Robert Soloway
Robert Alan Soloway of Washington, U.S. is the founder of the so-called "Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam", or SPAMIS, but is himself said to be one of the Internet's biggest spammers through his company, Newport Internet Marketing.
Spamming
Soloway allegedly uses hijacked zombie computers and spoofing. Some emails sent by Soloway's company contained false header information making them appear to have been sent from MSN and Hotmail addresses. As a result of this he was sued by Microsoft and convicted in December 2003.
However, an injunction to cease his activities did not stop him from spamming: Soloway's company was responsible, from around June 2004 until April 2005, for a spam campaign (sent from open proxy) on behalf of various websites including broadcastingtoday.biz and broadcastadvertise.org (all since suspended), which promised to send recipients' website addresses to several million "opt-in email addresses". He later claimed that as the service was free the campaign was not illegal under the anti-spam law CAN-SPAM. However, a disclaimer in each mail stated that using the service would only be "free" to non-profit organizations -- in many cases narrowed to those aiding the homeless, child abuse victims, people from third-world countries needing access to the Internet, or victims of the 2004 Asian Tsunami. [1] [2] Standard message Tsunami-related message
Soloway insisted that he removed all MSN and Hotmail addresses from his mailing lists, and that it was in fact his company's subcontractors, or "spam affiliates", who had carried out the illegal activity (though he remained liable under both state and federal laws, including Washington's Commercial Electronic Mail Act and CAN-SPAM). He insisted he had fired all his subcontractors (none of whom he named) and had himself taken charge of emailing, using spam program Dark Mailer. However, a Washington superior court judge ruled that Soloway was in default. [3]
SPAMIS
More recently, Soloway has distributed an email campaign (again, purportedly involving forged headers) accusing Microsoft itself of spamming through its Sender-ID framework, and containing several apparently pro-spam quotes from Microsoft executives (including CEO Steve Balmer threatening to "kill Google"). However, his awareness campaign is believed to be nothing more than spam itself, as messages purportedly contain no means of unsubscribing and no contact details.
See also
External links
- Robert Soloway on the Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) by Spamhaus
- SPAMIS press release
- Page logging Robert Soloway activities
- "Spammers Can't Hide Behind Affiliates" at the O'Reilly Network