Editorial: Joy at the Death of a Spammer

While the Internet as a collective whole rejoiced in the seduction, drugging, and murder of a spammer, solutions to the spam problem involve legislation and education rather than vigilantism.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [August 11, 2005]

The Internet reacted with glee to a murder recently. Posters on Slashdot were generally supportive of the murderers. Internet users seemed to assume, whether joking or serious, that Vardan Kushnir was killed by angry spam victims. Others speculated that Kushnir had been killed by a vigilante gang. Here at ISP-Planet, we feared that the Russian Mafia was moving into the business and that spamming would soon become more sophisticated.

Our fears, and the darkest hopes of Internet users, seem to have been wrong.

We were able to contact Suresh Ramasubramanian, manager of antispam operations at global e-mail provider Outblaze and coordinator of the Asia Pacific antispam organization APCAUCE. He is one of the world's foremost anti-spam experts.

He noted, in an e-mail to us:

There is a lot of wishful thinking about how this was a case of "spam rage", with some frustrated victim of the man's spamming turning up at his house with a baseball bat. Another rumor is that Kushnir had criminal links and fell out with the local organized crime gangs who then killed him. However, it is quite likely to be, as the Russian police have unofficially said, a fairly standard armed robbery that ended up in his getting beaten to death when he tried to resist.

But if it was a simple robbery, theft in Russia is more sophisticated than in the rest of the world. The Times of London reported that he had met a woman in a nightclub, and went home to his apartment with her and two of her friends. The three women drugged him.

He was nevertheless beaten to death, and police assumed that he awoke while he was being robbed.

Spammer had enemies
Kushnir had made many enemies. He had even managed to anger a key government official. The Times of London reports, in the article cited above:

Mr Kushnir was so prolific that in 2003, Andrei Korotkov, then the Communications Minister, began a campaign to retaliate. With the help of Rambler.ru, an Internet browser, he bombarded Mr Kushnir's office with a thousand automated telephone calls in one morning.

"I want to warn you that if you continue your illegal activity, then the necessary measures will be taken not just by me," the message said.

Webpronews.com adds, in the article cited above, that Kushnir spammed ICQ, blogs, and forums in addition to sending spam e-mails.

If you run an ISP, you too may have received spam like this.

Unorganized crime
As we understand it, most spammers today are like the notorious "Buffalo spammer", individuals rather than members of large criminal organizations.

We did not find any known link between spam and organized crime. We did not receive any reply to an e-mail to the FBI about organized crime and spam.

It seems to us that the case has not been solved, and that we should not rejoice even in the end of a spammer, because we cannot tell who or what will replace him.

Ramasubramanian says that the root cause of all spam is the fact that the recipient, rather than the sender, pays for spam.

We agreed with that in theory, that it might be helpful to require marketers to pay to send e-mail, but objected that no individual—or website with a newsletter—should to have to pay to send e-mail.

Ramasubramanian replied:

E-mail works just because it's so cheap for the sender. When bulk e-mail is sent, all that I as an ISP ask for is that bulk e-mailers deliver e-mail only to users that request their e-mail (that is, they follow an opt-in method of list handling). I don't want a red cent from marketers who e-mail my users. All I insist on is that they operate their lists responsibly, with respect for the stability of our systems, and for the privacy of our users.

At Jupitermedia, we go one better than opt-in, using double opt-in.

In a detailed report to the OECD, Spam Issues in Developing Countries [.pdf], Ramasubramanian added that most developing countries require basic anti-spam education and anti-spam legislation.

This is certainly true of Russia, which, according to the articles cited above, has not yet made spam illegal.

— End