The Life of a Spammer 539
An anonymous reader writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an interesting article today about the life of a "small time" spammer. It is interesting to note that even a religiously zealous grandmother can mire our inboxes with junk." That's Flo Fox, of Slidell, LA.
This Flo Fox? (Score:4, Informative)
127 Rue Acadian
Slidell, LA 70461-5203
(985) 646-2225
Re:This Flo Fox? (Score:3, Informative)
127 Rue Acadian
Slidell, LA 70461-5203
(985) 646-2225
Place collect calls to this number.
"Why don't you just hit delete?" Why don't you have fun refusing charges all day?
double check (Re:This Flo Fox?) (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't want to give grief to an innocent person.
Re:double check (Re:This Flo Fox?) (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I dunno. How about 'What would Jesus do?'
Re:This Flo Fox? (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.catalogdi
http://www.catalogs.com/catalog/default
A little bit of spam?
Re:This Flo Fox? (Score:5, Funny)
2. Agree to a newspaper interview identifying you as a spammer.
3. Forget that your address and phone number is listed publicly.
7. PROFIT!
Re:This Flo Fox? (Score:3, Interesting)
Somebody should make a website listing all those numbers, and keeping them up to date. Sure, people are going to annoy a lot somebody for a week or two, but then the story disappears from the front page, people forget...
There should be some good place where to find the phone numbers of all those morons so that they hear from people who are unhappy with their methods for a few months at least.
Re:This Flo Fox? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course then you have the problem of innocent people getting on the list... and anyone who says "hurting one innocent person is worth it!" just joined the ranks of spammers as far as moral decay goes, imho.
Re:This Flo Fox? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sending snail mail to spammers. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was fed up with a certain set of mortgage spam that I wrote a vb app that used the browser object to open up the spammer's web site, then proceed to fill in the information with random stuff, but had the area codes match the zips and states. I let it run and put about 40-50,000 false entries into 3 or 4 websites. Pretty funny, IMHO. The nice th
Re:This Flo Fox? (Score:4, Informative)
1711 W Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460-2536
(985) 781-2542
Re:This Flo Fox? (Score:5, Informative)
She is listed at the following address:
Fox, Florence F
1711 W Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460-2536
(985) 781-2542
(985) 643-9417
hmmm.... (Score:4, Funny)
repeat
not that difficult, in my opinion
Re:hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
How stupid is that? Sometimes the little guy deserves to be kicked out. It only takes a few assholes to ruin things for a lot of people, even if the assholes are "little guys".
Re:hmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The ends do not justify the means. Spammers are thieves by definition. They offload the cost of doing business to ISPs and their customers. I don't care if the pope was doing it. It's still wrong. Furthermore, most spammers are also liars (forged headers) and criminals (many states now have anti-spam legislation). I feel no sympathy for even moderate income grandma spammers. It costs the country millions of dollars that could otherwise be spent on closing the digital divide.
If you apply the same reasoning to people sharing files you're making a very strong case for the copyright holders
What a nieve assertion. Sharing files of copyrighted material is also wrong. But the system of sharing files is legit. Some criminals use roads as their getaway means. Let's ban roads.
Spam == Wrong, Illegal, Immoral. Get over it.
Spamming doesn't pay (Score:5, Informative)
You can bet that this woman is a relative or trailer park neighbor of the "cajun spam gang" [ratatak.com] that's been operating in the area for awhile. I think most of them have gone out of business though.
Re:Spamming doesn't pay (Score:2)
The Cajun Spam Gang is mentioned in the linked article.
Re:Spamming doesn't pay (Score:3, Insightful)
Ack! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ack! (Score:5, Funny)
Ewww! just thinking about some old lady telling me how to enlarge my cock turns my stomach.
Re:Ack! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ack! (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting Old Woman (Score:5, Funny)
The woman's age, grandmother status and religious strength aside, I'd still key her car if I ever saw it.
Re:Interesting Old Woman (Score:5, Insightful)
What difference does it make?
