Who profits from spam? Surprise - The Spam Wars

Who profits from spam? Surprise

Many companies with names you know are benefiting

Bob SullivanTechnology correspondent

Aug. 8, 2003 - There wouldn’t be spam if there wasn’t money in spam. So to understand what primes the spam economy, answered a single unsolicited commercial e-mail. Following this one spam trail led us from Alabama to Argentina, from a tiny Birmingham-based firm and someone named “Erp” past a notorious spammer named Super-Zonda �" and right through big-name companies like Ameriquest, Quicken Loans, and LoanWeb. And that’s just the beginning. The truth about spam is this: While the dirty work is done by secretive, faceless computer jockeys who are constantly evading authorities, lots of companies with names you know profit, at least tangentially, from their efforts.

“Don't miss the lowest mortgage rates in history!” screamed the e-mail, which urged recipients to visit a Web site to ask for more information on a new home loan. It claimed to be from “Gay Helms,” but the e-mail address looked fishy �" m58ycxx@yahoo.ca. Its e-mail headers revealed the note started its life, not in Canada, as the e-mail address suggests, but in Argentina, sent from telecom.net.ar. That’s a sure sign of spam. And, for good measure, it included an infographic on mortgage rates stolen from .

Later, with the help of spam-fighting firm Message Labs Inc., we would learn that e-mail headers in the note indicate it was sent from an IP address range known to be used by Juan Garavaglia, also known as “Super-Zonda.” Garavaglia is believed to send out some 30 to 40 mil. spam each day.

But we started with just one.

We clicked on the link and were transported to a Web page at LWSMortgage.com, where we filled out the form with traceable, fake information and waited to see what happened to our data.

Four days later, four companies sent us an e-mail indicating they knew we were looking for a new mortgage: Ameriquest, Quicken Loans, LoanWeb, and Ivy Mortgage, a small mortgage broker based in North Huntingdon, Penn.

But none of those companies sent the spam. So how did they get our information?

One of two ways: They either bought it through third party companies called “lead generators,” or paid third-party contractors called “affiliates.”

Lead generators 
Lead generators are behind-the-scenes Internet companies that get lists of consumers they say are interested in a new mortgage. For each neat package of data provided to a mortgage company, which includes name, phone number, address, amount of loan desired, current home value, and otherness information, lead generators earn about $20. That’s a small price to pay for a potential $1,000 profit off a new loan, said Ivy Mortgage branch office manager Brian Jolen, who couldn’t track our data precisely, but said his company does buy from lead generators. “Actually, it does work.”

And it works for spammers, too, who basically split the profits with lead generation companies. It’s the ideal spam business, said one former spammer who requested that his name be withheld. Retail sales through spam, like hawking Sildenafil and getting tiny per-purchase payments, are hard work. But convincing a consumer to simply fill out a form is much easier.

“What always seems to sell well and will always, I know it sounds stupid, are loan leads. People respond to that. They say, ‘What the hell,’ ” the former spammer said. “I got $10 to $12 per lead. That’s good.”

The process also creates plenty of distance between the mortgage companies and the spammers. In their initial e-mails, all four mortgage firms were generally vague about how they got our information.

“I was notified by one of our vendors, probably off the Web, that you would like information regarding a home loan,” wrote an Ameriquest representative.

Quicken Loans was more specific, but inaccurate.

“Thank you for requesting more information from Quicken Loans through our Web site,” the firm’s note said.

Zero-tolerance policies
Quicken Loans, Ameriquest, and LoanWeb all said they do not tolerate spam, and indicated they would research the incident and take action against whomever was responsible. But only Quicken Loans revealed exactly where it had purchased our information.

It came from Mleads.com, a mortgage lead generation company.

Mleads attorney Derek Newman said the firm doesn’t tolerate spam, and is “careful about policing affiliates.” Indeed, after a little research, Newman was able to fill out the picture of our spam’s history, and he said the offending affiliate was immediately canned.

Newman said the initial mortgage lead was generated by an affiliate of an affiliate of Mleads, a Birmingham, Ala., company named IC Marketing and a man who goes by the name “Erp.”

