Spam on Rye..
As mentioned previously, Spam is one of my pet peaves. True, it's easy enough to hit the delete button, and by having my own domains with the ability to easily change addresses it's fairly easy to manage and keep the crap to a minimun. But, some still gets through, most recently thanks to Earthlink, who didn't have tight enough security on their mail servers to stop a spam house from sending through an "alphabet attack". For you novices, this involves a spammer hitting a mail server with millions of mail request using computer generated alpha letter combinations and seeing which ones are "bounced" and which are not. The "non-bouncers" are then stored in the scumbags data file for future spamming. So...I'm getting a few spam sandwiches to my default generic Earthlink address. Thanks Earthlink!
The real reason I hate Spam is that I just don't like the thought of these morons being able to do this with impunity. Which they are generally able to do because A] it's not against the law, B] they have sophisticated software and C] because the people who could put a dent in it...won't.
I'm not naive enough to think that making Spam illegal will stop it all, but it will provide a legal basis for bringing lawsuits against the scum and make it easier to win MONEY from the spammers...which is all they care about and which will hurt them. It would also allow the legal system to keep track of those offenders who are convicted and start up new spam operations. At present, when a spammer is cut off from his ISP or Internet backbone connection, it is a matter of days before they spring up elsewhere.
The software developed for the spam industry is significant. Just several years ago, I could trackback through the email header and generally tell the IP address and the point of origin of the spam message. Not today. Their software creates fake email headers and shows fake IP addresses as the rule. It does no good to try and trackback. The reply addresses are fake as are the ID message lines. I have a little program which creates fake "bounce" messages, designed to send mail back to spammers announcing that "this is not a good address" and hopefully they would delete my address from their database. This is no longer useful.
There is one source link to the spammers that can still be traced. In order for the spammer to sell you some fake Viagra, he has to have a point of sale...usually a website. Now some of these are "confuscated" web addresses, in other words they are written in various coding that the average person could not decipher in order to report. But through the links I'll provide below you can do this. Many addresses linked on spam are normal Dot.Com addresses. The trick is to find out who is really behind this address. Be forewarned that the owners listed are mostly fake names and addresses commonly now coming from China or Brazil. But, and a big But....what you want to determine is how, what route and backbone server, does the URL get from the spam site to your computer. Sad to say, this is commonly through large well known companies such as Verio, ATT, Cable and Wireless or Verizon who really don't give a crap about your little complaint. Until, hopefully, they get hundreds of thousands or millions of complaints. These are the people who have the power to shut spam sales sites down, by blocking the IP addresses of the offenders. This is why I still send Abuse reports on every piece of spam I receive. If everyone did, perhaps they'd listen.
OK, here are two useful sites to start to chase Spam.
Sam Spade: allows you to do WHOIS searches, i.e. see how owns the site, do a TRACEROUTE to determine where the spam site URL enters the Internet backbone [usually a large well known company 5 or 6 hops up the list]. Allows you to deciper the "confuscated" URL's.
UXN Spam Combat: Here I utilize the Traceroute function and the very important SPEWS refernce. SPEWS keeps track of well known spam operations and can help you figure out the latest. You'll need the numeric IP address for this one. [many Spams are using html formated mail "right click" and use "source" to see the associated URL for the site.]
While using these tools remember: Never send a reply back to a spammer, nor use their "take me off your list" return address. This just confirms that your address is active...! You can send complaints to legitimate ISP's or Backbone providers by using the email address abuse@whomever.net. Always send a copy to the Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov. They won't act on the complaint but they are providing the statistics on Spam to the Congress [don't laugh, please].
There is some thought that since, hopefully, fewer and fewer people are buying anything from these scum, they will eventually implode. The biggest source of their revenue seems to come from selling spam email lists and spam software to each other. But until that happens, report the scumbags. Good luck and good hunting!
As mentioned previously, Spam is one of my pet peaves. True, it's easy enough to hit the delete button, and by having my own domains with the ability to easily change addresses it's fairly easy to manage and keep the crap to a minimun. But, some still gets through, most recently thanks to Earthlink, who didn't have tight enough security on their mail servers to stop a spam house from sending through an "alphabet attack". For you novices, this involves a spammer hitting a mail server with millions of mail request using computer generated alpha letter combinations and seeing which ones are "bounced" and which are not. The "non-bouncers" are then stored in the scumbags data file for future spamming. So...I'm getting a few spam sandwiches to my default generic Earthlink address. Thanks Earthlink!
The real reason I hate Spam is that I just don't like the thought of these morons being able to do this with impunity. Which they are generally able to do because A] it's not against the law, B] they have sophisticated software and C] because the people who could put a dent in it...won't.
I'm not naive enough to think that making Spam illegal will stop it all, but it will provide a legal basis for bringing lawsuits against the scum and make it easier to win MONEY from the spammers...which is all they care about and which will hurt them. It would also allow the legal system to keep track of those offenders who are convicted and start up new spam operations. At present, when a spammer is cut off from his ISP or Internet backbone connection, it is a matter of days before they spring up elsewhere.
The software developed for the spam industry is significant. Just several years ago, I could trackback through the email header and generally tell the IP address and the point of origin of the spam message. Not today. Their software creates fake email headers and shows fake IP addresses as the rule. It does no good to try and trackback. The reply addresses are fake as are the ID message lines. I have a little program which creates fake "bounce" messages, designed to send mail back to spammers announcing that "this is not a good address" and hopefully they would delete my address from their database. This is no longer useful.
There is one source link to the spammers that can still be traced. In order for the spammer to sell you some fake Viagra, he has to have a point of sale...usually a website. Now some of these are "confuscated" web addresses, in other words they are written in various coding that the average person could not decipher in order to report. But through the links I'll provide below you can do this. Many addresses linked on spam are normal Dot.Com addresses. The trick is to find out who is really behind this address. Be forewarned that the owners listed are mostly fake names and addresses commonly now coming from China or Brazil. But, and a big But....what you want to determine is how, what route and backbone server, does the URL get from the spam site to your computer. Sad to say, this is commonly through large well known companies such as Verio, ATT, Cable and Wireless or Verizon who really don't give a crap about your little complaint. Until, hopefully, they get hundreds of thousands or millions of complaints. These are the people who have the power to shut spam sales sites down, by blocking the IP addresses of the offenders. This is why I still send Abuse reports on every piece of spam I receive. If everyone did, perhaps they'd listen.
OK, here are two useful sites to start to chase Spam.
Sam Spade: allows you to do WHOIS searches, i.e. see how owns the site, do a TRACEROUTE to determine where the spam site URL enters the Internet backbone [usually a large well known company 5 or 6 hops up the list]. Allows you to deciper the "confuscated" URL's.
UXN Spam Combat: Here I utilize the Traceroute function and the very important SPEWS refernce. SPEWS keeps track of well known spam operations and can help you figure out the latest. You'll need the numeric IP address for this one. [many Spams are using html formated mail "right click" and use "source" to see the associated URL for the site.]
While using these tools remember: Never send a reply back to a spammer, nor use their "take me off your list" return address. This just confirms that your address is active...! You can send complaints to legitimate ISP's or Backbone providers by using the email address abuse@whomever.net. Always send a copy to the Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov. They won't act on the complaint but they are providing the statistics on Spam to the Congress [don't laugh, please].
There is some thought that since, hopefully, fewer and fewer people are buying anything from these scum, they will eventually implode. The biggest source of their revenue seems to come from selling spam email lists and spam software to each other. But until that happens, report the scumbags. Good luck and good hunting!
