Talk of the Town - Spam buster November 18 2000

From the cubicle in her Atlanta office, Mary Youngblood fights the forces of darkness on the Internet. Youngblood whacks spammers and shuts down hackers as a network abuse team manager at EarthLink, the second largest Internet service provider in the country.
The job calls for equal parts detective and crisis counselor. Youngblood leads a team of employees in Atlanta and Pasadena, Calif., that works to protect the company’s more than 4.5 million customers, fighting cyber crime together with the FBI and law enforcement officials. She also deals with irate customers fined for flaming newsgroups and e-mail account holders who just can’t take the spam anymore.
She jumped into the computer industry earlier this year after a career in the food manufacturing industry. She most recently worked for Pillsbury in Lithonia. Youngblood went to work at MindSpring in January, one month before the company merged with EarthLink.
Youngblood identifies more with Darth Vader than with her former employer’s mascot, the Pillsbury Doughboy. Her first ID badge at the Internet company bears the dark lord’s image.

How did you get into this line of work?
When I was in college I was a volunteer at a crisis center for three-and-a-half years. A friend I met there was a director here at MindSpring. Because of the merger they wanted someone to head the units at both companies. They wanted someone that could handle people in crisis situations. We get some real cuckoos. We need people that already know how to handle escalations.
What kind of cuckoos do you get?
People go nuts in the newsgroups. It’s like road rage. They go into a newsgroup about the Beatles and they’re talking about Nazi Germany. People complain and we warn them. They scream that the Internet is free. We whack their account and charge them $200. They think they’re masters of the universe and we slam down on them.
What kind of education or skills do you need for the job?
You don’t have to have a computer background, but you have to have strong customer service skills. I got a bachelor’s and master’s degree in agricultural operations from the University of Florida.
As a manager of this group I did not need the exceptional technical skills that my group has, however a working knowledge of operating systems such as Windows and Unix was needed. And of course, being able to surf the Net using various browsers and sending e-mail using various e-mail clients [Outlook, Eudora, Netscape] is necessary. Sometimes I act as tech support when talking with customers and it is valuable to be familiar with different browsers and e-mail clients.
What’s a typical day at work like for you?
Going through a lot of e-mail. If I don’t check it at home at night I could have 100 easy. I only get two or three spams [junk e-mails] overnight. The spams I investigate myself and send off reports to the Internet service provider the spammer originated from. It takes me 20 seconds to look up the Internet protocol address. These headers act as a road map to explain where the mail originated and each place it stopped along the way to its final destination. A lot of it is detective work and a lot of it is experience.
What is your work environment like?
My staff works in a room called the pit. I’m outside of it in a cube because I want them to be able to close the door and complain about me. There are beach balls in the pit. It’s very dark, like a vampire’s lair, to keep from having glares on the computer screens and reduce eyestrain.
What’s the dress code in your office?
Shorts and T-shirts. If I’m representing the company I will wear an EarthLink or MindSpring shirt. We have one guy that looks like Satan. We have one guy with big blue hair. I prefer everybody to be themselves and out there. It’s a very comfortable place to work.
What’s the least favorite part of your job?
A lot of times people think it’s cool because we have to look at porn to investigate. I don’t really look at it too much. We also have to look at hate sites. Sometimes you get complaints about a website and you go there and say ‘holy moly.’
When do you have to investigate this kind of content?
Most ISPs, including Earthlink, do not monitor content. The Internet is a free expression area. Our company motto is “It’s your Internet,” and we believe in that. When sites violate our Acceptable Use Policy or the Copyright Infringement Act or other laws and we are made aware, we will take action. But we do not judge content that does not violate these policies and laws. If a site is on another network, we cannot take action. It’s not our customer.
What’s the average salary for your position?
Managers for system administration could make between $55,000 and $100,000, depending on experience and the number of people they manage.
What’s the weirdest thing that has happened on the job?
In my first week on the job I took this call and the man thought the government was watching him. He thought he was being hacked and spaceships were falling out of the sky. I calmed him down and sent him some T-shirts.
What would surprise people about your job?
People are surprised when they find out who’s doing the spamming. They don’t realize it’s some poor guy in a shack with a 133-megahertz computer, who makes $100 a month from it. If he has a car it’s an old Pinto held together by duct tape. They get stolen credit card numbers and will sign up for fraudulent accounts that may last a day without getting caught. They must net $1 when they’re done, and they may face jail time.
What was your first job?
Working in a chicken plant as a quality assurance supervisor. I worked in the factory, the feed mill and chicken houses. All the stories you hear are pretty much true. Blood and livers and chicken poop ... I’ve been up to my elbows in it.
What’s your ultimate goal? Is it to rid the world of spammers and hackers?
I want my company to be synonymous for ‘don’t go there’ for these guys.