I received an interesting, if almost nonsensical email message, claiming to be from SPAMIS, or the Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam (there is a website at spamis.cc, but it seems to be defunct; Google cache). The contents of the email consisted of various quotes from Mike Lyman, who the email describes as the "Microsoft Head Email Abuse Administrator for Microsoft." Since the email did not explain why these quotes were important, none of them seem particularly damning.
A quick Google search for SPAMIS turned up a thread on the SpamCop forum, which in turn linked to an Usenet thread in news.admin.net-abuse.email announcing the foundation of SPAMIS. Apparently, the man behind the email and the SPAMIS "organization" is 26-year old Robert Soloway, one of the Internet's biggest spammers. Of the two personal email accounts I check regularly, Soloway is responsible for a significant portion of the spam email I receive (exhorting me to "email your web site to 29,500,000+ opt-in email addresses for free").
While I realize that Soloway does not see unsolicited email as illegal or annoying (after all, it bought him a Mercedes Benz), as the majority of Internet users do, this anti-Microsoft campaign still seems strange. He seems to have started sending messages similar to the one I received after Microsoft decided to pursue legal action against him for sending spam messages. It appears that Soloway created SPAMIS in order to make the claim that Microsoft is also in the practice of sending spam. However, all of the Mike Lyman quotes in the email refer to past practices of Microsoft that Lyman is apologizing for, which seem to have little, if any, relation to the current practices of the company.
But even if Microsoft was sending me unsolicited email, it would be hard to sympathize with Soloway (and not just because of the Benz). If unsolicited email is wrong, it does not matter if Microsoft is being hypocritical in suing Soloway while sending unsolicited email itself, because Soloway is also being hypocritical in lambasting Microsoft for its email practices. It shows the type of doublethink essential to being a spammer: my spamming practices are okay, but other spammers do bad things and should stop.
# At 18:20 on June 12, 2005, Tyrone wrote:
"It shows the type of doublethink essential to being a spammer"
It's not quite your point in context but:-
If spamming is doublethink, and doublethink is total totalitarianism; then the tyrants are spammers.
I like that. Helps me get them in perspective.
Thanks for this information. I got one of these e-mails and intrigued, turned up your page in a Google search.
Peace
# At 13:15 on June 13, 2005, mapson wrote:
Got some emails too here in old Europe.
About doublethink: I don't think spammers need to doublethink, they just downright lie (to get Mercedes's and stuff apparently, although the link above is dead).
Also I don't think this Soloway guy is hypocritical: just cynical
# At 13:18 on June 13, 2005, mapson wrote:
Sorry, the spamhaus link's not dead, got confused with the link to spamis.cc Google cache:
our search - cache:7obuXZJBBOsJ:www.spamis.cc/ - did not match any documents.
# At 16:30 on June 13, 2005, Chris wrote:
I got this email too. I hope MS sue him for libel now as well. Maybe then he will stop sending me those annoying viagra adverts.
# At 17:16 on June 13, 2005, Martey wrote:
One can be cynical and still moral, though. I have been reading posts on a membership-only bulk email forum called SpecialHam.The mindset of Soloway and other spammers seem to be an entirely different kind of doublethink than I referred to in the post. Not only do they claim that spamming is legitimate, but they see organizations like Microsoft and ISPs as interlopers trying to get spammers out of the way so they can send unsolicited email to their customers without fear of blowback. While I think the vast majority of the readers here will agree with me that this worldview is horribly flawed, that is their story, and they seem to sticking to it.
# At 19:28 on June 14, 2005, Fry wrote:
Fry this ugly Soloway bitch in burning oil!
# At 3:17 on June 15, 2005, mike bailey wrote:
I've recieved heaps and heaps of spam from this guy. If i had it my way, a public stoning would be held.
# At 10:53 on June 15, 2005, Sue A wrote:
Aha! I got the same daft email. Like so many spammers his thinking is incoherent, and so is his email. I am glad you took the trouble to disentagle the gibberish. No-one likes to be hated and despised, and spmmers are especially ones like this bozo. So he has to pretend to himself that OTHER people are the bad guys.
