STORY: Let Me Learn You
That was a typo. Sorry. LET ME TEACH YOU, that’s what it’s meant to say… this post is educational.
Do you hate Spam? Sure, we all do. But do you know anything about it? You will. Follow me people.
I used to get hundreds of pieces of Spam per day. Really, there was so much in my inbox I had to change my address. It was the only way. But what the deal-y-o? Who sends this crap? And why? And what made them think I was so desperate for herbal penis enlargement or fine Mexican Donkey porn? I decided to find out.
STEP ONE: Call the only person I know who’s internet savvy enough to know the answer, Brian Batjer. Brian told me to read a book call Spam Kings. It was interesting, but that’s not the way I operate.
STEP TWO: Contact a spammer. Don’t ask how, but I figured out the home number of one of the biggest spammers in the world. Let’s just call him Mr. R. After a million and one calls, including several where I talked to his very-gun-shy-but-sweet wife, I gave up.
Then about a week later he called me back.
Turns out his daughter is a fan of my web-site and told him I’m a pretty decent guy (thanks Miss Jr. R). We talked for about an hour or so, but at the end he said he wasn’t comfortable having me up to the Detroit home-base of his operation. Though he feels he isn’t doing anything wrong—it’s freedom of speech as far as he’s concerned and should be protected by the first amendment—the government seems to feel otherwise.
Luckily, the “bulk-mail” game is a small one and all of the big players know one another, so as a conciliation-prize he called a friend of his; arguably the world’s largest LEGAL-Spammer. A guy named Scott Richter.
STEP THREE: A quick call to Jet Blue. A flight to Denver (this was a few months back, otherwise I would’ve scheduled a Colorado date—what, you forgot about 50DATES in 50STATES? Don’t. I’m still looking for participants). And next thing I knew I was face to face with Richter… well sitting on the side-lines anyway. It was hockey night when I arrived.
Turns out Scott’s a pretty interesting guy.
He’d made his first $500,000 before he graduated high school (with vending machines—he asked his mom for a gumball machine for his birthday and things just kind of spiraled from there).
At 21 he was the youngest person in Denver to get a liquor license.
He was the founder of Great Scott’s Eatery, a 24-hour diner chain I’d actually be to years before… it was Dog the Bounty Hunter’s favorite.
And remember when General Tommy Frank first showed those terrorist trading cards on TV? Well it made an impression on Scott too. Within hours he’d made an ad for them and was “bulk emailing” it around the world, even though he didn’t actually have the cards and hadn’t figured out where to get them. Before the night was done he’d made $700,000 and wound up delivering them to satisfied customers almost three weeks before Wal-Mart.
He can even manage a pretty decent smile when he wants to.
But it was the billion pieces of spam her sends out per day that I'd come to find out about. Actually, not really. It’s not spam if you asked for it.
(the sign on Richter’s office building door)
See, that’s the hook, the loophole New York’s Attorney General and Microsoft learned when they ganged-up on Richter & Co. with matching $20 million dollar lawsuits, but walked away empty-handed. If you’re getting spam from Richter, and you probably are as he collects somewhere around 46,000 new names per day to mail it to, it’s only because you asked for it. And what’s worse, you never asked him to stop (well, 7,000 people do per day, but he respects their wishes).
Ever send someone an e-card? Enter to win something on line? Take a look at free porn that required “age verification” before you could see it? Yeah, well, you probably forgot to unclick the box marked “would you like to receive similar offers from our affiliates” before hitting send and in doing so, you legal gave him the right to “direct market”-you, oh, anytime he wants. You opted in.
Want to know what’s worse, for it to be legal spam (that’s a piece of spam from an opt-in list, with readable headers identifying it’s origin, for all you tech nerds out there) it needs to have an opt out link at the bottom. “Did you receive this in error? Want to be taken off our list? Click here.” Why does no one click there? Scott seems to think it’s cause people believe it’ll only bring more junk-mail their way… and he’s probably right.
