Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!uhog.mit.edu!news.mathworks.com!zib-berlin.de!uni-paderborn.de!news!axel From: axel@dali.uni-paderborn.de (Axel Boldt) Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.misc,comp.mail.misc,alt.internet.services,biz.misc Subject: Blacklist of Internet Advertisers Followup-To: news.admin.net-abuse.misc Date: 23 Apr 1995 01:57:36 GMT Organization: Universitaet Paderborn, Germany Lines: 1135 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: dali.uni-paderborn.de Xref: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu news.admin.net-abuse.misc:954 comp.mail.misc:23096 alt.internet.services:48809 biz.misc:22839 BLACKLIST OF INTERNET ADVERTISERS ========================================================================= Canter and Siegel acknowledge Blacklist's importance in recent interview: "On the day the anti-advertising vandals can convince customers not to buy from Usenet advertisements, that is the day advertising will stop." Read all at http://www.futurenet.co.uk/netmag/Features/CnS/CnS.html ========================================================================= * 1. What is this? * 2. Who gets on the list, and for how long? * 3. What is the philosophy behind it? * 4. Spam, Velveeta, ... what are you talking about? * 5. What can I do with the blacklist? * 6. What if I wanted to punish YOU? * 7. How about other ways of dealing with commercial junk? * 8. Who doesn't belong on this blacklist? * 9. How to advertise on the Internet? * 10. What other blacklists are out there? * 11. How can I help? * 12. The Blacklist in itself. 1. What is this? This is the Blacklist of Internet Advertisers. It is intended to curb inappropriate advertising on usenet newsgroups and via junk e-mail. It works by describing offenders and their offensive behavior, expecting that people who read it will punish the offenders in one way or another. The list is posted regularly to several newsgroups, stored on a number of FAQ archives around the world and the most recent version is always available on the WWW as http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/blacklist.html. Titus Brown (http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~cbrown/) is kind enough to operate a temporary mirror of the list in the US. It is updated daily and accessible as http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~cbrown/BL/ If you read the non-html version and you don't know what to do with all the links given or what the WWW is or how to access it by email, send mail to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the text send usenet/news.answers/www/faq/* in the body of the message. Whenever you see a link of the form "BL/something" here, you can get a valid WWW address by prepending the string "http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/" for the German version or "http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~cbrown/" for the US version of the list. 2. Who gets on the list, and for how long? Anyone who is pointed out to me for sending out unsolicited commercial e-mail or posting inappropriate commercials to usenet newsgroups or mailing lists. I also monitor the newsgroups news.admin.net-abuse.misc and news.admin.net-abuse.announce. With "inappropriate commercials" I basically mean ads posted to unrelated newsgroups or mailing lists or to those which traditionally don't tolerate commercial messages. The number of complaints I receive is also a factor. Everyone added to the blacklist gets notified so that they can correct possibly inaccurate information. As a general rule, people are taken off the list after 3 months unless they repeat their behavior. Their entries are then move to the archive at BL/archive.html for educational purposes. Note that the archive is not part of the blacklist as such. 3. What is the philosophy behind it? In a nutshell: the Internet is probably as close to an anarchy as we can get. This is good. Therefore, punishing of unwelcome behavior should be done by private individuals, following the same grass roots philosophy that governs the rest of the net. Read more about it in BL/blacklist_philosophy.html. 4. Spam, Velveeta, ... what are you talking about? Spam and Velveeta are two fine food products which, on the Internet, stand for certain unwelcome behaviors. Spam has its own page on the WWW: http://sp1.berkeley.edu/findthespam.html featuring a spam contest and many comments. Spam was also the main ingredient in a hilarious Monty Python sketch: ftp://suned.zoo.cs.yale.edu/lib/python/spam.Z is the transcript and ftp://ftp.cis.ksu.edu/pub/Sparcsounds/misc/spam.au.gz is the sound recording. On the Internet, spam stands for posting multiple copies of the same (or slightly altered) article to many newsgroups, without crossposting them. This means that the article will be transmitted to and stored on every usenet host multiple times: once for every newsgroup involved. I couldn't come up with a Velveeta home page on the WWW, which is a real shame. (Way to go, folks!) On the Internet, Velveeta means the excessive crossposting of an article to many unrelated newsgroups. Spam is much worse than Velveeta (try it!). Recently, more and more mixtures of the two appeared: many copies of an article, each of which crossposted to a large number of newsgroups. Some call this "jello". For the purposes of this list, I won't make a distinction between spam, velveeta and jello - if the ad ends up in a wrong newsgroup, then it is by (my) definition inappropriate advertising and will be recorded. 5. What can I do with the blacklist? If you judge that one of the described behaviors deserves some punishment, you could for example do one of the following. (Note that some of these might be illegal in some jurisdictions. Check the books first and don't blame me.) * Boycott the advertising business. Tell your friends about the boycott and the reasons behind it. * Send them or their sysadmins a message informing them that you disapprove of their behavior. If a phone number is given, you might want to try to call them collect. 