, at least not from the Grouplotto Borg. etracks.com made multiple tries nearly every day until 13-Feb-2002. networkpromotion.com tried a little less frequently and apparently gave up after 26-Jan-2002. Miss Cleo's Psychic Insight Blows a Fuse The GroupLotto product singled out for special treatment was a series of breathlessly vital disclosures from Miss Cleo. She Who Knows All was so convinced of Nadine's existence that she took the trouble to send a personal note. A short time later, apparently unfazed by the lack of response, Miss Cleo sent another enticing missive. Perhaps the puzzling lack of response (should we assume that psychics can be puzzled?) led Miss Cleo to send a poorly formatted rerun of Message Two, this time through networkpromotion.com rather than etracks.com. Who can fathom the mysterious ways of the Gifted? Gumshoes in Florida, perhaps? TargitMail (GTMI, Walt Rines) Here we have a true relic of the rip-roaring early days of unsolicited broadcast email. I will make no comments, other than to suggest that the reader who wants to know more may submit the strings "Walt Rines", "IEMMC" and "picklejar" to www.google.com and especially to Google's Usenet Newsgroup search engine, looking in the news.admin.net-abuse.* groups. TargitMail began sending itsImazing stuff from various tm0[digit].net addresses on 28 November 2001, beginning with tm03.net. They subsequently have sent from tm01.net, tm02.com and tm04.com as well. All of these domains are in the deny list. They made their last successful delivery on 09 Jan 2002 with a nice itsImazing offer of great deals from Fingerhut, sent from the heretofore-not-blocked tm02.com. They were last seen in the server logs on 09 Feb 2002. customoffers.com As uninvited spewers go, customoffers.com is pretty unremarkable. They first showed up on 9 November 2001 and managed to blap in 17 messages before I finally blocked them. Like most of the others, however, being rejected with a "553 Depart Ye Cursed Spammers" message initially did not impress their infrastructure. They appeared to have given up after 22 Dec 2001, but then something arrived from the Scott Hirsch operation claiming to be an advertisement for stuff from Sears. em5000.com, em5000.net On 28 November 2001 em5000.com began sending touts for ImazingOffers, winfreestuff, ItsAllAboutGreatOffers, Chase Manhattan Bank, gambling and college scholarships. Five messages in three days caused them immediate admission to the elite ranks of the blocked. There is reason to believe that this was not the only list they have ended up in, as they changed IP blocks and reappeared as em5000.net, managing to slip two more in on 12 December before I noticed and updated their listing. Like so many others, they tried frequently for quite a spell. 02-Feb-2002: They are now using a new envelope sender, jdrmedia1.net 11-Feb-2002: This time they have decided to abandon even the pretense of using a valid envelope sender, and claim to be something "@bounce.37.121.144". This would appear to be a seriously dim move, given the number of systems that now refuse mail from an invalid envelope sender. But then, the whole operation seems to be characterised by a significant lack of wattage. intervolved.net This player sent the usual "thanks for signing up with us" note in late November, 2001. I am personally fascinated by the "if you don't opt out, you have agreed to our terms" bit. I'm also somewhat intrigued by their "This message is not intended for anybody living in a state that has an anti-spam law" clause. What do you suppose that means? They went into the bozo bin after the third blast on 04 Dec 2001 and were last heard from on 06 Feb 2002. ixs1.net, ixs2.net Before joining the Chorus of the Banned, this domain pair sent Nadine four "winfreestuff.com" adverts, beginning with this one, in which the senders claim that Nadine visited their web site and entered a sweepstakes. I suppose it is indeed possible that the real "Nadine" was still giving out the same wrong email address 613 days after committing the first error. Personally, I have confidence that she would by this time have noticed that nobody ever responded (at least not in a way that she could observe). After a long hiatus, they made another attempt on 11-Jan-2002. ROI1.NET (Img Direct) Their first one is a keeper: entirely HTML, work-from-home opportunity, web tracking bugs. Plucky though blocked, they kept trying until 11 Feb 2002. oii1.net, oi2.net, oihost.net (Optin Inc) The first piece is an IMPORTANT NOTICE reminding Nadine that "per our TOS (Terms of Service), you wisely agreed to receive third party promotions from our network's preferred affiliates". I was so overawed by a mention of Terms of Service from this well-known Florida operation that I somehow managed to leave the web bug in while trimming the HTML portion. A few days later, two copies of a "Confirmation" arrived, identical except that