The guy is a genius. Check this out:
Take, for example, this online ad designed to get you to opt (CLICK HERE)… all you have to do is put your zip-code in to see if you’ve won a free ipod. This is real, he sends out close to $15,000 worth of them per month and ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PUT IN YOUR ZIP-CODE. But as soon as you do it takes you to another page with some of your info auto-filled in. This is where you opt in. See Scott knows 40% of people will fill out that next page. In fact, he’s so sure of it, he’s willing to pay me $1 for each person I send his way that even puts in their zip-code. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PUT IN YOUR ZIP-CODE. Do you see where I’m going with this? Help a brother out… PLEASE NOTE: There may be a pop-up attached. I can't tell; I use FireFox which blocks all that crap.
Pretty much the same deal here (CLICK THIS ONE TOO)… put your zip code in for some free doughnuts, opt in or don’t and I’ll get another $1.
Do it again with the ad below and I get another $1.50.
And $1.25.
I was going to call this post Playing With Fire? What do you think? It'll only take 5 digits and you could earn the Jakester $1 or 4 (feel free to do it from multipal computers to multiply those numbers). PS—Don't worry, this will be the only time we play this game. Promise. No ads like this again. Never. I'm just eager to get my dating on and whilee the best things in life are free, travel rarely is.
Do you hate Spam? Sure, we all do. But do you know anything about it? You will. Follow me people.
I used to get hundreds of pieces of Spam per day. Really, there was so much in my inbox I had to change my address. It was the only way. But what the deal-y-o? Who sends this crap? And why? And what made them think I was so desperate for herbal penis enlargement or fine Mexican Donkey porn? I decided to find out.
STEP ONE: Call the only person I know who’s internet savvy enough to know the answer, Brian Batjer. Brian told me to read a book call Spam Kings. It was interesting, but that’s not the way I operate.
STEP TWO: Contact a spammer. Don’t ask how, but I figured out the home number of one of the biggest spammers in the world. Let’s just call him Mr. R. After a million and one calls, including several where I talked to his very-gun-shy-but-sweet wife, I gave up.
Then about a week later he called me back.
Turns out his daughter is a fan of my web-site and told him I’m a pretty decent guy (thanks Miss Jr. R). We talked for about an hour or so, but at the end he said he wasn’t comfortable having me up to the Detroit home-base of his operation. Though he feels he isn’t doing anything wrong—it’s freedom of speech as far as he’s concerned and should be protected by the first amendment—the government seems to feel otherwise.
Luckily, the “bulk-mail” game is a small one and all of the big players know one another, so as a conciliation-prize he called a friend of his; arguably the world’s largest LEGAL-Spammer. A guy named Scott Richter.
STEP THREE: A quick call to Jet Blue. A flight to Denver (this was a few months back, otherwise I would’ve scheduled a Colorado date—what, you forgot about 50DATES in 50STATES? Don’t. I’m still looking for participants). And next thing I knew I was face to face with Richter… well sitting on the side-lines anyway. It was hockey night when I arrived.
Turns out Scott’s a pretty interesting guy.
He’d made his first $500,000 before he graduated high school (with vending machines—he asked his mom for a gumball machine for his birthday and things just kind of spiraled from there).
At 21 he was the youngest person in Denver to get a liquor license.
He was the founder of Great Scott’s Eatery, a 24-hour diner chain I’d actually be to years before… it was Dog the Bounty Hunter’s favorite.
And remember when General Tommy Frank first showed those terrorist trading cards on TV? Well it made an impression on Scott too. Within hours he’d made an ad for them and was “bulk emailing” it around the world, even though he didn’t actually have the cards and hadn’t figured out where to get them. Before the night was done he’d made $700,000 and wound up delivering them to satisfied customers almost three weeks before Wal-Mart.
He can even manage a pretty decent smile when he wants to.
But it was the billion pieces of spam her sends out per day that I'd come to find out about. Actually, not really. It’s not spam if you asked for it.
(the sign on Richter’s office building door)
See, that’s the hook, the loophole New York’s Attorney General and Microsoft learned when they ganged-up on Richter & Co. with matching $20 million dollar lawsuits, but walked away empty-handed. If you’re getting spam from Richter, and you probably are as he collects somewhere around 46,000 new names per day to mail it to, it’s only because you asked for it. And what’s worse, you never asked him to stop (well, 7,000 people do per day, but he respects their wishes).