# At 19:49 on June 15, 2005, Shrubby wrote:
AHAHHAHA
http://www.mortgagespam.com/soloway/
# At 20:31 on June 15, 2005, Mike Koenigs wrote:
I've been receiving garbage from this guy for days now. Had no idea what it was all about until I did a Google search and happened upon this listing.
It seems he grabbed a coded e-mail from a domain registrar. I think we can all hope Robert Soloway:
Suffers an extremely cruel, painful and slow death at the hands of a hitman
Someone REAL sues this guy into oblivion and strips away any wealth he's managed to accumulate
Gets a case of severe incontinence, impotence and a combination of venereal diseases that cause itching, scratching, open sores, lots of oozing pus, loss of bodily hair and eventually falls into a vegetative state...with his only form of communication murmuring Ethel Merman songs in German with a lisp
Goes on vacation to Africa and gets infected with the Ebola virus
Gets a bare-butt spanking on pay-per-view followed by "Death by Bunga-Bunga". In case you don't know that old joke, ask around or take a guess. You'll get it right.
# At 9:53 on June 17, 2005, Abs wrote:
Obviosly this guy is a sorry thief too .. coz I DO NOT give out the email (not the one I gave you here) he spammed to, to just any website .. only the HTTPS kind so I'm assuming he stole it by accessing some database. Obviously he's got partners inside these presumably "safe" sites.
Revelation ... this one?
# At 21:16 on June 18, 2005, Matt B wrote:
i created a new e-mail address on a domain name that i had just registered, and had no previous owners. i've only posted this e-mail on ONE web site, and that is thefacebook.com. this site requries login, i have no idea how i could have gottent his email!!!!!
# At 21:33 on June 18, 2005, Martey wrote:
I suspect that some entity was using thefacebook.com to harvest email addresses, considering they stopped printing email addresses in plaintext, and now use a generated image.
# At 20:14 on June 19, 2005, George Lenzer wrote:
I favor a gigantic slice and dice myself.
# At 3:02 on June 20, 2005, Jack wrote:
I see that the court documentation includes contact details for this bozo. Anyone feel like hogging the line?
# At 3:06 on June 20, 2005, Martey wrote:
No, actually. Harrassing him is not going to stop him from spamming. Neither is calling him and asking politely that he stop, most likely. Soloway puts contact information in the SPAMIS emails themselves:
He just does not care. If anything, he takes pride in the fact that he is "not hiding" from anyone.# At 21:33 on June 20, 2005, chevell wrote:
I think that all spammers should be taken out and shot. They make all of us waste time sorting through endless useless mail while at our expense make a living out of it. The sheer number of hours we waste sorting though that useless mail will never be repaid by them. It's illegal period. Stop doing it you foul piece of human excriment. You deserve torture as you torture millions each day by wasting millions of peoples time for your own profit and I hope you burn in hell after you get caught and thrown in jail to rot for the rest of your life. As far as not hiding goes...if your ever in my face your life will end shortly there after but unfortunatly you hide behind your computer away from the furious millions whose valuble time you waste on a daily basis. Get a life you loser, or better yet get a real job where you actually help the world instead of ruining the internet. Your probably in the same group of assholes who crash millions of computers daily so you can get paid cents for highjacking browsers and sending them to unwanted websites where more stupid crap is dumped onto our expensive harddrives which you ruin at our expense and your sick little profit. The sheer number of computer crashes caused by that adware and the time companies have to spend keeping systems safe is staggering. You also commit that crime without guilt or compromize all the while pretending that it's not your fault that so and so operating systems isn't safe or built right when the fact of the matter is we also would not have to spend so much time making them safe if it wasn't for assholes like you. My sentence for you is death and the time you spend in hell for spreading your hatefullness through the world will surly remind you of what an asshole you really are. Do you have a single clue how fucked up it is to have your computer crash for no other reason then some lazy asshole is trying to make an easy dollar? NO I think not because if you did then you would stop your assault on all the computers of the world and get a job where you aren't ruining millions of computers at the cost of billions of dollars every year. You lazy self centered loser go fuck yourself and everyone else doing the same thing as you. And after that pay your fines because the laws will become so severe you will be in jail after paying out your fines for ever.
