MainSleaze

The bloggers on this site are:

• Catherine Jefferson (aka SpamBouncer). Anti-spam researcher in her spare time. Started doing this when the legendary Green Card spammers annoyed her in the mid-1990s. Now annoyed at a number of large companies that seem to think she wants their “offers” when she never asked for them. Habitually puts up web sites for all sorts of good causes (like this one) and then tweets about them.

• “Frank Lyoner” (aka FrankLyoner). Pseudonym for an anti-spam activist and veteran IT professional who has had to deal with spam in its various forms clogging up systems for years. Receives entirely too much mainsleaze spam to his personal email address, so he is blogging about it.

• Rob McEwen (aka rob_mcewen). In 2004, began providing a high quality spam-filtered e-mail service. Became heavily involved as a volunteer for the SURBL DNSBL, particularly during SURBL’s early years. In 2007 founded the Invaluement DNSBLs, which focus heavily on spam that is missed by other, larger DNSBLs, including (you guessed it) mainsleaze spam. The Invaluement DNSBLs are in use by several hundred ISPs and other organizations, including a Fortune 100 company and a top-5 U.S. ISP.

• “Charles Messier” (aka CharlesMessier). Pseudonym for a long time anti-spam activist who has also worked in the field professionally for over a decade. Has a large collection of spamtraps and a number of personal email addresses that mainsleaze spammers just will not let alone. Didn’t want to let all that spam go to waste, so he blogs about it here.

• Tom Mortimer (aka TomM). Former blocklister, now retired from any but private spamfighting. Prefers to be left in peace to raise his family and tend his garden.

• “Joshua Peabody” (aka joshuapeabody). Pseudonym for an IT engineer who sees entirely too much spam from B2B spammers, especially those who try to sell him “leads” (lists) or provide spam services. While using a fireplace poker on skulls is tempting, it would tend to upset people whom Joshua really does not want to upset. (Such as his family, the police and the courts.) So he blogs here.

• “Sender Relations” (aka SenderRelations). Pseudonym for another long time anti-spam activist who has also worked in the field professionally for close to two decades. Has worked as both a sender and receiver of bulk email. Has seen it all. Believes that every user should be given the explicit choice whether or not to receive any sort of communications and whether or not a company can share or sell their data. HATES companies that sell email addresses. Takes it VERY personally when he or she receives unsolicited communications. Hopes that this blog will help companies be more transparent and accountable for their actions, especially when bad.

• Neil Schwartzman (aka spamfighter). Has been fighting spam since the mid-1990s. Executive Director at the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE), and hates spam as much as is humanly possible.

• Joe Sniderman (aka joe262). Geek. Techie. Likes to mess about with Linux. Does NOT like to receive “offers” from companies unless he asks for them first. Taciturn, but willing to blog about repeat offenders.

• Atro Tossavainen (aka InfiniteMho). Finnish anti-spammer known not to accept senders’ suggestions for unsubscribing from lists he did not subscribe to. Receives a steady trickle of mainsleaze spam to his business email address as well as spamtraps.

  For some unfathomable reason, attempts to inform mainsleaze senders of his primary spamtrap domain having changed hands, and despite all spam being equal regardless of the nature of the recipient address, and despite “remove” being for mugs, nonetheless complies with the local implementation of the EU spam directive (which says B2B addresses are fair game for spamming until opted out) and dutifully opts out the business address, so that the mainsleazers might at least have a chance to clean up.

  Likes to blog about the local B2B spammers, and more generally, about companies that appear to have a hard time meeting the requirements of the Personal Data Act and/or the Act on the Protection of Privacy in Electronic Communications.

• Udeme Ukutt (aka Djordie). Udeme has spent a decade in the email delivery messaging ecosystem – divulging into topics like deliverability, compliance, anti-abuse, email authentication standards, postmaster/abuse desk ops. Udeme avidly follows industry trends across the aforementioned topics – including privacy issues.

  With the similar passion, contributes significantly to tennis: serves on 2 USTA (United States Tennis Association) non-profit Board seats; captains/manages multiple tennis teams; volunteers in grassroot tennis development – and plays LOTS of competitive tennis!

• “Mr. X” (aka Mr. X). Mr. X. is new to the anti-spam game, having spent many years in exile for crimes he didn’t commit. X spends most of his days doing holistic flower arranging to perfect the feng shui of his man-cave, and at night prowls the ASNs of the net bringing discomfort to those who fall astray of common sense. He doesn’t understand why this blog is even needed.