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South Florida.
Palm Beach, Broward and Miami Dade has more email spammers and scammers operating out of them than any other COUNTRY. Yes, a county has more spammers than an entire COUNTRY.
It was in the news today. The major decline in global spam that happened last year was the exact same time frame as the hurricanes. Be-leeve dat!
-----------------------
No place can spam like South Florida
Unwanted e-mailers thrive with schemes.
By Ian Katz
Business Writer
Posted May 8 2005
E-mail story
Print story
POLL
How would you characterize spam?
Very annoying
Somewhat annoying
Not annoying
Poll: How much of a problem is spam for you?
I consider it a big problem. It fills up my mailbox
It does not bother me; I have a spam blocker
No big deal. I read some, delete some.
Talk about it
What are you doing about spam and is it working?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not visit Florida, or buy anything from Florida, or from a spam email. You can all suffer.
Submitted by: BananasFalklands
4:06 PM EDT, May 8, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read more comments or post your own Spoiling spam
Spam is almost impossible to avoid, but you can do several things to reduce your exposure:
● Take out a second address at a free e-mail provider such as Yahoo! or Hotmail, and use it when shopping online or when you have to give an e-mail address to a business.
● Guard your first, preferred e-mail address zealously. Give it only to family, friends and business associates.
n-When registering at a Web site, make sure you do not agree to a contract allowing the site to sell your e-mail address.
● Your Internet service provider is your first defense against spam. Though it might not seem that way, ISPs now stop most spam before it gets to your inbox.
● An additional defense is the filter or blocker in e-mail programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. These allow you to prevent certain senders or key words from getting through.
● But if that's not enough -- frequently it isn't -- dozens of companies make anti-spam filters or blockers that can help. Below is a sampling. You can also check anti-spam software reviews at www.cnet.com.
● Cloudmark SafetyBar, www.cloudmark.com
● Kaspersky Personal Security Suite, www.kaspersky.com
● MailFrontier Desktop, www.mailfrontier.com
● McAfee Internet Security Suite, www.mcafee.com
● Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005, www.symantec.com
● Zero Spam Network, www.0spam.net
PHOTO
Sandra Allen appears at her home in Saybrook Township
See larger image
(AP/Scott R. Galvin)
Attorney Barbara Bolton is working on the FTC’s case against Sun Ray Trading Inc.
See larger image
(AP/John Amis)
May 7, 2005
Subscribe today to the Sun-Sentinel
and find out how to get one week extra!
Click here or call 1-877-READ-SUN.
No place does spamming and scamming quite like South Florida.
Together, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties are home to more spammers than any country on Earth. And it's not just the annoying pitches for mortgages and sex pills. Increasingly, law enforcement officials are finding that junk e-mail is a favored weapon of predators, an easy way for criminals to target a world of potential victims from behind a wall of anonymity.
More than a quarter of about 180 hardcore spammers tracked by watchdog group Spamhaus are based in Florida, and most of those are in the tri-county area. The city with the most spammers in the world is Boca Raton. Eleven are listed by Spamhaus as based there, though anti-spam groups say they think that figure misses dozens who send spam at least part-time.
Why South Florida? Spammers and anti-spam groups cite a combination of reasons. They include the warm weather and laid-back lifestyle, lenient bankruptcy laws, proximity to Internet data centers, a history of telemarketing and e-mail marketing, and the state's longstanding image as a good place to do dirty business.
South Florida is so notorious that some experts attributed a short-term decline in global spam after last year's hurricanes to the assumption that the storms disrupted spammers' operations.
And the FBI's North Miami office receives so many fraud complaints that only major cases get the bureau's attention. "If you come in with a $1 million case, we'll put you in line with all the others," said LeVord Burns, supervisory special agent.
The FBI has found spam to be a natural accomplice for scammers. Unlike direct mail and telemarketing, e-mail is cheap, global and often untraceable. "You can hit a button and reach millions of people," Burns said. "It's like fishing. You just dangle a line out and wait for someone to bite on it."
All too often, the trails lead to South Florida. When Sandra Allen and tens of thousands of other victims bit on a work-at-home spam, the Federal Trade Commission investigated and found a South Florida operation at the heart of the alleged scheme.
Allen, 56, who lives in Ashtabula, Ohio, 55 miles east of Cleveland, received an e-mail claiming she could make as much as $3,000 a week stuffing envelopes.