# At 14:27 on June 21, 2005, Christopher Bell wrote:
You know where he lives, you know what he drives, you have a baseball bat. Perhaps a registration of your level of disgruntlement could be arranged. If you have an email address for him I suppose that it could be possible to enroll him in all of those opt-in sites. I do not publicly condone vigilanty action but would smile if I read that his Benz was not worth $6.28 for scrap and he couldn't email anyone cause he couldn't open his mail server due to overload. On a more serious note the mind-set shown by some of the above correspondants demonstrates the likleyhood that at some point someone will snap and someone (Soloway or one of the other cretin/criminals) will be found dead under a ton of SPAM cans. Someone will die, shortly thereafter, so too will spam! So, c'mon Soloway: keep pressing the buttons - one of them will create a bullet with your name on it. Cheers.
# At 0:15 on June 23, 2005, Pete wrote:
The answer to spam is to bill spammers 1st Class Postage for every receipient. Its legal, its expensive and won't stop proper communications. Also, use the "Refused Law" All refused spam, like porn at the post office, must be returned to its sender at the senders expense.
PK
# At 0:42 on June 23, 2005, Martey wrote:
Pete, will normal email communications also be charged "1st Class Postage?" How will you enforce fee collection?
# At 1:29 on June 23, 2005, Petar wrote:
So far this scum Soloway is the only one who sends me spam on this new email account. I was very carefull not to let spammers get to it, but he probably snached it from domain registrar, as someone suggested before. Stupid of me to use it there. The only reason that I set up this new account was to be able to communicate without struggling with tons of spam. If there comes any other spam on this account, I will come personaly to USA and kill him. So far I think it would be a good idea to set up an account where we could contribute money to pay for hitman to execute him. This what he is doing is just plain violence. I really had enough of it, few hundred times over.
# At 8:38 on June 27, 2005, wmastr wrote:
A couple of things to think about...
When you register a domain, you have to give a contact email address. This email address will be available in your domain's whois info. ( Check it at www.whois.net or a similar service). Unless you register your domain at a registar that offers "whois protection" or a similar service, this info will be available world wide, and thus it is harvested for spam.
You should not use your main email account when you register a domain, it WILL be spammed. Excessively.
Another thing is, if you do own a domain already, chances are you have a catchall account, that forwards anymailaddress@yourdomain to your main account or a less important account you read on a non-hourly basis. You could then use a different email address for each service you sign up for. That way you can easily trace where your addy has been harvested.
I.e. if you write articles at some place named webnews, you can use webnews@yourdomain as a mail addy when you sign up. Three years later, you start receiving viagra spam for webnews@yourdomain, and you know who to blame. Of course... This is if you do have an catchall account that makes sure every mail to your domain will get there.
Never leave your main address with people who can get paid for it. Because they will.
.v
# At 8:56 on June 27, 2005, Martey wrote:
The problem with using a catchall is that it can actually increase the amount of spam you get. I receive a significant number of messages to email addresses like "sales@marteydodoo.com" that I have never used.
Attacks using generated email addresses are also more disruptive when you have a catchall. For example, just this weekend, I received over a hundred messages infected with the Mytob virus sent to addresses like "tom@marteydodoo.com." If I did not have a catchall, none of those messages would have been delivered.
# At 0:30 on July 3, 2005, John wrote:
Killing this dickhead is a little over the top. How about kneecapping or removing his fingers? Stop him from using a computer.
# At 20:57 on July 3, 2005, JVC wrote:
I created a hotmail account once for a project that I never actually executed. The address was never, EVER, given to anyone, or used ANYWHERE in the world. Not a single message was sent from it, ever. Within days I was receiving spam. And plenty of it. I firmly believe that spammers also "brute force" email addresses the same way hackers might brute force crack a password, by trying every known word in a huge dictionary file. I also wonder if they don't somehow find a way to get a list of every single email address @ a particular domain, like all emails @hotmail.com. Lord knows how they'd do that, but I'm sure it must be possible...
# At 11:12 on July 4, 2005, Mu wrote:
I'll bring the oil!!!
# At 20:34 on July 11, 2005, Nach wrote:
Thanks for this information.
May be he is sending viagra adverts to us because he wants that we use it with his wife or mother.
greetings from madrid
# At 1:55 on July 13, 2005, Deadweasel wrote:
You know, regarding the potential damage caused by the endless infestations of garbage picked up along the way, and sent by unscrupulous morons like this fellow, I think two words would sum up the situation for someone in the PC repair/maintenance business, like myself: JOB SECURITY.
