Spam News

Note: See The Spam Diaries for all news more recent than 2005.

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And Now, The News

For more information, see Yahoo news article Court Lets Univ. of Texas Block Spam.

4 Jan 2006: Iowa ISP wins $11 billion judgement against a Florida spammer. See Quad-City Times article Clinton Internet provider wins $11B suit against spammer.

27 Dec 2005: Hacker who controlled a network of over 400,000 zombie computers has been arrested. See Spam Daily News article Alleged zombie master arrested.

15 Dec 2005: First spammers shut down under Florida's 2004 anti-spam law. See Consumer Affairs article Florida Shuts Down Illegal Spam, Internet Operations.

8 Dec 2005: California spammer AvTech Direct was sued for $3 million dollars for spamming the Seattle public school district. See Seattle PI article $3 million in fines for spamming school district and netnews thread $3 million in fines for spamming school district.

17 Nov 2005: British spammer gets 6 years in slammer. See BBC article Spammer jailed for £1.6m net scam, ZDNet article UK spammer jailed over £1.6m scam, and Register article 'Vindictive' UK spammer jailed for six years.

See related articles linked to from the Register article for other stories about this spammer going back a year.

10 Nov 2005: A U.S. court has shut down three companies for installing spyware. The companies are Enternet Media Inc., Conspy & Co., and iwebtunes See Reuters article 3 companies shut down on spyware charges for more details.

5 Nov 2005: UDP was discussed on news.admin.net-abuse.usenet against twister.auna.com. See netnews thread "[UDP] twister.auna.com"

16 Oct 2005: Alan Ralsky has been raided by the FBI. See Detroit News article FBI puts stop to spam king

25 Aug 2005: Another spammer in the slammer: Christopher William Smith, who made a fortune selling drugs via internet spam has been arrested on more than a dozen federal charges. See ABC News article Minn. Spammer Indicted on Pharmacy Charges

9 Aug 2005: Scott Richter, owner of OptinRealBig.com has agreed to pay Microsoft $7 million to settle a lawsuit. See Reuters article Microsoft settles suit against one-time 'spam king'

24 June 2005: Australians spammer Wayne Mansfield to be prosecuted. See ZDNet article ACA to prosecute alleged spammer

18 April 2005: Internet service provider Hypertouch has sued Kraft and Gevalia over Coffee Spam. See press release.

8 April 2005: Jeremy Jaynes, aka Gaven Stubberfield Has been sentenced to 9 years for spamming. See ABC News article Judge Sentences Spammer to Nine Years

29 Mar 2005: Scott Richter is filing for bankruptcy after being sued by Microsoft. See Denver Post article E-mailer says suits drove it bankrupt

13 Dec 2004: Eddy Marin is now suing his former lawyer Mark Felstein Details of the suit are unknown at this time. See Broward County courthouse record. and older news.

18 Oct 2004: Good article in PC World showing that Quicken Loans and Ameriquest are still spamming. See Spam Slayer

1 June 2004: The Buffalo Spammer, Howard Carmack, has been convicted of 14 counts of forgery, fraud, identity theft and other crimes and was sent to prison yesterday. See TheInquirer article Spammer seven years in the can.

10 Oct 2003: First lawsuits have been filed under Missouri's no-spam law. See St. Louis Business Journal article Nixon files first suits under state's No Spam law for more information.

8 Aug 2003: Good article on MSNBC on mortgage spam. See MSNBC article Who profits from spam? Surprise

1 Aug 2003: Jason Vale, the laetril spammer has been jailed. See Queens Chronicle article Bellerose Man Convicted Of Selling Apricot Pits As Remedy

17 July 2003: Jason Vale, the laetril spammer is on trial in New York for contempt of court. See Newsday article Queens Man Who Peddled Apricot-pit Cancer Cure on Trial.

14 May 2003: The "Buffalo Spammer", Howard Carmack, nas been arrested in New York for fraud. See Register article Buffalo Spammer arrested, Houston Chronicle article N.Y. officials say 'Buffalo Spammer' arrested, and Reuters article NY Attorney General Says Buffalo Spammer Arrested,

April 2003: Florida Spam Lawyer Mark Felstein is suing Spamhaus and SPEWS in a SLAPP lawsuit. See Spamhaus web page, Legal Udates, PC World article E-Mail Marketers Sue Antispammers, Cauce article Spamcon Foundation sets up legal fund for anti-spammers, Register article Florida spammers sue anti-spam groups, Wired article No Truce in the Spam Wars, Email Universe article Anti-Spammers Won't Let Lawsuit Drop, Register article Spam fighters defeat nuisance junk mail lawsuit, Steve Linford announcement on usenet, PC World article Antispam Activists Win (and Lose) in Court, http://www.wellbornlaw.com/, Marks & Katz, LLC (several useful references),

25 Mar 2003: A Michigan man has successfully sued Sears for spam under the Junk Fax law. For more details, see Michigan Man Uses Junk FAX Law to Sue Sears Over Spam and SlashDot article Michigander Beats Spammer With "Junk Fax" Law.

17 Dec 2002: AOL has won $7M from spammer CN Productions. See Register article AOL wins $7m in porn spam case.

12 June 2002: T3 Direct has been disconnected by WebCentral. See Australian IT article Web Central cans alleged spammer.

10 June 2002: T3 Direct has been disconnected by their network service provider, Swiftel. See Australian IT article Alleged spammer taken offline.

30 May 2002: An australian spammer, T3 Direct, is suing Joseph McNichol for causing them to be listed with SPEWS. Read the full story at ZDNet Australia: Aussie spammer sues anti-spammer in world-first case.

7 May 2002: Motorola has won its suit against Digital Wireless Technologies (AKA "Paging America", the "paging" spammer) For more details, see internetnews article Motorola Wins Spam Skirmish

6 May 2002: Paetec has finally won the right to disconnect Monsterhut See http://litigation.paetec.net for more information.

29 April 2002: Amusing article at Newsday.com: His Love of Spam's No Scam. It describes Jonathan Land's TheSpamLetters.com web site, wherein he engages spammers in bizarre conversations.

9 April 2002: The BBC reports that the legal firm Morrison and Foerster is suing Etracks over spam. They want $50 for each spam received.

3 April 2002: Excellent article in C|Net today. Time to put a stop to spam.

21 Mar 2002: An email marketing firm has filed suit against two email list providers for providing dirty lists. See Newsbytes article Spammer Sues E-mail List Providers for more details.

12 Mar 2002: Courts shut down "dot-usa" spammers. See CNN article Court shuts down '.usa' Web address scam

8 Mar 2002: Netscape version 6 has been revealed to contain spyware. See Newsbytes article Netscape Navigator Browser Snoops On Web Searches. In short, whenever you use the browser's built-in search features, even when using 3rd-party search engines like Google, the browser logs your search terms and your IP address and sends this information to Netscape. Users can avoid being spied upon by manually typing the search engine url into the browser and not using Netscape search services.

4 Mar 2002: California gubernatorial candidate Bill Jones has lost his web site for spamming. Read all about it at Virtual Sprockets web site.

30 Jan 2002: Xs4all.nl is suing spammer Abfab. See http://www.xs4all.nl/nieuws/overzicht/abfab.html

22 Jan 2002: Thanks in part to Steve linford, Sprint has posted a new AUP

22 Jan 2002: Australian IT reports that anti-spam measures are being taken in Australia. See article Anti-spam plan to track net users

16 Jan 2002: OzEmail, Australia's second largest internet provider has been blocked by NetZero. Read Australian IT article US internet giant blocks OzEmail

27 Aug 2001: Three members of the Exodus board of directors have resigned. See InfoWorld article Bellwether Exodus' sale speculation points to Web hosting turmoil

1 June 2001: Motorola has filed suit against Digital Wireless Technologies (AKA "Paging America", the "paging" spammer) Apparently the email spam advertised a Motorola pager, when in fact the pager was made by another company. For more details, see c|net article Motorola files spam lawsuit

14 May 2001: AT&T has been added to the RBL due to prolonged spam coming from one of their net blocks. A pink contract is suspected. For more information, see C|Net article AT&T hand caught in spam jar?

18 April 2001: Anton F. Pusztai, the Viagra spammer has been arrested. See Smh.com.au article Australian Viagra Mogul indicted to US

5 April 2001: "Tickle Terri" is now known to be David P. D'Amato, an assistant high school principal from Long Island, New York. See CityPaper.net article Who's Laughing Now

22 Mar 2001: Great article in the LA Times about spam and opt-out. After Spam, Baloney to Swallow.

5 Mar 2001: Media 3 has failed to get an injunction against MAPS. The judge has ruled that MAPS has made a strong case that Media 3 is "spam-friendly". Full text of court decision at bna.com.