1-800 numbers are also always warmly welcomed. The 1-800 directory is at http://att.net/dir800/ * If the blacklisted business is a so-called "WWW mall" which sells advertising space to other businesses, you might want to inform these advertisers about the blacklist entry and about possible consequences for their profits. * Put them in your kill file. Read the documentation of your news reader about kill files. The kill mechanism of rn-style newsreaders is explained in the killfile-faq, available via anon ftp from ftp.cs.columbia.edu in the directory /archives/pub/usenet/news/answers. * Filter them out of your mailbox. If you read mail on a unix host, you might want to use the program procmail for that, which can be gotten via anonymous ftp from ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de as /pub/packages/procmail/procmail.tar.gz. This can be installed and used even if you are not root. Another possibility is filter, which comes with the mail reader elm. A primer about how to use these programs is the filtering-faq, available from ftp.cs.columbia.edu in the directroy /archives/faq/news/answers/mail. * Use procmail and an AI engine like emacs doctor to engage them in a fake mail dialog. * If they operate an automatic mail-back robot, you could test their intelligence by sending them an e-mail with FROM or REPLY-TO header containing their own address. There are many other fun things one can do with these robots. * Say individuals A and B are on the list. You can send an e-mail message to B with fake FROM-header A saying "I'm interested in your product/service." In this fashion, the advertisers will end up on each others mailing lists. * Have a look at the shell script BL/fletch.txt and reflect about possible uses :-) * If you are a system admin, you could stop forwarding mail or news originating from them. The latter can easily be done with the Usenet Death Penalty, a perl script available as http://www.osf.org:8001/~rsalz/udp (and which, as you might have guessed, can do much more than that!) Or, if the culprit owns their own domain, you can deny them access to your ftp, gopher, telnet, irc, nntp and WWW servers. * If you operate a cancelbot, you could automatically cancel all postings originating from them. See the pointer to the UDP above. Note however that the noble Cancelmoose[tm] (see point 7) strongly disapproves of this behavior. * And for the truly perverse: since the unedited texts of all ads are provided, you can use this list as the ultimate Zombie Cyber Mall[tm]. 6. What if I wanted to punish YOU? You can use some of the measures from question 5 against me. The buddies who love to hear about the progress of my work hide behind postmaster@uni-paderborn.de. If you want to do it right though, you'll have to start a blacklist of blacklist maintainers. Also, please keep the threats of legal action coming - you don't do it in vain: the most amusing ones are published as BL/threats.txt while flames go to BL/flames.txt Moreover, all usenet postings concerning the Blacklist will have the word "Blacklist" somewhere in the subject line. Put it in your kill file and you won't have to hear about it ever again. 7. How about other ways of dealing with commercial junk? Here are other things you can do, short of having put people on the blacklist: * Send a complaint to them or their sysadmin directly. There's a neat script for doing that painlessly from within nn and rn-style newsreaders called adcomplain. It is posted on the first of each month to alt.sources and can also be gotten from BL/adcomplain.txt. * Cancelmoose[tm] cancels all spam mercilessly. Read the reports posted to alt.current-events.net-abuse. More information about that group in general and Cancelmoose[tm] in particular is contained in the a.c-e.n-a FAQ, which is available as http://www-sc.ucssc.indiana.edu/~scotty/acena.html * If you operate you own news site, Rahul Dhesi's perl script unspam can help you in locally deleting spam - you won't have to wait for Cancelmoose[tm]'s cancel messages. However, it can't detect the spam - you need to know. It's at BL/unspam.txt. * Jonathan Kamens has recently posted his spam detector; it's at BL/spam_detect.txt. * If the offender is from the US, you can run to Mama and whine about things like pyramid schemes involving money or deceptive advertising. Mama in this case is the FTC: Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Protection Bureau, Division of Advertising Practices, 6th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20580, (202) 326-3090 * Tell business people about the netiquette, i.e. point them to everything listed under point 9, below. 8. Who doesn't belong on this blacklist? As you might have guessed, one blacklist is too small for all the assholes in the world. On a completely unrelated matter: the Church of Scientology's war against Usenet has been nicely documented by Ron Newman at http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/rnewman/scientology/home.html Also, the common Get-Rich-Quick and Make-Money-Fast pyramid schemes don't belong on this list. They usually come from newbies who are scared to death by some 20 well-written flames, and blacklisting them would be too harsh a treatment. However, if you catch one of these idiots, you can make money fast. For details, read BL/idiots.txt. If you think it would be worthwhile to have a blacklist for non-commercial spams around, you'll have to start it yourself. 9. How to advertise on the Internet? My advice is: create your own WWW page and announce it once on comp.infosystems.www.announce and then try to get it listed in the various WWW libraries and indexes. Information about how to do this is at http://www.webcom.com/html/publicize.html If you must advertise on usenet, then the biz.