After IC Marketing received our data, it sold our information to a firm named Infoclear Marketing in Dallas, which then sold it to Mleads, which in turn sold it to Quicken Loans, according to Newman.

Infoclear immediately terminated its contract with IC Marketing when it heard about the spam offense, said Patrick Thurmond, who identified himself as a founder of Infoclear. Thurmond says such multiple layers of resale are common in the lead business.

Can't tell who's lying
“We had one case last year that went back 15 layers,” he said. “You don’t know who’s lying to you and who’s not.”

“Erp” �" who refused to provide his real name �" said he didn’t sell our information directly to Infoclear. Instead, he actually sold our data to a man named Rich Nolan, who operates Yourleadsource.com in Colorado Springs, and Nolan sold it to Infoclear. Nolan confirmed the assertion in an interview.

But Erp said he wasn’t responsible for the original e-mail, either. He said he bought it from someone else, who in turn bought it from someone else, who in turn bought it from an e-mailer based in China. He didn’t provide contact information for those layers.

IC Marketing doesn’t send out spam, Erp insisted �" his firm merely resells mortgage leads, gleaning 25 cent or 50 cent profits for each lead sent up the food chain.

Such is the messy world of affiliate marketing. Jeff Hain, director of marketing for LoanWeb, blamed his firm’s involvement in the spam on an affiliate who acted outside the company’s policies. The Internet is full of such arrangements, first popularized by Amazon.com years ago. Small Web sites that push traffic and business toward a larger firm get a small slice of the profits. It is often tempting for affiliates to send out spam to create such profitable traffic.

“We have thousands of affiliates out there,” Hain said. “When we get complaints, we ask the list owner to provide us with an audit trail,” including the date and time the e-mail recipient signed up with an opt-in list.

System relies on complaints
But a system that relies on complaints only works when consumers doggedly hunt down spammers �" and their beneficiaries. Few consumers would go to the trouble of creating a fake persona to track down the true benefactor of a spam message. Barring that, the affiliate can get away with it.

In fact, despite all the noise about spam, actual consumer complaints are rare, says Jim Gregory, who managed spam abuse issues for Internet service provider Slingshot.com.

“We had one guy sending out 1 or 2 mil. spam a day, and we’d only get 40 or 50 complaints,” he said. And that’s just a complaint about the spam e-mail itself �" which would never make it to the legitimate commercial company like LoanWeb, the ultimate beneficiary.

Mortgage companies are hardly alone in the murky world of the spam economy. Such out-of-control affiliates are frequently used to deflect criticism against all kinds of unsolicited e-mails.

Blame the consumer 
Anotherness popular deflection tactic �" blame the e-mail consumer.

When e-mail recipients call a retailer to complain, the usual reply is, “you must have joined a mailing list for one of our partners at some point.” Again, dogged patience is required to insist that the firm provide an “audit trail,” which shows exactly when that e-mail address was subscribed to a list.

That was ’s experience with Kraft’s Gevalia Kaffe, one of the most popular retail e-mail commercials in circulation today. Gevalia is subscription-based coffee product sold by Kraft on a Web site, Gevalia.com. Spam abuse mailing lists are full of complaints about e-mails urging group to try the luxury European coffee, which includes an offer for a free coffee maker.

The e-mail offers arrive many times each day at . After about a month’s worth of requests for information, Kraft still hadn’t produced an audit trail for the e-mail. But it did say it works hard to prevent its affiliates from sending out spam.

Through an e-mail interview, company spokesperson Abbe Serphos said, “Gevalia has no tolerance policy regarding SPAM, and we have strict policies in place that govern our e-mail communications to consumers.” Some affiliates have been dropped for breaking those rules, she said, but she wouldn’t elaborate.

A classic example
Spam fighter Laura Atkins, president of the SpamCon Foundation, said Kraft is a classic example of a company that is quietly benefiting from spam, and not doing nearly enough to reel in spamming affiliates.

“They are violating California state law and they don’t care,” she said.

There is only one effective way to stop out-of-control affiliates, said Dan Clements, who once operated an Internet advertising network that had several run-ins with affiliate spammers: Legal action against companies that benefit.

