How to Stop Spam

Aragorn: There is a war going on.
King Theoden: I will not risk open war.
Aragorn: Open war is upon you, whether you risk it or not.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Tolkein

There is a war going on – a spam war that threatens to destroy the Internet. Politicians are the geldings in the war and are doing nothing. Over 20 million crawlable servers are blacklisted as spam servers. Help destroy the spammers and have fun at the same time! Launch attacks on the spammers and their ISPs!

Spam, or unsolicited commercial email, is a type of denial of service clogging our Internet channel, preventing the delivery of valid mail, causing the propagation of viruses and worms, and often contains fraud attempts and attempts at identity theft. There is NOTHING legal about spam stealing my Internet channel, taking my time, and using my computer.

The following have sent us illegal spam; that is, unsolicited commercial email. In some cases it has been fraud, offensive, or containing viruses. The source was trapped by using the full email header and other resources. At the request of the FTC, we no longer notify people when we receive such spam. That would be letting them know our address is legal. We often, however, notify the FTC, the Direct Marketing Association, and (on US spamming) the Better Business Bureau in their area and their state attorney general.

We encourage anyone to launch viruses and Denial of Service attacks on these systems, as this apparently is the only recourse I have now for protecting my time and resources. In this way the spammer becomes his or her own suicide bomber, destroying their own hosting system and right to use the Internet.

If anyone wishes to be removed from this list they must sent $200 U.S. to OPM, 20020 Marigold Ct. Suite 24, West Linn, OR 97068. Identify yourself on the check with your IP. If you have multiple listings here, you must sent $200 U.S. per listing. The longer your record circulates, the more exposure to a possible DoS you can expect. Also, once the denail of service attacks start on your IP it will also shut down your hosting service. You can be liable to your hosting service for this damage.

A spammer can falsify their sending address to us, but not their sending ISP. Therefore, we normally target the ISP in the database. The ISP is legally responsible for who is using their hosting services. For this reason it is the ISP that owes us for the spamming and intrusion to our system. The ISP can find the spammer from the message number and date in the header that is in our email you you. The ISP can then bill the spammer. We have no way to do that correlation. Sure, it's going to cost the ISP. The ISP should bill the spammer.

If your spam contains fraud, attempts at identity theft, variations of the Nigeria scam, or a violation of then can-spam act, we notify the Federal Trade Commission with all relevant information and let them prosecute. We do not notifiy you if this is done. We have to do this quickly, as such spammers change their IPs often. This does not release you from the database. The FTC doesn't pay us anything by the current laws, so you still owe us the bill.

Notice that once you are in the database, that IP is DEAD. NO ONE can use it. It doesn't matter if the host shuts the spammer down, the host still can't use that IP again until it is removed from our database. The database is a public black list. If you don't like this, tell your congressman, representative, and President. Vote the ones in that will do something about it. All we are saying is if you spam us, you are dead.

Legal notes: A spammer is protected legally by his or her hosting system. This means when we (or you) receive a spam, we have no way, at the current time, of determining the email address of the sender. The spam generally (however illegally) often uses a forged email address. I can, however, from the header determine the hosting system the spammer uses. The hosting system, then, is legally liable for the spam. That's why hosting system is listed in our database. Our bill should be paid promptly to prevent the circulation of the hosting system in our database. Some hosting systems use an autoresponder for their abuse email, giving us a useless tutorial on how to minimize spam. You do this with us and you will still get the denial of service, as thousands of folks with our database will love to hit that abuse email address and IP to take your system down.

We consider the entire list as a list of illegal spammers, using our resources without permission. Those in the listing marked illegal are marked such because they violate the CAN-SPAM law, doing identity theft, or a Nigeria scam. In other words, the government should prosecute these. Why don't they?

Rather have us email the database to you as a Microsoft Access(TM) database?
Request this:

To protect yourself from future claims:

• Be sure you are not spamming
• If you are a host system, be sure you are not supporting open relays or spamming clients
• If you are a client system, be sure you have BOTH a good firewall and virus protection and both are updated using a subscription service.
• If you are a client system, be sure you use spyware occasionally be be sure your system hasn't been hijacked by a spammer for their work. We've seen reports that 66% of the spam is from hijacked systems. Use spyware checking programs for this.
• If you are a registrar, you are responsible for your resellers. If a reseller sets up a spamming domain, you can get listed here. In that case you should quickly pay us and then bill your reseller.

How to Launch a DoS at These Guys

This takes some technical expertise, but nothing a high school kid can't handle today. A good book for understanding the security of the enemy's system is Andrew Lockhart's Network Security Hacks by O/'Reilly(TM) press. This book is also useful for making sure your system is secure. For more on DoS hacking, see:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,15199,pg,1,00.asp

http://www.physnet.uni-hamburg.de/physnet/security/vulnerability/distributed_denial_of_service.html

http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57392,00.html

http://www.armor2net.com/knowledge/hackers_methods.htm

Send us more URLs for help...

Tip: Organize your DoS attack so that multiple people hit the IP that is spamming at the same time.

Protecting Your System

Always be sure your own system is protected. Use a router with a firewall, a software firewall, and updated anti-virus software. At least weekly, check your system for spyware (see our tech support page for this). Be sure your operating system has all the updates for adequate protection. Use spam filtering at the host.

A large percent of the spam we receive is from poorly protected systems that have been hijacked by a spammer for sending their spam. The spammer sent a trojan program to the innnocent system, and this program, in turn, opened a back door the spammer is using to cloak their own spam. In this case an innocent Internet user gets stiffed by their host for sending spam, when in reality someone is using their system for sending spam.

"A year ago, if you put an unprotected machine on the Internet, it would be attacked within 15 minutes. Now it's 15 seconds. "
Symantec

Never put your computer on the Internet until you have protection (firewall and anti-virus) installed. Even then, your first task is to update the antivirus software. Never open attachments from unknown senders.

Vote to Eliminate Spam

The current administration says a do-not-spam listing would not work because of technical reasons. Hogwash. If I can find the ISP of the sending system and crash it with a DoS, certainly the CIA, FBI, and other administrative agencies should be able to take these ISPs down with their massive funding. If they don't want to do this (or are owned by the DMA), vote somebody in that will.