* and *.marketplace groups are for you (not all at once!). As a general rule, you should read every group for at least a week before you post anything there. This way, you can find out what the group is all about and whether commercials are appreciated there. Note that *.forsale groups were created to accomodate users who want to sell some personal stuff and not for commercial ads. Never send out unsolicited commercial e-mail to individuals or mailing lists. Here is a list of documents describing the netiquette and how it relates to advertising: * Read the FAQs in the news.announce.newusers newsgroup, which are archived on ftp.cs.columbia.edu in the directory /archives/faq/news/announce/newusers. The Usenet primer by Chuq Von Rospach and the Usenet Posting Rules by Mark Horton are good places to start. * I also digged up a good article by Daniel P Dern about how to advertise on the net (must be good: has the word "Blacklist" in it): ftp://is.internic.net/pub/net-happenings/messages/3434 * An excellent paper explaining the rationale behind the netiquette is at BL/netmyths.html and has been contributed by Guy Berliner. * Netiquette for Usenet Site Administrators is explained by the Indiana University Support Center in http://ancho.ucs.indiana.edu/FAQ/USAGN/ 10. What other blacklists are out there? I'm aware of one blacklist operated by Pierre Beyssac who tries to keep the french usenet hierarchy fr clean of commercials. It is written in french, posted regularly to the groups fr.news.reponses, fr.news.divers and fr.biz.d and available on the web as http://www.freenix.fr/liste-pub/. Comes with cost estimates for all the ads. 11. How can I help? * If you encounter an instance of offensive advertising on the internet, send me a copy (including all headers), or, even better, post it to news.admin.net-abuse.announce or news.admin.net-abuse.misc. If you post it, you should first browse over the last couple of Subject lines in that group to make sure that no one has reported that incident before. Then, you should use an informative Subject line yourself. (Read the charters for the two groups at BL/nana_charters.txt.) If you send it directly to me, please check the latest version of this list first so that I won't get multiple complaints about incidents already covered. The latest version is always accessible on the WWW from http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/blacklist.html All contributions will be treated confidentially. * It's especially important to report all instances of unsolicited commercial junk e-mail, since these can take up more bandwidth, are more intrusive and less visible than usenet postings. * If you see an anonymously posted ad, please respond immediately and fake interest. You'll get a response, hopefully with a real e-mail address and can then report the real person behind the scam. Then send a complaint about inappropriate usage including a copy of the ad (with all the headers) to the administrator of the anon server (this would be admin@anon.penet.fi in case anon.penet.fi was used). * Spam originating from AOL is very effectively dealt with by their postmaster postmaster@aol.com; usually he cancels it even without having received any complaints and reports about it on usenet. (Anyone interested in starting a Black/White list of Internet access providers?) * Please start your own blacklist, especially if you disagree with some of the rules for getting on and off this list or if you would like to focus on a particular news hierarchy. Tell me about it and I will include a pointer to it here. * Let me know about any creative suggestions for the answer to question 5. * Tell me if you know about an equivalent of procmail for Windows or MacOS. * The blacklist is growing very fast. I'd appreciate it if someone could write an indexing tool which would allow search based on name, geographical location or e-mail address of offender. (Preferably with a form-based html interface.) Shouldn't be too difficult since the stuff is already formatted, but I don't have the time. * Feel free to contact me if you find that any information in this document is inaccurate. * If you're in the US and would be willing to provide space on your WWW server for a mirror of the list, please contact me. You'll get a file BL.tar.gz ftp'ed to you once a night. * Tell people about this page. 12. THE BLACKLIST IN ITSELF I have formatted it in such a way that automatic processing becomes easy. Every entry can contain some or all of the fields ID, Name, Address, Phone, Email, Entered, Changed, Behavior, Remarks in this order. A line starting with whitespace is a continuation of the preceding line. Several Names, e-mail addresses etc. are separated by commas and optional whitespace. Blank lines separate the entries. Every entry has a unique ID so that your program can decide whether it has processed that entry before when a new list arrives. Furthermore, the original offensive article is accessible as http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/BL/.txt where the true ID is to be substituted for (or by just clicking on the ID if you read the HTML version of this document). ===Blacklist start=== ID: CS941211 Name: L. Canter, M. Siegel Address: 3333 East Camelback Road, Suite 250, Phoenix, AZ 85260, USA Cybersell, P.O.Box 13510, Scottsdale, AZ 85267, USA Cybersell, 10245 E. Via Linda, Suite 222, Scottsdale, AZ 85258, USA Phone: (602) 661-3911, (602) 661-5202 Email: href="mailto:73450.3565@CompuServe.COM">73450.3565@CompuServe.COM Entered: 1994/12/11 Changed: 1995/04/11 Behavior: The famous greencard lawyers. In 1994, they repeatedly sent out a message offering their services in helping to enter the US greencard lottery to almost all usenet newsgroups. (Note in passing: they charged $100 for their service, while participating in the greencard lottery is free and consists merely of sending a letter with your personal information at the right time to the right place.) When the incoming mail bombs forced their access provider to terminate their account, they threatened to sue him until he finally agreed to forward all responses to them. Read all about it with gopher gopher.well.sf.ca.us