Slashdot Mirror
I Won A Lawsuit Against A Spammer
Ellen Spertus writes: "I sued Kozmo.com for sending me unsolicited commercial email and won using California's anti-spam laws. I believe it is the first case of its kind. Read the whole story, including why this particular piece of spam pushed me over the edge and how I sued in California Small Claims Court. I doubt I'll ever collect, since Kozmo is going out of business, but I'm very pleased with the outcome." Please do this.
She was awarded $50.00 Principal, $27.50 Costs and $0.00 in Interest on Plaintiffs Claim. That's $77.50, which she probably won't ever see. How much is her ISP going to charge for exceeding their monthly bandwidth cap... a bill she will *certainly* receive?
Oh my god, you killed kozmo!!
don't post link to site on /. since my webserver is a large piece of shit
-- Ellen Spertus
This is a waste of your time. I have called a couple of the 800 numbers, and they are all the same. A very brief announcement message, and then a place for you to record your name and number. If you leave the phone dangling, they'll probably cut you off after a minute anyway. A simple dialer program would do more damage, but the phone company tends to notice automatic dialing of 800 numbers and get very angry.
I'm posting as AC because I don't want my karma to get unfairly torpedoed. You people talk about a free network and you bash censorship and you laud anonymity. You practically worship digital anarchy. UNTIL it inconveniences you. Use spam filtering software, good administration, and your spending money to fight spam, but don't make NEW WAYS FOR GOVERNMENT TO RESTRICT NET TRAFFIC! The way to fight spam is mano a mano. The old fashioned way. Blackhole lists and ingenuity, not lawyers and judges. If you don't like a company mailing you, then break off your business relationship. If you get truly unsolicited spam, then try getting off your ass and ADMINISTERING YOUR BOX instead of bitching in court. The net should be a placed governed by technology, not by judges. Have you ever sent unsolicited email? That is, have you ever sent email to someone who didn't specifically ask you to email them? Probably. If you say something that person doesn't like, should they be able to take you to court? If you give lawyers and inch, they'll take a mile. That's a mile of your on-line liberty, mind you.
yer the big man, picking on the poor dead dot com....
"Yer Honor, we uh, well, our lawyers left, so, uh, well.... crap, okay here's yer money"
:P
I doubt I'll ever collect, since Kozmo is going out of busines
But I thought spamming was a big money maker...
Update (April 17): I won!
Background
In November, I received email from Kozmo.com that stated that it was being sent to people who had NOT opted in to receive announcements. My complaint to privacy@kozmo.com (the address listed on their website) bounced. A message I sent to customer service was replied to with the statement that the message was not sent in error; they were intentionally mailing people who had not opted in. At this point, I sent a registered letter to Kozmo, asking for (1) an apology, (2) $250, and (3) assurance that this would not happen again. I said that, if I did not receive these, that I would file suit and expected to win under California law. I was not able to get the names of Kozmo officers from the website or by phone, so I addressed my letter to Christopher Shimojima, who was listed in a magazine article as being the VP for customer service. I received the return receipt but no reply. I sent a second letter, which was not replied to in a timely manner.
I filed suit in California Small Claims Court for $500 against Kozmo.com for violating our agreement and sections 17538.45 and 17538.4 of the California Business and Professions Code. I had the SF courts serve papers on Kozmo by registered mail. I paid $27 in filing fees. A court date was scheduled for Wednesday, April 4.
Eventually, I did get a response from Kozmo to my letters. Specifically, a message was left on voicemail denying any wrongdoing but offering me "ten Kozmo dollars". I did not return the message.
Hearing: April 4, 2001
I prepared for the hearing by printing all relevant documents in duplicate and highlighting key sections. I tried emailing privacy@kozmo.com, still listed in the privacy policy, to see if it worked and got another bounce. I made a printout of the privacy statement and the two bounces.
At the beginning of the court session, the clerk determined who was in attendance, at which point I found out that Kozmo had sent a representative. The clerk informed us that we needed to share any exhibits with the opposing side, so I gave copies of my documents to the Kozmo rep. (I had only made two sets of documents, one for me and one for the judge. I should have brought three copies.) Two other cases were heard before mine, both of which ended with the judge saying she would mail her ruling in 1-2 weeks. (The other cases involved a car towing and an injury at a Safeway grocery store, apparently due to slipping on chicken grease.)
The judge first asked me to state my side of the case, which I did, as above. I also pointed out that in addition to being the recipient of the email, the mail was routed through a machine that I own with my husband, which may make me qualify as an electronic mail service provider under California Business and Professions Code 17538.45. (The spam was sent to yap-ers@spertus.com, then forwarded to spertus@mills.edu.)
The judge than asked the Kozmo rep to tell her version of the story. She claimed that the mail was not unsolicited commercial email because:
I had an existing business relationship with Kozmo. (This is a reference to paragraph a2A of 17538.45.)
It was not an advertisement; it was a service announcement letting customers know that they could opt in.
Furthermore, she said:
It was only a single message, not multiple messages.
Section 17538.45 applies to electronic mail service providers, which would not apply in this case.
Kozmo's privacy statement only promises not to share our email address, not to avoid sending us unwanted email.
When it was my turn again, I responded to the points:
Confirming that, yes, I did have a business relationship with Kozmo. (It seems like good manners and good policy to express agreement when the opponent says something with which I can agree.)
Arguing that the message was not just an announcement. Its second paragraph, which I showed the judge, announced new services. I said that I do not know if I qualify as an electronic mail service provider, but that my husband and I do serve several domain names on our computer and forward email for about a dozen people.
I did not respond to points 3 and 5.
During the wind-up phase, the Kozmo rep said that I had not received a timely response from Kozmo because I had sent my complaint letter to someone who was no longer at the company, having left the previous summer. I said that I had not been able to get the names of the officers from the website or by telephone but had gotten it from an article about Kozmo from that summer.
The judge asked us for any documents we wished her to consider. I gave her the above-mentioned documents, plus a few articles about successful suits against spammers. As with the other cases, she told us to expect the decision to be mailed next week or the following one. I will update this site when I receive it.
Judgment
On April 17, I received this judgment that I won my case. I was awarded $50 principal plus $27.50 in court costs. I believe this is the first case of its kind in California. I am very pleased.
Sorry, but your lawyer should have advised you that discussing cases currently before the courts is dumb. It's a good way pissing off the judge. I'm not surprised that you got stung for running a web site about it while it was before the courts.
Laughing my ass off. Your response is so funny that I'll happily burn karma to let you know I'm sitting here laughing out really loud.
Honestly!
Good luck, SlipOnChickenFat!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
... this should be written up as a HOWTO-killspam somewhere, and included with all Linux distro's as standard fare in the docset tarballs ...
...
Start it small. Write it up and talk about it a lot. Snowball it. Just like we did with Linux and countless other technologies
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Ah, the old ostrich (bury your head in the sand) method. If you don't see it, it isn't there. That works really well. I've recently started using Spamcop.net's reporting service and am seeing a reduction in the amount of spam I recieve. It also takes a lot less time to report spam now, then when I did it manually.
So, this guy was already a Kozmo.com customer, and he's complaining about getting administrative email from them?
Yes, after explicitly telling them not to send any.
I suspect that this is a moral victory, but unless spammers see huge cash awards in cases like this, they won't stop. I expect that Kozmo (well, assuming they stayed above water) would have just written this off as a small expense in their advertising campaign.
Actually, this is exactly the sort of thing that could turn the tide. One big reason there is so much spam is that it costs the spammer next to nothing. Spend $100 for a massive list of emails, and $15 for an ISP and you can send millions of spams each time. The $100 only has to be speant every few months (or buy harvester software as a 1 time expense). The 1 judgement probably added %80 or more to the cost of the spam.
One judgement for $77 won't do much, but it will show Californians that they can win in court. Two judgements for $77 still won't do much. However, 10 court dates (somebody had to be paid to appear in court) and 10 judgements for $77 and you've substantially multiplied the cost of spamming.
It's the sort of thing that could at any time without warning snowball into significant costs and a great deal of lost time for the spammer.
Here's an unsolicited and opted-out piece of SPAM I received this morning from Homestead.com. It would appear that in the name of customer service and in a desperate grab for revenue, these crumbling dot-coms are finding ways around opt-out privacy rules.
Class action lawsuit anyone?
---
Dear Homestead Member,
We are aware that you have unsubscribed from our mailing list. We are writing to inform you of important Homestead policy changes that will effect your Web site.
We assure you that you will remain unsubscribed to our mailing list.
[This is where they shameless promote new services, but I edited for space]
NEED HELP?
Your Homestead member name is:
Click here for your password.
If you have any questions or customer feedback please go to: www.help.homestead.com.
To unsubscribe from future mailings involving our features and services, click here. Or, login and visit your Personal Profile and check out the 'E-mail Subscriptions' section.
This guy sent an email explaining a new service and solicited for additional business.
You announced that the old service was broken.
The relationship you had with your clients were clearly defined and you were not attempting to gain anything from your mailing.
The relationship in this case was clear as well, but it specifically stated that they would NOT send email to her account.
If you want to advertise, leave it on the web page where I can ignore it without needed to take an action like deleting it.
So, this guy was already a Kozmo.com customer, and he's complaining about getting administrative email from them?
