Spam Kings by Brian S McWilliams Page A
Authors: Brian S McWilliams
Tags: COMPUTERS / General
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displayed Garst's business associate, 58-year-old Shary Valentine.
The photos showed Valentine posing in corny studio settings wearing a variety of teddies and
other revealing outfits. Also included at the site were two erotic short stories also
reportedly gleaned from Premier Services's hard disks.
The appearance of Behind Enemy Lines touched off a new debate in Nanae about the ethics
of hacking spammers.
"While that is exactly what we all dream about, the way these spammers' plugs were
pulled is NOT, repeat, NOT the way NANAEites should conduct business," wrote one newsgroup
participant. But some spam fighters, fearing that Behind Enemy Lines might be forced
offline, quickly "mirrored" (copied and republished) the site on their own web sites.
One of the first to publish notice of his mirror on Nanae, a Briton named John Payne,
soon received email from Garst requesting that he take down the mirror. Payne responded by
contacting her over AOL Instant Messenger.
"You do know I didn't have anything to do with the content, right?" he asked
Garst. [ 4 ]
But she still seemed under the impression that Payne was somehow connected to the Man in
the Wilderness.
"I intend to follow through with this legally, so any information you have would show
your cooperation," Garst told him.
Payne reiterated that he had no information and that his mirror was just thatâa copy of
the original site. "I note that you've not yet disputed the accusations," he added.
Garst took nearly a minute to reply.
"An investigator is currently on the case to discover as much information about this as
he can," she said.
Her response puzzled Payne. "About you, or the hacker?"
"The hacker obviously," she replied. "Direct email is not illegal and most of what he
claims my company has participated in is totally off base."
Payne tried to get her to talk about how she acquired her mailing lists and other
aspects of her business, but Garst was evasive.
"Gotta run...so nice to chat," she typed and signed off.
While Rodona Garst may have been eager to discover the identity of the Man in the
Wilderness, anti-spammers seemed reluctant to investigate too energetically. [ 5 ] They were focused instead on a large file lifted from Premier Services and
available at the Behind Enemy Lines site. According to the Man in the Wilderness, the
1.5-megabyte file, antifile.zip , contained a compressed archive of
addresses of anti-spammers that Garst's gang was afraid to spam. The company apparently used
it to "wash" its mailing lists so that spam fighters wouldn't receive Premier's ads and
complain. Nanae readers downloaded the file and pored over it, searching for their email
addresses among the more than 200,000 listed in the file.
"Wow, this is the first time I've been officially 'honored' by a spammer. Somehow I
feel...dirty," said a spam fighter named Cynthia upon learning that she made the list. "I'm
so proud, one of my spam-fighting addresses made the list, but none of my spam traps," wrote
another Nanae participant, who, like many anti-spammers, had signed up for email accounts
specifically in the hope that they would provide fodder for abuse reports.
Others saw the list as a sure sign that junk emailers were fearful of anti-spammers.
"Someone went to a lot of effort to put together that list. If fighting spam was as
ineffective as people claim, no one would go to the effort," was the conclusion of one
anti-spammer.
Although Shiksaa had only been in the spam wars for little over a year, her AOL and
Hotmail email addresses both made Garst's anti list. She realized that many of the addresses
apparently had been compiled simply by harvesting Nanae addresses; even emails belonging to
retired spammer Sanford Wallace and spamware vendor Andrew Brunner made the list. And a good
portion of the roster seemed to have been compiled from previous compendiums of anti-spammer
addresses and was thus out of
The photos showed Valentine posing in corny studio settings wearing a variety of teddies and
other revealing outfits. Also included at the site were two erotic short stories also
reportedly gleaned from Premier Services's hard disks.
The appearance of Behind Enemy Lines touched off a new debate in Nanae about the ethics
of hacking spammers.
"While that is exactly what we all dream about, the way these spammers' plugs were
pulled is NOT, repeat, NOT the way NANAEites should conduct business," wrote one newsgroup
participant. But some spam fighters, fearing that Behind Enemy Lines might be forced
offline, quickly "mirrored" (copied and republished) the site on their own web sites.
One of the first to publish notice of his mirror on Nanae, a Briton named John Payne,
soon received email from Garst requesting that he take down the mirror. Payne responded by
contacting her over AOL Instant Messenger.
"You do know I didn't have anything to do with the content, right?" he asked
Garst. [ 4 ]
But she still seemed under the impression that Payne was somehow connected to the Man in
the Wilderness.
"I intend to follow through with this legally, so any information you have would show
your cooperation," Garst told him.
Payne reiterated that he had no information and that his mirror was just thatâa copy of
the original site. "I note that you've not yet disputed the accusations," he added.
Garst took nearly a minute to reply.
"An investigator is currently on the case to discover as much information about this as
he can," she said.
Her response puzzled Payne. "About you, or the hacker?"
"The hacker obviously," she replied. "Direct email is not illegal and most of what he
claims my company has participated in is totally off base."
Payne tried to get her to talk about how she acquired her mailing lists and other
aspects of her business, but Garst was evasive.
"Gotta run...so nice to chat," she typed and signed off.
While Rodona Garst may have been eager to discover the identity of the Man in the
Wilderness, anti-spammers seemed reluctant to investigate too energetically. [ 5 ] They were focused instead on a large file lifted from Premier Services and
available at the Behind Enemy Lines site. According to the Man in the Wilderness, the
1.5-megabyte file, antifile.zip , contained a compressed archive of
addresses of anti-spammers that Garst's gang was afraid to spam. The company apparently used
it to "wash" its mailing lists so that spam fighters wouldn't receive Premier's ads and
complain. Nanae readers downloaded the file and pored over it, searching for their email
addresses among the more than 200,000 listed in the file.
"Wow, this is the first time I've been officially 'honored' by a spammer. Somehow I
feel...dirty," said a spam fighter named Cynthia upon learning that she made the list. "I'm
so proud, one of my spam-fighting addresses made the list, but none of my spam traps," wrote
another Nanae participant, who, like many anti-spammers, had signed up for email accounts
specifically in the hope that they would provide fodder for abuse reports.
Others saw the list as a sure sign that junk emailers were fearful of anti-spammers.
"Someone went to a lot of effort to put together that list. If fighting spam was as
ineffective as people claim, no one would go to the effort," was the conclusion of one
anti-spammer.
Although Shiksaa had only been in the spam wars for little over a year, her AOL and
Hotmail email addresses both made Garst's anti list. She realized that many of the addresses
apparently had been compiled simply by harvesting Nanae addresses; even emails belonging to
retired spammer Sanford Wallace and spamware vendor Andrew Brunner made the list. And a good
portion of the roster seemed to have been compiled from previous compendiums of anti-spammer
addresses and was thus out of
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