Spammer shuts down after his details appear on web

net1

A New Zealand email spammer has shut his business after receiving abuse following the posting of his personal details on the web.

Shane Atkinson said on a good day he and his associates would send out 100 million messages.

But his identity as the man behind the spam promoting penis enlargement pills, was revealed by the New Zealand Herald last week.

He said since the article was published anti-spam activists had been "having a field day". He had received more than 20 phone calls, five of them obscene.

His street address and phone numbers were "plastered all over the web", he had been subscribed to a gay-dating site and his email address had been added to "tons of email lists".

Mr Atkinson said the abuse made him worry for the safety of his children. "I have already banned my five-year-old from answering the phone," he said.

The article also led to rackshack.com, the US web service that hosts Mr Atkinson's servers, being entered in the Spam Early Warning System - which many networks use for blocking email traffic.

Rackshack gave notice it would shut two of Mr Atkinson's servers because of the listing. He has now decided to get out of the spamming business because of the negative feedback.

He said he never intended to break any regulations and has asked affiliates to stop doing the work for him.

"I sort of feel good now about stopping this. I'll just stick to search engines and websites. That's still plenty of fun and money," he said.

chris

I'm still getting about 5 of the sobig email virus each hour. Mailwasher is deleting most of them and i've checked my PC with norton virus checker and it say's i'm clear.

Just been reading here That it's starting to slow down now.

Anyone else still getting them ???

Chris.

rolfw

As far as I know, I haven't had any at all, but I wouldn't know if theyve been taken out by Mailwasher of course.

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chris

Most people i know have received it, The subject is mostly-

Then the main body of the email is:-

Then once the attachment is opened, the virus creates a security hole in the computer, allowing someone else to use it to send on more e-mails.

So..... DON'T OPEN THE ATTACHMENT !!!

Chris

rolfw

I don't open attachments anyway, certainly not before scanning them, will keep my eyes open though.

Even before Mailwasher, I always deleted unread, any E-mails from unknowns which had RE: in the subject line.

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Burnt Chips

[quote=rolfw]I don't open attachments anyway, certainly not before scanning them, will keep my eyes open though.[/quote


Guess what "I DID"

Sobig is doin my head in, tried the sobig trojan removal file,
Dont detect it, says OK,
BUT constantly getting (hundreds of alert popups about) sobig from Norton AV "stateing w32cmd.exe (infected, and or could not quarentene, or not repair, or delete)
Yet if i startup in safe mode "norton only finds 2, sobig, and kwbot 32, worm located, 2 files do you want to delete, i reply yes, if i run Norton
again "SAME", Not doing any harm "at the moment, BESIDES SETTING NORTON TO SCAN BY ITSELF LAST FRIDAY AT 8PM, But annoying that when the Warning popup appears i click at least a hundred pages of warnings to clear screen, If i do a V Scan (just the 2 infected files again)

I can see a format C:/U coming soon.

net1

Have you tried here Burnt Chips.

http://www.bullguard.com/virus/152.aspx

Regards
Net1

chris

The first time I got the SoBIG email , I thought what's in the attachment so I had to open it!!!

But Norton seems to have deleted it now. Is there anyway I can check fully that I've not got it left on my PC ??

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rolfw

Yes, use the Bullguard checker above Chris, if it doesn't find anything it won't do anything.

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Rolf If you enjoy our site, you can help support it by wearing our unique branded merchandise, you can do this by clicking on my baseball cap, making a direct donation with Paypal by clicking on the Donation button below, or using our site supporting advertisers, to do this, click on the central image below