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When Good Spammers Go Bad
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Jul 21, 2003 07:42 AM
from the whip-lash-from-spammers dept.
from the whip-lash-from-spammers dept.
pfleming writes "According to this blog article on BadTux by Eric Green, the constant harrassment of spammers has a price. You get a Cease and Desist letter- or more correctly, your ISP gets a C/D letter. But, if you're a hard core geek you just might get your site more notice as it gets mirrored out onto sympathetic hosts.
Also mirrored in other locations."
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It was going ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
M$ might be a monopoly but at least they have bought some form of consistency
Rus
Re:It was going ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
That kind of shit is what makes Linux advocates all look insane and results in me having to explain that, no, not all Linux users are short-sighted, socially-inept zealots every time I bring Linux up at work. It's a lot easier to sell Linux to people without the idiotic pomposity.
Parent
Immaturity in the OSS community? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It was going ok. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's most of the paragraph that you quoted from
- I offered to take down evidence-eliminator-sucks.com for free. All they had to do was take all mention of me off their site. I mean, what do I care about what Windows losers get scammed out of? But no, they had to go off and hire a solicitor to spew out a cart00ney, and now it's too late for that: the site is now hosted on several servers scattered around the Internet, and I couldn't make the site go away now even if I wanted to.
What he's refering to is this page [evidence-eliminator.com] on evidence eliminator's page that twists the truth a lot about Eric Green.Anyway, if he wanted to be more accurate, he probably would have said "I care a great deal about evidence-eliminator removing untruths on their website about me, more than I necessarily care about getting the truth out."
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Re:It was going ok. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:It was going ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
libel n.
a. A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation.
b. The act of presenting such material to the public.
Parent
Re:It was going ok. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It was going ok. (Score:5, Funny)
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Their product (Score:5, Informative)
As for their ethics, yes, their ethics suck. Their advertising says you'll go to jail if you don't use their product, they have popup scare ads that display your hard drive (if you're using Windows) and says that they're looking at your hard drive and you better buy their software or all those porn gifs will get you thrown in jail (it's a simple btw, with C:\ as the source -- i.e., it's just displaying your hard drive to yourself), and then of course there is the virus that their affiliates are sending around to hijack people's web browsers and point it back to the Evidence Eliminator site, and ... well. I think you're getting the picture now. These are not Nice Folks. And if we can trace that virus back to their offices, they will be wearing stripes soon.
Parent
With great power comes... (Score:5, Insightful)
... You know the rest of it. Just as comic book characters have such a code, it would appear that computer geeks need one too.
It's obvious that the folks at evidence eliminator know a good bit about tech, and not enough about morality. A lot of other fine folks who run legit/non-shady companies have the same knowledge but don't use it to trick consumers into using their products (probably because they actually make something useful). Just because you have the power to do something doesn't mean you should use it. Imagine if the loyal slashdot crowd were to use our collective resources to advertise any one issue or cause.....
Errr, Like Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
Erm, you mean like Microsoft Bad, Linux Good?
Blockwars [blockwars.com]: multiplayer and it's free!
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Sales and Marketting (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the sales guy thought that by sending me junk, he now has the right to call me whenever. First time I told him I wasn't interested, second and third times I added not to call me back. Fourth time I laid into him - he called by bosses number. Fifth time I did some research and sent his boss and a few other high-up's in the company an e-mail explaining how I had nicely asked to stop being bothered by the company and that they have now left a very bad impression, and that I talk with lot of other people that they may want to deal with, and am not afraid of sharing my opinion of a company if asked.
The VP of the company sent me an e-mail back saying (THE SALES GUY) IS DOING A GOOD JOB GETTING THE NAME OUT THERE SO BUY SOME PRODUCTS FROM US. (no lie - all caps).
Upshot is I've not been called anymore.
I look at it like X-10 - they've made some good products, but as soon as marketting/sales starts to lead, even the best company can get dragged downhill.
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The irony wasn't lost on me (Score:3, Funny)
Lies! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lies! (Score:5, Funny)
To paraphrase Starship Troopers:
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My own list of spammers... (Score:5, Informative)
I use the following script:
for I in `cat
do
echo Blacklisting Spammer: $I/23
iptables -A INPUT -s $I/23 -j REJECT
done
to blacklist them.
I personally guanantee that all the addresses in this list have spammed me. If you don't believe / trust me, fine - don't use it. I use it on a production server and have never had any complaints...
By the way, the
The list is 98% asian dsl accounts.
