I, Spammer 808
PCOL writes "The Washington Post is reporting on testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by Ronald Scelson, an eighth-grade dropout and self-taught computer programmer from Louisiana, who claims that he sends between 120 million and 180 million e-mails every 12 hours, that he can break sophisticated software filters 24 hours after they are deployed, and that he has no choice but to resort to forging the sender information in his bulk e-mail so he can be anonymous and maintain his connection to the Internet. He added that he obtained all his addresses legally and that AOL gladly sold him the company's entire customer directory which Ted Leonsis, vice chairman of AOL, did not deny." It's a tough life. Here's another story about the Senate committee meeting.
Uhhh.. (Score:5, Funny)
Hello Pot, this is the kettle, you're black!!
AOL is a bigger part of the problem vs being a bigger part of the solution.
With great power, comes great responsibility.
Re:Uhhh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, AOL sends commercial messages to its members, but it doesn't spam the rest of the world too -- a perhaps small but significant difference. They do offer a "check here to opt-out of commercial messages" mechanism, but it auto-resets itself after a period of time.
Hmmmm.... AOL blocks 2.4 billion spams a day. I wonder how many the company generates itself to send to its own members.
Re:Uhhh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it doesn't. Spam is unsolicited e-mail. What AOL does has been going on for long before the term spam came around. It is also different in that there's no forgery, you can return it to sender, etc. Whether AOL should be sending out tons of CDs is certainly debatable, but it is something different from spam.
Re:Uhhh.. (Score:5, Funny)
The post office won't return it.
Ever taken a bunch of them down to the post office and sent to back certified mail (and request delivery confirmation>?
AOL sends you a Cease and Desist letter.
I'm serious, some friends and I did this in college because we were bored.
Re:Uhhh.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Uhhh.. (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe not. The application states:
"The attached mailpiece, from the mailer identified below, offers for sale matter that I believe to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative and therefore is a pandering advertisement. Under the provisions of 39 USC 3008, I request that a Prohibitory Order be issued against the mailer and the mailer's agents or assigns."
Unless you use the AOL CD as an artificial vagina, you won't get far with that application.
Re:Uhhh.. (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you use the AOL CD as an artificial vagina, you won't get far with that application.
Wrong! Go read this page [junkbusters.com]. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Now, pay special attention to these sections (emphasis mine):
a. Whoever for himself, or by his agents or assigns, mails or causes to be mailed any pandering advertisement which offers for sale matter which the addressee in his sole discretion believes to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative shall be subject to an order of the Postal Service to refrain from further mailings of such materials to designated addresses thereof.
...and...
Both the absoluteness of the citizen's right under 4009 and its finality are essential; what may not be provocative to one person may well be to another. In operative effect the power of the householder under the statute is unlimited; he may prohibit the mailing of a dry goods catalog because he objects to the contents or indeed the text of the language touting the merchandise. Congress provided this sweeping power not only to protect privacy but to avoid possible constitutional questions that might arise from vesting the power to make any discretionary evaluation of the material in a governmental official.
It is not up to the post office to decide that you can't get aroused by AOL CD's.. In a nutshell, what's offensive to you may be miles apart from what's offensive to me, so the Supreme Court decided it's not up to the postoffice to make the judgement call. If you deem it offensive, form 1500 applies.
I've used it successfully to stop CitiBank's incessant bombardment of "you're pre-approved" credit card offers (I was litterally getting 3 a day for a while). Try it, it works.
Shayne
Re:Uhhh.. (Score:5, Funny)
It might have Mad Cow Disease.
Re:Uhhh.. AOL = Matrix v.2 (Score:3, Funny)
Matrix v.1 was too good for anyone to believe.
Matrix v.2 was so god awful annoying that everyone figured it had to be real. Makes sense that it was AOL.
Hell if I know what the other several versions are...
Re:Uhhh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
50 AOL CDs in the post over the years? Big deal compared with the 50 spam emails per day I receive (not counting the account I don't use anymore due to the amount of spam in it).
Compare a legitimate company with a spammer by all means, but keep the perspectives in place. The relatively insignificant amount of legit commercial email is not part of the spam problem.
Re:are you kidding? (Score:4, Insightful)
If those CDs were shipped to you postage due, then you can call it spam.
Re:are you kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Both consume limited storage space. Junk mail can fill up your postal mailbox and you'll then get a note, "You can pick up the rest of your mail at the post office." How fun. Spam fills up your email inbox until the sender of the next message gets "MORTAR_COMBAT!@slashdot.org's email is full".
Both abuse a common carrier system, paid for at least partially by the recipients of the message. Junk mail is usually paid for using bulk pricing systems, subsidized by the rest of the postal audie
Re:are you kidding? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm afraid you have it backwards. Bulk mail, even at its reduced rate, is what allows you to send a letter at 39 cents. Bulk mail is presorted so as to make processing time for the post office almost nothing. Your letter with sloppily written address actually takes time to be read and sorted.
ALso, the USPS is a government sponsored monopoly but it doesn't receive any tax payer dollars. It is self funding.
Finally, large glossy catalogs are very expensive for companies and they are not typically sent to people who haven't shopped in the store before or requested the catalog specifically. They therefore are not in the same category as snail spam.
Re:are you kidding? (Score:5, Interesting)
ALso, the USPS is a government sponsored monopoly but it doesn't receive any tax payer dollars. It is self funding.
Not only that, but it's even older than the government. The post office was concieved under the Articles of Confederation, before the current government under the Constitution. And not only did it pay for itself, but it was once the primary source of revenue to fund the government.
Re:are you kidding? (Score:4, Informative)
*sniff!* (Score:4, Funny)
angrily deletes the 4 billion spam in his inbox
Re:*sniff!* (Score:4, Funny)
Ah... a business opportunity!
[start spam]
Are you a spammer down on your luck??? Have you been disconnected from every major ISP in your area????? Getting tons of flames in your personal inbox??????
