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Spam King Lives Large off Others' E-Mail Troubles

Posted by Hemos on Mon Nov 25, 2002 07:04 AM
from the eating-off-of-others dept.
Spam
An anonymous reader writes "Those who are fighting spam will tell you that one of the most notorious spammers out there is Alan Ralsky. Well, the Detroit Free Press has a very interesting article on him. This guy is about as unrepentant as they come, and he's saying he wants to branch out into delivering pop-up spam via the Windows Messanging service present on most Windows boxes. If you sysadmins out there have been wavering about whether to block spam-friendly networks, read this article, then go to The Spamhaus Project and SPEWS and start getting IP ranges to block." Update: 11/25 12:35 GMT by H : Yep, it's a dupe. Nope, I haven't had my coffee yet.
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  • Dupe (Score:5, Informative)

    by Koyaanisqatsi (581196) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:06AM (#4750274)
    Read the original version if you want [slashdot.org]

  • Alan Ralsky? (Score:4, Informative)

    by meringuoid (568297) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:06AM (#4750275)
    This Alan Ralsky?

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/22/1658 25 6&tid=111

    As described here, quite recently?

    http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend22_20021122 .h tm

    Furrfu... So, what's new? Now we know it's SMB popups for sure, then? What were those two Romanians doing telling him that would get through people's firewalls?
    • Must be the same guys who sold him that "uncrackable encryption" for hiding links he one thought would keep my former employer's buisness free of spam complaints.

      You would think he would have learned by now.
    • So the Romanians lied to him, isn't this a good thing?

      Dear Mr Ransky
      !!!!DO NOT DELETE THIS!!!
      !!!!THIS IS NOT SPAM!!!!!
      Please read on to find out the latest trends in internet advertising, make $5000 per week just by sitting at your computer. Thanks to the world wide web and microsofts security become a millionaire in weeks!!! New advertising techniques developed by a crack team of romainian programmers allow direct-market-content-delivery-infrastructure-syst ems to be deployed on your PC. Market to millions realtime...


      lalala, at least I hope it went something like that :-/

    • Re:Alan Ralsky? (Score:4, Informative)

      by reaper20 (23396) on Monday November 25 2002, @08:06AM (#4750511) Homepage
      Pretty sure this is him [switchboard.com].

  • Re: Spam King Lives Large off Others' E-Mail Troub (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dunark (621237) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:10AM (#4750286)
    This guy Ralsky sends a billion spams a day, which has got to be costing the unwilling recipients a huge amount of money in wasted resources and time, but the FBI is busy busting a few people who uncap their cable modems in Toledo Ohio.
    • Very simple. One act is against federal law, the other act is not.

      It's a Good Thing(tm) when the FBI/Police are allowed to only enforce laws that exist.

      What we have to do is change the laws. Write (spam :-) your congress person. Call them. Do anything.

      During the recent campaign/election I had the opportunity to talk with a couple of candidates. I made sure that I understood their stance on my current pet peeves (H1B, DMCA, Copyrights), and voted accordingly. I also informed them as to *why* I was voting the way I was.

      Might not do anything.

      Might change the world...

      • nonsense (Score:4, Interesting)

        by g4dget (579145) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:34AM (#4750380)
        You get spam mail be ordinary mail too and you pay for the delivery too (your tax money makes the USPS go!). So why don't you complain about it, too?

        The USPS has not received tax money for operating expenses since 1982 (see here [usps.com]). Furthermore, people who send real-world junk-mail pay for the postage and the mailing. It's probably one of the bigger money makers for the USPS. If they didn't, it would have been stopped long ago.

        E-mail spam is theft of service, pure and simple: the people sending the spam aren't paying the full cost.

        I hate government intervention in the markets and involving the FBI should be an absolute nightmare to anyone with even a bit of libertarian in his heart.

        So, libertarians now endorse theft because stopping it would restrict the liberty of the thief? I guess that sums up the internal contradictions of libertarianism as well as anything.

        • USPS (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MacAndrew (463832)
          Actually, there may be a bit of a tax in the sense that first-class subsidizes bulk rate. The USPS is only quasi-independent politically (they're not an agency, nor are they private) and has been much more solicitous of the bulk mailerts "needs" when price-hike time rolls around. Or such is my impression. I don't think bulk mail is a money-loser, but possibly not as profitable as it could be. USPS would certainly hate to lose bulk mail, and they promote the heck out of it if you look at their materials, the ones they don't put out at the local P.O.

