[agarrett]

But while the ISPs have started to fight back, professional spammers are notoriously hard to track down. Some believe that the billions of spam e-mails emanate from just 150 shadowy companies, programming computers to randomly generate names and fire off mail by the million, 24 hours a day.

  I've heard this line before, linked to how difficult these people are to trace, and I've never quite understood it. Some one has to hire these companies to fire off the spam in the first place. Even if, somehow, only those who want to issue spam can find these people, we know who is hiring them, because they have their identity on the spam mails. Can't we get the contact information from those companies?

  I just don't see why finding these spammers should be so difficult, I suppose.

Drew Garrett

[gcraig]

I've heard this line before, linked to how difficult these people are to trace, and I've never quite understood it. Some one has to hire these companies to fire off the spam in the first place.

Not exactly. I used to host web sites on a server that I built. I located the server in Tulsa, at my friend's shop. I administered and installed IMAIL and Exchange Server 2000 to satisfy the email requirements of customers. Both email systems were hi-jacked. Script kiddies are relentless. It became impossible to keep up with the software patches, so I gave up. There are alot of servers out there that didn't give up. Those servers are still being hi-jacked.

[BJungNan]

I just don't see why finding these spammers should be so difficult, I suppose.

It is not difficult. Here is one of them.

Spam Queen
Laura Betterly

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

I just don't see why finding these spammers should be so difficult, I suppose.

I trace the origin of the IP address of SPAM that I get every once in a while. It is usually from the Carribean, Brazil, or somewhere in Asia. Good luck getting companies, in countries that could care less, to come clean.