Attached Link: http://www.mosnews.com/commentary/2005/07/26/spamassassin.shtml

"Russias most (in)famous spammer, Vardan Kushnir, 35, was dead in his apartment in downtown Moscow on Monday, July 25. Someone repeatedly smashed his head with a heavy object, authorities say, and then ransacked his entire apartment. The authorities have obviously got no clue as to who that someone might have been..."

For more results (and additional stories), see:
Yahoo News Search Results: Russia + Spam

--John

Message edited on: 07/27/2005 10:56

wow

Perhaps someone really got upset about the spam?

Ummm "According to the Kommersant, a Moscow newspaper, police said Kushnir met three women in a club, and invited them to his apartment. The women then spiked his drink, but when Kushnir woke up to find the women's accomplices taking credit cards, a laptop, money, and other items, he was bludgeoned to death, the paper said."

...thats the cover story. Police are having problems with leads on this case due to the amount of suspects. around 4 billon of them....

Well, it wasn't me. I was at home.

Wouldn't it be poetic justice if the "heavy object" was a black-market economy sized tin of...SPAM? ;)

It wasn't me, either. Death by bludgeoning isn't my MO.

Yes......I saw this one linked on Drudge a couple of days ago.

It seems that he only spammed Russian-language users. Chances are that most of us around here never heard from him.

Also, it was reported that spam isn't illegal in Russia. So, by those lights: he was nothing more than a legitimate businessman.

In case if anyone missed it: going to bars & picking up strangers is risky.

I love stating the obvious -- it's frequently overlooked.

I tried. I really, really tried to be sincerly sorry that the life of a fellow human was taken. I am still trying. But to my shame, my first reaction was laughter. I am still trying to stop chortling. Thats VERY sad. :-( Do I hate spam THAT much? And what does that say? I am still smiling............... Damn.

Batesd... I hate to agree with you, but I do... I finally joined blue frog in hopes of fighting back against the spammers.

Attached Link: http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20050725DidAntiSpamGangKillRussianSpammer.html

The best method that I've found for dealing with spam is to aquire a "junk" e-mail address -- and then give that address out to sites that you don't intend to do business with on a regular basis. Clean out the junk mailbox once a month or so.

Only give your "real" e-mail address to sites/people that you trust.

I've never given my work e-mail address out to anyone except for business clients. And I've never gotten a single spam e-mail at that address.

Which would be great advise, unless you were a poser content creator, and wanted to make sure your customers could get in touch with you.

That's true........ So if you are a Poser content creator, I suppose that you are doomed to swim in spam.......... Of course, you can have an e-mail address that's dedicated to nothing but giving out to customers. It won't stop the spam, but it'll filter the spam out of your personal e-mail.

I get surprisingly little spam at my Yahoo address and I've used it for years. True, there's a Junk mail box which gets it right most of the time but even accounting for that I don't have much trouble.

Interesting about spam - after that guy got a prison sentence a couple of months ago for spamming in a highly publicised and precedent setting case (I forget who he was) my spam level dropped by about 75% overnight - literally. It has since increased somewhat, but not all that much. Focus has gone from the old "Make your **** longer" and "Satisfy your woman" to the more recent "Buy online medicines cheap!!" and now, the last few weeks, to "Small cap stock deals!!" Maybe this idiot's death will make the spamming diminish even more. :] Fish

my spam makes me laugh.....for the last month or so ive had nothing but "You have won the such and such online lottery" and "we need your help etc" emails..so far i think ive won about 4billion ....i just wish for once it was real lmao

Well I for one love my SPAM. I have achieved over 3 extra inches of manhood this month! I have purchased enough Viagra at such a discount that I can use the extra money to buy drinks for women I pick up with my "Secret Tips on Attracting Hot Women." Then I can take them back to the house I just bought off foreclosure, and show them my new extra inches! Fortunately for me, I read all of my so-called "junk" e-mail, since I am now waiting for my check from Bill Gates to arrive for being part of his newest e-mail experiment! I was also lucky enough to get in a ground floor opporunity only available to ten select individuals, to purchase porkbelly futures! Can't wait to see the dollars roll in... I may need some more cash soon though, since I have joined 4,236 "adult" sites... Good thing I helped out that African government with thier bank issues. I expect my $800,000 check to arrive any day now. See? You can be just like me! Just send me a money order for $400USD right now, and if you are one of the first 100 people to respond, I will send you my "Make Money the Old Fashioned Way -- Steal It!" book, absolutely free! And you thought SPAM was bad...

meh, I still want to smack around the scum that keeps sending me the 'Nigerian Investment' scams. Wouldn't beat him to death, but I think a good thorough beating might get the point across.