the second one fails to mention "Custom Offers". Perhaps I was too hasty in blocking customoffers.com and missed all of the valuable information about Nadine's voluntary subscription to this wonderful service. Life has its unexpected setbacks. sendoutmail.com Nadine received one message and a couple of subsequent blocked delivery attempts originating from this domain. A responsible party from this domain has contacted me personally, and I have responded to his request for the details of the messages sent to Nadine. Being convinced that sendoutmail.com is making a determined effort to adopt the most effective list management practices, I have removed the IP and envelope sender blocks against sendoutmail.com. topica.com This message was surprising and profoundly disappointing. I had been led to believe that topica.com were rather strict in their list verification standards. If they would like help in diagnosing the point of failure, I'll be happy to assist. Unfortunately they were still trying to deliver email as of 14- Feb-2002, despite numerous rejections (and several visits to this page from topica's corporate IP space). DM360.com The list is sold yet again. On 19 December comes an advert apparently for REI sent by dm360.com on behalf of network60.com. Visiting the link, however, just gets you to www.freebieclub.com, with no obvious REI involvement. What a tangled web. This sender has made a sufficient number of subsequent attempts after being blocked to rate their own reject log page. Later on in the piece (30-Jan-2002), we find that their erstwhile client, network60.com, has decided to take things into their own hands and do their own polluting of the general netspace. (Or, perhaps, the two entities are really joined at the hip. Who can fathom these mysteries without buying a programme from a passing vendor?) Postmaster General (pm0.net) This sender's customer at least doesn't bother to try the "thanks for signing up at our web site" prevarication or the "you visited a 'marketing partner' and requested drivel" pretense. The lack of HTML is also a redeeming feature. pm0.net was added to the parade of unwelcome intruders, and they hammered away until 02-Jan-2002. I removed them from the deny list on 15-Jan-2002 after having a conversation with the Mindshare Design Standards & Practices people, who convinced me that changes are afoot at pm0. If this turns out to have been an incorrect impression, I will note it here. Bigfoot Interactive (bfi0.com) I've always been fascinated by a "this message is confidential -- don't do like we did and send it to a completely unrelated party" clause in email and FAX messages. What exactly does the sending party in this case have to hide, might one ask? Virtumundo.com / vmadmin.com Here is an organism that claims that somebody who doesn't exist went to a web site (the same one the itsImazing folks claim she visited) and gave permission for them to send bunches of advertising. What makes this all the more fascinating is that somebody from Virtumundo apparently visited us here a few hours before the spam started. Interesting news: Virtumundo has announced a lawsuit against two list vendors, including Mindset Interactive, who provided the list for the message discussed above. Scott Hirsch (edirect.com, offermail.net, eDirectNetwork, optin-offers.net) This submission arrived in the wee hours of 30 December 2001. These notes were originally slotted to appear in the "Spamming Scum" section, in view of eDirectNetwork's colorful history of adding unwilling participants to its list of targets for valuable offers. Upon reflection, I decided that eDirectNetwork meets many but not all of the criteria set forth there -- at least, not recently. So, eDirectNetwork joins the other Florida operations here in the slightly more prestigious "Hogs" section. The apparent proprietor, one Scott Hirsch, has been mentioned in the press from time to time. A brief Google search for this entity nets quite a bit of discussion of their, uh, methods. Those who want an example of the great care taken by this organization to verify that the recipients really want the advertising may observe eDirectNetwork spamming the abuse address here. As for offermail.net, you have to admire the earnest, honest sincerity of a firm that in its domain registration gives its business address as the White House and its telephone number as toll-free information. Spiffy folks, to be sure. (And not entirely on the mark when it comes to research. An Authoritative Source has sent me tidings to the effect that the White House ZIP is actually 20500.) I held off chucking offermail into the bozo bin because, I freely confess, I wanted to see what would happen next. I speculated that Scott might read this and spoil my fun. It has been several months since he has hit one of my personal addresses. However, on 03-Jan-2002 "what happens next" was not at all unusual as spam