26 Feb 2001: Sanford Wallace has been caught using Internet Explorer security holes in a dishonest marketing scheme. See C|Net article Browser hijackings upset security pundits

2 Feb 2001: AllAdvantage has gone under. See C|Net article Sweepstakes site awards its last prize

18 Jan 2001: More on the massive spam that crashed Pipex's email servers. See Wired article

16 Jan 2001: Norway Bans Spam. See SlashDot article Norway Bans Spam and VG article

3 Jan 2001: AOL is suing a company that operates a porn site and spams AOL members. Read all about it at C|Net.

7 Nov 2000: It has been confirmed that PSI has been writing Pink Contracts See:

• C|Net article
• Text of Contract
• PSI response

2 Nov 2000: It has been confirmed that AT&T has been writing Pink Contracts See:

• Original netnews article
• Copy of contract.
• AT&T Official Response.
• c|net news article
• AT&T response to c|net

More information:

Important facts which AT&T are hoping won't be picked up on, are that to get AT&T to tear that contract up it took a massive amount of spam complaints lasting 5 months, and the placing of two AT&T class C's on the RBL. Even then AT&T moved the spam outfit into a new class C under a different name which then took another 3 months of complaints and RBL nominations for that. For _8_ solid months AT&T gave the anti-spam community the runaround, binning our complaints to honor this pink contract. During all that time AT&T management knew what they were doing was wrong and highly unethical, and yet they just carried on.

From the source we now understand that AT&T sought a court order to prevent that contract from being leaked last week, but on the same day the CNET story broke.

27 Oct 2000: The New York Times has an article on "mainsleaze" spam. See Lessons in Spam: A Nordstrom E-Mail Goes Astray

5 Sept 2000: Amazon.com may be about to sell its customer's personal data. See CNN article Amazon to share customer data

27 Aug 2000: Good article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the problems with Telstra. See Telstra on black list because of spamming.

18 Aug 2000: Talk has begun on "de-peering" corecom.net. This is a passive UDP. See netnews article (fwd) Please Terminate Newsfeed for Corecomm LTD.

17 Aug 2000: Text of Harris' complaint against MAPS is now available on-line at the MAPS website.

8 Aug 2000: Harris has retracted its press release and no longer claims that AOL has caved in. See Yahoo message CLARIFICATION of BW2679, NY-HARRIS-INTERACTIVE

Contrary to our earlier release, Harris Interactive's dropping of AOL from the litigation is not contingent upon any agreement between AOL and Harris Interactive regarding the delivery of Harris Interactive's e-mail to its 1.3 million AOL members; however, Harris Interactive believes that it is now able to fully communicate with all of its registered respondents who have AOL e-mail addresses.

8 Aug 2000: Harris claims that AOL has caved in to the lawsuit from Harris polling. See Yahoo article Harris drops lawsuit against AOL

28 July 2000: EBay has won a $1.2M lawsuit against ReverseAuction for harvesting the user id's and email addresses of EBay customers. Full details at WiReD magazine: Spammer Pays Up at EBay

26 July 2000: YesMail has backed down in its lawsuit against MAPS. See Yahoo news article yesmail.com and MAPS Agree To Put Litigation On Hold.

24 July 2000: Porn-spammer Xpics got their hand slapped by the FTC for credit card fraud. Full story at MSNBC: Porn site settles bill scam complaint.

21 July 2000: MAPS has issued a press release about the temporary restraining order filed by YesMail. MAPS was unable to respond previously due to a gag order imposed in the TRO.

19 July 2000: Real Networks has been caught distributing spyware again. See netnews article Caught illegally snooping, Real Networks makes Cartoony Threats against Steve Gibson.

18 July 2000: Email marketing company YesMail has obtained a restraining order against MAPS to prevent MAPS from listing YesMail in the RBL. See WiReD article Yesmail Fights Blacklist Threat for more.

18 July 2000: AllAdvantage.com has laid off 60 workers. See C|Net news article Pay-to-surf company lays off 60 for full story.

18 July 2000: Anti-spam bill HR 3113 has passed the house vote. For more information, see CAUCE web page

13 July 2000: On-line credit card verification company IBill has been returned to the MAPS Realtime Blackhole List for spam support. IBill is the credit-card processor of choice for porn spammers.

13 July 2000: Computer cracker Raymond Torricelli was arrested Wednesday on computer-cracking charges. Most interesting is the fact that he was hiring himself out to spammers. Full article at Ziff-Davis: Man busted for NASA high-tech mayhem

14 June 2000: 120 people have been arrested on stock fraud charges, including pumping stocks on the internet via spam. Full article at the San Francisco Chronicle.

6 June 2000: Jason Garon of Mission Viejo, CA was charged with forgery related to spam email. See New York Times article Man Charged With Forgery in E-Mail Scheme. The New York Times requires that you register, but this is benign.

6 June 2000: The domain name "internet.com" was hijacked by "tucows.com". Read all about it in New York Times article Internet.com Says Its Domain Name Was 'Hijacked'. This looks to be another NIS screwup. In addition, Bali.com and Web.net were both hijacked last week.

4 June 2000: It has been revealed that AT&T enters into contracts with known spammers exempting them from their AUP. See netnews article AT&T writes pink contracts, confirmed!

19 May 2000: Woodside spammers Ursula Sprachmann and James Leonard have pleaded guilty in federal court. See netnews article Woodside Pleads Guilty for full info.

25 Apr 2000: A spammer known as csmckinley.com recently sent out a massive spam, mentioning CAUCE as if CAUCE were somehow affiliated with the spam. CAUCE is not amused. See their web page for more.

21 Apr 2000: AOL is blocking email from Pac Bell because of spam. Read all about it in The San Francisco Chronicle.

21 Mar 2000: Writer Jerry Pournelle has written a column in Byte magazine about spam and mailbombs.

2 Mar 2000: iBill has been added to the RBL. See netnews article Ibill on the RBL.

29 Feb 2000: Agis has filed chapter 11 bankruptcy. See Ziff-Davis article AGIS seeks bankruptcy protection. Of special interest is this paragraph:

AGIS' trouble doesn't come as a complete surprise, since the company has experienced managerial turmoil from the time AGIS management decided to open its backbone to spammers -- operators of unsolicited bulk messaging firms. The policy, eventually abandoned by AGIS, made the company a pariah in the Internet community.

22 Feb 2000: Big Star Entertainment is threatening to sue the MAPS project over its inclusion in the RBL. Read all about it at Big Star Entertainment, Inc. v. MAPS.

14 Jan 2000: CNN is covering the UDP. See article @Home threatened with discussion-group blackballing.

14 Jan 2000: C|Net is covering the @Home UDP. See article Usenet may block Excite@Home users.

14 Jan 2000: Wired: Dead ISP Walking

13 Jan 2000: @Home has announced that they will now deal with the spam problem. See netnews article Re: [usenet] Response to Usenet Death Penalty Notice: @Home Network

12 Jan 2000: UDP announced against @Home. See netnews article [usenet] Usenet Death Penalty Notice: @Home Network UDP scheduled to take effect 18 Jan 2000.

14 Dec 1999: Interesting article in New York Law Journal today; article discusses Jason Vale's continuing laetril spam. Vale has sent 20 million messages to AOL with fradulent headers. Vale has been completely ignoring court orders, injunctions and judgements. For full article see Big Fine for Spamming AOL Members.

22 Nov 1999: Nick Nicholas has obtained a copy of the DMA's new spamming plan. See a copy at e-MPS

19 Nov 1999: Sam Khuri, the toner spammer is being sued for forging another company's identity into spam email. See New York times article Company Says Junk E-Mailer Stole Its Identity.

See older news for more on Sam Khuri.

18 Nov 1999: A british spam-scammer has been arrested. See UK Register article Spammer scammer gets thrown in slammer

12 Nov 1999: Salon magazine has a good article about spam and the Direct Marketing Association. See Direct Mail Double-Cross

11 Nov 1999: Real.com has been taken to court. See the following:

• Wired: RealNetworks in Real Trouble
• Copy of summons
• Wired: TRUSTe Declines Real Probe
• Wired: Is TRUSTe Trustworthy?

See older news for more on Real Networks.

9 Nov 1999: Hotmail has started using the Realtime Blackhole List to filter spam. See C|Net article Hotmail uses controversial filter to fight spam

5 Nov 1999: UDP announced against Ameritech for hosting of Repsis.

See older news for more on Ameritech.

3 Nov 1999: A temporary restraining order has been granted against 9NetAve forbidding them from sending any more junk faxes. See their web page.