Also, for an alternative solution, try this:
smbclient -L $IP_ADDRESS
where $IP_ADDRESS is the address of the computer that spammed you.
If you're in luck, you'll find yourself connecting to a Windows computer. It'll ask you for a password. Hit enter. If you're still in luck, it will list the available shares, and a list of server names. Pick a server name. If there are more than one, try each one
Now, download and compile 'smbdie'. Search for it on google. Run:
smbdie -i $IP_ADDRESS -p 139 -t $SERVER_NAME
where $SERVER_NAME is the server name you just picked from smbclient's output ( above ). If you are still in luck, you will have rebooted the spammer's computer ( it blue-screens ), and maybe even caused some data loss.
Really don't like them? Add the smbdie command to a cron job. I've found most spammers have fixed ip addresses, and they become available to reboot again withing approximately 2-3 minutes.
Enjoy!
Re:My own list of spammers... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:My own list of spammers... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got logs to show that they spammed me.
If they take me to court, I'll counter-sue for double the amount they're claiming, consisting of:
a) Trespassing on private property
b) Bandwidth
c) Harassment and mental anguish
I'll also punch them in the face on the way out of court.
Re:My own list of spammers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:My own list of spammers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Look at it like this.
We are a private company and we have a mail server.
We refuse to accept ANY incoming connections from networks that have had spammers on them at one point. What is anyone going to do to stop us from firewalling them?
It's like saying that someone's going to sue me for putting my hands over my ears when I hear them talking about how good George fucking Bush is. I know they're wrong. I'm sick of hearing about him. I refuse to listen further.
As for posting the list, I am not forcing anyone to use it. I'm simply stating a fact: these addresses spammed us, and that you can use the script provided to blacklist the networks involved. If people download it and use it, that's not my problem.
It's like me saying that Nike products are made in sweat shops and people should buy them because they are supporting a company that believes in slave labour. I'm only stating facts. If people stop buying Nike products because of what I've said, then surely Nike is the cause of that, and not me - I'm only spreading facts.
As for the 'innocent' personal on a network that has had a spammer on it and is now blacklisted
As for there being 'absolutely no excuse for striking back against computers on the other side of the world'
Parent
Re:My own list of spammers... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's his network, he can do what he wants inside it, constrained only by whether he's providing transit for anyone else who may take issue with it.
His list falls under the category of advice garnered from personal experience - it may not work for you, it may be biased, but it seemed to work for him and it's offered for free.
Blocking Asian IP blocks in particular is a gre
Wrong! (Score:4, Funny)
--NJ state court judge, on acquitting Allen Ginsburg of smoking pot in a newspaper quote.
On that note, I shot five people last night. Sorry to everyone affected.
---------
Parent
Re:My own list of spammers... (Score:5, Insightful)
First off: It is possibly illegal.
Are you familiar with the computer crime laws in most Asian countries? Do they exist? Do you know if they protect computers with no passwords? Many computer crime laws offer very little protection for computers on public networks, if the owner doesn't bother to protect them himself.
Second: Most spam is blatantly fraudulent. Let say I'm getting 419 scam emails from somewhere actually inside the US. The second they file a complaint against me, I can go after them for fraud. Put simply: Spammers don't want you to know who they are. They can't file a complaint, our you could go after them for fraud.
Third: How is someone in Singapore going to prosecute him? Is the US going to extradite him for crashing a computer that was sending fraudulent email to the US? Or are they going to say: "Hey why don't you come set foot on US soil and then we'll talk about it?"
Fourth: Let's say this computer does belong to an "innocent" (read negligent) bystander. Crashing his computer might actually get him to fix the problem/alert him that someone else is controlling it.
This isn't something I'd be likely to do myself, but I'm not going to start yelling "Hey, that's illegal!" without thinking about it. Morally, I don't see very much wrong with what he's doing. Legally, he's on shaky ground, but he could, possibly be in the clear.
Parent
Great idea!!! Except.... (Score:3, Insightful)
So congratualtions, you have successfully made some poor guy's day miserable because his box keeps rebooting and he hasn't an fscki
Better iptables use... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:My own list of spammers... (Score:5, Insightful)
> know instead.
Report a SPAM incident to an asian ISP? Are you new here? They just don't give a shit.
Parent
The law is an ass (Score:5, Insightful)
When what now? (Score:5, Funny)
Logically, the only good spammer, is a dead spammer.
Therefore, all good spammers are past their experation date already.
So logically, all good spammers must be bad.
