The Monthly Lupine Awards
for MMF - July 1997
Starting sometime in May, I set up a special mail alias for people to
submit reports of Make Money Fast chain letters. Anyone who spots a
chain letter is welcome to send it, headers and all, to:
chainsaw@news.msfc.nasa.gov
You won't get a reply. I won't necessarily cancel any articles you send
me. I use what I receive to tweak my Make Money Fast detector so that it
can catch new variants. Please send only one article at a time. You
don't have to send more than one copy of a given type.
I express my grateful appreciation to the following people for their
submissions to this project in July:
submissions name
----------- ----
835 Fried Spam
46 Ken Lucke
36 fkist
35 Dave Godglick
27 J. Peter Mugaas
21 nobody@REPLAY.COM
21 "Gin"
5 Todd C. Lawson
3 Doktor DynaSoar Iridium
3 David Ritz
There were also some others who sent only one article to chainsaw in
July, but most of these were not MMF submissions; instead, they were
typically Cc:ed replies from various postmasters. This is probably true
of some of the above as well.
As before, almost all of these submissions were automatically detected by
the MMF detector. Typically, these posts merely hadn't made it to my
server yet, or else my cancels hadn't made it to their servers yet.
So much for the Good Guys. Now for the Bad Guys...
The following table lists the number of "Make Money Fast" (MMF) chain
letter articles I have canceled from my site, news.msfc.nasa.gov, by
article header From address, for the month of July, 1997, ranked by
number of articles. I only list the top 40. The numbers could vary
significantly from site to site; other people cancel these things as
well, and some sites (such as AOL) do not honor cancels at all.
Please note that forged and/or mangled names and addresses are common. I
usually try to combine entries that are actually from the same person,
but I've pretty much lost my patience with it, and I leave it as an
exercise for the reader. 8-)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Golden Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
1 5017 [a*@a.a]
This set of articles bore From addresses of a@a.a, a1@a.a, a2@a.a, etc.
The person in the hot seat was:
J. Martin
P.O. Box 2292
Reston, Va. 20190
Last month, this person took the Golden Lupine by posting through (I
think) Netzilla. This month, he or she switched to genesisnetwork.net.
The last one of these that I have on record is from July 10.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Silver Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
2 3291
This spammer was posting from Prodigy and was last heard from on July
20. The spotlight falls on this address:
NineToFive
P.O. Box 2130
Wellfleet, MA 02667
This was probably the same person as #5 below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bronze Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
3 3246 I_cant_remember@thatplace.com (yea_thats_it)
This might (or might not) be:
The Info Store
5761 E. La Palma Ave., Suite # 111
Anaheim , CA. 92807
(I have been to Anaheim before, but I can remember it.)
This person posted from Pacific Bell until July 11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The rest of the top 40:
Rank Posts
---- -----
4 1100 dragonfire@dragonfire.net (posted via earthlink.net)
5 938 (see #2 above)
6 823 <>
This nameless MMFer was actually about 3 or more people. The systems
used were cosmoslink.net--still ongoing--nni.com, and a couple of
others. I didn't bother to break them down.
7 807 "HELLO"
Posted via singnet.com.sg. Almost certainly the same person as #15 below
("Dennis Y."), #31, and a couple others.
8 688 jhernandez@sprintmail.com
9 552 "VC"
"van ac"
VC
Van Marketing Inc.
10 497 B21
B21@prodigy.net (N/a)
11 453 "RON STARK"
12 363 Rick (posted via telstra.net)
13 359 "David J. Smith"
14 336 "Walter"
Posted via golden.net. See also #28.
15 320 Marcus Adams (posted via swbell.net)
15 320 "HELLO"
hello@starmail.com
16 309 Do You Hate Your Job
This interlog.com user was apparently different from #1 above.
17 306 alexkwan@slip.net (alex)
18 303 ThisWorks@aol.com (posted via bellatlantic.net)
19 297 WETHRGOD@PACBELL.NET (JASON)
WETHRGOD@PACBELL.NET (JAY)
WETHRGOD@PACBELL.NET (WXGOD)
19 297 Robert Wilson
20 294 "...."
"Businessman"
NoN
These were all posted via skynet.be.
21 289 James Kung
22 259 "Capitalist"
23 255 "." <@TELE.DK>
24 251 "J. Baker"
"L. M."