Yeah. But having ticked "no I don't want Emails from you", this gal had a "contract" with them which they broke.
I expect "small claims court" to "think along with the small guys" a bit. In this case the lady who got spammed.
The "anti-spam" law is meant to protect those not wanting junk-mail. What do you think the "I don't want mail from you" button does? It means that even if there is a business relationship, the "updates on products" are not requested by the customer.
So even though the law was formulated a bit sloppily (it may not catch this case), it was explained by this judge the way it was supposed to work. Good.
Here in Holland there is a club, (operated by spammers, I think) which claims that you have complete control over teh spam you recieve. You can tick your "interests" on their site. Well, wouldn't you know it: half a year later, they spam you. I could have sworn I ticked that they shouldn't spam me. In this case all I have is my statement that I ticked the button, while they have the database to prove that I wanted their spam. This time I know for sure I modified my settings that I don't want their spam. And hereby I'm on record on slashdot that I did so.
Next time I'll sue them.
A real (working) anti-spam law allows you to sue first-time offenders. If there isn't a special law you would have to resort to "please don't bother me", and then wait for them to repeat the offense. This normally doesn't happen, as they have enough people to Email...
Roger.
Until then, I have my good friend, the "delete" key. Takes a second, gets rid of my problem. It's not THAT difficult.
During the year 2000, I received approximately 3500 spams, worth about 23Mb total disk storage.
It's just a few seconds of your time every time. But it adds up, doesn't it?
Roger.
You ask me, they deserved what they got.
I don't think so. They should've been ordered to pay much more.
If they pay $77.50 plus $200 for the lawyer to be present, they got off VERY cheap. Remember that only 1 in 10000 people will go to the courts.
If the court says: "how many people have you sent this to?", and they answer say "500", then the court can say: There is a $50 fine for every spam, so you pay for 10 spams to this little lady here, and I'm going to fine you $5000 for just 20% of the others that you bothered with your unsolicited Email.
(If they answer a rediculously small number ("Just her, honest"), they should be prosecuted for lying....)
Roger.
Be a professional litigant. Collect thousands of otherwise useless emaill adresses and then sue spammers in the name of each email address. Even with 50 bucks per - if you have 1000 addresses then you could collect the price of a new Boxter even after legal fees.
Charles Miller
--
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
My wife answered the phone the other day, & it was a telemarketer for Qwest.
Telemarketer: We'd like to offer you this new service that will help you block unwanted calls from telemarketers.
My Wife: Will it block sales calls from the phone company?
TM: Uh no.
My Wife: We're not interested. [hangs up]
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I suspect that this is a moral victory, but unless spammers see huge cash awards in cases like this, they won't stop. I expect that Kozmo (well, assuming they stayed above water) would have just written this off as a small expense in their advertising campaign.
Now, if the author had organized a class-action lawsuit... so that one court win could cost $50 * (# of people in suit) that might get their attention. As it is, if it only cost them $75 plus a lawyer's time, I imagine they figure they'd be making money anyhow, if the e-mail spurred some new business....
And yes, I'll write about it. You bet! It's a great little news item - just the thing to bring people hope. Right about now "ordinary people" (read: your mom and dad) are waking up to the ugly reality of spam, and want to know jut how to deal with it.
dduck
Tech Journalist, Denmark
I clicked on the expensive ones. heh. I hope a lot of other people did, too.
Hey, Einstein those are article from the various sections (Science, etc.) that didn't appear on the main page. That's a feature, not a bug. Articles that might not be important enough to put on the main page, but might be interesting to some people just go to the Sections. The articles aren't lost, you just have to look harder to find them.
...
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
Well, yes, but this wasn't just unsolicited spam. This email was targeted at people who had specifically asked not to be emailed. That seems particularly obnoxious to me. Not to mention dumb as a rock.
And then there's SpamCop, which gives you the satisfaction of getting booted from their ISP.
Copyright 2000 Kozmo.com, Inc.
Hopefully Kozmo won't see this before they disintegrate, or else they could use the DMCA to get Slashdot to pull this comment...
Sure slashdot is all well and good, but it has a pretty low eyeball count. Chances are you'll get ignored, but you shoud send this as a story to major news outlets in your area/CA in general. Most newspapers have a section on the internet these days that is printed once a week; E-mail the editor. Also good would be the editors of business sections. Try the wall street journal. This is the only way other spammers may see this. It's not much more effort then you've already gone through, and besides, if it get's published you've gotten to brag to so many more people!
Get the word out!
Sort of - but not quite. The decision has to be appealed and confirmed in order to set a precedent that must be followed in the future.
However, what this does do is to add to the growing number of cases where spammers have lost. At some point, someone will ask their attorney "So should I spam my customers?" The attorney will look at the history of spam-related cases and say "No, because 15 other spammers have been sued and lost; your potential liablity will be $78 per email sent."
Lawyers are risk-averse; this case sets the precedent that sending spam is risky.
I'd love to know how to do this too. My understanding is that the answer to that is no.
The same thing happened to me with a certain phone company that starts with a "Q".
I got an unlisted phone number, and immediately started getting phone solicitation from the phone company. The first two times, I politely told them to put me on their "do not call" list. The third time I became angry, and the fourth time, I talked to a supervisor for a long time.
Afterward, I got mail from them, saying that they would not bother me any more. But, it also said that most of their customers who have unlisted phone numbers enjoy getting solicited by them!
This is correct. I worked as a systems person in a telemarketing company once. This is very true in Michigan, because the management there was always paranoia about maintaining the DNC (Do Not Call) List. Backups of the DNC list were stored offsite, in fireproof, waterproof, etc. safe and in multiple locations. They weren't fooling around.
My journal has hot
JUNKBUSTERS Telemarketing Headlines: How to reduce the number of junk phone calls you get
JUNKBUSTERS Junk Mail Headlines: How you can gain control of your mailbox
cpeterso
I worked briefly as a telemarkter one summer. This is how a telemarketer is scripted:
1. Call phone number
2. If no one is home, then place number on the call-back-next-week list. Goto 1.
3. If person declines offer, then place their phone number on the call-back-in-six-months list. Goto 1.
If you truly want to stop receiving cold calls, you should politely ask to be removed from all of their calling lists. If they call you back in less than one year, you can supposedly sue them in some states, but it is difficult to remember or prove whether the same company has called you twice.
If you piss them off, however, many telemarketers will put your phone number on the call-back-next-week list to harass you!! Yes, telemarketers are annoying, but they are in the position of power. Be polite and use their power for your benefit!
cpeterso
I know a telemarketing company is used for the calls, but I still find it funny.
"Needed to send an e-mail"? Hmm.. No.
And it's not the same. If it's a security issue like you suggest, I can understand. Kosmo's message was pure advertising.
I completely, totally agree.
Hitting the del key a few more times is way worth it compared to the rain-of-shit that could come down if this was enforced.
If every company that spammed me went out of business. I'm not asking for it to be immediate. Let them spam me a few times and spend a lot of money on obtaining lists with names on them. Then I'll watch them crumble.
Kozmo did provide me with good service when I used them, so I didn't mind the spam too much. What I despise the most is unsolicited spam.
As far as she knows, she's the first one in the state of California to do this. On principal and to set a precedent, I would venture to say that it was worth her time.
Would it make sense to go after every spammer who spams you? Probably not. Between court fees and missed work, it would add up to more than it's worth (in my case, anyway). You're also right in that it usually is terribly difficult to track down who is doing the spamming.
Sounds like something they need to incorporate into SpamCop
First, I wanted to give a big gratz on this case. I was rooting for you, but at the same time, given the information of what was presented in court, I'm awfully confused to see how you ended up winning the case. The statements brought up in court seemed to support Kozmo more than the plantiff.
I've been thinking of what Spamford Wallace says lately, about how there are people out there who actually LOVE spam! I have to wonder... does anyone know someone who has a "Season Pass" on their TiVo for "Paid Programming" ??
Now that was amusing. However, I have to ask one thing. Did you have all that information about Ricci up on your webpage at the time? If so, then it could be construed that you were advocating that other people harrass him in his personal life. It seems like a needlessly spiteful amount of information to publicly post about him. I don't think I would've looked too kindly at someone who did this if I were a judge, but outright dismissing the case was a little harsh. Just be glad he demanded that Ricci return your property.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Apparently, I've touched off a hot button issue for a few Slashdotters. Thanks to the AC who posted a mirror of site's content I have a few more facts straight.
Alright, it does seem a lot like spam when there's the second part of the message piggybacked on the first administrative part. I don't think there's anything wrong with the first part, but the advertisement of new services to someone who specifically asked not to have that advertisement is just cheating, basically. Fair enough. Looks like they got nailed fair and square, and that someone from Kozmo.com did show up and did try to make a decent stance for the company, so it wasn't just flogging a dead horse. Looks like she had a valid case after all.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
So, this guy was already a Kozmo.com customer, and he's complaining about getting administrative email from them? I think that certainly qualifies as an "established business relationship" for determining whether or not a message is "unsolicited" commercial email. How is this spam? In fact, this is a message that tells you that if you ever want to get an email update, you have to tell them "yes" instead of having to tell the "no" to not get them. If he didn't want email about his account, he should've never created one in the first place.
