Spam: Letting Your Legislators Know

Copyright (C) Richard Lowe Jr. and Claudia Arevalo-Lowe, 1999-2001. Permission is granted to reprint the following article as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright information, and the resource box is included. Please let me know if you use this article by sending an email to mailto:articles@internet-tips.net

Article Title: Spam: Letting Your Legislators Know Author: Richard Lowe, Jr.
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Are you tired of receiving massive volumes of spam? I know that I am fed up with receiving countless spam emails every single day. It's gotten to the point where I receive ten spam messages for every valid message (I get about a hundred valid messages per day). Wow! That's a lot of spam.

What do I do? Well, I make good use of SpamKiller and Spamcop.net, I never reply to spam message or ask to be removed and I never, ever purchase anything based upon receiving spam.

There is more to be done. These method all depend upon the receiver doing something, taking some action, to filter out the messages. However, the problem remains.

Let's say a spammer sends out a million copies of an email. Those million messages must be routed (sent) all over the internet, each message passing through one or a dozen servers to get to their final destinations. So in addition to annoying (potentially) one million people, the spammer also uselessly "borrowed" resources several million times from many servers. While sending one email is a negligible hit on a server, sending millions of messages can make a noticeable dent in performance.

As I said, you can just delete these message when they arrive, you can filter them using tools such as SpamKiller, and you can report their senders to their ISP's (it's so rewarding to find out that you've caused a spammers account to be canceled).

There is still more than you can do, if you want to become active in the war on spam. And make no mistake, this is a war. The spammers are the equivalent of the Nazi scum in World War II (completely unethical, evil and amoral), the ISP's are the allies, and you and me are the innocent bystanders who occasionally get whacked by a stray bullet or artillery shell.

You can let your legislators know what you want. Believe it or not, your representatives (in all areas of government) do pay attention to the desires of their constituents (that's you and me). If you want to be heard, however, you have to talk (seems obvious, but how many people complain about government yet never even let anyone in power know about their complaints?)
Okay, here are some tips to follow when sending a letter to one of your representatives.

1) Find the correct representative. Do a little research. In other words, send a letter to your own Senator, not the one clear across the country that you saw on television.

2) Don't bother sending emails. Your representatives are totally overwhelmed with email. In addition, sending an email is so easy that they have gotten into the habit of just ignoring it.

3) Write just one page (two pages is the maximum).

4) Write legibly or type. Handwritten letters seem more personal, while typewritten letters appear businesslike. Choose the proper format for the effect you want to achieve.

5) State your purpose in the first paragraph.

6) If you are writing about a bill, include the name and number.

7) Be factual.

8) Avoid emotional arguments.

9) Do not spam your legislators (seems obvious, doesn't it).

10) Treat them with respect.

11) Include your name and address. Anonymous letters tend to get thrown away.

12) Do not demand support. Asking tends to get a better response then demanding.

13) The suggested style is:

The Honorable ____________________
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator _____________________

The Honorable ____________________
United States House of Representative
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Representative ________________

(Begin e-mail by Dear Representative ____________ or Dear Senator _____________

14) Spend some time learning about your representative so you can know in advance what is important to him or her.

In your letter, inform the representative of your concern and suggest how you would like it handled. You might say something like "dear senator Billy-bob, I am one of your constituents. I feel that spam emails has become a major problem and I would like you to do something about it." You could go on to cite why it is a problem, some possible or acceptable solutions (do you want a bill passed or perhaps one stopped) and so on.

This is how our representatives find out what we want them to do. So by all means, let them know your feelings, especially about spam. This way, they are more likely to do the right thing.

NOTE: The following information must be included if you reprint this article:
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.
Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net
Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm Daily Tips: mailto:internet-tips@GetResponse.com

Claudia Arevalo-Lowe is the webmistress of Internet Tips And Secrets and Surviving Asthma. Visit her site at http://survivingasthma.com

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Spam: Poison Pill

A common way for spammers to create their vast lists of email addresses is to cull web pages for "mailto:" tags. There are many different programs, available for small to huge costs, which will do this automatically, easily and efficiently.