28 Oct 1999: New Scientist magazine reports that Idt has blocked all British "co.uk" domains due to persistent porn spam. See Spam hits the fan

28 Oct 1999: Two internet stock scammers have been murdered in New Jersey. See CNN Report [dead link?] and New York Times [dead link?]

27 Oct 1999: Sam Khuri the toner spammer is at it again, in violation of a court order. See Register.co.uk article US spammer flouts British court restraining order

27 Oct 1999: Paging America is spamming again, relaying through ziplink.net. Paging America was once sucessfully sued by Typhoon for doing this. See older news for more.

27 Oct 1999: Kevin Lipsitz is spamming again. See netnews article KRAZY KEVIN LIPSITZ IS BACK!!!!!. Lipsitz was convicted of Fraud in 1997.

13 Oct 1999: Rahul suffered a disk crash last week. Still putting the pieces together. Site histories will be unavailable for a while longer.

13 Oct 1999: Discussion of UDP of BBN has begun due to persistent spamming by Tom Saylor from BBNPlanet dialups. See netnews article [RFD] BBNPlanet UDP Proposal: A Request for Remedial Action

4 Oct 1999: Spam crashes congressional email system. See Roll Call article Spam E-mail Buckles System
'Reply All' Misuse Causes Problems In Hill Offices and Wired article The House of Spam on the Hill

23 Sept 1999: Nice article in San Jose Mercury News about a small ISP that sued a spammer. See Small San Jose ISP declares spammer persona non grata

21 Sept 1999: Psi is now sending their own spam. See netnews article "PSI now spamming its own services"

21 Sept 1999: The FDA is now cracking down on VIAGRA sites. File complaints at www.ftc.gov

In May, Dr. Robert Felice was disciplined for selling viagra on line.

30 Aug 1999: Sanford Wallace has been caught violating the copyright on artwork which is displayed on his web pages. See netnews thread Spamford graduates from theft by conversion to art thievery!

18 Aug 1999: The "stockplayer.com" spammers have been jailed for securities fraud. See Infobeat article 4 Charged in Internet Stock Scheme

5 Aug 1999: Dun & Bradstreet have been spamming. See netnews article "Latest Mainsleaze: Dun & Bradstreet! Holy Crap!"

3 Aug 1999: Slashdot.org reports that a spammer has been sucessfully sued under the California anti-spam law, AB 1676. See article Califorinia ISP Sues Spammer and Wins.

2 Aug 1999: Microsoft/LinkExchange is being sued for placing banner ads for porn on a cheerleading web site. See Ziff-Davis article Cheerleader site sues MS over P-O-R-N

2 Aug 1999: NSI is threatening to sue MAPS over their RBL listing. Read all about it at NSI to be RBL'ed? (slashdot.org) and "NSI threatens to sue Blackhole List operator"

18 July 1999: The Austrian parliment has outlawed spam. See computerworld article Austria bans spam

14 July 1999: Good article in the Dallas Morning News. See Smashing Spam

13 July 1999: RealNetworks is back on the RBL. See official announcement and WiReD article RealNetworks Blacklisted Again.

9 July 1999: The Republican party is planning to solicit donations via a massive spam campaign. See Ziff-Davis news article Brace yourself for political spam

9 July 1999: Stanford Wallace has filed a lawsuit against competitor Mark Welch accusing him of slander and libel for calling Wallace a spammer. Read all about it at WiReD article "Ex-Spam King Shows No Mercy"

3 July 1999: Microsoft is apparently sending spam. See InfoWorld article "Don't look now, Microsoft might be spamming you".

10 June 1999: Full-fledged UDP of Popsite/Starnetinc has been suspended. See info page.

8 June 1999: Full-fledged UDP of Popsite/Starnetinc has gone into effect. See info page.

19 May 1999: CTX Mortgage, a Fortune 500 company, is being sued for $6 million for spamming. See news articles Fortune 500 Company Hit with $6 Million Lawsuit Under Washington State Anti-Spam Law [Business Wire], Fortune 500 Co. hit with $6 million lawsuit under Wa. state anti-spam law [yahoo], Firm faces $6 million junk e-mail lawsuit [Seattle Post-Intelligencer] and Fortune 500 company target of spam complaint [Seattle Times].

6 May 1999: Dr. Robert Felice was disciplined by the Illinois Medical Disciplinary Board for prescribing Viagra on line. See netnews thread "Viagara-by-internet doctor falls"

26 April 1999: Discussion has begun on the net on the subject of adding Sprintlink to the MAPS Realtime Blackhole List. See netnews thread "Request to RBL SprintPink"

22 April 1999: BBC News reports that ProPhoto UK is being sued by VirginNet for spamming from there. See BBC article "Virgin sues spam man" for more info.

20 April 1999: The UK Register has an article about another lawsuit against Benchmark Print Supply. Article may be read at "UK anti-spam minnow takes on US big fish".

16 April 1999: The Seattle Times has an article about the Rolling Stone email spam. See "Ati-spam-law pioneer targets another violator"

14 April 1999: According to Wired, Tuesday was the 5th anniversary of the Green Card Lottery spam. See their article" "The Spam That Started It All"

12 April 1999: See web page at http://americansmut.webjump.com detailing Infonet's lawsuit against porn spammers.

12 April 1999: Rolling Stone magazine has been advertising via spam. See netnews article "Rolling Stone Spams Again"

12 April 1999: Prodigy internet is now running radio advertisements advertising their anti-spam filters.

30 Mar 1999: American Express has started advertising via spam. See netnews article "American Express has joined the ranks of spammers"

29 Mar 1999: Someone posing as Nintendo has been using children to collect email addresses for spamming. In addition, they posted the collected list, along with credit card information to the net. See netnews thread "NINTENDO teaches chidren to steal and submit e-mail addresses ".

29 Mar 1999: The Internic has been spamming by email. See netnews thread "Um... I think I was just SPAMMED by The INTERNIC".

29 Mar 1999: UUNet has been spamming by email. See netnews thread "UUNet spamming InterNIC contacts".

17 Mar 1999: There was an absolutely precious story in the MMF hall of shame about the chain letter from Caltech. Read "A Report from Pasadena" Joe bob sez check it out.

28 Feb 1999: The San Jose mercury news had a good article in last Sunday's paper about spam. It's available on line at "Don't take it personally: Spam attacks everyone on the Net"

19 Feb 1999: Salon magazine has an article about New Jersey politician Murray Sabrin who sent out political spam on Feb. 4. See article "When candidates spam". See also Murray Sabrin info in the quick reference guide to spammers. The article is a good read; Joe Bob sez check it out.

17 Feb 1999: Woodside Literary Agency has been found guilty of fraud. See Wired article "Stranger than Fiction" for more.

5 Feb 1999: Disney is now spamming by email. See news.com article Go Network mulls security issue

2 Feb 1999: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an article about spammer Tom Gartman. I'm quoted in it. As with any newspaper article, it contains a number of errors and mis-quotes. *Sigh*. I found two problems with the article. First, it gives me *far* more credit than I deserve; I really don't do much more than track and report the spam -- others are the activists.

Second, the article claims that anti-spam activists have reduced Gartman's spam to as low as 100 articles/day. This is my fault, I'm afraid. Since talking to reporter Robert Tharp, I've discovered that Gartman was merely evading my filters. His spam is as bad as ever.

6 Jan 1999: Mindspring has purchased Netcom's customer base. See C|Net article " MindSpring buys Netcom assets".

3 Jan 1999: Discussion has begun on implementing UDP against BellGlobal due to persistantly open relays. See Netnews article " Bellglobal -- UDP or De-peering" and following threads.

1 Jan 1999: The San Jose Mercury news has an article about the new California anti-spam law.

8 Dec 1998: JT's Restraunt spammer has been sighted again. See netnews article "This company is Cookin'- JTSR '97 thru '98 300% Revenue Growth" JT's Restaurants - at it again!"

4 Dec 1998: PSI CEO William L. Schrader, is quoted in PilotOnline taking a pro-spam stance. Read the full article at "Virginia creates first Internet policy"

28 Nov 1998: The U.S. Treasury has issued an alert regarding the Freedom Star National Bank, which appears to be a fraudulent internet bank. See U.S. Tresury Alert 97-11 and USA Today article Bogus cyberbanks pose increasing threat for more information.

24 Nov 1998: See Milwaukee Business Journal article "Excalibur gives up on Eventemp contract" for a postscript on the Eventemp spammers.

23 Nov 1998: Sanford Wallace has surfaced again. See netnews article "Sanford Wallace is now Hosting Spammers through Nameservers Net!!

