Meet the Spammers 750
DaveAtFraud writes: "It took a little digging to find an on-line copy of this article that I first saw in my treeware daily newspaper. Thanks to the Salt Lake City Tribune for having it on-line. According to the Spamhaus project, a handful of people are responsible for 90% of the spam that clogs you in box. This is your chace to hear from them and what they have to say is quite interesting. If you don't think the filters and blacklists work, one spammer whines, "My operating costs have gone up 1,000 percent this year, just so I can figure out how to get around all these filters." Stopping spam is simply a matter of economics. When its uneconomical to send spam, people will stop sending it."
The Origin (Score:5, Informative)
This AP article has been making the rounds. It's rather shoddy journalism in that it takes the words of the spammers completely at face value. Seeing as how Rule #1 is "spammers lie" you can imagine how well this approach works. [google.com]
pot spamming the kettle black (Score:2, Informative)
Oh he's the one to talk... The amount of spam I get each day would make HIM sick. (Or maybe not)
Quick and Simple (Score:2, Informative)
Folks, if you haven't discovered SpamAssassin [spamassassin.org] yet, do yourself a HUGE favor and at least look into it. If you're not running a Linux box and are relegated to Windows, talk to your ISP about it. If you're running Mac OS X, I believe you should have no problem getting SpamAssassin to filter your mail, if you route it through a local MTA.
It took me about 30 minutes to get SpamAssassin integrated properly with qmail, vpopmail, sqwebmail and I've been happy ever since. I get maybe one spam a week now that isn't caught by the assassin and about 35-40 a day get routed into my Trash automagically.
SpamAssassin has a huge set of heuristics it uses to detect spam as well as some auxiliary tools that it can use to check global databases for common SPAM - if someone else has gotten it and is providing SPAM information to these databases, it saves everyone else from having to check it, basically.
Bottom line: check out SpamAssassin - its by far the best tool I've found in blocking spam, far better than simply blocking yahoo.com and hotmail.com addresses! Take some time, check it out - you'll be quite happy you did, I assure you! Its configurability is pretty much unmatched out there as well.
This article is just part of a series (Score:3, Informative)
Part 1: It's a war, and spam foes are losing [azstarnet.com]
Part 3: Anti-spam tools more aggressive but frustrated by e-mail's 'dumb' nature [chron.com]
"Stalker's" website (Score:5, Informative)
Growing a Spam Killing Community (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mimes (Score:3, Informative)
If you're gonna raise swine, don't bitch about the smell. We don't want to hear about it. If you're gonna shout advertisements on a street corner, don't complain when everybody walking by is wearing headphones or hearing protectors. If you're gonna send spam, don't complain about people using blocking software.
The entire series from the SL Tribune (Score:3, Informative)
Part 2 [sltrib.com]
Part 3 [sltrib.com]
Spam avoidance tips [sltrib.com]
Re:lack of regulation (Score:3, Informative)
A similar thing happenned to me. Someone had sent hundreds of threating e-mails to someone else and forged my address in the 'from' field. The municipal police in my area of Ontario, Canada interviewed me because they researched my domain name and I explained how the 'from' address meant nothing and that forgery of such things is common place.
The officer told me she did not know why they gave her this case and that she did not own a computer!
Re:Anti-spam law will not achieve much (Score:5, Informative)
BULLSHI!
Spamming is not speech - regardless of how many spammers tell you otherwise... free speech is the right to say anything you want.. it is not the right to force people to listen to what you say, and it certainly isn't the right to force people to pay to listen to you.
Spamming has nothing to do with the first amendment.
Re:I got a great idea! (Score:2, Informative)
emailmarketingsystems.com
webmark1.commarketfo
bulkmailhosting.com
bulkemail.ca
bulke
bulkbarn.com
web-promotions.com
listguy.
listsorcerer.com
bulletproofisp.com
bulkema
email-marketing.ca
getyoursoftware
americaint.comdata-miners.net
Sorry, I'm to lazy to make links out of them. If your under linux and using mozilla, simply select them with your mouse and middle click on a content part of the page you want to replace with the selected addresse's page.
Re:Basic math (Score:2, Informative)
Detroit News Spammer Article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:He collects them...? (Score:2, Informative)
Spamford Wallace (Score:2, Informative)
Anyways, the legal system worked as Cyberpromotions was shut down by lawsuits [wired.com]. Sort of like crime, the reality was that it was only a few individuals who were responsible for the overwhelming majority of spam, and that was true in this case too: After Spamford was shut down, the amount of spam hitting inboxes literally slowed to a crawl.
ROFLMAO - You don't really still get spam do you? (Score:3, Informative)
Tell you what, I'll point you to the clues:
http://razor.sourceforge.net/
or
http://pyzor
or
http://www.rhyolite.com/ant
And, no. The spammers can't get round them just by including random characters or personalising the mails.
The real deal (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.toledocybercafe.com/ivtg/index.htm
Better links (Score:3, Informative)
The spam articles are from the Associated Press and were published in the Houston Chronicle:
SPAMMED! PART I: A costly war of attrition [chron.com]
SPAMMED! Part II: Despite vigilantes, spammers keep e-mail flowing [chron.com]
SPAMMED! Part III: Anti-spam tools more aggressive but frustrated by e-mail's 'dumb' nature [chron.com]
Europe outlaws spam, but it keeps coming [chron.com]
The article complains about a "vigilante", but the woman, Karen Hoffmann, seems very reasonable: Karen Hoffman's website [toledocybercafe.com]. She says fighting spam is her hobby [toledocybercafe.com].
Part 2 of 3 (Score:2, Informative)
You can find the entire 3-part series here. [chron.com]
Re:And yet... (Score:2, Informative)
Sony doesn't want to end up on the mail abuse list they will take you off.