Well, fret no longer! I used to be in your shoes, but now I'm one of the top spammers in the world! I used to receive tons of mail from angry slashdotters, but no longer!!! I've discovered the ancient secrets of the internet, previously unknown RFC commands, MAPI and IMAP loopholes, weakness in POP, PAP, SMTP, RTFM/RTFA, ID-10T commands, and so much more!!!!
For just $19.95, I will send you the secrets of becoming a true world class spammer!
With my tested methods, you will:
keep your name and address hidden from vigilantes
maintain your account with any ISP legally
earn thousands of dollars a day from your home without lifting a finger! Ok, just one, to click the mouse! That's how easy and simple it is!!!
and so much more!
Just send the check for $19.95 to
[end spam]
LEGIT way to kill spam (Score:4, Interesting)
Spam is business, right? they do what they do to make money via advertisements. Well, here is something i just thought up during lunch that might thwart spam in a way
The difference between spam and bulk emailing is that you are forced to recognize spam, and get rid of each spam individually. Also, spam is very cheap. But, what if you got one (1) email a day with spam, advertisements, ect. This single spam would contain all the regular advertising you'd otherwise get in 50 emails. Sounds cool huh?
Problem: we'd have to get the regular spammers to stop, first. How do we do that? Well, we'd set up a site expressedly for this program, let's call it gerfmail.com. everyone would get a new, permanant, free email there. Like hotmail, but sans spam. In order for a company to be included in the LEGIT single, daily (or weekly even) email of advertising, the parent company would be required to agree not to use spammers who spam gerfmail.com with their usual spam. With this method, spammers are forced by their INCOME SOURCE to stop spamming anyone at this site. If a product is spammed to gerfmail.com, then they lose some sort of advertising rights for a period of time, and lose a lot of money. This would put pressure on them (X10, Orbitz, whoever) to only allow legit advertising to people hosted at this site
What about illegal spam, for illegal products? Easy, any product that is not in that single, daily email, is considered to be unwanted, and likely a fraudulent business. Any information about them will be submitted to the authorities, feds, or whatever gov't can do anything. This might create a lot of work for police at first, but when spam is knocked down to a managable level, it will be extremely easy to track down the few spams sent out.
Call this a crackerjack idea, or add to it, i don't care. But the reality is, there must be a business plan inacted that inherently discourages spam before it can truly be combated in a effective, capitalistic way.
Well (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well ...that's the problem (Score:5, Funny)
1. What do you tend to do with all the incoming spam????
5% - I delete it.
20% - I read it and I find it great!!
80% - What spam???? I just forward everything....
Rq: The results percentage is above 100% due to database corruption;oP
You're still sure that's a good thing????
Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:5, Interesting)
Dear God, I hope the committee saw through this pathetic little charade. Last time I checked, I had no oblighation to pay to receive advertising; I had no right to force others to pay the cost of carrying that advertising; I had no right to force others to put up with the deluge of complaints about that advertising.
And if he's right about AOL selling him their membership list and spamming their members (and AOL VP Leonsis' weasel words about "letting members opting out" does nothing to make me think otherwise), all that means is there are two assholes there instead of one. It doesn't give him any moral high ground.
But at least there's the proposal for a "federal antispam SWAT team". I'd pay good money to see a live video stream of that take-down.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to say it, but I hope the SWAT team proposal fails. How will the Federal SWAT team know who to raid? If they can trace a spammer they can trace activists, dissidents, anybody who might be a terrorist, they can trace anybody. Sure they can do it now to a large degree, but if there's a Federal SWAT team they'll need access to some sort of system right? Something like the Terrorist Information Awareness network or Carnivore but geared specifically towards email and only email. The SWAT team has to be efficient right? Mistakes would make them look real bad.
The worst thing spammers will do is cause even more loss of privacy, loss of open mail relays, and an increase of government monitoring of email.
I'm not entirely sure but I think for now I'd rather wear out my delete key a bit more and wait for better technical solutions. The legal solutions are just much too likely to be worse than the problem.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the reasons why sending advertisements over the Fax is now illegal (without prior authorization, etc, etc, etc) is because it costs *me* money to recieve *your* ad.
In the case of bulk snail mail, 100% of the costs (if you don't include me physically picking up the mail, looking at it, and tearing the latest "Want a 0% interest credit card that jumps to 30% later?" envelope as cost) is payed by the sender.
In the case of a fax, *I* pay the paper, toner, etc. So even at $0.01 per ad, if it wasn't stopped I could wind up paying hundreds/thousands a year for the honor of recieving ads.
In the case of spam email, I believe that the same conditions apply. While I might not pay directly $0.01 per "spam email sent", I am paying by having my web space taken up (for those with ISP's that limit their mail boxes to 5 - 10 MB). And if my business relies on emails, *your* spam interferes with my ability to do work, thereby costing me money.
Add in that most spammers forge their address, hijack (or at least use without permission "open relays" (who should be closed anyway, yes, I'm looking at you, China, Korea, and any other country who's causing this problem)) other people's mail servers (thereby costing the mail server money they did not want to spend on bandwidth, storage, processor, etc).
I should hope that the Senate should make a very simple anti-spam plan:
If you send an unwanted email as an advertisement, you must have a method of truly getting someone off of the list.
If you sell the email addresses of your clients, you should be required to state to whom they have been sold so you can opt out *before* you get spam mail.
There should be a "national opt-out" spam list that all spam senders must check before sending a message.
Violating these agreements, or sending another message after the user has "opted out" is punishable by a $1000 fine per email sent.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:5, Insightful)
If such a list existed, you can bet your bottom dollar that every spammer will pay very close attention to it. It would be a list of 100% valid email addresses! Normally they would have to pay for lists of email addresses, and here is one that is free and guaranteed to be accurate.
The spammer could then fire up the spambox which is conveniently located outside of the US, bounce the spam off of an open relay in the Far East, and it would be business as usual.