I monitor my web site log files on a regular basis, and I'm always amazed at the vast numbers of spam harvesting programs that regularly scan my pages. Not only do these obnoxious things steal email addresses, they use bandwidth which I pay for without any kind of compensation. I put up my web pages for people to read not for some scumbag spammer to scan them.

There are many ways to combat the spammer. None of these methods are perfect. As in any war, both sides are continually developing new weapons to use against the other. New methods work for a short time until the enemy comes up with countermeasures and overcomes the weapon.

One of the more effective ways to confuse the spammer (not hard because they don't tend to be very bright) is the "poison pill" defense. This consists of handing the spam harvesting robots some pages which appear juicy, full of yummy email addresses ripe for the picking.

The email address on these pages are fake. They have nothing to do with reality and exist only to choke the spam robots, causing them to overflow and possibly even crash.

Here's how a typical poison pill works. A script is created which performs all of these tasks. It is important that the scripting be done on the server, so CGI, ASP, PHP or a similar scripting language must be used. Server side scripting must be used because many spam robots are not smart enough to understand client-side scripting languages such as JavaScript.

The script creates a page which appears in all ways to be a normal document in a web site. The page may include some text informing human visitors of the intention (this is important so any people who see the page are not confused).

It also needs to include a meta tag informing all robots not to index the page. This is critical, as you do not want robots such as googlebot or scooter (the spiders for Google and Altavista, respectively) seeing this stuff. Don't worry, spam harvesters ignore these meta tags.

The script gives the page a name, usually randomly picked from a database or made up somehow, and fills it with a few dozen (at the most) email addresses. These email addresses are cleverly created to appear perfectly valid but actually are useless - they are just made up.

Links to other fake pages are created for the spam harvester to follow. Any robot (or human being, for that matter) that follow these links will find similar pages, full of desirable email addresses.

Depending upon the robot, it's possible the spammer could gather tens of thousands of totally fake, unusable email addresses before his robot blows itself out of the water. It's even better if the robot survives, as the spammer now wastes his time sending messages to nonexistent email addresses.

In the meantime, the harvester has been lured away from valid pages which may or may not contain email addresses.

My site, Internet Tips and Secrets, uses one of these poison pills. It is called wpoison and it really works well. If you want to see it, look at this page.

http://www.internet-tips.net/cgi-bin/guestlist.pl

If you want to get a copy for yourself, check out the wpoison page.

http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/

This is just another weapon in the war against spam.

Is it effective?

I know from personal experience that it does trap spam robots, and it does seem to lure them away from real, useful email addresses.

Is it ethical?

I believe so, as long as you are careful to include the meta tags to inform "good" robots to leave the pages alone as well as some text to let your visitors know what's going on.

It's not as satisfying as spamcop.net, and there is no where near that pleasant glow of success upon learning that some scum spammer has had his ISP cancel his account, but the poison pill is useful nonetheless. My advice is to include it in your arsenal along with the other weapons and tools at your disposal.

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Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets athttp://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to readover 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Tired of Bogus Spam Complaints? United We Stand ....June Campbell

If you are distributing material to an opt-in email list, you need to know about a fledgling, grassroots organization called e-Crucible. The organization is committed to "opposing by any ethical, political, and legal means available the vigilante activities of "anti-Spam" fanatics and the unfair and unjust handling of 'Spam' complaints by certain Internet Service Providers."

According to the Executive Director, John Botscharow, e-Crucibles is in the process of acquiring non-profit status so it can exist as a legal entity.

But first, a little background.

As an online publisher, you already know what I mean by bogus spam reports. Either in error or with mischievous intent, a subscriber decides your ezine is spam. Quicker than you can say, "Hey, you subscribed!", s/he sends hostile, rude and often abusive emails to every web site or email address listed in your ezine. In some cases, the complainant includes a worm or virus with the email for added impact. Or maybe s/he reports you to SpamCop, CAUSE or a similar vigilante group.

The bad stuff hits the fan. You're deemed guilty and there is no wayto prove your innocence. Without contacting you, SpamCop emails your ISP, your web host, your advertisers and even the writers whose articles you have published. At best, you spend the next few days explaining and pleading your innocence to the people involved. At worst, your website host and your ISP shut you down. Your business is interrupted until you can make other arrangements. If you live in an area of the world where you have only one ISP available, this can mean the end of your Internet business.

