Category: Spam

Spam, spam, spam

Categories
In The News Internet Spam

Your not allowed to be guilty

Considering our overburdened legal system, and understaffed courthouses, this is really pretty wrong:

A federal judge refused to accept a guilty plea Tuesday from a former America Online software engineer accused of stealing 92 million e-mail addresses and selling them to spammers.

So he can’t plead guilty to a crime he admits to committing because the Judge isn’t convinced. Just makes you think. I’m curious what the judge gets out of it.

“I’m not prepared to go ahead, Mr. Siegal. I need to be independently satisfied that a crime has been created.”

[Source: Forbes.com @ 3:28 PME ST 12/21/2004]

As if the guy pleading guilty isn’t enough. If there was any doubt about a crime being committed, the guy would fight it. I’m sure some spammers will be emailing Judge Hellerstein to say “Thanks buddy”. I question the basis of his claim that he isn’t satisfied a crime has been created.

Categories
Spam

Terrorists Spamming

This spam just came in. Quite amazing. I’m not sure if it’s a legitimate idiot, or just someone who thinks the are funny. This future start could potentially run away with a Darwin Award in the near future. So keep an eye out for this moron.

Welcome to our web site [Removed]

Please use [Removed] in case of our domain outage.

You’re invited to shop for large selection of bombs and different
kinds of rockets such as surface-to-air,
surface-to-surface and weaponry available at reduced price. With the
following types of rockets you will be
able to commit terrorist attacks, destroy buildings, electric power
stations, bridges, factories and anything
else that comes your mind. Most items are in stock and available for
next day freight delivery in the USA.
Worldwide delivery is available at additional cost. Prices are
negotiable.

Please feel free to inquire by ICQ # [Removed] or contacting us
directly:

[Removed]
[Removed]
[Removed]

Today special:

******* AIR BOMBS *******
OFAB-500U HE fragmentation air bomb
Fuel-air explosive air bombs -Not in stock
BETAB-500U concrete-piercing air bomb
ZB-500RT incendiary tank
500-KG SIZE RBK-500U unified cluster bomb
RBK-500U OAB-2.5PT loaded with fragmentation submunitions
RBK-500U BETAB-M loaded with concrete-piercing submunitions-Not in
stock
RBK-500U OFAB-50UD loaded with HE fragmentation submunitions

******* UNGUIDED AIRCRAFT ROCKETS *******
Main-purpose unguided aircraft rockets
S-8 unguided aircraft rockets
S-8KOM
S-8BM-Not in stock
S-13 unguided aircraft rockets
S-13, S-13T, S-13-OF, S-13D, S-13DF
S-25-0
S-25-OFM
S-24B -Not in stock
RS-82
RS-132-Not in stock

******* ROCKET PODS *******
B-8M pod for S-8 rockets
B-8V20-A pod for S-8 rockets
B-13L pod for S-13 rockets

Recently received *NEW*

Hydra 70 2.75 inch Rockets
Air-Launched 2.75-Inch Rockets
FIM-92A Stinger Weapons System
Stinger 101: Anti-Air

Our clients are well known Al-Qaida, Hizballah, Al-Jihad, HAMAS, Abu
Sayyaf Group and many other terrorist groups. We are well known
supplier in the market and looking forward to expand our clientage
with assistance of Internet.

Do not hesitate to contact us via ICQ # [Removed]

Impatiently awaiting for your orders,
ShadowCrew

[Source: Spam Inbox from my email]

Aren’t these guys great

Categories
Spam

And I Realized I Became A Man

Porn Spam They say there are milestones in every male’s life as they travel on that common journey from being a boy to a man. Well in the digital age, it’s still holds true, but it takes a unique twist.

Spam occasionally does (shocker) get through spam filters, and one got me today. It seems like all of a sudden the legal age for a porn star became younger than me (rather than older, as it has been most of my life). Somehow I never thought about it.

Talk about weird.

Anyway, that’s my random thought of the day. Growing older than porn stars.

Yea, this is pretty silly, but you have to admit, it’s a strange realization.

Categories
Spam

What would you complain about if there was no spam?

Seriously. It’s a good question. What would be the #1 complaint if there was no spam? Popups (despite Firefox blocking them)? Speed? Cost? Bad HTML? Accessibility? Pornography? Pornography that isn’t free? Pornography with Animals?

What would be your #1 complaint?

I’m honestly not sure of mine. Most likely proprietary components entering the internet (ActiveX, MSHTML, etc.) rather than standards.