If anyone out there believes that the spammers are honest and trustworthy, they deserve all the viagra, penis/breast enlargement/pr0n spam they get in their inbox...
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:4, Insightful)
These verified email addys would then be sold from spammer to spammer and eventually most of the database will be cracked and valid email addresses known.
It just won't work until there is an enforcable penalty and since most get routed outside the US, a nospam list will never be a solution (unless ratified by the world, heh).
Better to scrap the current email protocols and develop a new one that enforces accountability. Don't ask me how this'll work, but I think it the best solution out there.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:5, Insightful)
In order for unsolicited *commercial* email (read: spam) to be effective, there *must* be a product/service to purchase and a method to contact the seller.
Yell at/Fine the seller. They will know which campaign did the spamming. Then fine the spammer.
In order for the spammer (or the company the spammer is spamming for) to get my money, they have to provide a way for me to contact them. It doesn't matter if they use open relays on Mars, they still, ultimately, have to provide a method for me to contact them.
That means that a national opt-out list, coupled with a spambounty (or some other kill-the-spammer type legislation) *would* matter, and it would *not* be business as usual.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:3, Funny)
Even if all "legit" spams did this, it only takes one person to start harvesting this way and the whole thing completely looses it's meaning. And when you'
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:5, Insightful)
You, like many others (thieving parasites like Scelson included), are still overlooking one critical fact:
The Internet is not now, nor has it ever been, a truly "public" resource. Nobody in the government pays me any subsidy to operate my servers, and I don't know of any ISPs in the U.S. that are receiving any similar subsidies.
I pay, out of my own pocket, for the electricity and bandwidth that my servers require to work as they do, just as anyone from a mom-n'-pop ISP to a giant like Earthlink pays for the electricity and bandwidth to run theirs.
In each case, whether you're a single individual or a multinational conglomerate, or anywhere in between, your servers are YOUR PRIVATE PROPERTY, along with the mailboxes on them. You might rent them to others, as ISPs do, but the only guarantee that ANYone has in terms of sending and receiving mail is whatever guarantees are in the contract that gets signed between an Internet provider and their customers.
When spammers spam, they're violating private property rights. Period. When someone spams me, or one of my other users, they're STEALING from me. When someone spams AOL, they're stealing from AOL and its users. When someone spams ANYone with a 'net-connected system, it is theft of resources. Period.
I will do whatever it takes to protect my systems from such intrusions. If that means risking the loss or delay of some legitimate E-mail, so be it.
Apparently, AOL is taking a similar path. That's fine. They have absolute and final authority over their own equipment. Scelson can scream "censorship!" all he wants, but he still has no right to mail to someone else's network if they don't want to receive his (or any other spammer's) crap.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have an interesting question though: if receiving spam cost you money because you pay for bandwidth, what about other advertising? How much do you pay for the time commercials are shown on cable channels? How much money per month is spent on electricity, during the times when the TV is being used to display advertisements in your home? How much is your time worth?
Carrier protection (Score:3, Insightful)
You might then be taking responsiblity for the content you do let through.
I think ISPs are more scared of that than spam.
ISP's should let you opt out of their default mail filtering policy, then these spammers lose a big part of the arguement.
Either opt in spam filtering and opt in bulk email.
or
Opt out spam filtering and opt out bulk emial.
Are we just as bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
After his three children were asleep late one Saturday night last November, Jones sat down at his PC for a bit of spammer-flaming. First, he says, he visited a Web site, slashdot.org, that's a favorite among techies; he pulled down a list of about 10 alleged spammers. He programmed his personal computer to send a letter to each supposed spammer in the same way many spammers do: through so-called open relays and mail servers that forward e-mail in ways that make it hard to track down the sender. As his finishing stroke, he had his PC send the message to each spammer 10,000 times.
"We use the same methods the spammers use," says Jones, chuckling. "It's a bombardment."
Has Slashdot become a haven for anti-spammers? While I hate spam, I'm not sure that vigilante action is the right way to handle the problem. Although the article doesn't say that we endorse anti-spam vigilante actions, it makes it look like we're a hub for this sort of thing.
Re:Are we just as bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think, to a certain extent, it has. Consider for a moment, whenever we have a story about a specific spammer, how far down the discussion do you really need to scroll to find all of that spammer's personal information? I haven't seen it in this discussion yet, but I am sure that this Ronald Scelson guy's info is somewhere in this discussion. Add to that the number of people that will be saying things like, "this guy should be taken out and shot", and you have a hotbed for vigilante type attacks on spammers.
Though, mind you, while I would never do anything like that myself (actually, I might, but I am not a programmer and so don't have the skills necessary), I can't help but get a warm fuzzy feeling everytime one of these useless wastes of carbon get hacked and screwed. So, yes, its probably not legal, and it may be morally dubious, but to all the people that make this guys life hell, good work.
Re:Are we just as bad? (Score:3, Funny)
Pretty simple (Score:5, Funny)
{ $AOL=shoot_self_in_foot(with_gun);}
FYI incaseof /. fx (Score:3, Informative)
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 22, 2003; Page A01
As a Senate committee sought answers yesterday on how to curb the overwhelming surge of junk e-mail, one of the nation's most notorious spammers told members just how hard their job would be.
Ronald Scelson, an eighth-grade dropout and self-taught computer programmer from Louisiana, riveted the Commerce Committee hearing room as he explained that he sends between 120 million and 180 million e-mails every 12 hours.
He boasted that in 24 hours he could crack sophisticated software filters designed to block spam.
And he accused Internet providers of hypocrisy in claiming to want to protect their customers from unsolicited messages.
Large Internet companies spam their own members, he said, while other network access providers have signed contracts allowing known spammers to send out mass e-mail.
"I'm probably the most hated person in this room," said an unapologetic Scelson, responding to a parade of technology, government and marketing officials who decried the purveyors of junk e-mail.