This story is but one example of many. Frank Garon is a webmaster who publishes an opt-in ezine with a subscriber base of 12,000 (http://www.InternetCashPlanet.com). His ezine contains clear unsubscribe instructions. Sometime in April, 2001, a subscriber allegedly sent the entire ezine to SpamCop with the instructions to "shut down this American *&%^ spammer."

Garon reported that SpamCop contacted every email address and web host address contained in the ezine. One victim was a writer whose article had been published in the 'zine. She had the usual resource box at the end of her article, including a link to her site. The writer's email account was shut down, and at last report, her web site was in jeopardy. Remember that this writer did not send a single email. Common sense dictates that she could not possibly have been guilty of spam.

Garon and the writer sent an appeal to SpamCop. The response from SpamCop's "deputy" included the following:"..."If the admin of this ezine would like to pursue punitive action against the SpamCop user for filing a false complaint, we will need to see proof of opt-in confirmation. Otherwise, we will simply consider this matter closed..."

Now here's the kicker. SpamCop did not reveal the name and email address of the complainant. Without identification, how can Garon prove that the subscriber had opted-in? Worse, without the email address, how can Garon remove the subscriber from his list? What's to stop the same subscriber from filing the same complaint repeatedly? Again, it defies common sense.

As Garon wrote, 'To have to spend every day wondering if TODAY is the day some creep is going to falsely accuse you of Spam and cost you and your entire family everything you have put years of hard work into is MORE than a little scary."

To make the story even more bizarre, e-Crucible members state that they have reported real spammers to SpamCop with no results.

If you're an email publisher, the shark attacks come from three sources: odious subscribers, vigilante organizations and ISPs and web hosts who shut you down without giving you a chance to defend yourself. As an individual, you can do little to change the situation.

Please consider signing up for the free e-Crucibles mailing list and help strengthen this little organization with the big goals. Sign up at http://www.topica.com/lists/e-Crucible/ or send email to mailto:e-Crucible-subscribe@topica.com

Please note: e-Crucible is NOT pro-spam. They are opposed to spurious spam complaints that put legitimate marketers in jeopardy.

Visit June Campbell on the web for articles, a FREE ebook, or for guides to writing business plans, business proposals, joint venture contracts and more. http://www.nightcats.com

Spam: Where it Came From, and How to Escape It

In 1936, long before the rise of the personal computer, Hormel Foods created SPAM. In 2002, the company will produce it's six billionth can of the processed food product. But that mark was passed long ago in the world of Internet spam.

---------------------------------- WHO COOKED THIS!?
(HOW DID IT ALL START?)
----------------------------------

The modern meaning of the word "spam" has nothing to do with spiced ham. In the early 1990's, a skit by British comedy group Monty Python led to the word's common usage. "The SPAM Skit" follows a couple struggling to order dinner from a menu consisting entirely of Hormel's canned ham.

Repetition is key to the skit's hilarity. The actors cram the word "SPAM" into the 2.5 minute skit more than 104 times! This flood prompted Usenet readers to call unwanted newsgroup postings "spam." The name stuck.

Spammers soon focused on e-mail, and the terminology moved with them. Today, the word has come out of technical obscurity. Now, "spam" is the common term for "Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail", or "UCE."

---------------------------------- WHY DOES BAD SPAM
HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?
----------------------------------

Chances are, you've been spammed before. Somehow, your e-mail address has found it's way into the hands of a spammer, and your inbox is suffering the consequences. How does this happen? There are several possibilities.

BACKSTABBING BUSINESSES - Businesses often keep lists of their customers' e-mail addresses. This is a completely legitimate practice and, usually, nothing bad comes of it. Sometimes though, the temptation to make a quick buck is too great, and these lists are sold or rented to outside advertisers. The result? A lot of unsolicited e-mail, and a serious breach of trust.

RANDOM ADDRESS GENERATION - Computer programs called random address generators simply "guess" e-mail addresses. Over 100 million hotmail addresses exist how hard could it be to guess some of them? Unfortunately for many unsuspecting netizens not too hard. Many spammers also guess at "standard" addresses, like "support@yourdomain.com", "info@yourdomain.com", and "billing@yourdomain.com."