But what’s yours?

Categories
Spam

Comcast and Spam

I’ve got to admit I like this idea. Comcast has what might be a very good solution.

A great little bit here in CNET’s wonderful article.

Based on my conversations last week, Comcast’s network engineers would like to be more aggressive. But the marketing department shot down a ban on port 25 because of its circa $58 million price tag–so high partially because some subscribers would have to be told how to reconfigure their mail programs to point at Comcast’s servers, and each phone call to the help desk costs $9.

Instead, Comcast’s engineers plan to try the innovative approach of identifying the zombie PCs and surreptitiously sending the subscriber’s cable modem a new configuration routine that prevents outbound connections on port 25. Zombie-infected users won’t even notice, the thinking goes, because most people use Comcast’s mail servers for outgoing e-mail. Anyone wrongfully blocked can call and complain.

A few things I found interesting were the $9 help desk calls. As well as the great solution.

Personally, I think the best solution would be to simply shut those users down until they solve the problem. By encouraging people to keep patches on their computer up to date, it will prevent things like viruses and other garbage from wasting bandwidth. That would benefit everyone even more. Simply terminate all outbound access to all but local comcast servers (mail, www). The user gets an email, and forwarded to a page explaining why they lost outbound connectivity. When the issue is rectified, they can re-enable their account by contacting tech support.

The simple prevention of course is if you run windows, to use windows update once a month, and a virus scanner. For those who don’t, they will get a crash course if they want to connect to the network.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m sick of viruses clogging my inbox. And we all know they clog bandwidth on the network as well. That’s capacity that should be used for downloading legitimate data.

Categories
Spam

Habeas about to prove themselves

Habeas, an company who sells copyrighted x-header tags, known as “Habeas Warrant Mark” to companies who abide by their rules regarding spam, in return for avoiding spam filters (yes copyrights actually can benefit the internet community). It has a rather large backing from email providers and spam filters. Habeas has recently been under attack. As of about 11 AM, PST, Sunday January 11, 2004, an “unknown spammer” has been using the tags. The spam often has a title similar to “Get X(a)n@x, Valï(u)m, V|@gra, Som(a) Diet Pills Many Meds”, and is blacklisted by most DNSBL’s. Will copyright prevail and save the internet from Spam?

Categories
Politics Spam

Spam to increase thanks to new Law

Here’s my analysis of the new law:

1. More spammers will operate off shore. This means, even more spam, even the bad stuff (child pornography, scam’s etc.) will be out of US jurisdiction. As of now, at least some, comes from places within US law’s coverage. Now it will be less.

2. The biggest issue:

As CAUCE notes:

This legislation fails the most fundamental test of any anti-spam law, in that it neglects to actually tell any marketers not to spam. Instead, it gives each marketer in the United States one free shot at each consumer’s e-mail inbox,

Now here is where the removal clause can end up doing more harm than not:

People will be under the impression that removing email is as easy as clicking “unsubscribe”, which it may be for several US based spammers, who decide to obey the laws.

But how do you know it’s within the US, and removing? Or outside the US, and confirming your email address for spammers?

There is my issue. Congress has passed a bill that actually does the complete opposite of what it is intended to do. While it’s nice to see them caring about the issue. They have made the problem much worse. They are telling millions of people to confirm their email address with offshore spammers.

Now imagine this:

Not only is the spammer out of US law’s control, but Congress told the American people to confirm their email address with spammers outside the country.

This can actually have very negative consequences on the economy, as email is used widely throughout US businesses. Now imagine spam becoming more costly.

Are we having fun yet?

Spread the word that this bill is a very bad thing, and should be scrapped and redone. It’s flawed throughout, and poses to increase, rather than decrease spam. The complete opposite of the said intent of the bill.

Categories
Spam

SpamAssassin and OS X

Well, I’ve been working on getting SpamAssassin working with Mac OS X, and have gotten it working pretty good. Either just to filter spam for the computer, or for an entire network.

Continue reading “SpamAssassin and OS X”
Categories
Funny Spam

Real Spam

Well, I have been spending some time (don’t laugh) reading spam. I’m actually analyzing spam for generating some new rules for the SpamAssassin Project. It’s seriously good software, check it out. This is some real spam about my favorite science, Penis Enlargement. It is slightly suggestive, so don’t read on unless you are ok with my immature sense of humor. I don’t need complaint emails. Don’t like, don’t read. It’s that simple.

Continue reading “Real Spam”