About this time last year when we launched this site, we ran a report on the world’s 10 worst spammers.
This year we looked at the same roll-call at Spamhaus and the top 10 worst spammers in relation to their ranking last year.
Here is a comparison:
1. Canadian Pharmacy (United States)
“A long time running pharmacy spam operation. Uses botnet spam techniques to send tens-of-millions of spams per day. Probably uses many affiliates all over the world to spam but is probably based in Eastern Europe and hosts sites on botnets.”
2008 ranking: Not in top 10
2. Leo Kuvayev / BadCow (Russian Federation)
“Russian/American spammer. Does “OEM CD” pirated software spam, copy-cat pharmaceuticals, porn spam, porn payment collection, etc. Spams using virus-created botnets and seems to be involved in virus distribution. Partnered with Vlad – aka ‘Mr. Green’.”
2008 ranking: #1
3. HerbalKing (India)
“Massive affiliate spam program for snakeoil Body Part Enhancement scams. Also does replica luxury goods, pharma and porn. Spams via botnets.”
2008 ranking: #3
4. Vincent Chan / yoric.net (HongKong)
“Vincent Chan and his Chinese partners have been sending spam for years. They mainly do pharmacy, and are able to send out huge amounts daily. The use a vast amount of compromised machines, for sending, hosting and proxy hijacking.”
2008 ranking: #4
5. Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov (Ukraine)
“So many Alex & Alexey spamming! Alex Blood tied to Pilot Holding & bbasafehosting.com long ago, then Alex Polyakov posted he owned them. Massive botnet and child-porn spam ring, also pharma, mortgage, and more. May work with Kuvayev and Yambo.”
2008 ranking: #2
6. Nikhil Kumar Pragji / Dark-Mailer (Australia / Queensland)
“Through the Dark-Mailer Windows based proxy-botnet based spamware, this spammer is responsible for and behind a large portion of the world’s illegally send spam.”
2008 ranking: #5
7. Peter Severa / Peter Levashov (Russian Federation)
“A spamming partner of Alan Ralsky and other spam gangs.”
2008 ranking: Not in top 10
8. Yambo Financials (Ukraine)
“Huge spamhaus tied into distribution and billing for child, animal, and incest-porn, pirated software, and pharmaceuticals. Run their own merchant services (credit-card ‘collection’ sites) set up as a fake ‘bank.’ ”
2008 ranking: #9
9. Ruslan Ibragimov / send-safe.com (Russian Federation)
“Stealth spamware creator. One of the larger criminal spamming operations around. Runs a CGI mailer on machines in Russia and uses hijacked open proxies and virus infected PCs to flood the world with spam.”
2008 ranking: #6
10. Sistemnet (Turkey)
“Rogue Turkish network dedicated to hosting Eastern European botmasters and related cybercrime gangs.”
2008 ranking: Not in top 10
The spammers who slid off the top 10 were Pavka / Artofit (Russia), Russian Business Network (Russian Federation), and Michael Lindsay /iMedia Network (United States /California), ranked number 7, 8 and 10 respectively in 2008.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I don’t know who they are but whoever has been sending me emails calling me “Isabella Jerome”
Has got to be one of the worst.
Year after year and they keep on coming !
Their removal link is nothing but an address compiler. These days “75 Del Moro” is usualy in the subject line.
I’ve been on the web for so long I can’t remembver when I started and these people are the worst in my experience.