Spam Fattens Both E-mail And Bank Accounts

The Associated Press ^ | 06 August 2002 | Jim Krane

[steve-b]

NEW YORK -- Tom Cowles, who heads one of the world's largest bulk e-mail, or spam, businesses, ought to be a happy guy.

By his account, his company makes $12 million a year e-mailing billions of advertisements, mainly to folks who don't want them.

It's an easy job, the way Cowles and others describe it:

You get hired by a client who wants to sell a penile enlarger or an antenna booster. You write a zesty sales pitch. Then, with the help of some cloak-and-dagger software and a massive database of e-mail addresses, you deluge the planet.

If one in a thousand recipients buys it, you're rich.

But Tom Cowles is not a happy guy.

Relentless anti-spam vigilantes have hounded the 35-year-old head of Empire Towers Inc., plastering Cowles' home address and phone number all over the Web. Spam recipients call to tell Cowles how they feel.

"These people will go to the lowest depths," said Cowles, of Bowling Green, Ohio. "I have some phone clips that would make you sick."...

Dave Codding, president of Internet Direct, an Ohio-based ISP, said his company struggled for a year to get Cowles off his network. Codding said Cowles used a false name to open an account and threatened to sue if he was cut off.

Full Article

[steve-b]

I think we've found somebody who could give Clowntoon a run for the money in the Slime Sweepstakes.

[Snowy]

What's this guy's phone number? I'm, ... err, just curious.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Oh....boo-hoo.

I'm sobbing over here.

>:)

[Dimensio]

Bernard Balan, 51, who operates a bulk mail site from Emsdale, Ontario, called one-stop-financial.com, says he has gone through "unbelievable hardships" to keep the spam flowing. "My operating costs have gone up 1,000 percent this year, just so I can figure out how to get around all these filters," said Balan, a former truck driver and pinball machine mechanic.

Spammers deliberately send garbage to people who do not want it.

Spammers should be killed brutally and painfully, their deaths made public and their carcasses displayed for all to see as warning.

[steve-b]

"These people will go to the lowest depths," said Cowles

LOL!

[Dimensio]

"These people will go to the lowest depths," said Cowles, of Bowling Green, Ohio. "I have some phone clips that would make you sick."...

That he is still alive and not a rotting corpse makes me sick.

[Wingy]

Spammers should be killed brutally and painfully, their deaths made public and their carcasses displayed for all to see as warning.

Uhh...'Scuse me, but this seems to be an extreme measure just to keep you from hitting your DELETE key. You don't even have to cart it out to the street like the direct mail junk.

I don't now, nor have I ever sent spam to anyone. I don't have any products to sell, but if I did, what's the harm? Buy a filter, get a new address, but most of all, get a grip.

[NorseWood]

I got fat from spam too . . . then I stopped making spam sandwiches for lunch and I lost weight.

[Dimensio]

I don't hit the "delete" key until after I've sent off a complaint to the sending ISP and any upstream providers of websites that might have been advertised in the junk e-mail (actually, I don't hit the "delete" key at all. I hit "D" because that's the command for deleting messages in Pine).

I've lost important e-mail messages because they've been drowned in a deluge of junk. I should not have to sift through a load of crap in my inbox just because some jackass thinks I need to hear about increasing my breast size, looking at "barely legal" amature porn stars or sending money to some Nigerian as part of a scam.

[steve-b]

The total amount of time stolen by each spam (even setting aside loss of legitimate e-mail, crashing of systems, etc) is sufficient that each should be punished as an act of grand theft.

Additionally, the spammers who got new accounts under false names should be imprisoned for fraud.

[Salgak]

The problem with spam is not filling YOUR mailbox, but in the bandwidth and storage overhead it steals from your ISP and its' upstream providers. Your ISP has to put money into a larger mailserver with far more storage. . . so some jerk can send you, unsolicited, an invite to see BRITNEY SPEARS NUDE! or some other such garbage ???

SPAM is theft of services, pure and simple. . .the equivalent of a telemarketer calling you collect, and you can't refuse the call. . .

[ofMagog]

Some of us pay very heavily for satellite hookups (I'm at sea much of the time.) and thus being on-line should not be tied up with unsolicited stuff. Most businesses have their email swamped with spam. Your suggestion to just delete it takes considerable time, multiplied by the amount of spam each receives means myriad of wasted hours across the country daily.

A few years ago someone had the good sense to pass laws stopping unsolicited faxes. Until then, our large medical clinic, which sent and received many faxes daily to other clinics and hospitals, was swamped with junk, using up our paper and time.

As to killing spammers, naw. I suggest squatting them and any who support them over a blender set on puree and flip the switch.

[ofMagog]

Please give the rest of us your email address.

[WindMinstrel]

I just found out that two of my email servers were listed in an open relay database -- evidently some spammers had been bouncing against my server to spam others. I've spend the last 18 hours working to close the holes and tell my users how to change their email settings. Those spammers have cost my company at least $1000 in time and effort so far. Bastards.

[steve-b]

To paraphrase a possible recognizable quiz:

1. When your ISP has to install additional e-mail servers to avoid losing legitimate e-mail in the flood of spam, the price is paid by:

(a) Norwegians from Ballard;
(b) Elvis;
(c) A tour bus full of 80-year-old women; or
(d) You.

2. If your ISP's mail server crashes under a flood of spam, this impacts:

(a) Mr. Rogers
(b) Hillary
(c) The World Wrestling Federation; or
(d) You.

3. You lose an important message in the flood of spam. This causes trouble for:

(a) Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd.
(b) The Supreme Court of Florida
(c) Mr. Bean; or
(d) You.

[11th Earl of Mar]

This guy is out to be thrown to the dogs, beheaded and executed for the rest of his life.




[BTW, does that Penile-Enlarger really work?]

[DAnconia55]

You anti-capitalist pinkos are quite sickening.

But hey, it's 2002. Salute the Fatherland.

[Dimensio]

So because I oppose letting people force unwanted advertising onto the property and resources of others without compensation, I'm anti-capitalist? I suppose that you'd think it perfectly acceptable for me to paint an advertisement on your home and send you a bill for the materials and labor, because that's pretty much how junk e-mail is on computer systems.

As for the 'Fatherland' reference: Godwin invoked; discussion over, you conceded defeat.

[discostu]

I'll take spammers over telemarketers anyday of the week. I delete all e-mail from unknown sources anyway, and at least they aren't making the phone ring (I hate answering the phone when it's somebody I know, just not my favorite invention). My favorite is junkmail though, I found that quite useful when I had a fireplace.

[JohnGalt]

Yeah, but why pick on an entrepeneur when the Post Office is little more than a federal subsidy for the bulk mailing industry.