Spam King to Sing For Feds?

Vainglorious Coward writes "Infoworld is repeating the rumours that Alan 'spam king' Ralsky has been arrested by the Feds. With the file sealed for 72 hours, the article claims the underworld is abuzz with concern that, faced with enough evidence to put him in jail, Ralsky will squeal on his associates. We should know in the next couple of days whether any of the roaches scurrying for cover are going to get stomped."

finally...

[Beuno]

Finally they stopped chasing petty warez and went after people who actually profit and annoy the hell out of everyone else...

Of flying objects and domiciles

[GaryOlson]

Those who live in toilet paper houses should not fling poo else they find themselves being used to wipe the backside of someone bigger and meaner.

I have no idea how this statement applies; it just seems appropriate.

Re:Pop quiz: which of these wastes more time?

[TheRaven64]

Slashdot wastes more of my time than most other things. The difference is that Slashdot:

1. Is opt-in.
2. Is entertaining

Spam is neither of these things.

no point in playing whack-a-mole

[v1]

When legitimate businesses hire cockroaches to do their "dirty work" of spamming, the roaches aren't worth going after. You can stomp them all day and they just keep coming for the easy money. And they're hard to hit and they know it.

You have to go after the businesses that hire the scum.

I am trying that currently. In September I submitted an email address to Ford's "have a dealer in your area contact you about a Hybrid". I got several responses from dealers. Three weeks ago, that email address (which I made specially for that purpose) started receiving spam, one per day. I sent a nastygram to Ford and the dealers that responded to me asking who it was that sold my email address, in violation of their privacy policy as stated on their web site. One of the dealers replied, but the rest of the dealers AND Ford ignored my emails.

Since then I have tried other emails to two of Ford's complaint addresses. One was ignored, and the other bounced with a "relaying denied" error.

They know they are selling us out, and they really don't care. Businesses don't care about anything that doesn't cost them money, and if it MAKES them money, they care even less. Until it affects their wallet in the form of fines, legislation, and accountability, it won't stop.

In my case it actually looks like the company that Ford pays to run their "have a dealer contact you" page ("morpace.com") is actually the one that is harvesting the email addresses that Ford's customers enter on the web page.. they forward your requet to the dealers per their business arrangement with Ford, AND add your name to their own internal spam mailing list that activates a few months later so you don't suspect their client (Ford) of having sold you out. You'd think that if Ford found out about this they'd be pissed and that would hit someone in the wallet, but so far my complaints have fallen only on deaf ears. I'm going to try calling them on Monday to see if anyone cares, though I'm guessing "no".

It amazes me that Ford would risk pissing off a customer that is looking to buy a $28,000 product from them over maybe a quarter made by selling their email address to spammers.