Spam King Lives Large off Others' E-Mail Troubles 294
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.
Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Alan Ralsky? (Score:4, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/22/165
As described here, quite recently?
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend22_2002112
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?
Re:Alan Ralsky? (Score:3, Interesting)
You would think he would have learned by now.
Re:Alan Ralsky? (Score:2, Funny)
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-sys
lalala, at least I hope it went something like that
Re:Alan Ralsky? (Score:4, Informative)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Re: Spam King Lives Large off Others' E-Mail Troub (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Spam King Lives Large off Others' E-Mail Troub (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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...
Re: Spam King Lives Large off Others' E-Mail Troub (Score:2, Insightful)
Since congresscritters tend to do things for their own benefit most of the time, maybe we could make things more personal. Grab their e-mail addresses (the public ones are probably OK, private ones better but more shady) and include them in your signature when you post to newsgroups, e-mail lists, what-have-you. Something innocent, like:
I participate in the legal system, you should too!
E-mail your representatives! Mine are:
Sen. Bribetaker: bribetaker@senate.gov.fake
Sen. Moneybags: moneybags@senate.gov.fake
Rep. B.S.Artiste: artiste@congress.gov.fake
or whatever. Then post furiously in public forums, let the address grabbers pick up on the addresses, and wait until pure annoyance causes anti-spam legislation.
-SablKnight
nonsense (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
But otherwise, carry on!
Re:USPS - add'l data (Score:2)
There are lots of sources arguing that first-class subsidizes bail; assuming everyone is honest, the difference may a question of one's accounting practices. Remember Enron?
Cato has an interesting and, unsurprisingly, highly critical profile [cato.org] of USPS going back to the 18th century.
One note: Americans like to savage their postal system, but many don't know how cheap their first-class stamps are relative to many or most other nations, especially consider you pay one rate from one end to the other of a physically large country. Also, the furor over each penny-or-so price increase (and I'm not kidding, at least they always find someone to fulminate on the news) generally ignores the effects of inflation that erode the real price.
They're not perfect, but they're not that bad, either. There is a long list of other governmental functions I would criticize more harshly, anyway.
But no, I don't like junk mail. Be sure to sign up for the Direct Marketing Association's "Mail Preference Service" -- I think it helps, I hope.
Re:USPS (Score:2)
Then there's the true junk, unreturnable 3rd class bulk mail parakeet cage liner. Very very cheap, and heavily marketed by the USPS.
There is actually a federal statute forbidding the USPS from subsidizing one type of mail with another, because of private industry fears that the USPS would use its monopoly power over letters to subsidize unprofitable ventures into package delivery, overnight, etc. I'm not sure how this works when USPS has a monopoly over both kinds of service, as it does for first through third class junk, er, bulk.
As to who says who subsidizes whom, my quick Google (try "'bulk mail' subsidize") found almost everyone believing bulk got the break; only the bulk people said 1st class wasn't pulling its weight. I didn't feel like figuring out who's right -- perhaps neither side is right -- but I feel very suspicious of a situation where half the mail is first class by a variety of users, the other half used by direct mailers with a very organized lobby.
There are more subtle ways to discriminate than price, too, like support services the USPS provides bulk mailer, and decisions such as whether to cut Saturday service. Perhaps most importantly, I have to be skeptical of the USPS's desire to address people's concern with junk when it provides over half of their revenue and growing as email makes its inroads. That might be worst discrimination of all, as government institution supposedly dedicated to its citizens might choose self-preservation over reducing litter, downsizing, and increasing unemployment.
This all sounds kind of tedious, OK it is, but this is ALSO a multibillion-dollar public corporation! At some point in the next 10-20 years I imagine this will come to a head. If you find the "perfect study" of this online, let me know. The Cato study I linked elsewhere here is saturated with libertarian politics, which could be a good thing but makes me question their objectivity given their overt agenda to eviscerate the PO.
Re:nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
Re:nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
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].
Re:nonsense (Score:2)
Well, my point is that for the libertarian I was responding to, libertarian principles do seem to be a justification for theft.
Re:nonsense (Score:2)
Granted, paper junk mail is still a nuisance, but because the paper spammer pays most of the costs, it is self-limiting.