          But otherwise, carry on!
          • Better still, put the original mailing unopened back in the post, marked 'Return to sender', to get yourself taken off the mailing list.

            I do this to all mail sent to me that I can identify as junk without opening it, and as a consequence I don't get more than one or two junk mails a week now, down from two or three a day a few years ago.
            • Marking it 'return to sender' just gets it thrown in the garbage by the post office. Anything sent third class (bulk) mail doesn't get returned.
              • Just found this on http://www.recycle.mcmail.com/mail.htm [mcmail.com]:

                Businesses or individuals determined to receive no more unwanted magazines or literature should write a letter to the sender, in a pre-paid envelope if provided, saying that they do not want more copies, quoting the code number on the mailing address label. Note that items marked 'return to sender' are likely to be diverted to landfill by the Post Office (Consignia).


                I guess that means that sometimes the Royal Mail will return undelivered junk mail. But for a US perspective, see here [recyclestuff.org] and here [state.oh.us].
      • I hate government intervention in the markets and involving the FBI should be an absolute nightmare to anyone with even a bit of libertarian in his heart.

        Nonsense. It is the FBI's job to arrest thieves when they fall under federal rather than the usual state jurisdiction. The only civil liberties issue is that the investigation and arrest must be made in a manner consistent with the rights of the accused (and anyone else who might be involved).

      • Granted this guy is in a shady business, but still it's perfectly legal. You get spam mail be ordinary mail too and you pay for the delivery too (your tax money makes the USPS go!). So why don't you complain about it, too?

        If someone sends stuff through the post they have to pay for the paper, envelopes, printing and postage (possibly two lots of postage if they include a reply paid envelope). They have some financial incentive to only send the stuff to people who want and who can make use of the offer.
        Email spammers cost the recipients money and frequently misuse other people's computers in order to send the stuff in the first place. Since there is little cost to the sender they don't much care about who the send it to. Including sending stuff to people who couldn't buy their product even if they wanted to, assuming them can even read the language used.

  • Yay... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Omkar (618823) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:10AM (#4750288) Homepage Journal
    C'mon, I know this guy deserves to be hung, drawn, and quartered, but let's not repeat the exact same link.

  • Windows Messaging Service Spam (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Moe Yerca (14391) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:11AM (#4750294) Journal
    Let me tell you, this crap is uber annoying. It's enough to make me want to shut down the Messaging service, or at least get off my rear end and set up a firewall. Hell, ZoneAlarm should be able to block out the WinPopUp spam, but there will always be schmoes like me too lazy to protect their home networks for these guys to annoy...

    Oh well, time to go to work.

    • It's enough to make me want to shut down the Messaging service

      So why the don't you? Second thing (first thing is downloading PuTTY) I do when getting on a Windows box is shut off the Server and Messaging services.

    • Countermeasures (Score:5, Interesting)

      by osolemirnix (107029) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:29AM (#4750364) Homepage Journal
      Yeah but can't we do something about it? AFAIK, in contrast to email that comes in via someone elses open relay, a windows messaging request is a direct connection, so it's possible to get the senders IP adress.
      Instead of firewalling the port, hack a small script that listens on the port and launches a "countermeasures" against the source IP adress.

      Would some kind Windows hacker please program this?!
      Yes I am aware that there may be legal implications, I'm just thinking about the tech here. That's why I'm saying countermeasures and not counterattacks, e.g. some kind of teergrube [everything2.com]

  • What's that address again? (Score:5, Informative)

    by imag0 (605684) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:16AM (#4750310) Homepage
    Ralsky agreed to this interview and the tour of his operation only if I promised not to print the address of his new home, which I found in Oakland County real estate records.

    Hehe. Looks like someone is going to get some hatemail. Nice of Mike Wendland to slip that in there like that.

    • Re:What's that address again? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chilles (79797) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:23AM (#4750338)
      If someone from that area where to find and post his adress I'd sure take some time to fill in a few "free catalog" requests. Several tons of snail mail spam every day might just annoy him as much as his spam annoys me.

