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I'd like to continue on in my review of the book Spam Kings (read part 1) and make some more comments, particularly regarding the antispammers.

One thing that I really liked about the book is learning the history of some of the spam tools. I was never a participant on NANAE (news.admin.net-abuse.email; a USENET newsgroup which discusses e-mail spamming), that was before my antispam time. But I was intrigued by its history. People would gather together and discuss spammers and tools for stopping them, and sometimes spammers would stop by and the flame wars would ensue.

NANAE was sort of a self-policing forum where the mature members would discuss techniques. In one incident, some antispammers broke into a spammer's web site and shut it down or rendered it unusable. In other words, they hacked in and broke it. On NANAE, some of the senior members would reproach the actions and say that anti-spammers should not use such unethical actions. They hold the moral high ground so they should not revert to illegal actions. Such appeals to reason usually went unheeded by most of the rest of the community, and I think I agree with the rest of them. I would personally never resort to such tactics, but in the world of spam, spammers are absolutely ruthless. As Spammer X says, the recipient of his spam doesn't get a choice whether or not they want to receive it. If spammers are going to behave unethically, then turnabout is fair play.

I liked the stories of how the anti-spammers got started. They would receive spam in their email inboxes and would hunt down the spammer who sent it and harass them mercilessly. Eventually, many of these people would join organizations dedicated to fighting spam. All I can say to this is God bless Steve Linford, the guy who started Spamhaus. That's a very good web site and belongs in any anti-spammers' toolkit (and I consider myself a part of that group). Other blacklists like SPEWS I had only heard of. Now I know its history and why there was a bit of a controversy surrounding it.

Some anti-spammers became so good at "harassing" spammers that eventually spammers created a Do-Not-Email list containing their email addresses. The thinking went that considering the headache the antis would probably generate, that would outweigh the benefits. So, spammers would send these lists around to each other and scrub their own lists from these people. Personally, if my name were on that list, I would feel pretty good about making it.

All in all, Spam Kings was an enjoyable read. When I got done, I wondered how accurate it was. It's probable that most of the stories are more-or-less correct, but the book was published in 2004 and events in the book span 1997-2004. So, some events that take place long in the past likely have some historical errors since nobody can remember details exactly. It doesn't matter though, I got enough out of it to overlook any minor errors and I now have greater insight into the history of spam.

By Terry Zink, Program Manager. Visit the blog maintained by Terry Zink here.

Related topics: Email, Spam