Diabetes, heart disease and arthritis prevent Allen from working outside the home, so she saw the e-mail as a heaven-sent opportunity. She sent the $105 required to get started to SR & Associates, which had a Weston mailing address, but she never got a penny back.
The FTC is now suing three people who allegedly operated under the names SR and Sun Ray Trading Inc., accusing them of using the envelope-stuffing offer to steal at least $1.4 million. Defendants Rolando Galvez-Garcia, Kostadin Osvaldo Marte Tavarez and Anneelises Flores Adino lived or worked in South Florida.
Galvez-Garcia's lawyer, Jorge Calil of Miami, said someone registered Galvez-Garcia as an agent of the companies without his knowledge. Jason Wandner, a Miami lawyer representing Marte Tavarez, said his client wants to resolve the case amicably. The FTC thinks that Flores Adino has left the country.
Another inquiry led the FTC to South Florida when the agency began checking out reports of bogus human growth hormone sold over the Web.
Last year, Creaghan Harry, 37, of Highland Beach, was accused of defrauding thousands of customers of hundreds of thousands of dollars. He allegedly spent spam with links to Web sites selling the bogus growth hormone.
"LOSE WEIGHT WHILE YOU SLEEP WITHOUT DIETING OR EXERCISE," read millions of the e-mails. Human growth hormone, or HGH, is produced by the pituitary gland. As a drug, it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to help unusually short children grow, but some proponents also claim it has anti-aging benefits.
Because spammers often route their e-mails through hosts overseas, spam is difficult to trace. So to solve cases, investigators usually follow the money trail.
The FTC suit, filed in Illinois because undercover purchases of Harry's products were made there, alleges that the tablets contain amino acids that in the doses prescribed would have no effect on the person taking them.
The two sides have reached a settlement, but neither would give details.
Harry declined to answer several questions the South Florida Sun-Sentinel asked him about the case. But in an e-mail exchange, he said he agreed to a settlement because he would otherwise face years of litigation over the FTC's disagreement with the claims he made about his products.
South Florida's reputation as a hotbed for mass e-mailers makes it a perfect home for a place called the Bulk Email Software Superstore.
next >>
Nestled inconspicuously among medical offices in the Belle Terre East Medical Center in Coral Springs, the store is a one-stop shop for bulk e-mailers.
It doesn't look like much of a superstore. Cardboard boxes and huge bags of plastic foam peanuts sit between several desks in an office barely large enough for about eight people. Most of the space is used for a side business, 1st Class Cigar Humidors.
The store is far more convincing online. Its site, www.americaint.com, offers an array of legal products -- including programs that help place Web site names on search engines and lists of 1 million e-mail addresses costing $39.95 each.
The store also sells bulletproof hosting services, in which the host refuses to shut down the site despite requests from spam fighters. A lot of bulletproof hosting is farmed out by companies to Web hosts in China, making it more difficult for law enforcement to shut down a spammer's Web site. The Bulk Email Software Superstore offers a bulletproof service for $399 a month, plus a $99 set-up fee.
The company says it complies with a federal law that went into effect last year regulating how bulk e-mail can be sent -- and its clients range from real estate agents to tax accountants trying to legally expand their businesses.
Though many spammers operate legally, law enforcement officials are concerned that some South Florida spammers will use e-mail to rip people off, given the area's history as a scam capital.
South Florida had a reputation as a Shangri-La for hucksters long before spam became a scourge. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, so many scammers were selling penny stocks by cold-calling from so-called boiler rooms in Boca Raton that a stretch of Federal Highway in the city was known as the "maggot mile." The area has also been known as the center of the legitimate and sleazy sides of the telemarketing business.
The perception that South Florida is a spam capital is well-ingrained. A dropoff in spam after last year's hurricanes caused some to wonder whether spammers had been temporarily shut down.
Adding to the speculation was the fact that a group monitoring phishing, a scheme in which spam is used to lure people into giving up bank account or credit card information at phony Web sites, reported an unusual decline in September, the month hurricanes Frances and Jeanne hit South Florida.
Experts are divided on how much credence to give the theory, but some say it may have validity. Adam Brower, who tracks spamming activity for Spamhaus, said he thinks it does because e-mail administrators told the group they were getting noticeably less spam after the storms.
Staff researchers Barbara Hijek and William Lucey contributed to this report.
Ian Katz can be reached at ikatz@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4664.
