Russian Minister Gets Spammed, Spams Back

elhim writes "According to an article in the Moscow Times: 'Spammers last week got on the wrong side of the wrong man, and quickly found themselves with a taste of their own medicine. The man? Deputy Communications Minister Andrei Korotkov. Tired of the endless spate of unsolicited messages that clog e-mail systems everywhere, [Korotkov and others devised] ...an audio message to be volleyed nonstop to the telephone numbers listed in the... [email] spam messages.' Sometimes Russia reminds me of the Wild West."

So the numbers is real?

[dizzy_p]

I've always thought everything was bogus.

I'll order the penis enlargement pills right away.

--dpr

Phone numbers?

[minghe]

First of all. A spam message with real, working means of contacting the sender? Why din't I ever get that? Only in Russia, I say.

And second, that guy is hereby my god.

Wild West - not quite

[Eric Ass Raymond]

They could have sent out two 250-pound gorillas called Igor and Radek instead of an audio message.

Wrong Number?

[Mooncaller]

Just hope the numbers in the email are correct!

BTW, Russia had its wild east. While we had our mountain man era, the Russian had theirs, except they were going in the other direction. The parellels continue untill the turn of the century!

Re:Phone numbers?

[Uart]

sorry, Yakov Smirnoff had to take a week off, filling in for him will be Jeff Foxworthy:

"You might be a Soviet Russian if..."

Russian Rules of the Game

[some1somewhere]

You really, really don't want to get on the wrong side of Big Brother in Russia, China, and many other not-so-free countries.

I'd tell you about the story of what happened to the phone spammer in China that kept pestering a government office, but then I'd have to kill you... or someone'd do me.

So long story short... get the spammers to spam top government officials in Russia, China, N. Korea, and so forth... heck... maybe they'll drop a nuke on the spammers, and solve the problem for good!

Ha, ha.

Go on, say it

[darnok]

OK, I will

Phone rings: "Let this be a warning to you: in Soviet Russia, spam *recipient* drives you crazy"

Hang up

Phone rings...

Re:Russian Rules of the Game

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe they'll drop a nuke on the spammers, and solve the problem for good!

No nukes please.. medical research needs human subjects too!

The Group Against Harmful Programs

[mccalli]

Now this I like the sound of. From the article:
"With the brainstorming help of the Group Against Harmful Programs...".

The Group Against Harmful Programs. Wonderful. Sort of like the Fantastic Four, or the X-Men. Sounds like the sort of thing Tron would belong to. "That's Tron, he fights for the users under the banner of the Group Against Harmful Programs"...

Cheers,
Ian

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Jucius Maximus]

... victims spam YOU!

Please let me be the first one to have said that ...

Poor man

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the Deputy Communications Minister of Russia have a secretary?

Logarithms suck

[lovebyte]

From the article:
Spammers have ways to get around anti-spam filters, he said, but it's possible to collect patterns from their e-mails and block certain logarithms.

What's the point? They will use polynoms! Oh.. I guess they meant algorithms.

Re:So the numbers is real?

[gerddie]

But you already know, what you will get! [userfriendly.org]

Gulag Archipelago

[AtariAmarok]

If there ever was a group of people that should be sent to the Gulag, it's spammers.

Make $$$ fast

[Anonymous Coward]

A smart spammer would be using 0900 numbers... Make

• me

money fast!!! Just call 0900-555-555 (calls cost $9.99 per minute, children/ministers please ask your parents/president first)

Top 6 Russian Spams

[AtariAmarok]

6. Ukrainian farm girls and animals. free web membership

5. Enlarge your putin today!

4. If you order today, you get a free Russian space shuttle [space.com]

3. Free Vacation in Chechnya, Enlist today!

2. Out of work Russian comedian, will work for food. E-mail [e-mail]

1. Meet beautiful American wives!

Re:Wild West... Russia?

[gerddie]

From here in Japan, heading west, we run into the USA.
Certainly, only you have to cross Russia, Europe, and the Atlantic Ocean.

--
If your way the compass can not keep
three pearls of wisdom to thee do I give.

Re:Russian Rules of the Game

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

I thought everyone knew Echelon runs spamassassin..

This is a Public Service Announcement

[tankdilla]

For those of you new to Slashdot and fellow veteran Slashdotters, this is a PSA. As we all know there are many running jokes around here, i.e. the CowboyNeal option, 1. stupid action 2. ??? 3. Profit, beowulf clusters of everything, insensitive clod, and of course the most recently added SCO jokes, as well as many others I'm forgetting. By far, one of the most annoying of the running gags is IN SOVIET RUSSIA! Being that this story is about Russia, be warned that a veritable slew of IN SOVIET RUSSIA jokes follow this post. Any and everyone has come out of the woodworks with bat in hand for the communal beating of a dead horse. So for those with bats, swing away, today is your day. For the rest of us, strap in and enjoy the bumpy ride of redundancy.

Don't spam the people in power....

[dspisak]

for they find annoying people & problems crunchy and rather tasty.

In Soviet Russia, spam spams you back!

Re:Spam must contain a real contact method

[iapetus]

Of course, if I were a spammer, I wouldn't remove you from the list. I'd just move your contact details to the Reply-To: header. :)

Re:The biggest cost to them is toll free fax

[Trent05]

Another fun trick was to use a standard fax machine with a continuous loop of paper. Let that baby run for about 10-15 minutes and you'll create a lot of clutter on the receiver's end.

Just make sure you are using black construction paper.

