"Ed" the spammer

I would like to know this man's real name. I would like to know the names of all the merchants he worked for. Then I would like to publish them:

[Ed] sent spam to recovering gambling addicts enticing them to gambling Web sites. He used e-mail addresses of people known to have bought antianxiety medication or antidepressants and targeted them with pharmaceutical spam.

He spent 10 hours a day, seven days a week studying how to send spam and avoid filtering technologies in security software designed to weed out garbage e-mail. Most spam filters are effective 99 percent of the time; he aimed for that remaining window, using tricks such as including slightly different images in his spam, which can fool filters into thinking the e-mail is legitimate. . . .

He would start a spam run by finding an online merchant who wanted to sell a product. Then he'd acquire a list of e-mail addresses -- another commodity that has spawned its own market in the world of spam. He'd also set up a domain name, included as a link in a spam message, that, if clicked, would redirect the recipient to the merchant's Web site, enabling Ed to get credit for the referral.

The spam would then be sent from a network of hacker-controlled computers, called botnets. Those machines are often consumer PCs infected with malicious software that a hacker can control. Ed would "rent" time on those computers from another group of hackers that specialized in creating botnets.

If one of the spam recipients bought something, Ed would get a percentage of the sale. For pharmaceuticals the commission was around 50 percent, he said.

Response rates to spam tend to be a fraction of 1 percent. But Ed said he once got a 30 percent response rate for a campaign. The product? A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of fully clothed women popping balloons.

To track the money, merchants set up a "referral sales page" where spammers can see how much they make from a spam run. Ed would log in frequently, watching the money increase. He was paid into electronic payment transfer accounts, such as e-gold or PayPal, or into his debit card account, which he could cash out in $20 bills.

There's much more at the link, an outstanding article by Jeremy Kirk for Yahoo

Comments

[Zsa Zsa]

Poor ED. He doesn't have any friends. AND he goes incog so we can't give him a hard time...

[gail]

He SHOULDN'T have any friends. And he should be in jail

[Jake]

Yes he should be... and his cellmates should be the people that bring a continual string of fast food ads to an obese country.. that brought us Ronald McDonald, The Burger King, The Marlboro Man and Joe Camel.. The Swedish Bikini Team to advertise beer... Who promise quick cash to the lower working class with payday loans (with rates a mob loan shark would be proud of) and Easy qualify Platinum Visas... Nike, MTV, BET, the State Lottery any any number of Hollywood movies that sell a toxic lifestyle or unrealistic dreams to the least educated portion of our society..

Ed's just one shark in the frenzy..

Yes one can argue that none of the advertisers above compel, they simply impel by innocently offering goods and services that the consuming public has the freedom to choose to ignore or reject..

Yeah.. Freedom of choice.. Heh..

[Julie]

I would add to that list the Girls Gone Wild scumbag. Who, when sent to jail, cried like a little baby. It warmed my heart to read about it.

[CGHill]

"Then I would like to publish them."

At first I read that as "punish them," which might not be a bad idea either.

[Homer Simpson]

Mmmmmmmm Spaaaaammmmm !