Final Straw

The Spam

Who are the spammers?

Their Host

Their Domains

Host-related spams

Why am I doing this?

What can YOU do?

Updates
Oct 11th,2001

In the aftermath of the carnage at the World Trade Centre and related incidents, these people set up a fraud to extract money from well-meaning folk who wanted to help the victims.
You and I saw tragedy. These people saw a golden opportunity to make money. Their actions could be likened to searching the ruins looking for wallets and valuables belonging to the dead.

This website brings together information from different sources which will help to identify the fraudsters and the services from behind which they operated.
The network of domain names and linked sites, telephone and fax numbers form a web of payment transactions for law enforcement to follow.
YOU can contribute your bit by highlighting this information to your politicians and law enforcement agencies.

The morning after the attacks, I received the following spam:

Both 'Click Here's led to the same web page at http://www.freewebco.net/viacream/SurvivorFund.html

Here is how that page looked:

Give Blood 1-800-GIVE-LIFE Red Cross 1-800-HELP-NOW To the victims and families of this National tragedy are heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to you. Click Here $25.00 Red Cross Click Here $50.00 Red Cross Click Here $100.00 Red Cross Click Here $250.00 Red Cross Click Here Victims Survivor Fund $25.00 Click Here Victims Survivor Fund $50.00 Click Here Victims Survivor Fund $100.00 Click Here Victims Survivor Fund $250.00 The Victims Survivor Fund will go to a combination of victim survivor funds equally disbursed Thank you for your help and support. We are not affiliated with the Red Cross or a Survivor Fund. This is a service to help those who want to give and help those of the victims and their families. 10% of your donation will go towards administration costs.

This was a fraud, of course.

• The email followed a classic spam route
• www.freewebco.net is a well-known spammer host
  It is also known as www.freewebhostingcentral.com and www.e-webhostcentral.com
  A more recently noted domain for the same host is www.online-ggii1994.com
  More domain names are being registered for use in new spamming runs. Known domains are listed and detailed in the 'Their Domains' page.
• The proceeds were collected via an anonymous merchant account ( MerchantID=20144 ) at 1shoppingcart.com

You'll note the "10% of your donation will go towards administration costs"
Yeah. Sure! Try 100%

Despite all the warnings that common sense should have offered, I'm sure that emotion drove many people to donate. Why anyone should give money to a completely anonymous entity that uses an 'exotic path' to their mailbox beats me. People get defrauded via normal spam all the time, so I suppose it's not surprising that a spam which manipulated their emotions in these extraordinary circumstances would work.

Brian Walsh
finalstraw@alia.ie