Although I always give out tips and advice about how to help save themselves a ton of grief by using different browsers and email clients, installing antivirus software etc, the people in general out in the big bad world, unwilling or unable to learn something beyond what has been beaten into them during their formative years, will invariably and inevitably return for more of the same "cleanup on hard drive D:" treatment that they received from us not one month before. Of course, many of them feel it's our responsibility to see to it they never ever get infected again, no matter how bad their surfing habits, but in the end, they get charged. Again and again.
Mr. Soloway can take his Mercedes and stick it where the sun don't shine for all I care. I must remember to write him an email to thank him for the endless stream of customers ready and willing to pay $65 a head to have their machines cleaned of his detritus though. Come to think of it, I owe that man quite a few thank you emails. Maybe, say, one per customer over the last three years? Is it really spam if I'm wholeheartedly thanking someone, a couple thousand times over? :D
# At 1:31 on July 15, 2005, John G. wrote:
Hey, you wouldn't have to charge First Class. Charge 1 cent per message; most spammers would see the profits evaporate at $10,000 per million messages. And a few extra cents or dollars here and there would not bother most legitmate users. Yeah, enforcement might be a problem.
But - why not just block ALL traffic (not just the spam addresses) from ISP's hosting this guy? Foreign ISP's would be less than thrilled about losing all contact with North America. Just a thought.
# At 2:43 on July 15, 2005, Martey wrote:
Charging for email messages would be fraught with problems. Since there is no Internet equivalent of the Postal Service, who will collect these charges? If the collecting authority should be the individual SMTP servers that are receiving the email, who convince the system administrators who run these servers to implement charging? What mechanism will be place to stop fraudelent charging (extracting one cent from several thousand servers would add up)? The suggestion that "enforcement might be a problem" is the crux of the matter. Without mandating payment, you have simply added another complexity to email without solving the spam problem. Spammers are not going to be dissuaded by empty threats of being forced to pay for their spam; my own short-lived attempt at stopping comment spam in this way was unsuccessful.
There was a post on Slashdot some time ago about whether blocking all of China would end the spam problem. Since the Internet is relatively anarchic, such blocks would almost certainly have to take place on the ISP level. Besides the difficulty of convincing your ISP to block entire foreign ISPs whose customers send you spam, the foreign ISPs would not lose "all contact," just contact with websites, email accounts, and the customers of the ISPs that are blocking them.
Spam blocklists help with the spam problem, but are also problematic. Suppose that a spam-friendly reseller (who, as its name suggests, resells web hosting space) purchases space from an internet hosting company and gives it to a spammer. If you block the entire internet hosting company, innocent bystanders who had absolutely nothing to do with the spam will also be blocked. When this happens, people usually get annoyed. The time and patience needed to get off spam blocklists makes such blanket blocking a bad idea. That said, current spam blocklist organizations seem to realize that this is a problem. Many of them seem to take steps to ensure that when they do blocking hosting companies, it is because they have repeatedly provided aid to spammers.
# At 5:32 on July 15, 2005, Petar wrote:
Yeah ok, that is acceptable, but only if we pull his fingernails out before we remove fingers. And then we should bind him to a chair and make him look those stupid "take a look on this super space-technology car wax for only 2.99$ and you also get free donuts" for the rest of his life.
# At 14:05 on July 18, 2005, Bryan wrote:
I just got this email today... this fucker ashould be casterated with a rust spoon and then have salt poured into the cut
# At 16:53 on July 19, 2005, Drew wrote:
This Robet Soloway guy is a total asshole. Isnt there anyone in the greater Seattle area, if that is where he is from, at least his PO BOX is there, who can go out and club him over the head?
Let me know? I would be very happy.
# At 18:47 on July 19, 2005, Andy wrote:
You're too soft on him! :¬]
# At 1:50 on July 20, 2005, ECC wrote:
Here in Paris (France), I just got a spam from Spamic today, and immediately found my way here. Since I have family in the Seattle area, I'm willing to take on the hitman arrangement... Eat your heart out, you Soloway SOB!