Admittedly, I don't have all the facts since the site is Slashdotted, but if this guy was a Kozmo.com customer, I don't see how he could've won this case on any legal merits. It sounds like Kozmo.com couldn't afford the legal costs (which would've been way more than $50) and just paid him the money to get the matter out of their hair. Maybe California's definition of spam is a little broader than those that I'm familiar with.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Most spammers use 800 answering services these days. They only get charged if you leave a message with the answering representative. Leaving a legitimate sounding message is what it takes to make them pay, and it has the bonus of wasting their time.
---
My opinions are mine.
Well then, if you go and do that in California, you are guilty of spamming someone and could owe them some money. And rightfully so, too. You shouldn't use a technical letter as an excuse to send people advertisements - it's too easy for big companies to come up with something they just "really, really needed to tell you" so that they can hurl ads at your e-mail. Remember too that the person in question specifically stated upon entering an agreement with Kozmo that she did not wish to receive ANY messages from them.
Well, normally you'd be right, but in this case, Kozmo e-mailed her directly. So they are the only ones who could be blamed.
Actually, what happened is that a petty crime was committed by a small company, and this annoyed someone, and they sued for a small amount. The award of $50 certainly won't put anyone's name in lights, and is just compensation for what was really only a minor nuisance perpetuated by Kozmo.
Because an essential part of holding the line is to make damn sure that spam remains limited to obvious scammers and sleazeballs. If even 1% of reputable businesses get the idea that it's OK to buy the $99 CD of Spew-O-Matic software and ten million e-mail addresses, then you can stick a fork in e-mail as a useful communications medium.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Bottom line: be carefull when calling "free" phone numbers.
So this is is why Kozmo.com when bankrupt
...once in a while, anyway
Granted, I'm not a terribly huge fan of government controls of what goes on over the internet, since most of these laws are hyper-reactionary, invasive, corporate-biased, or just plain stupid. But it is really refreshing to see a regular human being can actually WIN once in a while, without being forced to become bankrupt doing it.
"The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."..........Dark-Phoenix
I got harassed by AT&T about changing my phone service. I practically only use my land line for local calls anyway, so what long distance service I have is largely moot. I finally told the telemarker that I was not going to switch to AT&T because I had been laid off during their trivesture and was still bitter about it. I didn't get calls from them after that. I've always wondered exactly what note they put next to my name.
-- I'm not evil, I'm
Procmail helps, but running your own mail server is even better. You can hand out a different email address to every commercial entity you deal with over the net. That way, if mail comes in to track010@salfter.dyndns.org and it's not from eBay or from someone who had an auction up on eBay, then I know that eBay is selling addresses (just an example; I'm not saying that eBay does this). When one of these addresses starts getting spam, I then delete it, let further messages to it bounce, and can go after the bastards who are selling addresses.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he gets sunk by a nuclear submarine."
HA! Now *that* is funny. Thanks!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think this is the wrong target to try to take down. Most legitimate companies are ok about not sending junk to you. If all else fails, call them up and have your account terminated. All you've done is kick a dying dog here.
The real people who need to suffer are the assholes who buy mass-mailing software, fish for accounts to hijack, or create fake ones by the dozen, and mass-spam everybody, clogging up ISPs until they are kicked off, then repeat the process. They need to burn, severely. Winning a suit against a poor gasping dot com is not much of a vicotry.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Since it's (apparently) pretty much guaranteed that suing a spammer will result in a winning judgement, I am wondering why there aren't more law offices that are advertising to handle these cases?
I would be happy to give 50%, or 75%, even 100%, or whatever fines the spammer had to pay me, to any law office that would handle the case for me.
Then, all anyone would have to do is contact one of these law offices (probably in the spammer's local area) and hire them (at no cost to the victim). The law office makes money, I stop getting spammed, everyone's happy! (except the spammer!)
The only difficulty is identifying the spammer, but that's not impossible.
We are aware that you have unsubscribed from our mailing list. We are writing to inform you of important Homestead policy changes that will effect your Web site. We assure you that you will remain unsubscribed to our mailing list.
Homestead Professional is the first of several premium services we will launch over the next year. The basic service, now called Homestead Personal, will still be free, and we encourage you to build Web sites to connect with others around the world. With the introduction of Homestead Professional, you'll notice the following changes in the Personal service:
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Moderators: Moderate the parent post up. This was the key to the case, and why Joe Sixpack can't use the CA law himself.
IMHO, what we need is a federal anti-spam law that allows a private right of action (i.e. Joe Sixpack can sue), and for a large enough dollar amount (e.g. $500 per spam, not $10 per spam) that it's worth his while.
Something like the TCPA would be ideal. It's hard to collect with TCPA (telemarketing) because the telemarketers block Caller-ID, and if they hang up (making the $500 violation a willful $1500 violation), you have no convenient way of tracing them. (Especially if you live in a state that, like California, prohibits taping phone calls without the consent of both parties.) The case boils down to your word against the telemarketer's.
By contrast, with spam, you've got headers to work with and your landshark can go straight to the ISP with the subpoena.
Finally - unlike the phone company, who makes money off telemarketing (both from the telemarketers themselves, and from selling you stuff like caller-ID blocking) - the ISP has no financial incentive to cooperate with the get-rich-quick scammer, and would probably be pleased to send your landshark the requested info.
One, I don't follow your logic. He said "I lose more than $50 if I take a day off." That's true whether you make $51 a day or $5000 a day. I think what he's trying to say is it's not worth the time off from work to win $50 in court.
Two is your assumption that he's either in high school, or (I assume) crap. Not everybody makes $104k/year (your $50 for 1/8 day figure). The system administrator at the high school in town makes $50k/year. I make even less, doing a similar job for Town Hall, due to various factors that I won't get into. Gov't tech jobs suck, in terms of salary.
Either way, I don't care if you lose $50 for taking off an entire day, or if you lose $50 for taking an extra 10 minutes at the end of your lunch break. The point (as I see it) is that, unless you're making less than $50/day, it's not worth taking the time off to go to court and fight for it. Unless you're just doing it to prove a point and can spare the cash.
Of course, my first thought was that you could just take a personal day...
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
foo.c: Warning: 17 warnings omitted due to --no-warn option.
What irritates us is fax-spam. Email spam is at least tolerable because of the 'delete' button, but faxes are quite expensive per page. Add on top of that the fact that fax spam usually has some horrible black thing covering the page that's supposed to be an image.
We got a 10 page (!) spam through fax once and it ate up all our toner. This is a low volume machine, so that toner would have lasted *months* (on regular simple black text on white paper transmissions) were it not for this FREE VACATION shit.
This is pretty neat. It's sad though, that things have had to come to this point on the net, but it's nice to think that one day there won't be any spam...
Um, this is my sig.
I have no problem filtering spam, but it's still a hassle. There's never going to be filters/rules that will catch all spam. It's also a pain for ISPs, who have to help a customer out, because someone is relaying 10,000 messages off their smtp server.
As for advertising new site, why not pay for banner adds on a high traffic site? I have no problem with that, and often click through if I think they're interesting. I'm not sure of the actual stats, but I would bet a paycheck that tech companies who advertise on Slashdot, or Cnet get a much higher return that spammers who send 8 million messages out.
Um, this is my sig.
;)
Facetiousness aside, Spammers place a significant burden on the internet as a whole, in terms of time wasted deleting the mails, resources wasted in having to accomodate the extra mail traffic, etc. It's not "free", they just get other people to pay for it. At least with paper junk mail, the money comes out of their pockets, not mine & my ISP's.
Pointing out how easy it is to delete an individual spam message kinda misses the point that it's not as easy to delete hundreds of them, or to route all those bits around.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Small claims can have an affect on a company. In many states, probably CA as well, a corporation needs legal representation for small claims court, while an individual can represent themselves. While you have to waste some of your time, the corporation has to pay for a lawyer to represent it.
This page was generated with the help of DOC++.
I'm pissed at the phone company. I have caller ID, but the phone company is trying to sell it to me again. Has anyone noticed that over time more and more calls say "Anonymous" or "Out of Area", etc? Well, I get a phone call from the phone company telling me that if I buy this new add-on service (I forgot the name) ALL calls will be displayed with caller and number. I told them I am already paying for Caller ID and don't want to pay for it twice every month. I'm thinking of cancelling now since without the add-on it's basically worthless nowadays.
I don't know about you, but I value my personal days at quite a bit more than $50 too. It's worth far more to me than $50 to not have to spend one of my days off in a courtroom (in fact, I'd really much rather be at work than in court) rather than saving it for a nice summer day and using it to golf or canoe. There have been a few people in the past year that I wanted to sue, but I really find that it's not worth the trouble just for the sake of getting back at someone. However, your desire for revenge may be stronger than mine, perhaps the satisfaction of being told that you're right is worth enough to you to take a vacation day.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
And I shouldn't use my insightful comments to slashdot to advertise my stuff in my signature either.
What you should do is send the notice, but without promoting anything else.
So, basically, my Good Reverend, you want to reduce your spam level but not make any effort yourself to do so :-)
;)
That's correct. I also want a ban on wildlands oil drilling, but I'm not chaining myself to bulldozers.
I submit that until you start doing some of the work yourself, you will not ever reduce your level of spam.
