The Monthly Lupine Awards
for MMF - November 1997
As usual, I have 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 November:
submissions name
----------- ----
333 Nasty Mama
16 Joel Rubin
10 Donald & Leigh Anne Harvill
7 Gin Petty
5 Terri Tait
3 J Peter Mugaas
3 solitaire
2 David Ritz
2 Matt Bartley
2 William Addams Reitwiesner
There were also some others who sent only one article to chainsaw in
November, but most of these were not MMF submissions; instead, they were
typically Cc:ed replies from various postmasters.
As before, almost all (about 95%) 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.
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 November, 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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Golden Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
1 1737 [abcdefgh@funny.net] (6-30 Nov, continues into Dec)
This was the output of a roboposter that generated random From addresses
such as aacnqujq@funny.net and yyssgkqf@funny.net. Live by the robot,
die by the robot, I always say. So the robot gets the Golden Lupine
award.
As usual, the 1737 count corresponds to the number of cancels that I
issued and that were not duplicates of other such cancels that had
arrived at my server. I actually detected far more than these, but Cosmo
Roadkill and others were somewhat faster at canceling these than I was.
As a result, I actually received 5160 of these, but I ended up canceling
only 1737 of them. (I have since modified my software to close this
gap.) Here is a breakdown of the 5160; a breakdown of the 1737 is not
easy for me to develop:
a. 4850 posted via viptx.net, innerx.net, and uu.net
Travis Dominey
802 Briarwood St.
Victoria, TX 77904
USA
b. 210 posted via lcc.net
Dale Babineaux
1003 W Lewis
Conroe, Tx. 77301
c. 78 posted via netline.cl
Guillermo Sanz
Los Canales 0256
Peaflor, Santiago
Chile
d. 22 posted via dnet.id
Patrick Powell
2235 Stratford Ave
Chicago, IL 60631
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Silver Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
2 788 friendly@ghost.net [bellatlantic.net] (16-19 Nov)
The most likely offender might be:
Mr. P
66 Rear 4th Ave.
Long Branch, NJ
I don't know if Mr. P's first name is Casper. 8-)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bronze Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
3 608 Fast@Cash (Make Money for the Holidays) [chicagonet.net] (20-28 Nov)
This person was probably:
DA
3 Sumter Ave.
Albany NY 12203
USA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 591 darrin@sprynet.com (ItDoesWork) [compuserve.com] (1-20 Nov)
This is a continuation of a spam that has been going on since September.
I'm not sure that it would have stopped had it not been for the
Compuserve UDP in November. I complained many times about this spam.
The luser appears to be the same DA of Albany, NY listed in #3. I hope
I've seen the last of these.
5 367 [abcdefghmakecash@moneyforyou.net] [rr.com] (11 Nov)
Another mass poster.
6 357 ICE [arkansasusa.com] (9-30 Nov, continued until 2 Dec)
ice [arkansasusa.com]
This person (S. Ice of Provo, UT) has spammed MMFs many times under a
variety of names.
7 355 Friend@ITWORKS.net [infoave.net] (20-25 Nov)
friend@ITWORKS.net
friend@ItWorks.net
8 350 works4all@aol.com (Works4All) (21-30 Nov, continued until 2 Dec)
AOL seemed to have had a hard time getting rid of this one.
8 350 family.man@ix.netcom.com (10 Nov)
Appears to be one Alexis Morales of Rio Grande, P.R. See also #19
below.
9 344 Raine (28 Nov)
10 336 joew (16-27 Nov)
11 313 Charles Turner [sunysb.edu] (2 Nov)
The perpetrator appears to be "ASHLE" of Manchester, MO, an MMF spammer
with a long history; e.g., see the September 1997 report.
12 307 "Make $$$$$" [pics.net/uunet] (25 Nov)
"TexAds, Inc." [pics.net/uunet]
13 304 cdcarman@aol.com (CDCARMAN) (7-8 Nov)
14 295 "Gennie" [io-online.com/wesconet.com] (20-26 Nov)
15 288 "E.S." [worldnet.att.net] (12 Nov)
16 265 (DAVE) [aiusa.com/accucomllc.com] (13-14 Nov)
17 263 "!!QUICK-CASH!!" (13 Nov)
18 256 afriend@game.net [bellatlantic.net] (16-18 Nov)
Same name (Mr. P) as #2 above.
19 249 family1st@ix.netcom.com (msn.net) (21 Nov)
Same name (Alexis Morales) as #8 but different address (Germany).