in Authors, Books.../Online Zines. They signed an agreement with their access provider, PSI, to refrain from sending out junk e-mail or spamming usenet. The text is available over the net as http://www.psi.com/press/Canter-Siegal-6-23.html Nevertheless, they have repeatedly spammed usenet again, although the postings were quickly found and cancelled by the cancelbot CancelMoose[tm]. PSI has cut their USENET access. They have since written a book, "How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway" and founded an internet advertising company, Cybersell. The book promotes several advertising strategies on the internet including gathering addresses from usenet and sending out junk e-mail, posting commercials to inappropriate newsgroups, advertising on irc and even via talk. They basically contend that all these behaviors are legal and therfore ok. They ridicule the terms "internet culture" and "netiquette" and claim that the internet, once all real-world laws are applied to it, will make a great source of income for attorneys. Canter & Siegel were behind the grand Credit Repair Spam and the Virtualmall spam. This finally forced their service provider, psi.com, to cut them off completely as of 1995/02/12. Update: At 1995/03/01, cyber.sell.com apparently acquired a new feed from sprint (800-669-8303). However, they can't be reached with ping yet. Sprint is still in the process of deciding what to do. You can mail them your opinion about this matter at engineer@sprintlink.net insc@sprintlink.net or dns-admin@sprintlink.net. On 1995/03/22, they spammed usenet again, this time with an ad for their book. A couple of interesting things to note about this one: - They spammed from two accounts, one on netcom and one on crl. The accounts have been nuked. - They put certain usenet hosts in the path line, so that their spam wouldn't reach these hosts, thereby trying to avoid the spam cancellers. To no avail, of course. - They systematially varied From and Subjet headers, again hoping to avoid being cancelled. - They forged Approved-headers, so that their ad appeared in several moderated newsgroups. - The spam spilled into several mailing lists, prompting the following anti-spamming policy from the Debian mailing list: BL/debian.txt. The Water Spam, also orchestrated by C&S, shows similar characteristics. Remarks: Don't bug the owners of cybersell.com; they were the access providers for (and hence victims of) C&S during their first spam and acquired the domain name cybersell immediately - very much in the spirit of creative punishment :-) ID: NM941211 Name: Netmart Inc. Phone: 514-681-2267 Email: gls@netmart.com, nminfo@netmart.com Entered: 1994/12/11 Changed: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Spammed several unrelated newsgroups on 1994/12/10 with a truly sad announcement of their WWW Mall. Did it again after having been blacklisted; they seem to post it once per week. On 1995/03/01, they posted another announcement to all *.marketplace groups in sight. Remarks: Please take the time and inform the businesses advertising on their WWW page about this blacklist entry. ID: AD941223 Name: Jess Guim, Advanz Home Office Companion Address: 319 East 95th Street, Dept. 2, New York, NY 10128-5761, USA Email: adhoc@ix.netcom.com Entered: 1994/12/23 Changed: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Posted their ads about desktop publishing to several rec.food groups. Advertises his tool for creating e-mail lists of potential customers via unsolicited e-mail. When complaining to him, he sends even more information about his program. Remarks: He claims to give a 30 days money-back guarantee on his products. ID: TM941223 Name: TMI Phone: voice: 408-429-5400, fax: 408-429-6100 Email: tmi@scruznet.com, info2@tmi.org, info3@tmi.org, info@tmi.org Entered: 1994/12/23 Changed: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Spammed the soc.culture hierarchy with ads for discount telephone service. Repeated it even after having been blacklisted. They recently tried to find out Cancelmoose[tm]'s spam criteria by posting a sequence of low-volume spams, which were classified as part of one big spam and hence canceled. Remarks: They have now their own domain, tmi.org, but continue to use the newsserver of scruznet.com. ID: KL950105 Name: Kevin Jay Lipsitz ("Krazy Kevin") Phone: 718-967-1234 Email: krazykev@escape.com Entered: 1995/01/05 Changed: 1995/04/12 Behavior: Spammed almost the whole usenet repeatedly with anonymous ads (Hi, my name is Anne Nelson...") for a long distance calling plan. He was warned by the admin of the anon server, then lost his account there and did it again with a new account. He told me on the phone that a company called Card Call USA, INC. 6232 N. 7th ST. #109 Phoenix, AZ 85014 Phone: 602-264-7000 Fax: 602-266-0687 uses a pyramid-like promotion scheme where every customer gets a commission for each new customer they bring and in turn for each new customer these new ones bring and so on up to level 7. Kevin Lipsitz is a customer of Card Call USA and tries to bring new customers to get these commissions. His using the anon server is evidence enough that he knew that he was doing something wrong. Incidentally, he sent me the membership application for CC USA. Point #6 of the contract, which Kevin most probably signed, reads: "6. I agree to operate in a lawful, ethical, and moral manner and to do nothing that will adversely reflect upon CCUSAI, its clients or its other Independent Sales Representatives. I understand that any act deemed by CCUSAI to be detrimental to CCUSAI, in any manner, is grounds for the termination of my status as Independent Sales Representative and all corresponding commissions." As of 1995/02/20, he uses the new e-mail address at escape.com. On 1995/02/26, he anon-spammed again, this time advertising his magazine club. It occured again on 1995/03/04. Remarks: I tracked him down by answering to one of his ads using an old e-mail address, to which he promptly