Following the Spam Trail 232
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC's Bob Sullivan doggedly follows a spam trail from Alabama to Argentina to find out who actually benefits from spam. The beneficiaries aren't necessarily the pasty faced, high school drop out industrial spammers we have gotten to know, but well known companies."
Get Spammed Thru An Anti-Spam Article! (Score:4, Interesting)
Statement of the obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, like we hadn't figured that out already.
All commercial advertising, SPAM included, benefits companies.
Individual spammers are just pawns like their more respectable counterparts in the legitemate marketing industry.
Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Greetings,
We need a vendor who can offer immediate supply.
I'm offering $5,000 US dollars just for referring a vender which is (Actually RELIABLE in providing the below equipment) Contact details of vendor required, including name and phone #. If they turn out to be reliable in supplying the below equipment I'll immediately pay you $5,000. We prefer to work with vendor in the Boston/New York area.
1. The mind warper generation 4 Dimensional Warp Generator # 52 4350a series wrist watch with z80 or better memory adapter. If in stock the AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction motor, two I80200 warp stabilizers, 256GB of SRAM, and two Analog Devices isolinear modules, This unit also has a menu driven GUI accessible on the front panel XID display. All in 1 units would be great if reliable models are available
2. The special 23200 or Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor with built in temporal displacement. Needed with complete jumper/auxiliary system
3. A reliable crystal Ionizor with unlimited memory backup.
4. I will also pay for Schematics, layouts, and designs directly from the manufature which can be used to build this equipment from readily available parts.
If your vendor turns out to be reliable, I owe you $5,000.
Email his details to me at: info@federalfundingprogram.com
Please do not reply directly back to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.
Anyone else get this one? =P
what I want to know is.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Who benefits from spam? (Score:3, Interesting)
But seriously, does anyone here actually think people will care enough to boycott these companies?
fighting back (Score:5, Interesting)
MSNBC Got lots of people canned (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the story, it seems like MSNBC was responsible for the termination of at least three business relations between "Legitimate" companies and spammers.
If only more news outlets traced their spam the same way, it could put a dent in the demand for spam.
Who am I kidding? Those spammers, er "lead generators" will go right back to work, selling to anyone who will buy, no questions asked. As long as businesses will pay for personal information, there will be plenty of weasels to sell it to them.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Several times. I couldn't figure out what the scam was so I did some googling. Apparently the guy sending them out is a bit... different. He really seems to believe that some time-traveling bad-guys ruined his life and caused him health and other problems. He seems to believe there are actually many time-travellers on earth at the moment, and wants to get a machine so he can travel back in time and undo the horrid stuff they did to him as a child.
Numerous folk have corresponded with him and he's made the deal many times, but somehow the bad guys always seem to nab his seller at the last moment. Poor guy.
SPAM will end when... (Score:3, Interesting)
and it's always about the money...ank
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, and it would be dangerous if there were.
The inhibiting factor for most is simply the risk of being blackholed by the rest of us if they do.
Sadly there are a few that have such a huge chunk of the net under their thumb they are basically immune to this threat. I think that's the number two contributor to the spam problem (number one being fools that buy from spamvertisers.)
Re:Obviously (Score:3, Interesting)
I got the one from the parent post as well.
>>>>>>>>>>
Hello,
I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Upon arriving here my dimensional warp generator stopped working. I trusted a company here by the name of LLC Lasers to repair my Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit, and they fled on me. I am going to need a new DWG unit, prefereably the rechargeable AMD wrist watch model with the GRC79 induction motor, four I80200 warp stabilizers, 512GB of SRAM and the menu driven GUI with front panel XID display.
I will take whatever model you have in stock, as long as its received certification for being safe on carbon based life forms.
In terms of payment:
I dont have any Galactic Credits left. Payment can be made in platinum gold or 2003 currency upon safe delivery of unit. Please transport unit in either a brown paper bag or box to below coordinates on Sunday July 27th at (exactly 3:00pm) Eastern Stand Time. If you miss this timeframe please email me.
42.4845467 & Longitude -71.1576157 and the ground is 101.3' above sea level.
Although those coordinates are a secure guarded area, these channels through email are never secure. Unfortunately it is the only form of communication I have right now. There is a good chance that sombody will try to redirect the signal. The unit must be teleported directly in a way
that nobody will be able to interfere with the transference.
After unit has been sent please email me at: *address withheld*
with payment instructions. Do not reply directly back to this email.
Thank You
squeak
Microsoft & others want to spam too - legally (Score:5, Interesting)
as this was a a mortage related spam - aka respectable spam - as opposed to the unrespectable spam like "enlarge ..." spam, it is not too off track to show how the big corporations are lobbying for the ability to send spam directly rather than thru these layers ...
It is also very interesting that the big companies like Microsoft are paying lobbyists for laws that shall allow them to send spam, on the pretext that if only their spam is identified as spam it is no longer spam. I might give my email id to a Microsoft division, and then without my permission it is available to all the divisions of microsoft - even if I have no interest in all their products save one for which I gave my email - so isn't all the unrelated email they send me now spam ???
What the big companies want to do is to send spam themselves, but prevent others from sending it. All knowing that spam is dirt cheap tool for sales, but there is only so much spam a consumer can take before the backlash hurts all spammers ...
it is pure and simple application of game theory - when it becomes lucrative enough for the politicians, they will step into it too ...
Fight spam by replying to it? (Score:5, Interesting)
This suggests that the economics of spamming could be disrupted rather easily if large numbers of folks would helpfully supply the information that the spammers seek.
Think about it. What would happen if every time a slashdotter got a spam, he responded with all the personal information (randomized, of course) that the spammer requested? The article used the example of a web form that the spamee was invited to fill in with his mortgage information.
