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Rep. Bill Jones Thinks Spam is "Innovative" 393

Posted by CmdrTaco from the when-is-election-year? dept.
GMontag writes "Wired is running this story:Candidate: Spam in Every Pot about candidate-for-governor Bill Jones' spam campaigning. The most telling quote: "Jones spokesman Darrel Ng said the e-mail wasn't spam, commonly defined as unsolicited commercial e-mail. Ng instead classified Jones' non-commercial mass-mailing as an "innovative way to use the Internet.'" Another interesting item: "An examination of the e-mail sent out by the Jones campaign revealed forged headers. The e-mail, purportedly sent from an MSN.com address, was actually routed through the server of an elementary school in Chonnam, Korea.""
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Rep. Bill Jones Thinks Spam is "Innovative" More

Rep. Bill Jones Thinks Spam is "Innovative"

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  • Interesting Stance... (Score:3, Funny)

    by I Want GNU! ( 556631 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:18PM (#3094989) Homepage
    He should make his campaign slogan "a spam in every mailbox." That will get him elected.

  • And the surprise is? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gogl ( 125883 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:20PM (#3095000) Journal
    I can't help but think "so what?". This seems to me to be very standard political spin. A politician uses spam to try to further his campaign, and then defends it as "innovative" just because email spam *is* new in the domains of campaigning. Obviously anybody with a brain can say "it's not innovative unless the concept is new, not the application". By his logic I could spam for saving purple elephants and be "innovative".

    It's just playing with words and being a political spin doctor. I, for one, am only surprised that email spam has not been used for campaigning earlier.
    • And god knows routing spam through Korean email servers isn't terribly innovative...

    • Re:And the surprise is? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by VP ( 32928 )
      It's not innovative - I was spammed by the Republican National Committee in 2000 to vote for Bush... Given that I am not a US citizen, there is no way that they could have found my e-mail address in any legitimate way...

    • Re:And the surprise is? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phyxeld ( 558628 ) <phyx@lo s t i n t h e n o i se.net> on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:42PM (#3095188) Journal
      I, for one, am only surprised that email spam has not been used for campaigning earlier.

      I'm very surprised anyone would want to use spam for political purposes. It's just stupid. Your average spammer doesn't care about his reputation, so it doesn't matter that 95% of the people who see their message will angrily throw it away. Politians, however, live off of their reputation. They can't afford to piss off that many people at once.

      I'm sure this guy is regreting it. I mean, his website is blackholed right now, a few days before the primary! And this guy was supposedly "net savy"....
    • Look who else is spamming...

      I have a message that's little more than a week old sitting in my box from "Tony Sanchez, Democrat for Texas Governor in 2002".

      "The Internet and email has made it possible for you and I to communicate in ways that we could have only dreamed of a few short years ago. As a result, from time to time, I would like to send you an email keeping you up to date with: the latest news regarding the 2002 election, my stance on important issues and the progress made by the campaign."

      Though I must give him credit, I am a Texan. Interestingly enough the email has my mother's name in it, as if it was intended for her. This is very interesting since I am quite sure that she doesn't even know about this particular address (it's a throw away account for registrations and collecting spam.) For that matter I have serious doubt over whether she'd be savvy enough to register for political email even if she wanted to.

      Geez, I just went over to his website [tonysanchez.com] and the guy even has wallpaper and a screensaver to promote his campaign. I know it's the internet age, but are there really people out there that would want a screensaver image of a politician??

  • Not only did I get this spam... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Teancom ( 13486 ) <david&gnuconsulting,com> on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:20PM (#3095002) Homepage
    But I'm not in california, I used the "never get this again" link after the first one, and subsequently got 3 more, and it was freaking html! Does California still have the death penalty??

    • Does California still have the death penalty?

      Yes, but carried out at a much lower rate than in Texas or Oklahoma. He could be elected, serve, and retire before they got around to him. I'm against the death penalty, but I might be willing to make an exception in this case :-)

      In any event, I'm pretty sure this counts as 'three strikes' so he can be locked up for good. Ironically, it's a bill he authored. Seems fitting to me...

  • Another thought- (Score:3, Interesting)

    by I Want GNU! ( 556631 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:21PM (#3095010) Homepage
    Thinking about this further- does he think of mail fraud as an innovative use of the postal system? Many spam laws aren't against the spam themselves but are against falsifying header info.

  • Don't think this will be the only one... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by No-op ( 19111 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:22PM (#3095020)
    I hate to say it, but I think we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality coming from our elected officials (and candidates). You have to realize they farm this sort of thing out, and to them it's all a broad spectrum of marketing/contact/fundraising/etc.

    I doubt the candidate in mind was even aware of what was going on, but when confronted he responded as you would expect any politico to respond. doublespeak and warm fuzzies, with a handful of buzzwords.