        • Re:Could someone please confirm... (Score:5, Informative)

          by BJH (11355) on Monday November 25 2002, @08:05AM (#4750505)
          Wrong one. That's his former address, apparently - it currently belongs to someone else.

          The one you're after is:
          Buyer: ALAN M RALSKY
          Buyer Mailing Address:
          6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
          Seller: BING CONSTRUCTION CO
          Property Address: 6747 MINNOW POND DR, WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI 48322
          Sale Date: 8/28/2002
          Recorded Date: 9/12/2002
          Sale Price: $ 740,000 (Full Amount)

          And a picture of the location is available at:

          http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/addressim ag e.aspx?t=1&s=10&lon=-83.4306683068011&lat=42.53497 71549766&alon=-83.43067008&alat=42.53497312&w=1&re f=A%7c6747+Minnow+Pond+Dr%2c+West+Bloomfield%2c+MI +48322

    • 1. Visit the Oakland County real estate records.
      2. ...
      3. Profit!!

      Oh, wrong joke. Can the guys who are collecting a few tons of AOL CDs please drop them off at THAT house, not back to Virginia? Thank you.

  • Less Investment = More Profit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by e8johan (605347) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:17AM (#4750314) Homepage Journal

    The response rate is the key to the whole operation, said Ralsky. These days, it's about one-quarter of 1 percent.

    "But you figure it out," said Ralsky. "When you're sending out 250 million e-mails, even a blind squirrel will find a nut."

    Has he never figured out that if he spewed out less shit to people not wanting it, he would have to spend less dollars on hardware, bandwidth and personal security.

    Also, it looks like he is trying to hide (stealth spam, etc.). Why does he do that as he is claiming that his business is legitimate. Why not admit that he is a shit-bag, sending loads of e-mails nobody wants, eating bandwidth from research and serious commercial sites.

    • Re:Less Investment = More Profit (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rinikusu (28164) on Monday November 25 2002, @08:02AM (#4750497)
      Have you not figured out that the millions that he makes makes all that irrelevant? No, really. Hardware is dirt cheap (see beowulf clusters under $1k/node) these days, he's already paying for bandwidth (might as well keep the pipe flooded, unlimited access is great, no?), no one is actually taking shots at him through his windows (yet), hurling bombs through his garage or anything like that. Getting an unlisted number is relatively cheap, and the $50 or so he spends on a new cell phone is PEANUTS to what he really makes (seriously, if you're making $6-10k/WEEK net, does $50 every few months really make a difference on your bottom line?).

  • Mmm. SPAMNet, I love you. I get 1-2 SPAM e-mails a day, down from 20 or 30. Windows Messaging Service has been turned off by me minutes after installing XP, thank you. He'll do this, it'll be a pain for a week, then Steve Gibson at GRC.com will slap some binary together that will turn off WMS for those people that don't know how. It'll then show up all over the web and people careful about their computing environment won't be bothered by this SPAM shit. There should be laws against this!

  • Are we really afraid of Windows Messenging? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brinko99 (140880) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:20AM (#4750324)

    Regardless of what Mr. Ralsky says, I don't feel that this new breed of Spam will ever come close to the problem e-mail Spam has. It seems to me that this type of spamming is just too easy to block. If this starts to become widespread, ISP's will likely ban any offending account. Any halfway secure corporate intranet should already prevent Windows messages to be passed in from the outside.

    Ultimately, it's a lot harder to hide the identity of the sender here. There's no spoofed headers to fool people. Furthermore, most of the public doesn't _need_ Windows Messenging but they do need e-mail.

    -- Brinko
    • Any halfway secure corporate intranet should already prevent Windows messages to be passed in from the outside.

      For those that don't know, the way to configure a firewall is to first block everything then selectively open only the ports that you need inbound. You can run a fully functional network with no inbound ports open at all, for example if you retrieve mail from your ISP you are initiating the connection. If network administrators are even only half competent, Windows Messaging will therfore be blocked by default.

  • This guy looks set to go (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FeatureBug (158235) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:20AM (#4750326)
    So if Blocking Popup Ads is Theft [slashdot.org], anyone wanna bet he has a good business model?
    • You're comparing apples and oranges here. In one case, we're talking about pop-up ads tied to (otherwise free) content being provided on the web that the user is actively seeking out. On the other hand, we're talking about a spammer invading your computer, exclusively for the purpose of sending you unwanted ads.