Religious people are no more 'decent' than non-religious people.
Women are just as capable of doing wrong as men.
Age does not make one wiser or a better person.
Procreating doesn't make one better than a a childless person.
Re:Interesting Old Woman (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I can think of a very good reason why a spammer might be heavily into religion - these scum require forgiveness by the truckload.
Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, great, it's about a spammer.
Crap.
I know what you mean (Score:2)
Yeah, hooray for our hometown internet heroes... bringing the Blaster worm to the masses. (note sarcasm). Although my first thought when I heard about it was "Cool! We're on the national news!", it's kinda wierd to know the kid down the street's house is being raided by FBI and secret service agents.
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)
1711 W Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460-2536
(985) 781-2542
(985) 643-9417
or
Fox, Flo
127 Rue Acadian
Slidell, LA 70461-5203
(985) 646-2225
Nobody's sure as to which one, though. However, we need her e-mail, and we need to send her the Fetish Catalog (I only know of it from reading KillCat.com, an anti-CueCat site that came up with creative ways of destroying them, and noticed that missing the G key and pressing F when typing "getcat.com" gave you the Fetish Catalog's site) under multiple names. Also, we need some collect calls.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe this goes on in every spam story without anyone having the shred of maturity it takes to say "this is wrong". Physically assaulting other people is wrong. I don't care if they're spammers. I don't care if they're child molesters or genocidal dictators. We're living in the year 2003, and we've seen what happens when we use violence as a solution to our problems. We've built countries with laws and courts and all that other good stuff so we wouldn't feel a need to engage in such vigilante barbarism. Everyone deserves a fair trial and a fair punishment. If you don't like what someone does, work to change it but work under the rule of law. Don't encourage people to beat up other people. It's not civilized.
A religious grandmother wants to enlarge my penis? (Score:2, Funny)
Boo Hoo (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the fact your product and actions are not wanted.
Simple capitalism- Sell a product people want in a manner people want it and you will make money. Spam does neither as such will eventually die out.
Re:Boo Hoo (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the fact your product and actions are not wanted.
Simple capitalism- Sell a product people want in a manner people want it and you will make money. Spam does neither as such will eventually die out.
It doesn't matter what the receiver of the spam wants. What matters is that companies want to get advertisements for their services out to millions of people, and she provides that service. Therefore, she has high demand. And spam filters interfere with her being able to meet her customer's expectations.
That said, I think I should cover my back by saying I hate spammers, they should die, and wtf is she doing sending spam and wearing a "what would Jesus do?" shirt? Just goes to show you ALL kinds of people can be dumb, mean, and detrimental to society.
Re:Boo Hoo (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Boo Hoo (Score:5, Funny)
The media is based in New York. New Yorkers hate southerners. Anytime one gets in the news for any reason, they want to make them out to be as hateful as possible. Hence, out of all the spammers in the country, the found one in Louisiana, who is a religious nut (wearing a WWJD shirt, nonetheless), and paint her as a hopeless hick living in a shitty southern town. As a result, this is the average northerner's view of the south. Just be glad they didn't portray her as a KKK member.
This is absolutely correct, and you deserve the "Informative" moderation you got for exposing it. Just last week we got the memo from our Jewish media overlords in New York, sent to all media conspiracy field offices across the South. It said, and I quote,
This caused some problems for our agents at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, our local puppet news outfit, since of course most spam originates from the north of the Mason Dixon line, and the South offers a poor choice of spamming types at best. In fact all spammers to be found in the South are atheist carpetbagger Democrats who originally hail from the North. Luckily a shipment of creepy Jesus portraits and WWJD shirts to fit spammers of all sizes (S, M, L, and XL) was airlifted from Brooklyn and our staffers at the AJC got to work creating a backdrop of a heavily Jesusized trailer home. In fact, they used the same set that the government used to fake the moon landings. Naturally, Mrs. Fox, being a secular humanist and a spammer, has no convictions to uphold and was happy to oblige in aiding the Zionist media conspiracy in its mission of sliming the South in the eyes of Northerners, in return for money- which she promply donated to Dean's presidential campaign.
