About Edmond Wollmann's Abuse of the Abuse Process

Main Page Why this Page? Targets Admins on Ed Ed on Admins Ed Spams Ed Cancels Ed's admission Off topic posts Entrapment Insults & Threats Email accounts Kook of the Month Ed's Post Archive	Information About Edmond H. Wollmann's Abuse of the ISP Complaints Process
	Mirror This Site: Tar File
	Update 10/23/09: Wollmann failed to provide a valid PO Box address for return of the DMCA Counter Notice
	Update 10/5/09: Edmond Wollmann has again attempted to remove this site using a spurious DMCA Notice. Update 10/9/09: A Counter Notice has been promptly returned.
	Update 5/6/05: Ed seems to take exception with his name appearing in Wikipedia’s alt.usenet.kooks page. In a meltdown true to form, Ed blew off many, many emails to the WikiEN-l mailing list, including the usual lawsuit threats, defamation claims, and the inevitable turning tail and running.
	Update 5/5/05: In yet another failed attempt to remove this site, Edmond Wollmann tried complaining to my internet provider: “I am a published author and my copyrights under the DMCA are being violated.” This seems to be a different tactic from a few years ago when Ed found these very same pages to be “defamation”. In the event that Ed wants to actually go through the legal process of submitting a DMCA notice, I’ve prepared this page to hold a copy of Ed’s notice and my subsequent replies: DMCA Notice Page
	Update 7/30/99: In an email to the owner of this server, Edmond threatened, "Remove your defamation or I'll walk down there and yank it off" See the archive of Ed Wollmann's threats to and harrassment of this site's owner.
	Who is the target audience for this web page? Although anyone is welcome to read it, this page was written to serve as a resource for ISP abuse admins. Who wrote this web page? The authors of this page are a group of Usenet readers and admins who detest Usenet spamming, EMP, email abuse, and other forms of net abuse. If you are investigating a true spammer or abuser, we sincerely hope that your investigation serves justice. However, you were likely referred to this page because actual net abuse may not have been done by your user. Rather, the claim of abuse has been made by a person well known for flooding abuse admins with spurious complaints. Who is Edmond Wollmann? Mr. Wollmann is a well-known abuser of the ISP abuse process. He harasses many people whom he encounters in Usenet by sending numerous complaints to his targets' ISPs. Frequently he involves the ISPs' upstream providers and news peers as well. Why a web page about Mr. Wollmann was needed Which newsgroups are most affected by Mr. Wollmann's complaint letters? We know to date that Mr. Wollmann is sending complaints about many regular posters in alt.astrology, alt.astrology.metapsych, alt.usenet.kooks, and news.admin.net-abuse.usenet. However, Mr. Wollmann will often check on an authors posting history, and bombard his victims' "home" newsgroup with forwaded and off-topic posts in an attempt to intimidate a poster to stop posting to "Ed's" group(s). Who has had complaints sent about them by Mr. Wollmann? We do not know for sure how many people have had this happen to them. For one thing, if an ISP (wisely in our opinion) chooses to ignore him, his target is not always aware that Mr. Wollmann has been complaining about him or her. However, there is more than enough information to show that Mr. Wollmann is harassing quite a few people with the number and volume of complaints that he sends. Documentation is available at this link: Your customer is not alone: some of Wollmann's many targets What do news and abuse admins say about Mr. Wollmann? Several abuse admins have been willing to "go public" with their experiences with Edmond Wollmann. They rightfully grow tired of his spurious complaints and address morphing to thwart their mailfilters. "Mr. Wollmann seems sadly ignorant of the legal doctrine of "unclean hands." Essentially what it means is that a court will not grant relief to one who complains of being damaged if the complainant has himself engaged in abuse related to the cause of action." -Jason Barr, PBI Policy Manager "Mr. Wollmann’s account at AzNET was cancelled due to multiple, seemingly endless complaints about his abusive behavior in Usenet."