    Hopefully there will be a day when there is a representative we can stand behind- the only way we can get there is for all of us to make our voices heard, and to use the system to fight the system. as many have said before, make phone calls or write actual letters spelling out WHY you feel something is bad, and rational reasons as to why they as your elected representative should be against something.

    my 2 cents. have a good weekend!
    • "...we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality" is right, and the reason is: "'There are a number of California anti-spam laws but, like all laws, they were passed by politicians. So there is a huge loophole that permits politicians to spam,'" --quote in the article from anti-spam activist Laura Atkins (emphasis added).

      And "politician" is one of the word-oriented professions that has most difficulty adapting to computers or anything cyber at all. Lawyers, preachers, journalists, professors, politicians, writers, and a few other types predictably resist learning and using computers. I learned about this pattern when I was doing ISP tech support.
    • I think it's inevitable that they will try it and experiment with it a little. A democracy requires communication to be effective and as the population moves over to email and the web politicians will need to as well.

      However, unlike most commercial bodies, political folk (be they politicians or other political activists) have a vested interest in not antagonizing great swathes of people.

      I work in the non-profit sector where mission based messages is our bread and butter. Putting out messages that people are likely to latch on to is important. But few mature organizations risk upsetting too many people even if they are unlikely to ever be a true supporter of your cause.

      Businesses are only really interested in their customers. Some big firms have a general public image to care about but that sex site that spams every address it can get its hands on really doesn't care if 100,000 women (or anyone else) are upset about receiving a pornographic email.

      But politics is built on consensus and give and take. If you produce too many enemies or tarnish your general public image you weaken yourself. It's rarely worth it.

      Sure, there will be mistakes like this one but as politicians see how upset people get they'll change their habits to ones that are more acceptable (so if you got one of these emails, make sure to let them know that it's turned you against him).
    • Implicit in spam is the idea that the spammer wants to sell you something. Politicians don't sell you anything, they simply take.

      On a serious side. Think of all the crap that politicians receive in the mail. The stuff our representatives and senators get make your 80 pieces of spam a day look like a cake walk. For that matter, Tom Daschel gets Anthrax. I would rather get ten thousand offers for a fake university degree than a single bomb.
    • we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality coming from our elected officials

      Umm, so we need a super hero to seek out, identify and publicize the *real* e-mail addresses of politicians. Not the address they publicize. You know, the ones they and their staff use when they're conducting business.
  • It's not theft, it is an innovative way to acquire resources.
    It's not murder, it is an innovative way to use a gun.

    I call it "proof by I call it something else so it isn't bad"

  • Fast Forward to October (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tyler Eaves ( 344284 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:22PM (#3095031)
    In a new state record, Candiate Bill Jones received only 1 vote. Many blame his poor showing on the fact the he hired his campaign spokesperson because he promised to "Get Vote$$ fa$$t"

  • SPAM! (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeAlien ( 164869 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:22PM (#3095034) Homepage Journal
    Shouldn't this be under the category "Its funny, laugh"?

    But many who received Jones' e-mail are not California residents. Some aren't even U.S. citizens. Evidently, the address harvester used by Jones' vendor assumed that all e-mail addresses containing ".ca," a suffix that identifies a Canadian domain, belong to California residents.

    Well, clearly if he could get the much coveted Canadian vote he'd win by a landslide..I bet the Canadians aren't voting for any other Californian Politicians. I don't know why no one has ever tried this before. How innovative!

  • Helped make my decision (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slugfro ( 533652 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:23PM (#3095037) Homepage
    It will be interesting to see if the effects of this SPAM will have negative result on the number of voters voting for Bill Jones. I would say that if you are against SPAM then this is a very good reason to vote for someone other than Bill Jones

  • ANY publicity is good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Geeyzus ( 99967 ) <mark_madej@@@yahoo...com> on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:23PM (#3095042)
    Unfortunately for us, this may turn out to be a good thing for the candidate.

    Anyone in the public eye gets their name out to the public, and it sticks in some peoples' heads. Bad publicity or good, this happens. Unfortunately for us, this can translate into mindless votes on election day. Knowing a name often translates into thinking that person is the best candidate, and voting for them.

    I hope I am wrong about this...

    Mark

  • From a CA registered voter (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rgmoore ( 133276 ) <glandauer@charter.net> on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:23PM (#3095043) Homepage

    Well, I'm actually registered to vote in California, so I can let him know how I feel about spamming me in a way that might have some impact. I have a feeling that some other people around here might feel the same way; if your primary name recognition is as that spamming bastard it's not likely to win many votes. (Though this raises the spectre of forging spam from an opponent in an attempt to smear him.) Of course I wasn't planning on voting for him anyway, but it's one more reason not to like him.

