Chris Lewis (Usenet)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Operating cancelbots
on Usenet
Chris Lewis | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Security consultant |
| Organization | SpamhausTechnology |
| Known for | Volunteer "despamming" Operating cancelbots on Usenet |
Christopher Lewis is a Canadian computer security consultant from Ottawa,[1][2] who fought spam on Usenet and the early Internet. Active in volunteer anti-spam efforts in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Lewis was described in Net.wars (1997) as "the best known active canceler of spam and other mass postings" at the time. In April 1998, he organized an unsuccessful moratorium with forty other anti-spam volunteers in an attempt to boycott internet service providers into doing their share against spam. He worked as a systems architect for Nortel and, as of 2017, is Chief Scientist at SpamhausTechnology.
Lewis worked as a senior security architect at Bell Northern Research, then as a systems architect for Nortel from 1991 to 2012.[3][4] In 2002, Lewis led a five-man spam-filtering team at a major telecommunications company[a] with over 45,000 employees. His unofficial title was "spam issues architect", and he was conservative with the messages he filters so as not to accidentally hide potential business offers. He said at the time that, while Usenet spammers had become unsuccessful, email spammers were still prevalent.[5] In late 2012, Nortel downsized and laid off Lewis. As of 2017, Lewis works as Chief Scientist at SpamhausTechnology, an organization targeting email spammers.[3]