The Monthly Lupine Awards
for MMF - October 1997
I have set up a special mail alias for people to submit reports of Make
Money Fast chain letters. Anyone who spots a chain letter is welcome to
send it, headers and all, to:
chainsaw@news.msfc.nasa.gov
You won't get a reply. I won't necessarily cancel any articles you send
me. I use what I receive to tweak my Make Money Fast detector so that it
can catch new variants. Please send only one article at a time. You
don't have to send more than one copy of a given type.
I express my grateful appreciation to the following people for their
submissions to this project in October:
submissions name
----------- ----
356 Nasty Mama
21 Gin Petty
11 Terri Tait
7 Donald & Leigh Anne Harvill
5 J Peter Mugaas
5 Matt Bartley
3 Ken Lucke
2 David Ritz
2 Shahar Steiff
There were also some others who sent only one article to chainsaw in
October, but most of these were not MMF submissions; instead, they were
typically Cc:ed replies from various postmasters.
As before, almost all (about 95%) of these submissions were automatically
detected by the MMF detector. Typically, these posts merely hadn't made
it to my server yet, or else my cancels hadn't made it to their servers
yet.
The following table lists the number of "Make Money Fast" (MMF) chain
letter articles I have canceled from my site, news.msfc.nasa.gov, by
article header From address, for the month of October, 1997, ranked by
number of articles. I only list the top 40. The numbers could vary
significantly from site to site; other people cancel these things as
well, and some sites (such as AOL) do not honor cancels at all.
Please note that forged and/or mangled names and addresses are common. I
usually try to combine entries that are actually from the same person,
but I've pretty much lost my patience with it, and I leave it as an
exercise for the reader. 8-)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Golden Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
1 3723 you@somehost.somedomain (sean)
This was a user of itribe.net. He or she posted from roughly 13 October
to 28 October. Once I finally discovered the correct complaint address
for itribe.net--I have since added it to www.abuse.net--I was able to get
this MMF source turned off. The offender might have been:
Sean T.
2107 Wyoming Ave.
Portsmouth, VA 23701
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Silver Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
2 1516 Wolf man
nfs77@hotmail.com
This was a BellSouth customer who posted on 25-26 October. I notified
BellSouth and got it stopped. The perpetrator might have been:
Eric Ruby
16624 Royal Poinciana Dr.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33326
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Bronze Lupine award goes to:
Rank Posts
---- -----
3 1227 nobody@nowhere.yet
This was a customer of pacific.net.sg who posted all of these on 31
October. Reported and stopped. I'm not at all certain who posted these.
The last two names on the list are:
James Ku
Blk 53 #10-122
Pipit Road
Singapore 370053
Dale Smith
2528 Desoto Drive
Kissimmee, FL. 34746
See also #5 below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The rest of the top 40. The name of the ISP is in []'s if it differs
significantly from the domain in the email address.
Rank Posts
---- -----
4 1157 SAI
5 692 mountjerai@hotmail.com [pacific.net.sg]
mountjerai@hotmail.com (Snakie) [pacific.net.sg]
Possibly the same as #3 above. Same time frame, too.
6 633 darrin@sprynet.com (ItDoesWork)
In dribs and drabs, this one is still going. I can't get sprynet to do
anything about it.
7 597
Probably several persons using xtra.co.nz, axionet.com, and erols.com.