  • what if every one of us sent a message to his primary email address with an image of something random and telling him some way to get rich in the next 24 hours, every day for the next month and see how innovative he thinks spam is after that.

  • If he gets elected, we are all dead. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:24PM (#3095057) Homepage
    If this moron gets elected, then we can expect every political candidate everywhere, in every country, state, and district, to spam each and every one of us. Obviously, then, He Must Not Win. Who is he running against, so that I may I donate money to them?
    -russ
  • ... Politics are honest...

  • Time to redefine 'spam'? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wackybrit ( 321117 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:26PM (#3095070) Homepage Journal
    Mr. Ng claims that spam is 'unsolicited commercial e-mail.' Unfortunately it seems this definition is held by all, but shouldn't we really say that spam is 'any unsolicited mass e-mail for personal gain?' That way, we cover political sharks, over-eager charities, AND commercial enterprises.

    This story claims that it's all okay because a) it's within the law, and b) he provided an unsubscribe link. Hello? Does anyone actually EVER use unsubscribe links on unsolicited e-mail? I've learned that it's a great way for a spammer to validate your address is real and that some idiot is reading the mail. Even if the unsubscribe button isn't legit, aren't most tech-savvy folk going to think the same?

    P.S: I got this e-mail when he sent it. What sending his political BS to someone sitting in the countryside in the United Kingdom achieved, I'm not sure.
    • Mr. Ng claims that spam is 'unsolicited commercial e-mail.' Unfortunately it seems this definition is held by all, but shouldn't we really say that spam is 'any unsolicited mass e-mail for personal gain?' That way, we cover political sharks, over-eager charities, AND commercial enterprises.

      The clued use the definition "Unsolicited Bulk Email", not "Unsolicited Commercial Email". This was UBE, hence spam.

  • young getting in on politics... from the article "The e-mail, purportedly sent from an MSN.com address, was actually routed through the server of an _elementary school in Chonnam, Korea._ "

    But wait, I digress...

    However, ask yourself, why do you vote for a candidate; do ad campaigns effect how you vote? (really... do they)

  • My Bill Jones experience (Score:5, Informative)

    by zsazsa ( 141679 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:28PM (#3095085) Homepage
    I submitted my page on Bill Jones's spams a couple days ago, and it was rejected:

    2002-02-28 00:58:56 California Gubernatorial Canidate Resorts to Spam (articles,spam) (rejected)

    Anyway, I'm not bitter. Check out my page on it anyway: http://polpo.org/jonesspam/ [polpo.org]. Basically, I pick apart the mail and the "click here to remove yourself from our list" page (which involves some novel Javascript-based HTML obfuscation) and find out who one of the spammers might be.

    After talking with some people about this and doing a simple Google search I found that he's been doing this for a couple months now, with MSNBC doing this story [google.com] on it in December. They have a followup story here. [msnbc.com]

    By the way, don't count on Bill Jones's office writing you back when you complain to them about the spam. I haven't recieved a response yet.

    Ian
    • Here's a bit of synchronicity. Just this morning I received a spam in my personal mailbox. I have 5 addresses: work, personal, and 3 spamtraps that go to trash by default. Whenever my 2 real addresses get spammed, I go medieval. Headers revealed the spam was sent through an open relay at ... Naju Noan Elementary School [najunoan.es.kr] of Chonnam Province [chonnam.kr], Korea.

      What's the deal with the Korean school system? Did someone donate a few thousand default-setup NT servers to them after the dotcom bust?

      According to NameSpace [name-space.com], the class-C block belongs to Soonhwa Cho (jeonnam3@soback.kornet.net), and the class-A belongs to Korea Network Information Center (hostmaster@nic.or.kr). I've written to KrNIC before, and they flatly disavow any and all responsibility for net abuse in their subdomains. They refer me to their WHOIS server [nic.or.kr].

      Now, there are a few problems with that position. The most important is that NajuNoan's whois entry belongs to yang yeon ho (noan1@edunet4u.net), and that address bounces back as invalid.

      So what to do? AFAICT, the only answer is for some off-white-hat hackers to 0WN the whole damn Korean edu network and secure those servers remotely whether they like it or not.