goes (although I do have to wonder whether the return-path account name is a bit spelling-challenged). So, I blocked offermail and waited to see: would they pay any attention to bou[n]ces? Nope. (But they did eventually fix Irma La Bouce). Then, on 09-Jan-2002, our dear comrades at CustomOffers apparently leaped into the hammock with our friends at eDirectNetwork and sent Nadine an important custom offer for Sears Custom Fit Windows. Shades of Diana Mey. And then, sent to the "Tagged by SPEWS" sump by an incorrect mail sorting filter, there is this gem, in which Scott urges Nadine to consider plastic surgery for breast augmentation. Time to bung eDirectNetwork into the deny list and give them their own rejection log. On 13 Jan 2002 another metamorphosis occurred, and stuff started arriving with an envelope sender of optin-offers.net. I was not particularly quick on the deny list entry update, and ol' Scott managed to slip in two more that afternoon. The first was a delightful Path to Sudden Wealth blandishment, which offers yet another Work From Home and Make Big Bux opportunity. The other one was sent apparently on behalf of Gevalia Coffee, who certainly should know better. PO-1.COM Yet another itsImazing tentacle put its suckers on the window on 17-Jan-2002, with threats of even more exciting offers soon to festoon the lonely inbox. Into the bin with them. Mediatrec Transmissions with an envelope sender of something@MEDIATREC.ROI1.NET were a regular occurrence here until they halted suddenly on 3 January 2002. Then on 19 January 2002 this mysterious piece arrives, with its peculiar "sorry to see you go" clause, but with links that appear to point strictly to an opt-out function. Curious to see what their list management practices might be, I visited their web page, signed up for their mailings and waited to see what would happen. A short time later this confirmation message arrived, inclining me to the belief that they do indeed practice safe mailing, at least as far as new subscribers at their own web site are concerned. Time will tell. 24-Jan-2002: What time tells us is that they don't practice safe mailing when purchased lists are involved, as they dropped this item in the hopper on behalf of VoiceStream Wireless. So, into the deny list they go. Bon voyage. The record of their rejected delivery attempts is here. 16-Mar-2002: They've been averaging more than one futile attempt per day for quite some time, sending from the myz.com IP block at 65.105.159.*. Perhaps others have blocked myz.com and/or the mediatrec.com envelope sender, and they needed to find something that would temporarily let them get through. Regardless of the reason, they are now sending from mediatreclists.net, from their own IP space. Since they dumped five days of pent-up traffic on Nadine this morning, it seems likely that they saw a high non-delivery rate with myz.com and needed to make up for lost time. Here is one for Full Access Medical, the subject of many a search-engine visit to this site. Those interested in an exclusive money- making program need go no further than here. Maybe a free cellphone? Fancy an unsecured credit card (of unspecified type and issuer)? DVDs from Columbia House? It's all here, whether you have the sense to ask for it or not (assuming that you exist at all, of course). So, into the Plonk-O-Matic with mediatreclists.net. DirectNet Advertising (dnadv.com, valudesk.com, valudesk1.com) These folks have enjoyed some popularity amongst those who receive and report spam. Nadine also received the "Free Chocolates" spam mentioned in some of those reports. In the non-HTML portion, they began their Nadine involvement with no attempt to explain how they came into possession of Nadine's address. Only if you browse down to the web-encumbered portion do you see the shift of blame to "valued marketing partners" and the typical threat to continue the bombardment if no opt-out action is taken. Before the opportunity arose to add this section to the story, somebody from a network address belonging to dnadv.com spent half an hour or so reading Our Saga. I hope they come back, now that they are a featured character. NETWORK60.COM On 30-Jan-2002 there comes a "Membership Confirmation for NADINE" from an already-familiar denizen of the swamp. We first encountered network60.com as an apparent client of DM360.COM. One is tempted to speculate about the tendency for apparent clients of spewers-for-hire to begin doing their own spewing, as is for example the case with Mediatrec and ROI1.NET. When the spewing for RadioStakes apparently began in earnest on 08-Feb-2002, the envelope sender "NETWORK60.COM" went into the bozo bin. Two-River.com (Harvest Marketing, GDTRFB.COM) On 16-Feb-2002 we first hear from the Two-River Co-op, formerly known as Prime Offers but calling itself Harvest Marketing in the domain registry. We receive the welcome assurance that "Two-River