Joe's Random Ramblings

I learned about this via a post on the Usenet newsgroup NANAE (news.admin.net-abuse.email).

Apparently, a former Air-Force captain was able, using what looks like questionable means, to get control of large network blocks that rightfully belong to another company half-way across the continent in one case, and to NASA in another case. It seems he then turned around and sold access to the network blocks to spammers.
Read the whole story here:
http://www.47-usc-230c2.org/chapter3.html

Next time you are pi**ed about the amount of spam you receive, remember, it comes courtesy of NASA.

Some time ago, Comcast got sued by a spammer, because they were blocking his spam emails.
On April 10, a judge ruled in favor of Comcast. That's of course how it should be, but unfortunately, not all judges are sufficiently clued-in about things computer-related...
The best thing about the ruling are the first two sentences:

Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.

Not surprisingly, the spammer didn't like being called a spammer, so they filed a motion to remove the second sentence. Of course, the motion was denied

For a while now, I have received unsolicited bulk email, aka Spam, from an organization calling itself the "National Federation of the Blind."
Like all spammers, when I talked to somebody in their main office on the phone, they claimed that I subscribed to their list. Of course, that is absolutely not true. They bought my email address. With that, they have put themselves in the same league as the usual barrage of pill spammers and the like.
They use a company called Convio for their email campaigns. So, either the NFB or Convio or both bought my email address. Shame on them to devalue their organization by becoming spammers.

In their latest spam, they ask to donate part of the economic stimulus package to charity, in particular to them... I guess they need money to buy more email addresses...
Idiotic lying spammers!