For the Record (Post 4B)
Anonymous Coredump
of Newport Beach, CA" actually apparently the world's most
disgusting and hated spammer, Stanford "Spamford" Wallace:
CONTINUED from Post 4A:
..
Eric Wenger, an Assistant Attorney General in New York, is also skeptical that
90% of all spam is from IEMMC members. He points out how easy it is for a spammer
to set up shop. But he thinks the IEMMC code of ethics is reasonable.
Shabbir Safdar of VTW (Voters Telecommunications Watch) said that 25% of all
e-mail is spam. He projects that spam will grow linearly.
I disagree. I project that it will continue grow exponentially, as it has been.
That's the nature of self-replicating systems, whether they be noxious bacteria,
chain letters, MLM schemes, or ads for lists of e-mail addresses that one can
use to spam ads for lists of e-mail addresses. Exponential growth until the
self-replicating system is killed off, or until it dies by having destroyed
its growth medium (e.g. culture medium, medical patient, or the Internet) is
the rule.
Safdar doesn't think people will stop using e-mail.
I disagree. Lots of people have already stopped. In a year or two, so will
almost everyone else, if something isn't done about spam.
He favors technical solutions, and gives adding ".nospam" to one's address
as a solution. Nobody brought up the fact that Wallace's software, among others,
automatically strips off ".nospam" and other common spamblocks when accumulating
addresses. Or the fact that spamblocks make it difficult to send legitimate
replies. Impossible, for some mail software.
Wallace mentioned that CyberPromo has a firm policy of not allowing third-party
relaying. Any CyberPromo customer who does this will be kicked off. When asked
how long this policy had been in place, he replied "one week". That got some
laughter from the audience.
When asked if there was a cost associated with receiving spam, Wallace conceded
that there was. But he compared it with the cost of receiving third-class mail
-- trash disposal! And with the cost of getting ads on TV -- electric bills!
He said there was no comparison with junk fax, as that consumes paper. Nobody
asked him whether he was formerly in the junk fax business.
As for the cost to ISPs, he said that they pay to receive e-mail anyway, so
what makes his e-mail any different? These machines are set up to deliver e-mail
to their users. That's exactly what they're for. So there is an "implied right"
to spam.
When asked about spam being seen by children, he replied that he had never
seen spam targeted to children. This sounds plausible to me, but unfortunately
nobody thought to ask what keeps children from seeing pornographic spam. The
answer, of course, is nothing.
Al Mouyal is the founder and head of the IMC (Internet Marketing Council).
This is not to be confused with the IEMMC. Or perhaps it *is* to be confused
with the IEMMC, as they sound much alike. It's another group of "ethical" spammers,
which will have a spiffy logo and a "universal" remove list. Yawn. Oh yes,
members are also required to put "advertisement" in the subject field of all
spam.
He gave a surprisingly good explanation for why present-day spam is almost
all for sleaze and worthless scams. Reputable companies won't go near spam
-- or even use opt-in lists -- for fear of massive boycotts and loss of reputation.
Many people who opt in later forget that they opted in, and flame the "spammer".
I can believe this. I've come close to doing exactly that myself. After I complain
about twenty consecutive messages, it's hard to notice that the twenty-first
is not spam, and refrain from complaining. Especially if it is a commercial
message.
Ram Avrahami (who sued a newspaper for selling his name) claimed to have a
"universal" opt-out list, which would solve the spam problem once and for all.
He claims that Wallace uses his list. Why am I getting such a strong sense
of deja vu here? At least he admits that 80% of the one thousand (!) spammers
he's aware of ignore his list. In response to a question, he replied that 2%
of all spam is religious rather than commercial. He has a collection of 2000
distinct spams. There is no overlap between DMA (Direct Marketing Association)
members and these spammers. He points out that spammers can buy a list of one
million e-mail addresses for $11, which is one thousand times less expensive
than a list of that many street addresses.
