Spam 'n' Scam

If you spam us, you will be listed on these pages.

Are you sick and tired of getting unsolicited bulk email (UBE, often called spam), most of which is either outright fraud, or advertising web sites of dubious value?

How did these people get your private email address in the first place? There are many ways:

Lucky guess.
A computer containing your email address was infected with a virus which harvested your address and sent it to a spammer.
Your friend's webmail account got hacked.
An unscrupulous employee of a company with whom you've done business stole and sold the email addresses of clients.
A legitimate program that you installed on your computer compromised your address.
A robot found your email posted on the internet, perhaps in a newsgroup or in the comments on a web page.
A robot trawled the databases belonging to domain name registrars.

Once your email address has been compromised, it will be added to one of the growing number email databases that are used by spammers. Then it's just a matter of sending the junk emails. This may be done through the spammer's own Internet service provider (ISP) or through a third-party mail server or relay that has been configured to accept and transmit email to and from anyone. Sometimes the spammer will hijack an insecure formmail or other contact script sitting at someone's web site. Often times home computers are compromised and form one node of a botnet which is used to send spam or even host the advertised web site, all without the PC's owner knowing about it.

Before you know it, you start getting more rubbish than you bargained for.

Whilst we have no objection to free trade on the Internet, we do not wish to pay for advertising that we did not ask to receive. Would you pay for a collect call from a telemarketer? Would you pay the postage due on junk mail coming through the letter box? No, neither would we, but one way or another, you do pay for all of those UBEs in your electronic mailbox.

Why are we being forced to pay someone else's advertising costs? And why should we allow these people to use our private email addresses without our consent?

Have You Been Spammed By Obliquity.[com|eu|net|org]?

No, but spammers forge our domain name almost continuously on their rubbish.

Statement of Purpose

These pages are a log of the UBEs sent to us at any or all of our private email addresses since October 1998 when Obliquity went online. For all messages that manage to evade our filters, we present header information, along with details of the complaints made to and responses received from those involved. If we believe that the goods or services advertised in the message are illegal, then we alert the relevant law enforcement agencies. We offer no other comment or opinion regarding the contents of the UBEs.

Since UBEs are broadcast indiscriminately to thousands of people all over the world in order to reach the largest possible audience, they are neither private nor confidential and we regard the contents as being in the public domain.

If you spam us, you will be listed on these pages.

Some of the email addresses in these pages have been distorted to protect the innocent and their beleaguered mail servers. Many of the headers contain forged lines, so inclusion of a particular domain name on these pages does not necessarily imply that they are responsible for the accompanying UBEs. Messages are sent to most of the domains appearing in the headers and bodies so that innocent parties will be alerted to the fact that their email addresses and domain names are being abused by another.

We do not contact the spammers directly, except in the very rare instances in which we believe the sender to be a reputable businessperson who simply has made an unfortunate mistake in sending a one-off UBE. We do not regard serial spammers as innocent.

Log Book

We have managed to get the plug pulled on a number of spammers and so can you. The situation so far:

	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
January		4	4	16	305	1564	50	162	460	159	594	18	3	17	24
February		13	5	16	276	1504	54	121	391	148	644	42	2	10	9
March		10	4	19	466	2852	57	205	291	112	643	14	4	23	10
April		8	3	17	530	4022	82	152	170	91	220	6	3	24	2
May		1	5	11	525	4798	71	195	261	58	127	17	4	20	TBA
June		4	2	35	923	4761	111	210	210	99	115	56	3	8
July		4	5	50	1664	36	74	263	227	181	99	15	3	7
August		2	6	88	991	95	80	277	201	277	64	10	2	8
September		1	8	119	1076	15	55	234	234	618	104	11	5	1
October	7	2	17	126	1171	24	73	394	343	187	52	7	5	5
November	6	5	13	179	855	24	139	259	478	300	15	3	9	3
December	3	5	10	226	1189	36	157	437	455	576	8	1	8	10
Total	16	59	82	902	9971	19731	1003	2909	3721	2806	2685	200	51	136	45

In Case You're Tempted To Complain ...

Occasionally, we receive a complaint from someone who has spammed us and who is aggrieved that we have listed them on these pages. If you are such a person, we advise you to read our standard response to such complaints before threatening us with legal action or demanding compensation.

If you spam us, you will be listed on these pages.

The Boulder Pledge

By Roger Ebert, University of Colorado

Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.

The Only Legitimate Spam

Remember, the only legitimate spam is SPAM Luncheon Meat produced by Hormel Foods Corporation.

Computers and the Internet