      Furthermore, in the case of "blocking pop-up ads being theft", it was a technological solution rather than a legal one. All it was was website content producers only providing content to users who don't block pop-ups. That're you're trying to draw some connection between the two scenarios is just absurd.

  • The bit about the 2 romanian programmers writing something that will pop up messages on your screen. How will that work exactly? Is he being taken for a ride (we can only hope) or are these romanians going to exploit a bug in Windows (unix is safe unless someone is dumb enough to allow all hosts access to their X server) in which case it will be a crime and this f*ckwit can be busted for hacking?

  • OK, time to dig up... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ari Rahikkala (608969) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:22AM (#4750336) Journal
    All the +5 funny responses about digging up +5 insightful and +5 informative responses that have already been posted on repeat stories!

  • Surely this is the guy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by clickety6 (141178) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:25AM (#4750346)
    ... we should be sending all our AOL CDs to ?
  • I think people who copy the interview and then re-post it on slashdot as the first reply are great!
    That said, From that response, Ralsky can monitor the effectiveness of his pitch and the subject line on the e-mail to make sure he's getting maximum return. Does this mean we should start opening e-mails that we are certain not to buy the product of?

  • Slashdotting spamvertized sites may help... (Score:5, Informative)

    by DocSnyder (10755) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:32AM (#4750373) Homepage
    In Germany we have a BIG problem with porn dialer spam. Most of these spammers use accounts on the Canadian freeweb hoster "netmails.com [netmails.com]", who refuses to kick spamvertized sites even on several spam incidents which have been spamvertizing the same accounts for weeks. We suspect "pink contracts" between the spammers and Netmails as well as between Netmails.com and its uplink AT&T Canada to keep these accounts and the spamhaus Netmails.com online.

    Lots of the spam recipients are just fed up, and after each spam run thousands of annoyed people slashdot spamvertized accounts on Netmails.com until it blows the whistle [netmails.com]. With the effect that "paying customers" look for a new hoster with better performance and will no longer supply Netmails.com with money. Hosting costs (traffic) on Netmails.com's side are growing, income is shrinking - so finally Netmails.com will have to change their spamfriendly business model or go down.

    If spammers and spamfriendly hosters will make the experience of each spam wave resulting in an enormous amount of network traffic and server load, they will have to think twice whether their infrastructure withstands the next spam run...

  • As much as I dislike spam (2/3 of my daily mail
    is spam), I dislike spamhouse/spews as well. Their
    idea of blocking complete netblocks is IMHO
    an utter failure - the damage is done to many small
    websites that are on the netblock perchance.

    The 'bad guys' are too high up to care if one of their
    C-class netblocks has some problem. After all,
    it is the webhosting companies on that netblock
    who will loose customers, not the network operators.
  • ... let's fight spam instead!
  • The Messenger Service hole was patched by MS weeks ago. Anyone running automatic updates, or anyone who does it reasonably often won't have this problem.

  • American Dream...... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by siasl (541853) on Monday November 25 2002, @07:51AM (#4750463)
    Yep, you got to love it. In America only two things are considered when in business. 1. Can it make money?....Duh. 2. Is it legal? The question never gets asked. Is it the right thing to do....? We have become a totally amoral society.

  • address (Score:2, Informative)

    by sacevoy (260692)
    found this at http://www.spamblocked.com/

    6747 Minnow Pond Dr, West Bloomfield, MI 48322

    The Mapquest search seems to bear out what Mike Wendland's column
    reported since Minnow Pond Drive is very near to Halsted/Maple.