Re:Wild West - not quite

[trikberg]

Very disappointing really. I was

- praying for "shock and awe".
- hoping for bunker busters.
- expecting at least a few tanks.
- prepared to be slightly dissapointed by a few snipers.

But phone messages? Sheesh. Russia just isn't what it used to be.

Re:More money for the spammer ???

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't like to be the Russian Deputy Communications Minister when his mom sees the phone bill.

Since when is sci-fi defined by films?

[SubliminalLove]

In Soviet Russia, the dead horse beats you.

Re:This is a Public Service Announcement

[fenix down]

In Soviet Russia, the announcement services the public.

Or else it's The People. Do communists have any public? Maybe there's a Public.

In Soviet Russia...

[poptones]

we already ate the horse - and we don't HAVE bats, you insensitive clod!

Re:UK Spam

[MythMoth]

If there's a phone number, then leaflet all of the phone boxes in the Kings Cross area with it advertising their "services"...

D.

Re:Stupid and Childish

[Rogerborg]

How do you telephone an email address? Well at least we know who's dumb enough to actually buy things from spam, assuming that you can figure out what the ringing thing on your desk is.

useful

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have his email address? I need to send him a few mails with the phonenumber of my ex.

Re:The Group Against Harmful Programs

[gclef]

So, what, they don't use GOTO?

To Sum This All Up

[Bruha]

Ring Ring!

Oh A customer!
(picks up phone)

Ni!

Re:Russian Rules of the Game

[Anonymous Coward]

Very arrogant putting Russia among the communistic dictator countries it is a democratic country with free elections just as US.

Very arrogant to put the US among democratic and free countries such as Russia.

Re:Phone numbers?

[AndroidCat]

Miscrosoft could send out porn spam and put Mozilla's phone number

So by getting a huge number of people angry enough to call (or wanting to buy) this would be an .. MS-DDOS .. ?

Re:useful

[Kosi]

Posting it here should do as well. Would that be the first /.ted phoneline, then?

Wild West

[Wordsmith]

Was there a lot of spam in the wild west?

Re:The biggest cost to them is toll free fax

[farnsaw]

> Another fun trick was to use a standard fax machine with a continuous loop of paper.

Be sure to use black construction paper. If they are using paper fax, the ink/toner will cost much more than the paper very quickly.

Better yet, use a computer and a fax modem.

To be truly cruel, scan a real document (wait for it) and then use Photoshop or some other software to smear the bottom half of the page. Then fax them this. It will make them think something is wrong with their fax machine, especially if you can send it from several different fax machines. (just change the info on your software and dialout from different phone lines). Then report that their machine is broken and watch them panic.

At one point I had too much time on my hands and a hate of Faxed Spam....

Re:Beware the Joe-Job

[Pig Hogger]

If the spammer choses to retaliate, they could find themselves on the recieving end of some policemen that figure it is ok to beat the fuck out of a suspect.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA...

suspects fuck the shit out of the beat.

A person could really start some trouble

[kmilani2134]

Wondering what would happen if you spammed this Russian politician and placed the number for the White House or some other important number in the body of the spam. I bet George W. would like it if the Russians were spamming his office. :)

Re:Don't spam the people in power....

[TheRaven64]

In Soviet Russia, spam spams you back!

No, I think you'll find this happened in capitalis Russia. In Soviet Russia the spammer would have been invited by some nice men from the KGB to go and play with their thumb screws, then sent on an all expenses paid holiday to Siberia. Don't you miss the good old days?

Re:I once tried something similar

[Anonymous Coward]

Little did you know that the spammer was the Uzbekistan phone company.

Re:Spam

[i chose quality]

i prefer a roll of toilet paper. write "please hold the line..." on the first paper. then, if it is almost through, tape the first to the last paper...

:)
revenge is sweet...

Re:A person could really start some trouble

[suwain_2]

The next day, he "discovers" that Russia's buying some nukes from Niger... :)

Re:A person could really start some trouble

[shaldannon]

Given Russia's present economic condition, I think you meant to use the word "selling" :)

Re:This is a Public Service Announcement

[Rai]

1. Image a beowulf cluster of insensitive CowboyNeal clods in Soviet Russia
2. ???
3. SCO Profits

Finally a "Profit" plan with no "?" step!

[Animus Howard]

1) Change your phone number to a 976 number, where the caller is automatically charged $49.95 just for connecting.

2) Spam the Russian Deputy Communications Minister.

3) Allow the Russian Deputy Communications Minister to tie up your phones for several days.

4) Profit!!!


P.S. In Russia, spam profits YOU!

Re:SETI-style spammer bamming

[BigBadBri]

I can see the defence lawyer now -

Your Honour, my client was so excited by the prospect of increased penis girth that he inadvertently leant on his 'F5' key while reading the plaintiff's web page.

Blocking Logarithms, eh?

[EvilStickMan]

"Spammers have ways to get around anti-spam filters, he said, but it's possible to collect patterns from their e-mails and block certain logarithms."

Yes, how dare those spammers try to calculate the correct power of a number. I'm surprised that so many spammers use the same kind of mathematical equation in their e-mail....

Re:Spam

[ShadowBlasko]

"i prefer a roll of toilet paper. write "please hold the line..." on the first paper. then, if it is almost through, tape the first to the last paper..."

Not bad, although I prefer to use a ribbon made of BLACK paper. As long as I am going to annoy the fax spammer, I am going to eat up as much toner/ink as I possibly can along with his paper.

Just a thought.

Shadow