      • Teergrube and Reverse Teergrube DDOS for KR, RBL? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Saturday March 02, 2002 @12:08AM (#3096273) Journal
        If you google for Teergrube (German for "Tar Pit"), you'll find several implementations that happily sit on Port 25 (either on machines that don't run their own SMTP servers, or perhaps are called out by the real sendmail when receiving mail from a known spammer) and answer v...e...r.....y.....s....l....o....w.....l.....y, with lots of delays and perhaps some try-later error messages. The usual application for Teergruben is to place a bunch of spambait addresses out on your web sites for the spammer's harvesting system to find, since any mail addressed to them is obviously spam, and log the senders' machines so you can track them down. The theory is that if somebody's sending out a few mail messages to real people and mistakenly send to you, responding slowly isn't a problem, but if they're trying to send thousands of spams per minute, and each of the N simultaneous outgoing SMTP sessions they can maintain keeps running until it hits one of the thousands of tarpits waiting for them, they'll use up all their capability waiting for tarpits to respond and be unable to bother real people, and thus they DDOS themselves. If they're abusing mail relays, and spreading the load around, that's a bit rougher, but each mail relay can also get bogged down. Also, dialup or open relay IP address that gets caught in the tarpit is one you can add to the blacklists on your real mail server, though you probably don't want to do that for non-dialup machines that aren't running relays, because they may simply have bad users (e.g. AOL has spammers, but also has your mother-in-law, so you don't want to block all mail from AOL.) You may not have a current DUL for Korea, but if you don't expect to get mail from anybody in Korea, or the mail goes to one of your spambait addresses, you can trap them too.


        That works nicely if enough people do it, especially if they spread around lots of spambait addresses. But what about an active response - if you receive mail from an open-relay machine (either on the RBL, or one that you test, e.g. yet another Korean school box), you could send it ten simultaineous messages, v...errr....y...s....l...o...w..ly. Not enough to flood it, or kill it permanently, but enough that if it's trying to spam N destinations at a time, it will have some fraction of them tie up a few percent of its incoming SMTP capacity, and therefore quickly block its relay capability.

        It's a bit dodgy, and you need to check your ISP's acceptable use policy to make very sure you're not violating it, but it's basically a scale attack which won't harm any systems that have real people sending out real mail, might bother real systems sending out real mailing lists (so obviously don't do this to systems you subscribe to), but will interfere with abused machines being abused by spammers as well as with spammers using their own machines directly.

  • Before everyone goes off half-cocked here... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by isaac ( 2852 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:29PM (#3095097)
    Before everyone goes off half-cocked here about how political spam should be illegal, I'd like to gently remind people to think of the potential consequences to our society of banning any form of political speech, regardless of how tacky it might be.

    I think the "market" (i.e. voters) will take care of political spam just fine by reacting negatively to its use. Remember that spam works for scammers and hucksters because a tiny portion of those targeted will send money to the sender; ergo there's no disincentive to pissing off all the other recipients. Political elections, however, don't quite work that way...

    -Isaac

    • Re:Before everyone goes off half-cocked here... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:58PM (#3095295)
      > Before everyone goes off half-cocked here about how political spam should be illegal, I'd like to gently remind people to think of the potential consequences to our society of banning any form of political speech, regardless of how tacky it might be.

      If Bill Jones had spammed from Bill Jones' machine, and paid Bill Jones' ISP to deliver the outbound spew, you might have a point.

      But according to the article, Bill Jones didn't do that. According to the article, Bill Jones raped an open relay in Korea. That is, he sent an SMTP transaction to a server (a server on which he had no authorized access), and commanded that server's MTA to deliver multiple copies of his spew to recipients in California and Canada.

      Ignoring the theft-of-service issue that applies to all spam delivered through open relays, the server was on foreign soil -- that is, he appropriated the resources of a foreign government to influence the results of a domestic political event. That sounds like it could be in violation of numerous election finance laws (at a minimum), and a potential diplomatic incident to boot.

      I happen to believe that all spam is theft (by conversion) of my mailbox. That is, Bill Jones has the right to speak, but he doesn't have the right to appropriate my resources to deliver his speech.

      But even if you choose accept that sort of theft as OK in certain cases, how can you deny that (if the article is true) what he did is anything other than unauthorized access to, and theft of service from (if not a denial-of-service attack on) the Korean high school's server?

    • political spam should be illegal, I'

      UBE is UBE. Spam is as spam does -- the 'political' qualifier is a subjective one. Do i really want spam from the NRA, Republicans, Christian Family Front (or whatever) or other right-wing crazies littering my mailbox because *they* think their message is worthy? I think not.

      I think the "market" (i.e. voters)

      Lets not insult American Democracy with such filthy name calling. Citizenship, Democracy and Civil Responsibility has nothing to do with the unabridged pursuit of immediate physical gratification - ie: The Market.

      Political elections, however, don't quite work that way...

      Political elections is not like selling Penis Enlargment Devices or Get RI$H QUICK!!!!! $cheme$. I understand how you could confuse markets and hucksterism with American Politics, but please, dont apologize and suggest that it is 'ok'.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Spampaign. As in, "in 2004, many candidates are expected to spampaign for president, but only one will win".
  • To be fair to Jones (and as a Californian I hate having to be fair to one of our Republican candidates :-) it isn't unsolicited commercial email. Of course I'd still consider it spam but technically he's right, especially in the context of CA's spam law which does explicitly define it as commercial email.

