doctorkc@ukmall.net – Hacker? Spammer? Malware Distributor? BEWARE HIS SITES! They are infected!

This morning, a person with the email address [ doctorkc@ukmall.net ] signed up for my newsletter.  My newsletter form then sends the submitter to the correct link for entering one’s email in the actual newsletter email list, which then generates an email requesting activation and verification.  This is essentially a ‘triple opt-in’ procedure that goes beyond the industry ‘best practice’ ‘double opt-in’ method for managing newsletters.  You can imagine my surprise, then, when I received two emails from my registrar indicating someone had accused me of spamming.  As evidence, they forwarded the activation emails.

I was a little torqued, as you might imagine, because I had really done all I could to prevent exactly that sort of accusation.  I don’t do triple opt-in for all my email lists, but I do try to do due diligence to make sure they can’t be considered ‘unsolicited.’  I have had experience in the past with people signing up for my newsletters with the sole intent of reporting me, as well as people emailing me personally and then when I replied, submitted my reply as unsolicited to the ‘authorities.’  (From the nature of this website, you can guess what sort of folks would do such a thing).  But this incident really took the cake.

Wishing to defend myself from this vicious slander, I naturally began googling the email address to see if he had done the same thing before (and to see if he was in the aforementioned category referred to as ‘sort of folks’) and found what appeared to be his very own sites, accusing other folks of spamming, and of course hundreds of banner ads and affiliate links.  Five seconds later, my computer was seriously compromised by a virus posing as an anti-virus program.

There is no doubt in my mind that the whole point of the spamming accusation was to get people to go looking for information about that email address, and consequently, find themselves compromised and forking over a bunch of money to a rogue anti-virus program.

[UPDATE:  Below is the screen shot from my stats monitor detailing the visitor information of the so-called 'doctorkc' at 122.177.247.43 ]

I caution anyone dealing with the same email address to NOT visit the person’s websites.  In conversation with your registrar sending you the abuse notice, you may give them a link to this post as evidence of the person’s malicious intent and one person’s experience dealing with the issue.

In the off chance that someone does ever get an email from me or one of my sites, please know that I take the ‘spam’ issue seriously, taking due diligence, as I already indicated.  However, I think this example goes to show that it is possible to take spam complaints TOO seriously.

In the past, for example, Barracuda Networks has put my server on their blacklist for all sorts of dumb reasons, up to and including someone filing false complaints.  This ‘guilty until proven innocent’ approach to ‘spam’ is too prevalent, in my opinion.  Moreover, it sets up people for being held hostage to truly malevolent folk, like the one prominent black list that accepts complaints but then does not give the complainer’s email address- how on earth was my client to remove that person’s email address if it is not given to him for removal?  I suppose the idea is to spare that person from retaliation or retribution, but it should go without saying that it is impossible to remove someone’s email address from your list if you do not know it!  You’d think the bright persons who manage that particular black list understood that simple piece of logic… at the very least, if they’re going to forward anonymous complaints, they should at least understand that there are people out there who may take advantage of their system, and exploit it to the malicious harm of another, who is doing nothing wrong at all.

I would like to commend my own registrar, gkg.net, for handling the matter with the right level of sensitivity, and hearing me out.  I got to deal with a real live person, which I think was critical to resolving the matter.  In some of my past experiences, my defenses were made by submission forms and when I was vindicated (as I always was!), I never heard back from the organization that I was cleared, or what came of the investigation, or given a chance to hear their explanation.  I was simply removed from the black list, or whatever.  (Although, my experiences with Barracuda blocking legitimate emails a couple of times a year ensures that I would not personally ever use them.)

I hope this post is useful for someone else encountering the same person/email and issue, and spares them the time wasted in cleaning up one’s system.  And on the off chance that doctorkc@ukmall.net is himself a victim of some other malicious entity: my friend, you’ve got issues to solve on your end, and I suggest you get cracking!