8 543 me@hotmail.com [swip.net]
9 460 "superstringman" [rutgers.edu]
10 443 "Tim" [worldnet.att.net, swbell.net]
11 439 United Ads [mcleodusa.net]
12 374 Smokey
13 366 cpettis550@aol.com (CPettis550)
14 329 Patrick Siglin
15 328 jim3@noo.net (jim) [bellatlantic.net]
16 283 "Robert Franken" [telstra.net]
17 266 "hblythe"
18 262 rchamp9119@aol.com (RChamp9119)
18 262 nathan.kennedy@maxvision.com (Nathan Kennedy) [hiwaay.net]
19 246 "I'M RICH!!!!" [sympatico.ca]
Fast@cash.com [pipex.net]
RichGuy [sympatico.ca]
20 244 DAFL
21 240 Heath [slic.com]
22 236 h2322862@aol.com (H2322862)
23 235 Dorcas
24 232 Mfuzi@aol.com [spectratek.co.uk]
mfuzi@aol.com (Mfuzi) [aol.com]
25 226 ator@usaREMOVE.net (Ator) [bellatlantic.net]
26 215 grodd@aol.com (Grodd)
27 212 phd567@aol.com (PHD567)
27 212 Kent Adams
27 212 Brian Balogh
28 210 "Michael Rhodes"
29 207 wkstone@world.com (W. K. Stone) [ottawa.on.ca]
30 206 WHY NOT TRY
WORK AT HOME
chris
cjenchri
peanut
30 206 "ABAO" [dsuper.net]
"ƒ¢±¶" [dsuper.net]
31 197 fasttrack98@hotmail.com [dracsconsulting.com]
fasttrack98@hotmail.com (Joy J.) [dracsconsulting.com]
31 197 chad knutson [swbell.net]
32 194 vr3dman@aol.com (Vr3dman)
33 191 Little@Effort.Required (UH-HUH!) [i1.net]
34 182 mike1@sprynet.com (ItDoesWork)
34 182 "Danny Cousineau"
35 181 zen2000 [asu.edu]
35 181 punch@carp.org (Punch) [erols.com]
35 181 money_man@billionaire.com (Randy Scott) [worldnet.att.net]
36 180 ja@turn.com (J. A.) [lightspeed.net]
37 177 farshtey@zippo.com (Ken Farshtey) [panamnet.net?]
38 174 Good@and.Plenty (HEADS UP!) [i1.net]
39 173 "Shawn Stolar"
40 172 AOk@Ok.Ok (AOK) [i1.net]
--------------------------------------
Total articles canceled: 50334
Total unique Froms: 1853
There were approximately 1.13 cancels issued per minute in October, a
significant increase from last month (0.87 per minute).
I have compiled a list of the most MMF-ridden newsgroups in October
1997. Please note that this list is affected by many factors, such as:
1. I don't get (or want) a full feed here, and a lot of the newsgroups
listed are mostly leakage or crossposts.
2. I don't cancel articles in moderated newsgroups and certain others
(such as news.admin.*).
3. Crossposts are listed as if they were multiple posts, unlike the
Lupine Awards list above.
4. The activities of other third-party cancelers are not compensated
for.
With that in mind, here are the top 40 "MMF magnets" for October 1997.
You'll note that, as usual, the newsgroup names begin either with the
letter a or a number.
rank arts newsgroup
---- ---- ---------
1 192 ab.jobs
2 181 alt.business
3 175 alt.business.home.pc
4 164 ab.general
5 160 abq.for-sale
6 157 alt.business.multi-level
7 154 a.bsu.programming
8 150 alt.bbs.gigo-gateway
8 150 alt.2600
9 141 a.bsu.talk
10 140 alt.bbs.excalibur
11 138 alt.business.misc
12 125 3b.config
13 124 5col.forsale
14 123 alt.business.home
15 120 alt.alcohol
16 119 alt.0d
17 118 alt.1d
18 117 alt.3d
18 117 3b.misc
19 115 alt.activism
20 112 3b
21 109 alt.alien.research
22 106 alt.ads
23 105 alt.astrology
23 105 alt.america.online
24 104 acadia.bulletin-board
25 103 alt.coffee
25 103 alt.adoption
26 101 alt.alien.visitors
26 101 a.bsu.religion
27 98 ab.politics
28 97 alt.alt
28 97 5col.announce
29 96 acadia.chat
30 94 alt.acting
31 93 alt.beer
31 93 alt.anything
31 93 alt.acme.exploding.newsgroup
32 92 alt.amazon-women.admirers
33 90 abg.amiga
34 89 alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb
34 89 alt.abuse.recovery
35 88 alt.abortion.inequity
36 87 alt
36 87 5col.general
37 86 abg.diskussion
37 86 3b.test
38 85 alt.community.local-money
38 85 alt.bbs.internet
38 85 alt.algebra.help
39 84 alt.make.money
39 84 alt.anybody
40 83 alt.autos
40 83 alt.asian-movies
40 83 abg.acf-jugend
--
J. Porter Clark, d/b/a
+--+
|oo| The Unknown News Administrator
| | news@news.msfc.nasa.gov
`^^'