    However the Wired article does mention the spams are using forged headers and were sent via an elementary school's servers in Korea. Now this is pretty despicable, even if it is not technically illegal (I don't know relevant Korean law). This would-be governor is stealing server resources from Korean school kids in his bid to get his political message out. That's a low tactic indeed. I do hope Mr. Jones doesn't support laws that make using someone's computer resources without permission illegal...

  • Kick him out of Office and bankrupt him. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:30PM (#3095108) Homepage
    His spam may not have violated California law, but may have violated the TCPA (the junk fax law).


    If your computer has a fax modem attached, a printer attached, and fax software, then it is a fax machine for the purpose of the federal definition.

    What you should do:

    • File lawsuit against him for $500 against him and the campaign.
    • Work as hard as you can to ge the word out that he is scum, that abuses the computer equiptment of schools (if that is true), and help his opposition.


    Lets make an example of this SPAM scum.


    This is not legal advice until I go to law school, graduate law school, pass the bar, and confirmed that your retainer check cleared.

    • We may be able to get the list of emails that this was sent to. Then determine if they illegally copied it off of websites, violating terms of use and copyright. Hit the spammer with some lawsuits too.

      Just guessing, but the list may be available under some open election laws.

  • was actually routed through the server of an elementary school in Chonnam, Korea

    Seems obvious to me - the guy is for better relations with china as well as furthering education! Damm where do I vote? Such an innovative speaker!
    On a serious note, I hope this guy gets his head put on a pike and placed on display as a warning to the next ten generations that some things come as too high a price.

    Not everday you get to use a B5 quote now is it? =)
  • ISPs should block port 25 (TCP/SMTP) to all servers other than their own. This prevents lusers from using open relays to email their spams.

    Most major ISPs I think already do this, but there are many smaller ones that do not.
    • ISPs should block port 25 (TCP/SMTP) to all servers other than their own. This prevents lusers from using open relays to email their spams.

      ...and if you run your own mail server, what purpose does this serve other than to delay the transmission of your mail (especially if your ISP's mail server is tango-uniform)? What if you're sending email that needs to go through your company's server and you're just using the ISP for remote access? Besides, if this became common practice, what's to stop spammers from seeking out mail servers running on ports other than 25? Blocking outbound port 25 would create more problems than it solves.

  • Lest we forget... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fobbman ( 131816 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:37PM (#3095151) Homepage
    A properly filled-out ballot is an innovate way to show your disgust of these practices.

  • so it's okay.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by maxpublic ( 450413 )
    Jones says that the mail is fine because it isn't commercial. Does that mean that if I send him 50,000 copies of a piece of mail expressing my ire - and perhaps including an entire dictionary in each one, so he can look up the word 'spam' - that this too is okay because it isn't commercial?

    It used to be, before the web, that hosing an offending ISP that refused to chastise a spammer was considered to be a perfectly acceptable response. I say - given the obvious effectiveness of legislation against spam - that we return to those days once again.

    Max
  • IANAL but I think that forging headers is a deceptive practice and he should in the least have a class action civil lawsuit used against him.
  • He could have taken a page from former Vice President Al Gore's book and claimed to have INVENTED Spam! ;-)
  • Too bad it was South Korea they routed it through. If it was North Korea we could get the press to jump all over his ties to a country with nasty human rights issues. You know they'd love that. It sells papers.
  • I don't see how theft is innovation. As far back as recorded history theft has been with us and considered a crime. The only "innovation" is that these thieves have so far not been subject to any criminal proceedings.

    I think an appropriate punishement for SPAMMERS would involved kneecaps and baseball bats

    ENOUGH already, My penis is TOO long as it is

  • The sin is in the coverup, not the crime (Score:3, Interesting)

    by coyote-san ( 38515 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:53PM (#3095255)
    If this guy had the balls to stand up and say "this is political free speech, it's not spam, get over it!" a lot of spam fighters would give him a bit of room. We understand that there are no simple answers when dealing with politicians (and political issues in general) that are often excluded by a mass media that is focused on ratings, not public service.

    But this idiot doesn't even know the first rule of politics - no matter what you did, you can make it far worse by trying to cover it up and failing. He spammed header information - he should burn in Hell for that regardless of the merits of the content of the message! I hope every person who got that spam writes a check for $5 or $10 for his opponent, telling the opponent exactly why they got that donation... with copies send to this moron and the local TV stations. Let him learn that forging headers means that's he's not fit to pick the dog shit up in the city parks, much less represent a district.

    (Of course, if it turns out that the opponent forged the headers and got checks... suddenly that's fraud by misrepresentation. Criminal indictments tend to put a stop to that *very* fast.)