Palm Beach, Broward and Miami Dade has more email spammers and scammers operating out of them than any other COUNTRY. Yes, a county has more spammers than an entire COUNTRY.
It was in the news today. The major decline in global spam that happened last year was the exact same time frame as the hurricanes. Be-leeve dat!
-----------------------
No place can spam like South Florida
Unwanted e-mailers thrive with schemes.
By Ian Katz
Business Writer
Posted May 8 2005
E-mail story
Print story
POLL
How would you characterize spam?
Very annoying
Somewhat annoying
Not annoying
Poll: How much of a problem is spam for you?
I consider it a big problem. It fills up my mailbox
It does not bother me; I have a spam blocker
No big deal. I read some, delete some.
Talk about it
What are you doing about spam and is it working?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not visit Florida, or buy anything from Florida, or from a spam email. You can all suffer.
Submitted by: BananasFalklands
4:06 PM EDT, May 8, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read more comments or post your own Spoiling spam
Spam is almost impossible to avoid, but you can do several things to reduce your exposure:
● Take out a second address at a free e-mail provider such as Yahoo! or Hotmail, and use it when shopping online or when you have to give an e-mail address to a business.
● Guard your first, preferred e-mail address zealously. Give it only to family, friends and business associates.
n-When registering at a Web site, make sure you do not agree to a contract allowing the site to sell your e-mail address.
● Your Internet service provider is your first defense against spam. Though it might not seem that way, ISPs now stop most spam before it gets to your inbox.
● An additional defense is the filter or blocker in e-mail programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. These allow you to prevent certain senders or key words from getting through.
● But if that's not enough -- frequently it isn't -- dozens of companies make anti-spam filters or blockers that can help. Below is a sampling. You can also check anti-spam software reviews at www.cnet.com.
● Cloudmark SafetyBar, www.cloudmark.com
● Kaspersky Personal Security Suite, www.kaspersky.com
● MailFrontier Desktop, www.mailfrontier.com
● McAfee Internet Security Suite, www.mcafee.com
● Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005, www.symantec.com
● Zero Spam Network, www.0spam.net
PHOTO
Sandra Allen appears at her home in Saybrook Township
See larger image
(AP/Scott R. Galvin)
Attorney Barbara Bolton is working on the FTC’s case against Sun Ray Trading Inc.
See larger image
(AP/John Amis)
May 7, 2005
Subscribe today to the Sun-Sentinel
and find out how to get one week extra!
Click here or call 1-877-READ-SUN.
No place does spamming and scamming quite like South Florida.
Together, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties are home to more spammers than any country on Earth. And it's not just the annoying pitches for mortgages and sex pills. Increasingly, law enforcement officials are finding that junk e-mail is a favored weapon of predators, an easy way for criminals to target a world of potential victims from behind a wall of anonymity.
More than a quarter of about 180 hardcore spammers tracked by watchdog group Spamhaus are based in Florida, and most of those are in the tri-county area. The city with the most spammers in the world is Boca Raton. Eleven are listed by Spamhaus as based there, though anti-spam groups say they think that figure misses dozens who send spam at least part-time.
Why South Florida? Spammers and anti-spam groups cite a combination of reasons. They include the warm weather and laid-back lifestyle, lenient bankruptcy laws, proximity to Internet data centers, a history of telemarketing and e-mail marketing, and the state's longstanding image as a good place to do dirty business.
South Florida is so notorious that some experts attributed a short-term decline in global spam after last year's hurricanes to the assumption that the storms disrupted spammers' operations.
And the FBI's North Miami office receives so many fraud complaints that only major cases get the bureau's attention. "If you come in with a $1 million case, we'll put you in line with all the others," said LeVord Burns, supervisory special agent.
The FBI has found spam to be a natural accomplice for scammers. Unlike direct mail and telemarketing, e-mail is cheap, global and often untraceable. "You can hit a button and reach millions of people," Burns said. "It's like fishing. You just dangle a line out and wait for someone to bite on it."
All too often, the trails lead to South Florida. When Sandra Allen and tens of thousands of other victims bit on a work-at-home spam, the Federal Trade Commission investigated and found a South Florida operation at the heart of the alleged scheme.
Allen, 56, who lives in Ashtabula, Ohio, 55 miles east of Cleveland, received an e-mail claiming she could make as much as $3,000 a week stuffing envelopes.