Co-op never sends unsolicited email", but are forced to ponder: if the commercial relationship is launched with such a transparently fraudulent statement, what sort of confidence shall we have in the worth of the commercial offers? Again on 15-Mar-2002 we see that things haven't changed much. And on 20-Mar-2002 it would appear that AOL needed some assistance with their sales programme, with a little help from dnadv.com, for reasons best known to those who best know reasons. Alas, it looks like it is time for the bin for Two-River Co-op. The envelope sender on the most recent atrocity was . River.com is apparently an unrelated domain in Colorado, whereas two-river.com is in New Hampshire and gdtrfb.com claims to be in New Jersey. Considering that the delivering server calls itself "two.river.com" when in fact it is listed as "jupiter.gdtrfb.com" by its own DNS server, and looking at the river.com web site one may perhaps be forgiven for exhibiting a modicum of doubt that river.com has any involvement with these misdeeds. And in fact my communication with the actual owner of river.com confirms that river.com has no connection with two-river.com and has not authorized them to use a river.com address or host name. mxsys.net (dandyoffers.com, youclickhere.net) on behalf of memolink.com, dreammates.com et al. Pretty ordinary. First a mailing for memolink.com, then another one that seems less than fully suited to the demographic information that DandyOffers presumably purchased along with a bogus email address. On 25-Feb-2002 there was another spam for Sonix Systems / AT&T. Since I'm getting spam from mxsys.net for the "imesh" list to another bogus address @honet.com, there's no obvious reason not to award mxsys.net a prime spot in the bin forthwith. And since they've persisted in knocking at the gates, let's give them their own reject log. sign2002.com The presence of links to www.opt-track.net in this piece suggests that sign2002.com is just a new disguise for the masters of opt-in-ness, Optin Inc. Regardless, it has the exceedingly tiresome mendacity "This message was not sent unsolicited. You are currently subscribed to the Open2Win mailing list". As if "you are subscribed" somehow transforms an unsolicited message to a nonexistent person into a legitimate, requested communication. Gag. Then again, I'm interested in whether the folks at discounts.com, who don't seem to be affiliated with anybody mentioned in this message, would approve of the apparent sender being "HotelDiscountCard@discounts.com". Hmm... staff@webmagic.com seems to be the place to knock. 27-Feb- 2002: Email from webmagic.com gives me the distinct impression that they aren't too happy with this use of their domain name. Imagine that. Meanwhile, on 26-Feb-2002 the next piece arrives, signaling that The Hour of The Bozo Bin has arrived for sign2002.com. Exactis As a proud carrier of the "Motel Six Discount Card" (or AARP membership, as it is sometimes called) I note that in this piece The Hartford makes some sensible use of the demographic information that somebody fraudulently sold them. Although they wisely chose exactis.com to send their advertisement for an AARP-branded insurance plan, all was not entirely well in this particular shot. For instance, the valuable quartz clock is not available in Nadine's home state (and apparently only in Nadine's home state). One would expect greater diligence from these professionals. Additionally, this message is the first one in ages to make an explicit reference to delivere.com. The HTML version of the payload attempts to retrieve an image from the server consumer.delivere.com, which is strange, since the name servers for delivere.com are unreachable (at least from any network to which I have access) and have been for quite some time. Odd. valoffers.com What can we say about this initial salvo (other than a minor carp about a missing ">" in the Message-ID)? Not much. We'll just have to wait for the inevitable Drizzle of Irresistible Offers. Which began to arrive on 19-Mar-2002, manifesting as Yet Another Free Cellphone Offer (YAFCO). Time for a new deny list entry. dartmail3.net On 22-Mar-2002 Nadine received a "privileged and confidential" offer of magazine subscriptions by Synapse Group Inc, from dartmail3.net, through flonetwork.com. tinglobal.com This is apparently an IMG Direct (optin-inc) operation. More information here. Sample here. The "strict Code of Ethics" bit is a hoot. jobsonline.com (emailoffersondemand, Toplander Corporation) One is tempted to speculate just who has demanded the email offers, of which Nadine received four in the three days that elapsed before the sender was carefully inserted into the deny list. Since three of them were very similar YAFCO advertisements -- two for AT&T Wireless, one for Voicestream -- on three successive days, the use of the phrase "this recurring mailing" was particularly apt. Sample here.