20 241 beeyatch37@aol.com (Beeyatch37) (12 Nov)
21 237 "dugan" (22 Nov)
21 237 "Eric Fryters" (2-3 Nov)
22 234 "Kev" [gabn.net] (2-9 Nov)
"Kevin" [gabn.net]
"Residual Income" [gabn.net]
23 226 "Jack Stegall" (20-28 Nov)
"Paul Stegall"
dwadej@worldnet.att.net (David W Jarvis)
24 221 speedyj303@aol.com (SpeedyJ303) (16 Nov)
25 212 "animal" [gibralter.net] (6 Nov)
25 212 "Arthur A. Holmes, Jr." (18 Nov)
"Marc Reif" (14 Nov)
"User" (5 Nov)
(4-30 Nov)
Of course, these are probably several different people.
26 204 you@know.com (Somebody) [gate.net] (15 Nov)
you@know.com (Who) [gate.net] (15-16 Nov)
26 204 junkosack@aol.com (JUNKOSACK) (29-30 Nov)
27 197 jeffb11845@aol.com (JeffB11845) (26 Nov, but restarted 2 Dec)
28 194 puntatorpe@aol.com (PuntaTorpe) (15 Nov)
29 188 mitchell_ent@GalaxyCorp.com (Douglas Mitchell) [bigwave.ca/utoronto.ca/interlynx.net] (5-20 Nov)
30 185 Dan Worland (17 Nov)
31 184 "Wilmoth" (9 Nov)
32 181 ben.dover@posterior.com (Hoo-fahhh!) [erols.com] (4-5 Nov)
33 177 "consford" (16 Nov)
34 170 "rlamay" [msn.com] (28-29 Nov)
35 169 john7099@aol.com (John7099) (25-26 Nov)
36 168 "OPORTUNITY OF A LIFE TIME" (15 Nov)
"Sandra Gluschankoff" (15 Nov)
37 166 abutzi@aol.com (Abutzi) (1 Nov)
37 166 "ARENDTS" (7-8 Nov)
38 164 "Iosif Fyodor" (20 Nov)
"editrotta" (16-19 Nov)
39 163 money4u220@aol.com (Money4U220) (8-9 Nov)
40 161 "Rocketman" (14-15 Nov)
--------------------------------------
Total articles canceled: 41544
Total unique Froms: 1662
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-)
There were approximately 0.96 cancels issued per minute in November, a
decrease from last month (1.13 per minute).
I have compiled a list of the most MMF-ridden newsgroups in November
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 November 1997.
As usual, alt.business is at the top of the list.
rank arts newsgroup
---- ---- ---------
1 190 alt.business
2 177 ab.jobs
3 158 a.bsu.programming
4 152 ab.general
5 148 a.bsu.talk
6 134 alt.business.misc
7 133 alt.business.multi-level
8 131 3b.config
9 128 3b.misc
10 127 alt.2600
10 127 a.bsu.religion
11 122 3b
12 121 alt.business.home.pc
13 118 alt.0d
14 116 alt.alien.visitors
15 112 alt.activism
16 111 abg.acf-jugend
17 110 alt.alcohol
17 110 5col.forsale
18 109 abg.atari
18 109 5col.announce
19 107 alt.make.money
19 107 abg.acf-vor
20 106 abg.amiga
21 105 ab.politics
22 102 alt.business.home
22 102 abg.acf-termine
23 101 3b.test
24 100 acadia.bulletin-board
25 99 5col.general
26 98 alt.amazon-women.admirers
26 98 abg.biete
27 97 alt.1d
28 96 abg.diskussion
29 95 abg.dfue
30 93 alt.3d
30 93 acadia.chat
31 90 alt.alien.research
31 90 abg.member
32 88 abg.gewerblich
33 87 abg.intern
34 86 abg.kultur
35 85 alt.anything
35 85 alt.america.online
35 85 alt.adoption
35 85 abg.tip-info
36 82 abg.ms-dos
37 81 alt.astrology
37 81 alt.amateur-comp
37 81 abg.suche
38 80 alt.anonymous
39 79 alt.algebra.help
39 79 alt.ads
39 79 alt.acting
40 77 alt.community.local-money
40 77 alt.binaries.games
40 77 alt.abortion.inequity
--
J. Porter Clark, d/b/a
+--+
|oo| The Unknown News Administrator
| | news@news.msfc.nasa.gov
`^^'
