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 USD10-billion in lost productivity, filtering software, and other expenses. Spam Kings:The Real Story behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and Penis 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, from his apprenticeship with an experienced Viagra-and-diet-pills spammer who uses the nickname Dr. Fatburn to his emergence as a major player in the lucrative penis pill market--a business that would eventually make him a millionaire. Spam Kings also tells the parallel story of Susan Wilson, an accountant in California who is reluctantly drawn into the spam wars and eventually joins a group of anti-spam vigilantes. Her volunteer sleuth work on behalf of law-enforcement authorities and Internet companies puts her on a collision course with Hawke, Dr. Fatburn, 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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; chapter one; Birth of a Spam King; The Education of an Anti-Spammer; Ho, Ho, Ho, the Nazis Didn't Show; Spamford Meets Hacker-X; chapter two; Hawke Mails the Web Manual; Shiksaa, the Spammer Tracker; Shiksaa Plays Peacemaker; Hawke's Publishing Company in a Box; chapter three; Shiksaa Meets the Cyanide Idiot Hawke Concedes to an Anti; A Date with a Spam Queen; Bubba Catts and the Crank Callers; chapter four; Spamhaus Takes on Sue You Net; Shiksaa and the Pink Contracts; Mad Pierre's Homage to Shiksaa; chapter five; Tracking Empire Towers; Terri Tickle Descends on Nanae; Hawke Rips Off Dr. Fatburn; David D'Amato, the Titanic Spammer; chapter six; Nanae Battles over Block Lists Hawke Takes on an Apprentice; 9/11; Hawke Tutors Bournival; chapter seven; Shiksaa Meets Scott Richter; Hawke Goes Home to Rhode Island; Hoffman Catches Tom Cowles; chapter eight; Amazing Internet Products; Fighting Dr. Fatburn; chapter nine; The Shiksaa Shakedown; Patricia's Graveyard Gambit; Creampie Productions; chapter ten; The Pinacle Partnership Program Rise of the Spam Zombies; Jason Vale Held in Contempt; The Time-Travel Spammer; Karen Hoffmann, Sock Puppet; Richter Unravels chapter eleven; CAN-SPAM; Shiksaa Hangs Up Her LART; The Phoenix Company; AOL v. Davis Hawke et al.; The Gingerbread Man epilogue; glossary; acknowledgments; index