Scelson and eight other witnesses testified as Congress grapples with what Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) called a tide of "digital dreck" that threatens e-mail communication, one of the most powerful tools of the Internet age.
With spam now costing U.S. businesses upwards of $10 billion a year, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is co-sponsoring an anti-spam bill with Burns, said it was time for Congress to stop dawdling and pass federal legislation.
All of the witnesses agreed that spam is a complex problem that defies an easy fix. But as executives from leading software companies and online providers fidgeted uncomfortably, the man known to anti-spam tracking groups as the "Cajun Spammer" described how he easily acquires millions of e-mail addresses from publicly available member directories at America Online and other providers.
Moreover, he said, "the same people complaining about spam send e-mail" with solicitations for their own products and services. "AOL spams its members," he said.
This prompted the committee chairman, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), to turn to Ted Leonsis, vice president of AOL.
"Mr. Leonsis, are you a spammer?" McCain asked.
Leonsis, who had testified minutes earlier about how AOL was blocking 2.4 billion pieces of spam per day, did not answer directly.
"We let members opt out" of commercial messages sent by the company and affiliates, he said. And he accused Scelson of violating the company's "terms of use" agreement by using AOL's membership directory as a source for e-mail addresses. Scelson readily agreed.
Scelson also testified about how some Internet access providers signed little-known agreements, called "pink contracts," with known spammers to allow them to send mail in bulk, at prices higher than other commercial clients were charged.
Although the contracts mandated that bulk e-mailers abide by all state laws, Scelson said it did not matter if the e-mailers followed the rules. Most of the providers rip up the contracts and kick spammers off their systems after being threatened by anti-spam organizations that track mass e-mailers and put them on blacklists.
As a result, Scelson said, he has had no choice but to resort to forging the sender information in his bulk e-mail so he can be anonymous and maintain his connection to the Internet.
"This is censorship," he said, arguing that both anti-spam vigilantes and Internet providers that filter out spam are depriving people of their right to see their mail.
"People still buy this stuff," he said, claiming that his clients get a response rate to his e-mail of 1 to 2 percent.
Scelson, who said he does not distribute mail containing pornography, said one of his biggest clients sells a package of anti-virus computer software called Norton SystemWorks at cut-rate prices.
Officials at Symantec Inc., which makes the Norton software
Hell Freezes Over (Score:5, Funny)
and several dimensions away, Satan scraped the icicles from his beard and once more begged God to turn the heat back up. "Okay, so a spammer told the truth, but it only happened once, and it was an accident, it's not my fault, can I please have some frickin' heat down here already?!?!"
Re:FYI incaseof /. fx (Score:5, Funny)
An impressive claim, considering that he was testifying before Congress.
Re:FYI incaseof /. fx (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:FYI incaseof /. fx (Score:4, Funny)
Just a few (Score:5, Insightful)
client filtering is just wrong approach (Score:5, Insightful)
That spam email should never be sent, period. It should not ever proceed across the internet whose bandwidth is being paid for by millions of users, providing benefit to the sender. It should never touch the hard disk of a server.
In addition, it simply takes too much sophistication for the VAST majority of email users to properly set up filters. A simple [ADV*] -> Trash filter would delete some email that quite honestly some users want -- special coupons from Amazon.com for repeat customers, for example. Those emails would by (proposed) law have to have the [ADV] tag on them. So then you add another filter above the Trash filter to allow ADV from Amazon through... and so on, and so forth.
Pretty soon the hassle of organising your filters has exceeded the hassle of having to just click 'delete' to spam (for the average email user). I can easily enter a new expression in my
Why do people do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why do people do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
But okay, the reports of Al Ral getting buried in mail did make me smile. :^)
Ronnie Scelson's Info, Courtesy of ROKSO (Score:5, Informative)
ABUSERS: Ronald R. Scelson
[Birthdate: 12-11-71 or 72, New Orleans, LA, married]
avsrscelson@aol.com / cajunspam@aol.com / avsrscelson2000@yahoo.com / dff@yahoo.com
Amy Hoolahan [wife/sister?]
43 CYPRESS MEADOWS LOOP
SLIDELL, LA 70460 US
Home: (504) 646-2225
Work: 504-649-6248
PHONE NUMBERS: 888-365-0000 ext. 1648 / 800-242-0363 EXT. 2427
888-724-3108 x5413752
504 781 8117 / 504-957-1037 / 504-847-1232 / 504-649-7751
504-781-6615 / 504-649-6248 / 504-781-6655 / 504-831-1595
504-646-2225 / 504-641-0876
FAX: 504 641 0810 / 504-456-0995 / 504-781-6615
MORE INFO: Connelly sues to keep spamming:
http://www.frc.org/legal/lf99j05.html
http://www.mediainst.org/digest/fall1999/p
Wife Florence Fox sued for Nu-Skin Pyramid Scheme:
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/press2/mo
AKA: RONALD SCELSON (NETBLK-FON-106771046442576)
43 CYPRESS MEADOWS LOOP
SLIDELL, LA 70460 US
SCELSON, RONALD (RS928-ARIN) RSCELSON@AOL.COM
5049571037
Re:Why do people do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask a dozen random AOL and Yahoo! users - I bet not one of them can describe how the antispam features that their mail host uses work.
Slam his customers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slam his customers (Score:3, Interesting)
Now -that- would be slamming the customers. p.------------
Profit on selling customer list? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if anyone inside of AOL has run the numbers to figure out
and compared that to the amount of revenue that they get from selling out their customers.
Re:Profit on selling customer list? (Score:5, Insightful)
AOL has the luxury of being both part of the problem (huge customer list) and part of the solution (spam fighting tools). They sell both.
To the user they offer 'advanced' spam fighting tools. The users see the problem as external to AOL (EVERYONE gets spam after all), and continue to use AOL because they offer at least some kind of protection. This creates, in the users mind, value.
