The Monthly Lupine Awards
for MMF - August 1997
I have 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 August:
submissions name
----------- ----
133 Nasty Mama
50 Gin Petty
7 Donald & Leigh Anne Harvill
5 J Peter Mugaas
2 Matt Bartley
There were also some others who sent only one article to chainsaw in
August, but most of these were not MMF submissions; instead, they were
typically Cc:ed replies from various postmasters.
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 August, 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 1031 splat@ra.isisnet.com
This person was posting from sympatico.ca. The last one of these I have
is dated August 21. I complained to Sympatico about this spam, and I
have a reply dated August 23 to the effect that the person(s) responsible
had been "dealt with."
The last person on the list was:
M. Burke
5595 Fenwick Street
Halifax NS B3H4M8
Canada
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Silver Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
2 937 happy1@finace.net
This spammer was using linknet.net, easily the no.1 MMF ISP this month.
The proud owner of this account was probably:
R.M.
66 Navsink Dr
Monmouth Beach, NJ 07750
Every single one of these that I have is dated either August 19 or 20,
although I didn't get the last one until the 28th. They appear to have
been posted sequentially a few seconds apart.
I wrote to linknet.net but never received a response.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bronze Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
3 600 "Anthony"
This might (or might not) be:
Anthony
9404 Benet Way
Bakersfield, CA 93311
I never did figure out who this was. In fact, I still don't know for
sure where he was posting from. This is a typical header:
Newsgroups: 3b.test
Path: news.msfc.nasa.gov!europa.clark.net!4.1.16.34!
cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!
news.bbnplanet.com!nntp1.crl.com!LSNT3!LSNT1!not-for-mail
From: "Anthony"
Subject: !!MONEY!!MONEY!!MONEY!!MONEY!!
Message-ID: <01bca05f$4bfadbc0$f0f671cf@compaq>
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 23:50:13 GMT
X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1155
I did not get a response from netland.com, and CRL (somewhat angrily)
disclaims knowledge.
The last of these that I received was dated August 17.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The rest of the top 40. The name of the ISP is in []'s if it differs
significantly from the domain in the email address.
Rank Posts
---- -----
4 509 ThisWorks@ble.com [linknet.net]
5 417 GoodNews@capital.net [linknet.net]
Probably the same person ("R.M.") as #2 above.
6 358 adrianos@infosel.net.mx (adriano)
7 338 "Mitchell Yim"
mjyim@mortimer.com (Mitchell Yim)
8 267 loocking@aol.com (LOOCKING)
9 265 "Answer Girl"
"James A. Mays"
"Man With A Plan"
10 262 RobertsB@aol.com (B.roberts) [wanadoo.fr]
11 261 llllllllll@llllllll.lll [linknet.net]
Probably the same person ("R.M.") as #2 above.
12 260 "Jokers"
13 250 ThisWorks@aol.com [bellatlantic.net]
Probably the same person as #4 above.
14 234 Larry Cooley
15 231 "C. Lee" [news.tor.shaw.wave.ca?]
16 230 mnm1036@aol.com (MnM1036)
16 230 Money4School
tkoch@freenet.columbus.oh.us
tkoch@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Money4School)
This looked like it came from either compuserve.com (NNTP-Posting-Host)
or interserv.com (Path). Still going, too.
17 226 [prodigy.com]
17 226 "Tom Wehrheim"
18 223 "QUICK CASH" <$$$$$cash$$$$$$> [silk.net]
19 220 mad_slasher@mindspring.com (J Koehne)
20 216 Jeffrey Smith
21 215 Simon
22 208 serial_number@juno.com [inconnect.com]
23 203 Simon Ghionea
24 198 pHp@Gong.net (Guarranteed Winner) [pgh.net]
pHp@Gong.net (Long Distance Runaround) [pgh.net]
25 194 jimbob965@aol.com (JimBob965)
26 193 "$#$#$#$#$#$"
"$$$$$$$$$"
"$$$LOOK!!!"
"$$$NOW"
"$$CASH NOW??"
"$$CASH"
"$LOOK$"
"$WOW$"
CYNDICYNDY
VISTANOW@SISNA.COM
karen
From looking at the list of names, it would appear that
VISTANOW@SISNA.COM represents several people. These were all posted via
sisna.com hosts.
27 190 Jeannine
28 184 getrich01@aol.com (Getrich01)
28 184 "Roger Bjorn"
29 183 Angel Perez
30 180 emsy97@aol.com (Emsy97)
31 177 just@do.it.com [hol.gr]
32 175 BABERUTH [pi.net]
33 172 dav@wt.net (trey wagley)
34 171 lvmybands@aol.com (LVMYBANDS)
35 167 subzero377@aol.com (SubZero377)
35 167 charles
36 163 "hpotts" [mci.net]
37 160 angel@aol.com [voicenet.com]
37 160 "Dan Muntean"
Dan
Dan Muntean
Dan Smith
38 159 netads@wdi.co.uk [cerbernet.co.uk]
38 159 "want some?"
38 159 "Preferred Customer"
39 158 malc@home.demon.co.uk (Malcolm Abbott)
40 152 "VOICE PERFECT"
--------------------------------------
Total articles canceled: 42606
Total unique Froms: 1948
There were approximately 0.95 cancels issued per minute in August, a
significant decrease from July's 1.37.
I have compiled a list of the most MMF-ridden newsgroups in August 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 August 1997.
rank arts newsgroup
---- ---- ---------
1 201 alt.business
2 197 ab.jobs
3 177 alt.2600
4 172 alt.business.home.pc
5 160 ab.general
6 156 alt.business.misc
7 154 alt.business.multi-level
8 137 alt.3d
9 136 a.bsu.programming
9 136 3b
10 134 a.bsu.talk
10 134 3b.misc
10 134 3b.config
11 132 alt.0d
12 131 alt.activism
13 130 5col.announce
14 129 alt.1d
15 123 5col.forsale
16 121 alt.abortion.inequity
17 116 alt.alcohol
18 115 a.bsu.religion
19 111 alt.adoption
20 110 alt.alien.visitors
20 110 alt.2600.crackz
20 110 5col.general
21 109 alt.beer
21 109 alt.amazon-women.admirers
22 108 alt.astrology
23 107 alt.alien.research
24 106 alt.business.home
24 106 alt.anything
24 106 alt.3d.studio
25 104 alt.binaries.games
25 104 alt.america.online
26 102 alt.aapg.announce
27 101 alt.community.local-money
28 99 alt.aapg.general
29 95 alt.2600.codez
29 95 ab.politics
30 94 alt.bbs
31 93 misc.entrepreneurs
31 93 alt.abuse.recovery
31 93 3b.test
32 92 alt.alt
33 90 alt.make.money
33 90 alt.bbs.ads
34 89 alt.activism.death-penalty
35 87 alt.binaries.clip-art
36 85 alt.2600.warez
37 84 alt.acting
37 84 alt.2600.hackerz
38 83 acadia.bulletin-board
39 82 alt.2600.phreakz
39 82 3do.bad-attitude
40 81 alt.anonymous
40 81 alt.acme.exploding.newsgroup
40 81 alt.2600hz
--
J. Porter Clark, d/b/a
+--+
|oo| The Unknown News Administrator
| | news@news.msfc.nasa.gov
`^^'