I do. I have filters, and I hit delete. I also vote for congressional representitives who represent my views. And I post to slashdot. That's GOT to count for something
Until you start helping the rest of us that take the time to actually complain about it, may your mailbox be infested with the excrement of spammers!
Do you bite your thumb at me?
Here's a tip: spammers have "flamers lists" that they use to weed out addresses that are known to complain a lot...
I'm interested in such a list...keep looking!
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
I'm glad someone took the time and effort to sue someone for spamming. Maybe it'll make other companies think twice before spamming me.
On second thought, it probably won't, unfortunatly.
Until then, I have my good friend, the "delete" key. Takes a second, gets rid of my problem. It's not THAT difficult.
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
There's plenty of horse-drawn wagons in New York City. More than there are cars in most other cities.
I'd have to disagree with you, in at least one specific case. QWest kept calling us and offering free hook up on all kinds of extras: call waiting, three way calling, etc. After about the 6th time my wife told them to never call us again concerning services and place us on the do not call list. A few weeks later we received a letter confirming what she had said, that we had been placed on the do not call list, and that they would maintain that information for 10 years. We haven't received a call from them for months now.
Man, or should I say boy, it's people like you that burn a hole in me. You just have to go around and stick your nose up at everyone else. You just have to prove that you're so much better than the rest of us.
Hey, fella - go way. We don't need your stinkin' aristocratic attitude around here.
I'm all for bitchslapping spammers, but Kozmo was the best thing in my life. And now Kozmo is gone. And you rub it in my face by _suing_ them for 50 dollars, when you should have been _giving_ them 50 dollars and thanking them for lugging groceries, munchies, booze, cigarettes and pr0n to your lazy ass. Kozmo took care of me when I was sick, tired or just feeling lazy. Everything from a Dreamcast and a bunch of new and used Dreamcast games, to the weekly cherry garcia frozen yogurt cravings. At least one DVD purchase a week, and usually a rental every week or two. Occasionally even a porn DVD rental, which I never would have ripped to a DivX movie and distributed globally, or anything like that. I got fed because of Kozmo - I work 80 hours a week, and don't have time to go to grocery stores. I got laid because of Kozmo - you can take a girl home after a date and order movies from Kozmo and skip that unromantic trip to the video store, not to mention you have to sit around for 45 minutes waiting for the movie. I was _always_ getting it on by the time the movie got to my apartment. I was happy because of Kozmo. They made my workaholic, geeky life bearable. DON'T SUE MY KOZMO, DAMMIT! KOZMO, COME BACK! NOOOOOOO......
About that hypothetical telephone solicitation. If you have an established business relationship, you can't do a thing about it. They can call you all they want and let you know of their new services etc. They do not give an option to opt out nor do they have to. There are interesting restrictions for companies that do not have an established business relationship with you, however..
Yeah.. they were nice. They don't have to, though.. Competition sometimes helps getting companies nicer so that you don't dump them.. If you don't have a choice like in many places were you have a choice of one local carrier, you're sol. We used to have three options, then bell atlantic bought the other two and now there's one verizon..
Well, they expect that because people do this. I look at it as holding the line, at least.
I don't just go after the email and dial-ups though, I go for the server anytime I can. Many spams originate from .com scams - take out their website and the spam they got out becomes useless. I've gotten quite a few website kills over the years, it's particularly satisfying.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I used to do what you are doing, have you tried spamcop? It saves me a lot of time. I just forward the spam to spamcop@spamcop.net, I get a reply with a URL, hit the URL, it traces everything for you and prepares a letter you can send with the push of a button. Most of the time it gets stuff right, though of course you still need to double check everything before you send... but it's a great timesaver.
"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
As the article states:
"I filed suit in California Small Claims Court for $500 against Kozmo.com for violating our agreement and sections 17538.45 and 17538.4 of the California Business and Professions Code"
Looking up the sections that are referenced, it appears that a great deal may hinge on the interpretation of this paragraph:
In any action brought pursuant to paragraph (1), the electronic mail service provider shall be required to establish as an element of its cause of action that prior to the alleged violation, the defendant had actual notice of both of the following: The electronic mail service provider's policy on unsolicited electronic mail advertising. The fact that the defendant's unsolicited electronic mail advertisements would use or cause to be used the electronic mail service provider's equipment located in this state.
What this effectively means is that the case was won because she may reasonably be considered a form of service provider.
The status of "service provider" isn't something that just anyone can claim. What would have been the outcome had she been a regular internet user; I'd put my money on odds that she would have lost, and I think it is reasonable to say that her award of $50 (she asked for $500) demonstrates the premise that the judge "barely" accepted her points. I'd even go so far as to say that the judge sounds like he was leaning towards Kozmo.com...
No i'll be getting spam on how to win lawsuits against spammers.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
I'd be a millionaire if I sued every company that spammed me for $50
Which is essentially what I did. I think we announced the new features at the bottom of the e-mail, but it was a technically focused e-mail, not a salesy one.
It was a technical announcement.
You must to this, we apologize, your accounts now work with features X and Y...
There was a more salesy one that went out to the people that were interested.
I'm glad for this article, I understand California's laws better. I wish I still had the original e-mail, I'd post it to get feedback on it.
Alex
Okay, thanks, I couldn't get the details out of the site, it was /.'d.
/. thread, someone stop this...
I see your point. That's very salesy.
My, "sales" announcement was too the extent: we have our new discussion forums up. If you have feedback, e-mail: (email address and site hidden).
Yeah, I didn't see the Kozmo Ad at the bottom, okay, that is very sketchy.
I see what you mean regarding the administrative e-mail being excessive, also.
What do you guys think (not legal advice, ethical advice, the cost of $50 judgements is kinda insignificant regardless) is appropriate in a technical announcement.
Obviously, people opt-ing out shouldn't get routine e-mail. However, if there is a technical problem, you can obviously e-mail them. Is mentioning new features after the technical announcement WAY over board? Or is it only rude if you have a sales pitch there? I mean, once you send the e-mail...
That's for the comments...
Wow, a useful
Alex
Sometimes you actually need to get announcements out. We were running an early version of a client's website, and we had a problem with the client massively changing the system. We had to scrap the old user accounts, so we e-mailled everybody.
Under this kind of judgement, we'd have been considered spamming.
What should I have done?
Sometimes you need to send out announcements. It wasn't like Kozmo was sending you a weekly newsletter, they needed to send an e-mail.
I agree with the posts that this wasn't real scummy spamming.
I don't know why Kozmo did this, but I think that you blew one e-mail WAY out of proportion.
Alex
Read the damn email, you idiot. The reason she went after them was because they specifically sent this email to people who chose to opt out of receiving emails.
The world's fastest way to crash your webserver.
Take a document, scan it into a 130kb GIF file, then post a link to it on Slashdot.
--
Could someone with some actual lawyerly knowledge explain how this person's web site describing their dispute could possibly be used by the judge to decide to not award damages? This is, as the previous poster says on his site, ridiculous.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Yea, check out www.reversephonedirectory.com
Just three more hours seapeople and you can finally take me away from this crappy God Damned planet full of hippies
Thanks for this link! You just made my day! :-)
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
When an ad proclaims, "Available now for less than $50!", you can bet the price is closer to $49.99 than to $.10. Just because of the comparison, even though both amounts would be valid, computationally.
Besides. I was attempting humor. I didn't really think the poster made $6.24/hr (just less than $50/8hrs).
And, no I don't make anywhere's near $50/hr - especially if you count unpaid overtime for this salaried slave, er, employee. And I'm private sector, too.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
- You're a student (High School)
- You're an India-based programmer (how's Whistler coming along?)
- You're WebVan's new CEO
Most of us would lose $50 for taking off 1/8th of our day...-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
yeah, i think i owe them about $25... too bad i can't actually find the tape i need to return: Brazil.
[|]
You Killed Kozmo!
;-)
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
When you call to first activate a card, you may request that the issuing company does not send you any balance transfer checks- it's like a bit they set in your customer profile. You may call the 800 number on the back of all your existing cards and ask them to stop sending you BT checks. If they ask you for a reason, don't tell them that you're sick of their junk mail- tell them that you have an unsecured mailbox and they're threatening your credit record.
You may also call the 3 credit reporting agencies and tell each of them to mark you as unwilling/unable to recieve solicitations for credit. They usually do this for people who have been on the victim end of an extensive identity theft- not someone just stealing your card and making a couple of purchases, I'm talking about applying for additional cards, setting up bank checking and savings accounts, applying for car loans and such. Tell the CRA's (ALL of them) you're afraid of having this happen to you- throw in something about mischevious teenage neighbors with computers and you should be all good.
I know all this because I moved in february, fwd all my snailmail at the post office 2 weeks before the move, and changed my address with all the companies I felt it necessary to continue to communicate with (WellsFargo, American Express, National Geographic, etc). For some reason, DiscoverCard still felt it was necessary to send BT checks IN MY NAME in the US mail to my old address. I got my statement last month, and there were 3 charges I didn't recognize, and when I called to report them the security agent on the other side was like, "Oh, good thing you called, because someone tried to do a $5000 balance transfer to your account yesterday. Do you know anyone named Isiaih?"
