World Class Spam King Arrested

I heard that he was directly responsible for over 1billion spam e-amils sent EVERY DAY! That is ridiculous. He is going to ruin it for ALL OF US!

Maybe i won't get 1,000 e-mails a day about penis enlargement now.lol


4
best of luck,
Justin

Fred said... This has had no impact on spam rates that I've been able to see. The guy was busted about a month ago, and is just now getting into the mainstream press.

Unlike the old school spammers, these guys are running bot networks and don't have to be at the machines to make sure the spam keeps flowing. They're not individual operations in any sense of the word. Guys like Nikolaenko are cogs in a machine run by the Russian mob. (Google "Russian Business Network" - in quotes - for some basic info.)

The odds are extremely high that a number of people reading this thread are part of that network, or some other, without knowing it. If your computer is compromised by a virus or trojan these days, it will very likely be used to send spam, among other nasty ongoing effects.

The particular botnet in question is Mega-D, which is estimated to consist of a half-million compromised machines. It doesn't take anywhere near that many to create a DDoS.

These guys don't just send harmless emails or scam people out of a little money. These are full-out nasties. Extortion, fraud, identity theft, child pornography, and pretty much anything vile you can do in bulk via a computer. The global cost of the spam they send, even if no-one ever got scammed for a dime, is in the Sagans every year. (For you youngsters, that means "billions and billions.")

To Americans they pitch fake Rolexes and Viagra. We can laugh at people who fall for that. But how about the fake drugs they sell through the "Canadian pharmacy" spam? Or the fact that, in central Africa, they pitch bogus AIDS drugs. Not nearly so funny, eh?

It's also a serious issue of security at the nation-state level. The virtual firepower in the hands of these guys is enough to take down electronic infrastructure of all kinds. The notion of a botnet in the hands of, or hired out to, a terrorist organization is something that keeps a lot of people at high levels in governments all around the world awake at night.

Yes, jail time is entirely appropriate. Lots of it. Much more than the measly 3 years he could get under CAN-SPAM.

These are not Nice People.


Paul

Perhaps we should strike all laws from the books, because the possibility of wrongful accusations and convictions exists for all of them.

Not even really worthy of a response but anyway, I would never be in that position because I don't spam my customers. I use aweber and have records of every persons consent to send them email and I follow all the legislation regarding spam. If you don't then you deserve whatever is coming to you.

There is only ONE reason people spam. That is to make more money. So how the hell is slapping them with a fine any sort of real punishment? They will be straight back to it the very next day because they know they can make more money than the fine is so they will just keep doing it. He needs to be locked up well away from computers - it's the only way to learn his lesson.

I'm sure glad you're not the judge in this court case. And as it stands he faces a maximum of a huge fine and imprisonment. So clearly I am not the only person who thinks the punishment fits the crime.

Where will the Internet be if we let these people get away with this stuff? The only people I can see sticking up for a guy like this OR whining that the punishment is too strict would be those people who dabble in this themselves - why else would you not want someone who has committed such a serious offense to be locked up?

The world has changed dramatically over the last 10-15 years, much to do with the Internet. Just because this guy has not murdered someone or robbed a supermarket it doesn't mean he deserves to be set free. Hopefully we will see more of these idiots locked up.

Perfect. Because most people who underestimate the spam problem say, "What's the big deal? Just delete the spam."

Nicely done.

Cheers,
Becky

Grooby, There is a difference between victimless and non-violent. Change that to victimless and I'll agree with you completely. That's a different discussion, though.

I'm going to tell you flat out that there are a significant number of people who are active members of this forum who are only prevented from getting into this kind of thing by the thought of going to jail. It's a very effective deterrent for non-violent crime. Not so much for violence, but again, that's another discussion.


Paul

If your last sentence refers to the rest of your post, I heartily agree.

Seriously, you believe that nonviolent offenders should never go to jail? So we should simply fine con artists who manage to rip off people's life savings, or hackers that destroy people's businesses?

Jails are overcrowded for a reason that has nothing to do with locking up too many people who nonviolently victimize others. There are many ways to hurt people besides laying hands on them. Your cavalier dismissal of jail as a deterrent, or as a way of preventing those under lock and key from harming others while in custody, is unsupported by facts.

The problem is primarily due to three reasons:

1) We don't rehab anyone-"corrections" is just a nice word-we all know that the attitude permeating the prison system is one of revenge and punishment-not rehabilitation, very little of which is ever attempted. In fact, it's quite the opposite; we turn juveniles into hardened criminals with the tragic horrors we put them through in detention.

2) The profit motive-the prison system has long sought repeat customers, because the industry makes more money as a result-the problem is going to get a lot worse due to privatization.

3) The ongoing hysteria regarding drugs that radically increased with Reagan's declared "war" on them. Simultaneously, he was assuring a booming future for the lucrative prison industry by illegally funding his army of torturers in Nicaragua-the Contras (after a horrified public pressured congress to outlaw support of those monsters) with; guess what; profits made by using military transport planes to import cocaine from Central America for sale on our black market-pretty slick huh?-Oliver North thought so.

No the solution to prison overcrowding is to address the real problems in a sane manner-not to declare a moratorium on locking up monsters that ruin lives without touching their victims. The obvious solution follows:

Take the profit out of prisons, stop the privatization, root out corrupt officials that get a cut of profits, when, for example contractors get paid for a truckload of beef and deliver instead, 1/2 beef, and 1/2 sugar (there's a nonviolent crime against prisoners and taxpayers for ya-does being deprived of nutrients, or money, count as being victimized?).

Get serious about rehabilitating as many offenders as early we can, while giving more kids more of what they need socially to live constructive, happy lives.