responded. The second time, I responded again to his anon ad, and he apparently recognized me and tried to harrass me over the phone. Next was a truly pathetic first attempt at mailbombing. [Kevin, next time pick an ftpmail service without per day traffic limits, jeeez] His account on panix.com is no more. ID: KK950105 Name: Kim Kerns, Applied Information Technologies, Inc. Address: POB 2634, Midlothian, VA 23113, USA Phone: 704-559-5988, 800-576-5146, 804-378-8050 Email: applied@vnet.net, BYNH09A@prodigy.com, lorcine@aol.com Entered: 1995/01/05 Changed: 1995/01/09 Behavior: Spammed many newsgroups with a long distance calling plan. Varied subject lines, posting sites and exact text, apparently to avoid cancelbots. The company selling the phone service is Applied Information Technologies, Inc., POB 2634, Midlothian, Va. 23113. This company employs a promotion scheme offering commission to every customer for each call people sponsored by them make. After being blacklisted and notified about it, he did it again repeatedly. Remarks: Note the 1-800 number. He doesn't seem to own vnet, so you can put pressure on his postmaster. ID: JM950121 Name: Pat Mok Address: Box 34217, Westbrook Postal Office, Calgary, Alberta T3C 3W2, Canada Email: mokp@canuck.com, jmok@cyber.sell.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Posted his ad about chinese acne medicine to 110 newsgroups; reply address was a automatic reply bot at cyber.sell.com (the site of the greencard lawyers). Remarks: Apparently has been reprimanded be the site admin at canuck.com. ID: BB950121 Name: BBS AMERICA, David Paolo, Log On America, Inc. Address: 3 Regency Plaza, Providence, RI 02903, ATTN: Internet BBS, USA Phone: Voice: 401-453-5100, Fax: 401-459-6222, BBS: 401-459-6200 Email: bbs.america@loa.com, david.paolo@loa.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Sent their ad for internet access to many totally unrelated mailing lists and 258 newsgroups. The ad ended with the ironic "This article was an automated post. Any posting in unrelated newsgroups is an error, please disregard this article if it is off-topic." Remarks: loa.com seems to be owned by the spammers and is fed directly by uunet. ID: HA950121 Name: Router Solutions, Address: 5527 Preston Fall City Road, Fall City, Wash. 98024, USA Phone: 800-837-4180, 206-644-6082, Fax: 206-222-7622 Email: routers@halcyon.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Spammed 76 newsgroups with their ad regarding network engineering. ID: CS950121 Name: Card Smart, Glen Todovich Address: 900 N. Geyer, St.Louis, MO 63122, USA Email: crdsmart@inlink.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Sent their ad about credit card information to an animal rights mailing list. ID: CL950121 Name: Jack Starworth Email: jstar@cyberspace.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Changed: 1995/01/23 Behavior: Crossposted their long distance ad to about 15 soc.culture groups and sent it to a politics related mailing list. ID: CP950121 Name: Cyper Psychology, Inc., Richard Baldwin Email: cyberpsych@atlanta.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Posted their ad "Secrets to a Happier Life" to about 100 unrelated newsgroups. They have sent me a letter of apology and promise to not do it again. Read the letter at BL/cp_responds.txt ID: YG950121 Name: Yoram Gafni Address: 5 East 41st #150, New York, NY 10017, USA Phone: 212-592-0350 Email: yglaw@ix.netcom.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Spammed 106 usenet newsgroups with their ad offering help in entering the US greencard lottery. Everyone who sent him mail got an even longer e-mail ad back. Remarks: Participation in the annual US greencard lottery is free and easy. Inquire at your local embassy/consulate or in alt.visa.us. ID: LH950121 Name: Libhitech, Fountain head Inc. Address: P.O. Box 136, Lake Hiawatha, NJ 07034, USA Email: info@libhitech.com, support@libhitech.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Changed: 1995/02/28 Behavior: The first large scale junk-email spam I've seen. They advertised a book list for technical professionals. I got it twice :-) Remarks: libhitech.com is fed by mordor.com, and the sysadmin their reports that they have agreed to cease and desist. Anyone have libtech's name and address? ID: MR950121 Name: Michael Rifenburg, Premier Telecom Mangagement Address: 4360 East Main Street Suite 301, Ventura, CA 93003, USA Phone: Voice: 805-659-1082, Fax: 805-647-0229 Email: mrifenburg@delphi.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Advertised his long distance plan in 52 newsgroups, mostly soc.culture.*. ID: HK950121 Name: Graham Daley, Internet Promotions Inc. Email: hkmark@hk.net Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Sent their ad regarding a chinese lottery to unrelated newsgroups. ID: IS950121 Name: Herbert D. King, Cynthia Wiley Address: POB 91098, Los Angeles, CA 90009-1098, USA Email: 75672.1174@compuserve.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Behavior: Posted an ad about incense sticks to many newsgroups and later also to mailing lists. Remarks: My notification mail to their compuserve mailbox bounced: "Mailbox full". ID: CY950121 Name: Cybergear Address: 2770 St. Albans NW, North Canton, Ohio 44720, USA Email: cybergear@delphi.com Entered: 1995/01/21 Changed: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Posted their ad for t-shirts to at least 30 unrelated newsgroups, sometimes changeing the subject to avoid canceling and to make the postings technically on-topic. Did it again on 95/02/05. ID: BO950212 Name: Stuart Bar-On, Parallel Performance Group Address: 450 Jordan Rd., Suite E, Sedona, AZ 86336, USA Phone: 602-282-6300 (voice), 602-774-0896 (fax), (520) 282-6300 (voice), (520) 774-0896 (fax) Email: ppg@ppgsoft.com, ppginc@shell.portal.com ppginc@earth.usa.net, ppg@primenet.com, strand@ppg.strand.com ppg@unicomp.net, info@ppginc.com ppg@ppgsoft.com, news@ppginc.com Entered: 1995/02/12 Changed: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Engage