It is not in AOL's best interest for Spam to simply go away. Much like telemarketing is in the best interests of the phone companies (they CREATE the problem by selling phone numbers, and also sell the tools to fight the callers). AOL merely wants to propogate the perception that they are on 'our' side of the spam battle.
Can't beat my filtering (Score:3)
Spamming != bulk mailings (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately he, like all other spammers, completely misses the point that the two are not related. When LL Bean sends its catalog to you it costs the company X cents to do so per each catalog.
When Scelson sends out his 180 emails a day it costs him X cents in total. However, it costs all the ISPs whose bandwidth he and others chew up X dollars per email. Thus, he is offloading the cost of doing business to the people who are receiving the email.
This reminds me of the old postal system in the UK. In days gone by it was the receiver who had to pay to accept the piece of mail. If they didn't pay the mail was returned. It is only in recent history that the mail system is such that sender pays.
I wonder if Mr Scelson would be happy if all the advertisers who send him their mailings would tell him he has to pay to get those things whether he wants them or not.
Re:Spamming != bulk mailings (Score:4, Interesting)
Postage stamps were first introduced in Britain, in 1840. As you say, before then it was the recipient who paid for the mail, not the sender.
Now in those days that was sensible, since there was no mail system as such anyway. Cash on delivery was the only way you could be fairly sure that the messenger would actually deliver your letter -- since if he didn't, he wouldn't get paid.
Problem was, people cheated the system. Early hackers, shall we call them, figured out that they didn't need to have their letters actually delivered & paid for to communicate. For instance, if someone wanted the answer to a simple yes-no question (remember, all long-distance communication was by letter then, so this happened a lot), they could set up a code for the response to be communicated by the colour of the envelope. So: messenger arrives with a letter -- but the recipient, having seen the colour of the envelope, says he doesn't want it and refuses to pay.
Solution: set up a national postal system that people trust, so they're willing to prepay for delivery.
Of course, 150 years later and US phone companies make the same mistake with cellphones. Charge people to receive calls + caller id -> don't answer, just call back on a land line.
Nothing Good Is Going To Come Of This (Score:4, Interesting)
He's the Norton SystemWorks guy! (Score:5, Interesting)
Scelson, who said he does not distribute mail containing pornography, said one of his biggest clients sells a package of anti-virus computer software called Norton SystemWorks at cut-rate prices. Officials at Symantec Inc., which makes the Norton software, said in an interview that although they have not seen the package Scelson's client is selling, other similar offers that they have tracked down have proved to be counterfeit.
I get 1-2 Norton SystemWorks spams a day. If they're from this fucker, let's hope the Symantec people are able to find out where he lives, and sue him into oblivion.
Scelson, as all spammers, is a liar (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing to keep in mind when talking with spammers is that they always lie. They lie to themselves ("everything I do is legal", "I am forced to hijack open proxies") and they lie to everyone else ("Here's the information you requested").
The career spammers are, indeed, bold enough to even lie to the US Government, face-to-face. Too bad the US Government is usually totally cluefree when it comes to the spam problem, so these conmen get away with lieing to senators.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers. Remember to shoot knees first, so that they can't run away while you slowly torture them to death
Re:Scelson, as all spammers, is a liar (Score:4, Informative)
Let's start with AOL. You say there is no way AOL sells their info. Well, I know 3 local businesses here who bought AOL member addresses from AOL, buying only the sections of our local town even. AOL will not only sell you their members, they will offer targeted selections.
Now, I doubt AOL puts this on their site next to their member sign-up, but from what I have seen, they sure do sell your addresses. In fact, I'll bet you did not know AOL tracks where their users go on the web for marketing purposes. Yup, if you visit a mortgage site, they immediately sell your info to their list of mortgage lead buyers. By morning, you will have several offers for mortgages in your inbox. And this happens for all kinds of businesses. I mean, they control your email and your net connection, why not market accordingly. I'm sure a few of you AOL users have experienced this before, or perhaps could try it?
Now, as far as all spammers being liars, I see you are just one of the anti-spam flock, spouting propaganda. It's disappointing no one on /. actually reads the articles, or can remembers ones from a few weeks ago. You might remember a bit on Spamhaus showing the top 200 spammers causing 90% of the spam. Well, I know 2 of those people. I know one because they live 3 towns over from me, running a small PC shop in Halifax, MA. If you email me, I'll send you their business address, directions, even their home info. :) The other one I met because of them. I can tell you they are unscrupulous, a bit dumb, and have no troubles telling lies. The ones I know are total dicks. The issue is the remaining 90% of small time spammers, some of whom who are actually ok guys.
Granted, they should be paying for their use of email, yata-yata. Case in point, the 3 shop owners I know locally who bought those bits of AOL's lists. They offer honest products, they try and target locally, so they don't send people who can't possibly use their service an ad, and they honor remove requests. They even offer their shop info in the email so they can be contacted directly. The system could be better, but at least they try. They do not fit your bill of the evil spammer. Some really are pretty bad. Some are not. Your sweeping statements of ignorance and promises of murder at the end are totally unwarranted.
I will be sure to remember to offer to murder you next time I disagree with the way you do business. How you got modded +5 for this steaming pile of flaimbait is beyond me, but I'll certainly burn some karma to put out an opposing statement. I guess that is what public forums are all about. ::drinks a little more distilled Usenet post evil:: Cheers.
Re:Scelson, as all spammers, is a liar (Score:4, Interesting)
Also consider this. How much do you think a little weasel like Scelson could've afforded to pay for the customer list? $20K, maybe, if he borrowed money from his stepmom.
AOL would NEVER sell complete (as in without AOL's involvement) access to their most valued asset for anything not in 6-7 figures.
Scelson is putting on a smoke-and-mirrors game trying to confuse people involved so that they won't notice he's a thief, liar and a conman. This is Spammer 101 tactics.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers
Making a Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
When a specific claim is made, like this there are a few options.