So I'm not out anything, but Discover screwed itself for a couple thou by spamming me. I guess the new business they get offsets the risk...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Wow... someone actually sued an out-of-state .com company, had a represenative show up, and won the case! Has anyone ever done this with good old CyberThrill.com? They still owe me over $600 for click-throughs almost two years ago. I have made countless phone calls to their parent company, "the Internet Entertainment Group Inc.," including some to their office in the Bahamas, all to no avail. I still want my god damn money!
Cary Wiedemann
I'm glad to see that spam laws were upheld in the courts. But this isn't the kind of spam that upsets me. The spam that I wish I could stop are the ones that come from Overseas and have every header spoofed and flood to random words@ hoping they find an account. It really sucks if they hit an account if I have a "catchall" setup.
.kr or .jp but that really isn't the solution and I can't do that because of customers that are e-mailing to people in those areas.
I'm borderline ready to shut down all mail with
I can trace down the domain and block that domain but they will just find a new one. Whenever I try to contact a non-US sys admin they generally don't reply in English and nothing is resolved. I've had excellent luck with working with US Sys admins in the past. I'd like to think I've shut down some of the bigger spammers for the community.
My own mail server is guilty of relaying messages that have been forged to look like they are coming from my domain. I don't know how to fix it in sendmail, but I'm going to work on it today.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
First, I've fixed the problem since this morning. I only discovered it two days ago.
But maybe you are right.
Unfortunately small businesses have to start somewhere and we started with setting our own equipment up to the best of our ability which is constantly changing. We can't hire anyone that knows what they are doing until we've got enough flow to cover our own butts.
And I should clarify that spam wasn't sent out through my server, (I used the word relay but that was incorrect in the traditional sense of relaying mail), it could only be received internally if they forge the header and say it's from me.
So they could send spam to people using my domains.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
unless the company knowingly allows spammers to use their service - see UU.net
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
That doesn't stop the junk fax. I get at least 1/week on an unlisted #. Many try to hide by selling ads for non-profits. The Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a fax spammer. Their service is supplied by Fax.com. I find it disgusting that a legitimate non profit that does genuinely good work would stoop to such a low level to raise revenue.
Spammers cost money by the resources they consume. The really stupid ones are even worse. One spammer even has virui attached to their spam. Tell me that isn't harmful. Taking my bandwidth, time, and resources costs me. When I visit a web site, some of the bandwidth I don't pay for, but the advertisers etc do. They pay the website to get their ad in front of me (what the filters don't catch). The spammer takes, and doesn't allow me a choice. If thats your legit email, you will soon find yourself deluged in spam as your email address is harvested.
As for the shower issue, no you don't have the right to force the other person to shower, but you DO have the right to not associate with them. They don't have the right to follow you around and force you to put up with them.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Not entirely. You can call 800-555-1212 and find out the reseller who owns the 800 number, and get the contact info for that reseller. You can then advise the reseller about the illegal activities of their customer and ask where to send the subpoena to obtain full customer information. This will rattle them and you will have as much info as you can get until you proceed with court action.
You can also try http://www.555-1212.com, but most times spammers aren't listed 800 numbers. Maybe we need a regulation/law requiring legit contact info for 800 owners, not unlike what is "supposed" to be done for web pages.
Also, perhaps a web page that lists and identifies these vermin? I can contribute a couple when I find the paperwork, including http://www.fax.com - a fax spammer. They were very upset when I finally tracked them down and identified them.
good luck
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
So the rest of the US can use that as a case law. If you did small claims court, each state has to have it's own version of it and while your case will be used as a 'see?' it does not hold weight. This was a California statute, though and the wording may and probably will be different between the states.
But it's worth a try to use it even if you are not in California.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
You searched for "bulk mail", the $4 ones are on "bulk email". See the diffrence?
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Agree! If I ever meet Ellen and her husband I'll buy them a beer. I am a partner in a small ISP in Berkeley. We get thousands of spams a day. Thanks to Ellen we now have case-law to use against these bozos. Look out Mr. "Increase the size of your dick". Your days are numbered.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Not long. How do you think they're going to dig up people for the class action lawsuits?
Hopefully this case will grab the attention of some lawyers to stop spamming.
I was walking in Darwin Hall this afternoon and saw something that disturbed me. Some company was looking for somebody with a large # of Northern CA University e-mail address to basically spam the list to tell about a yoga class. How this got to be a good idea, I don't know. Maybe they figure the people will need yoga after the stress of spam. I thought flyers were meant to alert people to this kind of class.
How this got to be "acceptable" I don't know. I am certainly not going to take the offer. If by any chance I do get a spam about yoga I will sure as hell try to sue.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
Both eBay's and Kosmo's actions were likely actionable without the need for the Californian law in any case.
Whether it's worthwhile for an individual to take action on that is questionable though.
someone has used a free domain name register to get the misspellings of Slashdot.org, things like Slasdot.org.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
eBay was doing something similar to this (in terms of unsolicited emails, not suing spammers) recently. Can anyone else smell a potential lawsuit?
It doesnt looks to me like a REAL standard piece of spam. Looks like someone waiting for a chance to get known in the midia.
And she won what ? She was asking for $500 and got $75,00. That's not even enough to pay for a lawyer.
In the next days you will see this thing in a lot of places and they will have some spot lights on their website and bussiness. And that's all.
I wanna see this happenning with a giant in the market !!!
Bring me MS,IBM,COMPAQ,DELL,AT&T and you will get a very happy guy.....
I'm ready... ready for the grid lock... i'm ready... ready for the push. (U2)
Oh yeah, real valuable. Paraphrase: Did you really KNOW that you could get sent spam by us (even though you did know that and explicitly declined?) Well, it's not too late!
Get real.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"It isn't a point of everyone gets it, it is a point of those who are lazy and lax in their policy get spam. Don't burden me, or feed the lawyers, with your stupid attepts to shoot yourself in the foot where privacy, and anonymity are concerned.
Personally, I would prefer that everyone on the net send a 10MB file to a spammer with REPLY several million times in it at the spammer, than ever have gotten lawyers involved. Even directed at someone incrorrectly. (including me)
I will defend to the death a spammer's right to spam me, but I have the right to spam spammers back, and delete their spam. ;) (with aplogies)
Just to remind you all in case you hadn't read clearly, the reason he was able to get damages is because he is a small isp for friends and such. Unfortunately, the average person isn't so I'm not sure how much the law applies - no get rich quick aggregate and class action suits ;(.
SSL Certificate
This incident has done something far more valuble than kick a dying company or provide $78 in monetary compensation! What this case does do is provide further precedent for future cases. If anyone in California ever decides to sue a large company over something like this they will need to show plenty of previous victories in spam cases or fall victim quickly to a wolfpack of lawyers from the opposition. I tip my hat to Ellen in her success in setting this precedent in California as it may also help in getting anti-spamming laws passed and enforced elsewhere in the future!
Tell them "please take me off your calling list."
They will. From what I remember FCC regulations set this up so that if you ask to be taken off their calling list, and they don't, you can sue them.
I went from at least 1 telemarket call a day (and usually 3 or 4) to none. Not one.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
I wonder how long it'll be before we see "MAKE BIG $$$$$ SUING SPAMMERS" spam...
If you don't want my koalas, baby, don't shake my eucalyptus tree.
That won't do a damn thing (unless the telemarketer is actually honest), and they are free to keep calling you. The proper response is "Please put me on your don't call list"
Well, how much spam do you get?
You could be a rich, yes, but would have to give up your day job and stop going out at night for beers! (at least I would, being that I get so damn much of it).
Spammers are getting smarter, too. She was lucky that she knew who was spamming her and could get contact information. For much of the spam I receive, it seems as if I'd need to hire a PI, and probably need court subpeonas, to find out who even sent it.
She won $50, so it's a moral victory of a sort, but was it worth her time?
Until then, I have my good friend, the "delete" key. Takes a second, gets rid of my problem. It's not THAT difficult.
So, basically, my Good Reverend, you want to reduce your spam level but not make any effort yourself to do so :-)
I submit that until you start doing some of the work yourself, you will not ever reduce your level of spam.
Until you start helping the rest of us that take the time to actually complain about it, may your mailbox be infested with the excrement of spammers!
Here's a tip: spammers have "flamers lists" that they use to weed out addresses that are known to complain a lot. I'll be damned if I can find a URL right now to such a list, but I know I have various addresses on the list (and, the lists are used by spammers that want to "joe-job" antispammers as well :-)
Congradulations! I think I would have gone with the 10 Kozmo dollars. You never know how valuable they would be with today's exchange rates.
Suing people is crazy stuff. Check out the info on my case at http://hifiho.tsx.org or http://hifihospitalhijinks.freeyellow.com
The judge didn't like me creating a webpage about my wrongdoing. The case was dismissed. It sucked.
funk
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
Darn it! Now you've spammed /.! Give me $50 at once!
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Spammers will just move elsewhere.
There is someone trying to do this suespammers.org
For another example of a multiply negative anti-spam checkbox look at The Times
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/09/1648257.shtm l
End spam? It might slow spam from legit businesses. But what about all the fly-by-night operations? What about all the stuff routed through china, korea and the former eastern block? What about the mailing lists that never check for bounces? The idiots of put up "fake" email addresses on web sites, only to end up subscribing someone else to the list?
Somewhere.Com gets more than 2 million messages a year--all to non-existent addresses. (See SpamWatcher's realtime log). Legislation isn't going to solve spam. Court suits aren't going to stop spam.
