Anti-spam activists have upped the ante in their fight against junk email by publishing the details - including credit card information - of people who"ve ordered spamming services online. Activists published details from order forms left on a monumentally insecure spam services Web site, run by notorious American spammer Robert Soloway, on the newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.email (NANAE). Names, addresses, phone numbers of seven "would-be spammers" were published on the newsgroup last week. Three of those who ordered a $129 spam run or bulk mailing lists from the site come from the UK, three from the US and one from Germany.
Australian anti-spammer Glenn Barry came across the information while tracking down the source of annoying spam junk email. This led him to the Pakistani Web site. Barry explained to El Reg his rationale for posting credit card details of people who"d ordered spamming services.
"I found the "orders" page links which listed the orders insecurely with the full identity and credit card details of the people signing up for spamming runs wide open. I thought I would get them before they could get me with a spam run," he said.