Institute a sane and effective drug policy with education and treatment as it's main thrust for dealing with truly harmful drugs, and legalize substances far safer than alcohol.

Let's not go nuts and free all the creeps who steal without guns. I have to agree with Michael's distinction between "nonviolent" and "victimless"-one can destroy people, and the latter shouldn't be illegal at all in a fee society.

There's a difference.

Snail mail costs money to send out.

Email is free, and there is this little problem: Email providers are required by federal law to keep a record of every email coming and going. This means the spam emails you didn't request are costing the ISP's a small fortune to archive.

Spam may be annoying to you, but it's also why your broadband internet access is costing $50- $100 every month as well. Who do you the ISP's pass the costs for handling all that spam to.....you!

So while Wal Mart shells out a small fortune to send out their promos, spammers are stealing from you.

Understand the difference now?

Don't know about the legal part, but at least it is good to see one spammer go off the list.

But seriously, if one is talking about 1/3rd of the total spam happening in the entire world being connected to one single person, we are talking about scalability.

It could be a sheer academic pleasure fo understand how in the world did he manag to get so viral unless he was using a permutation generation program to script out email addresses.

Here ya go:

FREE
DirectMail.com's Mail Preference Registry - Get rid of junk mail

or $1:

To make a request by mail (include $1 check or money order, not cash), send a letter to this address requesting that your name be placed on the suppression file:
Mail Preference Service
Attn: Dept 27478505
Direct Marketing Association
PO Box 643
Carmel, NY 10512

Also FREE:

Valasis Direct Mail, Inc.
Director of List Maintenance
Consumer Assistance
PO Box 249
Windsor, CT 06095

Abacus (to reduce unwanted catalogs)
P.O. Box 1478
Broomfield, CO 80038
800-518-4453

also for catalogs: www.catalogchoice.org

Acxiom (covers lists for many different sectors): call to request an opt-out form) 877-774-2094 or Acxiom: Opt-Out Request Form

Cox Target Media
(Val Pak coupons)
Cox Target Media: Mailing Removal Request Form

Credit card offers: call 888-567-8688 or visit https://www.optoutprescreen.com/

For companies not covered by these resources, contact them directly and request you be removed from their lists.

Aha! It's a conspiracy theory!

No way for anybody to win against that.



~M~

Sorry, separate point I just thought of.

It's easy to paint the "opposing side" as big corporations and evil politicians, but that totally ignores a large chunk of what's known as "facts".

No sir!

• The opposing side is honest people who have their PERSONAL computers highjacked so they can send out spam.
• The opposing side is honest people who fall prey to scacms perpetuated by the worst spammers.
• The opposing side is honest people who have to constantly work to filter out spam - wasitng their time doing so.

Hey if you are on the opposing side of all those things, then I wish you luck.



All the best,
Michael

Bro, you've got a real problem with logic-and it's a little irritating that when you can't use it, you resort to the most inaccurate mind reading I've ever seen-you couldn't be more wrong about what I want. From here on out, I'll take over the job of expressing my thoughts, if that's alright with you.

As you know (speaking of intellectual honesty), I was responding to your absurd rhetorical question about "how long" it will be before we start seeing CEOs on trial for sending out junk mail-as if locking up a violator of a law you think the penalty is too harsh for is going to lead to that-a ridiculous, blindly anti-government, fear mongering, paranoia promoting idea.

It was a huge leap then from punishing people too harshly in your opinion (although within sentencing guidelines established by law-agree or not), to punishing people for acts you think are similar, but are totally legal. That simply isn't how the criminal justice system (as massively flawed as it is), works. I merely pointed out the silliness of that leap.

Now I'm pointing out the silliness of the next leap-that my earlier point means I'm for making laws "just because the other side" doesn't "grease palms". Wasn't it you that just accused Michael of intellectual dishonesty for misrepresenting your point of view? You need a serious reality check Bro, if you can't see you just did exactly that with me. Obviously, what I said had nothing to do with commenting on the pluses or minuses of how laws are made, or should be made.

In case the obvious still eludes you, my comments were restricted to the absurdity of your raising the fearsome specter of the government coming after marketers that aren't in violation of any law, just because they arrested a spammer, who was-whether the law was just or not isn't remotely connected to the comment you twisted. My comment pointed only to the silliness of a statement that tries to erase the distinction between enforcing laws you don't like, and a Kafkaesque paranoid fantasy of the courts randomly putting people on trial for legally sanctioned acts-a huge leap.

For the record, I, like most US citizens, hate the corruption of our elections/lobbying/lawmaking in the US-it is seriously broken-which means democracy is broken, and we are in serious trouble. It's a very tough problem, because money has hijacked many of our democratic processes, and it's tough to get re-elected if you challenge your campaign donors, which is why desperately needed campaign finance reform never gets traction in congress.

Yet, as broken as it is, I do believe in having a system of laws, whether I agree with them all or not (and I don't). I believe we should fix what's wrong, and be clear about what it is, rather than make ridiculous, irrational, paranoid statements about who they will come after next, in response to a law being enforced that you don't agree with.

Clearly, big money should be taken out of lobbying and elections as much as possible. Next time you want to shoot off your keyboard about what kind of a world I "want to live in", try to find out if you aren't representing the opposite of my point of view-which is exactly what you did-the powerless are who I care most about, always have.

I have taken direct political action, and risked jail time on many occasions in defense of powerless victims of my government's policies, and spent short amounts of time incarcerated as a result. Yet I am not opposed to having laws against spam, or other acts that hurt people without violence. Keep that in mind before the next time you tell me what kind of world I want to live in. Just because you can type an opinion that sounds dramatic and cool to you, doesn't mean you should, or that anybody else will be foolish enough to think it's cool.