Every bit helps. And certainly anything that educates legitimate businesses is a boon. (I just had to explain to a web site operator why using a web form and open mail relays to run an "anonymous mail service" was not a legitimate business model.) But there's no magic bullet.
Or..... you could go to a semi-out of the way block of pay phones, dial the 800 number on each phone (which you can do with no money since it's toll free) and leave the phones dangling off the hook. You use up their lines and you cost them money.
Precisely!
sulli
RTFJ.
You told us not to bother you. But someone else told us you might be wrong! So we're bothering you.
The writer should get some kind of award, anyway...
sulli
RTFJ.
"Getyoursoftware"- They paid the most, at $4.64, so why not give them some value?
http://www.windows100.com/?source=goto is advertising the same product as http://www.freesecret.com/ and http://www.bulkemailsoftwaremarketing.com/ . They all have the same corny pitches about people who made "millions" working at home spamming 63 million users. Apparently you can get either a 3 day vacation free with your order (WHAT?! It cost more than that to visit Alcatraz!) or a large address list. Yeah, sure.
Then check out the prices they pay per link- insane. The only down side to this plan is that GoTo is making money off this. Oh well. To me, this just underscores the kind of business spamming is, although I almost wish they'd make this software illegal too.
I don't like receiving spam either, but I get around it by only giving out my email address when absolutely necessary. They have every right to exist, whether or not you like what they do. If you don't, don't do business with them. But don't try to force them out of business. This is just another anti-American law passed by the Kommie Kalifornians.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Had Kozmo settled out of court, there would have been no precedent set. However, a judgement was made. If they appeal and the ruling is confirmed, then precedent is set. If they do not appeal, precedent has still been set.
---
---
Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
Hey, asshole, these fuckers who send us spam mail through the post office make our stamp prices go up. And these fuckers who send us e-mail SPAM STEAL OUR bandwidth, and STEAL bandwidth from the ISP, thus making our ISP costs go up. They also put undue burden on OUR computer systems with their graphics/animation-intensive e-mails. Btw, its not like this person was suing for millions of dollars(only a few hundred): was suing for the PRINCIPLE. SPAM should be OPT-IN, not OPT-OUT, and someone's "right" to "express himself," should NOT come at the expense of MY system, or of MY ISP's resources.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Look, I am ALL for the right to freely express one's self, and the right to pass information along. However, YOU do not have the right to send me crap if I ask you to stop, and I really do NOT want you or some other SPAMing fuck wasting my bandwidth in the first place with some 10Mb porno add of a woman sitting on her fist, OKAY? Yes, there is the right to free speech. But you don't have the right to USE MY TIME/MY MONEY/MY ISP's bandwidth(thus driving up MY ISP cost) to freely express yourself. If you want to deliver graphic ads to me, you should have to ask me to opt-in with a small text message first. This is really no different than the fax case. Yes, these groups have the right to express themselves: but they don't have the right to sell my fucking fax number to millions of other companies, and WASTE my ink, or waste my paper, or waste MY time. What these fax-SPAMers do is USE MY MONEY to advertise THEIR PRODUCTS. This is WRONG. Now, as for my opinions on distributing DeCSS, the ppl who distribute it PAY for their server access, or set up their own servers. As for Napster and other stuff, information should be freely exchangeable between voluntary participants, irrelevant of the kind. The key word there is between voluntary participants. You do not have the right to send me large 10Mb animated e-mails to advertise YOUR products any more than do anti-choice nut-cases have the right to hammer a burning cross in my yard to "freely express their hatred of women". That is what you are doing: using MY physical property, MY money, to express yourself.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
can anyone say "WarDialer"?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
you forgot the scarcasm tag genius....oh wait you we're being serious.....then you need to use this tag
there much better
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
It's easy to ignore these trolls that always get posted when there is a spam thread, but we should analyze this a bit and see what the real costs are.
It may take a quarter of a second to delete an e-mail, but consider the total time of loading the subject lines, reading them and then deleting. It's hard to measure, but I'd estimate at least 2 seconds of my time before the message is gone. A few are not obvious spam and take much longer to download and read enough of to decide to delete. The average goes way above 2 seconds each.
The typical billing rate for a Senior Software Engineer would be about US$0.025 per second. Thus, the minimum cost to delete an e-mail is US$0.05 and may average a couple of times that.
Just to see what the total effects of this spam are, let's take some order of magnitude estimates and do some multiplying:
Total cost of spam per year: US$500,000,000.
Holy cow! I did that computation while writing this and didn't expect it to be that big.
spam is not only an annoyance, it's expensive! (To everyone but the spammer).
2. Yippee. The Good guys got paid.
3. It was only a lousy $50.00.
I applaud the effort, and it's VERY cool that you won, but I'm disappointed that you didn't get the $500.00 you expected.. Fifty bucks is fifty bucks, but come on, that barely covers dinner. If I take a day off I lose more money than that.
Not really. My work is pretty cool and it wouldn;t be a problem.... but you get my point. I just wish it would've cost more than the lawyers+$50+court costs.
Lawyers are also expensive. It probably cost the company more in Lawyers fees than the actual judgement.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I thought that this was great until I read the actual laws involved. The California Business & Professions Code 17538.45 (the law that the individual sued under) states that an Email Service Provider (ESP) may sue individuals and companies that send Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) over their servers.
The only reason that the individual was able to win her suit was because her email is forwarded to one machine to another which (in her words) 'may make [her] qualify as an electronic mail service provider'.
This is indeed a victory but it's a small one. The responsibility still lies with the ISPs. Most individuals won't qualify as an ESP and, therefore, can't sue.
As someone else suggested, go to goto.com and search for "bulk email", just by clicking the top 5 links you can cost spammers $20.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
This is great, I just cost spammers $20 in less than a minute. I suggest everyone do the same.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Here's the offending spam, reprinted from the website:
Delivered-To: spertus@mills.edu
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2000 23:16:08 -0500
From: Kozmo Customer Service
To: Valued Kozmo Customer
Subject: Service Update from kozmo.com
Through customer feedback we heard that many of our members like you,
who originally opted not to receive occasional e-mail news from us,
would like to change their preference. Now, you can opt-in to our
subscriber contact list via the Web site -- http://www.kozmo.com -- by
clicking the "My Account" button, going to the "My Personal Info"
section and entering your e-mail address. If you choose not to
opt-in, your original preference will not change.
You also may not have heard about a new service at kozmo.com that
revolutionizes gift giving. When you first joined kozmo.com, you
could have products delivered to your door in under an hour. Now you
can use our new gifting feature to have any item on the site delivered
as a gift to anyone in our service areas in 11 cities across the
country.* Every item we carry -- from DVDs to MP3 players, diapers to
baby blankets, gourmet chocolates to martini glasses -- can be sent as
a gift. We can deliver your gift in our new signature orange box with
a personal greeting. We'll even deliver gifts on Christmas Day!
You can also subscribe to our e-mail updates by replying to this
e-mail and typing OPT-IN.
Happy holidays and thank you for choosing kozmo.com.
Best regards,
Your friends at kozmo.com
*Subject to inventory and service ability. When sending a gift, please allow
extra time for gift processing and packaging.
Copyright 2000 Kozmo.com, Inc.
Although I agree with others that this particular e-mail is not a "scummy" spam (i.e. one that has come from a third party that you have no direct or indirect affiliation with), it is a spam nonetheless.
Kozmo used the facade of being concerned that their customers did not know about their opt-in program to send a spam regarding their new "gift" system. Clearly, this is an advertisement.
Kozmo could have just as easily sent an e-mail expressing concern and sent ANOTHER e-mail to those that opted in advertising their new service. Clearly, they did not do this because the real purpose was to advertise the service, not express concern.
--
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
After I switched my phone service from AT&T to another carrier, AT&T started regularly calling to get me to come back. The first time, I listened to the schpiel, it wasn't a better deal, so I thanked the nice lady for her time and told her to have a nice day. She was pretty cool, and only protested once.
The second time, the guy who called was a bit more insistent. I told him that, yes, I had changed my service, and yes, I was happy with what I had, and no, I didn't want to change at this time. He protested for a few tries, and I finally told him, "Look, fella, it won't work. Bye," and hung up.
The third, fourth, and fifth times, they got my roommate, who pays me money after I pay all bills. After the fourth call, my roommate called me and told me AT&T wanted to talk to me. I asked how many times they'd called. Since it was an hour before I got home, I decided to get good and angry.
I get home, and the phone rings three minutes after I walk in. [You'd think they'd bugged my apartment or something in the interim.] The guy calling sounded fairly official, so I cut him off right away. Since it was the truth, this is what I told him, but if you want to steal it, you can. You must sound very commanding doing it, but I said:
I either scared the shit out of him, or he hung up while I was ranting, because there was dead air on the other line.
And hey, my roommate ph34rs me now.
--
-- Geof F. Morris
Uh oh slashdot - now she's going to sue you next for spamming her web server with millions of slashheads ;-) Incredibly, the text-only site is REALLY crawling for me and seems to be on the brink of joining the list of slashdotted sites. Why does this always happen to the stuff I'm really interested in.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
So avoid leaving a pattern on YOUR line by using payphones instead.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Not much I can do about the bogus penny-stock scams, other than forward to the SEC, which I've already been doing.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They shouldn't have antagonized her like that. Kozmo should have just ignored it.