    http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?mapdata=yNJ u1 Eg45fdtL0I1l7A%252bRXryNLPs0tgSXSzgCSYyXdlhnNA5GuI mU26ugsD9TleE3bAJDCkCeR1KHPRAN3eOguDm6GJlXfBQ%252f %252bytAvtEFOk1KIRMQrYhzhCb2%252fQQoDd%252bv6en1TF YgC5qnNLhyvhLoB5SGUpVu6iKfCDtashTT43qqVZrXSD8%252f RiCttILGiR53V3Ej9PwP%252b2eBXeaOfUXhC%252f2kGv9gBL BEbjZkBT5BZE1jokd0tLX47qLUho9KLPMBh4MrQoqSQSTCxhKt LbVavysiAwiD%252f0%252bB0Fw1YlrXnHnr%252bajvdQO%25 2bMJbh0QsBcTlXRdSAMEAAe4%252fdBTKr6X75XKoOdqokT1th 4hOTrPl0cjmcP4pjqlTs48gqJepStYr6ONr59CQFSw%253d&cl ick=center&mqmap.x=159&mqmap.y=88

  • I want to go shove a whole lot of prawn shells in his letterbox and see how he likes it

    -- james

  • SPAMMERS are inconsiderate neighbours (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuietYou (629140) on Monday November 25 2002, @08:54AM (#4750760)
    I was living in an apartment complex while I was attending University, and I got on my neighbours last nerve a few times by playing music too loud in my apartment. A couple of times I got a visit from the local Police, kindly informing me that I was disturbing the peace. They had every right to get angry with me. I was disrupting their lives, in one way or another.

    Sharing the Internet with SPAMMERS is a lot like living next door to an inconsiderate neighbour. Sure SPAM is "commercial", but just because something is commercial doesn't make it ok. Would it have been ok for me to blast commercial messages from my stereo into my neighbours apartments? I think not. And just because SPAM can be blocked if you don't want it doesn't make it ok either. My neighbours could have worn ear plugs to block out the sound, but they shouldn't have to.

    I wonder how Alan Ralsky would feel if a few inconsiderate neighbours moved in next door to him.

  • The real problem is (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tincho_uy (566438) on Monday November 25 2002, @08:55AM (#4750764) Homepage
    that spam actually works... If scumbags like this can make millons it's because there are enough clueless users that actually buy the shit they advertise.

    If hotmail, yahoo and the likes started using a more agressive filtering default policy (bayesian filters, and the like), and most mail clients had this kind of filters on, it's almost certain that the success rate of spam would go down.

    As a side note... This guy being a known spammer, and spam being illegal in the states...Why the heck doesn't somebody put him away???

    just my 2x10^(-2)$

  • Is there any reason to run messenger? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by leereyno (32197) on Monday November 25 2002, @10:06AM (#4751225) Homepage Journal
    With all of the instant messaging tools available out there, is there any reason to run the messenger service to begin with?

    This is why I really don't understand what the big deal is about the messenger spam. Just turn the damned thing off.

    The same thing goes for spam from the 3rd world. I don't know anybody in China, Rangoon, Nigeria, so I see no reason to accept e-mail from these places. In fact, I would be willing to make the argument that the best way to prevent spam is to ONLY accept email from networks owned by companies that strictly forbid spam. If everyone were to do this, the market for spam hosted on legitimate servers would essentially dry up. That doesn't solve the problem of crackers breaking into systems and setting up spam-relays, but then that problem will only be solved by the owners of the boxes being competent and taking responsibility for securing and updating their systems. If people were keeping an eye on security holes and being vigilant about closing them off, most of the cracker activity online would cease to exist. Lets just see some "1337 d00d" try and break into a system that has been locked down properly and kept up-to-date.

    Lee

    • Err, what exactly does this mean, can anyone tell me? I really, really doubt that opening a mail in, say, pine will send back any message without action on my part.



      So, is this something which triggers MS Outlook? Or is this just some BS that spammer told the poor journalist?


      It's just an image link in HTML formatted email to trigger an HTTP get request, eg: http://someserver/image.pl?spamee_id=HKJHS89872



      James

    • In his own words... "When you're sending out 250 million e-mails, even a blind squirrel will find a nut."

      Damn straight... Send out 250 million e-mails, and chances are that you'll hit someone who will take it further than moaning about it on Slashdot.

      No wonder this guy is hiding. He realises that with such incredibly large bulk mailings, your response, however small a fraction of the total, will not be zero. That includes responses of the violent kind.
    • Exactly, and it is the end user who is paying him, so let's charge the end user who clicks on links in spams. If the response rate is 1in 400, charge them for, say, the cost of delivering 500 spams. I reckon most people would only have to pay once...

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