the biter bit
Dec. 8th, 2002 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sisyphusshruggedWil Wheaton has a story from boingboing which links to a story from the Detroil Free Press discussing and earlier Slashdot story about an earlier Detroit Free Press story about a spammer moving in to a $750,000 house in Bloomfield Hills (I should put this in perspective by telling you that my husband's cousins starter house was a three bedroom ranch with finished basement, in-ground pool and fireplace in a "good neighborhood" that they paid $75k for). Plastic also weighs in.
(Note: the comments sections of these articles list the home and office addresses of the gentleman in question as well as his lawyer, another prominent spammer and Admiral Poindexter, which I trust you not to misuse because it would be bad. If you wanted to send a few pizzas to the nice folks at AdPro Solutions and supportdude.com, however, I could probably control my indignation. (No, it would be wrong. Never mind.) The author of the original article is apparently similarly conflicted, based on this:
Ralsky agreed to this interview and the tour of his operation only if I promised not to print the address of his new home, which I found in Oakland County real estate records.
The money quote (although I really wonder at the fact that everyone has picked up this phrase from Andy Sullivan, as it not-terribly-obliquely equates the writing of the quote to, as he would no doubt put it in that marvelous earthy way he has, "shooting a load" in the reader's face) is this:
Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam.
It is intricate computer software, said Ralsky, that can detect computers that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad, much like the kind that display whenever a particular Web site is opened.
"This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything.
"Isn't technology great?"
Ralsky's life, he says, is also somewhat complicated because he's had to move to foreign servers after he was busted essentially stealing bandwidth from Verizon. Anti-spam crusaders have apparently complicated his life further by informing the chinese government that he donates to the Falun Gong.
The upshot is that Ralsky is now receiving tons of paper-based direct mail delivered to his house daily. (It's hard to feel completely sympathetic, since opting out of paper-based mail is possible, and doesn't simply make your address a more valuable target for direct mailers by confirming that someone lives there).
Of the fine folks at Slashdot who signed him up (one theory is) for the direct mail lists, Ralsky says
They've signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is. These people are out of their minds. They're harassing me.
Well, yes, but it doesn't seem - politic? - for someone to bring it up who brags that not only does he send out up to 2 billion pieces of junk spam with forged headers a day (using stolen bandwidth if he can), he puts a little chunk of code in his spam so your machine will notify him that you read it.
Happily, the town he lives in requires source recycling.
I wouldn't do it myself, but it's really hard not to feel a twinge of schadenfreude in the face of his voluble indignation.
(Note: the comments sections of these articles list the home and office addresses of the gentleman in question as well as his lawyer, another prominent spammer and Admiral Poindexter, which I trust you not to misuse because it would be bad. If you wanted to send a few pizzas to the nice folks at AdPro Solutions and supportdude.com, however, I could probably control my indignation. (No, it would be wrong. Never mind.) The author of the original article is apparently similarly conflicted, based on this:
Ralsky agreed to this interview and the tour of his operation only if I promised not to print the address of his new home, which I found in Oakland County real estate records.
The money quote (although I really wonder at the fact that everyone has picked up this phrase from Andy Sullivan, as it not-terribly-obliquely equates the writing of the quote to, as he would no doubt put it in that marvelous earthy way he has, "shooting a load" in the reader's face) is this:
Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam.
It is intricate computer software, said Ralsky, that can detect computers that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad, much like the kind that display whenever a particular Web site is opened.
"This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything.
"Isn't technology great?"
Ralsky's life, he says, is also somewhat complicated because he's had to move to foreign servers after he was busted essentially stealing bandwidth from Verizon. Anti-spam crusaders have apparently complicated his life further by informing the chinese government that he donates to the Falun Gong.
The upshot is that Ralsky is now receiving tons of paper-based direct mail delivered to his house daily. (It's hard to feel completely sympathetic, since opting out of paper-based mail is possible, and doesn't simply make your address a more valuable target for direct mailers by confirming that someone lives there).
Of the fine folks at Slashdot who signed him up (one theory is) for the direct mail lists, Ralsky says
They've signed me up for every advertising campaign and mailing list there is. These people are out of their minds. They're harassing me.
Well, yes, but it doesn't seem - politic? - for someone to bring it up who brags that not only does he send out up to 2 billion pieces of junk spam with forged headers a day (using stolen bandwidth if he can), he puts a little chunk of code in his spam so your machine will notify him that you read it.
Happily, the town he lives in requires source recycling.
I wouldn't do it myself, but it's really hard not to feel a twinge of schadenfreude in the face of his voluble indignation.