I wish you the best of luck in unearthing this vast conspiracy to make you look like hicks.
What WOULD Jesus Do? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What WOULD Jesus Do? (Score:2)
Re:What WOULD Jesus Do? (Score:5, Funny)
Makes sense. Jesus' followers have been spamming humanity for two millenia.
Re:What WOULD Jesus Do? (Score:3)
Imagine my lack of surprise at a Mormon bothering people at home trying to sell them something. Yes, nothing like putting old skills to new use...
--RJ
Emmancipation! (Score:5, Funny)
Jesus would prolly open up a can of whoop-ass when he finds out she's sending "XXX HOT LATIN TW1NKS XXX FOR FREE rqewgkjtqwertnb" to random 13 year olds. How about some divine retribution with a vulcan cannon?
Re:uhm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:uhm (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:uhm (Score:3, Funny)
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
And you trust a spammer? They'd prolly even send kiddie porn out if it paid enough. They spam, that's enough proof their moral compass is seriously misaligned.
Re:RTFA (Score:4, Funny)
Spammer is only part of it. I don't trust anyone with all that Jesus crap hanging on the walls.
Do Unto Others (Score:5, Insightful)
Fox might not send any XXX spam. What she did is not condemned by the church.
Sure it is! Do Unto Others.
She sends a million spams. She knows that it costs her nearly nothing and that the recipient is therefore paying to receive it. By her own stated understanding of response rate, she's making millions of people pay for something they don't want.
Is that doing unto others?
Not in my books.
Therefore, it *is* condemned by the church, and it demonstrates her hypocrisy.
How bothersome is spam for most slashdotters? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yahoo Mail has its own filters, my Linux mailserver has spamassassin, and the spam e-mail address gets discarded on a weekly basis automatically.
Yeah, occasionally 2-3 letters per day pass though Spamassassin, but they are easy to see right from the subject line and delete right away. Spamassassin and other free (as well as commercial ) products seem to do a pretty decent job at it, and 2-3 spam e-mails per day can be just treated as a cost of using the system.
Re:How bothersome is spam for most slashdotters? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure I'm deleting real email too, but what can I do? I don't have time to look through hundreds of messages a day to see if one is legitimate. (Maybe Flo Fox can do it for me from prison.)
Re:How bothersome is spam for most slashdotters? (Score:5, Informative)
On my system, (spapassassin + spamass-milter) I file at 6, and reject mail at 14
I waited a while to ensure that the bayes was tuned properly before adding the reject rule, but if I didn't have it my mail'd be totally unusable...
If you don't have a scoring system, get one
Re:How bothersome is spam for most slashdotters? (Score:3, Informative)
At home (with spamassassin, instead of the crappy, big$$ system we have at work) I get 1-5 a month that slip thru the net.
If there are any spamassassin developers reading this, thanks much!
Re:How bothersome is spam for most slashdotters? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now how about the sysadmin reading slashdot. The one that maintains that mailserver and has to find storage for all of that crap that comes pouring in. The one that has to setup spamassassin on the servers and teach people (which is probably the worst part) how to setup their outlook clients to filter all of this. The one that has to hear complaints about the 2-3 spam getting through over the 3 trillion that came in during the week and the one that has to requistition the money to maintain the spamfiltration instead of it going elsewhere in the company.
Spam costs the ISP/Company/User time and money whereas the spammer pays next to nothing and most slashdotters (IMHO) have a problem with that.
Pretty damn bothersome, thnx (Score:5, Interesting)
About the time I switced to the new domain, I began seeing a significant amount of email spam. As of 2000, I began to see my rate doubling about once per year. Last year I got about 150/day -- this year it's up to 300 or so. Even using spamassasin, the emails that get through are a major annoyance, especially if I've been away from email for more than a day or two. At this point, it looks like I'll be switching to using multiple addresses, one semi-public, one for ecommerce, and one given out only to friends and family -- I really see no other way at this point (although even THAT isn't a perfect solution).