in a large-scale junk e-mail assault. Sent out unsolicited e-mail ads to postmasters, who were supposed to forward it to their "Marketing Directors". They got the addresses from InternNIC's list of registered domain names. In addition, they gathered e-mail addresses from usenet postings and sent unsolicited commercial e-mail to those. A new junk e-mail wave occured around 1995/02/28. This time from unicomp.com. I suspect that they scan usenet postings for certain Organization-lines in the header. Remarks: Their mail-bots and WWW pages are maintained by zoom.com. In addition, the domain name ppgsoft.com is owned by Bar-On but is nothing but a bunch of mailboxes on stealth.romoidoy.com. The domain ppginc.com, also owned by Bar-On, contains only a couple of mail-bots residing on unicomp.net. ID: MS950212 Name: Alliance Corporate Services Phone: 817-453-8428 (fax) Email: msrgpltd@pic.net Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Posted their ad about financial services to many unrelated newsgroups, including several *.general groups. Remarks: Please do not confuse this company, Alliance Corporate Services, with a wholly unrelated company that is also on the internet but is NOT blacklisted, Alliance Credit Corporation. ID: BH950212 Name: Bernard Hodes Advertising, Inc. Email: dratecard@1390.com, mark_shevitz@ch.hodes.com box_master@ch.hodes.com, owen@hodes.com Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Repeatedly and persistently advertised on misc.jobs.misc, even when told that this is a discussion group and ads belong elsewhere. ID: CH950212 Name: Chris Hoyt, The Contrarian Advisor, Hoyt Financial Advisors, Inc. Email: choyt@interactive.net Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Sent their ad about a financial newsletter to several, totally unrelated newsgroups. Remarks: Note the line "Feel free to send your complaints and comments to choyt@interactive.net." in the original posting. ID: TO950212 Email: tony@realm.net Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Repeatedly advertised his software on many unrelated newsgroups. ID: DH950212 Name: David Halsted Phone: 415-497-2798 Email: def@leland.Stanford.EDU Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Posted an ad about a dubious financial service to almost all soc.culture.* groups. Defended his action in BL/halsted_defense.txt Remarks: Note that he used his Stanford .edu account for this. ID: CL950212 Name: Claude Lee Address: POB 1374, Cape Girardeau, Mo. 63702-1374, USA Phone: 314-339-7237 Email: 76312.3240@CompuServe.COM Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Advertised his matching service in many soc.culture.* groups and on uk.announce. ID: WS950212 Name: Will Sherman, Automobile Safety Foundation Address: POB 12183, La Jolla, CA 92039, USA Email: asf@ix.netcom.com Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Sent his ad for car safety books and requests for donations to a large number of mailing lists and newsgroups. ID: LI950212 Name: Lynn International School Address: 41 Jarvis Circle, Needham, MA 02192, USA Email: agni@bix.com Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Posted an ad about an MD program in 327 newsgroups. Their subsequent apology is at BL/agni_apology.txt ID: ME950212 Name: Rich Williams, Canadian Music Exchange Email: cme@io.org Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Posted an ad about their music service on 161 music newsgroups. ID: PB950212 Name: "Paperboy" Email: editor@paperboy.com, thibault@cerfnet.com Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: They engaged in a low-speed spam of many newsgroups and also in regular postings to selected newsgroups to advertise their TV program e-mail newsletter which is really a way to shovel even more commercial junk in your mailbox. They initially didn't even give information about how to unsubscribe. The poster keeps changing sites. Remarks: Note the .edu WWW site. ID: MR950212 Name: Michael Rodriguez, Fone Card International Email: mrmagic@mindvox.phantom.com Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Spammed the soc.culture.* hierarchy with ads for his phone card service. A response of Michael is here: BL/mr_responds.txt Remarks: postmaster@phantom.com's comment: "Usenet has no rules". ID: CC950212 Name: John Petiton, Consumer Credit Advocates, David Markowitz Address: 11 Pennsylvania Plaza, Suite 2101, New York, NY 10001, USA Phone: 212-629-9696 (voice), 212-629-5261 (voice), 718-204-8182 (voice), 212-629-4762 (fax) Email: ccapc@cyber.sell.com Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: They sent out their ad about credit repair services ("WE GUARANTEE THAT YOUR CREDIT CAN BE RESTORED!!!") to almost all newsgroups, including moderated ones (forging the Approved-Header) and to the bit.* hierarchy, which is gatewayed to mailing lists. To post the spam, they used a trial account on panix under the name David Markowitz, which was immediately terminated by panix's postmaster, who also helped in cancelling the mess. Fully anticipating that, they had set the From header to an address at cyber.sell.com (Canter & Siegel's domain). The actual spamming was done from cyber.sell.com via telnet to panix.com, which was in violation of C&S's contract with PSI and subsequently led to their being cut off the net for good, after panix had complained to PSI. Joel Furr's interview with the guy who hired C&S to do all this is here: BL/furr_interview.txt. Remarks: Some excerpts from New York's disciplinary rules governing attorney conduct are at BL/NY_bar_rules.txt. You can request a complaint form from the New York State bar association by calling 212-685-1000. This is just a private association of NY attorneys, so you want to call the state court system also (at what number?). If you call the credit lawyers, please tell them about their entry in this list since I couldn't reach them by email [heh heh, since they have been kicked off the net]. ID: SP950212 Name: Mary Lynch, Sweet Physiques Address: 3551 S. Monaco Parkway, Suite #129, Denver, CO 80237-1200, USA Phone: 303-691-9166 (voice), 303-691-9166 (fax) Email: 7272259@MCIMail.com, hunterlm@csn.org, sweetp@dash.com Entered: 1995/02/12 Behavior: Engaged in a large scale and repeated spam (at least 600 groups) advertising chocolate. The post originated from AOL (from a trial account that was quickly terminated) and was sent via an anonymous remailer at rahul.net to several mail-to-news gateways. 