16 Nov 1998: See Wired article "Backstage at the 'Spampaign'". Article discusses Florida gubernatorial candidate Buddy MacKay who spammed in the campaign. He lost.

See also "Georgia Spampaign Backfires", about Steve Langford's spam campaign in July, 1998.

See also "Would You Vote for a Spammer?", discussing Judge Jim Martin's spam campaign in May 1998.

6 Nov 1998: UDP against PSI has been called off.

30 Oct 1998: Full UDP has been announced against PSI. Scheduled to begin 4 Nov 1998. See netnews article "UDP Notice: PSINet".

28 Oct 1998: The SEC has announced the filing of 23 enforcement actions against 44 internet spammers and scammers. See the SEC press release.

27 Oct 1998: The "JT's Restraunt" and "Eventemp" spammers, Sloane Fitzgerald and Francis Tribble have been fined by the SEC. See the SEC press release.

26 Oct 1998: Discussion has begun in news.admin.net-abuse.usenet on implementing UDP against PSI. See netnews article "30 days with PSI, the habitual Spamhaus"

24 Oct 1998: The "Remington-Hall spammer is in trouble with the SEC. See the The Dallas Morning News

22 Oct 1998: Washington state has brought a lawsuit against a spammer in Salem Oregon. Read the full details in The Seattle Times.

5 Oct 1998: UUNet has filed suit against TCPS. Read the full details in UUNet's press release.

1 Oct 1998: InternetMCI has been acquired by Cable & Wireless USA. All internetmci.com addresses are changing to cwix.com addresses.

30 Sept 1998: California Governor Wilson has signed two anti-spam bills. See C|Net article California enacts antispam laws.

The first law requires that email ads contain "ADV" or "ADV:ADLT" in the subject line as appropriate. Spammers are also required to provide toll-free phone numbers or accurate return addresses to that users may opt out. The law provides for up to $500 per message or six months in jail.

The second law, drafted by Rep. Gary Miller, allows any email provider to sue for $50/message for unauthorized relaying of spam, up to $25,000/day or actual damages, whichever is greater. The law also outlaws address spoofing.

29 Sept 1998: O'Reilly books is publishing a book on combatting spam. See their web page: Stopping Spam. Stay tuned to this web site for a review.

21 Sept 1998: See PC world magazine, article Top Ten Spam Control Tools

18 Aug 1998: I am going on vacation. No reports will be posted and no statistics will be collected while I'm away. I may be sporadically reading my email, but there will be no updates to these web pages. See you in late September.

14 Aug 1998: "Spam" has been added to the New Oxford Dictionary of English.

14 Aug 1998: Aracnet has joined the IDP of UUNet. See netnews article "uu.net rbl"

14 Aug 1998: PBS's NewsHour program had an excellent special on spam. Read a partial transcript at "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM & SPAM".

10 Aug 1998: Discussion has begun on the possibility of a UDP against MCI over their refusal to deal with spam coming from mci2000. See netnews thread "A call for shunning of news.mci2000.com" for more.

3 Aug 1998: Visit Bruce Miller's web page to see a picture of the first payment collected under the Washington State anti-spam law.

3 Aug 1998: Netizen Lee Jackson Beauregard has created an archive of "Bilker Board" articles about a proposed revenge attack on netnews. See web page at http://www.smart.net/~rchason/boomerang.html

3 Aug 1998: The U.S. House of Representatives subcommitte has postponed a hearing on pro-spam measure H.R. 3888. See wired article "Pro-Spam Bill Derailed", and the CAUCE news page for more information.

28 July 1998: Cleveland Live reports that Ameritech.net was forced to block all incoming email from AOL due to mis-directed spam complaints. There was a massive spam attack on AOL which used an Ameritech email address in the From: line. Bounces from AOL then when to Ameritech. See article "Internet provider blocks e-mail from AOL" for more info.

28 July 1998: The IDP discussion against UUNet has begun to heat up. See netnews discussion "RFD: UUNet IDP" in newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email.

22 July 1998: For continuing coverage of the lawsuit that Adam Engst and four other editors at TidBITS are filing against WorldTouch Network, see their web page: TidBITS Sues Spammer.

20 July 1998: The Seattle Times has an article about Adam Engst, who has filed suit against a spammer in Los Angeles under the new Washington State anti-spam law. See article "Lawsuit will test state's new e-mail `spam' law"

16 July 1998: The Seattle Times has an article about Bruce Miller, who may be the first person to collect damages from a spammer under the new Washington State anti-spam law. See article "Seattle man makes spammer pay"

13 July 1998: The Strong Funds lawsuit has surfaced in the news again. See the Milwaukee Business Journal article "Strong seeks $100 million in cyber-porn e-mail case"

9 July 1998: Juno has announced victory in two of its lawsuits against spammers. See their announcement "Juno Declares Victory in Spam Litigation"

7 July 1998: Serious discussion of complete IDP of UUNet has begun. See newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email for more information.

• WTOP, Washington coverage (search for "Internet Warnings")
• Ziff-Davis

29 June 1998: The Seattle Times has an anti-spam editorial. See "Rein in unsolicited commercial e-mail"

26 June 1998: The Washington post has an article about a spammer named Michael Ragland who was fined and charged with trespassing for forging email from a local politician. See article "Fake E-Mail Brings Real Trouble"

17 June 1998: C|Net has been spamming by email. See netnews article "Spam from cnet"

16 June 1998: Linkus.com has been connected by MCI.

16 June 1998: Linkus.com has been connected by ObjectNet and just as quickly disconnected. See netnews article "linkus.com: LARTed *again*, a HUGE white hat for objnet.com"

15 June 1998: Netcom has finally disconnected Linkus.com.

11 June 1998: The Washington State anti-spam law is now in effect. The new law makes it illegal to falsify information about the sender, to use false or misleading information in teh subject line, and to use a third party's email address without permission. The law applies to senders or recipients in Washington state.

11 June 1998: Commissioner of Corporations Dale Bonner has issued orders against Eventemp, JT's restraunt and seven other companies selling penny stocks on the internet. See Yahoo news article "Internet Investments Ordered to Stop Selling"

11 June 1998: Another UDP of PSI may soon be underway. See newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.usenet for more information.

9 June 1998: IBM has been spamming. See netnews article "ALL IS LOST SPAMMED BY IBM CORPORATE"

8 June 1998: Wired has an article about the death of Jim Nitchals. See "Jim Nitchals, Net Crusader, Dies"

5 June 1998: The state court of Berlin has ruled that email spam is illegal in Germany. See "Wegeweiser Online-Recht" [german]. See also netnews article "Berlin court decision bans UCE"

4 June 1998: Another UDP of Tiac may soon be underway. See netnews articles "USENET Moderator ban of TIAC" and "TIAC UDP?"

4 June 1998: Jerry Falwell's Liberty University has agreed to stop spamming. See netnews article "Liberty University is ending its spam campaign"

4 June 1998: The San Francisco Chronicle had an article about Sanford Wallace this morning. See article "Reputed King of Junk E-mail Says He's Through Spamming"

3 June 1998: C|Net is accepting advertising from spammers. See netnews article "CNET Advertiser Selling Spamware". The ad was later pulled.

1 June 1998: Amusing anti-spam article at ZDNet. See "Slamming Spam"

1 June 1998: Dan Hufnal's spam site, TheHitMan.com is back on line, courtesy of Good.net.

1 June 1998: Discount computer store Surplus Direct has been caught selling its mailing list to spammers. See netnews article "Surplus Direct" for more info.

26 May 1998: Sanford Wallace has closed his Cyberpromo office and disappeared after losing a judgement in the suit brought by Matt Mitchell. See netnews article "Cyberpromo--hat trick" for more info.

21 May 1998: Harris Marketing has left Sprint and switched to Netcom.

15 May 1998: Internetnews.com has an article about two weak anti-spam bills going through congress; the Torricelli bill and the Murkowski Bill. See article Senate Proposes Regulating Spam for more info.

15 May 1998: Juno is claiming victory in their lawsuit against spammers who forged their domain name. See Internetnews.com article Juno Claims Victory in Spam Suit

14 May 1998: From the "Coffee & Cats" file, C|Net reports that Sanford Wallace has taken up the anti-spam crusade and is now suing spammers. Full details in article "Former king to fight spam"

See also Wired article "Spam King Forges Unholy Alliance"

12 May 1998: The Seattle Times reports that a local Nissan dealer is experiencing a backlash due to recent spam. See article "Protest halts car dealer's e-mail `spam'". It is said that this is the first non-computer business in the Unites States to be picketed by anti-spam activists.

