Spam 'n' Scam

Are you sick and tired of getting unsolicited bulk email (UBE, usually called spam), most of which is either outright fraud or advertising web sites of dubious value?

How did these people get your private email address in the first place? There are many ways:

Lucky guess.
A computer containing your email address was infected with a virus which harvested your address and sent it to a spammer.
Your friend's webmail account got hacked.
An unscrupulous employee of a company with whom you've done business stole and sold the email addresses of clients.
A legitimate program that you installed on your computer compromised your address.
A robot found your email posted on the internet, perhaps in a newsgroup or a blog or in the comments on a web page.
A robot trawled the databases belonging to domain name registrars.

Once your email address has been compromised, it will be added to one of the growing number email databases that are used by spammers. Then it's just a matter of sending the junk emails. This may be done through the spammer's own internet service provider (ISP) or through a third-party mail server or relay that has been configured to accept and transmit email to and from anyone. Sometimes the spammer will hijack an insecure formmail or other contact script sitting at someone's web site. Often times home computers are compromised and form one node of a botnet which is used to send spam or even host the advertised web site, all without the owner of the PC knowing about it.

Before you know it, you start getting more rubbish than you bargained for.

Whilst we have no objection to free trade on the Internet, we do not wish to pay for advertising that we did not ask to receive. Would you pay for a collect call from a telemarketer? Would you pay the postage due on junk mail coming through the letter box? No, neither would we, but one way or another, you do pay for all of those UBEs in your electronic mailbox.

Why are we being forced to pay someone else's advertising costs? And why should we allow these people to use our private email addresses without our consent?

Have You Been Spammed By Obliquity.[co.uk|com|net|org|uk]?

No, but spammers forge our domain name almost continuously on their rubbish.

Statement of Purpose

These pages are a log of the UBEs sent to us at any or all of our private email addresses since October 1998 when Obliquity went online. For all messages that manage to evade our filters, we present header information, along with details of the complaints made to and responses received from those involved. If we believe that the goods or services advertised in the message are illegal, then we alert the relevant law enforcement agencies. We offer no other comment or opinion regarding the contents of the UBEs.

Since UBEs are broadcast indiscriminately to thousands of people all over the world in order to reach the largest possible audience, they are neither private nor confidential and we regard the contents as being in the public domain.

If you spam us, you will be listed on these pages.

Some of the email addresses in these pages have been distorted to protect the innocent and their beleaguered mail servers. Many of the headers contain forged lines, so inclusion of a particular domain name on these pages does not necessarily imply that they are responsible for the accompanying UBEs. Messages are sent to most of the domains appearing in the headers and bodies so that innocent parties will be alerted to the fact that their email addresses and domain names are being abused by another.

We do not contact the spammers directly, except in the very rare instances in which we believe the sender to be a reputable businessperson who simply has made an unfortunate mistake in sending a one-off UBE. We do not regard serial spammers as innocent.

Log Book

We have managed to get the plug pulled on a number of spammers and so can you. The situation so far:

Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
1998										7	6	3	16
1999	4	13	10	8	1	4	4	2	1	2	5	5	59
2000	4	5	4	3	5	2	5	6	8	17	13	10	82
2001	16	16	19	17	11	35	50	88	119	126	179	226	902
2002	305	276	466	530	525	923	1664	991	1076	1171	855	1189	9971
2003	1564	1504	2852	4022	4798	4761	36	95	15	24	24	36	19731
2004	50	54	57	82	71	111	74	80	55	73	139	157	1003
2005	162	121	205	152	195	210	263	277	234	394	259	437	2909
2006	460	391	291	170	261	210	227	201	234	343	478	455	3721
2007	159	148	112	91	58	99	181	277	618	187	300	576	2806
2008	594	644	643	220	127	115	99	64	104	52	15	8	2685
2009	18	42	14	6	17	56	15	10	11	7	3	1	200
2010	3	2	4	3	4	3	3	2	5	5	9	8	51
2011	17	10	23	24	20	8	7	8	1	5	3	10	136
2012	24	9	10	2	8	8	8	13	17	18	8	4	129
2013	3	6	8	2	6	5	39	111	85	76	47	53	441
2014	64	103	21	2	3	1	3	1	2	10	8	0	218
2015	0	0	5	2	5	2	0	0	1	4	2	19	40
2016	1	4	17	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	22
2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1
2018	3	0	1	0	3	3	3	5	11	20	4	4	57
2019	3	2	8	12	6	4	5	1	0	0	2	1	44
2020	5	3	0	5	0	1	5	7	0	5	5	8	44
2021	1	3	3	2	0	0	0	1	7	3	4	1	25
2022	0	2	0	1	5	4	4	5	7	12	12	9	61
2023	15	15	12	6	11	4	5	3	5	11	10	5	102
2024	4	4	8	8	6	6	8	9	11	TBA			64

In Case You're Tempted To Complain ...

Occasionally, we receive a complaint from someone who has spammed us and who is aggrieved that we have listed them on these pages. If you are such a person, we advise you to read our standard response to such complaints before threatening us with legal action or demanding compensation.

The Boulder Pledge

Coined by Roger Ebert in 1996 during the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado:

Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.