Still, it's kinda silly to think much of a local small claims ruling when you're talking about something on the scale of spam. Yeah, it's California, but it's a frivilous dispute. You can't be expected to take days off to deal with spammers one at a time with those kinds of payments being extracted. And even if you did manage to get draconian and encourage spammers to hide thier identites completely with aggressive prosecution, would you really be in a big advantage? No way, you'd just get a different quality of spam.
A lady sued the phone solicitor who kept pestering her, also in small claims court
My other sig is extremely clever...
wow... you even got a Score:4
I figured this site might get slashdotted so I quickly created a mirror. Click on the URL to my site and it's right there on top.
Or Click Here
Granted my site is nothing fancy but then again I never proposed that it was....
Linuxrunner
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
thats the least spammiest spam i've ever seen! .com. hey buddy! you've made it on my list of people never to do business with! (you're actually the only one on it right now). they sent you a quasi-helpful email, and thats it.
thats....almost....legitimate!
why didnt you spend your time/effort going for those who really send you completely unsolicited junk mail?
jeez, poor
Ellen, not Allen
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
I mean no offense however when I tell you that I'm sticking to my chicken fat slipping scheme. So far I've made tens of thousands of dollars, free groceries and theaputic massages. Life is good.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
Hello,
This is not SPAM, this is only an unsollicited commercial email. This email has been sent to you because your email address was in a list that we purchased. You can be removed bij sending a mail to fwsdgsdfgb465gdfg41@fictiveemail.fuck
You can now get rich very quickly by an action that will not take one minute.
Ducon LaJoie from Springfield,CA got rich by doing this. It is really simple. You won't regret it.
This is the trick : send us $50 along with your credit card numbers, and we will provide you with the information on how to SUE US. It's LEGAL!
Ellen, as a fellow Californian I'd advice you to ignore the naysayers and futilists who'll sit hunched over their keyboards, tapping the "Delete" key furiously and saying it's either too much hassle or not a big enough deal to worry about.
Exercising one's right as an individual not to be bothered by hucksters large or small in your email account, mailbox or phone is always going to be a hassle. I'm sure it felt like more trouble than it was worth too, to put together all you documents, go to court, and plead your case so that the law passed to protect you could mean something.
Sorry to run up the flag on /.ers, but ensuring the validity and usefulness of the laws that are passed to help you is YOUR job, not the government's. If spam is flooding your mailbox and pissing you off but you don't want to exercise your rights & priveleges enough to get rid of it and recoup damages to you (meager though they may be) then you simply deserve every piece that sits there eating disk space & bandwidth.
More than any mass-mailing program, spammers use your apathy for profit. No apathy, no profit.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
This seems overly lame.
If it had been used on someone whom this person did not have a business contact established with I could stand with the crowd and say "yeah". As it is it appears that the California legislature and courts have invented a new money maker for the trial lawyers...
this is not an example of what I would call a moral victory... this is more like a "I want my name in lights" type stuff.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
DON'T DO THIS! Don't try to make ISP's in charge of regulating traffic. If ISP's are sued for spam charges, then they will feel a need to register all sorts of traffic.
This is a very slippery slope, and while I agree it could be effective against spam, it's not a road we want to go down. Not unless you want even more draconian TOS's than we have now...and for them to be rigidly enforced. I'm sure a lot of /.ers have rather large p0rn and MP3 collections and host servers n residential connections. These are forbidden in most TOS's, and if ISP's become responsible for their traffic, you can bet there will be a crackdown. Not to mention the possibility of segmenting off other networks because of "questionable" content. This would not be a good thing...think about it.
It's not an ISP's fault if a company sends Spam. The ISP (should be) simply providing a link to the Internet. What is done with that link is the company's/individual's business.
I'm pretty laidback so I wouldn't be calling numbers from spam in the first place (heck, I delete this type of spam outright), but if I did call I would do so from a pay phone.
What people should be doing is to sue the actually ISP that allowed this to continue. Then, you don't make some tiny company go out of business, the ISP takes a big hit, and they will ensure it doesn't happen again.... After all, we wouldn't have spam if ISPs enforced their own TOS.
I definately don't want the ISPs monitoring all the traffic generated, but my point is that most ISPs will tell you to get lost when you report spam comming from their clients. Now when they are made aware of violations and do nothing about it, then they should be responsible.
Is my point clear now?
Normally I'd be on your side, but they used this as an excuse to include spam. The second paragraph is pure spam, and I'd have to say the nature of the email seemed to be spam because it had more advertising than it did content. A business relationship email should not include any promotional material IMO. Even account-oriented material is borderline. Maybe that's why she only got $50 instead of $500? There was spam, but it was also valuable information to the customer. If what you did contained a lengthy advertisement inside it, I'd say what you did was wrong. If not, I'd say it wasn't :)
One judgement for $77 won't do much, but it will show Californians that they can win in court. Two judgements for $77 still won't do much. However, 10 court dates (somebody had to be paid to appear in court) and 10 judgements for $77 and you've substantially multiplied the cost of spamming.
Now in Ohio where I live, a judgement in small-claims court is pretty much unenforceable. You could spend many times the amount of money in a judgement trying to collect on it and even then wind up with nothing.
Furthermore you aren't legally required to show up at small claims court. So if you get sued by 10 different people with 10 different court dates you could simply skip them all. Now the plaintiff would get a summary judgement since you didn't show up, but that takes me back to my first point.
Again, this is in Ohio, so California may be a little different. But it seems to me that the small-claims nature of such suits are pretty much harmless. A class action suit would definitely be the way to go. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even mind seeing a bunch of attorneys getting rich off of killing spammers, so long as they were sucessful at it.
And in other news, AP is reporting that Hell has frozen over. While this might sound good for those heading there soon, it doesn't appear that this will make Hell a better place to live, but it does make for a good sounding headline.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Hmm, lets see after the gas to the court office, the time, effort and resources for printing, etc. you just might be only $20 in the hole.
Really, are all things worth fighting for or are you just an old grump with no life?
Since you run a mail server, would it have been that difficult to setup a 30-second filter, or even press delete? I don't reall think whole $50 in principal damages are going to stop any spammer from making money.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I've pondered this as a potential money-making strategy for the internet before: What about setting up an e-mail company dedicated to creating a class-action lawsuit against all the major spammers? One arm would be involved in creating software and protocols to intercept spam and reply to the offending organizations with legally worded "don't spam me again" messages, the second arm would be engaged in research to insure that it located the true perpetrator of the spam and to track any specious legal transformations they migh engage in to avoid hassle/litigation, and the final arm would be engaged in preparing a massive lawsuit to sieze their assets and make spam a thing of the past. I'm ready to sign on! I would be satisfied to make 5 bucks if it meant doing irrepperable harm to the dogs that run the major spam lists.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
They send her spam that says "we thought you might actually be wanting some spam, so here's how to sign up for spam."
You ask me, they deserved what they got. And let's face it: most of these failing dot-coms deserve everything they get, becuase they started stupid companies with dicey money and then swiftly ran them straight into the ground. Stop a moment and ponder on the fact that if providing some sort of valuable, valid SERVICE had been a bigger goal than gettin' rich real quick, the whole Dot-Com bubble might have actually created some sort of value in society, rather than just turning a whole lotta dollars into a whole lotta nothin'.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I think it's not uncommon for larger companys to try again even after you opted out.
A German freemail service (gmx.de) once did sent me an email saying something like
You did not check ANY of our newsletter features. As we suspect this might be an error, we checked all of them for you. Please sign in and uncheck all options you are sure not to want.
Did these guys really think their customers are THAT stupid ???
bow
Now can I bug you for a buck to save my fsckedcompany from going out of business!
why hackers scare me
360 degrees of Karma
write "For a good time call (spammer's 800#)" on the bathroom wall at the bus station. 8-)
The first is your traditional account-fishing, mass-mailing, waste-of-space spammer. These are the guys who want you to MAKE MONEY FAST, TRY MY NEW DIET PILLS, and RID YOURSELF OF SPAM FOREVER (one of my favorites.) And yeah, these guys are generally hard to track down because they use fake addresses, bounce their spam off of unsecured mail servers, and use dial-up accounts, so they don't have a static IPs.
The second group, and the group that I feel is more insidious, is the legitimate businesses. Any idiot can spot one of the aforementioned spams from a mile away, but when I get a piece of e-mail from a real company, and it looks like someone with at least a 5th-grade education wrote it, I'll usually read it. In this case, the plaintiff specifically asked not to get e-mail from this company, and they sent her crap anyway. They even went so far as to tell her that they knew she opted out of getting e-mail from them, but they just wanted her to know she could.
This is nothing but thinly-veiled bullshit. Apply this to almost any other situation, and it becomes evident that this practice is wrong. For example, let's say I just moved, and I got a new phone installed. When I called the Phone Co., they asked me if I wanted some add-on service, like Caller ID, which I declined. Now, let's say in a month, I get a call from someone at the telephone company, saying that they know I didn't want Caller ID a month ago, but they thought I might be interested in it now. I can assure you that you wouldn't want to be in the room if I got that call. (Well, actually, it might be kind of funny...)