Aurora Nissan has an online apology.

12 May 1998: Good article in Wired: "Would You Vote for a Spammer?" This time it's a judge in North Carolina who was spamming voters.

11 May 1998: A mirror of the EvenTemp warning page has been created after the original was removed due to death threats. Eventemp is involved in a penny stock scam.

11 May 1998: Mike Tetreault has named UUNet as a co-defendant in his lawsuit against a spammer who impersonated him.

4 May 1998: See Wired article "The Case of the Mistaken Spammer". In short: according to Wired, a network consulting business was disconnected by UUNet for spamming when in fact, he and his domain were innocent. It turned out that UUNet had only matched the first three bytes in the IP address when tracking the spammer. The owner of the consulting firm had to prompt UUNet technicians to check the entire IP address.

Update:: John Bradshaw of UUNet has provided further information:

[The above] Is not an accurate statement of what happened. A technical glitch in a lookup program we were using only looked at the first three octets and it turned out the Class C has been subnetted for ISDN account allocations. We missed this in our verification process before termination of the account.

We did not have to be "walked through the process".

29 April 1998: See Internet World article "Spammer Must Pay Hosting Company $173,000 After Sending E-Mail Ads" [back issues] In short, VNZ Information & Entertainment SErvices has been fined $173,000 for relaying through SimpleNet's mail servers.

28 April 1998: See Andover News Network article "Washington State ISPs Gearing Up Against Spam". In short, assistant Attorney General Paula Sellis was a featured speaker at the annual conference of the Washington Association of Internet Service Providers. She was discussing the new Washington State anti-spam law which forbids spam to contains falsified address information in the headers. The person receiving the spam, the ISP, and the state Attorney General may all sue the spammer.

27 April 1998: ZDNet has another article about Sanford Wallace's alleged retirement. See article "Spammer Opts For Retirement". There is also a brief mention of Mike Tetreault's lawsuit against a spammer who impersonated him.

20 April 1998: See Internet World article "Junk E-Mailer Said To Be Leaving Spam Business". In short, Sanford Wallace says he's getting out of the spam business after losing a $2 million lawsuit by Earthlink.

10 April 1998: Matt Mitchell has sucessfully sued Sanford Wallace for junk faxing. See netnews article "Re: Fax Trial With Matt Mitchell"

3 April 1998: The 30 March Business section of the LA Times reports that Earthlink has won its lawsuit against Sanford Wallace. For more information, see netnews article TIMES: Earthlink Expected to Announce Win in 'Spam' Suit [Boston Globe]

• Announcement
• Usenet Spam Forecast: "Horrific" [wired]
• Usenet junk e-mail could swamp the system Friday [Ziff-Davis]
• Antispammers going on "strike" [C|Net]
• Spam watchdogs to 'Net firms: You're on your own

23 Mar 1998: Quantom Communications is back on the internet, courtesy of Cyberpassport.com.

19 Mar 1998: Norm Refford announced today that Connect Up has been disconnected.

17 Mar 1998: The San Jose Mercury News had an article on the front page of their business section today about the new version 8.9 of sendmail with anti-spam features added.

16 Mar 1998: Aol has issued a subpoena against Neil Albala, the devleoper of spam programs "Goldrush" and "Floodgate". Aol is requiring Albala to produce his customer lists and sales recronds. Alabala has refused to rpovide the dcouments and was held in contempt by the federal court, ordered to pay AOL's costs and to produce the documents within 48 hours.

14 Mar 1998: The Palo Alto Daily News reports that Pacific Bell Internet's email system was shut down for four days last week after being overloaded by spam. The San Francisco Chronical also had an article about the incident; see: 'Spam' Overloads Pac Bell

13 Mar 1998: Texas politician Murff Bledsoe tried spamming his constituants and had "his head handed to him", as one netter described it. Full story at the Dallas Morning News

UPDATE: Bledsoe finished fourth with 10 percent.

12 Mar 1998: Bigfoot has sued Sanford Wallace and won an injunction preventing Wallace from sending -- or helping his customers send -- spam to Bigfoot customers. There is a $10,000/day fine involved. Visit C|Net for the full article by Janet Kornblum.

9 Mar 1998: AOL is getting more serious about stopping spam; visit their legal page.

9 Mar 1998: Att.net has begun spamming on a corporate level, especially to its own customers. Visit newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email and search for the thread "Response from ATT Wireless"

9 Mar 1998: The FTC has taken its first spammer to court; see their press release. In short, the FTC is suing Internet Business Broadcasting, Inc. for false advertising. Also, see C|Net article "FTC takes spammer to court"

23 Feb 1998: ABC news has a cute article on the Netcom UDP. See "Spam Busters Win the Day"

23 Feb 1998: Netcom has issued a press release about the spam issue. See web page "NETCOM CRACKS DOWN ON SPAM - SITUATION IS UNDER CONTROL". Joe Bob sez check it out and don't forget your hip boots.

23 Feb 1998: Reuters has followed up on Wired's article (see below.) This has still not yet been confirmed. See article "Netcom spared disruption, pledges to stop 'Spam'"

23 Feb 1998: Wired reports that the Netcom UDP has been called off. This has not yet been confirmed. See article "Netcom Gets Usenet 'Pardon'"

23 Feb 1998: The Philadelpha City Paper Interactive has an article on the upcoming Netcom UDP. See "Netcom Defcon"

19 Feb 1998: There is a web site dedicated to the upcoming UDP of Netcom. Visit "The Official CNS Netcom Usenet Death Penalty Site"

14 Feb 1998: Full UDP against Netcom has been announced because of spamming. UDP is scheduled to begin Friday, 20 Feb 1998. For more information, see netnews post "UDP NOTICE: Netcom.com"

9 Feb 1998: The Federal Trade Commission has a new press release about fraudulent spam.

6 Feb 1998: Yahoo had a good article about the MAPS Real-Time Blacklist. See article Anti-spammers police Net with "Black Hole" threat

4 Feb 1998: ACSI is suing Dakotacom for mail-bombing. See Azstarnet article Feature: Spam, spam, spam.

4 Feb 1998: Wired is in trouble for email spamming. Read this San Francisco Bay Guardian article entitled "Net Effects"

29 Jan 1998: C|Net reports that AOL is suing LCGM and Web Promo for sending porn spam to AOL customers. AOL charges that the two companies used header forgery to evade filters and forged AOL's domain name. See article "AOL sues porn spammers" for more info.

28 Jan 1998: C|Net reports that Hotmail is suing eight spammers for forging hotmail's name into spam headers. This is similar to the Juno lawsuit in November. Named in the suit are:

• Van$ Money Pie
• ALS Enterprises
• LCGM, Incorporated
• Christopher Moss d/b/a Genesis Network
• Claremont Holdings Limited
• Consumer Connections of Charlotte, North Carolina
• Palmer & Associates of San Diego, California
• Financial Research Group of El Cajon, California,

26 Jan 1998: The Philadelphia City Paper reports that Sanford Wallace has returned to his old junk-faxing business. See Life in Spamalot for the full story. See also USC 47, § 227, the law that makes Junk faxes illegal.

19 Jan 1998: C|Net had an article about the disconnection of GTMI. See article "Spam site killed under threats"

19 Jan 1998: Good article from the Austin American-Statesman about spammers today, entitled "SPAM WARS". It discusses the Flowers.com case and professional spammer Joe Melle.

16 Jan 1998: Quantcom has been disconnected again, according to geo.net.

15 Jan 1998: Quantcom is back on the net, connected via galaxy-net.net and geo.net.

9 Jan 1998: AOL is reportedly suing three spammers: IMS of Knoxville TN, Gulf Coast Marking of Baton Rouge, LA, and TSF Marketing/Industries of Riverside CA. Note that TSF is owned by Joe Melle, president of the NOIC which has been attempting to blackmail AOL with a threat to publish subscriber addresses (see below.) See Reuters article "America Online Files Three Junk E-Mail Suits"

7 Jan 1998: The NOIC is attempting to blackmail AOL into accepting spam. See L.A. Times article "Group Says It May Post AOL User Addresses"

6 Jan 1998: Wired has an amusing article about Sanford Wallace's proposed spambone. See article "The SpamBone Connects to the Funny Bone".

For more amusement, see Joe Melle's letter from the president

2 Jan 1998: Sprint has disconnected T-1Net.com (Taylor Made Communications.)

29 Dec 1997: ZDNet reports that email spam overloaded GTE's mail system. See article "GTE Internet E-mail sags under spam attack"

23 Dec 1997: Cyberpromo's lawsuit against Agis was dismissed with prejudice by Judge Brody.

22 Dec 1997: See C|Net article "State bill seeks to ban spam". Assemblyman Gary G. Miller is introducing a bill in California which will outlaw email spam to California citizens.