DMA's H. Robert Wientzen said his organization was developing -- you'll never
guess -- a "universal" remove list! It will be ready in the US in 6 months,
and worldwide in a year. How could it possibly fail? He says it's "too early
for legislation".
Safdar mentioned the irony of discussing giant databases of millions of e-mail
addresses at a privacy conference. Wientzen responded that this was not a privacy
violation since opt-out lists are always opt-in! In other words, nobody is
ever added to such a list except by their own request. (We had to destroy privacy
to save it?)
Someone quoted part of a spam from one of Wallace's customers. I happen to
have saved that January 5th spam, so here is the part that was quoted:
To keep up with the respect of internet users who wish their names removed
from Noci Marketing's emailing list, simply mail to: no...@cyberpromo.com and
type "remove" in the subject field or message body. It's that simple. NOTE
TO FLAMERS:DON'T DO IT! We will comply with and respect all REMOVE requests,
but if we are flamed we will (a)FLAME YOU 1000 times as much (b)email to 3
million people a questionable item with your return email address. We want
respect as much as anyone else, so if you give it, you shall receive it.
Wallace replied that he had immediately terminated that customer. He did indeed
claim at the time to have done so. However, I happen to know that this is Yuri
Rutman, and that his account name was simply changed from noci to italivest.
As far as I know, he is still a CyberPromo customer.
Simona Nass of Panix described filtering as a never-ending "arms race". Spammers
keep finding ways around the filters, which then have to be constantly updated.
She said that spam labelling requirements, as required by the Murkowski bill
(S.771), and as suggested by Mouyal's IMC, would be asking the "offenders to
police themselves". She didn't see how such a law would be enforcable. How
could the spammers be tracked down? And how would anyone prove that they really
received the spam they claimed to have received?
I agreed with everything she said, until she went on to claim that people were
"researching opt-in". What's to research? There have been opt-in lists on the
net for at least 22 years. (See my Internet timeline at http://www.clark.net/pub/kfl/timeline.html.)
Raymond Everett of CAUCE compared spam to environmental pollution. Both save
the spammer or polluter money, but only at the expense of shifting costs to
uninvolved people. He claimed that technical solutions won't work.
Wallace mentioned that AOL is filtering out all messages with fake domains
in the headers. AOL's Jill Lesser responded that this filtering only works
for domains which are not registered, not for real domains which are forged.
Wenger agreed with someone's question that fraudulent headers tend to go with
fraudlent contents. He gave as an example a spammer named Lipsitz, who was
prosecuted for magazine subscription fraud.
Rosalind Resnick, the President of NetCreations, says that NetCreations is
now 100% opt-in, with 3000 topic lists and 3 million subscribers. She claims
they get two to three times the postal response rate for half to a third the
cost. She says that spammers who hijack SMTP ports should be prosecuted for
theft of services and fraud.
FTC Commissioner Christine Varney seemed to misunderstand what was meant by
SMTP hijacking. What it means is the spammer telnets to someone else's computer's
SMTP port, and has that machine send their e-mail until it crashes, invariably
losing real e-mail in the process, and leaving a hell of a mess for sysadmins
to clean up. Varney seemed to think that e-mail just naturally bounces around
from one system to another in the course of getting to the recipient, and the
spammer has little control over this. Nobody corrected this misunderstanding.
Wallace said something to confuse the situation further.
Nass mentioned that there's a two-line fix to prevent SMTP hijacking, but that
it wasn't usable on sites that host virtual domains such as your-name-here.com.
Technical fixes to those SMTP servers are possible, but rather involved, and
would generally void the maintenance agreement. She didn't seem to notice that
Varney was totally misunderstanding was SMTP hijacking is.
Deirdre Mulligan of the CDT (Center for Democracy and Technology) mentioned
that there's lots of confusion as to what spam is. She mentioned that a congressional
staffer was complaining about getting 500 "spam" e-mail messages (from 500
different senders) on the topic of upcoming legislation.
