CMS - InPrint - Detroit News - Junk e-mail foes target spam king



Sunday, August 4, 2002

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Daniel Mears / The Detroit News

Lih-Tah Wong, president of Computer Mail Strategies Inc. in Southfield, uses Praetor software to control the amount of spam e-mail the office receives.

Junk e-mail foes target spam king
W. Bloomfield man, a major sender of bulk messages, lands in center of free-speech battle

By Joel Kurth / The Detroit News

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   How bulk e-mail works
   Companies wanting to advertise hire bulk e-mailers, who in turn buy computer disks containing millions of e-mail addresses for as little as $30, Wong said. Software that scours the Internet for e-mail addresses and sends bulk mailings usually costs a few hundred dollars.

Ralsky
   In about an hour, e-mailers can download the addresses onto their computers, then click send. From there, it's the work of servers such as Verizon or Comcast to sort out the addresses and individually mail all of them.
   Internet service providers and businesses have spent millions on anti-spam software and filtering devices to block messages that seem suspicious. But e-mailers have become just as creative in circumventing the rules, camouflaging their messages and using foreign servers that have no qualms with spam, Wong said.
   "It's like a car chase when someone keeps throwing cones in the road," Halpin said. "As quickly as computer software experts develop filters and rules to get rid of spam, you have people on the other end who are just as clever going around those blockades."
   Most leading Internet providers now limit the amount of e-mails consumers can send in an effort to block spammers, said Dailey, who is president of the Washington, D.C.-based Internet Service Providers Association.
   Verizon can freeze customers' ability to send e-mail if they send out more than 500 messages in single 60-minute spans, said Bobbi Henson, a company spokeswoman.

Spammer or bulk e-mailer
   Ralsky may send bulk e-mail, but he said he's hardly a spammer.
   Ralsky wouldn't name his clients, but Harrison said they include software wholesalers, offers for weight loss and firms that arrange government grants and auto loans. In its suit, Verizon claims Ralsky sent deals promising "Real Las Vegas Blackjack," the "lowest price on your new car" and "free budget and debt counseling."
   Unlike spammers, Ralsky said he maintains files with 87 million e-mail addresses of computer users who ask to be removed from his blanket solicitations. Ralsky has another 150 million active e-mail addresses to which he regularly sends pitches.
   In most cases, clicking icons to be removed from e-mail lists only invites even more solicitations because the addresses are confirmed -- unlike many of the addresses they send out, Wong said. Disks with valid addresses can cost $300, 10 times more than disks with unverified addresses.
   Ralsky said he takes a percentage of all sales of his clients. In turn, Ralsky's business sets up Web sites for the companies and markets their products with as many as 30 million daily e-mails.
   But doing so has incurred the wrath of anti-spam crusaders, whom Ralsky claims are harassing him and scaring away clients.
   "Two or three times a week, people call and say, 'We'll find you and we'll kill you,' " Ralsky said.
   "I've seen them drive around my house late at night."
   Harrison acknowledged some of Ralsky's e-mails may have "inadvertently" slipped through Verizon's servers, but he disputes Ralsky sent millions. Verizon has acknowledged deleting many of the e-mails it claims came from Ralsky and thus far has produced less than 40.

Verizon Internet Services is suing Alan Ralsky in Virginia, which has one of the toughest laws against bulk e-mail in the nation. Michigan has no spam law.
Verizon vs. Ralsky
   Verizon alleged that Ralsky's e-mails were no accident and he intentionally used several methods -- aliases, false domain names and hijacked servers -- to cover his tracks.
   At least twice in 2000, Ralsky sent enough e-mails to almost paralyze the system for a few hours, said Dailey, who would not divulge many details of the alleged attack in fear that it would put Verizon at a competitive disadvantage.
   The company's engineers tracked down 56 gigabytes of e-mails, while many more may have escaped before they could find them, Dailey said. The average e-mail takes up about 15,000 bytes, meaning that Ralsky sent at least 3.7 million e-mails, according to the lawsuit.
   Virginia law -- the one Ralsky's lawyer is fighting -- allows companies to seek $10 per e-mail. Verizon spent about four months tracking the e-mails to Ralsky, court papers show.
   "The more of these cases you can bring, the more you impose a cost of doing business on (spammers) and have a deterrent effect," Dailey said. "We're not going to let people use our system to adversely affect our customers without the risk of litigation."
   Harrison counters that Verizon can't prove Ralsky crashed its system and suggested anti-spam zealots or disgruntled employees of a company that almost merged with Verizon may have been behind the attack.
   "Alan is an honest businessman," Harrison said. "The reason he's become so vulnerable to anti-spammers is that he's so wide open. He is who he says he is. His phone number is listed. He doesn't hide. That's made him a chief target."

Ralsky's background
   Ralsky gravitated into commercial e-mail after legal problems stripped his licenses to sell insurance in Michigan and Illinois in 1996.
   A self-made entrepreneur who learned the insurance business during a three-day cram course in Chicago in 1976, Ralsky was making $500,000 a year during the mid-1980s, had a nice home in a tree-lined subdivision with his wife, Irmengard; three children; a country club membership; a John Hancock franchise; and two dogs, Sparky and Candy, court records and depositions show.
   But things soured after he left the insurance industry in 1988. Ralsky sold real estate, securities and limited partnerships with some success, but the economy tanked. Soon, Ralsky bounced from job to job, at one point selling hallway mats and stereo equipment.
   Between 1991 and 1995, Ralsky had declared bankruptcy and been sentenced to three years' probation and $74,000 in restitution on a Michigan felony relating to false bank documents. He also had served 50 days in Chippewa County Jail in the Upper Peninsula and been ordered to pay $120,000 restitution on a plea-bargained misdemeanor of failing to deliver on contracts after he reinvested seniors' pensions in a telecommunications company.
   In 1996, Ralsky lost insurance licenses in Illinois, then forfeited his licenses in Michigan. Testifying to state regulators, his brother, Stuart, said Ralsky "got off track."
   "He got away from those things he does best and perhaps just became temporarily enamored with what looked to be a change, a challenge, something new," Stuart Ralsky, an industrial psychoanalyst, told the Illinois Department of Insurance.
   By that time, Alan Ralsky had already discovered how to make money off the Internet.

Self-taught technology
   Broke, Ralsky said he paid his "last $1,000" to a Canadian marketer who promised to multiply the investment on the Internet. Instead, Ralsky got nothing, but emerged determined to learn how to use the new technology.
   He said he sold his car, bought two computers and taught himself how to use them.
   "Al Ralsky is a rags-to-riches story," Harrison said. "Yes, he's had his problems in the past. He's human like the rest of us. But he's paid his price and has become a pre-eminent commercial e-mailer."
   Ralsky's neighbors have noticed. "I always thought he won the lottery or something because he always did never-ending renovations on his house. I mean, it was just renovations, renovations, renovations," said Janet Walker, a longtime neighbor who recently moved to Arizona.
   As Harrison sees it, commercial e-mail must be saved to save the Internet. If servers crack down on users' ability to send thousands of messages, they will soon place other restrictions or charges on cyberspace, he said.
   "Spamming may be a part of the Internet people don't like, but everything else we like will be gone if (providers) win," Harrison said.
   Spam foes and Internet providers hardly buy the argument.
   "Ultimately, these spammers are exploiting the Internet and everyone's ability to enjoy it for their own personal gain," Dailey said. "It takes up bandwidth. It's annoying. It's stealing."


You can reach Joel Kurth at (313) 561-8623 or jkurth@detnews.com.