Spammer Shutdown

One of the nation's top spammers was shutdown in September as the result of an FBI raid on his office. The raid actually occurred about a month ago, but details included in the warrant have just been made public.

Alan Ralsky is located in Detroit and has been sued by numerous ISPs including Verizon. Ralsky has violated virtually every antispam email law on the books. He openly brags about being in possession of well over 150 million email addresses. Ralsky has been a highly visible public figure. He has even had a book written about him.

All of his equipment was taken in the raid. The raids targeted both his home and the home of his son-in-law. Ralsky has recently acknowledge that he is at least temporarily out of business.

While "Spam Kings" like Ralsky continue to send massive amounts of trash email, their rain as the spoilers of the internet may be coming to a close. In recent years massively decentralized spam operations have increased in popularity.

This new league of spammer uses armies composed of thousands of hacked computers to send spam on their behalf. Even though this activity is clearly illegal, it is extremely difficult to track. One of its major advantages is that it renders many attempts at stopping spam futile.

It is currently estimated that nearly 50% of all junk messages are the result of such hacked systems. These spammers rarely are selling their own goods. More commonly they profit from participating in affiliate schemes that pay them based on visitors to a website, or actual sales.

Back