8:01 AM
Spamming Scumbags
Mister Nizz
I blather on about technology a good deal on this blog; it's partly my job and my passion. But there's a dark side to technology; the murky ground where we all are in danger of checking our soul at the door. There's always a fuzzy area where one has to make a personal choice-- just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD do something. For me, that dark ground is inhabited by the subhuman cretins who send out unwanted porn scam indiscriminately. I'm sure most readers (especially those without kids) glaze over a bit when someone rants that he's a father of childen and doesn't want them to get indiscriminate email ads for sex with barnyard animals, but there it is.. I just don't trust the Internet much any more and I limit what my kids can see on it. Meaning: I'm usually right there with them when they go surfing, which can be damned inconvenient at times.
So I was fairly impressed with a recent DATELINE PIECE on tracking down porn spam. John Hockenberry was contacted by a woman in Texas named Julie. Julie is a concerned parent who was aghast to receive on of the worst porn spams ever: "Farmspunk" which depicts sex with barnyard animals (I don't write this stuff). Hockenberry took on the assignment of tracking down the specific individual who sent that spam email to Julie's computer. Along the way he visits New York to find the "Custodian of Record" (the guy who keeps the records of the actresses names and ages), then to Canada's Internet porn district (who knew such a thing existed???) to find the actual company who owns the site, then to Las Vegas for an Internet porn convention for more information, then back to Montreal to find the actual, living, breathing human who bought Julie's name on a list and sent it to her. The piece ends with the person in question, one Jean Yves Cotes, apologizing on the phone directly to Julie. He seems chagrined at the end of the story, and vows to get out of the business.
This is a great story with an ambiguous ending. Sure, they found the guy, but they had to fly to Canada twice, New York once, and Las Vegas once. They had to have hidden cameras and set up a media ambush to get the right answers. Which is all very comendable, but let's face it, that's great for DATELINE, but Joe Schmuckatelli, like myself, can't take the same actions.
Right now, the Internet is still like the Wild West-- wild and unregulated (outside US borders, where much of the porn spam originates now), and there's no signs that the settlers are heading out to civilize the place. One hopes that some day we can take this issue seriously enough to set up an international treaty binding signatories to fighting spam distribution. We have to start by taking the issue seriously.
BTW, don't go looking for Farmspunk unless you like popups and malware attempts. It's pretty grim from what I hear!
So I was fairly impressed with a recent DATELINE PIECE on tracking down porn spam. John Hockenberry was contacted by a woman in Texas named Julie. Julie is a concerned parent who was aghast to receive on of the worst porn spams ever: "Farmspunk" which depicts sex with barnyard animals (I don't write this stuff). Hockenberry took on the assignment of tracking down the specific individual who sent that spam email to Julie's computer. Along the way he visits New York to find the "Custodian of Record" (the guy who keeps the records of the actresses names and ages), then to Canada's Internet porn district (who knew such a thing existed???) to find the actual company who owns the site, then to Las Vegas for an Internet porn convention for more information, then back to Montreal to find the actual, living, breathing human who bought Julie's name on a list and sent it to her. The piece ends with the person in question, one Jean Yves Cotes, apologizing on the phone directly to Julie. He seems chagrined at the end of the story, and vows to get out of the business.
This is a great story with an ambiguous ending. Sure, they found the guy, but they had to fly to Canada twice, New York once, and Las Vegas once. They had to have hidden cameras and set up a media ambush to get the right answers. Which is all very comendable, but let's face it, that's great for DATELINE, but Joe Schmuckatelli, like myself, can't take the same actions.
Right now, the Internet is still like the Wild West-- wild and unregulated (outside US borders, where much of the porn spam originates now), and there's no signs that the settlers are heading out to civilize the place. One hopes that some day we can take this issue seriously enough to set up an international treaty binding signatories to fighting spam distribution. We have to start by taking the issue seriously.
BTW, don't go looking for Farmspunk unless you like popups and malware attempts. It's pretty grim from what I hear!