22 Dec 1997: CAUTION: an organization calling itself "antispam.org" is using various techniques to get people to give them their email addresses. "Antispam.org" is not anti-spam. It is a front organization for spammers for collecting email addresses. Currently posting from Redrose.demon.co.uk.

22 Dec 1997: Netcom's open relay block (206.214.98.0/24) has been added to the The MAPS Realtime Blackhole List.

22 Dec 1997: The "Martian Consolate" spammer has been disconnected by HomeCom.

15 Dec 1997: Harris/Savoynet is back on the net, connected via cyberenet.net.

15 Dec 1997: See Ziff-Davis news article "Spam shoot-out softspoken, serious". Article discusses Sanford Wallace's talk at Internet World.

15 Dec 1997: See Ziff-Davis news article "'Put a spammer in the slammer,' and other good works". Article discusses the Flowers.com case and the Put A Spammer In The Slammer campaign.

15 Dec 1997: Ziff-Davis has been email-spamming. See netnews article "Great, now ZD/PCMag is spamming"

15 Dec 1997: See C|Net article "Deja News joins antispam war". Article details how Deja News was becoming swamped by spam and spam cancels. Deja News says that two-thirds of all netnews messages are spam-related.

12 Dec 1997: Harris Marketing has been disconnected by Agis See Agis' agreement violation list.

9 Dec 1997: NoCeM for C News and INN has been announced. See source code

8 Dec 1997: Discussion has begun on implementing UDP against Tiac. See newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, and look for the thread entitled "TIAC UDP?". A five-day warning was issued early today; see "** UDP NOTICE: TIAC **"

4 Dec 1997: See Wired article "Wpoison Sets Trap for Spam Weasel" For an article about Ron Guilmette's new "wpoison" cgi script. Wpoison is a cgi script that generates bogus email addresses and bogus links that cause email address harvesters to flood their own databases with garbage.

3 Dec 1997: See New York Times article "A Father, a Daughter, the Web And an Unstoppable Flow of Pornography". It's the chronicle of a father trying to stop the flow of email porn spam to his 11-year-old daughter's AOL account.

3 Dec 1997: Try out the new Sanford Wallace Dart Game Requires Java.

2 Dec 1997: UUNet has finally updated their AUP. The new AUP may be found at http://www.usa.uu.net/usepolicy.shtml

2 Dec 1997: It is believed by some that Sanford Wallace's new "spambone" business partner is Global Tech 2000, one of the businesses being sued by Strong Funds for $125 million.

1 Dec 1997: The author of Pegasus email was forced to release a new version that emits slightly different headers, after to several ISPs and the U.S. government mistakenly decided that Pegasus was a spam package. See Wired article "Pegasus Soars Beyond Spam Goof" for more info.

27 Nov 1997: The New York Attorney General has filed suit against Woodside. See their press release entitled Vacco Throws The Book At Phony Internet Publisher. See also: the Jayne Hitchcock information page "The Case of the Woodside Literary Agency", the New York Times article "Queens Company Bilked Writers on Internet, State Suit Says"

25 Nov 1997: See C|Net article "Juno files $5 million spam suit". Juno is suing five email spammers for $1 million each for forging Juno's name into spam headers.

Named in the suit are: Scott Allen Export Sales of Somerset, N.J.; Strippers Inc. of Beverly Hills, Calif.; Phoenix Interactive of Hermosa Beach, Calif.; Global Information Services of Clearwater, Fla.; and IMS of Knoxville, Tenn.

25 Nov 1997: Pac Bell has dropped Agis as a backbone.

24 Nov 1997: C|Net has another article about the Cyberpromo "spambone" entitled Furor over spam mishap. In short, the names that Sanford Wallace picked for his new company happened to belong to someone else, causing no end of trouble for the legitimate owners of the names.

21 Nov 1997: Log On America has taken great exception to a report by C|Net which implies that they are going to work with Sanford Wallace on building a new "spammer's" backbone. See their web page "Log On America to do business with Sanford Wallace, NOT!". The author of the C|Net article, Janet Kornblum, has issued a clarification indicating that Wallace's supposed partner is Global Technology Marketing Inc, not Global Telemedia International.

21 Nov 1997: The New York Times has an article on the Compuserve UDP entitled Spam Dispute Brings Usenet and CompuServe to Brink. (NYTimes asks you to register to use their services, but this is benign.)

20 Nov 1997: C|Net reports that Sanford Wallace claims that his new spam backbone will be online within two or three weeks. See article "Return of the spam king" for the full story.

20 Nov 1997: The Compuserve UDP has been lifted. See newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.usenet for more info.

20 Nov 1997: A University of Cincinatti student has been arrested for email spamming a pyramid scheme from campus computers. Full story in the Cincinnati Enquirer: "UC computer fraud case shows how net can be misused"

20 Nov 1997: Press Release in YaHoo's pr newswire entitled "Hunton & Williams Strikes Another Blow Against Internet Spam". Of greatest signifigance is the fact that a ruling has been obtained that spammers may be sued in the damaged party's home state.

20 Nov 1997: Nice article in C|Net today about Agis entitled "AGIS turns back on spam"

19 Nov 1997: Compuserve has announced a new acceptable use policy.

18 Nov 1997: Compuserve is now under full active UDP! See netnews message "COMPUSERVE under Full Active UDP" for more information.

C|Net is covering the story under the headline "CompuServe given "death penalty". According to the story, Compuserve states that they are drawing up an anti-spam policy to be posted within a day or so.

Infoworld is covering the story under the headline "Usenet administrators lock out CompuServe"

17 Nov 1997: AGIS has disconnected Cscent. See Agis' AUP Violators web page.

17 Nov 1997: IBM has just noticed that other domains are blocking them due to spam. See netnews article "Request for Information".

17 Nov 1997: Visit WebWeek for an article about an online auction house (Onsale Inc.) that email-spammed the users of another (eBay Inc.)

17 Nov 1997: Craig Nowak has been ordered to pay $18,910 in the lawsuit filed by flowers.com. See Zilker.net for more information. See netnews article "LAW: Judgment in Flowers.com case", for the text of the judgement. Note the judge's use of the word "garbage" to describe spam.

This is an important precedent in the Bigfoot lawsuit against Cyberpromo.

17 Nov 1997: C|Net has coverage of the SPA spam involving server hijacking. See "SPA can't resist sending spam"

14 Nov 1997: SimpleNet has filed suit against spammers for damages due to lost revenues. See their Press Release and a C|Net article entitled "ISPs crack down on spam".

The story also mentions that Earthlink has instituted a $200 fine for spamming.

13 Nov 1997: Cyberpromo became reconnected to AGIS again! This time via Cscent. It is believed that Agis has already disconnected them.

Agis also maintains a web page containing the status of AUP violators. This web page claims to have disconnected C-Flash, Contact Data Systems, Cyberpromo, Nevwest, Nanycnet, Quantcom, LLV, WebCareers and WebPromo.

12 Nov 1997: LLV became connected to NETXS.NET and disconnected again within 12 hours.

12 Nov 1997: The Smith Bill is now up to 24 co-sponsors.

11 Nov 1997: There is an ongoing discussion about implementing a passive UDP against UUNet in the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.policy. Look for the thread entitled "UUNet Allows the Destruction of Usenet".

10 Nov 1997: Mandex.com experienced an unauthorized use of their domain name in a large spam. If you have any information that could help them litigate against the spammer, please contact them.

5 Nov 1997: AOL has won a preliminary injunction in their lawsuit against Over The Air. For more information, see netnews message "AOL wins injunction against Over The Air" and C|Net article "Judge backs AOL antispam efforts"

4 Nov 1997: ACSI has announced that they will implement a usenet spam-policy. See netnews message "ACSI is now implementing a usenet spam-policy" in newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.policy.

3 Nov 1997: Full UDP was announced today against ACSI.net. See newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.usenet for more info. See the thread entitled "Full Active (Phase II) UDP For ACSI.NET". Sites which have aliased out ACSI may also alias out "acsiudp" to ignore the incoming cancels.

3 Nov 1997: Spacelab.net has terminated its spammers; spam counts are down. Full UDP has been lifted.

30 Oct 1997: Full UDP was announced today against MXOL and spacelab.net. See newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.usenet for more info. Sites which have aliased out MXOL may also alias out "spacelabudp" to ignore the incoming cancels.