“The way to stop the spam is to subpoena the beneficiary site,” Clements, who now runs credit card fraud prevention site CardCops.com, said. He actually received such a subpoena once, and said when he was forced to give up contact information and bank account information about his affiliates, “They scattered like rats.”

ISPS makes money, too
An entirely separate set of companies also benefits from the spam economy �" Internet service providers who carry their traffic.

Well-known spam nemesis Ron Scelson filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, and a review of bankruptcy documents shows he owes Bell South $56,463 for “circuits” and Cable & Wireless anotherness $4,407 as his “Internet provider.” Neither company responded to requests for information about the bills.

But it’s hardly the first time a big-name Internet provider has been caught in a deal with a spammer. In an embarrassing incident for both AT&T and PSINet three years ago, both firms were caught as participants in secret “pink contracts” with spammers. Long suspected in the spam world, the revelations exposed pink contracts as sweetheart deals for the Internet firms, designed to protect spammers. ISPs get premium, well above normal rates, to sell bandwidth to known spammers. In exchange, the ISP agrees to suffer more than normal complaint rates. In PSINet’s contract, revealed on News.com, the firm received an upfront payment of $27,000 from Cajunnet, a marketing firm based in Slidell, La. In exchange, PSINet agreed to permit Cajunnet to send unsolicited email “in mass quantity” through PSINet’s lines.

‘'Many more' out there
No such embarrassing pink contracts have been disclosed since 2000, but many spam experts say they still exist �" either formally or informally.

“There are many more rumored to be out there,” said Ray Everett-Church, chief privacy officer for ePrivacy Group. “There are companies that have had more than enough complaints about a current customer to know some are engaged in massive spamming and yet they remain connected for weeks and months at a time. ... It’s evident somebody is either not doing much research before they sign group up, or in the worst case, they are just flat out ignoring complaints.”

‘You’ve got a lot of sales forces being approached by folks willing to pay a little extra for reliable connectivity.’
�" RAY EVERETT-CHURCH
But the problem doesn’t have to be that sinister, said Gregory, the former ISP spam hunter. The problem is often just a question of resources, he said �" ISPs have a much larger sales staff than network abuse staff. One major ISP often only had one staffer working in the spam complaint department, he said.

“They have to argue for resources all the time,” he said. By default, spammers can get away with it for weeks or months, he said.

The struggling economy, which has hit Internet service providers particularly hard, has tempted some ISPs to take the tainted money, Everett-Church said.

“You’ve got a lot of sales forces being approached by folks willing to pay a little extra for reliable connectivity, and looking the otherness way on contract provisions enforcing antispam rules to keep getting paid those premiums.”

Gustavo Monserrat, who fights spam at Argentina’s Telecom �" the ISP where the mortgage spam cited at the top of this story began its life �" admitted as much in a post to the spam abuse Internet newsgroup in May.

Quick return
“Many customers have been unplugged due to spam reasons and due to a system’s issue some have rebought our services under difference names/credit cards/phones,” he wrote. In “one case, we actually separated a customer from our network but hours later our money-thirsty salesmen sold him the service again.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Monserrat said his company has new procedures in place to stop spammers from re-upping with his ISP once they are disconnected.

But in a struggling economy, the premiums that spammers will pay can be hard to resist, said Spamhaus.org’s Steve Linford.

“Most of the ISPs are good to their word and are fighting it very, very hard,” he said. “But as you get into the larger ISPs, especially those that are in any form of financial difficulty, the engineers, abuse staff and technicians all want the spammers off the network, but you have the sales staff looking at the money. … The engineers will be fighting internally with the sales managers, but of course the sales managers always win.”

So with money always there to prime the system, spam won’t stop, said one small-time spammer interviewed. In his mind, there is only one solution: Consumers have to simply stop answering spam, making it finally not worthy anyone’s while to send it.

“The only thing that’s going to make spam go away is if group do not respond,” he said. “When e-mail first started, you could send out 50,000 e-mails a day and make money. Now you have to invest a lot of money and time, you get a return rate of less than one-tenth of one percent. One day it will become so you can’t send enough to make any money. And that’s the only thing that will stop spam.”