# At 4:44 on July 20, 2005, Chopper wrote:
Wow, there are some really angry people out there! I guess there's a lot of folks who've seen their beloved PCs come to a grinding halt under the weight of the crap that's found its way from the Wonderful World Wide Web.
Me, I'm a systems admin. Part of my job is ensuring that the firewalls, spam filters and virus checkers are up-to-date and functioning. Very rarely do I have to clean an infected PC in the company, but when I do, it's just part of the job. And it's also a service I perform for friends and family in return for free meals, use of their weekend houses, bottles of wine, etc. So, whilst I also consider spammers to be scum, they do me a lot of favours. And, of course, so do all those users who don't protect their PCs properly. I imagine cops see criminals in much the same way. Without them, they'd be out of a job.
Of course, if nobody ever bought viagra, penis enlargement pills, and of course, porn, and if no-one fell for the scams then there wouldn't be any spammers. (I love reading these scam mails by the way, especially the African Dictators' Widows' mails. My view is, anyone who is so monumentally greedy as to want any of the cash a dictator has milked from his people deserves to get well and truly ripped off).
And my home PC? I read all my e-mail on my iBook using the Apple e-mail client. Which has simply the best spam filter I've ever seen. Every now and again I glance at the hundreds of entries in the spam box to see if there are any false positives (there never are), then launch the lot into virtual outer space. And smile to think that the spammers are wasting their time.
# At 5:50 on July 20, 2005, Martey wrote:
I completely and totally disagree. Being that a significant amount of the work I do involves cleaning infected PCs, I do not count spammers, malware writers, and adware/spyware companies to be "doing me a favor." If you see the anger, pain, and annoyance that these individuals cause normal computer users, you will fail to appreciate their "favours."
The police may have a different view about criminals, but keep in mind that they are allowed to arrest them whenever they catch them. Since it is difficult to permanently stop spammers and other online miscreants, one could argue that cybercrime is a much harder problem to solve than that of normal "offline crime."
# At 8:07 on July 20, 2005, Chopper wrote:
Martey, I expect you're right. And I'd gladly give back all the bottles of wine etc. (with interest) if I thought it would banish spammers (using that as a generic term for spammers, virus-writers, malware propagators, etc. etc.) from the world. The police analogy is, I agree, a crude one. Unfortunately, though, we are living in a world peopled by, well, by people. And some of them are going to behave in a way that makes life unpleasant for the rest of us. Hopefully, at some time in the future, the spam problem will be solved. (And I suspect that that won't come about without a lot of controls and restrictions that will be hard to swallow. Perhaps the police analogy isn't such a bad one when I come to think of it. Only by accepting a load of restrictions are we able to walk around pretty safely in most places). However, until the day comes when spammers are history, we have to live with the problem. I am just deeply disturbed by the angry rants and calls to violence. Spammers are scum, as I said before. But I suspect that no-one's actually died from spam. Or lost a limb, or contracted AIDS.
So let's keep things in proportion, hey? All this talk of baseball bats and hitmen helps nobody. If we lynched a hundred spammers it wouldn't solve anything, but it would cost us a lot of effort - and land us behind bars. If we could make the majority of our computer systems and networks impervious to malware, the spammers would go back to their crochet and stamp-collecting or whatever it was they did before the internet linked us all together. Seems like a worthy goal.
# At 18:20 on July 21, 2005, Mike wrote:
I hold ten domains with unlimited email addresses on each one. The number of spam emails I have recieved on all these domains is astounding. The number from Robert Soloway's site or sites is a great portion of these. NONE of my email addresses have EVER been put into an OPT-IN system so that I would recieve legitimate advertising. Why is it that someone like Soloway can get away with FRAUD by saying that my addresses are in his OPT-IN system? The cost to me in TIME and SOFTWARE to filter out all the CRAP I have gotten from this creep is staggering. Sure... nobody has ever died from SPAM.... but what about Nickle and Diming you to death?
Here is an idea. I'm going to refuse all email that is not digitally signed. Personal Digital Certificates are free from Thawte... and your ID can be verified by any of thousands of notarys. Maybe then ... when Soloway's email comes in (with digital signature) I can take him directly to court and collect on some of all this wasted time.
