 on wednesday august NUMBER NUMBER at NUMBER NUMBER pm daniel quinlan wrote just a few notes it will be difficult to find prosecute and win money from someone in various non friendly countries where spam originates china is a good example even if they do officially respect copyright law a lot of spam which appears to originate from china and even a lot which advertises websites hosted there is sent by and is done for the benefit of companies based in the us the spam often appears to originate there because it s coming from open http or squid proxy servers it s hosted there because these spammers are now persona non grata on all us isps one hardly needs to involve the chinese government in a case where a us citizen is violating us law law suits take time between now and conclusion of the first court case we could have years of spam in our mail boxes the first court cases were actually concluded years ago these include many legal precedents which are used to protect the rights of isps to block mail and to terminate service to spammers contact information can change phone numbers po boxes stolen cell phones temporary email addresses etc surprising then how much information you can find on the current whereabouts of long time spammers like alan ralksy of detroit michigan ralsky is a guy who even gives interviews to the news media if you can connect a specific corpus of spam to him his street address is well known ralsky is a prime candidate for lawsuits in any state with an anti spam law thomas cowles is another long time spammer but last i heard he d been jailed for stealing computer equipment from his business partner eddy marin also a long time spammer you ve heard of poplaunch right spammers do not always remember to include contact information i don t understand it either but nobody said they were bright also some spam is non commercial or sent by a third party for example pump and dump stock scams so contact information is not strictly required for the spammer to get their way back when i was working at maps there was a flap over a pump and dump spammer rodona garst seems she had an open file share on her laptop and when she forged the wrong domain the real owner hacked in and posted all her private information on a website oh look it s still there including the nude photos URL i recall this well because the sec was very interested in confirming the validity of the information found online there were some interesting conversations this summer the sec released the following URL yes the investigation took two years but the financial penalty for operating a pump and dump scam isn t small the wheels of government grind slow but the grind very fine indeed b this URL email is sponsored by jabber the world s fastest growing real time communications platform don t just im build it in URL _______________________________________________ spamassassin talk mailing list spamassassin talk URL URL 