The Attack Continues...

Well the other shoe just dropped, I guess is the saying.

My old stomping grounds, thecarpcstore.com/phpbb2, was knocked offline this morning by (you guessed it) a DDOS attack.

Given the staggering amount of evidence present here and elsewhere on the web, who do you think it could be that would want to perform that kind of attack? Who would have access to the resources needed to do so? Why members of that old stalwart: bulkerforum.biz of course.

I expect it will be a very small number of days before the boasting begins on that selfsame web forum, and elsewhere.

But what does this accomplish, ultimately? All of the individuals who contributed to that forum: they still hate getting all the spam that these idiots keep sending. They hate that despite asking numerous times to stop sending all of it to them, these spammers haven't stopped. And they hate that not only do they continue to get these unwanted messages, very often they get them twice as much.

How is this good for anyone's business? How hard is it for these moron spammers to recognize that they should just clean their lists? Clearly they don't seem to understand that they're consistently targeting - and thereby abusing - the wrong audience for their so-called "products", and they're wasting a huge amount of people's time, energy and money. They're also ruining the whole experience of the internet in the process.

Spammers love to blame people like me because we "can't find the delete key." That completely misses the point: I didn't want it in the first place, and you just confirmed that you KNEW I didn't want it. That makes you, the spammer, doubly stupid.

Attacking sites which take on the task of compiling data regarding their operations, and reporting and exposing their underlying personnel, only further exposes how tenuous your "business" is in the first place. If all it takes to piss you off is bring more attention to how you operate, doesn't that make it that much more probable that we'll make sure that the same info gets into the hands of someone with more tangible tools to take you down? DDOS'ing our little forum is proof that we've been on the right track for a while, and it's further proof that the spammers somehow think that this information is "dangerous" to have in the public eye. Knocking that forum down won't stop the information from being made available. Nor will it stop those of us who have collaborated so closely over the past year and more to make sure we tell even more people about these scumbags.

Many members on bulkerforum.biz like to make the claim that (a) we're just jealous because they can profit from spamming and (b) that they are only making an "honest" living, and that we hate them for that. ("The terrorists hate our freedom")

They fail to provide any answer at all when it's pointed out that the "drugs" that they are promoting via their spam comes from sites that lie; they're not secure, they have absolutely no support or endorsement from the Better Business Bureau, or Visa, or VeriSign, and the drugs that they sell are fake.

They don't have any answer when we point out that stock spam is indeed an illegal and fraudulent act, which carries with it some very high fines and sentences. How is that an "honest" business.

Fake diplomas: how "honest" is that as a product? That's not legal either. How is it an honest way to make a living? Would you trust a guy to build your house if he had a fake engineering degree? How about your lawyer? How about your doctor? We're supposed to be envious that this is how they make a living? That's total bullshit.

Selling mortgage leads collected via spam may be profitable, but that doesn't make it any more legitimate when you're spamming it to people who aren't even in the US to begin with (easily more than half these idiots' lists are full of peoplle from Canada and overseas, none of whom are supposed to be offered these mortgages in the first place. The spammers know this, yet they don't clean them from their lists, and further to that: they ban the ip addresses for overseas users.

How is any of that "honest" or legitimate? And why on earth would any of us be envious of any spammer who said that they profited from it? People have already started dying from taking some of the fake drugs sold by these illegal pharmacies. What else will it take?

DDOS'ing our forum won't stop that information from getting out, and it won't stop even more people from remaining angry as hell at the people who continue to send this crap out.

There have been not one but two very high profile actions in the past few weeks in the courts regarding illegal spammers. I fully expect that this is only the beginning of a long line of arrests, convictions and guilty pleas still to come. The only question is when, not if, more will take place.

SiL / IKS / concerned citizen