Spam Wars: Inside the Mind of a Spammer

[Tom]

Interesting reading:

The Hartford Courant is running two articles that provide a glimpse into the spam wars. The first and better article gives a look into the mind and business of an actual spammer, Ronnie Scelson who runs Opt-In Marketing Services from Louisiana. The second is a profile of Martin Roth, spam fighter from New Orleans.

Spam King Living High In The Bayou
http://www.ctnow.com/news/specials/h...sonjun30.story

It's All-Out E-War
http://www.ctnow.com/news/specials/h...othjul01.story

[sheila]

The concluding paragraph of the first article is certainly an interesting quote from the spammer:

"As far as the anti-spam organizations, they just basically want to get rid of e-mail [advertising] altogether. ... If they didn't ask for it, they don't want it. And it's not that simple of a business."

[MichaelC]

Actually, it is "that simple of a business" -- shut down every single one that steals addresses, buys stolen addresses, provides incorrect return addresses, or uses open relays.

My spam filters (thank you, EFM!) stop between 75-100 pieces of spam per day. Not a single one was "opted-in." They use every kind of trick to avoid filtering. Munged return e-mail addresses. Use of encoding and forwarding to obscure the "payoff" website address. Subject lines designed to look like it's just a message from your friend "Pete."

The thing that burns my britches about 99.9% of spammers is that they spew a mile a minute about how what they're doing is a perfectly legitimate business, all the while committing outright fraud in order to beat perfectly legitimate filtering:

Scelson, who designed the software, says it will penetrate virtually any system designed to stop ads from reaching the intended mailbox.

'Nuff said.

MC