- Jack Bailey, Aznet "...Eddie first came to my attention: a complaint from columbia.edu about the complaints they had been receiving from Eddie, as many as 300 per day....His thing is abusing abuse departments. If he doesn't get his way with complaints, he'll call up and harass the abuse department. If they manage to avoid his calls (or direct him to cease and desist phoning), he sends large numbers of duplicate complaints via email." Nick Nicholas, Executive Director, Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC, mail-abuse.org (formerly of pacbell.net) "You have a worthless charter given that you chose to made your group [alt.astrology.metapsych] unmoderated. I think you set it up to attempt to kill accounts and that it should be rmgrouped as a trap and public nuisiance." -Rebecca Ore, respected n.a.n.a-u participant. More documentation is available at this link: Abuse admins re: Edmond Wollmann And what has Mr. Wollmann said about admins and ISPs? Mr. Wollmann on the subject of ISPs and their employees What has Mr. Wollmann done to lose credibility with many people? Mr. Wollmann has shown himself in many ways to be a poor Netizen and not someone whose opinion can be trusted about the appropriateness of another's postings. In addition, many of the actions which Mr. Wollmann accuses others of in his complaints are actually things he has done himself in Usenet. Documentation is available at the links below: Mr. Wollmann Spams Usenet Mr. Wollmann frequently sends complaints about others "spamming" even when the posts being complained about do not fall under the Skirvin guidelines. This is ironic, because Wollmann is well aware of what constitutes spam. He was TOSsed from AOL and lost 6 accounts there for spamming. Wollmann also has spammed from both Earthlink and ATT Worldnet, documented by thoroughly detailed spam reports and multiple cancels of his spam. Mr. Wollmann Censors by Illegitimately issuing Third-Party Cancels for Others' Usenet posts Mr. Wollmann has never owned up to his own censorious activities. In July of 1997, he issued a rash of over 50 illegitimate third-party cancels for Usenet posts with which he apparently had some issue with. Many of the posts he attempted to cancel made it to DejaNews, so that it can be seen that posters were sometimes merely criticising him. Wollman's outrageous "Netcopping" behavior is grevious Net Abuse. He has publicly admitted to his intention to send thousands of complaints Mr. Wollmann has announced in Usenet, many times, his intentions to send volumionus complaints. He makes "off-topic" complaints about others while he frequently posts off-topic Mr. Wollmann likes to complain about other posters being "off-topic". He does this in a hypervigilant manner and so disrupts normal Usenet conversation. However, he often makes off-topic posts himself -- especially when he discussed complaints he has sent. He often adds unrelated newsgroups to his posts. He also often sets follow-ups to his posts to go to alt.dev.null rather than to the groups where his messages were posted. alt.astrology.metapsych: so many "off-topic" complaints that a new charter was needed Mr. Wollmann admitted to adding this group in his cross-posts in particular--in order to entrap persons following up his posts so that he could send "off-topic" complaints about them. He became such a nuisance that a consensus was reached to create a new charter for this group which would make it harder for him to send these complaints about posters being off-topic there. Mr. Wollmann himself frequently posts abusively in Usenet Nobody involved with this site denies Mr. Wollmann's right to engage in flame wars and be as insulting or as profane as he wants to be. There is a difference, however, between abuse ON the Net and abuse OF the Net. Many of Mr. Wollmann's complaints are about abusive and defaming posts even as he insults, defames, and abuses other posters. He posts, without permission, private e-mail sent to him. He has made threats regarding posters' places of business, mailbombing threats, threats of telephone harassment, threats to force his in-person presence upon other posters, and at least one explicit threat to commit physical violence. What is Mr. Wollmann's email account address? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question! Edmond Wollmann abuses the Net in several ways, and as a result frequently loses Internet accounts. Not only does he change address frequently, but also often sends complaints from more than one address at a time -- which can make it seem as though many people are complaining about an individual when that is the fact not the case. Documentation is available at this link: Some of his current and past accounts & why he has lost many of these accounts Mr. Wollmann, Award-Winning Netizen Mr. Wollmann actually won a Usenet award, titled "Kook of the Month", for his Usenet posts of February, 1998. Click here to view some of the posts he made at that time which earned him this distinction. Wollmann Usenet Post Archive 2/98 to 7/99 Download your own reference archive for Mr. Wollmann's Usenet posts for the past 1.5 years (2mb .zip file expands to 7mb text file).
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