Of course, maybe it's because I live in St. Tammany Parish (a parish in LA is like a county in other states) -- the same parish as Slidell. In fact, Ron Scelson was our old babysitter's son in law. Maybe the massive spam load is some kind of weird misdirected digital karma bullet, that just happened to hit me instead of the nearby spammer. Dunno -- but I suspect its just the inevitable consequence of keeping a vary public email address.
In any case -- yes -- spam is a major problem for me, and I'm reasonably savy with most of the available anti-spam tools out there.
Re:How bothersome is spam for most slashdotters? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How bothersome is spam for most slashdotters? (Score:3, Informative)
The 1st line of defense is a false address (i.e. I don't use it how I say I use it). I use hotmail.com. The account is handed out to sites that demand to know my email address for various reg purposes. This hotmail account is on auto-reject
any ideas what ip's she has assigned to her? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:any ideas what ip's she has assigned to her? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately this this reflects badly upon the truly religious people. All I can say is that I hope her church finds out and kicks her sorry ass out of it, I'd do it if she were in mine.
Re:any ideas what ip's she has assigned to her? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then use spamcop, SORBS, or the spamhaus SBL, because like the article says, she's using the "cajun spammer gang" tricks -- which involves SMTP AUTH password cracking, and open relay and proxy spamming. No doubt she'd use zombies if she bought in to that network.
She's a felon thousands of times over. You want to pre-empt her spam, call your states AG.
Crummy Article (Score:5, Insightful)
"Less secure networks"? Riight... They're all equally insecure, the US as much as anyone else.
Daniel
Observations (Score:3, Insightful)
Two interesting things in that paragraph:
1. When someone says "Don't respond to spam", it's really good advice.
2. The spammers themselves don't even believe in the products they sell, labelling their customers "suckers".
Even? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is interesting to note that even a religiously zealous [...]
Even? I suggest that's precisely the kind of mental handicap ("disconnect" if you want to be nicer) that's required.
Spam is in the eye of the beholder (=recipient) (Score:3, Interesting)
Therefore efforts (legal and technical) to define spam at the sender side seem inherently dubious to me.
On the other hand, weeding out spam at the receiving end doesn't do anything to conserve the bandwidth and other computing resources wasted on items, which ended up being identified as spam by the respective recipients.
So this is a fundamentally tough nut to crack.
Re:Spam is in the eye of the beholder (=recipient) (Score:3, Informative)
Not much, not yet. Those at the intermediate stages (the ones who lose the most bandwidth) could very easily act. Even those who can't be abused (because they are secure against abuse already) could act: by looking like they are vulnerable to abuse and then reporting the attempts at abuse to the appropriate ISP.
I've stopped spam to millions of people without actually changing my SMTP software (I couldn't change it.) All I used were command files and system
Off shore? (Score:5, Informative)
If it's off shore, she originates messags from there, and the bandwidth require would be satisfied with a 14.4k modem. Upload one message, message list stored off shore, fire.
So who does she get her lease line from in the U.S.? Or is all of this just typical spammer lies?
Re:Off shore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Off shore? (Score:2)
so "plain old text" posting rips out everything between brackets... nice to know...
Oh the irony (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean just like its easy to steal bandwidth and send annoying or inapporopriate material to people you've never met, bitch?
How many.. (Score:2)
WWJD? (Score:3, Interesting)
First Amendment, commercial speech, and porn (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
But Fox and Connelly have their limits. They don't peddle Viagra, breast enlargement pills or smut, they say. "When I defend what we do, I talk about free speech," says Connelly, a rugged man with silver hair and a full beard.
Spam is commercial speech and as such does not enjoy unfettered First Amendment protection. This is a property rights issue no matter how you slice it, and the First Amendment does not apply to spam any more than it does to spray painted graffiti.