Re: Spam King Lives Large off Others' E-Mail Troub (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Re: Spam King Lives Large off Others' E-Mail Troub (Score:2)
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.
OT: Your sig (Score:2)
Yep, but a headlong rush away from whatever it is.
Yay... (Score:3, Funny)
Windows Messaging Service Spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh well, time to go to work.
Re:Windows Messaging Service Spam (Score:2)
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)
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]
Re:Countermeasures (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Countermeasures (Score:2)
What's that address again? (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:Could someone please confirm... (Score:5, Informative)
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/addressi
Re:Could someone please confirm... (Score:5, Funny)
Just a thought...
Re:Could someone please confirm... (Score:2)
now, could someone figure out what his e-mail address is *and* any and all ip addresses routed to the nice T1 connections going to his house?
Re:Could someone please confirm... (Score:2)
Re:Could someone please confirm... (Score:2)
Has anyone else confirmed this address?
Wouldn't it be horrible if somebody sent snail mail to all His Neighbors on Minnow... [whitepages.com] telling them what their new neighbor does for a living?
Insurance rates (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Smart bomb anyone? (Score:2)
Re:Dont't just mail him a catalog (Score:2)
A better idea if everybody send him an invoice for mail server usage and bandwidth, keep it reasonable amount, and when he does not pay register a bad debt against him. This could work best if done out of his juridiction.
Re:What's that address again? (Score:3, Funny)
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)
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)
Oo (Score:2)
Are we really afraid of Windows Messenging? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Are we really afraid of Windows Messenging? (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:This guy looks set to go (Score:2)
Re:This guy looks set to go (Score:2)
Re:This guy looks set to go (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:This guy looks set to go (Score:2)
Banner and even Popup adds: Although they use extra bandwith they help defer the cost of opertating a web site, thus keeping the content free for the site.
TV and Radio Adds: Help defer the cost of your TV shows that you watch.
Junk Snail Mail: Keeps the USPS running and keeping stamp prices low. With out Junk mail Stamps could be well over a doller for a a letter.
Some Bill Boards: Depending on their location. If they are located on City Busses and Shelters they help defer the cost of public transportation. But I dont like them just standing in on the road side distracting drivers.
All these other forms of advertising help the echonomy in the large. By causing movement of money to different indrustries. Spam Mail generally pays no one to send out the junk mail it looses productivty of its readers. So the only people really making money with SPAM are the Spammers, and they are not helping the echonomy they are just sucking up the money that could go toward better things.
Popping up messages on your screen? How? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Popping up messages on your screen? How? (Score:2)
This is real and it does not exploit a windows 'bug' so to speak. There is a messaging service built into win2k/xp that is automatically enabled that can be used by network admins to send messages to clients. Unfortunately it will receive messages from any sender, not just a designated admin, and display them on the screen.
There was a previous article about this on /. describing it and how to turn it off.
OK, time to dig up... (Score:5, Funny)
Surely this is the guy... (Score:5, Funny)
false logic? (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
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...
Re:Slashdotting spamvertized sites may help... (Score:2)
Thay're waiting for his check to bounce and then they may shut him down. Otherwise, they're a spam friendly provider.
dave
spamhouse/spews (Score:2, Flamebait)
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.
Re:spamhouse/spews (Score:2)
Level3 has a crime-tolerance problem. That isn't the fault of SPEWS and it isn't the fault of people who use SPEWS to filter.
screw world hunger ... (Score:2)
patched (Score:2)
You are confused (Score:2)
American Dream...... (Score:3, Insightful)
So which one? (Score:2, Insightful)
You see, therein lies the rub. Defining what is moral and what is not is a subjective guess -- at best.
Re:American Dream...... (Score:2)
I declare myself ruler of the USA. My first change will be to run this country according to my religion, Nintendorkism. All business decisions will have to be approved by my ethics office. It doesn't matter if the general public would buy into something manufactured through shady, but legal means. I'll stop it before it gets on the market. There shall be no money. Everybody will be financially equal, thereby removing the need for innovation. It's about time we had another dark age!