WEB SPIDERS -
Today's most insidious list-gathering tools are web spiders. All of the major search engines spider the web, saving information about each page. Spammers use tools that also spider the web, but save any *e-mail address* they come across. Your personal web page lists your e-mail address? Prepare for an onslaught!

CHAT ROOM HARVESTING -
ISP's offer vastly popular chat rooms where users are known only by their screen names. Of course, spammers know that your screen name is the first part of your e-mail address. Why waste time guessing e-mail addresses when a few hours of lurking in a chat room can net a list of actively-used addresses?

THE POOR MAN'S BAD MARKETING IDEA - It didn't work for the phone companies, and it won't work for e-mail marketers. But, some spammers still keep their own friends-and-family- style e-mail lists. Compiled from the addresses of other known spammers, and people or buisnesses that the owner has come across in the past, these lists are still illegitimate. Why? Only you can give someone permission to send you e-mail. A friend-of-a-friend's permission won't cut it.

---------------------------------- STOP THE FLOOD TO YOUR INBOX ----------------------------------

Already drowning in spam? Try using your e-mail client's filters - many provide a way to block specific e-mail addresses. Each time you're spammed, block the sender's address. Spammers skip from address to address, and you may be on many lists, but this method will at least slow the flow.

Also, use more than one e-mail address, and keep one "clean." Many netizens find that this technique turns the spam flood into a trickle. Use one address for only spam-safe activities like e-mailing your friends, or signing on with trustworthy businesses. Never use your clean address on the web! Get a free address to use on the web and in chat rooms.

If nothing else helps, consider changing screen names, or opening an entirely new e-mail account. When you do, you'll start with a clean, spam-free slate. This time, protect your e-mail address!

---------------------------------- STAY OFF SPAMMED LISTS
IN THE FUTURE
----------------------------------

Want to surf the web without getting sucked into the spam-flood? Prevention is your best policy. Don't use an easy-to-guess e-mail address. Keep your address clean by not using it for spam-centric activities. Don't post it on any web pages, and don't use it in chat rooms or newsgroups.

Before giving your clean e-mail address to a business, check the company out. Are sections of its user agreement dedicated to anti-spam rules? Does a privacy policy explain exactly what will be done with your address? The most considerate companies also post an anti-spam policy written in plain English, so you can be absolutely sure of what you're getting into.

---------------------------------- THINK YOU'RE NOT A SPAMMER? BE SURE.
----------------------------------

Many a first-time marketer has inadvertently spammed his audience. The first several hundred complaints and some nasty phone messages usually stop him in his tracks. But by then, the spammer may be faced with cleanup bills from his ISP, and a bad reputation that it's not easy to overcome.

The best way to avoid this situation is to have a clear understanding of what spam is: If anyone who receives your mass e-mails did not specifically ask to hear from you, then you are spamming them.

Stick with your gut. Don't buy a million addresses for $10, no matter how much the seller swears by them! If something sounds fishy, just say no. You'll save yourself a lot in the end.

---------------------------------- THE FINAL BLOW
----------------------------------

The online world is turning the tide on spam. In the end, people will stop sending spam because it stops working. Do your part: never buy from a spammer. When your business seeks out technology companies with which to work, only choose those with a staunch anti-spam stance.

Spam has a long history in both the food and e-mail sectors. This year, Hormel Foods opened a real-world museum dedicated to SPAM. While the museum does feature the Monty Python SPAM Skit, there's no word yet on an unsolicited commercial e-mail exhibit. But, if all upstanding netizens work together, Hormel's ham in a can will far outlive the Internet plague that is UCE.

References:
Hormel Foods, Virtual Press Kit, hormelfoods.com Microsoft Corporation, MSN Hotmail Fun Facts, microsoft.co

Buried Under a Mountain of Spam

For years I didn't worry much about spam.

But lately it's got out of control. Over half of my email is now spam, and it's growing by the week.

Spam is now such a problem that I know people who have had to close down their domain name. This article offers some tips on how to avoid being buried under a mountain of spam. How Do They Get Your Address? In the old days, spammers got their addresses mainly from Newsgroups - if you didn't post to Newsgroups, you were reasonably safe. But they're now using a much more efficient method to build their lists - email harvesters.