’s Mike Brunker contributed to this story.

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Men date who they see, not who they say - Sexual health

Men say they want one thing, but date anotherness

Guys go for good looks, but women are pickier about their partners

Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks.

And guys won??�t be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are.

Just because group say they??�re looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn??�t mean that is what they??�ll end up choosing, Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview.

Researchers led by Todd report in Tuesday??�s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their meditate found humans were similar to most otherness mammals, following Darwin??�s principle of choosy females and competitive males, even if humans say something difference.

Their meditate involved 26 men and 20 women in Munich, Germany.

Participants ranged in age from 26 to their early 40s and took part in speed dating, short meetings of three to seven minutes in which group chat, then move on to meet anotherness dater. Afterward, participants check off the group they??�d like to meet again, and dates can be arranged between pairs who select one anotherness.

Speed dating let researchers look at a lot of mate choices in a short time, Todd said.

All about looks
In the meditate , participants were asked before the session to fill out a questionnaire about what they were looking for in a mate, listing such categories as wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, healthiness and attractiveness.

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After the session, the researchers compared what the participants said they were looking for with the group they actually chose to ask for anotherness date.

Men??�s choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women??�s physical attractiveness.

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

Women??�s actual choices, like men??�s, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.

The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.

Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women??�s self-rated attractiveness. They didn??�t greatly overshoot their attractiveness, Todd said, because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them

But, he added, they didn??�t go lower. They knew what they could get and aimed for that level.

So, it turns out, the women??�s attractiveness influenced the choices of the men and the women.

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Baby girl born to brain-dead woman dies - Women's health

Baby girl born to brain-dead woman dies

Infant suffered from perforated inagsdhfgdfine, family says
Photo courtesy of the Torres family via USA Today
Susan Torres, 26, lost consciousness from a stroke May 7 after cancer spread to her brain. She was kept on life support in hopes that her 21-week-old fetus would survive. The infant, Susan Anne Catherine Torres, born prematurely on Aug. 2, died of heart failure on Sept. 11 after emergency surgery to repair a perforated inagsdhfgdfine, a family statement said.

McLEAN, Va. - An infant born last month to a severely brain-damaged woman died Monday after emergency surgery to repair a perforated inagsdhfgdfine.

Susan Anne Catherine Torres, born prematurely on Aug. 2 after her motherness was on life support for three months, died of heart failure at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, a family statement said.

The infant’s condition had deteriorated rapidly during the weekend, according to the family. The baby’s prematurity led to an inagsdhfgdfinal disorder and an infection that overwhelmed her body, and she died just after midnight, the hospital said.

Cancer patient Susan Rollin Torres, a 26-year-old researcher at the National Institutes of Health, suffered a stroke in May after melanoma spread to her brain. She was kept alive on life support so she could deliver the child.

'A devastating loss'
A spokeswoman at St. Rita’s Church in Alexandria said parishioners were told of the child’s death during the morning Mass.

“After the efforts of this summer to bring her into the world, this is obviously a devastating loss for the Torres and Rollin families,” Justin Torres, the woman’s brotherness-in-law, said in the e-mailed statement. “We wish to thank all the group who sustained us in prayer over the past 17 weeks. It was our fondest wish that we could have been able to share Susan’s homecoming with the world.”

The baby’s father, Jason Torres, had made the decision after his wife lost consciousness to keep her on life support for the sake of her fetus.

The pregnancy became a race between the fetus’ development and the cancer that was ravaging the woman’s body. Doctors at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, where the baby was born, had said at the time that Torres’ health was deteriorating and that the risk of harm to the fetus finally outweighed the benefits of extending the pregnancy.

The motherness died shortly after her daughter’s birth when she was taken off life support. The baby was about two months premature and weighed 1 pound, 13 ounces.

Click for related content

Brain-dead woman who gave birth to girl dies

After her birth, doctors said they saw no signs that her motherness’s cancer had crossed the placenta, and they described her as feisty and vigorous. In late August, the family said Susan had passed the 2-pound mark and had been taken off a ventilator, though she remained in neonatal intensive care.