A perl script could generate a lot of fills to the web form in a short period of time.
In the short term, affiliates would make extra money by selling truckloads of (phony) personal information. But within a few monthes, the large companies that pay for that information would wise up. That's when the spam economy would start to suffer.
This strategy is only interesting to those of us that have good spam filters in place. I'm getting very good results with bogofilter now. I believe that I could "survive" the major spam wave that would result if I employed this strategy. But this strategy would be a lot more effective if I had some company.
English translation - Pick up the phone. (Score:3, Interesting)
Address: Callao 1253
City: Postal Buenos Aires
Postal Code: 1024
Country: Argentina
Telephone: 4803-3824
Fax: 4803-3824
Main Activity: Systems
Responsible Person: Alberto Meyer Robert
Address: Callao 1253
City: Postal Buenos Aires
Postal Code: 1024
Country: Argentina
Telephone: 4803-3824
Hour Contact: 10-18
Date of recording: 20/01/2003
Organization Administrator: Zonda Sistemas S.A..
Address: Callao 1253
City: Buenos Aires
Postal Code: 1024
Country: Argentina
Telephone: 4803-3824
Fax: 4803-3824
Main Activity: Systems
Tecnicnal Contact: Alberto Meyer Robert
Address: Callao 1253
City: Buenos Aires
Postal Code: 1024
Country: Argentina
Telephone: 4803-3824
Hour Contact: 10-18
Fax: 4803-3824
Servants of Name of Dominion
Primary Servant of Names:
Name: ns.super-zonda.com
Direction IP:
Secondary servant of Names:
Name: ns1.super-zonda.com
Direction IP:
Third Servant of Names:
Name: ns2.super-zonda.com
Direction IP:
Fourth Servant of Names:
Name: ns3.super-zonda.com
Direction IP:
personal note - i kinda like the sound of 'Primary Servant of Names' over 'name server one'.
Re:Fight spam by replying to it? (Score:1, Interesting)
This would effectively kill spam the way it's killed banner ads... early on, I remember being able to get upwards of $.10 per click-through from random companies, for a site with very little hits.. but once companies realized that click-throughs rarely equaled sales, the payments started dropping dramatically
Hell, if some large group (say, slashdot, or fark, or something) all took one of these sign-up pages, and all proceeded to sign up a ton of times using false names/info, it would probably be enough to destroy a few affiliate programs (also, it would be immensely funny for some huge bank/mortgage company to have to pay out millions for false info)
Use of FormFucker to spam spammers' web sites (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a utility called FormFucker [google.com] which spams web forms.
It analyzes the web form and then makes 1000s of submissions using realistic-looking but fake names, addresses, zip codes, telephone numbers, credit card numbers, etc.
Note that use of FF is very controversial, as many consider it fighting-abuse-with-abuse.
Re:Obviously (Score:2, Interesting)
The stuff kept showing up from time to time, and eventually, on a day when we didn't have much to do, we did some tracking ourselves. Like you, we found that the guy apparently really believes it. We even found a web site where someone had posted his communications with the guy.
I'm all for getting his Internet access cut off so that he can't bother people, but I think people shouldn't toy with him. He obviously needs help and has enough problems with people baiting him.
Re:SPEWS and SomethingAwful (Score:2, Interesting)
I think this is a problem more to be blamed on clueless sys-admins than organizations like SPEWs. Remember, it is the sys admin, not the the black hole who is choosing to accept the message.
People who filter based on spews and others alike basically don't care about getting a 1%-10% of false positives. To an individual that might be cool, but try setting up that policy in your workplace server.
I have my filters based on spamhaus, blitzed and dsbl. The analysis [slashdot.org], done by sgifford [slashdot.org] was a real eye opener. I recommend it to anybody in charge of running a realiable server with black list filtering enabled.
MSNBC ignores Microsoft spamming (Score:2, Interesting)
Noticeably absent is any mention of Microsoft's support of spam, including their spammer-for-hire subsidiary, bCentral.com
Listbuilder is one of the worst at harvesting email addresses from any source they can get their hands on.
Re:Use of FormFucker to spam spammers' web sites (Score:3, Interesting)
I think one of the big problems with FormFucker, which I'm trying to avoid, is that it's really a vigilante justice system. For some reason, which I can't totally put my finger on, having lots of people fill out one order form each (but with all of them lying) just seems less abusive than one person flooding the site with orders...even if the total number of fake orders comes out the same.
I guess having each person just fill out one fake order each, and trying to get lots of people to do that together makes the attack seem more like a community protest akin to a sit-in, rather than vigilante justice.
Thanks for the link, though. If I lose the "I really should behave" inhibition, it's entirely likely I'll use that.
Spam, the Mob, and RICO (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd started building an anti-spam site (I was going to call it "Spamintology") and I was planning to launch it with the number up front, suggesting that people call her to tell her what a bad boy her son was.
But I didn't. Because after the visions of glory, I had visions of my own mother's phone ringing off the hook as spammers called her to complain about me. And that's when I cancelled my plans for the site.
These spammers are often criminals, and always scumbags. If you really start to hurt them, hit them where they live, you risk them trying to hurt you back. That's why I decided to abandon my crusade, because I wasn't so altruistic as to put myself and my family in the line of virtual fire for the sake of zinging Spamford.
Some spam will be stopped by current anti-spam laws under proposal, but the only way to truly stop spam is going to be to take it out of the hands of the FTC and put it into the hands of the FBI. Spam will slow when we see spammers on the evening news, walking into federal courthouses to defend themselves against RICO charges like John Gotti.
If we put together an FBI Anti-Spam unit on par with the FBI's Organized Crime unit at its height, we'd see spam decrease and the nightly news would be entertaining again... for a while.
- Greg