Email harvesters are robots that roam the Internet collecting email addresses from web pages. Examples are EmailSiphon, Cherry Picker, Web Weasel, Web Bandit and Email Wolf, to name just a few.

How can you protect yourself from email harvesters?

By 'munging' (mung = 'mash until no good') or cloaking your email address.

There are many ways of munging your address - the easiest technique is to use HTML code for the punctuation in your email address (instead of symbols).

For the colon after mailto use : and for the @ symbol use @ and for the period use .

With this method, my email address would become: mailto:msouthon@freezineweb.com

Your email address will appear exactly as it did before, and it will still be 'clickable', but email harvesters will ignore it and move on.

There are also JavaScript's that you can insert into your web page that will make your email address visible to humans but invisible to harvesting programs. Here's one that works very well:
http://pointlessprocess.com/JavaScripts/anti-spam.htm

The most important thing is never, ever, reply to spam.

Most spam contains an innocent-looking 'remove me' email address. Do not use it. Here's why:

Spammers typically buy a CD containing a million or so email addresses, but they have no idea how many of those addresses are active. So before beginning their marketing campaign in earnest, they send out a 'test message' to the entire list.

The test message contains an email address for removing yourself. When you reply to that address, it confirms to the spammer that your address is active and therefore worth spamming.

Worse still, the spammer may be distilling from that CD a list of confirmed active addresses that he will then sell to another spammer.

The key to dealing with spam is to report it to a 3rd party: (1) the affiliate program that the spammer is advertising, (2) the spammer's web host, or (3) the ISP the spammer used to connect to the Internet.

When you report spam to a 3rd party, remember to be polite - they didn't send the spam and they're probably just as anti-spam as you are.

(1) Reporting to Affiliate Programs

Many spammers are affiliates advertising someone else's products or services. So look for a website address that contains an affiliate link, something like this: www.affiliateprogramdomain/841526

Then just send an email to the affiliate program (abuse@affiliateprogramdomain.com), informing them that you are receiving spam from one of their affiliates.

Most affiliate programs have zero tolerance for spamming and will remove an affiliate spammer without warning.

Now, affiliate spammers don't want you to see their affiliate link, so many of them send their email as HTML. All you see in the message are the words 'Click Here and Order Now'.

But in your browser just click on 'View Source Code' and search for the letters 'http'. That will take you to the spammer's affiliate link.

(2) Reporting to Web Hosts

If the spam doesn't contain an affiliate link, its likely that it is coming from the owner of the domain name. In that case you'll have to report it to the spammer's web host or their ISP.

To make a report to the spammer's web host just go to Whois, the directory of registered domain names: http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois

Type in the spammer's domain (the website address that appears in the spam) together with the extension (.com, .org, .net etc).

The host for that domain will usually be listed as the Technical Contact in the Whois record and there will be an email address for contacting them.

(3) Reporting to ISPs

To report a spammer to his Internet Service Provider, you'll have to look at the spam's 'extended headers'.

Extended headers show the servers that the message passed through in order to get to you. The instructions for viewing extended headers will vary depending on what email client you are using.

=> In Pegasus Mail, open the offending message and then right-click and choose 'Show raw message data'.

=> In Eudora Light, click on 'Tools' in the top menu bar, and then 'Options', and then select the checkbox option that says 'Show all headers (even the ugly ones)' and click OK.

=> In Outlook Express, open the offending message, select 'Properties' from the File menu and then click the 'Details' tab.

Reading and understanding extended headers is quite a detailed subject. Here's an excellent free tutorial on how to decipher extended headers: http://www.doughnut.demon.co.uk/SpamTracking101.html

As an alternative to these reporting techniques, you could use a web-based spam reporting service such as SpamCop (www.spamcop.net). SpamCop deciphers the spam's message headers and traces the mail back to its source.

However, SpamCop is known to generate complaints about innocent third parties, and as a result, many system administrators ignore complaints received from SpamCop.

There is one kind of spam that the techniques in this article probably won't help you with: spam from China.