# At 19:36 on July 21, 2005, Martey wrote:
More likely Soloway will not go through the trouble of adding a digital signature to the messages he sends you (do you think spammers write their emails by hand?).
Refusing all non-digitally signed email seems problematic. If I send you a unsigned message, how will I know that I should add a digital signature in order to get you to read my message? If your mail server will send the from address an email, what about spam and virus-infected messages that forge senders?
# At 7:05 on July 22, 2005, doug smoke wrote:
So, we all hate SPAMIS/Soloway. This is unsurprising. By the by, is there any truth in his theory that Microsoft are about to buy Claris/Gator? Oh yes, and Hotmail accounts receive spam even if you never admit to anyone that you have even visited a Microsoft site. Try it and see.
# At 9:39 on July 22, 2005, Martey wrote:
Microsoft was thinking about buying Claria, but decided against the move after widespread public outcry.
I am pretty sure that Hotmail accounts receive spam even when the email addresses are not used, because spammers targeting Hotmail use dictionary-based attacks to attempt to spam every possible Hotmail account.
# At 7:38 on July 23, 2005, Ashman wrote:
Oh Fuck! I just got a mail from this SPAMIS dickhead and replied with a very "direct" email asking that I be removed from his "SPAM". I then did a search on this wanker and found this website...after reading all your comments I can see what a dickhead he really is...I've also got a feeling I am about to be totally swamped with more of his crap now. (I should have realised he would't obey a "remove me" request by the lack of "unsubscribe" instructions at the bottom of his email!) The person who can successfully invent a working "spam killer" will retire with great wealth indeed!
# At 4:58 on July 25, 2005, G Bob wrote:
Well I got this email several times...
I'm also getting it forwarded from 'anti-microsoft-brigade' - presumably as 'see told you so, MS are jerks too'
However I think this is going to continue, as the messages are starting to evolve and include other (copyrighted) material.
For example, I just got mail from spamis.org that basically repeats this eSeurityPlanet article http://www.esecurityplanet.com/views/article.php/3520931
eSecurityPlanet is part of jupiterMedia and they should really pursue Soloway fro breach of copyright, but as they like to play 'kick' MS then I guess they wont
shame really, the onward march of Spam continues
GRRRRRRR!!!!!
g bob
# At 11:40 on July 29, 2005, scabsaw wrote:
Hey I can agree and sympathize with every poster out here on the spam issue. And I deffenitly could care less about this Soloway fellows greif with M$...
But I'd just like to state, for the record that M$ is not, and never has been, the communities friend. They are out to make money, anyway they "legally?" can.
That's a questionable legally too... I'm just saying that while Microsoft obeys the law of the land, but is more than willing to stoop to less-than-moral tactics to get their way. I know most of you are probably saying "Great, another nix kid here to bash on us Windoze users...", well, no... not quite. I use windows as well, and I don't see any problem with using windows. True, to me windows is substandard software, simply because if I want to change the way the operating system works it's not as simple as downloading some source code and busting out my c/c++ compiler. When you get tired of everybody else taking advantage of your OS, maybe it's worth looking into. It's not that hard, anyone can do it: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Also, Soloway may be a waste of skin and fluids, but he's actually just qouting sources elsewhere on the web, and if you where concerned with network/system security anyway you should have been aware of these articles and issues in the first place. Do I agree with Soloway and his methods? No. Do I think him a hypocrite? Yes. Should you go ahead and trust Microsoft's software simply because Soloway is a moron? Well, I gues you can do as you please... me? I'll keep a warry eye on anything I use, simply because knowing of the security issues beforehand saves me a lot of time in the end. ;)
# At 16:23 on July 29, 2005, Martey wrote:
Thanks for the insightful comments. It is worth noting the sources Soloway is quoting that actually talk about Microsoft sending spam are several years old (see the date on this article, for example). For a first time Linux user, a distribution like Mandriva or Ubuntu would probably be easier to use.
# At 5:33 on July 30, 2005, Samuel wrote:
I am sick of damn viagra and caliis sor whatever emails. I created a thosand rules to stop them at my mail server but the guy seems to be registering a new domain everyday.
