For a full list of today's Salon Technology stories, go to the Technology home page. We don't know if it will be enough to show that the spam always came from the same home phone and that there were several credit cards and e-mails registered to that address. In other words, Dayman isn't sure if he can tie the spam to the spammer. And ironically, despite his doubts, Dayman is closer to winning that game than he realizes. At least he's caught some personal information.
Most serious spammers manage to completely avoid giving up such data, say systems administrators.
Indeed, several options are available. Speed is one. Many spammers send thousands, even millions of e-mails from one address, then shut down quickly before someone like Anderson at Redshift blocks them, or before they're added to MAPS Realtime Blackhole List, which blocks all mail coming from ISPs that have allowed spammers to use their networks and going to networks run by RBL members. Others fake their identities. And if it's not an international address they're sending from, it's often a stolen one.