Spam King Soloway arrested
p2pnet.net news:- Yesterday Robert Alan Soloway, described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers and founder of the Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam, or SPAMIS, was nailed.
So?
Because although it’s being reported his arrest will result in a significant decrease in the amount of spam, in reality, it probably won’t make any difference whatsoever to the amount of spam landing in your email box.
Soloway, 27, “was once on a top 10 list of spammers kept by The Spamhaus Project, an international anti-spam organization. Others have since topped him, mostly based in Russia and other countries out of reach of U.S. or European law, have since topped him,” says Associated Press.
“But Soloway remains on a Spamhaus list of about 135 spammers deemed responsible for as much as 80 percent of all junk e-mail.”
Soloway’s Newport Internet Marketing defrauded customers by offering to send a high volume of legitimate e-mail marketing messages or to sell software that could be used in mass mailings, according to prosecutors quoted by the Los Angeles Times.
“Neither approach performed as advertised but generated a torrent of spam. When customers complained, Soloway allegedly refused to provide assistance or refund the sales, instead threatening to charge them with additional fees and refer them to collections agencies.
But, says another AP story, even if Robert Alan Soloway is ultimately convicted and his operations shuttered, spam experts say dozens are in line to fill the void.”
Ain’t that the truth
Also See:
Associated Press – Junk e-mail abounds despite top spammer’s arrest, June 1, 2007
Los Angeles Times – ‘Spamming’ suspect accused of fraud, identity thefts, June 1, 2007
AP – One spamming suspect down, dozens to go, June 1, 2007
f your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 1st, 2007 at 9:30 am
AT least, that is my conclusion. This is how I arrived at that conclusion:
When “Make Love and Not Spam” first came out, I was very happy. For the first time in 4 years, I have finally saw a decrease in the amount of spam I was getting. Unfortunately, Lycos decided to cease its antispam operation. I jumped in to fill the void. In about a day, I wrote SpamFryer and released it to the public. It was downloaded 21 times.
My next step was to write SpammerSlammer. This program allows people to generate real looking but fake order information that was written to pass order validation forms on Spamvertised sites. This effort took about 2 days research, debug and write. I am lucky to see this accessed twice a week.
About a year or so after after Lycos shut down “Make Love Not Spam,” a multi million dollar Israeli company published Blue Frog. This program was was used by thousands and was very successful. It, like “Make Love not Spam,” finally took the battle to the spammers. It worked like a charm until spammers figured out that all they had to do was attack the server responsible for updating the anti spam clients. I joined the Blue Security developers group and was eager to contribute code. Unfortunately Blue Security pulled out and shut down before I could really get involved.
I decided the Blue Security and “Make Love not Spam,” were excellent programs with only one fatal flaw that I thought I would correct. That flaw was the fact that these programs required a central server to operate and update. This is where I really decided to jump in and start writing. I wrote a program that did basically the same thing as “Make Love not Spam,” but which operated on a peer to peer format. After several months of hard work, I finally released an alpha earlier this year (open source and at no cost). In addition, I spent hundreds of dollars in my own money to promote the program. For all of my efforts, what did I get? Two lousy downloads.
People like Jon (who runs this site for those who don’t know), me, and many others who work hard to solve problems cannot even get others who claim they care about a problem to even lift one damned finger to help out. I donated money to keep this site running, and Jon has given me space to let people know about SpammerSkewer, but very few people care to join the effort.
My conclusion is this, people love to bitch and moan about how they hate spam, high gas prices, big companies steamrollering people, and working more and more for less and less. Unfortunately, except for the very few, they refuse to band together to take care of a problem unless they receive instructions. From some multi million (or Billion) dollar company.
Most people DESERVE the corrupt governments, outrageous prices they pay for things, and whatever other problems they are faced with. This is because they refuse to get off their asses to even contribute a little bit towards fixing things. Instead, most prefer to have their nose rings pulled in the direction of the day by whatever government or corporate entities that currently control these rings.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I have multiple gmail accounts and google detects every spam mail with exception. My thunderbird client no longer receives any spam! you don’t need novelty programs, just get a gmail account, problem solved.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 pm
It’s true. I’ve actually had two spam get through google’s excellent filters. Until I got the first one, I didn’t even realise that google were filtering it all out. (I mean, I didn’t realise I was being sent any.)