# At 15:52 on July 31, 2005, Sensi wrote:
lol ^^
# At 8:26 on August 1, 2005, Martian wrote:
I have received a couple of ANTI-Microsoft emails. But the one that bothers me the most is an almost HOURLY spam about BROADCAST YOUR WEBSITE TO 25,000000 Emails thing. I have set horde to catch spam in a new folder. I have enabled spam assasin in cpanel, It dont seem to help at all. Is this soloway untouchable? Hey Solofreak, you have been weighed and Found WANTING. What you reap is what you sow. Brave yourself for the Harvest of your life. I'd rather be Poor and at Peace, than rich and Peaceless.
# At 8:31 on August 1, 2005, Martian wrote:
Just saw this..........http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/listing.lasso?-op=cn&spammer=Robert%20Soloway%20-%20Newport%20Internet%20Marketing
Soloway is the owner Newport Internet Marketing Corporation. Damn! that freak has beeb busy.
# At 8:32 on August 1, 2005, Martey wrote:
In case you did not notice, I linked to that in my post.
# At 8:45 on August 1, 2005, Martian wrote:
As of Nov 6, 2004, Robert Soloway's NIM/Newport Internet Marketing is an active corporate entity in Washington State. This corporate name was registered in WA in Dec, 2003. Soloway's "corporation" is run out of his apartment at the Harbors Apartments in Seattle.
http://dor.wa.gov/content/brd/Results.aspx?Valid=Yes&RequestType=1&Criteria=nim+corporation&City=
# At 8:47 on August 1, 2005, Martian wrote:
Hey Martey, guess i was soo mad at this nuts that i did not even check the link. Cheers Mate.
# At 17:49 on August 2, 2005, Neal White wrote:
I have a three pronged attack that will eliminate SPAM from the internet, but it can't be done with the "normal" channels...
ONE: SPell check the subject line. All email programs have a spell checker function that checks the subject line. If it doesn't pass the spell check on the way into teh server it gets canned. TWO: Once spell check is working we can go about blocking the single spelling of VIAGRA, etc, etc instead of having to block v.i.a.g.r.a and viiiiaagra. etc. THREE: DDOS attack on the site that WAITS for soemone to click on a link in a SPAM message. Look at it this way. If the people that SEND spam can't make any money because their web sites vanish off the internet shortly after they send a round of SPAM the problem will eventually go away. HOW? Imagine a SETI like screen saver on 20 million computers all keeping a spam advertized site off the internet. It wouldn't take long before the people sending the spam couldn't afford to send more spam because the endless supply of NEWBIES that fall ofr the spam won't be able to get to the web site where they will get screwed.
Yes.. I know that there might be a way to abuse this. "Hey.. Microsoft spammed me. I'll report them to that great new ANTI SPAM group I heard about" ANd the 20,000,000 screen savers kick in and blask microsoft.com. Or google.com. or whitehouse.gov.. OK.. NOT a good thing.. but it can be handled and avoided.
I don't see any other way. Under the radar and under the law is the only way to eliminate SPAM. The CAN-SPAM law isn't going to do it.. Just my $.02
Neal
# At 18:00 on August 2, 2005, Martey wrote:
This is a bad idea. First, not all email programs have spell checkers, and even fewer check the subject line. Secondly, when I am sending you an email, I have no way of knowing whether or not the words I am using in my subject are in your mail server's dictionary. If emails with "unorthodox" spellings are simply not delivered, then email traffic will drop significantly, as people turn to other mediums to communicate. This is an even worse idea. Considering that some spammers have turned to hosting their websites on compromised machines, DDoSing random networks will simply cause Internet chaos.How, pray tell?