1. No statement at this time, or no comment.
2. Suggest that this didn't happen. This is against our standard policies.
3. Investigate the statement, and then comment on it's accuracy.
4. Say we did no such thing, without checking. This is reckless, and a responsible person should not do so.
I know it sounds weaselish, but you MUST not make a statement when you do not have the information to justify it. You can get in a lot of trouble for lying.
Re:Scelson, as all spammers, is a liar (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a few possibilities:
There's no reason Leonsis would know every dealing that AOL does (especially those before he rose to this level); if he affirms, he's fucked. If he denies, the best he can hope for is status quo ante if he's right; if he's wrong, he's fucked. So if he answers, 4 things can happen, and 3 of them are bad.
Return to sender! (Score:5, Interesting)
As an added bonus use the spammer's postal address as the return address.
Install TMDA now! (Score:3, Informative)
That, in combination with qmail's revokable dash-addresses (howard-amazon@cow.com, howard-slashdot@cow.com, etc.) make it an excellent solution not just for avoiding spam, but for tracking its sources as well.
1-2 percent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1-2 percent? (Score:3, Insightful)
No. "Response" and "sale" are clearly two different things. Of the 1-2% responses, probably less than 1% of those (i.e.,
Lots of good info here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's say 10 million emails per hour (lowest), 1% response rate (lowest), that's 100,000 responses per hour! That means that over the course of a year, we are talking about 876 million responses. Divide that by the 165.75 million internet users in the US, and we learn that each and every one of you respond to him 5 times per year!
Well, maybe he spams the entire world. I have no idea how many internet users there are in the world, but let's say it is something like one billion. That means everyone responds to him almost yearly! Amazing! Now I only have one question: those responses, are they sales or deaththreats?
one less spammer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lots of good info here... (Score:3, Informative)
Also, I never saw any statements about the kinds of responses. I'm inclined to think the spammers-for-hire count all kinds of responses (including the death threats) to make their numbers look better.
Re:Lots of good info here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, as you suggest, he could be counting death threats as responses as well :-)
Still, with todays bandwidth prices, and an estimate of 10kb per e-mail, if he's sending 10 million messages an hour, he'd be sending around 100GB an hour at around $50 an hour (likely less, given the volumes and since it's mail traffic where he doesn't need to pay a premium for low latency connectivity). A product with a reasonable markup and he might be able to recoup the cost of those 10 million messages with a single sale, possibly even making a nice profit.
And that's why asking people not to buy from spammers won't be enough to get them out of business.
Re:Lots of good info here... (Score:4, Insightful)
I personally think it's not only the spammers which need hefty fines; it's the people hiring them. I don't think jail time for fraud and many counts of unauthorised computer use (and paying someone to do these things for you) is a bad idea either.
Never mind crap like "spammer gets $100,000 fine, sells one of his ferrari's to pay for it"; I want to see "spammer gets $100,000 fine, 3 year jail term, and all assets potentially paid by or related to spamming confiscated. Companies responsible get $1,000,000 + 1 year profit fine each".
Then I want to see Bush announce a War on Spam; out of the country? No fines for you, we'll just blow you up with a Predator Drone.
Sadly I doubt much less than this would have a significant impact on the problem. And blowing people up might be taking things a little far
Another bad Slashdot analogy (Score:5, Interesting)
People need to guard their email addresses in the same way they practice safe sex. Don't go sticking your email address just any old place ...
Ok, that was bad. The exceptions are cases where your ISP screws you and sells your name (like those sorry AOL customers had happen to them) or people who use brute force address guessing algorithms.
Although I think the legislation being considered is a good first step --
Nothing really beats good filtering. I put together a server side filtering process using a Mail::Audit. I support several end users who can administrate their mail rules (e.g. block if subject has "viagra" or if sender is spamboy@jizzmop.com, etc.) using a web based interface and MySQL back-end. People can share rules as well. It's working pretty well for everyone. Additionally, Mail::Audit allows you to tap into the RBL which essentially will give you an "unlisted number" - only those you have expilicity granted permission to recieve from can reach you. Sounds extreme, but I get ZERO spam.
Re:Another bad Slashdot analogy (Score:5, Funny)
People need to guard their email addresses in the same way they practice safe sex. Don't go sticking your email address just any old place ...
Special offer for JSkillsWui$d3g6Yert! Email address too small/not performing to expectations? Now you can enlarge your email address the natural way! 100% safe and effective! Get the email address performance you've always dreamed of having!
SPAMHAUS Record on Scelson (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SPAMHAUS Record on Scelson (Score:3, Funny)
OK, that's eyewitness (nosewitness?) confirmation that Scelson does indeed live there.
What a spin he puts on it. (Score:3, Insightful)
"..and that he has no choice but to resort to forging the sender information in his bulk e-mail so he can be anonymous and maintain his connection to the Internet."
In other words: "I have to lie, cheat and steal to use resources on mail servers illicitly."
Asshole.
Where's the personal info, it's been 20 minutes. (Score:5, Funny)
This article is 20 minutes old, I am suprised his home address, phone number, ssn, shoe size and EQ account info aren't already posted.
Re:Where's the personal info, it's been 20 minutes (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/search.lasso?evi
ABUSERS: Ronald R. Scelson
[Birthdate: 12-11-71 or 72, New Orleans, LA, married]
avsrscelson@aol.com / cajunspam@aol.com / avsrscelson2000@yahoo.com / dff@yahoo.com
Amy Hoolahan [wife/sister?]
43 CYPRESS MEADOWS LOOP
SLIDELL, LA 70460 US
Home: (504) 646-2225
Work: 504-649-6248
PHONE NUMBERS: 888-365-0000 ext. 1648 / 800-242-0363 EXT. 2427
888-724-3108 x5413752
504 781 8117 / 504-957-1037 / 504-847-1232 / 504-649-7751
504-781-6615 / 504-649-6248 / 504-781-6655 / 504-831-1595
504-646-2225 / 504-641-0876
FAX: 504 641 0810 / 504-456-0995 / 504-781-6615
MORE INFO: Connelly sues to keep spamming:
http://www.frc.org/legal/lf99j05.html
http://www.mediainst.org/digest/fall1999/p
Wife Florence Fox sued for Nu-Skin Pyramid Scheme:
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/press2/mo
Me, I'm thinking some letters of marque and reprisal are the answer...