  • Spamming for dumbasses (Score:5, Interesting)

    by t0qer ( 230538 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @07:53PM (#3095261) Homepage Journal
    Uhh, this isn't a troll, it's a true story and it might shed somelight on how spam operators do their dirty deeds.

    About 2 months ago I had the chance to take a road trip with one of my best buds to go see his father down in bakersfield. For those that don't know what bakersfield is, it's a shithole of a dirty little town somewhere between Sacramento and LA on the I5.

    Now if it's a shithole of a little town, why would I in my right mind want to go there, sleep on a floor for 3 days, and eat crappy food. Well, my friends dad *supposidly* had a T1 line going into his apartment and was running spam operations from that. I told my friend that's bullshit, Ma bell don't run T1's to anything but businesses, i've ordered enough of them to know.

    We got down there, I was expecing to walk in, and find a wirespeed DSL modem or something. Upon closer inspection I found a CSU/DSU and a cisco 2500 router. Holy shit this guy really did have a T1 line. I started talking to him about the legal/social ramifications of his business. After about 30 minutes of talking to him I could tell, he got a hair up his butt one day thinking spam was going to be a big money maker for him, paid someone to set him up and that was it. Not only did he not have a clue that hijacking someones SMTP server is bad, but he said SMTP servers that don't run open relays are interferring with his ability to do business and started screaming "ITS MY RIGHT TO SPAM AND ANYONE WHO TRIES TO STOP ME IS INTRUDING ON MY AMERICAN RIGHTS TO RUN A BUSINESS"

    I stopped talking to him after that. He just would not accept that using someone elses server without their permission is just plain wrong. Anyways...

    He started trying to talk me and my friend into getting into the business with him. I told him it would be a conflict of interest for me because I am a sysadmin of course, but I would be more than happy to watch him work to learn for myself.

    His network consisted of 6 win98 machines, 1 BSD box that he had no idea what it did. They ran some windows GUI based tool called SMTPscan. Basically it had 2 boxes to input your IP range into, it would scan that range and report back usable servers. I can't remember the actual name of the program he used to send the mail with, but I remember him pasting that list from SMTP scan into it.

    Also to note was his lack of a true list management system. His remove e-mails pointed back to a hotmail account so his main server would be isolated from any attacks. He would manually go into his hotmail account. These removes did nothing though, let me explain it from his point of view.

    Basically when your remove yourself from a spam list, it's just for that spam. The spammer still has a list for some new product that he hasn't sent out yet, if he hasn't sent it out how can you be removed?

    So this guy maintains a list of 4,000,000 e-mails and ALLWAYS spams to all of them. Legally he's found a loophole to cover his ass and can happily spam the same list as long as he's selling something different.

    I just wanted to post this so everyone would know, spammers aren't really the most technically minded people. To them it's
    1. Spam
    2. ****
    3. Profit

    While to us it's
    1.Spam
    2.Flood someone elses server, slander some legit company by relaying pr0n spam. Eat Bandwidth
    3. Profit

    I hope you enjoyed this post, please mod accordingly if you did.

    --toq

    • He started trying to talk me and my friend into getting into the business with him.

      Classic! Sounds like one of those "work at home" pyramid scams, where the whole purpose is to find suckers to find suckers to find suckers to...

    • Re:Spamming for dumbasses (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Darkling-MHCN ( 222524 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @09:25PM (#3095692)
      This too isn't a troll.... and is also based on real life experiences. Although as I actually have an alternate and probably unpopular positive view of using email for marketing purposes I probably will be modded accordingly.

      I have worked with a group that does "email marketing". Is there a difference between this and spam ? Some would say no....

      But I would say yes for the following reasons:-

      1. They use their own servers and their own network and pay for the bandwidth required to send the emails.

      2. They have a policy that all their clients should have fully qualified (opted in) lists, any client found to be breaking this rule becomes an ex-client. As they are in Australia this would be in breach of the privacy act, and they have no wish to be associated with criminal activity no matter how petty.

      3. Their clients aren't selling viagra, or university degrees, they run legitimate businesses that have been in business for years. Most of them have products that are totally unrelated to internet, and use email to replace sending faxes or sending out brochures or an event calendar to clients who have a desire to receive this information.

      4. They actually have a remove option that actually does get you removed from the list. And to prove they do have a genuine concern for the recipients of emails. They are currently adding web interfaces that will give email recipients control over what clients they wish to receive email from.

      Now it's obvious there are some cowboys out there and many of them probably do not fully understand the consequences of their actions, or the foolishness of annoying the people you're trying to do business with or in this case get votes from, which is roughly the same thing as far as I understand the US political system. I also think that their is obviously something that needs to be done about these people as they damage not only themselves but also the people in this business with some integrity who try and play by the rules and do the right thing.