Ever send someone an e-card? Enter to win something on line? Take a look at free porn that required “age verification” before you could see it? Yeah, well, you probably forgot to unclick the box marked “would you like to receive similar offers from our affiliates” before hitting send and in doing so, you legal gave him the right to “direct market”-you, oh, anytime he wants. You opted in.
Want to know what’s worse, for it to be legal spam (that’s a piece of spam from an opt-in list, with readable headers identifying it’s origin, for all you tech nerds out there) it needs to have an opt out link at the bottom. “Did you receive this in error? Want to be taken off our list? Click here.” Why does no one click there? Scott seems to think it’s cause people believe it’ll only bring more junk-mail their way… and he’s probably right.
The guy is a genius. Check this out:
Take, for example, this online ad designed to get you to opt (CLICK HERE)… all you have to do is put your zip-code in to see if you’ve won a free ipod. This is real, he sends out close to $15,000 worth of them per month and ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PUT IN YOUR ZIP-CODE. But as soon as you do it takes you to another page with some of your info auto-filled in. This is where you opt in. See Scott knows 40% of people will fill out that next page. In fact, he’s so sure of it, he’s willing to pay me $1 for each person I send his way that even puts in their zip-code. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PUT IN YOUR ZIP-CODE. Do you see where I’m going with this? Help a brother out… PLEASE NOTE: There may be a pop-up attached. I can't tell; I use FireFox which blocks all that crap.
Pretty much the same deal here (CLICK THIS ONE TOO)… put your zip code in for some free doughnuts, opt in or don’t and I’ll get another $1.
Do it again with the ad below and I get another $1.50.
And $1.25.
I was going to call this post Playing With Fire? What do you think? It'll only take 5 digits and you could earn the Jakester $1 or 4 (feel free to do it from multipal computers to multiply those numbers). PS—Don't worry, this will be the only time we play this game. Promise. No ads like this again. Never. I'm just eager to get my dating on and whilee the best things in life are free, travel rarely is.
42 Comments:
I know I said I was shutting the comments down, but as this one is on a subject that, er, so many people have opinions on, I figured I'd leave it open.
Dude, this is smart, but I've read about this guy, there's no way he's going to pay you after you blew up his spot like that. You'll be lucky if you don't get sued. I'm rooting for you though. I already did all three. I figured I should contribute to the legal fund before the shit hits the fan.
I agree with the poster above, you'll be lucky not to get sued. That being said, I still clicked the links to help you out.
JAKE HAS SOLD OUT!!!!
He's not selling out, he's ripping them off. Nothing wrong with that. Espicially if it helps me kill time watching the fall-out.
Frankly Jake, I'd rather hit a PayPal donate button than risk getting even more spam.
Ever considered throwing one up and seeing just how many people want to repay you for providing us with interesting, daring and humourous reading? Why do you feel the need to bring the scourge of the online world into it?
i'd do paypal too, before this... put up a donate linky.
I just made you $4.75. I feel so dirty and used. Like something a hot shower won't take away...wait...no....*sneeze*...ahh, that's better.
Hey Jakester...A year ago I signed myself up on one of this guy's sites and even bought one of the video professor's dvd's. I'm still waiting for MY ipod. Ask him where my ipod is!!!
Still patiently waiting...
Why would Jake be sued? I think pretty much everyone already knows that spammers work that way.
FYI: telemarketers also get their information in this same way, so NEVER fill in personal information online.
Anyway, at least NOW I know who's responsible for sending me those stupidass terrorororroorirst trading card emails.
If only Jake would post Scotty's email address here...
i used to be a spammer. i majored in broadcast journalism but decided to not become a journalist because people hate the media and i didnt want to be hated all my life. then i graduated from college and took the first job that would take me and became what people hate even more than journalists - a spammer. i got out of that gig a few months ago. i still sit front of a computer all day but at least im not filling peoples inboxes with crap. less hate = saner mind. saner but not completely sane.
Oh my god, the two of you look so dorky together it hurts my soul. But I like that you're mixing it up. This was interesting and not everything needs a punchline. Just one question, is your very first thought whenever something interests you to jump on a plane or is there something I'm missing?
your friend's blog is fucking hilarious. Pictures of that Grant dude getting beat up by a girl. I love his facial expressions:
http://ikeepadiary.com/diary/2002/grant_gets_beat_up/index.html
I worked for an internet company for four years that specialized in spamming. I handled complaints.
