Spam king lives large off others' e-mail troubles

The Detroit Freepress ^ | November 22, 2002 | Mike Wendland

[cebadams]

You might call it the house that spam built.

Alan Ralsky's brand new 8,000-square-foot luxury home near Halsted and Maple in West Bloomfield has been a busy place this month. Outside, landscapers worked against the November cold to get a sprinkler system installed before the ground freezes. Inside, painters prepared to hang wallpaper.

[cebadams]

Unsolicited email messages (spam) now account for 36 percent of all e-mail, up from just 8 percent a year ago.

[TrappedInLiberalHell]

I think the ultimate revenge would be to find this guy's address and phone number, and email it to every email address that can be found. It's only fair.

[TrappedInLiberalHell]

Unsolicited email messages (spam) now account for 36 percent of all e-mail, up from just 8 percent a year ago.

Oh, and in my case, on a daily basis, about 90-99% is spam. No exaggeration.

[lelio]

I'm a supporter of Washington state's anti-spam laws. That's the way to stop these people: make it very expensive to send spam to the wrong person.
And I don't like this "we send out remove links in every mail" -- yeah a remove for that particular domain/type of spam. He'll just send out another one from a different domain.

[cebadams]

I know what you mean. I was out of town for two days and, upon return, I find I have 22 email messages and 115 spam messages. Most were obvious and could be easily deleted but there were a few that looked ok and I opened them (booooo).

If this gets any worse it's going to kill email.

[dead]

Oh, and in my case, on a daily basis, about 90-99% is spam. No exaggeration.

Same here, without a bit of exaggeration. If I find one email in twenty that is actually from somebody I know, it’s a good trip to mailbox.

[cebadams]

Ralsky said he includes a link on each e-mail he sends that lets the recipient opt out of any future mailings. He said 89 million people have done just that over the past five years, and he keeps a list of them that grows by about 1,000 every day.

Most spam is sent out blindly. These guys farm for email addresses but don't really have any way of knowing if they are real or not. By including the opt-out link he gets a list of absolutely valid email addresses. He probably gets paid extra to sent out spam to these 89 million people. Never, never reply in any way to spam.

[AdA$tra]

Git a rope!

I am the last guy to suggest the government get involved in solving any problem. This, however, is an exception. Congress simply need to ban email solicitation. It is NOT a first amendment issue as they use MY private network to sell their TRASH.

I hope this guy does not depend on the continuation of SPAM to make his house payment as there is enough of a groundswell amoung the corporate world the acheive a ban on SPAM.....sooner rather than later.

[AdA$tra]

Never, never reply in any way to spam.

Agreed! However, if the advertisement includes a fax number, feel free to fax them a roll of toilet paper

[tacticalogic]

Meanwhile, delivery trucks pulled into the bricked circular driveway with computers, routers, servers and other high-tech gear that will hook up to the high-speed T1 line installed a few weeks ago.

The new Spamford Wallace. I wonder if the Second Amendment covers EMF pulse weapons.

[strela]

Earlier this month, said Ralsky, somebody told the Chinese government that a Web company from which he leases e-mail servers in Beijing was sending messages critical of Chinese policy.

That was probably me. On the complaints I send about spam from Chinese servers, I always include at least one mention of Falun Gong and/or Tibetian independence. And, there might be a Chinese government email address or two sprinkled in the TO list occasionally.

I'm glad that Alan Ralsky is poking his head up a little higher, consenting to these interviews documenting how well he is doing. Makes it much easier to target his operation and serve him with papers, since most spammers have no assets worth bothering with. He'll get his.

[Jakarta ex-pat]

"Ralsky makes his money by charging the companies that hire him to send bulk e-mail a commission on sales. He sometimes charges just a flat fee, up to $22,000, for a single mailing to his entire database."

These people aren't capitalists. Nor Conservatives.

They are criminals, similar to our anti-globalists.

They should be exposed as such.

[Vicki]

My husband and I have our own business and we left town for two days recently. When we came back my husband had 700 email messages and I had 300. Most of which were spam.

I have missed important messages because of spam. I can't comment further because I'm afraid of what I might say. Spam makes my blood boil.

[tacticalogic]

On the complaints I send about spam from Chinese servers, I always include at least one mention of Falun Gong and/or Tibetian independence.

You might want to consider throwing in a reference to the Hong Kong Blondes, too.

[AppyPappy]

If you have a website, remove your email address from it. Use a guestbook instead. Your spam numbers will drop quickly.

[tacticalogic]

If you have a website, remove your email address from it. Use a guestbook instead. Your spam numbers will drop quickly.

You also might want to consider installing wpoison.

[jpl]

And under no circumstances should one ever give out one's primary e-mail addy to any web site for any reason. If a web site ever insists on a valid e-mail addy for authentication purposes, get a temporary one for free from Yahoo or some similar provider.

[FReepaholic]

>>...He'll get his...<<

It's interesting to see people get fired up about this, yet they'll allow "unsolicted" commercials to bombard them while they watch TV. Nobody seems to get upset about that.

What makes the TV commercials (and bulk junk "snail" mail) more legitimate than bulk email?? Why should'nt Proctor and Gamble, Ford, and McDonalds' "get theirs"?

If you don't like commercials, turn off the TV...if you don't like bulk email, use filters.

Now, having said all that, I will side with ISP's that are struggling with bandwidth overload because of bulk email.

My $.02

[AppyPappy]

Filters don't clean the lines. Spam is clogging the wires.

[tacticalogic]

Filters don't clean the lines. Spam is clogging the wires.

It's also clogging up mail spools because their damned servers won't even accept an incoming connection to deliver the NDR's for the stuff they sent to bad addresses.