25 249 Ronnie Lohr
26 242 Janice Wawrzon
27 241 gooch
28 240 "Walter"
29 225 Jackson (posted via atnet.net)
30 221 blackacaro@hotmail.com (cala)
Posted via telepac.pt. There were some more from a similar usa.net
address.
31 218 lkayes@globalserve.net
31 218 "Y. Dennis"
32 217 "gonzobob"
33 212 Chris Racey
34 209 cochran316@aol.com (Cochran316)
34 209 NY <@DIRECT.CA>
35 207 mbrown
Posted via idirect.com. There were some more with slight variations in
the address.
36 206 andeferon@aol.com (Andeferon)
37 202 myts35@aol.com (Myts35)
38 201 GEO (posted via prodigy.com)
Hot Dog (posted via prodigy.com)
39 200 lordsmugg@aol.com (Lord Smugg)
40 195 "$$$$$$sense"
"$$$$$SENSE"
"$$$$$SENSE$$$$$"
****SABRINA****
anna allen
anna jeannine
sabrina
--------------------------------------
Total articles canceled: 61004
Total unique Froms: 1795
There were approximately 1.37 cancels issued per minute in July, a
significant increase from June's 0.99. Some of this increase may have
been caused by the "despammer's holiday" in early July. I did not
curtail my MMF-cancellation activities during that time, but some other
regular spam-cancelers did, and therefore I had more to cancel.
I normally receive a fair number of replies to the notifications that I
send out. The replies range from the poignant to the utterly stupid. I
have considered posting a "Best Of, So Far" compilation with the names
and addresses removed. Comments?
I have compiled a list of the most MMF-ridden newsgroups in July 1997.
Please note that this list is affected by many factors, such as:
1. I don't get (or want) a full feed here, and a lot of the newsgroups
listed are mostly leakage or crossposts.
2. I don't cancel articles in moderated newsgroups and certain others
(such as news.admin.*).
3. Crossposts are listed as if they were multiple posts, unlike the
Lupine Awards list above.
4. The activities of other third-party cancelers are not compensated
for.
With that in mind, here are the top 40 "MMF magnets" for July 1997.
rank arts newsgroup
---- ---- ---------
1 237 alt.business
2 205 alt.2600
3 190 alt.business.misc
4 186 alt.business.home.pc
5 184 alt.business.multi-level
6 171 alt.0d
7 170 ab.jobs
8 164 alt.ascii-art
9 159 alt.3d
10 157 alt.activism
11 156 alt.alien.visitors
11 156 alt.1d
12 135 alt.alcohol
13 134 alt.abortion.inequity
13 134 ab.general
13 134 5col.forsale
13 134 3b
14 132 a.bsu.programming
15 130 alt.amazon-women.admirers
15 130 alt.adoption
16 129 alt.america.online
17 120 alt
18 119 a.bsu.talk
19 118 alt.astrology
19 118 alt.anything
19 118 alt.alt
20 115 alt.alien.research
20 115 alt.acting
21 112 alt.bbs
22 111 alt.beer
23 109 alt.3d.studio
24 107 a.bsu.religion
25 106 alt.acme.exploding.newsgroup
26 105 alt.business.home
26 105 alt.bbs.ads
26 105 alt.2600.hackerz
27 104 alt.2600.crackz
27 104 acadia.chat
27 104 acadia.bulletin-board
28 103 alt.aol-sucks
28 103 alt.anybody
28 103 alt.amateur-comp
28 103 a
29 102 ab.politics
30 99 alt.make.money
30 99 alt.autos.camaro.firebird
31 98 alt.backrubs
31 98 alt.autos
31 98 alt.2600.warez
32 97 alt.anonymous
32 97 alt.abuse.recovery
32 97 alt.2d
33 96 alt.sex
33 96 alt.ads
33 96 alt.2600hz
34 95 5col.announce
35 94 alt.activism.death-penalty
35 94 alt.2600.programz
35 94 alt.2600.codez
36 93 alt.games
36 93 alt.ascii-art.animation
36 93 3b.config
37 92 alt.baldspot
37 92 alt.alt.alt.alt.alt
38 91 alt.abortion
38 91 abg.diskussion
38 91 abg.amiga
39 90 alt.3d.misc
40 89 misc.entrepreneurs
40 89 alt.autos.antique
40 89 alt.aapg.announce
40 89 5col.general
40 89 3b.misc
--
J. Porter Clark, d/b/a
+--+
|oo| The Unknown News Administrator
| | news@news.msfc.nasa.gov
`^^'