Unethical business practice isn't just in the USA. It happens in every human society and hierarchy. Even the Catholic church screws up and hides crimes. Get used to it and quit ripping on the USA (Probably your own country, asshole). If you want to get a company to play nice, raise awareness about their poor business practices and convince the consumers to take their money elsewhere.
Re:American Dream...... (Score:2)
Since when has business been a "moral" activity? That's for the society as a whole to undertake. If the society as a whole develops rules of behavior which are imparted to children in school and adults in houses of worship or other community meeting places, business will tend to be more moral simply because people will tend to have more morality. Unfortunately there will always be a few immoral people who take full advantage of the system (e.g. our friend the spam king), but that's the price of a free society. With a generally moral populace, the immoral minority would be more or less controlled. For example, the spam king outrages others' sense of justice and causes them to take various kinds of action against him.
The questions you should be asking is, how can we improve our school systems to impart moral education to our children?
address (Score:2, Informative)
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=yN
somebody post this guys address (Score:2)
-- james
SPAMMERS are inconsiderate neighbours (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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)$
The Chilling Realization (Score:2)
I think we have found out what the updated business model is. Whoops.
Has anyone ever received European spam? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, all spam is annoying regardless of its source.
However, is this an American problem, or does anyone ever get any remortgaging/sex offers from Europe?
Re:Has anyone ever received European spam? (Score:2)
Yes, it's a dupe (Score:2)
Windows Messaging Service.... (Score:2)
When I am dialed up to XO Communications, I receive 1-2 pop-ups a day via Windows Messaging Service. The solution is to turn it off, since its fairly useless anyways.
Is there any reason to run messenger? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Is there any reason to run messenger? (Score:2)
Uh, that's not what Windows Messenger Service is.
It's a service that allows windows computers to talk to each other. It's primarily for messages like "Load new tape" or "UPS on Battery Power" or "File Server going down" that are sent by automated services/daemons on other windows machines. However, MS included the functionality for a person to send messages by hand, for example, a sysadmin can send "Printer outage this afternoon" to the entire domain. It wasn't designed with spammers in mind. It's been around since NT 4.0 at least....
Yet another reason why we need a "-2, Just Plain Wrong" moderation.
Someone needs to step up to the plate (Score:2)
OK, clearly people need to start dying over this if we want spam to stop. One of you in the audience has to be an ex-marine with a stockpile of guns. Everyone knows that murderers are only caught if they want to be caught. Pick the top 3 spammers and go out and kill them.
In a trust-metric based world, spammers would be considered so disgusting that you would actually gain karma by killing them.
Lets see how quickly new spammers take their place when spamming runs the risk of having someone explode your head over it.
That or write "MAKE MONEY FAST" on a cinder block and drop it in his mailbox.
Open relays on Windows Messaging service? (Score:2)
Is there an equivilent "open relay" for Windows Messaging Service? If not, addresses could probably be much easier to block via IP, as they would have to be broadcast by "willing" recipients (or those trojan infected, etc). As above, I suppose some scummy ISPS would be willing to host the infectious service, but hopefully they wouldn't be as hard to blacklist as the fluxuous number of open relays?
"Stealth spam" = trojan (Score:2)
Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam.
It is intricate computer software, said Ralsky, that can detect computers that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad, much like the kind that display whenever a particular Web site is opened.
"This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything.
Is there a bounty on this guy's head yet? (Score:2)
NANE Rules (Score:2)
NANE Rules
Rule #0: Spam is theft.
Rule #1: Spammers lie.
Sharp's Corollary: Spammers attempt to re-define "spamming" as that which they do not do.
Rule #2: If a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see Rule #1.
Crissman's Corollary: A spammer, when caught, blames his victims.
Rule #3: Spammers are stupid.
Krueger's Corollary: Spammer lies are really stupid.
Pickett's Commentary: Spammer lies are boring.
Russell's Corollary: Never underestimate the stupidity of spammers.
Spinosa's Corollary: Spammers assume everybody is more stupid than themselves.
news.admin.net-abuse.email Rules [google.com]
Now reread the original article, amazing how similar it sounds to the last get rich scheme you encountered. [See #2]
That is because it is in order for their dodge pyramid schemes to work these junk emails must convince both the advertising companies & their own pyramid's lower tiers that it 'works' and the market for spam is increasing. It is not it is just steadily stealing more and more bandwidth the cost of which is shared out by legitimate email users. 96% of the email received at one of my drop accounts is junk email; 3% not, that means we pay 32 times (yes times/not percent) more than we should for email.
