Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements

by Brian S. McWilliams

More than sixty percent of today's email traffic is spam, according to email filtering firm Brightmail. This year alone, five trillion spam messages will clog Internet users in-boxes, costing society an estimated $10-billion in lost productivity, filtering software, and other expenses. Spam The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements is the first book to expose the shadowy world of the people responsible for the junk email problem. Author and veteran investigative journalist Brian S. McWilliams delivers a compelling account of the cat-and-mouse game played by spam entrepreneurs in search of easy fortunes and those who are trying to stop them. Spam Kings chronicles the evolution of Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a notorious neo-Nazi leader (Jewish-born) who got into junk email in 1999. Using Hawke as a case study, Spam Kings traces the twenty-year-old neophyte's rise in the spam trade to his emergence as a major player in the lucrative penis pill market--a business that would eventually make him a millionaire and the target of lawsuits from AOL and others. Spam Kings also tells the parallel story of Susan Gunn, a computer novice in California who is reluctantly drawn into the spam wars and eventually joins a group of anti-spam activists. Her volunteer sleuth work puts her on a collision course with Hawke and other spammers, who try to wreak revenge on the antis. You'll also meet other cyber-vigilantes who have taken up the fight against spammers as well as the cast of quirky characters who comprise Hawke's business associates.The book sheds light on the technical sleight-of-hand--forged headers, open relays, harvesting tools, and bulletproof hosting--and other sleazy business practices that spammers use; the work of top anti-spam attorneys; the surprising new partnership developing between spammers and computer hackers; and the rise of a new breed of computer viruses designed to turn the PCs of innocent bystanders into secret spam factories.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Brian McWilliams is an investigative journalist who has covered business and technology for Web magazines including Wired News and Salon as well as the Washington Post and PC World, Computerworld, and Inc. magazines. The author of hundreds of articles about spam, internet security, and online consumer protection, McWilliams gained international attention in 2002 when he wrote about the contents of Saddam Hussein's email in-box for Wired News. He has appeared on NBC Nightly News, Fox News, BBC Radio, and NPR's Here and Now and PRI's Marketplace programs, and has been quoted by the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times.

Reviews

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting inside look at the world of spam and spammers from the late 90s until 2004. Overall a quick and enjoyable read.

This book also had one particularly memorable line that perfectly described how it feels to no longer be in school: "In recent days, as fall classes resumed... he'd managed to resist a strong seasonal force akin to what migratory birds must experience each autumn."

[Kit Murray]

just picked up today. sounds interesting....

update 8/16/10. Never read. Fiance read it, he is a self proclaimed computer nerd. Said the book was good.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a sleazy world

This is about the personal lives, and the trials and tribulations of spammers and spam fighters. A more motley crew of miscreants and their enemies would be hard to imagine.

Sickie number one would be Davis Wolfgang Hawke (aka "Bo Decker," "Michael Girdley," etc.) one-time founder and leader of his self-styled Neo-Nazi group, the Knights of Freedom. He got started in Web hustling by selling knives and Nazi paraphernalia on Ebay. When it was discovered that his birth name was Andrew Britt Greenbaum and that his father was Jewish, he quite naturally lost a lot of cache with his Neo-Nazi followers, and so he closed down his storm trooper Website and turned to spam. He discovered that he had a natural talent for writing the sort of copy that sells sex pheromones, pyramid schemes, porn, and other spam "products," and before he knew it he was hiding stashes of hundred-dollar bills all over his various digs and the nearby countryside.

Sickie number two would be Brad Bournival, Hawke's geeky chess-playing protege who made a million dollars spamming penis enlargements pills and such. Other sickies include big-timer Scott Richter of OptInRealBig who followed 9/11 and the anthrax attacks with flag and gas mask spamming, a kind of low-life huckster with a genius for turning public events into personal wealth. Also mentionable is the really sad Thomas Cowles who hustled mass mailing software but got thrown in jail for criminal contempt of court after allegedly stealing some computer equipment from South Florida spam king Eddy Marin.

The white hats include Susan "Shiksaa" Gunn, Piers "Mad Pierre" Forrest, Francis Uy, Pete Wellborn, Steve Linford and others, many of whom frequented the antispam Web newsgroup Nanae. Compromised and perhaps characteristic of a third category of spam-world denizens would be Karen Hoffman, one-time spam fighter who crossed over to the dark side to work for spammers.

What is really amazing is just how readable this book is. McWilliams has the narrative talent of a novelist, and the investigative skills of a top drawer journalist. I found this bizarre story of greed and human depravity in cyberspace as "unputdownable" as a best-selling true crime tale--which it is. This also serves as a sort of history of outline spam, chronicling the lives and times of those involved while reporting on the various measures taken by email providers and governments to combat the flood of unsolicited bulk emails.