"When it comes to porn, I don't care about [the pornographers'] free speech."
This makes me hate them even more. Pornographic spam may be more offensive (and politically useful for getting people riled about the issue of spam in general), but strictly speaking, whether or not the spam is pornographic is irrelevant. Spam is not free speech, and your spam gains no legitimacy for not being pornographic. And legitimate free speech doesn't lose its free speech status simply because you don't like pornography. Who are you, a pair of spammers with creepy pictures of Jesus all over your walls, to be announcing which forms of free speech you "don't care about"? What nerve!
Plus, this whole defense of "letting the little guy compete" is just as appropriate for pornography as it is for spam. All you need for pornography is a girl, a camera, and a room! (Plus a T1 and a few other things.) And unlike spam, porn is an honest living- as long as you don't market through spammers. Larry Flynt had way more insight into free speech than these guys. (Although Larry went through his own creepy Jesus pictures phase.)
I have to admit I got a smile when I saw she gets migraines. My poor wife gets migraines and she never spammed anybody. If I had this woman's email address, I'd arrange for her to receive several hundred special offers a day for Imitrex.
Life of a spammer? (Score:4, Funny)
Just another crime at this point (Score:3, Insightful)
I know I'm at risk at being modded down, but when I'm allowed to legally allowed to carjack or otherwise rob people to make ends meet, I'll have a little sympathy for this sort of person.
Spam: BSA as a tool? (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, I've been thinking a bit. Spam is becoming a real problem and it's only a matter of time before email itself becomes nearly useless due to the massive amounts of spam. Something has to be done and it has to be done soon in order for it to still be effective enough. Stopping spam itself when it's en-route is not an option, as it will only lead to an arms race between spammer/virus writers and hackers/AV corps. Killing the bandwidth of the computers that send spam isn't an option either as it involves (D)DoSing, which is rather illegal. Killing the spammers themselves, as satisfying and tempting as it may be, is not an option either. Remember, even a spammer is someone's father/mother and/or son/daughter.
Maybe, MAYBE we have a chance by sicking the BSA on them. Yes, the Business Software Alliance, the same people who use some sort of legalized extortion and raid small businesses that "fail to comply" to their rather variable demands. Think about it, most small time spammers are technological idiots who use home computers. Do you really think every spammer who has 10 PCs churning out email has valid licenses for Windows? Maybe a few, but loads don't. And even if they do, MS licensing is so horrid that whatever the heck you did, you're bound to violate at least 3 licenses anyways, excluding other licenses like the spam software itself. This is how we might go after a few small-time spammers. And hey, it actually makes the BSA people do something useful as well! Maybe an idea?
Re:Spam: BSA as a tool? (Score:4, Informative)
A few software companies actually ask you to forward them spam that advertises their products. See Symantec's Spamwatch [symantec.com] site as an example.
OT- My last spam experience. (Score:5, Funny)
My company's mail server was filled and not accepting new messages. I've not had too much problem with spam before (I use yahoo mail, mac Mail, and Thunderbird on the 'Mail PC') My settings are off on the PC, set to not delete messages fast enough.
I finally realized the rage that most /.ers display at spammers - I found mysellf wanting to personally kill each spammer.
The title of this article is "The Life of a Spammer" - If the anger I felt this weekend is similar to others, I'm thinking the title should be "The Very Short, and Very Painful Life of a Spammer After Being Beaten By Angry People Who Don't Need A Larger Penis, Like the Interest Rate They Currently Have, And Don't Need Another Copy of Norton SystemWorks."
Kings and Queens of spam (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to see some variation. I'd like to see a spam pope.
To be more accurate, I'd like to see a spam pope on a rope.
So what? (Score:5, Informative)
Whats she say to defend her theft - things like "....This (spam) lets the little guy compete". What does she think about the time, energy and costs small providers have to dish out to defend their network against SPAM? How many small guys have had their machines shut down because of false return addresses, or an onslaught of spam that makes mail services crawl? What about those small guys BUZZZZ Wrong answer grandma!