It's Worthless, But We'll Sell It Anyway.
There was a bit of a lull in the non-Harris onslaught until September 2000, when Home Shopping Network decided to join the party. Note that they obtained Nadine's information just over one month after Nadine had been assured that it would take three to five days to make certain that she would not receive any further mailing from 247Media's "partners". HSN apparently was prepared for this, as the end of their message suggests that opting out of their blasts is not as easy as one would hope. Until their last blast on 14 December 2001 they averaged one message every seven to ten days. Update: on 21-Mar-2002 HSN reappeared. Perhaps we will soon have some idea how effective the bounce processing is at 4at1.com.
Our breathless wait for new material was prolonged until October, when enlist found another sterling client, viz. thirdvoice. Nothing has been heard from them before or since.
In November, it was Hewlett Packard who elected to become the next object of derision. They likewise appear to have chosen other advertising channels.
The parade of one-time enlist.com clients continued with half.com, enews.com and finally SimplyHealth.com. After that, enlist.com sank beneath the waves. The last mention of enlist, matchlogic or delivere came in April, 2001, in a couple of bleats from peopliknow.com, who share a ZIP code with them.
Then things took a darker turn.
Question: Why send mail to somebody who doesn't exist?
The spam from enlist.com for AT&T finally caused me to do some research. Visiting the enlist.com web site, I found what seemed like an appropriate person to contact, and sent this official-looking message, complete with ticket number and RBL references. Naturally I had some hope that a [possibly fruitful] discussion might ensue.
Once again my hopes were shown to be unrealistic.
Answer: We Believe In You, Even If You Don't.
Some readers might not be astonished by what followed, but I was. In the surreal reply that arrived the next day, the "ePrivacy Coordinator" at
247Media revealed personal information about a subscriber to a complete stranger. The details included full name, complete address with 9-digit ZIP code, and date of birth.
Fortunately, 247Media are "members of both TRUSTe and the Direct Marketing Association" and "strictly adhere to the privacy guidelines they provide". One can only speculate about what horrifying breaches of confidence might have occurred had this not been the case. Also a note of encouragement was the "exclude from future mailings from our partners" promise. As we shall see, alas, that was as empty as the promise of privacy.
Always ready to grab for the last word in any debate, no matter how one-sided, with some asperity I offered a rejoinder.
More Stuff Arrives Nothing more came in for about two weeks. When the first real advertising payload arrived it went into the "bad message" sump and it was several days before I had enough spare time to deal with the accumulated sludge. Since this was just one of dozens of bogus accounts that receive occasional messages, I made a note of the "nadine" name and archived the message with the intent to take further action if the traffic volume climbed. Which it did. Harris Polls Nadine began to receive messages from other entities. Harris Polls sent their first blast about two weeks later, and swiftly became the most prolific sender. After a few of these arrived, I followed the "how did you end up on our list" link and determined that Harris had apparently obtained Nadine's information from delivere/matchlogic. Now there was a breathtaking surprise. Harris ignored the "no such user" notice, so after the first four messages I dropped them into the mail server's deny list, where they remained for a number of months. Despite the fact that every message to nadine@honet elicited a "553 domain tesp.com does not accept mail from HARRISPOLLONLINE.COM" response, they were still pounding away months later, when I removed the block in order to collect evidence for some legal proceedings that were under way. Harris continued to send Nadine several messages per month until 9 August 2001, when the stream unaccountably stopped. In all, 79 messages were received, in addition to the ones that were rejected during the four months when Harris were in the local deny list. Update: on 23-Jan-2002 a request to confirm arrived, indicating the start of yet another round. Perhaps this time they have instituted real confirmation procedures, and nothing more will arrive. 01-Feb-2002: Apparently no answer doesn't mean a "NO" answer. Is this what is meant by "double opt out"? Ourhouse.com Ourhouse.com hired enlist.com to send Nadine a message. A second one, identical to the first, arrived the next day. Perhaps Ourhouse.com changed their minds about this method of advertising, because Nadine never heard from them again. Webstakes.com Next to step up to the plate were webstakes.com/idialog.com. They sent a total of five messages, each one entirely HTML, one each in May, July and August, and then two in September. Perhaps they were convinced that Nadine would never use a simple text email client, or they just didn't mind making the recipient wade through crufty HTML to get to the exceedingly valuable content. SmarterKids.com smarterkids.com was another one-shot wonder, sent by enlist.com. AT&T Only one message was sent (by enlist.com) directly on behalf of AT&T. A few others during the later deluge mentioned AT&T or associated products. Next: Question: Why send mail to somebody who doesn't exist?
