PC World Interactive 1/PC World Interactive 1 - Nisan 1997.iso/nostalji/bbs/faq/blacklst.txt

Internet Message Format | 1995-05-25 | 53KB

Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!uhog.mit.edu!news.mathworks.com!zib-berlin.de!uni-paderborn.de!news!axel
From: [e-mail] (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: <[e-mail]>
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 [e-mail] 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
   [e-mail].

   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, [phone]
     * 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
   <[e-mail]> 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 [e-mail] in case
       anon.penet.fi was used).
     * Spam originating from AOL is very effectively dealt with by their
       postmaster [e-mail]; 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/<ID>.txt where the true ID
   is to be substituted for <ID> (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:    [phone]
Email:    href="mailto:[e-mail]">[e-mail]
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 [e-mail]
          [e-mail] or [e-mail].
          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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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: [phone]
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail],
          [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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: [phone]
                  Fax: [phone]
          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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
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: [phone], BBS: 401-459-6200
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [phone], Fax: [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
Entered:  1995/01/21
Behavior: Sent their ad about credit card information to an animal
          rights mailing list.

ID:       CL950121
Name:     Jack Starworth
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
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: [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone] (voice), 602-774-0896 (fax), [phone] (voice),
          [phone] (fax)
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
          [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]
          [e-mail], [e-mail]
          [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [phone] (fax)
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
          [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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 [e-mail]." in the original posting.

ID:       TO950212
Email:    [e-mail]
Entered:  1995/02/12
Behavior: Repeatedly advertised his software on many unrelated newsgroups.

ID:       DH950212
Name:     David Halsted
Phone:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
Entered:  1995/02/12
Behavior: Posted an ad about their music service on 161 music newsgroups.

ID:       PB950212
Name:     "Paperboy"
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:  [e-mail]'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:    [phone] (voice), 212-629-5261 (voice),
          718-204-8182 (voice), 212-629-4762 (fax)
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone] (voice), 303-691-9166 (fax)
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]
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 [e-mail], your mail is
          redirected to Mary Lynch at either [e-mail] or
          [e-mail] 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
          [e-mail]. 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:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone] (fax), 216-461-1770 (fax), 216-231-2857 (voice)
          800-266-2006 (voice)
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail],
          [e-mail], [e-mail],
          [e-mail]
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:  [e-mail] seems to be an automatic mail-back
          robot.

ID:       PG950228
Name:     Peter Goldberg
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
Entered:  1995/02/28
Behavior: Advertised their astrology chart via junk e-mail.

ID:       TR950228
Name:     Tronics
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone] (voice), 510 657 2499 (voice), 510-657-2492 (fax)
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
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 [e-mail].
          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:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail],
          [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
Entered:  1995/04/15
Behavior: Sent an ad for his newsletter to about 100 unrelated newsgroups.

ID:       JD950415
Name:     Jackie Davis
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone] (voice), 617 441-9265 (fax)
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail],
[e-mail]
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:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone] (voice), [phone] (fax)
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
Entered:  1995/04/15
Behavior: Posted their conference announcement plus magazine ad to 18
          completely unrelated culture newsgroups.

ID:       JS950415
Name:     JEFF SERGENTI
Email:    [e-mail]
Entered:  1995/04/15
Behavior: Spammed 28 music newsgroups with their web server
          announcement.

ID:       CS950415
Name:     Cysport Group Ltd.
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
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:    [phone] (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:    [e-mail], [e-mail]
Entered:  1995/04/15
Behavior: Advertised his t-shirts on 20 unrelated newsgroups. Forged
          FROM-line.

ID:       CA950415
Name:     David Ford, A+ Vending
Email:    [e-mail]
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:    [phone]
Email:    [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]
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 <[e-mail]>.
   You can do with it whatever you want, unless you are blacklisted here.
--
 Axel Boldt * [e-mail] * http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/