      Email marketing has the ability if properly regulated and controlled to give marketers unprecedented value and give customers unprecedented service. It also has the potential to save thousands of tree's by avoiding the wasteful use of paper to disseminate information. Have you ever wanted to opt out of receiving a brochure stuffed in your letter box, a little hard isn't it ?

      Is it such a bad thing if email is used for marketing ? Or do we think that all marketing is evil ? How many things do you currently have enjoy in your life that you wouldn't have if it weren't for marketing ? Hmm.. movies like The Matrix, TV series like star trek ?

      I think it's unwise to make huge generalizations and often people are too quick to use the word SPAM, which seems to have become a word more dirty than most other 4 letter words.

      So does anyone else think that there is some place for email marketing ? Isn't the dissemination of information what the internet was originally designed for ?
      • 2. They have a policy that all their clients should have fully qualified (opted in) lists, any client found to be breaking this rule becomes an ex-client. As they are in Australia this would be in breach of the privacy act, and they have no wish to be associated with criminal activity no matter how petty.

        This is the critical point. If one "opts in" for mailings, then by definition it isn't SPAM as it is not "unsolicited." If I check "send me notices of good deals" on some web site I'm buying something at, then I've opted-in, ie solicited, the bulk emailings.

        SPAM is unsolicited bulk email (mostly, but not always, commercial, but again, the emphesis is on unsolicited bulk email).

        If someone uses my servers, and my hard disk space, to store their unsolicited advertisments then as far as I (and several states, but alas, not Illinois) am concerned they are guilty of tresspass and should be treated accordingly: with stiff fines and some jail time. If, on the other hand, they are sending a mass, but soliticed, mailing (for example, I get mass mailings from AOPA all the time, which I have explicitly asked for), then there is absolutely no abuse and all is kosher.

        You claim to not be in the habit of sending unsolicted bulk emails. Excellent. In this case you run a legitimate, inoffensive business and I wish you the best. If, on the other hand, this claim should turn out to be untrue, then I would be the first to cheer for the legions of system crackers tapping at your electronic Windows and smashing your servers.
  • Not only does this not surprise me, it will be no surprise that crap like this is only going to get worse.

    I have noticed a *very* disturbing trend in the reams of spam I receive. More and more of it is coming from seemingly legitimate BigCos.

    In the last week I have received spam for several different forms of service from AT cellular and long distance. I have also received three different spams for the Columbia House CD/DVD club.

    I'm fairly certain that a number of these spam have been merely a test; just a dip of the toe in the pool, so to speak.

    Can you imagine what would happen if an AT&T or a Columbia House (Sony, isn't it?) were to decide the spam was a 'legitimate market channel'?
  • It seems to me that emails are less annoying than the lawn signs and incessant TV ads that we always see, and considering learning about the politicans is an important step in making an informed decision about who to vote for, email is one of the better ways. It gives everyone a fair playing field.

    My only concern would be that the email doesn't reach people who are out of the voting district (I can't vote in the FL gubernatorial election) and that it isn't excessive. I, for one, would like to get information about all of the candidates via e-mail. One e-mail per candidate. If I get any more, he's just lost my vote...

    You can't say "get the money out of politics" and "don't take advantage of this free form of advertising" and expect to get away with it. Now excuse me while I don my asbestos suit.

    • Sorry, that's crap. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Maigus ( 118056 )
      No flame, simply strong dissagreement.

      The problem is that spam isn't free for the recipient. The primary argument against spam is not simply that it's annoying or that it clogs an otherwise useful communication medium with noise but that it's a collect call that the receiver can't refuse.

      If you're on the end of a pay per X pipe, like many wireless net plans, then spam actually costs the receiver money. Some internet mail hosts charge users per X of storage, once again spam costs money. There are more and better examples which other people can cite who understand the situation much better than I.

      Using spam in this way shows just how out of touch the candidate is. He's ran past the "I'll buy your vote" argument all the way to "You'll pay for my sales pitch".

  • Newspeak. It is spam, damnit. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by praedor ( 218403 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @08:00PM (#3095306) Homepage

    The really telling thing is the forged headers. Even if you could argue the points of political mailings being spam/not being spam, as far as I'm concerned, using a fake email/forged headers makes it spam. Forged email/headers trumps all other arguments. It is spam.

    • Before I write to my congressman proposing this, I want to toss it out on /. to see if it's a valid idea.

      Should forged headers be illegal?

      The exception being anonymous remailers. In which case the remailer identifies itself as such.

