BuyEmails.org: Indian site services Internet scam artists

Brian Krebs has a good investigative piece on BuyEmails.org, an India-based website servicing Nigerian fraudsters and other Internet scam artists. They offer curiously targetted email lists ("6 million prospective work-at-home USA residents for just $99"), untraceable bulk email, and direct payment schemes from Nigerian banks, and (hilariously) they don't accept credit cards or Paypal because of all the fraud they've suffered. They also hold US patents on sending spam, but they lost one the first time they tried to use it against a competitor in a US court (the judge said that "sending and re-sending of spam until all of the mail is delivered" was "obvious"). The parent company of BuyEmails.org is Perfect Web Technologies Inc.

The site sells dozens of country-specific email lists. Other lists are for oddly specific groups. For example, you can buy a list of one million insurance agent emails for $250. 300 beans will let you reach 1.5 million farmers; $400 closes on 4 million real estate agents. Need to recruit a whole mess of money mules right away? No problem: You can buy the email addresses of 6 million prospective work-at-home USA residents for just $99. A list of 1,041,977 USA Seniors (45-70 years old) is selling for $325.

If you don't care much about who gets your emails, or if you want to target recipients based on their email provider, the price per address goes way down. Consider these offerings:

50 million AOL addresses: $500
30 million Hotmail addresses: $450
30 million Yahoo addresses: $400
5 million Gmail addresses: $350

Where Did That Scammer Get Your Email Address?

• [Anonymous]

  There are still 50 million users at AOL?

• [Anonymous]

  I don’t get what’s so funny since this current internet boom is all about selling email address to third parties – whether its apple, angrybirds or okcupid- this is the name of the game and it isn’t laughable “nigerians” anymore.

• [sally599]

  Interesting their pricing correlates exactly with the security level of my e-mail accounts with G-mail being my highest level outside of work. Wonder if that is number of users, account age (ie we all used to be stupid back in the AOL days) or just user savvy.

• [sworm]

  I’m tempted to buy one of those lists and anonymously send cute animal pictures.

  I imagine this would make the world a happier place.

• [bcsizemo]

  I really wonder why I’ve never seen anyone propose a dictionary attack on email servers….

  I mean most email address are some iteration of a name and probably a number. Or an animal, or the like.

  You know like [e-mail] or [e-mail]

• [phisrow]

  Were this a just universe, spammers would spend an eternity licking fiberglass fragments from the underbelly of satan’s lava yacht.

  Unfortunately, it isn’t a just universe.

• [AnthonyMitchell]

  List selling is an established business in the US, with little or no controls on where the data ends up. Why are you targeting this Indian outfit, while ignoring the larger picture?

  You can buy sophisticated lists that include phone numbers and addresses, and that target people in ranges according to the amount they have in their checking accounts, their credit score, how long they have lived in their current location, whether they own their home, and more. Some list providers can facilitate payment processes, drawing on providers’ access to financial account data.

  Freshness of a list is an issue, as is the number of times it’s been worked. For example, if you’re trying to sell home security services or satellite TV subscriptions, a fresh list of people who have just moved into new homes in the last one to six months will be more valuable than one that is older and has been worked by numerous other sellers.

  List stealing is a problem, especially in India, but that’s a topic for another day.

• [Anonymous]

  I can smell a DOS coming up on this one!

• [ackpht]

  Being a “senior” starts at 45 now?

  That explains my recent urges to drive exactly the speed limit in the fast lane.

• [delt664]

  I am shocked, SHOCKED! to discover that this site has problems with fraud.

• [Anonymous]

  Looks like their webhost-er suspended them. Looks like they used justhost.com. Looks like they are cheap. Looks by my previous sentence, I implied that justhost.com is cheap. Looks like I’m right.

• [bcsizemo]

  I’m still amazed when my parents ask me how spammers get their email address.

  I usually just make up a couple of techy sounding things, but seriously. It’s like if I wanted to find where you live. If I know the street address I can at least find who owns the house, and judging by when it last sold I can get a good idea of if you are the resident or not. (In my parents case that’s almost 40 years.) Or vice/versa with name finding an address.

  If you don’t want to be found you’ll have to go off grid. Like off anything that requires a bill/mail/phone/power/and internet.