She doesn't stop there, she goes on to say the even more bizzare "When I defend what we do, I talk about free speech". I looked at the constitution to be sure and nowhere did it say "You may steal from others, and then force them to accept your speech into their homes". I believe the consitution protects speech, but doesn't force others to have to accept/listen to ones speech. The amendment is about government cesorship, NOT about theft of services to promote a get rich schemes. BUZZZZ Wrong answer grandma!
So she makes 2000 - 4000 / week. After several years of college I don't make 4k a week, but then again, even if I could improve my economic situation, my personal moral compass wouldn't allow me to what she does. Perhaps she needs to read the bible more. What was it again?? Thou shall not steal?? Thou shall not bear false witness?? - Stuff like that.
With 80% or more of all e-mail being spam, the signal to noise ratio is heading south fast. To stop spam you have to stop spammers.
Here is the towns website
http://www.slidell.la.us
Now can any one let me know which provider provides this type of person with access? I have some IP blocks to add to my blacklist.
According to information -
Flo Fox - Slidell LA
985 646 2225
I don't know if that number is correct - but it's publically listed.
AngryPeopleRule [angrypeoplerule.com]
Spam by Any Other name will not sound so Odius (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about most people, but isn't this business model just too too tempting ? The act of spamming, by whatever name, is here to stay. And the fact of the matter is that when the Big Boys move in they will edge out the small time spammers. United States set to Legalize Spamming on 1 January 2004 [spamhaus.org] http://www.spamhaus.org/news.lasso?article=150 Spam by Any Other name will not sound so Odius.
Frankly, I hear the same thing about how much crap there is on TV - but is anyone really doing anything about reducing the crap on it today ? Why because it is the Big Five or Six Companies that control it ....
Here I do disagree. Land's End spends hundreds of thousands designing and illustrating it's catalogs so that they can entice the customer to buy. The spammers don't do any such thing, and their main goal is to design the messages so that it evades the spam filters - that is why the strange characters and mangled words ...
Someday, when the Big Companies start designing Spam with Mega-Budgets, and they can make the eye candy hypnotizing like it is on TV, I am sure few people will complain. I know many people who will spend hours watching nothing on TV, and occasionally complain about it - but then do nothing.
Diversion and Delusion is the Opium of the masses.
Re:Spam by Any Other name will not sound so Odius (Score:3, Insightful)
The central issue is not whether endusers are annoyed by spam; there are mostly effective technical solutions.
The difference between advertising and spam could not be more startling: advertising makes free tv (for what its worth possible); on the other hand, spam increases the cost of internet service.
Dear Mrs. Fox, (Score:3, Insightful)
Another spam article today, from Vegas... (Score:3, Informative)
from ROKSO, Bill Wagggoner [spamhaus.org]
Obvious countermeasure: disposable addresses (Score:3, Informative)
So the obvious coutermeasure to spam is to make stolen addresses worthless.
Use spamgourmet [spamgourmet.com] and only give disposable addresses to businesses, web sites, forums and friends running Windows.
What to Say to Flo When You Call Her ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Acts 13:10. "You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?"
Matthew 19:19. "Jesus replied, 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and 'love your neighbor as yourself.'"
John 10:1. "[T]he man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber." (It's a slight stretch, but it's a little applicable.)
Mark 4:18-19. "Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful."
Matthew 19:23-24. "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Revelations 3:16-17. "So, because you are lukewarm -- neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked."
1 Timothy 6:17. "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment."
Might want to tell her to read her Bible a little more carefully.
If she tells you, "The Devil can quote Scripture to his purpose," then point out that that's Shakespeare [rhymezone.com] (Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene iii), not Holy Writ.
(However, if Satan's on the Internet, Bible.Gospelcom.Net [gospelcom.net] would sure let him do it.)