Here's an idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
Whaddya think?
-- Greg
forging sender address (Score:5, Insightful)
He claims that he "has no choice but to resort to forging the sender information in his bulk e-mail so he can be anonymous".
Isn't that a bit like saying that when I was 19, I had no choice but to resort to forging my driver's license so I could buy beer?
Re:forging sender address (Score:3, Insightful)
While I hate spam as much as the next guy, this is not the same thing. Spam with modified headers is like somebody calling you up and saying their in Oregon when they're really in Nevada. That's not illegal, nor should it be.
Your analog is more like forging (or stealing) secret PGP keys.
BTW, I've always thought it funny that /. folks are so against spam, yet they're all for anonymity on the net. We
Anonymous my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that like bank robbers being forced to don a mask so they can remain anonymous and maintain their 'business operations'?
I've had one of my email addresses used as a reply to: for quite a few spams. A real PITA. Not only did that address get the standard spam, it get bounces from nonexistent recipients. Sometimes in the hundreds per day, as the result of dictionary attacks on various ISP's. On top of that, you get the indignant replies from pissed off people.
Blatant forgeries in commercial email headers should be made illegal.
HERE HE IS, the bastard (Score:5, Informative)
These were the only Ronald Scelson's in Louisiana and considering they are both in the same city I would say it's fairly certain.
Ronald Scelson
211 Martin Lane
Slidell, LA 70458
Ronald R Scelson
1711 W Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460
Would the
Re:HERE HE IS, the bastard (Score:5, Informative)
That's the problem with vigilanti-style justice - it requires an assumption of guilt, and the victim rarely gets an opportunity to reply until it's too late.
A modest proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
What would the result of this be? Email would be totally unusable that day and perhaps for many days afterwards. Not only would it get government officials to take notice, it would cause even the spammers to see the evil of spam. Those that are capable of seeing it anyhow, most of them are probably blind to it.
Also, everyone that became a spammer for a day would Profit!
Scelson is right (Score:5, Insightful)
(emphasis mine) I think it's a brilliant suggestion. If the Burns-Wyden bill is passed, then I can easily filter my mail to stop spam I don't want to see. I don't think that my ISPs should be blocking email that may be spam but follows these rules. The filters in Eudora and Outlook Express are powerful enough to stop all spam I am not interested in receiving if I know for a fact that the forged header problem vanishes. I think it's a great compromise.
8th grade education ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"But carriers should be held accountable when they submit to anti-spam groups. Terminating services to companies' such as my own without any legal reason to do so is not the democracy that we should all be living."
Jackass, if you're reading:
1) This is not a democracy. We're a democratic republic. There's a big difference.
2) Forcing someone else to provide you a service is neither freedom, nor related to a democracy. In fact, that would be contrary to freedom.
3) Claiming you're FORCED to forge email addresses because of "bullying tactics" is akin to claiming you were forced to break into my house and dump junk mail on my desk because I refused delivery.
Apparently you think America is all about you, and that you somehow have a level of freedom that compels others to act according to your wishes.
Rot in hell, dickhead.
Even worse than being spammed (Score:5, Interesting)
Until a few days ago...
Then I started getting bounced messages showing up in the inbox. First a dozen or so, and now 300+ per day. Some unscrupulous bastard put my e-mail address as the return address on those damned "Penis enlargement" spams and sent out a coupla hundred thousand. All have a different name ("Buffy", "Steve", "Frank", etc.), but all with my e-mail address.
I've had that address for nearly 10 years, which is the reason I put up with spam on it, but now I'm going to have to kill it all because some moron (the messages originated in China according the to headers) picked my name at random to hide behind.
New Distributed Computing Project : DDoS spammers (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been looking at the source of my spam lately, and, although the email addresses are always forged, the body of the messages nearly always point to some website.
What we should do is have a way to automatize the slashdotting of these sites. The resource cost for every recepient is very small, but is very high for the target web site. If the site is run directly by the spammer, then that's great (he get's to pay the bandwidth bill). If it is run by the spammer's client, then that's even better. If it is hosted on a free non-commercial facility, it will wake them up and will make them find a way to make their users accountable.
So how to do this in a very user-friendly and convenient way ? /dev/null. The app should have a funny user interface, that let's you know when a target host becomes unavailable (victory ! another one bites the dust !), etc. The downloadable list of target hosts should be maintained by a trusted source (it could be GPG signed for example), maybe mailed to you though a MixMaster remailer to avoid spammer suing the originator.
Make a distributed-computing application, very light-weight, that runs on every platform. You should be able to set the maximum bandwidth you want to use (the default could be very low, like 5kbps), when it should start and stop, etc.The app will go and fetch a list of URLs of images or HTML pages on the target servers, and start downloading them to
This could make all the Spam issue a lot more fun !
DMCA (Score:5, Interesting)
So isn't that in violation of the DMCA? Or am I stretching it? If he said he could get around them then its different but he specifically said he could crack them.
8th Grade Dropout? (Score:5, Funny)
It shows [google.com]
And all this time I thought the bad english in the spam I get originated from Asia.
Blacklist AOL on your mailserver!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
They are breaking the rules of the Internet (see: SMTP RFC [isi.edu]s) by improperly implementing postmaster@aol.com (see rfc-ignorant
I have asked all AOL users at my site who wish to continue emailing their home addresses from work to get a new service provider and given them two months to do so. I have recommended several small local ISPs to them that I know provide good service and never allow easily detected virii like Yaha, Klez and SoBig to transit their mail hubs.
