Book details of 'Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements'

Title	Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements
Author(s)	Brian S. McWilliams
ISBN	0596007329
Language	English
Publisher	O'Reilly

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements':

Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
This book is the story of some spammers, and some anti-spammers, during the period from about 1998 to 2003. The stories are not, as in other works, separated by chapters, but are interwoven in roughly chronological order. After a while, you begin to realize that much of the material is padded out with conversations taken from old Usenet archives, as well as instant messaging and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) logs. Oddly enough, these aren't as interesting as they sound. The conversations aren't particularly illuminating, and tend to be arguments on the level of schoolyard fights. In fact, almost nobody in the book comes across as an attractive or sympathetic character: even the "good guys" seem to be self-righteous, petty, vindictive, and occasionally just plain, outright nasty. The book does not provide much insight into spam protection technology: that is probably not the intent. Neither does it describe spamming technology as such, and many would likely consider this restraint to be a good thing. Instead, the book concentrates on the fight between the spamming and anti-spamming forces, but does not go into any detail on those technologies either, using narratives, and references to the fact that certain research is undertaken, without any suggestion of how this might be accomplished. Those seriously interested in the fight against spam will likely find something in this work to redeem the cost of it. Those who simply want to use email, and who are annoyed by spam, may believe that they have obtained some insight into the phenomenon after reading the text. But it's difficult to say what value or intelligence that might be. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2005
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Book description:

More than sixty percent of today's email traffic is spam, according to email filtering firm Brightmail. This year alone, five trillion spam messages will clog Internet users in-boxes, costing society an estimated $10-billion in lost productivity, filtering software, and other expenses. Spam Kings: The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements is the first book to expose the shadowy world of the people responsible for the junk email problem. Author and veteran investigative journalist Brian S. McWilliams delivers a compelling account of the cat-and-mouse game played by spam entrepreneurs in search of easy fortunes and those who are trying to stop them. Spam Kings chronicles the evolution of Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a notorious neo-Nazi leader (Jewish-born) who got into junk email in 1999. Using Hawke as a case study, Spam Kings traces the twenty-year-old neophyte's rise in the spam trade to his emergence as a major player in the lucrative penis pill market--a business that would eventually make him a millionaire and the target of lawsuits from AOL and others. Spam Kings also tells the parallel story of Susan Gunn, a computer novice in California who is reluctantly drawn into the spam wars and eventually joins a group of anti-spam activists. Her volunteer sleuth work puts her on a collision course with Hawke and other spammers, who try to wreak revenge on the antis. You'll also meet other cyber-vigilantes who have taken up the fight against spammers as well as the cast of quirky characters who comprise Hawke's business associates. The book sheds light on the technical sleight-of-hand--forged headers, open relays, harvesting tools, and bulletproof hosting--and other sleazy business practices that spammers use; the work of top anti-spam attorneys; the surprising new partnership developing between spammers and computer hackers; and the rise of a new breed of computer viruses designed to turn the PCs of innocent bystanders into secret spam factories.