Angry ? You should get even not angry, don't rant and rave here: tell *everybody* you know UCE dirty little secret.
Ralsky's Personal Information (Score:2)
While the above information is marginally interesting to bring business to his local pizza, flower, dildo delivery guys, what i'd really like to know is:
Obvious Sign Spam Doesn't Work (Score:2)
With that being said, how many of us have gotten e-mails telling us about the wonders of spamming?
Re:Obvious Sign Spam Doesn't Work (Score:2)
hmm, there's bandwidth and server time I guess, but they probably have far more of that than they need for their paying "customers".
windows (Score:2)
This tactic made me so angry that i'd probably be in shackles now had that spammer been within any damagable distance at the time.
I used to be against the dealth penalty (Score:2)
whoa this is good (Score:2)
How can we bust the crap out of these retards?
For one thing, I filled out their form with "CUT THE SPAM YOU BLITHERING RETARDS" as my name, and "dslkfjsdlkafj" type data in the other fields, and 4111 1111 1111 1111 for the credit card #. And the hit submit repeatedly.
www.wholesale-software.com is the offender.
Re:whoa this is good (Score:2)
You know, this is the kind of thing that someone needs to write a little Perl program to do. Should be easy with the LWP::UserAgent (or whatever it's called) module. Just feed it a form URL, have it get all the fields and fill them with random trash, submit repeatedly, and walk away for a few hours.
Re:Open In Case Of Slashdot Effect... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Open In Case Of Slashdot Effect... (Score:5, Funny)
How warm?
Re:Q: Hidden Code in Spam? (Score:4, Informative)
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
HTML link (Score:2)
This can also be used to protect you from Goatse.CX, Comp-U-Geek, Rotton.Com, and other material you don't want to see.
Re:Q: Hidden Code in Spam? (Score:2)
Re:I'm buying a can or two of spam (Score:2)
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.
Re:no sex? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:no sex? (Score:2)
Re:The problem is (Score:2)
Re:why blame him... (Score:2)
I think most people already don't buy things from these companies, which is why said companies need to resort to spam - to weed out the few suckers who will buy.
Another Idea... (Score:2, Insightful)
And your problem with this is? (Score:2)
Personally, I regard a major-league spammer as simply a declared enemy of humanity, making his income across deliberate harassment of people en masse. I see no moral problem against people striking back against them by any means necessary. They're at war with the rest of us.
Apparently I'm not the only person who thinks so, that news article with how-to info on locating its subject was checked at least by an editor before it got printed and in this case, probably all the way up the newspaper hierarchy and by legal counsel as well. They obviously didn't have a problem with the content, what's yours?
If anything unpleasant happens to one, I'd consider throwing a party to celebrate, and I think there's be celebrations around the world. I wouldn't participate in violence against one, but it's quite possible I'd put in a few bucks towards the legal defense fund of anyone who got caught doing so.
If he actually has a family... it's called collateral damage. Of course, if they're old enough to know what he does for a living, I'm a lot less sympathetic. Usama bin Laden has a family, too. Does he get sympathy points over it? Only from the weak-minded.
SPAM as terrorist communication? (Score:2)
We have a medium where the sender is explicitly trying his best to prevent the origin of his communications from being traced, where the sender is trying to bypass firewalls and content filters wherever possible, and with mailing lists in the millions.
We have senders who by definition have no personal ethics and presumably have no problem with payment via grocery bags full of $100 bills for content ranging from scans to kiddie porn.
Let's say you're Abdul "Joe' Sixpack wanting to communicate to your worldwide network. Go find Alan, tell him to send your message and add this disk full of names to the list.
As for content, it has to look like ... spam. Names, product names, telephones, or those random alphanumeric strings could be used to convey codebook type content, and I've even seen multiline strings in these e-mails... perhaps these ARE crypto content.
I was joking when I started this. I'm not kidding anymore, this is a very real possibility.