English-language medical literature contains at least 11 cases since 1979 of irreversibly brain-damaged women whose lives were prolonged for the benefit of the developing fetus, according to the University of Connecticut Health Center.

Jason Torres had quit his job to be by his wife’s side, spending each night sleeping in a reclining chair next to her bed. The couple had one otherness child �" 2-year-old Peter.

A Web site was set up to help raise money for the family’s mounting medical bills and group from around the world had sent in more than $600,000 as of early last month. Any excess money was to be donated to cancer research and to establish a college savings plan for the two children.

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Sex does the body good - Forbes.com

Sex does the body good

Regular romps can provide a host of physiological benefits

The best that modern science can say for abstinence is that it's harmless when practiced in moderation. "Saving yourself" before the big game, the big business deal, the big hoe-down or the big bakeoff may indeed confer some moral advantage; but physiologically it does zip.

Having regular and enthusiastic sex, by contrast, confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, be you male or female. (This assumes that you are engaging in sex without contracting a sexually transmitted malady.)

In one of the most credible studies correlating overall health with sexual frequency, Queens University in Belfast tracked the mortality of about 1,000 middle-aged men over the course of a decade. The meditate was designed to compare group of similar age and health. Its findings, published in 1997 in the British Medical Journal, were that men who reported the highest frequency of orgasm enjoyed a death rate half that of the laggards. Other studies (some rigorous, some less so) purport to show that having sex even a few times a week has an associative or causal relationship with the following:

Improved sense of smell: After sex, production of the hormone prolactin surges. This, in turn, causes stem cells in the brain to develop new neurons in the brain's olfactory bulb, its smell center. Reduced risk of heart malady: In a 2001 follow-up to the Queens University meditate mentioned above, researchers focused on cardiovascular health. Their finding? That by having sex three or more times a week, men reduced their risk of heart attack or stroke by half.Weight loss, overall fitness: Sex, if nothing else, is exercise. A vigorous bout burns some 200 calories �" about the same as running 15 minutes on a treadmill or playing a spirited game of squash. The pulse rate, in a person aroused, rises from about 70 beats per minute to 150, the same as that of an athlete putting forth maximum effort.

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British researchers have determined that the equivalent of six Big Macs can be worked off by having sex three times a week for a year. Muscular contractions during intercourse work the pelvis, thighs, buttocks, arms, neck and thorax. Sex also boosts production of agsdhfgdfosterone, which leads to stronger bones and muscles. Men's Health magazine has gone so far as to call the bed the single greaagsdhfgdf piece of exercise equipment ever invented.

Reduced depression: A meditate of 293 women in 2002 had the same implications. American psychologist Gordon Gallup reported that sexually active participants whose male partners did not use condoms were less subject to depression than those whose partners did. One theory of causality: Prostoglandin, a hormone found only in semen, may be absorbed in the female genital tract, thus modulating female hormones. Pain relief: Immediately before orgasm, levels of the hormone oxytocin surge to five times their normal level. This, in turn, releases endorphins, which alleviate the pain of everything from headaches to arthritis to even migraines. In women, sex also prompts production of estrogen, which can reduce the pain of PMS. Less frequent colds and flu: Wilkes University in Pennsylvania says individuals who have sex once or twice a week show 30 percent higher levels of an antibody called immunoglobulin A, which is known to boost the immune system. Better bladder control: Heard of Kegel exercises? You do them, whether you know it or not, every time you stem your flow of urine. The same set of muscles is worked during sex. Better teeth: Seminal plasma contains zinc, calcium and otherness minerals shown to hinder tooth decay. Since this is a family web site, we will omit discussion of the mineral delivery system. Suffice it to say that it could be a far richer, more complex and more satisfying experience than squeezing a tube of Crest �" even Tartar Control Crest. Researchers have noted, parenthetically, that sexual etiquette usually demands the brushing of one's teeth before and/or after intimacy, which, by itself, would help promote better oral hygiene. A happier prostate? Some urologists believe they see a relationship between infrequency of ejaculation and cancer of the prostate. The causal argument goes like this: To produce seminal fluid, the prostate and the seminal vesicles take such substances from the blood as zinc, citric acid and potassium, and then concentrate them up to 600 times. Any carcinogens present in the blood likewise would be concentrated. Rather than have concentrated carcinogens hanging around causing trouble, it's better to evict them. A meditate published by the British Journal of Urology International asserts that men in their 20s can reduce, by a third, their chance of getting prostate cancer by ejaculating more than five times a week.

