Anti Spam - SpamUnit

It’s perhaps not the best thing to be famous for, but many have made their name through the spam industry. Here are ten of the most important and prolific spammers - past and present - and their exploits.

Robert Alan Soloway is described as “one of the world’s most prolific spammers” by Tim Cranton of Microsoft. While this “Spam King” was arrested on 30 May 2007 in one of the most high-profile spam cases known to date, he made a great deal of money before being taken into custody. 35 charges were brought against him, ranging from identity theft to e-mail fraud to money laundering. None of the charges directly related to spam, but with millions of emails a day to his name, his arrest was extremely noteworthy in anti spam circles. On June 13, he was refused bail, and is expected to be found guilty.

Alan Ralsky was once described as the top spammer in the world. A small-time fraudster in the pre-Web age, Ralsky was an early adopter, spamming from 1996 onwards. He never shied away from the limelight, telling major newspapers of his “commercial email” business and its legal implications. He thought everything was above board; the FBI disagreed and confiscated a great deal of his equipment from his mansion back in 2005. No charges were ever filed, and it’s uncertain whether or not he’s in operation again. Even some of Ralsky’s enemies admire his outspoken style - unlike many spammers, he does not hide his identity - and he remains unconvicted for anything directly relating to spam. With over 100,000,000 spams a day to his credit, though, he remains one of the most notorious in the field.

“Alex Blood” is consistently ranked as one of the top spammers by Spamhaus, the major anti-spam bureau. This mysterious Ukrainian operates only by a pseudonym; small wonder as he’s rumoured to be involved with some highly illegal activities in addition to spam. As of June 2007, he was the world’s most prolific spammer, and may operate in conjunction with other spamming groups. He may or may not have been arrested for mail fraud back in 2001 but, as his real identity is a secret, it’s difficult to tell.

Vardan Kushnir (deceased) was one of Russia’s foremost spammers until his death in 2005. The victim of a violent murder, Kushnir was infamous in Russia due to his international spamming campaign, mostly advertising his English-language school for Russians in his adopted home of Moscow. He was a national figure, appearing in several newspapers and even gloating about his exploits to government ministers. Russia’s email system slowed to a crawl with his 25 million emails; he switched to instant messaging programs until his death. Nobody has yet been charged with his murder.

Dave Bridger, also known as Davis Wolfgang Hawke, is a former Neo-Nazi who later took up spamming. He quickly became adept at his new life’s goal, but, sadly for him, his spamming exploits coincided with the introduction of the CAN SPAM Act in 2003. His spamming mostly took place against AOL customers and won him such notoriety that he was profiled by Salon.com, amongst others. All good things came to an end: after a lengthy trial, AOL were awarded $12.8m against Hawke in a default judgement. In an attempt to recover the money, AOL plan to dig up Hawke’s parents’ yard, where precious metals are rumoured to be buried.

Vincent Chan is a Hong Kong-based spammer with massive influence. Working alongside his Chinese partners, he has been in the game for years, largely dealing in medical supply marketing spam. A master of zombie/botnet systems, his central Hong Kong office provides a significant percentage of all pharmaceutical spam. Botnets are a somewhat recent innovation: one of his earlier specialities was abusing the Geocities registration process to create thousands of new sites. Spam domains that were filtered out of emails clearly were not reaching his potential customers, so the free-site, innocuous Geocities pages were employed to appear innocent. Of course, they merely forwarded the unsuspecting user on to one of his product pages.

Leo Kuvayev is another Russian spammer with a formidable track record. Unlike Chan, his spam is not focused on a particular area, but rather runs the gamut of all web marketing possibilities, from pornography to pirated software. Owning hundreds of domains, he aims to stay one step ahead of all spam filters and spam lists, and appears to have some success: he’s seen as the second most successful spammer worldwide as of June 2007. In an intriguing twist, he shares hosting for some of his operations with Vincent Chan: yet another indicator of how close-knit the hardcore spamming community really is.

Michael Lindsay is the boss of iMedia networks. The company name is very Web 2.0, very now and very innocuous, but his operation is pure, devious spam. A spam-host service, he actually works behind the scenes as an administrator for spam operators, who often operate botnet systems. He and his team have produced “back end” solutions for the pharma-spam industry, in exchange for a cut of the profits. Maybe he’s not a spammer himself, but he certainly makes it happen.

Finally, Alexey Panov is another Russian spammer, and one that, like Lindsay, facilitates a lot of spam through hosting and network solutions. He’s the author of ProMailer DMS, a Unix spam solution. This is one of the most sophisticated spam mailers and, alongside the accounts on his servers that he offers for sale, once again provides spammers with a valuable outlet to the internet at large.

The website Spamhaus maintains a current list of the top ten most active spammers; many of the names above are past or current occupants of that hall of shame. The description and identification of the above would not have been possible without their research. See www.spamhaus.org for more details.