Websites
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE)National Conference of State Legislatures - Links to CAN-SPAM Act and state laws; claims to be updated as of Feb. 10, 2010.
Net-abuse Google Group
Spam Poison - This site has amusing snips of code that it claims will "redirect email harvesting bots to trap sites that will feed it with an almost infinite loop of dynamically generated fake email addresses, mostly on known spammer owned domains! This will render their harvested lists practically useless and of no commercial value." I always approve of using the bad guys' own tools against them.
Reading Material
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Spam Kings goes very behind-the-scenes
into some notable spammers, including Davis Hawke and Scotty
Richter. I’ve
personally tangled with a few of the low-lifes depicted in the
book. Here's the Amazon description: With monikers like Shiksaa, Dr. F******, Mad Pierre and Terri Tickle, the subjects of McWilliams's debut often sound cut straight from pulp or comic-book noir farce – despite being real. A brisk narrative sets immediately on the trail of one of them: Davis Hawke, a chess-geek neo-Nazi turned spam lord. We also meet Shiksaa, a frustrated AOL user turned antispam vigilante who, along with a posse of like-minded netizens, fights running battles with spammers like Hawke, the man behind countless herbal Viagra offers and get-rich-quick schemes. McWilliams, an experienced business and technology reporter, manages, at his best, to make stories of people glued to their computers read like a thriller. His true (if virtual) crime tale's quick pacing and use of online exchanges provide relief from details of how, technically, spam kings operate (not always gripping moments: "Hawke purchased and downloaded a copy of Extractor Pro from the company's Web site"). This helps McWilliams pull a lively tale from the messy web of computer-geek criminality and righteous antispammer reprisal – and one from which spam-beleaguered computer users may take heart. |
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Inside the SPAM Cartel Spammer_X, as edited by security expert Posluns, offers no regrets for his misspent life but does offer penance by way of describing how spam and spammers work, including how they set up their marks and deliver messages through proxy servers, messenger systems, and stolen IP blocks. He shows how spammers and crackers work together to get inside information and verify lists. He then describes how spammers prepare texts and formats and encode messages that will be opened and read by the uninitiated. He has the unmitigated gall of including a chapter about how to get paid as a spammer, and then gets down to ways to thwart spam through filtering, advanced spam evasion techniques, the law in the form of CAN-SPAM and other possibilities for revenge, and spam's real cost and other statistics. Distributed in the US by O’Reilly. |
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Spam Wars: Our Last, Best Chance to Defeat Spammers, Scammers
and Hackers Spammers, scammers, and hackers are destroying electronic mail. The email inbox that once excited you with messages from friends, family, and business prospects now causes outright dread and rage. With unsolicited and unwelcome email accounting for as much as 80% of the world's email traffic, it's time for all email users to act to turn the tide in this epic battle for their privacy and sanity. Spam Wars veteran, award-winning technology interpreter, Danny Goodman, exposes the often criminal tricks that spammers, scammers, and hackers play on the email system, even with the wariest of users. He also explains why the latest anti-spam technologies and laws can't do the whole job. Spam Wars provides the readers with the additional insight, not only to protect themselves from attack, but more importantly to help choke off the economies that power today's time-wasting email floods. Spam Wars puts to rest many popular misconceptions and myths about email, while giving readers the knowledge that email attackers don't want you to have. Danny Goodman's crystal-clear writing can turn any email user into a well-armed spam warrior. |