Re:When what now? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Kind of on topic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Kind of on topic (Score:3, Informative)
1) don't let your browser report your real email address (if you're on windows, this may require using a non-IE browser)
2) Spamassassin is your friend...
When Good Stories Go Down (Score:5, Funny)
vaderhelmet writes "According to this server error on BadTux by the webserver, the constant loading of pages has a price. You get a 425 error- or more correctly, you cannot connect to the host. But, if you're a hard core geek you just might get your site more notice as it gets mirrored out onto sympathetic hosts. Also slashdotted in other locations."
Re: when good stories go down (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: when good stories go down (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wouldn't it be nice... (Score:5, Funny)
... if someone wrote a nice piece of mass mailing software that would be free, look great, run fast, spam people like there's no tomorrow and available under a "free but get your paws of my source code" license? I mean, we don't want the spammers to be able to realize that their latest toy doesn't actually send anything and has more backdoors then a Win95 alpha version, now do we? And it automagically has to hook up to a webcam if available, so we can have a laugh as a spammer realizes all his computers are now hosting illegal crap like Britney/Nsync/Linkin Park MP3s, various bad Disney animations as MPGs and files like "SCO_Unixware_kernel.tar.gz" while a RIAA/MPAA APC drives his/her front window!
Bonus points if said program makes a AYB quote the moment the spammer is sued into the nine hells themselves!
K5 (Score:5, Informative)
new error page (Score:5, Funny)
"Slashdotted!
Not available at the moment due to the Slashdot Effect. Will be back shortly as a (much faster) static page. Thank you for your patience."
So should this be a new error message? I'm thinking 501 - Slashdot...
already taken (Score:5, Funny)
500 Internal Server Error
You'd have to start at at least 506 - but then that might be used by later http implementations501 Not Implemented
502 Bad Gateway
503 Service Unavailable
504 Gateway Timeout
505 HTTP Version not supported
better to just add a new block of response codes:
600 Server Slashdotted
601 Databaser fried
602 Redirect to Google Cache
603 Redirect to Goatse.cx
604 Random error from 4xx/5xx code
605 Cowboy Neal
Or just use the HTTP response that I seem to get a lot when viewing slashdot:
417 Expectation Failed
.02
cLive ;-)
Parent
When good Spammers go bad? (Score:4, Funny)
This is disappointing (Score:3, Funny)
Welcome to the WWWF (Score:3, Funny)
In the red corner we have a shrill and somewhat incoherent geek with time to waste (and apparently more interested in getting even than getting a job).
Both parties tend to long self-justified rants. We feel sympathy for the red corner because he seems to be motivated by morals rather than money. But wait... he just wants his reputation restored, does not care whether people are ripped off by the product.
The blue corner are obviously the Bad Boys, the tag team of hate. They like shouting at the crowd more than actually getting down to business. We don't know quite what they're shouting about, but frankly, we can't wait for Red Boy to jump into the ring and smash their stupid heads against the ropes.
Only Red Boy seems to lying unconscious on the floor... it's a Knock Out!!! The Slashdot crowd - all ten million of them - have jumped into the ring and are smashing the ref, the Tag Team of Hate, and Red Boy with anything they can get hold of: chairs, empty drink cans,...
Later, order returns to the scene. The ref announces a draw, and everyone asks "what the heck was that about?" No-one seems to know, but one of the bikini-clad girls holding the score signs thinks that whatever it was, it wasn't worth breaking a nail over. She looks at her hand glumly.
I mean... Jesus!!
Sick MS on them (Score:3)
It's more of a UK problem (Score:4, Informative)
US law is much less restrictive. The First Amendment is held to encourage "robust debate", even if some the statements aren't entirely correct.
The McDonalds case / UK defamation law (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, yes, that one. People were standing around outsides McDonalds restaurants giving out flyers that accused them of various unfortunate things. If memory serves, they took the flyer producers to court on defamation grounds, and successfully rebutted a couple of the points, notably including the fact that their food was found to be nutritious by the court. A few days later, the flyers were back, with the claims the court found against removed, and a big banner over the rest basically saying "PROVEN IN COURT!".
If ever there were an own goal in a legal case, that was probably it. Anyone have a link to detailed info any more? Makes fun reading if you've got a few minutes to kill. :-)
Incidentally, there is some legal protection for freedom of expression in the UK, including under the ECHR if memory serves. However, what's wrong with defamation law overriding freedom of expression? You want to be able to say anything you like with impunity, even if it's wrong and damaging to someone? I have no problem with a clear standard that if you want to say things negative things about someone else publicly then you have to be able to back them up. Why is that a problem, either in principle or in practice?