Re:What to Say to Flo When You Call Her ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If she tells you, "The Devil can quote Scripture to his purpose," then point out that that's Shakespeare
Yes, but it's a biblical principle nonetheless - see Matthew 4,1-11 [gospelcom.net]
the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:
FLORENCE F. FOX aka Mrs. Bruce Connelly (Score:5, Informative)
A1E_Services (NETBLK-BRW-5021-A1ESERVICES)
1711 West Hall Ave
Slidell, LA 70460
US
Netname: BRW-5021-A1ESERVICES
Netblock: 67.96.78.0 - 67.96.79.255
Coordinator:
Hostmaster (ZB13-ARIN) hostmaster@broadwing.com
512-427-3700
Domain System inverse mapping provided by:
NS3.BROADWING.NET 216.140.16.252
NS4.BROADWING.NET 216.140.17.252
Connelly, Bruce (BC891-ARIN) a1esupport@aol.com
A1E SERVICES
1711 W Hall Avenue
Slidell, LA 70460
(504) 649 - 6248
http://www.sec.state.la.us/cgibin?rqstyp=crpdtl
34331685D
Name: FOXC, INC.
Type Entity: Business Corporation
Status: Active
Domicile Address: 1711 WEST HALL AVENUE, SLIDELL, LA 70460
Incorporated: 05/19/1989 | Effective: 05/17/1989
Registered Agent (Appointed 5/19/1989): FLORENCE F. FOX, 1711 WEST
HALL AVENUE, SLIDELL, LA 70460
Officer(s)/Director(s): FLORENCE F. FOX | CAROLYN J. FREDERICK |
BRUCE
D. CONNELLY
Incorporator(s): FLORENCE F. FOX
Jesus, indeed (Score:5, Funny)
Who is her ISP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone have any info on her internet provider? There should really be laws against allowing this behavior at all in the U.S.
Re:Who is her ISP? (Score:3, Insightful)
Spammers have quite a few things to worry about. Being cut off by their provider is not one of them.
Where'd all the spam go? (Score:3, Informative)
Now, 3 messages in each, total, for the last two days.
Did MS finally start filtering this stuff out?
Re:Where'd all the spam go? (Score:4, Informative)
They've already been sued for spamming (Score:5, Informative)
Wouldn't that make it pretty easy getting a verified address?
Re:They need our understanding (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course that's proposterous. The tool is not the crime. Sociopathy and lack of social responsibility knows no limits or bounds, and self-justification for such behavior is limited only by the imagination. Little old ladies who go to church and feed the homeless can have areas of social irresponsibility as well.
I know that one of my grandmothers, who is one of those little old ladies who goes to church and feeds the homeless, just happens to be racist. Does that make racism justifiable?
Re:They need our understanding (Score:3, Interesting)
Come on, let's not lose our heads here.
Nearly every week there's a standard spam article on slashdot, every day the less savvy computer people like my stepfather get slammed with spam. The spammers are denegrated to the point of being dehumanized, and laws get bandied about to fix everything via litigation.
Meanwhile, there are a few people who have set up their own private mail relays, which reject all mail coming from "untrusted" servers. A fine step toward combating spam, but obo
Re:They need our understanding (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that they should be robbed, but that they are naive, and will sadly learn the hard way. Funny thing is email is "good enough" for it's users most of the time that they never hang that door, much less lock it. As problems begin, they quickly accept that it's a small price to pay for shelter, and finally whe
No. Don't blame SMTP (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't just SMTP that is abused: open proxy abuse is a big contributor to the spam problem. There, again, trust is inappropriate - but still exists. Spammers take advantage of other system and human vulnerabilities to set up spam zombie servers. Too much inappropriate trust yet again.