2 days later, they opened another trial account on aol and spammed again, this time without bothering to use a remailer. Again, the aol account was promptly terminated. They did it again three days later. If you express interest to 7272259@MCIMail.com, your mail is redirected to Mary Lynch at either hunterlm@csn.org or sweetp@dash.com and you will get a 6 part jpeg or an even larger gif of the chocolate in the mail plus an order form with address, fax and telephone number of the company. Remarks: MCI refuses to terminate the account. You can complain to 0004538383@mcimail.com. MCI has an 1-800 number also. The address given above is a rented mailbox. ID: PD950228 Name: Paul Dawkins Address: Educational Developments Ltd, 1 Royal navy Avenue, Keyham, Plymouth PL2 2AE U.K. Email: ay89@cityscape.co.uk Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Posted an ad for a broken newsreader to some 1500 newsgroup. Later claimed that the very brokenness of the program was responsible for the spamming. Has sent unsolicited commercial e-mail to people who had complained to him. Remarks: The first european spammer. Heaven help, capitalism is spreading! ID: SC950228 Name: Susan Chaffee, The Sound Healing Center Address: 331 Norcrest Dr., Suite 111, Rochester, N.Y. 14617-1343, USA Phone: 716-338-3019 Email: lacatena@cyber1.servtech.com Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Spammed 61 newsgroups with their ad about "what Jesus Christ, Bhudda, Shiva, and Pythagoras knew" for $3.00. ID: CL950228 Name: Cyberlink Inc. and various agents Address: 5855 Toanga Canyon Blvd., #520, Woodland Hills, CA 91367, USA Phone: 818-702-0456 (fax), 216-461-1770 (fax), 216-231-2857 (voice) 800-266-2006 (voice) Email: mvs3@po.CWRU.Edu, MRN@WVNVAXA.WVNET.EDU, 75017.605@CompuServe.COM, cyberlink@infomat.com, fy755@cleveland.Freenet.Edu Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Persistent, slow spam of soc.culture.* groups, advertising some long distance plan. Apparently, Cyberlink pays commissions to agents who brings new customers, and several of their agents spam. It's unclear whether Cyberlink is aware of that. They need to change their rules. Remarks: cyberlink@infomat.com seems to be an automatic mail-back robot. ID: PG950228 Name: Peter Goldberg Email: goldberp@iia.org Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Repeatedly advertised phone services on soc.culture groups (no spamming involved, however). When confronted, he maintains that there's nothing wrong with his advertising in these groups. ID: SF950228 Email: sfiresto@interserv.com Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Posted their ad about american tax services to 50 comp groups. Remarks: Notification mail bounced: no such user. ID: TC950228 Name: Tricom Address: 3624 Rawdon Drive, Durham, NC 27713-1410, USA Email: tricom@downtown.durham.nc.us Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Advertised their astrology chart via junk e-mail. ID: TR950228 Name: Tronics Email: tronics@mango.aloha.com Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Advertised their cable TV scam to 193 newsgroups. It was made to look like a FAQ-request. ID: WC950228 Name: William Calder, LC Society Address: 2240 Autumn Dr., Oceanside, CA 92056, USA Phone: 619-630-7801 Email: LCSty.95@ix.netcom.com Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Sometimes it's hard to remain serious... 89 groups, including alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. ID: AI950228 Name: Lee Pryor, Ask Information Systems Address: P.O.B. 75504, Los Angeles, CA 90075, USA Email: FREE4U@ix.netcom.com Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Posted his ad about amazing credit secrets to several unrelated newsgroups. ID: CB950228 Name: C. Boyle, Boyle and Associates Address: 39899 Balentine Dr. Suite 200, Newark, CA 94560, USA Phone: 510-657-2493 (voice), 510 657 2499 (voice), 510-657-2492 (fax) Email: cboyle@SYSTEMV.COM, boyle1@ix.netcom.com Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Chuck Boyle is listed as the "administrative contact" for virtualmall.com, the company who chose to announce its WWW mall on about 1500 usenet newsgroups. The spamming was done from a disposable account on crl.com, which has been terminated since. The Web mall itself contains the e-mail address brianjob@systemv.com. Canter and Siegel were hired for this spam. An apology is at BL/boyle_apology.txt. Canter has written a response at BL/canter_comments_on_boyle.txt. Remarks: Please take the time and inform the businesses advertising on their WWW page about this blacklist entry. ID: MA950228 Name: Magazines unlimited Email: mags@mars.superlink.net Entered: 1995/02/28 Behavior: Posted 68 copies of their magazine service ad to unrelated newsgroups. Remarks: Has anyone expressed interest to them? I'd love to know name and address. ID: JC950415 Name: John Chavez, Automated Control Corp. Phone: 619-546-9984, 619 458-9890, 800-700-7337 Email: acc@cyber.net Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Spammed 29 computer groups, some of them completely unrelated, with their hardware ad. ID: AT950415 Name: Atlas Computer Systems Phone: 904-694-2900, 800-655-5590 Email: atlas@alpha.bin-sixx.com, knight@alpha.bin-sixx.com, us001663@interramp.com, atlas@ocala.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Spammed at least 2259 groups and probably many more with their hardware ad. This was preceded by a 618-group test spam. Apology is at BL/atlas_apology.txt ID: RS950415 Name: Randal N. Streilein, HowTo InfoNet Email: randys@awinc.