      But forging headers to make the email appear to have originated or been processed by a machine that wasn't involved in the delivery is, IMO, a malicious act.
  • The e-mail, purportedly sent from an MSN.com address, was actually routed through the server of an elementary school in Chonnam, Korea. (emphasis mine)

    It might be amusing for Wired, or one of Jones's opponents for that matter, to get in touch with the Korean embassy on this issue. I know (believe me, I know) that a lot of Korean sites are doing precious little about their open relays ... but what, I wonder, would the Korean government think about its educational resources being stolen for the furtherance of an American politician's campaign?

    "We've replaced this antispammer's whack-a-mole [tuxedo.org] mallets with axes of evil. Let's see if he notices ...."

  • California voters: Please sign. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TClevenger ( 252206 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @08:05PM (#3095342)

    Since billjones.org is down (either slashdotted or still disabled because of his upstream ISP) I have created a petition. If you are a registered California voter and want him to know why he won't get your vote, please make your voice heard [petitiononline.com].

  • Bill Jones is not a U.S. Congressman. He's not even a member of the California Assembly or Senate. He's the California Secretary of State, an elected official.

    In other words, calling him ``Rep. Bill Jones'' is wrong.

  • Spam Works! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Crispin Cowan ( 20238 ) <crispin AT crispincowan DOT com> on Friday March 01, 2002 @08:19PM (#3095416) Homepage
    Hey, spam really can increase your penis size. It has turned Bill Jones into a giant dick! :-)

    Crispin
    ----
    Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
    Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. [wirex.com]
    Immunix: [immunix.org] Security Hardened Linux Distribution
    Available for purchase [wirex.com]

  • CALL THEM (Score:4, Informative)

    by drDugan ( 219551 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @08:34PM (#3095500) Homepage
    916-349-2002

    they tried to support their actions, citing 1st amendment and an unsubscribe.

    I told them to go to hell.

  • Bill Jones is California's secretary of state [ca.gov], not a US Representative. He's running for the Republican nomination for governor.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @08:54PM (#3095576)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • While Korea government officials are busy whining [cnn.com] about a little dog eating joke, their country is getting cut off from the internet because its servers are remotely harboring e-terrorists. Korean government officials and bureaucrats need to get some clues. A lot of clues.

    Maybe Jay can do a joke about how the Koreans use dogs to run the treadmills for the generators that run the Korean spam servers in all the schools and government offices ... before they chop 'em up to be put in little cans to be sold as meat.

    Seriously ... block Korea ... I do ... and I don't regret it.

  • i got this spam... (Score:4, Funny)

    by kevin lyda ( 4803 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @09:19PM (#3095675) Homepage
    ...and i live in galway ireland.

    and here i thought florida had the weirdest voting laws...

  • Who else will be "innovating" (Score:3, Funny)

    by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @09:40PM (#3095751)
    Let's hope Mr. Jones doesn't set a precedent. The next article [wired.com] at Wired talked about how the Catholic church sees the Internet as a great opportunity for evangelism:

    Foley also quotes the Pope as saying, "Consider ... the positive capacities of the Internet to carry religious information and teaching beyond all barriers and frontiers. Such a wide audience would have been beyond the wildest imaginings of those who preached the Gospel before us.... Catholics should not be afraid to throw open the doors of social communications to Christ, so that his good news may be heard from the housetops of the world."

    I can see it now, hundreds of "Get Eternal Life FAST" and "Jesus and his horny college teen friends want to see you in church" from HotPope@blasphemy.nu all sent via open Korean servers. Sigh.
  • Forging an email address is a criminal activity in California, regardless of whether or not it's commercial. It is a crime to:

    "Knowingly and without permission uses the Internet domain name of another individual, corporation, or entity in connection with the sending of one or more electronic mail messages, and thereby damages or causes damage to a computer, computer system, or computer network."

    Whoever forged the MSN address while really going through a Korean relay would seem to be a criminal.

  • How is spam (Score:3)

    by ahde ( 95143 ) on Friday March 01, 2002 @09:51PM (#3095794) Homepage
    any more annoying than all the political ads that used flood the airwaves right before an election.

    Notes:
    1) Now, thanks to the campaign finance reform bill (and Tauzin-Dingell), we don't have to watch any of this.

    2) Right. (and it'll pass the senate. The conference committee will slip in some extra uglies to "compromise")

    3) The candidates are actually paying the networks for the airtime, and if I don't like it I can vote with my Doritos and Pepsi somewhere else.

    4) Uh, the networks don't own the airtime, I do. Refer back to Telecomm Act 1997, etc.
  • I've heard "uncolisoted political email" (UPE, I guess) refered to as Tofu.

    Just passing allong the meme.
  • Half of my spam now says on it "THIS IS NOT SPAM, we are strongly opposed to spam". Apparently, if you just declare your spam non-spam, it is no longer spam.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The buzzword is 'spampaign^TM'.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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