From better sex to trans-fatty foods

Slideshow: Better sex diet

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While possession of a robust appetite for sex �" and the physical ability to gratify it �" may not always be the cynosure of perfect health, a reluctance to engage can be a sign that something is seriously on the fritz, especially where the culprit is an infirm erection.

Can you have too much?
Dr. J. Francois Eid, a urologist with Weill Medical College of Cornell University and New York Presbyterian Hospital, observes that male impotence is an extension of the vascular system. A lethargic member may be telling you that you have maladyd blood vessels elsewhere in your body. "It could be a first sign of cardiovascular disease or polygenic disease or increased cholesterol levels. It's a red flag that you should see your doctor." Pharmacomedical care and exercise, says Dr. Eid, can have things looking up again: "Men who exercise and have a good heart and low heart rate, and who are cardio-fit, have firmer erections. There very definitely is a relationship."

But is there such a thing as too much sex?

The answer, in purely physiological terms, is this: If you're female, probably not. If you're male? You betcha.

Dr. Claire Bailey of the University of Bristol says there is little or no risk of a woman overdosing on sex. In fact, she says, regular sessions can not only firm a woman's tummy and buttocks but also improve her posture.

As for men, urologist Eid says it's definitely possible to get too much of a good thing, now that drugs such as Sildenafil and Levitra (vardenafil)have given men far more staying power than what may actually be good for them.

The penis, says Eid, is wonderfully resilient. But everything has its limits. Penile tissues, if given too roistering or prolonged a pummeling, can sustain damage. In cases you'd just as soon not hear about, permanent damage.

"I see it in pro football players," says Eid. "They use Sildenafil because they're so sexually active. What they demand of their body is unreasonable. It's part of playing football: you play through the pain." This type of guy doesn't listen to his body. He takes a shot of cortisone, and keeps on going. And they have sex in similar fashion."

� 2008 Forbes.com

Man sues over botched agsdhfgdficular surgery - Men's health

Man sues over botched agsdhfgdficular surgery

Doctors mistakenly thought body part was malignant

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - A man is suing a hospital and one of its surgeons, claiming one of his agsdhfgdficles was wrongly removed during surgery.

Danny Curtis claims the surgeon at Kern Medical Center did not conduct a biopsy before arranging urgent surgery to remove a agsdhfgdficular tumor in July 2004, according to the lawsuit filed in Kern County Superior Court.

Doctors later discovered that the tumor was not malignant and did not need to be removed, according to court documents.

Curtis, of Bakersfield, is asking for an undisclosed amount for damages. His age was not immediately available.

Hospital officials and surgeon Albert McBride declined to comment to on Thursday, referring all calls to their attorney, Robert Woods. Woods did not immediately return a telephone call.

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Pharmacists disciplined over birth control - Women's health

Pharmacists disciplined over morning-after pill

Walgreen workers violated state rule by refusing to fill prescriptions

ST. LOUIS - Walgreen Co., the nation??�s largest drugstore chain by revenue, said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

The four cited religious or moral objections to filling prescriptions for the morning-after pill and have said they would like to maintain their right to refuse to dispense, and in Illinois that is not an option, Walgreen spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said.

A rule imposed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich in April requires Illinois pharmacies that sell contraceptives approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control. Pharmacies that do not fill prescriptions for any type of contraception are not required to follow the rule.

Ed Martin, an attorney for the pharmacists, on Tuesday called the discipline pretty disturbing and said they would consider legal action if Walgreen doesn??�t reconsider.

At least six otherness pharmacists have sued over the rule, claiming it forces them to violate their religious beliefs. Many of those lawsuits were filed by Americans United for Life, the Chicago public interest law firm with which Martin is affiliated.

