I basically never want to see anyone go to jail, even people I intensely dislike, but it's hard to work up much sympathy over this one: spam king Alan Ralsky has been busted. The rumors, as one would expect in such a situation, are that the feds have him so badly he is going to rat out the entire global spam network. We'll see, but it's a curiously pleasant thing to think about. And it's not too hard to believe that spammers would immediately turn into rats when faced with even a small amount of jail time.

I'll bet the real numbers (which we will never know) are astounding. I wouldn't be surprised if the reality was something like: the top 20 spammers in the world account for 10 percent of the traffic on the internet. Yes, I just totally made those numbers up. But I'll bet it's something like that. Others will step in to fill any shoes that are sent to prison, for sure, but the sheer outrageousness of scope that the top guys are operating with will not come back if they sweep up all the big guys.

I'll wait for the spam huntress' take on it, but I'm cautiously hopeful.
- jim 4-29-2006 4:59 am

Looks like it isn't true.
- jim 5-02-2006 6:22 pm


Talk about Sp4M, get rewarded with some Sp4m.
- tom moody 5-07-2006 6:22 am





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