Some guys have all the luck! [grin]

To be honest, between my ISP filters and my ZoneAlarm filters, my biggest problem is getting the emails that I actually want to get from some companies. Even putting them on my whitelist doesn't seem to work.

To be honest, between my ISP filters and my ZoneAlarm filters, my biggest problem is getting the emails that I actually want to get from some companies. Even putting them on my whitelist doesn't seem to work.

That's why I recommend the junk e-mail address approach to the problem, as opposed to using spam filters.

Spam filters sometimes have the unfortunate side-effect of rejecting mail that you actually want.

I tend to agre with Sam Therapy. I, too, switched to Yahoo a couple or three years ago. Since then I have had NO trouble with spam in my inbox, and the "Bulk Mail" folder has also been almost clear. But then, I'm not a merchant, so I don't have problems with unsolicited e-mails.. Cheers, Diolma (Who still prefers Yahoo over Hotmail by about 200%, regardless of some of the threads that I've seen complaining about Yahooo...)

I get some spam, even at addresses I never give out to anyone. They must be guessing, but the addys aren't that easy to guess.

Some of them aren't even addressed to me. My ISP seems to assign misdirected mail to their customers at random. :-/

Geeez, I don't live in Russia, but I could be a potential suspect because I've seriously wanted to "reach out and touch someone" at times when I open my mail box and come across 100 spam emails that somehow make it past 2 email spam filters. dyes hair and puts on dark sunglasses

One should never find something like this amusing nor even look at it as a spamming issue.If the cover story is true then the guy was the victim of a horrible and brutal crime that could befall anyone.If it turns out that its true that there was something more or even spam related,I'd say look more at the guys character because it could be that spamming was only one of many issues the guy might have had that were all related.Most spammers don't care what you think nor that you don't like getting spam so somethings wrong there to begin with...maybe it just went beyond spamming to everyday life and it finally caught up to him when he pissed off one too many people??

spam..nah..that might be a bit of a stretch..but the guy who made Cool Web search..well, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy..;) Well, we can hardly talk, they got Kevin Mitnick (trivia pursuit question...who?..;) not 10 miles from where I used to live..;)

For his funeral, they should cut him up and bury him in spam cans!!! Maybe Armour can use him in their commercials.

I use a system with a very accurate spam filter, which I check regularly and remove any legitimate mail (not that much gets caught in there). However, we also have a server of our own, and we pay for incoming as well as outgoing bandwidth. So, basically, we have to pay for these sleazy bastards to inundate our users with their unwanted bullshit. Nice, isn't it? We've now started to implement some fairly aggressive spam filtering on our server, although at this point it only tags the spam, rather than rejecting it. When the filter is "trained" to high enough accuracy, we'll start outright rejecting mail that has a rating above a certain level. It's theoretically possible that some legitimate mail will get caught (not likely, given the levels we'll be using), which is worrisome, but we can't keep paying for all the crap being sent. It just doesn't make sense to do so. As for the Russian spammer, well, I'm never happy to see someone blugeoned to death, certainly, but there is the concept of karma at work here... shrug bonni

Karma I can understand and like I said,I think it might have more to do with the character of the guy beyond just spamming...a symptom of the disease maybe but certainly wouldn't wish him dead (beaten bloody maybe but even then only sarcastically). I've been hit by spam and I've been hit by spyware and viruses because of spam let alone spoofs which luckily I didn't fall for. Eliza is right though,since my isp installed their spam filter I'd say about 96% of my spam gets filterred and very few legit emails get caught by the spam filter.As for Coolweb...dude thats spyware and you usually get that one visiting porn sites lol (but its a nasty lil bugger ain't it;)

dude thats spyware and you usually get that one visiting porn sites And how would you know that, hmmmm? ;-) bonni

Y'know...erm...got hijacked and was redirected to a site where I got that spyware on my system (whistles and hopes she buys it)

I'd say look more at the guys character In some of the articles that I read, the guy was quoted as blatantly spamming peole. He believed that e-mail was invented as a way to spam people (or something to that effect). In other words, he didn't care one bit for how his spam affected people. One of the sadder issues is that many ISP's block .ru addresses because so much spam is sent from there. This means that the average Russian user can't send e-mail without it being blocked as "spam". Y'know...erm...got hijacked and was redirected to a site where I got that spyware on my system Um, stop using Internet Explorer and you won't get hijacked. :) Use a Mac or Linux (which don't have all of the Windows' security holes) and you won't get hijacked either. :) --John

Actually lol,thats why I use Firefox now (didn't say when it happened and was actually a joke...erm lol). As for the spammer,point was that issues like you just mention bespeak the guys overall character...this was only a symptom of something worse and that is more likely to be why he was killed.But even with that,I wouldn't care if he spammed everyone and spat on us t'boot...I'd never wish death on someone who hadn't themselves committed murder~maybe a public flogging or something but not death;P