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March 18, 2005
Spam list-broker shut down
It now appears that OptinSupply.org, the web site that was giving away private information on nearly a million people, has been terminated. Canaca.com, its hosting provider, is redirecting visitors to an "account suspended" page today.
I'm sure it won't be long before the site's operator brings it back online somewhere else. In previous incarnations, it has been known as OptInSupply.com, EmailsByChip.com, Emails4marketing.com, Booneo.com, and EmailSupply.net.
Here's a screen grab of the site's home page from a couple days ago.
The "downloads" page featured links to around 60 files with samples of the site's "opt in" data. Each sample contained personal data on between 1,000 and 250,000 people. By my latest calculation, the site was giving away data on over a million people. (If spammers wanted to buy the full lots, each of which contained millions of records, they had to pay less than a penny per name.)
It's hard to feel a lot of sympathy for people who buy from spammers. But I don't envy the people on these lists.
One database, apparently obtained from LendingTree.com, featured contact information on people who had been shopping for new mortgages. According to the data, almost every one of them said they had a poor credit rating. I can't see that improving now that their information is circulating in the spam underground.
Posted by brian at March 18, 2005 10:07 AM
Comments
Brian,
good to know that they shut this site down. But I too have difficulty sympathizing wih the victims. We all know how spam looks like. Those "mortgage shoppers" probably had gotten an email that read "You're M0.gate is appr.ved" or something like that. Never trust your personal details to someone with spelling that bad.
I have a little more sympathy for the grinning people depicted on that screen grab.But I guess that it's safe to assume that those are stolen pictures. Which might be another angle of attack against such sites. Bring 'em offline because they stole the pictures of all those happy people.
Posted by: Manni at March 18, 2005 10:22 AM
Manni,
As you know, shutting down spam sites is like playing whack-a-mole. The folks from OptInSupply have already relocated to a new location at a different ISP and are still offering their lists for free download.
Posted by: Brian at March 18, 2005 1:21 PM
Brian that person is a known scammer amoungst the community. IT goes by the alias's sherlean, shiroq, freeadcar, the sites you mentioned and numerous others. It has near probably a dozen scam alias's on forums. I obtained access to this persons server a year or 2 ago when they first came around and came upon interesting info and more regarding who the person is and what they were doing at the time. Ive since been tracking them along with "scammers" and "scam spammers" putting a bad image to our industry.
If youd like i can send you my entry on the scammer along with various info about them. Id rarely do a thing like this but this person just doesnt want to vacate the industry or make things right.
Posted by: swank at June 26, 2005 6:31 PM
http://web.archive.org/web/20040204024006/http://www.booneo.com/proof1.jpg - http://web.archive.org/web/20040204024006/http://www.booneo.com/proof2.jpg - from the scam operation it ran a while back
From its very short lived scam affiliate program - http://www.pixpond.com/06/M_Attachment_Paypal.jpg
http://web.archive.org/web/*/booneo.com - Interesting, might take a look.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:qPdNM0rvIDwJ:erotic-fun.net/dalnet/teen20030914_0.html+booneo+direct&hl=en - Odd they are chatting with teens.. If you knew this person like some of us do you would definately not want your children speaking with them. Looks like a pretty poor botched advertising attempt, dates back to 2k or 2k2 possibly, unless the dates within the article are from something else as google just spidered it june 24th.
Here we have some early insight into the scam op's - http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8393212?hilite=booneo
I think this sums it up.. ;)
Posted by: at June 26, 2005 7:11 PM