Some basic human behavior needs to change - and the ISPs should be in the lead. They aren't. The security experts might be in the lead. They aren't. Many security experts appear to believe that securing a small fraction of systems and bitching about all the rest is adeqaute. Well, take a look - is it? Few security experts do anything towards identifying and stopping the abusers who constantly search the internet for vulnerabilites. It's like a city is plagued by burglars and the security experts simply make sure the doors and windows of their buildings can't be forced. They could put in cameras to get pictures of the burglars when they try the window - but instead merely complain about those who don't secure their windows. Of course in this case it's spam, not burglary, and the abuse commited on the other guy's system can hit the security experts own system, in the form of spam. If the security expert would help rid the community of the abusers then the abuse would be reduced. The security expert would rather point fingers at others and hurl blame than do what he himself could do beyond excluding just one form of abuse. Some expert - he doesn't even look to see how allowing the abusers to continue hurts him.
Who is better placed than an ISP to watch for attempted proxy port abuse? What ISP do you know of that watches? Recent actual experience by someone who did watch showed that many spammers commit the abuse form their own IPs. Watch for the abuse and you find the spammers' IPs (so much for the much-vaunted "anonymity" of the spammers.) The spammers aren't that particularly clever: it's mostly that those who could act don't.
Hacking DNS to annoy spammers (Score:3, Interesting)
127.0.0.3 is always good, or 255.255.255.255, or 192.168.255.255, or 169.254.255.255. If you've got a BGP feed, so you can figure out their upstream provider,
Re:How harmful is spam... REALLY? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The amount of spam has increased dramatically, and the amount of computing horsepower required to run a mail server has increased as well.
2. Currently we routinely refuse connections from more than 75% of all computers that ATTEMPT an SMTP connection - private open relay block lists. If we didn't do that, double the amount of disk space and computing horsepower required to continue
3. We loose customers when spam assassin doesn't keep up with spammers. They move to Earthlink and other providers that have more money to throw at the problem
4. A server with a common domain name associated with it, that has about ONLY 40 legitimate accounts on it routinely gets more than 100,000 connection attempts every day.
Filtering costs money, CPU disk space and adds expense and complexity to a very simple protocol. The amount of spam is such that some companies have stopped getting mail at their primary domain all together. This is becoming an option exercised more and more. Spam is stopping companies from posting contact information on their website, and pornographic spam, even filtered, makes getting a child an e-mail account risky unless you personally approve every message.
In the end, it's time, money, time and money time and money that the provider spends, that could be used to bring the cost of yoru internet service down, instead of inflating it.
AngryPeopleRule [angrypeoplerule.com]
Re:How harmful is spam... REALLY? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, in fact there was one quoted in the article:
In other words, spam has already destroyed email as we knew it. There was a time when you could put your address on your webpage without fear of getting spammed to death. In fact, this was true as few as five years ago. This allowed people to connect easier with people they don't know or people they used to know.
But now, it can take less than nine minutes for you to start getting spam after posting your email address somewhere. So those who don't install spam filters will guard their email addresses or go by pseudonyms, which lowers the usefulness of email.
They just destroyed my email address, for a start. (Score:5, Informative)
I know this as I get all the bounce mail. Spammers get a lot of bounce mail, and 300+ mails an hour is enough to kill the inbox. Then there is all the 'stop spamming me' responses, or the 'j.user is out the office messages' -this is brutally hard to filter without destroying all useful content (like my own bounce mail)
So I have just been evicted from an email address (on my own domain) that I have had for five years, having to notify friends that is has moved, and generally suffer from trying to clean up the damage.
That is what spam does.
Re:How harmful is spam... REALLY? (Score:3, Informative)
73% of all the mail hitting my servers during the last week were either rejected via RBL, via access.db, or via SA. For the mail that was actually allowed to be delivered, 48% was tagged as SPAM -- meaning it met SA criteria for the thresholds I have set to be SPAM.
In the last month I've spent ~30hrs (not all at once) dealing with spam and spam-related tasks such as user Q&A, dealing with false-positives, dealing with false-negatives, RBL related, server maintenence
Re:How harmful is spam... REALLY? (Score:3, Funny)