http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/3011)))UPDATE: Spammer Desperately
Tries to Undermine Blue Security
May 4, 2006
By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
In what appears to be a last-ditch attempt at scaring subscribers to
Blue Security's "Do Not Intrude" registry, one very prominent
spammer has started to resort to scare-tactics targeted toward members
of the Blue Security community. I received one of these emails today,
and while it sounds forboding it is, as one Blue Security community
member said, "like a sheep in wolf's clothing". Here are the
relevant contents of the email:
Update #1: The Blue Security website has been hit by a DoS attack and
is currently down, though their software is still working. If you're
interested in more reading on the subject, you can look through this
excellent article on Blue Security.
Update #2: I have yet to receive a single additional spam email to any
of my email addresses. The promised increase in spam has yet to show up
for me, though others are reporting more heavy spamming, especially of
notices similar to this one. The Blue Security website continues to be
under attack from spammers, but I was able to get through for a few
minutes to see that they have posted up a new message to spammers
saying that they will not back down and will continue to fight against
them.
Update #3: While reading the comments keep in mind that Fred, Mark,
Laurie, Ronald, Killthem, SpamKing, Rick, Frank, and Paul are all the
same person. This same spammer used the same person's computer to
post all of his comments under these various aliases. You should also
notice the similar spelling and grammar mistakes in all of his posts.
Update #4: One of my email accounts has started receiving bounced spam
messages indicating that the spammers have started using it as the
"from" address on their spams. My other 3 protected accounts have
seen no activity, I'm assuming because they weren't on this
spammer's list to begin with.
Update #5: It appears as though Blue Security is slowly but surely
bringing their site back online. I can now access the members' area
and log in. My Blue Frog software is also connecting again. If you want
to sign up, but haven't been able to, you should be able to do that
now-barring any new, unforseen attacks on the website.
Hey,
You are recieving this email because you are a member of
BlueSecurity (
http://www.bluesecurity.com).
You signed up because you were expecting to recieve a lesser amount
of spam, unfortunately, due to the tactics used by BlueSecurity, you
will end up recieving this message, or other nonsensical spams 20-40
times more than you would normally.
How do you make it stop?
Simple, in 48 hours, and every 48 hours thereafter, we will run our
current list of BlueSecurity subscribers through BlueSecurity's
database, if you arent there.. you wont get this again.
We have devised a method to retrieve your address from their
database, so by signing up and remaining a BlueSecurity user not only
are you opening yourself up for this, you are also potentially
verifying your email address through them to even more spammers, and
will end up getting up even more spam as an end-result.
By signing up for bluesecurity, you are doing the exact opposite of
what you want, so delete your account, and you will stop recieving
this.
Why are we doing this?
Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We
would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless
mails.
Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We
would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless
mails, but do not believe for one second that we will stop this tirade
of emails if you choose to stay with BlueSecurity.
Just remember one thing when you read this, we didnt do this to
you, BlueSecurity did.
If BlueSecurity decides to play fair, we will do the same.
Just remove yourself from BlueSecurity, and make it easier on you.
Gena Elmore
This sounds scary, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Blue
Security's email address registry remains secure contrary to what
this spammer would have you believe. The way subscribers' emails were
obtained was by checking the spammer's own list of emails against the
Do Not Intrude registry. Normally spammers will get the emails of those
who subscribe returned to them and will then remove those emails from
their spamming lists. This one, however, has taken another approach.
Instead of taking those hits off of his spam lists, he is sending them
these intimidating emails.
What's so funny about this approach is that if you do remove yourself
from the Blue Security registry, you'll still receive normal spam
from this spammer. He has no intention of taking your email address off
of his spam list, he just wants you to stop fighting back against the
spam you already receive from him (Blue Security only goes after
spammers who send spam emails with no opt-outs to its members). Emails
like this are proof that Blue Security is getting noticed by these
spammers by making it unprofitable for them to continue sending their
unsolicited mail to unwilling recipients. Recently Blue Security has
made great strides toward its goal of eliminating spam for its users.
On the account where I received this email, I used to receive over a
dozen spams every day. Recently, within the past two weeks, I have seen
spam to this address slow and almost halt. Today I'm averaging just
one or two spam emails daily.
I personally hope that this email has the opposite effect from what
this spammer wishes. Hopefully, more people will sign up for the Do Not
Intrude registry, and make Blue Security even stronger. Learn more
about how Blue Security is fighting spam here. You can also read a lot
of the current stories of success against the spammers in their blog,
here.