15 Oct 1997: UUNet has reconnected Netzilla.

10 Oct 1997: Ziff-Davis has an article entitled EFF spearheads anti-spam effort

10 Oct 1997: Ziff-Davis has an article entitled AOL, others may form group to fight spam

8 Oct 1997: The moderators of sci.med.midwifery announced that they are not accepting posts from Prodigy due to persistant spam from the Woodside spammer. See netnews message "Prodigy users banned from midwifery newsgroup" for more information. This was followed by an announcement that Woodside had been terminated from Prodigy and the ban is now lifted.

8 Oct 1997: Ziff-Davis has an article about Cyberpromo & Quantcom's plans to build their own backbone.

6 Oct 1997: WebWeek reports that email spammers hope to build their own backbone. The plan is to subsidize legitimate sites with income from spammers, in the hope that the presense of legitimate sites will keep anti-spam ISPs from black-holing the spam backbone.

6 Oct 1997: C|Net reports that Bigfoot Partners is suing Cyberpromo. The article wasn't clear on why, but Bigfoot's own web page has more information. In short, Bigfoot is suing Cyberpromo for using Bigfoot addresses in mass emails. The text of the lawsuit is also available. This lawsuit is also archived at The John Marshall Law School.

3 Oct 1997: A media company called "JP Kids" is pitching an animated TV show about spam-fighting, called "Yahooligans". See this article in Wired for more information.

3 Oct 1997: The "Sam Spam" spammer at Enterprise.net has been arrested. See this message from Nigel Titley for more information.

2 Oct 1997: C|Net reports that AOL is suing Over the Air Equipment for spamming AOL users. According to the article, Over The Air was falsifying email headers to get around filters and copying AOL trademarks. Ziff-Davis has another article on the lawsuit.

Over The Air is also currently being sued by Strong Funds for $125 million. See news from 28 July 1997.

1 Oct 1997: QuantCom has obtained a connection to the internet through Illusions.net. Rumor has it that they have already been disconnected.

1 Oct 1997: UUNet claims to have disconnected EscortGuide, although the site still seems to be reachable. See netnews message "UU.NET takes action against schoolgirlz.com / escortguide.com".

Addendum: UUNet turns out to have been lying. As of November, EscortGuide is still connected.

1 Oct 1997: It is reported that Netcom.co.uk has just joined the IDP of Enterprise. See netnews article "BT.NET / ENTERPRISE.NET - IDP now in effect"

1 Oct 1997: A copy of the Judge's ruling in favor of Cyberpromo may be found at www.parrhesia.com/cyberpromo.html. Agis was found to have failed to give Cyberpomo the 30 days notice required in the contract. Cyberpomo should be off the net again on Oct 16. Agis retains the right to temporarily disconnect Cyber during a ping attack or other emergency, but may not leave Cyber disconnected afterwards. Agis was also found wanting in that they did not hire a security expert to deal with the ping attacks. Finally, Cyber has been ordered to post a $12,500 bond.

See update.

1 Oct 1997: More on the reconnection of Cyberpromo, from C|Net. Article quotes Phil Lawlor saying he regretted ever having Cyber Promotions as a Client and accusing Cyberpromo of unethical actions.

30 Sept 1997: Bill Mattocks has tracked down the spammer responsible for the "Princess Diana Tee Shirt" spam.

30 Sept 1997: According to C|Net, AGIS has been ordered to reconnect Cyberpromo.

30 Sept 1997: A widespread IDP of Enterprise.net and Bt.net has begun due to persistant abuse coming from Enterprise.net. See netnews message "BT.NET / ENTERPRISE.NET - IDP now in effect" and other related messages in the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email. So far, uni-linz.ac.at and comp-sol.com are shunning Bt.net and Enterprise.net.

29 Sept 1997: C|Net reports that netizens are seeing less spam. See their article.

29 Sept 1997: CNN has an article about the Cyberpomo v. Agis lawsuit.

29 Sept 1997: Film maker Peter Hall may sue Earthlink for wrongful termination of his account, full story at WIRED News.

26 Sept 1997: The Philadelphia Inquirer has a short article about the Cyberpromo lawsuit.

25 Sept 1997: C|Net has an update on Agis v. Cyberpromo. Judge Brody will issue her decision on Monday.

25 Sept 1997: Reuters is covering the disconnection of Cyberpromo.

25 Sept 1997: Compuserve allows users to filter incoming email for spam. Read all about it at C|Net News.

24 Sept 1997: Read about WebSystems and their lawsuit against Cyberpromo. Websystems' name was forged into spam headers by Cyberpromo. Lawsuit is archived at The John Marshall Law School archive. C|Net article at news.com.

24 Sept 1997: Cyberpromo has filed suit against AGIS. Full story at The Philadelphia Inquirer

24 Sept 1997: Cyberpromo was caught briefly spamming from home.com via cable modem. Home.com quickly disconnected them.

23 Sept 1997: The lawsuit against C.N.Enterprises moved another step today.

23 Sept 1997: Ziff-Davis reports that the IEMMC has been kicked off of AGIS. IEMMC administrator Hubert Seals has been ejected from his office at AGIS headquarters.

23 Sept 1997: Ziff-Davis had another article about the disconnection of Cyberpromo.

23 Sept 1997: Read here for more details on Cyberpromo's short-lived connection to BBN.

22 Sept 1997: Cyberpromo has a "$10 USD for every day non-operational" clause in its terms of service. How many customers does Cyberpromo have? How many days will they be non-operations? This could be good.

22 Sept 1997: On the 19th, AGIS ammended their Acceptable Use Policy. The new policy is stricter than before.

20 Sept 1997: C|Net has an article about the disconnection of Cyberpromo. Ziff-Davis has another article, giving Cyberpromo's spin.

19 Sept 1997: AGIS has disconnected Cyberpromo, Quantum and NancyNet! Cyberpromo was briefly back up at digex.net, but quickly disconnected. They were also connected and kicked off of Sprint and BBN as well, making them the first ISP ever to be kicked off of four backbones in one day.

See Agis' announcement and Cyberpromo's reply. (If you can't reach this URL, it is mirrored at visi.com.)

Cyberpromo was able to get reconnected at a reseller of digex.net, but was quickly disconnected again.

16 Sept 1997: InfoWorld has an excellent article by Brett Glass about securing your mail servers against spam.

16 Sept 1997: C|Net has an article about a massive spam from HP that went out over the weekend. HP sent mail out to anybody who had entered their email address in a contest, but a technical error caused mailboxes to be flooded.

15 Sept 1997: Good article in USA Today about Cyberpromo.

12 Sept 1997: The Smith Bill is now up to 23 co-sponsors.

12 Sept 1997: Ml.org has announced that it has disconnected www.cloaked.com. See netnews article "www.cloaked.com has been disconnected". Cloaked.com was created to spam from Compuserve.

11 Sept 1997: The Professional Presence Network had an article this week entitled "Rise of the Anti-Spammer". Joe Bob says check it out.

11 Sept 1997: The professional Presence Network has moved their web site to a non-Agis host.

10 Sept 1997: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal has an article about email spam entitled On-line porn sellers reach out by e-mail. It includes discussion on a new anti-email-spam law introduced in the Wisconsin legislature, as well as four laws pending in the U.S. Congress.

9 Sept 1997: ZDNet has an article about spam hunters.

8 Sept 1997: C|Net has an article on the "Princess Diana" tee-shirt spam.

8 Sept 1997: Florida-isp.com is uder full UDP. See netnews message "Full Phase II UDP For FLORIDA-ISP.COM" for more information.

5 Sept 1997: A 15-year-old high school student is in legal trouble for spamming with forged addresses. Full story at PC Mike.

3 Sept 1997: Samsung has made a public statement about the progress of their investigation. UUNet has finally coughed up the identity of the forger, but the information was fraudulent. The investigation continues.

3 Sept 1997: Jeff ("Spam King") Slaton is filing bankruptcy. See www.jeffslaton.com for more information. See also Slaton's response.

3 Sept 1997: Cancel Moose reports that in the first 2 days of September, we have exceeded the entire month's worth of spam from 2 years ago, and we've seen more than 1/2 the spam from all of Sept. 1996.

2 Sept 1997: Matthew Seidl is suing Greentree Mortgage Company over forged spam. In brief, Greentree Mortgage sent out a large email spam with forged headers to hide the origin. These forged headers pointed back to a site owned by Matthew Seidl, causing him a great deal of problems. See his information page for more information. Lawsuit is archived at The John Marshall Law School archive

29 Aug 1997: Make.Money.Fast Pyramid schemes are causing trouble in Japan. See the Mainichi Daily News for more information.

29 Aug 1997: The first Usenet 2 gateway tests are now being conducted.

29 Aug 1997: Concentric has filed a lawsuit against a scam that was perpetrated against their users via email spam. See the News.com article.