PS: You said we'd hang out because you liked my lomos and you never called me, you fucknut. (I mean that in a nice way.)
SELLOUT
Why is anyone who wants to try to make a buck automatically a sell out?
Is it better to be poor? Then he would just be a cheap bastard right?
If he has to pay for 50 dates he needs the freaking money, girls make guys shell out before they put out.
Damn whores.
Let me do you a favor and help you make some real money:
http://ekmas.com/ez/awoarproatl/&dp=0&l=0&p=0"
Ok, Jake, you need to tell everyone how you are bankrolling all these trips you make.
You are really lame to be trying to make money off of your readers this way! So... pretty much... you dont give a SHIT about your readers. You just want your 1.25, 1.50... while we get SPAM for the rest of our lives. Thanks, Douche.
Halle, clearly you don't understand... he explained how not to get spammed. Basically, you're donating money without having to open your wallet. If anything, you're screwing a spammer. Get it?
I remeber a time when panhandling meants standing the corner and asking people to give something. I like this much better. And I get to keep my quarters (there's no free parking in LA, so they're like gold).
can we collectively let go of the whole "sell-out" notion? unless you are a trust fund recipient or in fucking high school, you need to earn your own keep. for actual grown-up people, this means doing work.
and for Jake, this means coming up with increasingly inventive ways to avoid it. I for one salute him in his dedication to exploit the system as much as possible. this is not an easy task, but he handles it with relative grace and goodwill towards all. what more can you ask for?
Jake is a champ and a slacker role-model. you doubters and haters are just jealous freaks trapped in the misery of your selfmade prisons. you should be taking notes instead of whining like little anonymous babies.
I've always been qmazed at the creative ways he comes up with to generate the cash.
Jake should tell us how he bankrolls his adventures. Unfortunately, if its his mommy and daddy or granny's trust fund, then I think I would respect him less. I mean, any rich kid can have a crazy life and put it on the Internet.
Its the ones who can creatively think of ways to get around the country, and do cool stuff, which deserves merit! Hopefully, Jake is the former, and not the latter.
Who's with me here?
Rather, the latter and not the former. Sorry for the goof!
You're money's on the dresser, baby.
You know, Richter's not entirely innocent. Yeah, he beat the NY state case, but I do believe he's about to I just saw it reported that he's going to settle with Microsoft to the tune of $9Million for trespasing on their hotmail servers.
Still, fuck him up. I clicked all 4 from every computer in my office. Total emails he got to opt in from me? 0. Total number of dollars he's now got to pay you? $40. Well done.
Anyone else notice the hockey team is called "Spamkings", priceless....
Was that not photoshopped in? if that's real, then that's hilarious!
I clicked the links ,
I want my half .
Cough it up.
Wow. Thanks for a great insight into the world of spamming - the photo of the "Spamkings" was truly priceless.
It's really a sad state of affairs isn't it? I mean, what this guy is involved in is bascially a dishonest, morally irreprehensible form of old fasioned trickery. Yes, he's making a buck out of it, but at the expense of you and I - everytime we get pissed of because we've received some spam.
why didn't you just turn off your spam control in your email section? i never receive that crap anymore, ever!
'twas real and not photoshopped. wow. those guys have some sense of humor, there. i like it.
When I first started reading this post and it said SPAM, I thought alright a wonderful funny blog about spiced ham...now you've just left me hungry.
this was a really weak post.
You suck. Ads suck.
Long time reader, first time commenter! I don't blame you for closing the comment section. No need for all the hatorade. Your fans will remain loyal readers, as I'm sure will the others...
"This was a really weak post." You my man (the poster of this comment) are a very weak person. "You suck. Ads suck." Then why are you here? What does that say about you?
yeah johnny mathis. you kinda suck. ads suck. hatorade is stupid. i hate leadership roles. this sucks.
One last one: Oscar really looks a lot like you, especially in profile. Were you blond too as a baby?
Hey, it still works on old posts....
in dutch the verb to teach and to learn are the same, just tell people you're dutch. i do. so does my dad. actually any grammar mistake can be explained away by giving a random country as an excuse... as long as the other person isn't from that country.
sorry, ik spreek geen engels. spreek je nederlands?
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