Parent
VioPac on Bank Balance Eliminator (Score:4, Interesting)
Today, VioPac would like to offer you a quiz. It's very easy, and will take only moments of your time. In fact, it only has one question, and it is this: What rocks more, Iron Maiden or Evidence Eliminator? Think about that carefully now.
The correct answer, of course, is Iron Maiden. In fact, there is very little out there that could beat Maiden in any contest you care to devise. Observe:
Simply put, the spammers at Evidence Eliminator have now threatened the ISP that hosts Evidence-Eliminator-Sucks.com with a libel suit in England. As intended, the ISP in question can't afford to defend itself in a foreign country. What this means is that every one of you, regardless of your nation of origin, should write to Iron Maiden immediately and ask them, politely of course, to find these EvElim scumbag spammers and beat the shit out of them.
Note: I don't think he's *really* serious about writing to Iron Maiden :-).
Re:better mirror that geocities page (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:better mirror that geocities page (Score:4, Informative)
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site text (Score:4, Informative)
Eric Green doesn't use Windows very much. A long-time Linux user and advocate since 1995, Windows software interests him about as much as, say, the price of pork bellies on the Chicago futures market. So why is the publisher of a much-spammed Windows software product trying to shut him down? Welcome to the wild and whacky story of the strangest bunch of spammer scammers on the Internet: those whacky folks at Robin Hood Software whose overpriced "Evidence Eliminator" software is spammed on every Internet forum on a regular basis. This is a tale of spammers and spam, and an unlikely spam fighter who has learned that spammers suck even worse than most people think. And in the end, it's the story of how spam fighters around the globe support each other when the spammers decide to go after their critics and detractors. It all started back in June 2000. At the time, I was researching encryption algorithms for use in a new software product. There was this product called 'Evidence Eliminator', produced by a company named 'Robin Hood Software', being hyped on the sci.crypt and alt.privacy newsgroups. Curious, I went to the web site of the publisher of the software. After being subjected to flash animation, popups threatening me with jail if I didn't buy Evidence Eliminator, and no way to contact the makers of the product other than a web form, I decided: "These people aren't credible." And said so. From my work account. Big mistake. I didn't realize I was dealing with spammers. I thought they'd be interested in seeing what an industry veteran thought. But there was no response to my message on the sci.crypt newsgroup. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. I went on with his life. But Andy Churchill, one of the principals of Robin Hood Software, wasn't so eager to let go. Imagine my surprise when, in early 2001, I ran a Google search for my name and discovered that I was part of a vast conspiracy by some strange New World Order collection of villains to destroy the makers of "the best security product on the market"! Naturally I wasn't happy. And as someone who isn't shy about expressing his opinion, I expressed it, sending EMAIL to Robin Hood Software demanding that they remove any mention of me from their site. Andy Churchill of Robin Hood Software iadmits to have received that EMAIL, but says, "we deleted it". There was no response from Robin Hood Software. So I did what comes naturally to any Linux geek: I put up a web page. Which Robin Hood Software swiftly (and in violation of my copyright) duplicated on their own web site, with "False." (no explanation) beside each of my points as to why you shouldn't buy their software. And as time went by and, thanks to the readers of my site, I accumulated more and more evidence about Robin Hood Software's activities, including evidence that they were behind the "push ICQ" spamming of their product (an EMAIL to their affiliates urging them to do that kind of spamming), Robin Hood Software's web site became yet more lurid, even to the point of duplicating a copyrighted gag photo (cropping out Agent Binks) on their own web site. These people don't appear to be too stable -- definite candidates for the aluminum foil beanie award. In early 2002 I purchased the domain name 'evidence-eliminator-sucks.com', and did a major overhaul of the web site to try to organize the by-then large amount of information that I'd accumulated about Robin Hood Software and its activities. By that time it was clear that these weren't nice people. Deceptive claims in their advertising, huge amounts of spam originating from their affiliates, ia browser hijack virus that hijacks people's web browsers and redirects them to the Evidence Eliminator home page, and their continued attempts to disparage their critics and competitors on their aptly-named Dis-Information page pretty much are a Major Clue. I also launched the "Evidence Eliminator Sucks Conspiracy" -- both a statement on what I feels is Robin Hood Software's paranoia in their rantings about a "vast conspiracy" out
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Re:better mirror that geocities page (Score:4, Informative)
http://blue.doosh.net/~yarn/elgreen.html.gz [doosh.net][4k]
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Re:At least they take their Slashdotting in style. (Score:4, Informative)
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