Diabetes, heart disease and arthritis prevent Allen from working outside the home, so she saw the e-mail as a heaven-sent opportunity. She sent the $105 required to get started to SR & Associates, which had a Weston mailing address, but she never got a penny back.
The FTC is now suing three people who allegedly operated under the names SR and Sun Ray Trading Inc., accusing them of using the envelope-stuffing offer to steal at least $1.4 million. Defendants Rolando Galvez-Garcia, Kostadin Osvaldo Marte Tavarez and Anneelises Flores Adino lived or worked in South Florida.
Galvez-Garcia's lawyer, Jorge Calil of Miami, said someone registered Galvez-Garcia as an agent of the companies without his knowledge. Jason Wandner, a Miami lawyer representing Marte Tavarez, said his client wants to resolve the case amicably. The FTC thinks that Flores Adino has left the country.
Another inquiry led the FTC to South Florida when the agency began checking out reports of bogus human growth hormone sold over the Web.
Last year, Creaghan Harry, 37, of Highland Beach, was accused of defrauding thousands of customers of hundreds of thousands of dollars. He allegedly spent spam with links to Web sites selling the bogus growth hormone.
"LOSE WEIGHT WHILE YOU SLEEP WITHOUT DIETING OR EXERCISE," read millions of the e-mails. Human growth hormone, or HGH, is produced by the pituitary gland. As a drug, it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to help unusually short children grow, but some proponents also claim it has anti-aging benefits.
Because spammers often route their e-mails through hosts overseas, spam is difficult to trace. So to solve cases, investigators usually follow the money trail.
The FTC suit, filed in Illinois because undercover purchases of Harry's products were made there, alleges that the tablets contain amino acids that in the doses prescribed would have no effect on the person taking them.
The two sides have reached a settlement, but neither would give details.
Harry declined to answer several questions the South Florida Sun-Sentinel asked him about the case. But in an e-mail exchange, he said he agreed to a settlement because he would otherwise face years of litigation over the FTC's disagreement with the claims he made about his products.
South Florida's reputation as a hotbed for mass e-mailers makes it a perfect home for a place called the Bulk Email Software Superstore.
next >>
Nestled inconspicuously among medical offices in the Belle Terre East Medical Center in Coral Springs, the store is a one-stop shop for bulk e-mailers.
It doesn't look like much of a superstore. Cardboard boxes and huge bags of plastic foam peanuts sit between several desks in an office barely large enough for about eight people. Most of the space is used for a side business, 1st Class Cigar Humidors.
The store is far more convincing online. Its site, www.americaint.com, offers an array of legal products -- including programs that help place Web site names on search engines and lists of 1 million e-mail addresses costing $39.95 each.
The store also sells bulletproof hosting services, in which the host refuses to shut down the site despite requests from spam fighters. A lot of bulletproof hosting is farmed out by companies to Web hosts in China, making it more difficult for law enforcement to shut down a spammer's Web site. The Bulk Email Software Superstore offers a bulletproof service for $399 a month, plus a $99 set-up fee.
The company says it complies with a federal law that went into effect last year regulating how bulk e-mail can be sent -- and its clients range from real estate agents to tax accountants trying to legally expand their businesses.
Though many spammers operate legally, law enforcement officials are concerned that some South Florida spammers will use e-mail to rip people off, given the area's history as a scam capital.
South Florida had a reputation as a Shangri-La for hucksters long before spam became a scourge. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, so many scammers were selling penny stocks by cold-calling from so-called boiler rooms in Boca Raton that a stretch of Federal Highway in the city was known as the "maggot mile." The area has also been known as the center of the legitimate and sleazy sides of the telemarketing business.
The perception that South Florida is a spam capital is well-ingrained. A dropoff in spam after last year's hurricanes caused some to wonder whether spammers had been temporarily shut down.
Adding to the speculation was the fact that a group monitoring phishing, a scheme in which spam is used to lure people into giving up bank account or credit card information at phony Web sites, reported an unusual decline in September, the month hurricanes Frances and Jeanne hit South Florida.
Experts are divided on how much credence to give the theory, but some say it may have validity. Adam Brower, who tracks spamming activity for Spamhaus, said he thinks it does because e-mail administrators told the group they were getting noticeably less spam after the storms.
Staff researchers Barbara Hijek and William Lucey contributed to this report.
Ian Katz can be reached at ikatz@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4664.