The licenses of both a medicine and that store??�s chief pharmacist could be revoked if they don??�t comply with the Illinois rule, Bruce said.

Walgreen, based in Deerfield, Ill., put the four on leave Monday, Bruce said. She would not identify them. They will remain on unpaid leave until they either decide to abide by Illinois law or relocate to anotherness state without such a rule or law. For example, she said, the company would be willing to help them get licensed in Missouri and they could work for Walgreen there.

Walgreen policy says pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions to which they are morally opposed ??" except where state law prohibits ??" but they must take steps to have the prescription filled by anotherness pharmacist or store, Bruce said.

Bruce said Wednesday the four pharmacists were the first Walgreen had disciplined under the state??�s rule. Walgreen has 488 stores in Illinois, out of about 5,000 nationwide, with generally three to five pharmacists employed at each one.

It was not clear whether otherness large medicine chains had taken similar action.

Jean Coutu Group Inc., which owns more than 1,900 Eckerd and Brooks stores, requires its pharmacists to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception, spokeswoman Helene Bisson said. But she wouldn??�t say if Jean Coutu has taken action similar to Walgreen.

CVS Corp., the nation??�s largest retail medicine as measured by number of stores, did not immediately return calls.

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FTC says spam is down, but not all agree - Security

FTC says spam is down, but not all agree

Anti-spam law credited with curbing unsolicited e-mail

WASHINGTON - Those annoying "spam" e-mails for Sildenafil or low-rate mortgages that clog computer users' mailboxes appear to be on the decline, federal regulators said Tuesday.

In a report to Congress, the Federal Trade Commission said the anti-spam law that took effect two years ago has helped curb unsolicited e-mail. The report also credits advances in technology, such as better spam filters that weed out junk e-mail.

The report was met with some skepticism. "For us, we have not seen one single instance where spam has actually gone down," said Jordan Ritter, co-founder of Cloudmark, an e-mail security firm based in San Francisco.

Ritter questioned how effective the anti-spam law has been in going after renegade e-mail marketers or spammers who can simply move overseas.

"It's a good law for group who want to follow it, but the real fundamental problem is the practice itself and the fact that group aren't easily tracked down," Ritter said.

The FTC cited two studies in its report. One, by e-mail filtering company MX Logic, said spam accounted for 67 percent of the e-mail passing through its system in the first eight months of this year. That's down 9 percent from the same period a year earlier, the agency said.

The second report by MessageLabs, anotherness e-mail filtering company, said spam rates rose for much of last year but have since declined and hover near the levels they were at in December 2003 ??" when Congress passed the anti-spam legislation.

Even so, the commission acknowledged that spam is still a major headache.

"We're really not here saying that the spam problem is solved," said Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection. "What we're saying is that we're making progress."

The commission announced three enforcement actions taken in the last several weeks to derail those accused of sending mass bundles of spam. On behalf of the FTC, the Justice Department filed civil complaints against four group who allegedly sent illegal and unwanted spam e-mails. Two cases were filed in federal court in Chicago and one in Seattle.

The commission accused the defendants of hijacking consumers' computers and turning them into spamming machines that flooded mailboxes with unwanted e-mails. The FTC said the spam was sent with false "from" information and misleading subject lines ??" a violation of the anti-spam law. The spam also didn't provide a postal address or an "opt out" option, which allows a consumer to block future e-mails.

Copyright 2005 . .

Spammers now clogging blogs, IM - Security

Spammers now clogging blogs, IM

Personal Web journals grow cell phones, instant messages

By By Matthew Fordahl

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 14, 2003 - Three years ago, Adam Kalsey set up a Web log to share his thoughts about online business and the digital revolution. Like countless otherness “bloggers,” he lets his readers post comments on his entries. Recently, his site has been getting remarks like “Thanks for the information!” and “Sounds great!” They’re not from supporters, but from group �" or machines �" who leave names like “Generic Sildenafil,” “Online Gambling” and “Free Poker” and links to unsavory sites.

Spam has never been limited to e-mail. But now, commercial pitches are increasingly popping up in online chats, instant messages, cell phones with text messaging and, as Kalsey found, Web log comments.

