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That's exactly what I was wondering. I don't know about the local statutes in all the areas where these folks operate, but at least in a few of them it must be illegal. In some, advertising may not be legal, in others it may be a littering offense - but it can't be something that is just allowed everywhere.

It is probably just a low level annoyance for each property owner (what, they get a sign like this a couple of times a year each), and without knowing who to complain about it would be difficult to ever get a fine to anyone. Come to think of it, that blog isn't going to help most people find out who put that sign in their park, yard, school, etc. So there will probably be no practical effect from the disclosure of the parties responsible.

Yes, it's usually illegal, and often akin to littering. In my city, I went after the "Mattress Firm" across the street for putting 50 of them at a time by the public roadside advertising a sale. It took calling the city directory and finally narrowing it down to about 6 people who handle this. Repeated calls finally got the city to send a guy out, who took the signs the first time and went into the store to give a no-fine warning. The enforcement guy told me that first offense is usually free, 2nd one is $50 per sign, 3rd is $100 per sign. The store did, in fact, repeatedly replace the signs, so I kept after the city. I think they finally got their big fine because the behavior has stopped.

That was an easy one, more or less, because the violator was obvious. Most "street spam" signs would be much harder to track and I'd tend to just let it go due to not having the time to pursue it.

Apparently some people make a living just placing these signs for pay, as I have seen pickup trucks several times full of signs in the back. Not only are they littering for money, they are driving the trucks on grassy public areas, spinning out jumping the curbs, etc.

http://www.causs.org/ has info about the legalities of all this. The Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam.

Excellent research! These (and other) signs are illegal in 99% of our cities and towns. See http://www.causs.org/ CAUSS.org. CAUSS is a nationwide organization of citizens and code enforcement officers who remove illegal signs in their neighborhoods. CAUSS maintains national and state-based forums that are fairly active. There is quite a bit of research on illegal singles signs there - search for "single" and "dating". Bottom line: help Code Enforcement remove illegal signs in your city!

Okay, I understand the need for new and fresh content to keep the customers coming back, but an article about a dating site that uses town names from across America?

Let's think this through:

1. Anyone who wants to get more Obama can go to news.google.com and read through several dozen international news sources, as well as the Huffington Post and Fox "News", and get more than enough of the regular headlines.

2. Slashdot, as a news aggregator, is finding slim pickins on the tech side, as Obamamania sucks the oxygen out of every other news story. Cool for us political wonks, not so cool for CowboyNeal & co.

3. This really is a nationwide conspiracy. Every tiny suburb and exurb of Dallas is frequently spammed by these guys. I thought they were a local outfit, so it's very interesting to see the extent of their reach.

4. The way the guy investigated is cool, and I'm sorely tempted to upgrade my own DomainTools.com account to "paid" status, now that I know that it really works.

5. Last, but CERTAINLY not least, it's about a DATING SITE. Dating, as you may have heard, is part of the mating ritual of Homo Sapiens Solaris, aka "those of us who have emerged from our parents' basements". It involves meeting FEMALES, which is kind of an awesome concept when you think about it. Opportunities for +5 Funny moderations abound (deserved or not).

I think the "Together Dating" guerrilla marketing behemoth, with its sign spam, is reaching the same shallow end of the gene pool that buys enough v1@g@ra to keep our inboxes full of e-spam. Pretty sad. Especially when there's a free dating site that almost certainly generates better results. But I guess some folks think, if you don't pay for it, it's not worth anything. Hopefully, those folks won't be asking me for a date.

If you hate them as much as I do, visit this site for tips and contact your local code enforcement office.

Legally, they are no different from litter. If you don't have a permit to leave something in a public place, it's nothing but trash. That said, the neanderthal assholes who post them might not be aware of that* and almost certainly won't be happy if they catch you taking them down, legally right or not, so be careful when picking up trash.

* and I'm sure the assholes who SELL the signs never mention it, either.

But what if, like these devices, they are clearly abandoned property? They were deliberately placed where they had no right to place them - effectively not only abandoning them, but also littering.

That's a good point - the guys who have a good time ripping down street sign spam have some advice on this.

http://www.causs.org/ is an oganization that fights against street spam.

I have a strong suspicion that most of the little-guy spam email factories are really just suckered in

A few of them are, yes. One good way of dealing with them is education. See The Club Built on Spam for a good example.

It starts with shit-on-a-stick advertising.

...Which is actually illegal in most places. See Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam.

The only way to break apart an illegal MLM is to find the organizing agents of each illegal MLM, and pound them into the dirt legally.

Not the only way (as I pointed out above) but it can be very effective (as well as very time consuming and expensive). See The Reed Slatkin Media Resource.

One thing the report didn't mention is that people have lost thousands of dollars in these schemes. Newest Way to Wealth, one of the Herbalife offshoots which is responsible for this scheme, encourages people to put up as many signs as possible in order to get more recruits. They sell their "training materials" for hundreds of dollars, and they tell their new recruits to buy enough Herbalife products to achieve the supervisor level. They promise that people will make thousands of dollars doing this, but I've heard reports that when people run out of money or patience and try to quit, their uplines get abusive and tell the poor, misled distributors that they hadn't been working hard enough.

And, since Herbalife is finally changing their policy to disallow signs, Newest Way to Wealth is cooking up new advertising ideas. One idea is to toss a bag filled with "Work From Home" business cards onto people's driveways, along with a few rocks to keep them from blowing away. (Of course, if they throw these little presents onto the lawn by mistake, and you don't see the baggie when you're mowing the lawn, you could end up running over it. That's a good way to put someone's eye out.) Another advertising method is to put packets of cards onto pay phones, ATM's, and every other flat surface.

As far as the signs are concerned, most states and cities have ordinances saying that it's illegal to put signs on utility poles or in the right of way.

In the House of Representatives, the only "Nay" vote to the Anti-Spam bill was cast by Ron Paul (Republican, 14th District of Texas). I wonder what thorn is up his butt? I mean, Texas is home to a majority of the members of Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam... hmm... methinks Mr. Paul must be working as a spammer at night or something ;-)