This is the most peculiar spam you're ever likely to receive. For example I regularly get messages from a certain ChenHua of the China-Lutong mechanical company asking me if I would like to order hydraulic heads for the VE distributor pump.

Spam is not an issue in China so it's unlikely you would stop the spammer by reporting him to a 3rd party. However, while doing the research for this article I came across a web page that offers a very ingenious (though rather severe) solution to Chinese spam.

The Chinese government recently ordered all ISPs in China to start monitoring email for subversive phrases. This anti-spammer replies to Chinese spam with a message that includes subversive phrases, such as "weapons and ammunition", "Falung Gong" and "Free Tibet".

But I don't recommend you do this - the Chinese spammer could end up spending years in a forced labor camp. Even the worst spammer in the world doesn't deserve that.

Good luck in your fight against spam!

Michael Southon is the author of the popular new eBook 'Ezine Writer!' Discover how to dramatically increase your Traffic and Sales, starting today: http://www.ezine-writer.com/ Join his twice-monthly 'e-Profit Tips Newsletter': mailto:ept-subscribe@freezineweb.com

Affiliate Marketing and Spam: The New Realities

The growing backlash against spam is changing the way affiliates need to run their business.
With all the tools available to affiliate marketers, nothing quite compares to a well-written email that that introduces you, explains your affiliate's benefits, and piques the prospect's interest. The path to marketing success is then relatively straightforward - you create a killer letter and get it to as many prospects as possible. Simple, isn't it?

Not any more.

Over the past year there has been a shift in the online environment's view of unsolicited email so pervasive that affiliate marketers cannot afford to ignore it. The movement has made changes in the structural relationship between a company and its affiliate marketers, and has even moved offline into the hands of lawmakers (for better or worse).

Three realties stand out:

- A Spam complaint you are unprepared for can cause significant disruption to your business.

Spam is, to a great degree, still in the eye of the beholder. Someone who doesn't remember opting in to your program and claims your email to be Spam has an unfortunate degree of credibility from square one. ISP's are so intent on shutting down possible Spam sources, that you can quickly find yourself without an account or with a suspended account "pending investigation". The potential disruption - from advertising being spoiled, to confusion on the part of customers, to even loss of access to database information on the ISP's site, can be enormous.

Further, it's hard to envision doing large-scale advertising without sending one email that upsets someone, so this situation is a virtual certainty for marketers at some point.

- The company you are affiliated with has less incentive to back you than you might realize

How many people remember the old Mission Impossible series on TV? The agent always received a tape that explained the mission, wished him luck and by the way..if any of you are caught we will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Companies offering affiliate programs are playing a version of that tape now when they tell you they have a "Zero Tolerance" policy for Spam. It sounds noble, but what it means is that unless you are one of their top super affiliates they'd rather dump you than get themselves caught up in a Spam issue. You are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.

- You can make changes to react to this new environment and emerge a stronger marketer.

Change 1 - Understand Your Sources

Instead of simply mailing to opt in and safe lists on a whim, get to know the people producing these lists. Send a personal email to the list owner and mention how concerned you are about unintentionally spamming anyone. If your source is a quality company you will probably get a personal response back reassuring you that this particular list really is opt in. Keep a file of all these responses so that when you do get named in a Spam complaint you can, as a first step, show this ISP that you have been concerned about acting properly for a long time.

Change 2 - Build Your List Yourself

No tools are safer (or more effective) than opt in lists you build yourself. This is certainly the slowest and most difficult of all methods of marketing but is by far the most rewarding. There is virtually no successful online marketer who does not believe that your personal opt in list isn't the most important asset you have. Why? Because it takes a number of contacts to get most people to buy something online. Selling to people on a first contact, cold call basis is strictly hit and miss.

Change 3 - Become a More Systematic Marketer

Take this time to institute systematic evaluation of all your advertising. There are many tools available to evaluate each mailing you do and each ad you place. Marketers who begin this analysis often find that 50% of their business comes from half the ad sources they use. Cut the dead half and reevaluate regularly. You will find that this will cut the chances that you market to a bad list.