We, fellow slashdotters, can use our enormous power as administrators of email hubs to get AOL's attention - since it seems more civilized methods are useless. The social contract of the Internet is simple; play by the rules (i.e. implement the required RFCs) or you are not part of the community.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Snailmail DoS (Score:4, Interesting)
has everyone missed the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
This issue isn't about killing spam - it's about using spam as an 'issue' to kill anonymity online. It's yet another attempt by the government to throttle what remains of our privacy, and spam is a very convenient complaint to base this sort of legislation on.
Thanks but no thanks. I'll take the spam in exchange for privacy. My privacy is far more important than any government attempt to curb unwanted email, especially when it's just a ruse to eliminate what few rights I have left.
Max
Super-DMCA (Score:4, Interesting)
I just realized something. (Yes, I'm probably a bit behind, and just mod me redundant if this has been discussed before.)
The Super-DMCA that's been going around basically makes it a crime to attempt to hide the destination or originating point of any communication with the intent to defraud a communications provider.
This Super-DMCA has been passed a lot of places. Doesn't it pretty much already make forging headers for sending spam illegal?
Open Relays and an Immodest Proposal (Score:4, Interesting)
In the case of spamming I've started to wonder about open relay blocking. Most sites that offer information about open relays to facilitate blocking (such as ordb.org) do not make the contents of their open relay lists public. And that made perfect sense to me until yesterday when (while looking into several spam filtering methods) I got curious and started looking for a list of open relays. I found at least one such - but it was clearly aimed at the spammers as it had incomplete information and a way to purchase a subscription.
So, by making open relay lists private and secret, we're actually supporting the spam industry (not necessarily the spammers directly, but the folks who sell them stuff).
Maybe its time to think about releasing the lists. This could have several interesting effects (positive :) , neutral :| and negative :( ) :
Maybe it wouldn't work, but the stuff written about the spam proposal before congress is seriously scary - it would essentially legitimize whole classes of spam and make it much harder to turn off such "legitimate" spam.
Re:Spam is just good business (Score:3, Insightful)
I would rather trust a spammer than a lazy computer programmer to get a job done, that's for sure. It's not about being nice, it's about being a hard worker. Stupid isn't forever, but lazy is.
How, exactly, is writing a few scripts to send out a huge batch of e-mail every 12 hours or so, with minimal input from the user, hard work?
Sounds to me like the spammer is the lazy one, but, maybe I'm missing something. Please enlighten me.
Well overhere (Score:3, Interesting)
Spam is not good business (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to attract and retain a loyal customer base, it absolutely doesn't make sense to use spam or other annoying methods of advertising on the Internet.
As an example: I work for a company that owns one of the major online travel sites. A few weeks ago, we had an all-company conference call, and one of the members in my group pointed out that another online travel site had recently stepped up its advertising via popup ads on web sites. He asked why we weren't annoying the consumer with popup ads. The leader of the call replied, "I think you just answered your own question." He explained that while popup ads may be effective, they don't make any friends among consumers and they don't build loyalty.
If popup ads have such a negative impression, don't you think unsolicited commercial E-mail has a much more negative impression on the Internet population? Here's a hint: The spammers who sell Viagra (r), Viagra substitutes, penis extension pills, mortgages, and other spamvertised products almost never reveal their real business name. They hide behind throwaway e-mail addresses and make themselves untraceable to their audience.
Would a business concerned with consumer loyalty really have to hide themselves? My local grocery store doesn't have to hide from me. Neither does Target, Borders, Best Buy, or any number of bricks-and-mortar retailers. Amazon.com doesn't have to hide from me, nor do any of the online travel sites. Yet the spammers pushing penis pills don't dare reveal who they are, where they work, how I can contact them, or anything traceable.
I would rather trust a spammer than a lazy computer programmer to get a job done, that's for sure. It's not about being nice, it's about being a hard worker. Stupid isn't forever, but lazy is.
I think you're trolling here, but in case you aren't: That "hard work" relies on hijacking other people's resources. It relies on deception and lies to push a product to people.
(Disclaimer: This is not the opinion of my employer, of course.)
Lies are perfectly legal; they're even protected! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think things would be so different if corporations didn't have that right -- the actors, script writers, spammers, etc. working for corporations would still have the right to tell you lies, as individuals.
(OT TIME) What pisses me off is when the *cops* are allowed to misrepresent the truth. Like alleged sniper guy John Malvo not getting a lawyer because he asked "Do I get to see a lawyer?" and the cops said "No." Then he started singing like a bird. The judge ruled the testimony should be allowed, since Malvo didn't explicitly ASK for a lawyer -- he didn't say "Can I see a lawyer?" But it's clear from his question that his intent was to see a lawyer, and it's also quite clear that the cops knew they could play word games with him, because everyone wants this kid to fry so jurisprudence goes out the window. Hmmm I guess it does piss me off that the cops lie, but it pisses me off even more that it now has a big fat stamp of approval, at least in Virginia. What a crock -- what if someone who doesn't speak English well (Malvo perhaps) is detained and can't formulate the specific grammatically correct sentence to request a lawyer? Oh, wait, that person is probably a terrorist [nynews.com] or illegal immigrant, nevermind.
So, I guess the overall arc of this post would be: don't come bitching about how horrible all these spammers are, they lie, hide behind secrecy etc. when that sort of behavior is exactly the same thing our legal system is doing with Malvo, and don't get me started on Ashcroft's tactics.
And, what's the fucking problem with spam in the first place. C'mon people, I have had the same HOTMAIL account for like five years, and for a LONG time my email was listed with each post on SlashDot. I still don't get that much spam, maybe five a day, and I'm not so freaking busy that I don't have the FIVE SECONDS it takes to delete them. What's that, you say? You run a mail server and the spam has got you down? Well, that's why your job is to run that mail server. If it were easy, they wouldn't have to go out and hire a specialist.