IEMMC's Walt Rines is totally in favor of opt-in. Opt-out, too. "Let opt-in
and opt-out coexist," he says in a voice of sweet reasonableness. (What is
wrong with this picture?)
David Sorkin, a law professor, discussed the Smith bill and several similar
state bills, all of which would outlaw spam. He opposes the Murkowski bill,
saying it would be an unfunded mandate on ISPs. (The Murkowski bill would mandate
that all spam is labelled as such, and that ISPs offer all users free filtering
of same.) He suggests that spammers could be prosecuted under existing harassment
laws.
He suggests that if nothing is done we will soon get "trillions" of spams per
day. (Assuming 50 million users, that would be 20,000 spams per day per user.)
I think this is indeed quite likely in two or three years, unless e-mail simply
stops being used first. Nobody else seemed to think that spam would grow at
all, at least not very much or very quickly.
George Nemeyer, of Tigerden Internet Services, and Internet Service Providers
Consortium, favors the Smith bill which would ban spam. (After the hearing
ended, I saw him in a heated argument with Walt Rines about spam, and about
its cost to ISPs. Rines insisted that processing all incoming e-mail was simply
what ISPs are supposed to do and supposed to pay for.)
FTC Commissioner Christine Varney said she wanted to go after a few of the
worst fraudulent spammers and prosecute them for fraud. But she says they're
virtually impossible to find. (Really? They always mention a phone number or
P.O. box.) She said she liked the IEMMC's code of ethics. (Sigh.) At the close,
she thanked Wallace and Rines for their "courage" in coming there.
After the hearing, I went up to Walt Rines and congratulated him. "Very slick,"
I said. "I think you just bought yourself another six months. I guess you can
take the web page down now that it's served its purpose." He didn't reply.
I handed Sanford Wallace a list of my e-mail addresses, with the word REMOVE
in very large letters at the top. The sheet of paper says I don't want to get
spam from him, his customers, or anyone else, on any of those addresses. He
replied "it's a deal". He really is slick as a snake in person. If you didn't
know what he's really like, you'd find yourself buying a used car from him
-- even if you don't drive.
I also talked to Al Mouyal. He is a non-stop talker, hardly letting me get
a word in edgewise. He claims to have legitimate businesses such as GNC as
customers, and to mostly send solicited e-mail, but also some spam. He says
he has a remove list, with confirmation. And his own personal 800 number which
appears in every spam. And a spam label in each spam. He seemed to be skeptical
when I told him how much spam I get. He asked me to look at his site, edmarketing.com
I haven't done so yet.
I also talked to Blair Richardson of Aristotle. They are developing -- hold
onto your hats -- a "universal" remove list! Which Stanford Wallace will not
only respect, but will forfeit a million dollars if he abuses! Color me skeptical.
They have changed their mind about the limit of five addresses per person,
but not about the requirement that one be a registered voter. Apparently they
also require lots of personal information. He said Aristotle will refer non-voters,
and those who refuse to divulge personal information, to Jason Catlett of Junkbusters.
They too have a "universal" remove list, he explained. (Lost count yet?)
This message can also be found as http://www.clark.net/pub/kfl/ftc.html. Within
a couple days, I plan to turn every mention of an person or organization into
a link to that person or organization's web page. [ Done ] While I have your
attention, please also consider downloading http://www.clark.net/pub/kfl/toll.html,
my list of toll-free numbers recently seen in spam, and giving each of them
a call.
I wish I could get that list, and this message, to everyone interested in fighting
spam. I also wish I could have spoken at those FTC hearings. But then, that's
precisely the problem, isn't it? Everyone who has something to say can't force
it on everyone, or else everyone would be buried in unwanted excess information.
That's the real spam problem.
--
Keith Lynch, k...@clark.net
I boycott all spammers.
This post is about:
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
This post is about:
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace Taylor Netscum Jimenez Stanford Wallace
Anonymous
of Newport Beach, CA" actually apparently the world's most