Preparing yourself for this new environment can be an opportunity to make yourself a better marketer while protecting your business from serious disruption. Christopher Greig writes on a variety of marketing topics and helps people develop both active and passive income online at http://character36.com

Hall of Shame The Bad Boys of Email Spam

Trust, Inc.The majority of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) or spam is sent by a relatively small group of dedicated professional spammers. The Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) indicates that 80% of all spam comes from just 200 known spam operations. This data is in line with research completed by CipherTrust research scientists, which indicates that most spam originates from a relatively small group of tightly integrated spam networks. While were all very familiar with the spam messages we receive each day, it is interesting to take a look at who these spammers are to put a face to the problem. Following are four of the most notorious and prolific spammers in the world.

Alan Ralsky
Mr. Ralsky is currently one of the most egregious spam senders in the world. His organization, based in Michigan since 1997, uses Chinese, European and US-based servers to host and send spam to millions of email boxes daily. But thats not enough for Ralsky. Not only does he operate as a spammer, but he also provides hosting services to other spammers.

In 2002, Verizon sued Mr. Ralsky for causing their network to freeze twice. The lawsuit originally sought $37 million, but was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. Ralsky is no longer allowed to send email over Verizons networks, but admits no wrongdoing in the case and has vowed to continue sending bulk email.

Mr. Ralsky was convicted in 1994 for falsifying documents to defraud two banks in Michigan and Ohio and was fined $74,000. In an unrelated case in 1992, Ralsky was sentenced to 50 days in jail and ordered to pay $120,000 in restitution for failing to deliver a contract involving unregistered securities.

While Mr. Ralsky sends millions of unsolicited email messages selling everything from diet pills to online gambling, he claims that his business is legitimate and that his emails are not spam. He also insists that he does not sell pornography. Were sure hes an absolutely charming fellow.

Scott Richter
Scott Richters Denver-based company, OptinRealBig, is responsible for sending out billions of spam emails. He is one of the most outspoken and notorious spammers in business today. Whereas most spammers attempt to keep a low profile, often denying any involvement in spam, Richter seems to enjoy the spotlight. In fact, Richter even attempted to start up a Spam King clothing line before Hormel (the company responsible for bringing delicious canned Spam to dining rooms around the world) put an end to his trademark-infringing idea.

Richter and his partners were named in a lawsuit filed by the New York Attorney General and Microsoft. That suit, filed in 2003, sought millions of dollars in punitive damages, but was settled out of court in mid-2004 with a paltry fine of $50,000. For quite some time, Richter regarded his legal entanglements as excellent advertising for his company which, he claimed, gains value each time he is sued.

Recently he has changed his story somewhat. Faced with prolonged lawsuits led by Microsoft as well as various state and corporate entities, Richter has now declared bankruptcy. As his father (who is also his attorney) said, "Its the legal fees that are battering the company. OptIn is profitable but for these lawsuits."

Andrew Westmoreland
An apparent accomplice of Scott Richter, Westmorelands Texas-based company, Internet Access Group Inc., sends millions of spam messages pushing everything from gas to online diploma mills to auto loans and mortgages. His business also operates under the names Brilliant Marketing, Aphrodite Marketing, OptiGate Networks and Players Exchange Club.

Robert Soloway
Robert Soloways Oregon-based company, Newport Internet Marketing Corporation, has sent millions of spam emails and has been the subject of numerous complaints and lawsuits by class action groups and Microsoft.

Soloways spam messages often contain get-rich-quick schemes selling (what else?) spam software and fresh email addresses. Yes, thats right folks; you too can send spam to 15 million recipients for just $295. At least thats what the ad says, but would you want to give your credit card number to someone like this?

Slam the Door on Spam
This is just a small sampling of the questionable characters who insist on clogging your inbox with junk email. While these may be some of the most egregious offenders, there are plenty more waiting in the wings who would like nothing more than to be considered equally offensive. As these new spammers rise through the ranks, well keep you posted on who they are, and what kind of shady business theyre up to.
Dr. Paul Judge is a noted scholar and entrepreneur. He is Chief Technology Officer at CipherTrust, the industry's largest provider of enterprise email security. The companys flagship product, IronMail provides a best of breed enterprise anti spam solution designed to stop spam, phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Learn more by visiting www.ciphertrust.com/products/spam_and_fraud_protection today.