# At 14:36 on August 3, 2005, Neal White wrote:
When Microsoft released XP they stated that not all softawre would work on the new OS. E-mail, as it is today, is broken and can not be "fixed" with filters and black/white lists. Break it the rest of the way. STOP trying to make sure that all users of EVERY little POS software can still use what they want to use. No spell checker on your email program? You're shit out of luck, Can't spell check the subject line? Your email message will get tossed out. If we lay out new rules on how to get email delivered, you must follow the rules or you can't "play in our sandbox" As a business tool Email is nearly worthless. Too much time spent filtering out crap, and you can't just filter crap because of the false positives. No, DDos'ing will NOT cause internet chaos.. ddos is a fact of life on the internet NOW, is there chaos? no. Plus.. compromised machines will be cleaned up and patched, replaced, corrected, again.. end of problem. Need to send an email to someone behind a spell-checked-subject-line-server? SPELL CHECK THE SUBJECT LINE. If it doesn't pass, know that your mail will be tossed out. Follow the rules or don't use EMAIL. Email program doesn't spell check the subject line? Use another email program. And Don't bother to tell me that makeing new rules "isn't the way the internet is supposed to work" because that just doesn't wash. There are rules to follow for IP. for HTTP. for HTTPS for IPX. for VoIP, even for email. Just one simple change in the "rules" and we can make more effective filters; thus eliminating SPAM at the server, not the desktop. Hundreds of thousands of $$$ are spent/wasted dealing with spam. None of the "patches" for the problem in the pipeline are going to work any better than BAysian filters do.. they DID for a short time, then the spammers found an easy way to beat them. Now they are worthless. Black lists by domain or IP range is also worthless, since spammers use compromised machines to send spam and the wrong people get "spanked."
Sorry.. you haven't made a convincing argument against this simple plan/
# At 16:25 on August 3, 2005, Neal White wrote:
Again.. keeping it all very simple. Abuse can be avoided. Knowing that abuse can happen is half the battle. The actual events that would take place to assure a "win" aren't for open debated on this forum since "the bad guys" can listen in too. Google doens't tell how they do what they do so fast; We just use them and are happy they exist. I guess I'm saying "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" but the problem has been forseen and taken care of.
# At 17:45 on August 3, 2005, Martey wrote:
Microsoft makes Windows. If I am a Windows software developer and Microsoft decides to stop supporting the APIs that make my program work, it sucks, but there is nothing I can really do about it.
Email, however, is different. No one company decides what email is or isn't. If a company or organization decides to "break" email, the rest of the world will ignore them. As a result, most ideas to stop spam (for example, SPF) attempt to extend email, rather than break it. The world realizes that starting from scratch with email is just not an option.
However, even these extensions run into the problem of implementation - any plan to kill spam is useless if nobody uses it. Both components of your plan fail to take this into consideration.
You will not be able to convince mail server administrators to block emails with misspelled subject lines because it would result in too many messages being dropped. If I send a message to you entitled "Check out Mozilla Firefox," your mail server might drop that message (since the words "Mozilla" and "Firefox" are not in the dictionary). Also, it does not take into consideration the international nature of the Internet. If I send someone in France email in English, I should not have to worry that the mail server might refuse to send the message because the words I use are not in the server's dictionary.
As for your DDoS screensaver idea, it has already been tried, and it already failed. Go read up on Lycos Europe. Since DoS attacks are illegal in the United States and violate most (if not all) ISPs' terms of service agreement (including yours, Neal), it would be incredibly difficult to get this to work.
Your cavalier attitude toward DDoSing false targets may allow you to dismiss my rebuttals, but they will also allow systems administrators to dismiss your ideas. What happens if I hate you, and decide to get revenge by inserting your website into a spam message, knowing that the resultant attack will both bring down your website, and make you pay large amounts of money for bandwidth?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this would not stop spam. Bayesian filters like SpamAssassin already take into misspelling into account when attempting to determine whether mail is spam. Also, a majority of the spam I receive does not mispell any of the words in its subject.
If spammers realize that linking to websites in their messages will cause DDoS attacks, they will not link to them. For the past three or so years, I have constantly received spam that does not include links to websites, but instead gives email addresses, phone numbers, or fax numbers for contact. Last week, I received spam from some company in Singapore that attached a Excel spreadsheet that contained contact information.
If you do not find my arguments convincing, there is a "simple" way to prove me wrong. Get the Internet to implement your ideas and sees if spam stops.
# At 3:47 on September 5, 2005, MarteyDodoo.com wrote:
Spam Worries
...
# At 7:57 on June 21, 2006, electrixity | Blog Archive | “Microsoft send wrote:
[...] If you, like me, have recieved several copies of this nonsensical and pathetic email claiming to be from an organisation called SPAMIS, here’s the story behind it. If you can’t be asked to click, the person behind the email and SPAMIS is Robert Soloway. Apart from being one of the Internet’s biggest spammers, he’s also got a (obviously) twisted worldview and a grudge with Microsoft. [...]