Major internet spam organization busted
The Federal Trade Commission won a preliminary legal victory against what it called one of the largest spam gangs on the Internet, persuading a federal court in Chicago on Tuesday to freeze the group’s assets and order the spam network to shut down. The group, which used several names but was known among spam-fighting organizations as HerbalKing, sent billions of unsolicited messages to Internet users over the last 20 months, promoting replica watches and a variety of pharmaceuticals, including weight-loss drugs and herbal pills that supposedly enhanced the male anatomy, according to the commission. To pepper Internet users with its solicitations, the HerbalKing group used a botnet, a global network of computers infected with malicious software, often without the knowledge of their owners.
The security firm Marshal Software, which assisted the F.T.C. with the investigation, estimated in court documents that the group’s Mega-D botnet — named after one of its pill products — was made up of 35,000 computers and could send 10 billion e-mail messages a day. In January, the botnet was the leading source of spam on the Internet, the firm estimated. F.T.C. investigators also said they monitored the group’s finances closely and that it cleared $400,000 in Visa charges in one month alone. The commission has brought more than 100 cases against spammers and spyware vendors over the past decade. But officials and investigators said this spam operation was perhaps the most extensive they had ever encountered, with ties to Australia, New Zealand, India, China and the United States.
Source: NY Times
Comments(24)
probably darkies
tommas
probably darkies
LMFAO!!!!!!
$400,000 a month
wow
I didnt think there were that many people in the world stupid enough to give out their cc details to a spam e-mail :p
how do these companies get there customers? I mean you cant just advertise, can you? How do they do it?
hmmm replica watches, like the ad above?
when you think about “who gives out cc info on the internet?”, think about the theory of how if you take infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters typing for an infinite amount of time, one of them will eventually type Shakespeare (don’t know who said it, but it makes sense).
I mean, 20 months, 10 billion emails per day, that’s 6 trillion emails. you’re talking of one in millions of people being stupid, which isn’t too surprising. not to mention the highly probable large number of people who used stolen info to buy some of this stuff. replica watches have their use. and fat people seem to want to do anything to lose weight…
Man I need to set up one of these for say 6 months then stop.
If the visa bill was $400k then the amount made was plenty.
Lets see at my work I pay about 5% for my visa transactions so if $400k is 5% then the gross was around $8,000,000 for a month.
I think 6 months would be enough.
I highly doubt I will but email lists have increased in value for me now.
rlslog got busted?
@#1 tommas, are you a jewish then?
Too bad they don’t have the death penalty for spammers.
One spammer gone, more to come. Internet is anarchical, for better and worse.
These people have been spamming me nonstop and they do not offer an unsubscribe! They try to get you to their site with links in the spam with no option for unsubscribe + plus they write spy ware.
Hey, The FTC should have stopped these thugs 19 months ago when they started? Why did it take them so long to shut them down?
Long live spam! Die hard leechers
@13 who do you think seizes all the assets in the end ? … the government ofcourse – so the longer they let these guys stay in business the more money they get
give them the chair!
This is good… But onto the pressing matters… Those internet pop-ups and windows that appear when you’re browsing websites and make you start back up at the top again…
give em the chair
death penalty
i always laugh my ass off at the moral high ground of people writing such comments on websites promoting piracy – and fake watches
i like there spammer, they are very considerate people
They always send me emails when they worry about my weight, my penis size, my health, everything.. always sending me emails and telling me about nice things to help me 
What!? That’s all? Just “shut down”? If I was the judge, I woulda have ordered daily radiation treatments for all of them until they died of necrosis 5 years from now, 3 years into their comas.
A few steps to avoid getting spammed, or letting it annoy you.
Step 1. Gmail. (Problem 99% solved)
Step 2. Go to Gmail’s Spam Box. Click delete forever. Repeat once every day.
Problem solved.
Honestly, spam has never been a problem for me and probably never will.
I bet they already sold their email address database to another spam company, and will pay their legal defense funds with the profits from that sale.
co-signing the Gmail sentiment. I’ve had my Gmail addresses for around 3 years now and in all that time, I’ve probably had 4 spam mails slip through the filters. Good jorb Google.
Use more than 1 email address eg., one for personal/work related, one for throwaway emails, one for online purchasing, one for online sign-ups/surveys etc. Signups and survey websites usually let your email go aand you’ll be spammed forever. And don’t use the same handle on each email. david404 @email1.com, david404 @anothermail.com, no no no.
Also, NEVER “unsubscribe” to a spam mail. Doing this only verifies your email address as active to the spam company (nearly all spam mail is sent out completely randomly and in bulk) and once your email is flagged as live, your address may be sold on to other spammers and you’ll only make the situation worse.
Millions of dollars in fines for the crime of, well essentially it’s the crime of annoying people.
That’s the problem with the net, people take it all way to seriously.
lmao @ 19
… yes there lovley people…
they sent me 4 boxes of viagra… and my breat enlargment op
is in january…
…and my wolex keeps perfect time