Nadine -- The Story Begins Once upon a time, there was a senior citizen in one of the Southeastern United States who was apparently confused about what her email address was. Because I have no desire to cause this lady the slightest inconvenience, I will call her "Nadine", which is not her real name. I'm also going to change her surname to "Smith", which is likewise false. (NOTE: Because I have no desire to avoid inconveniencing any of the other players in this tale, hers is the only identity that has been altered in any way.) On or about the second day of March in the year 2000, Nadine visited a web site belonging to an outfit called delivere.com. While there she apparently entered a sweepstakes, gave delivere.com some personal information and (I presume) agreed to receive email advertisements from various parties from time to time. The email address she gave them consisted of her first name and the domain honet.com. What the actual email address should have been is something about which I can only speculate. To confirm (to Nadine) that she had signed up, delivere.com sent a message to nadine@honet.com. (This was the First Big Mistake: the message should have asked the real owner of "nadine@honet.com" to confirm that the sign-up was genuine.) A semi-automated process at honet.com noticed the message and sent a "No such user" message to the appropriate addresses (at least one of which was bogus). Normally, that is all it takes to stop any further traffic. Such was not to be the case here, however.
It's a good thing because it's /. already
Reminds me of the recent slashdot feature about abiword and their call for help
It's good to see that new features are still being added.
Yes but could he read
Yes but perhaps not in the way you think. While something like this has a possibility of being hacked, it will only be if someone puts backdoors into the low level hardware controlling the electrical signals along with the remote controller.
Fortunately the eye works differently than the typical I/O interface. Retinal neurons adjust quickly to stimilation and adjust firing patterns. Just think how quickly your eyes adjust to stepping out into a dark room from the sunlight or vice versa. Any permanent damage to the eye is usually from something physical rather than electrical. You can only burn out your eyes from looking at the sun and it's UV or whatever.
Also there is something called deploarization block in which the cell will simply not fire even if there is strong enough imput.
The other big factor is that while all the signalling is coming from this mechanical interface, all the interpretation is done in the Occipital Lobe and we don't and I don't think ever will have a great enough understanding of the brain to hack it.
Woohoo! No more text-to-speech /.
That there is no "blind-community" counterpart to the deaf-community that was up in arms about cochlear implants. Could you imagine Stevie wonder saying that these are bad things?
There are several important factors in determining your circadian rythym but by far the most important is sunlight. Diurnal animals are postively influenced by sunlight, meaning during the daytime you are more likely to be awake. Rats on the other hand are negatively influenced by daylight and are nocturnal, however the same mechanism is in effect, the superchiasmatic nucleus (directly behind and below your eyes). This is one possible explanation, your are not influenced by sunlight like a majority of the population.
Another possibility is that you have a lengthened circadian rythym. In an enviroment without time cues, (no clocks, time specific television shows) our circadian rythym extends to about 24.5 hours. It is the sunlight that corrects the clock on a daily basis. People that have a lenghtend circadian rythym find it harder to wake up in the morning, no matter the time or amount slept because you still feel that the day should be longer (more like 27 hours), waking up later and going to bed later (night owl). People with shortened circadian rythyms "think" that the day is shorter and go to bed earlier and wake up earlier in the morning. Classic morning person.
This of course is overgeneralized information and may not even apply to you at all. Who knows maybe you just have something for the numbers 4 and 10.