As for the future of spam and spam-fighters, McWilliams gives this appraisal: "...the pernicious root of the spam crisis does not appear to be legislative or technological. It is human..." He adds, "The ability to move relatively incognito online may have created a perfect medium for surreptitious e-marketers...But the Internet has also engendered a corresponding segment of consumers. Call them furtive shoppers" who have a desire for stuff that needs to be delivered in plain, brown wrappers. He concludes, "...spammers sell whatever people will buy from them." (pp. 296-297)

So, the spam problem (costing the world $25-billion a year--estimate by the UN's International Telecommunications Union, p. 295) is not likely to go away until somebody changes human nature. As soon as the large ISPs such as AOL and Yahoo! find a way to filter out spam, spammers find a new way to get around their filters. Short of draconian measures, it would appear that spam at some level of annoyance will continue to be with us for years to come.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my work industry. I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot. That said, having talked to others involved in the work around the same time, I've heard that some people felt it wasn't the most accurate. So, very well written and engaging, and useful to someone interested in the subject, but someone seeking a highly accurate representation of the truth might want to take this with a few grains of salt.

[Tim O'Hearn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other reviewers are pretty harsh without good reason. This is a definitive account of early internet spammers ending around the passing of the CAN-SPAM act of 2003. For whatever reason, it took half a decade to assemble this material and publish the book. I think now is a pretty interesting time to look back at it, considering spam is still an issue but that many readers likely don't remember the pure savagery of early-internet spam.

[Jamie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The full title here is Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements. I co-worker of mine used to get flabbergasted every time the topic of unsolicitted commercial e-mail, or Spam, was brought up. Not because it annoyed him, but because he just didn't understand how these people got away with it and how they did their work. Why didn't police just knock on their doors and arrest them? I was kind of interested in the same question, so I picked up this book looking for an answer. I was also curious as to why these people do what they do. Do people really buy stuff from them? Enough to make a living? Enough even to get rich?

Spam Kings did answer these questions, in a way. It actually tells the stories of both spammers and anti-spammers, dedicated Internet users who try to unmask, report, and otherwise thwart those deliverers of junk e-mail. In particular, the book follows the stories of one person from each side, highlighting how he/she got involved in the spamming/anti-spamming scene, the methods used, and the hijinks that ensued. It sounds like it should make for an interesting story --the main spammer character in the book is a Neo Nazi for crying out loud-- and it does in parts. But McWilliams somehow manages to take an inherantly fascinating (if distasteful) topic and drain it of most of its drama and life. I don't expect him to make everything more melodramatic than it is, but this book was pretty hard to get through in most places. It could have really used some humor, commentary, and more examination of the big picture that spamming played in Internet culture. The author gives the anti-spamming subculture a good treatment, but largely ignores the rest of the world would make it that much more approachable to the typical reader. Instead, it reads more like a 9th grade world history book than the story of new-age cyber criminals and the grass roots campaigns organized to defend against them.

Its other problem is that there are way too many characters and not enough to differentiate them. The two main protagonists are fairly well drawn out, but far too often the book would flop into discussions about othe players and their activities that were honestly of no interest. Okay, is he talking about the herbal viagra guy, the diet pill guy, the hacker secrets guy, or some new guy I don't even know who the heck he is? Do I care? Is there even a difference between them? Can't I just skip to the next section?

So I really don't recommend this one. You may, in fact, get more entertainment out of reading the actual spam in your e-mail inbox.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another one of those books where the title pretty much says it all. This book reminded me, in some ways, of Cliff Stoll's classic, The Cuckoo's Egg. If you've ever been curious about junk email, this book will reveal some of the secrets behind it, including what motivates people to send it. McWilliams' style is clear and direct, and he does a good job of explaining some complex things. I think one of my favorite parts of the book were the bits about the time travel spammer. I vaguely recall reading a few pieces about him back in the day, but had almost forgotten until this book brought them back.

[Jeremiah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book brought back a lot of memories of the early days of the internet. I remember some of the spam campaigns, and even remember people I knew buying lists of emails from these guys and automated mail programs to try to get their own piece.

The book did feel a bit padded, with full AIM conversations being transcribed when only a summary would have sufficed just fine. There was precious little in resolution to the book--it concluded before many of the spammers of the era were brought to justice. Maybe it could be re-released with updates. Like the internet itself, stories like this can get out of date very quickly and ten years is an eternity.

[grundoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Certainly dredged up quite a few memories from a previous life. A number of friends and acquaintances make appearances, though not often in particularly flattering light. In fact, virtually nobody completely escapes the tar brush... I suppose this is seen as a more objective form of journalism? An interesting enough read that filled in some gaps for me, but I'm not sure it conveys so much a sense of "The Real Story" than a neutral narrative of selective fact-checked events.

[John Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically, this is a book length version of a magazine article. It's not padded out: there's certainly enough material to fill the book. Equally, this isn't just a set of articles stuck together, like many "books of blogs" I've read. This book is quite tightly focussed but it doesn't go into any more depth as it progresses. It's fine for what it is, although it would be nice to get an extra page in the ebook to say what happened to the people who went to trial.

[Dr. Barrett Dylan Brown, Phd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very detailed and well researched and all but... well... it almost completely takes place in the US of A, and there is a whole world of spammers out there who don't grace these pages even once.

Kinda like reading IM logs, mixed with court records, for hours.

[chipster · Rating 5 out of 5]

facinating history of spam - a must read for any email server admin.

[Luciano · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great for the demonstration of ridiculous ego-charged capitalistic hyperactivity all the characters engage in that makes them almost unbelievable but it happened I guess.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read. Very interesting.

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great book back in 2004.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked this one. Wish he'd do a followup and revisit the scene as it exists today.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and it had some solid information but it became outdated with new technology and it's not entirely relevant anymore.