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Spammed 403 groups with an ad about their soon-to-be-launched document-for-cash service. Apology is at BL/streilein_apology.txt ID: VL950415 Name: Vic Lutsky Email: vick@epix.net Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Posted three large gif files, 4 parts each, to several newsgroups. They contained car ads. Then he reposted them, since he had confused uuencode and base64 encoding. Quote: "I believe the NET is for everyones use as they see fit." ID: JT950415 Name: Jan Teteris, Corporate Computer Distributors Address: Suite 303 - 738 Broughton Street, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6G 3A7 Phone: (604) 893-5022 Email: corp@haven.uniserve.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Unsolicited junk e-mail. "PLEASE TELL ME IF THIS INTEREST YOU? I have over 25 years of marketing experiance." Remarks: He asked me to post the following well thought out response here: BL/teteris_response.txt ID: JA950415 Name: Jim Anderson, First National Data Bank Address: Box 24008, Kelowna, V1Y 9P9, BC, Canada Email: jim.anderson@cyberstore.ca Entered: 1995/04/15 kBehavior: With a tasty mixture of velveeta and spam, he reached 164 newsgroups with his ad for a CD. ID: CW950415 Name: Cyberwarrior, Inc. Address: 1710 Nevins Road. Fair Lawn. NJ 07410, USA Phone: (201)703-1517 Email: tanha@outland.cyberwar.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: An internet access provider who spammed 190 groups with their ad. They are not able to configure a newsreader. An apology is at BL/cw_apology.txt. ID: MD950415 Name: Matt Drudge Email: udge@lainet.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Sent an ad for his newsletter to about 100 unrelated newsgroups. ID: JD950415 Name: Jackie Davis Email: enfo@wsnet.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Posted three different spam/velveeta combinations: nutrition, cookies and motor oil for good measure. Remarks: Apparently, the account has been nuked in the meantime. ID: NF950415 Name: New Frontiers Information Corporation Address: 586 Putnam Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Phone: 617 497-6811 (voice), 617 441-9265 (fax) Email: info@nfic.com, news@nfic.com, root@nfic.com, aheitner@nfic.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Subscribed people to a junk mailing list, no questions asked. The information about the subscription came together with an unsolicited software email ad. Remarks: info.nfic.com is a mail robot. ID: HY950415 Name: High yield investment club, R.S. Friedenberg Email: bob@yield.ip.portal.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Advertised some investment scheme on several unrelated groups. ID: SA950415 Name: Sandip A Patel, NETWORK International Address: 18427, Studebaker Road, Suite 204, Cerritos, CA 90703, U.S.A. Phone: (310) 402-5095 (voice), (310) 403-3717 (fax) Email: patel@ecst.csuchico.edu Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Advertised their software firm in 28 groups, most of them unrelated. Remarks: Apology is at BL/patel_apology.txt ID: ME950415 Name: Mark Eberra, The Superior Edge Corporation Phone: (816) 861-1508 Email: inside@tyrell.net, supere@tyrell.net Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Posted his ad for a mailing list "dedicated exclusively to consumers that are interested in shopping via the internet" to 580 newsgroups. Remarks: Read Eberra's letter "To All Internet Users" at BL/eberra_letter.txt. They also like to threaten with legal action. Read the hilarious letter of "William Phillip Whitmore III, Chief, Legal Counsel, The Superior Edge Corporation" at BL/superior.txt. App arently, this guy went on to Harvard Law School right after having finished third grade. ID: TF950415 Name: The Fountain, B. EREN Email: beu@le.ac.uk, zsrikay@truestar.demon.co.uk Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Posted their conference announcement plus magazine ad to 18 completely unrelated culture newsgroups. ID: JS950415 Name: JEFF SERGENTI Email: wwmusic@ix.netcom.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Spammed 28 music newsgroups with their web server announcement. ID: CS950415 Name: Cysport Group Ltd. Email: CysportGP@aol.com, Cysport@delphi.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Spammed 28 sports related groups with an ad for their baseball book. ID: TA950415 Name: Tell A Friend, Bob Kidston Address: 19201 Rd 15, Pioneer, OH 43554, USA Phone: 419 737 2364 (fax), 419 737 2352 (voice) Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Doesn't know anything about the Internet, payed Canter and Siegel $1000 for the dirty deed of spamming 213 groups with his ad for water analysis. ID: PB950415 Name: Peter Brown Address: 324 E. 77 ST, NEW YORK, NY 10021, USA Email: pbrown@mindvox.phantom.com, pbrown@ingress.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Advertised his t-shirts on 20 unrelated newsgroups. Forged FROM-line. ID: CA950415 Name: David Ford, A+ Vending Email: capital@clark.net Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Advertised twice, with forged FROM-lines, their spina bifida vending machines, hitting more than 100 newsgroups in the process. ID: WC950415 Name: WWCD Inc., Steve Schall Phone: (410) 581-1110 Email: wwcd@wwcd.com, t-rock@access.digex.net, steve@wwcd.com Entered: 1995/04/15 Behavior: Repeatedly posted announcements of their WWW server on a large number of sports related newsgroups. Respond to complaints with flames. Put at least 41 links to their server on The-Mother-of-all BBS at http://www.cs.colorado.edu/homes/mcbryan/public_html/bb/summary.html Remarks: Access provider is digex.net. ===Blacklist end=== _________________________________________________________________ Date: 1995/04/21 17:24:22 PDT (C) 1994, 1995 by Axel Boldt . You can do with it whatever you want, unless you are blacklisted here. -- Axel Boldt * boldt@math.ucsb.edu * http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/