28 Aug 1997: Psi has allegedly disconnected EscortGuide

26 Aug 1997: Sanford Wallace is making noises about suing the hackers that allegedly brought Cyberpomo down last week. He'll have to find them first. Full story at ZDNet.

25 Aug 1997: UUNet has sent letters to its customers that it intends to close its open ports. See netnews article "UUnet takes spam action" for more information.

22 Aug 1997: Tokyo-based ISP, Typhoon is filing a lawsuit against Paging America for forging typhoon addresses in spam. Full story at C|Net News Lawsuit is archived at The John Marshall Law School archive

22 Aug 1997: Discussion has begun on creating a "Usenet 2", in which would work by requiring members to have strong anti-spam policies. Usenet 1 traffic would be gatewayed to Usenet 2 through selected gateway machines which would implement anti-spam filters and hold articles long enough for cancels to arrive. For more information, visit news.software.nntp and follow the discussions entitled "NNTP Protocol RFC redux" and "USENET2 proposals".

A draft proposal can be found at Sol.net.

There is another proposal, also nicknamed "Usenet 2" which involves re-creating the old "net.*" hierarchy.

22 Aug 1997: In C|Net's opinion poll last week, 79% of respondants answered Yes to the question "Is it fair for hackers to pick on spammers?" See C|Net's poll results page.

21 Aug 1997: Information week has a great article about spam

21 Aug 1997: Reply.net has firewalled AGIS. See netnews article "Follow-up to blocking agis"

19 Aug 1997: Spam is in the news a lot nowadays. See articles in Anchordesk.com, Computerworld, Information Week,

18 Aug 1997: Although netnews spam from UUNet has decreased since the UDP, email spam and abuse continues unabated. UUNet refuses to do anything about the problem. Discussion on IDP has begun. See netnews message "Time to IDP UUNET?" and other messages in that thread for more information, or vist news.admin.net-abuse.email.

18 Aug 1997: An FBI spokesperson says that Dept of Justice will not prosecute the action taken agains UUNet

15 Aug 1997: James Macdonald and Jeffry Dwight are suing Carlos V. Lattim for forged spamming. For more information, see the press release and the text of the lawsuit.

14 Aug 1997: Ptd.net is now blocking email from Bell Atlantic, according to netnews message "My ISP takes some action towards spammers".

14 Aug 1997: The 97.9% spam estimate for UUNet has been revised to 99%. According to Ken Lucke, of the 2.1% of posts that were not flagged as spam by the software, another 1.1% was manually identified as spam, leaving only 1% legitimate traffic.

13 Aug 1997: Some great letters to the editor in today's San Jose Mercury News

12 Aug 1997: Someone from UUNet has been sending out millions of forged emails purportedly from Samsung, making legal threats. Users who receive this email often think it is legitimate and complain to Samsung or to the lawyers whose names appear in the mail. According to CNN, the spam is costing the company millions of dollars. Samsung has hired a private investigator to track down the source of the spam. There are also stories in USA Today and Wired.

12 Aug 1997: According to Wired, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com are rethinking their pro-spam policies.

9 Aug 1997: For information on the legality of udp-style cancels, see this New York Times article (New York Times may ask you to register first, this is probably benign.)

6 Aug 1997: Wired reports that the UDP against UUNet has been lifted.

6 Aug 1997: Hackers have allegedly broken into Cyberpromo systems again and posted the password file. The post was in netnews article "Cyberpromos Password File..Again" (backed up at www.visi.com/~will/cp.html.) I have not verified the accuracy of this posting. It is speculated on the net that this post was actually a publicity stunt forged from Cyberpromo There is an article about the attack at News.com.

5 Aug 1997: UUNet has announced it will toughen its anti-spamming policy! See their Press Release and C/Net's coverage.

5 Aug 1997: An article in the Washington Post, referring to UUNet's chief executive, John Sidgmore, states:

Sidgmore said UUNet decided yesterday to implement technological changes to make it more difficult for users to send out mass Usenet postings and easier to identify offenders.

5 Aug 1997: The San Jose Mercury News, InfoWorld, The La Times, CNN/Reuters, and The Washington Post are covering the UDP against UUNET. Tha Mercury News' article got a lot of details wrong, but their regular computer columnist, Dan Gillmor, was out of town so someone with less experience is covering the story. The Washington Post article seems to be the best.

See also Howard Knight's response.

5 Aug 1997: Current estimates by spam-cancellers are that 97.9% of Uunet traffic is spam.

4 Aug 1997: The Smith Bill is up to 19 co-sponsors. Visit the Bill Summary page at thomas.loc.gov for more info.

4 Aug 1997: Mail to abuse@uu.net is rumored to be bouncing.

1 Aug 1997: Full-fledged UDP is now in effect against UUnet. For more information, see netnews article "UUNet UDP In Force", and Wired article "UUNET Given the 'Death Penalty'".

It is known that rahul.net and msfc.nasa.gov have aliased Uunet. If you know of any other sites that have aliased Uunet, please post to news.admin.net-abuse.misc or contact me.

For information on how your site can alias Uunet out of your news feed, see Abuse.net's news blocking page.

Uunet may be aliased with "uunet". Udp cancels may be aliased with "uunetudp". It is estimated that aliasing both will reduce your netnews volume by 30-40%.

31 July 1997: Sanford Wallace is advertising (via spam) for someone to host CyberPromotions. See netnews article <199707311446.QAA24183@basement.replay.com> for more information. This may imply that Wallace is about to lose his Agis connection.

30 July 1997: Flash.net, Pacific Bell and Radix.net have left Agis. See the AGIS FAQ for more information.

30 July 1997: The IEMMC domain briefly lost their InterNic registration, allegedly for failure to pay registration fees. Their toll-free phone number has been disconnected. The internic database reported the domain status as being "On Hold". See netnews articles "IEMMC.ORG is on hold!" and "IEMMC meets the Reaper" and the AGIS FAQ for more information.

29 July 1997: C.N. Enterprises and Craig Nowak are being sued by Zilker Internet Park, inc. of Texas for using their service provider's name as the return address in a massive spam. For more information, see the Lawsuit and Wired's coverage. Lawsuit is archived at The John Marshall Law School archive

UPDATE: 17 Nov 1997: Craig Nowak has been ordered to pay $18,910. See Zilker.net for more information. See netnews article "LAW: Judgment in Flowers.com case" for the text of the judgement. Note the judge's use of the word "garbage" to describe spam.

28 July 1997: Agis customers, including overtheair.com, Ultragrafix and Global Tech 2000 are being sued by Strong Funds for bouncing spam off of their server. See the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal article about the lawsuit and Dallas Business Journal for more information.

See also the case history at The John Marshall Law School archives.

Named as defendants are:

• David L. Smith, 909 Monroe St., Roanoke Rapids, N.C. 27820-2624
• Glenn Canady, 2625 Collard Road, Arlington, Texas 76017 (Ultragrafix and GlobalTech 2000)
• Over the Air Equipment Inc., 2054 E. Desert Inn Road, Suite D, Las Vegas, Nev. 89109
• Garrido Enterprises, 2054 E. Desert Inn Road, Suite D, Las Vegas
• Online Services Inc., 2054 E. Desert Inn Road, Suite D, Las Vegas
• Joe's Emporium, 4682 Madera Way, Las Vegas, Nev. 89121
• Ultragrafix, 3811 S. Cooper St., Arlington, Texas 76015
• Global Tech 2000, no address given but related or connected to Ultragrafix
• Turner Multimedia Studios, 626 Overland Ave., Burley, Idaho 83318.

UPDATE: It is believed that Global Tech 2000 is Sanford Wallace's new "spambone" business partner.

UPDATE: 13 July 1998 More news on the lawsuit at The Milwaukee Business Journal.

22 July 1997: Posting of NoCeM reports based on these spam statistics has begun. Key is "Falk-NoCeM", available on any public key server, or from this web page

21 July 1997: I and several other people are currently the victims of a major "binary bomb" forgery. Thousands of stupid and annoying binary files are spammed all over the net with our names in the "From:" line. This angers clueless newbies into sending hate mail to us. See this report on the bomb for more information.

8 July 1997: Laurence E. Canter, the original "green card" spammer has been disbarred, partly for spamming. See this Press Release from the state of Tennessee for more info. Other references:

• LegalEthics.com
• Wired

8 July 1997: "Krazy" Kevin Lipsitz has been convicted of fraud. See fraud.org and New York State's Press Release for more info. Case is archived at The John Marshall Law School archive

This page maintained by Ed Falk