The only reason some people think this is OK with e-mail is because they pay a fixed rate per month (rather than per byte or kilobyte), and they can just delete the mail in a split second. Well, some people do have to pay for data transfer (or connection charges for time on-line, and over a modem, spam can add up), and this is still a waste of my time, whether it's a second of my time (in the case of spam), or ten minutes of my time (in the case of a phone call, where I'd be conversing with the unfortunate soul on the other end of the line for a while.)
Executive Summary: Spam that is blatantly spam is bad, but spam that poses as genuine business-to-business or business-to-consumer marketing is even worse. All forms of spam should be stopped post-haste.
The only reason some people think this is OK with e-mail is because they pay a fixed rate per month
But you =r ISP pays by the byte to recieve the spam, and guess where the ISP gets its money from? Just because it doesn't appear on your bill doesn't mean you're not paying for it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Probably would have gotten the full $500 if she had filed with Judge Judy.
You can put lien on a building or something. They (or their creditors) won't be able to sell the asset without paying you off. Then you can negotiate for a percentage. Threaten to go to court to fight for more.
I don't know the particulars about your organization, but I can't tell you how many times I got bit by the stupid opt-out policies of various spammers. It is borderline deceptive for the checkboxes on some web sites to be automatically set to "spam me", and then made a small typeface, or hidden where they're unlikely to be noticed.
I legitimately gripe to companies that spam me because I "voluntarily" opt-in like this. Since I don't want or request junk mail from any company for any reason, _all_ ads I get in my inbox are targets of my ire.
Could this be similar to your company's policies?
God bless your company, it sounds like you guys are doing it right!
Truth be told, I very rarely recieve spam from mainstream companies. 90% of it leans towards the get-rich-quick, grow-new-hair, get-dirty-pictures varieties. When I apply the word "evil", these are the outfits I have in mind.
If I do business with a company online, and get a subsequent ad from them, it doesn't really bother me unless there's no clear, easy, and functioning way to stop the flow.
The one thing mainstream companies often do that gets me even more steamed than spam itself is when they hand my email address over to spammers.
For a while, I used the old postal spam tracking trick of giving your name out in minor spelling variants to see who sells you to, so I could avoid doing business with the worst of them. Online, I do the same thing.
Um....You can't get billed for dialing an 800 # directly from the phone company. That only works with 900 numbers. The only way to get billed through an 800 number is if you give them a credit card or something else over the phone. Thats the whole purpose of 800 numbers, you know they are free.
Message: Aerosol Assault will be met with flying butt pliers?
That kind of response would end spam in an instant. It would disappear from the Internet just like horse-drawn wagons from New York City.
--
spam spam spam spam spam spam
No one expects the Spammish Repetition!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
A couple of minutes later I'll pick it up and ask if they're still there; often they are. "Thanks, please keep holding" I'll ask.
Five minutes later I'll pick it up and ask if they're still there. Usually they aren't. If they are, I ask them to keep holding.
Eventually they hang up.
If they don't recognize that "No, thank you" means that I'm not going to buy their product, then they deserve to waste their time listening to silence instead of bothering other people.
When I was in private practice I used to turn the tables on them and start trying to sell them my services. Eventually they'd spend the whole call trying to decline my offer, never getting a chance to sell their product, while I was being as persistent as they were.
They're mostly working off a script, so do anything to throw them off the script. Start sharing recipes with them, ask who won the Lakers game, pretend you're their long lost Uncle Charlie, or whatever.
If they're going to be pests you might as well at least have some fun with them. Just my $.02. Keep the change.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
I suppose if you have the time you could leave a message for them asking them to call you back at a pay phone or bogus number.
Not that I'm advocating such actions, of course. :)
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
Who the hell said that Kozmo was honest in their e-mail anyway ? You guys shouldn't really believe everything you read.
That could have been bullshit all the way, with a small web-bug in the e-mail body or any other nasty tricks like it.
I'm a radical person and if we have to be radical to stop SPAM then so be it.
And for the Spam question, this ain't a question of laws. Spam is anything coming into my mailbox that i didn't want. Conclusion, this was Spam, period.
Evolving with the fastest, not the slowest.
Couldn't there be some kind of distributed app made to clog these 800 numbers and discourage spammers? (a futile battle, I'll admit) Kinda like a seti@home using home PC's, corporate and university servers, at random so the phone company doesn't get wise. Maybe even call 'em over TCP/IP (no charges).
Just a thought.
Moon Pie. What a time to be alive. (Frostillicus)
Uncheck this box if it's not the case that you don't want to not receive daily newsletters and product updates neither from us, nor our affilates, unless not authorized by us.
--
Oh, that's very easy. Wind up in ChexSystems, thanks to the idiots at US Bank.
I haven't had one single credit card company or financial institution send me any junk mail in 5 years. Ugh.
Or, avoid buying checks printed by the Deluxe Corporation (the company that owns ChexSystems) because if you do, you open yourself up to tons of junk mail. They've been very well known for selling your information (financial information included) to third parties that specialize in sending junk mail. I found this out after wondering why I, someone that wasn't making any money and had no bank account wasn't getting any credit card offers while my roommate that made $50k + was constantly getting "Platinum VISA card - preapproved!" offers in the mail.
Advertisers suck. They'll leech whatever information they can just so they can hurl junk mail at you.
Great, the site advertises "Net Detective" - yet another piece of crap that spammers advertise.
I punched my own business phone number into that site and it came back with horribly inaccurate information. So, I went through the phone book and entered more numbers. All of them either "Not found!" or wildly inaccurate.
Please do this.
Please do what? Go out of business?
(*#&$%#$'in ambiguous reference.
I cannot see how spam helps a company, I mean when my inbox receives junk-mail it just makes me hate the company of whom is the cause of it. But I suppose the is aim getting themselves noticed.
Which only proves to myself that spam only comes from businesses that are doing badly financially or a business that has only just started up.
I suppose the common answer back will be just to delete every spam mail
One per week - sure.. but when it becomes the norm.. then it's time to take action.
It's a shame it's only a $50 compensation which she will never see - but I hope this is beginning of a movement to rid us all of spam/ube
Evil ZEN Scientist
When I posted the goto link today the top links were paying $4.64 per click now thanks to slashdoters clicking there links the price has dropped dramatically (there are only 2 above $1 ) I just wish we could do this every day
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
you can find the script here
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
goto goto.com put "bulk email" in the search field you will get a list of companys that sell spam software these companys pay goto.com per click if we slashdot those links we can cost these scum bags a fortune!
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
the best thing to do with 800 number spam is call the number It's costs the spammers money and their time especially if you leave your name and number and they call you back thats when you tell them how much you hate spam just imagine if 1000 people called their number every time they sent out spam it would totaly screw them up
for more spam fighting tips check this
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!
Reading this made me feel angry. Really angry. Angry enough to speak when I'm usually silent.
Don't get me wrong -- I hate spam. Really. A lot. I have so much of it I can't even use my mail. I think it IS criminal. But I also hate whining and kvetching and time wasted going after the people who aren't the real culprits.
Where do we draw the lines? Who are the real bad guys? Why are we suing a real company with a real product and real customers who probably shouldn't have sent out an unsolicited mail, but are far from being the real bad guys? You know who I am talking about. The 23o3p4ko@bluggaspucca.com guy who keeps trying to sell me sexual potency enhancers I don't need. why didn't we go after HIM?
It is a fine line to walk. What constitutes unsolicited mail? What if I click on the "mail me my password" button and put in another user name somewhere? Is the website going to be guilty of sending unsolicited mail because the real user didn't request it? What if I reply to someone via email whose email address is posted with his comment? What if someone writes back to me? Should I sue him too?
I don't like people who fight for a cause just to be fighting for a cause. Especially if I even THINK they might be doing it just to get money. Those people are on my $hitlist right along with the real spammers.
We need to set anti-spam legal precedences, but we need to set them CAREFULLY, or we will lose our freedom right along with the spam.
That's all I have time to write. I'm late for my court date of me vs. the major manufacturers of naugahyde. Poor little naugas. They need protection too.
---
General you are listening to a MACHINE. Do the world a favour and don't act like one.
Speaking of bribery, I'd like to make it illegal for any corporation to make campaign contributions to US Congressmen. That should get Congress back under the people's control.
I believe the odds of ending privacy-invading marketing are best as the state/commonwealth level. Congress is hopelessly enamored with keeping those campaign bribes--er, I mean CONTRIBUTIONS--flooding into their coffers. Governors and state/commonwealth Senators, Delegates, or whatever are MUCH more in tune with the needs of their constituents. It's the states/commonwealths, not Congress, that will ban spam, teletrespassing, and personal info sharing.
Here's a law I'd love to see: From now on, ALL places of business--including nonprofits/tax exempt stuff--would be required to follow the same privacy rules that lawyers do. It'd be a business/client privilege modeled after the attorney/client privilege in all 46 states, 5 commonwealths, three territories and the District of Columbia. Disclosure of ANY of my information to ANYONE without a signed, notarised Declaration of Permission from me would be a felony. (Obviously, an order from a judge would also be a permissible reason.) If that doesn't keep the empty suits in check, I don't know what will.
Try some of these websites:
http://www.suespammers.org
http://www.junkbusters.com
http://www.spamfree.net
So ya wanna email me, eh? Change