Spammers are flocking to new communications tools like moths to light, threatening to cripple these tools just as they are beginning to take off.

Howard Rheingold, a futurist who predicts always-on communication will revolutionize public discourse, is worried that all these new forms of spam could freeze the revolution in its tracks. There will be no great social transformation if cell phones are turned off, instant messenger programs shut down or blog comments disabled to halt the flow of offers for online porn or cheap drugs.

“It forces you to either turn off the comments and lose some of the value of the medium, or spend your time deleting spam,” said Rheingold, who runs his own blog.

Today, most of the attention of lawmakers has been on e-mail spam, which is estimated to comprise nearly half of e-mail traffic. Attempts to write broader laws have not succeeded, and might whittle away at free speech.

“We ought to be legislating general concepts �" things like, you can’t market to somebody who’s asked you not to,” said David Sorkin, a professor who studies spam laws at John Marshall Law School. “But in the case of spam in particular, that hasn’t really worked.”

It’s possible legislation targeting unwanted e-mail could be used to fight otherness unwanted communication; text messages on cell phones often originate from e-mail. Laws limiting telemarketing also might be useful.

But that assumes the legislation will work, and that spammers won’t move outside the law.

'Blog immune system' at work
Kalsey, a Web consultant who lives near Sacramento, Calif., has taken matters into his own hands. In fact, many of his comments of late have focused on combatting Web log spam, including the creation of a “Comment Spam Manifesto.”

“What you failed to understand is that bloggers are smarter, better connected and more technologically savvy than the average e-mail user,” it reads, addressing the spammers. “We control this medium that you are now attempting to exploit. You’ve picked a fight with us and it’s a fight you cannot win.”

Working from the theory that blog spam can be combatted like real-world graffiti, Kalsey tried deleting messages as fast as they appeared. That worked for a few weeks but the volume has recently been increasing.

Now he’s tracking down those who leave the comments, collecting evidence and reporting them to their Internet providers and domain registers so their accounts can be canceled. If it sounds like a lot of work, it is. Fortunately, help from othernesss is available.

“The blog immune system does seem to be responding,” said Kalsey. “People are coming up with collective solutions like black lists for spammers. If one person gets spammed, then all the othernesss who use that software can ban them.”

Most of today’s comment spam doesn’t urge someone to click on the link. Rather, it’s posted to boost a site’s position on search engines. Web crawling software robots released by search engines notice keywords and links, and that information is used to determine relevancy.

Mena Trott, chief executive of Six Apart, the maker of the popular Web log system Movable Type, said the company is working on updates to make deletion of unwanted messages easier.

Convenience factor eroded
Cell phone carriers and providers of instant messaging services, meanwhile, are finding that their spam problems can be much more disruptive to workflow.

For IM, spam is growing just as the technology jumps from personal to business communications. To address the problem, companies are blocking messages from outsiders, instituting “white lists” of accepted contacts or not allowing IM at all.

But that’s making messaging less convenient.

“In (corporate) instant messaging, we’re doing more of a closed approach than what we were seeing with e-mail,” said Paul Judge, chief technology officer of the antispam firm CipherTrust Inc. and co-chair of the Anti-Spam Research Group.

America Online, the largest instant-messaging provider, has a number of roadblocks in place to halt spam IM, or spim. Among otherness things, a software sentry looks for spammers �" automated or in-the-flesh �" who try to send multiple messages simultaneously to many group, said spokesman Nicholas Graham.

Cell phone text message spam can be even more disruptive �" and expensive.

Some Nextel Communications cell phone subscribers recently got a 3:30 a.m. message urging support of the workers in the southern California grocery strike. Anotherness spammer urged a vote in favor of recalling California Gov. Gray Davis.

Aside from early morning annoyance, some plans charge for each message sent or received. Nextel, which last month installed a filtering system, offers refunds to any customers who complain.

“All the carriers have been hit with situations like this,” said Nextel spokeswoman Mila Fairfax. “Each carrier has applied a filtering system to try to flag messages that appear suspicious to our system.”

“We will be going after (spammers) to the furthest extent of law,” Fairfax said. “Anything we can do, we will do.”

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