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.
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.
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. --
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.
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....
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.
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.
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
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.
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" ??
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").
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.
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.
Rule #1: Spammers lie.
Rule #2: If you think a spammer is telling the truth, see Rule #1.
Rule #3: Spammers are stupid
Sounds like your phone company's telespammers were exhibiting Rules #1 and #2.
I'm particularly convinced of this because just last night, I saw a marketroid from the DMA on National Business Report saying "consumers like to get notice of special offers" along with their credit card bills - in a piece that's explaining why you're (if you're in .us) getting all those "Privacy Notices" in the mail from your bank or brokerage.
(Basically, a new law forces them to let you opt out, but the opt-out doesn't give you anything useful, but the DMA is hoping that so few people bother opting out that they can use it as "evidence" in Congress that no privacy laws are required, because, after all, if consumers didn't like junk mail, they'd have opted-out ;-)
When multiple marketroids start saying the same thing, my bullshit detector goes stratospheric.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
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
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
- 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
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.
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
Not long. How do you think they're going to dig up people for the class action lawsuits?
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!"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"
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 :-)
Darn it! Now you've spammed /.! Give me $50 at once!
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
There is someone trying to do this suespammers.org
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
So avoid leaving a pattern on YOUR line by using payphones instead.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
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
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.
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.
Think you can protect your e-mail address? Think again. Spammers have even taking to address guessing: Every set of one, two, and three letters @ a domain to get people who use their initials. Some even go through dictionary guesses.
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
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.
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
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.
--
Please do this.
Please do what? Go out of business?
(*#&$%#$'in ambiguous reference.
"Would it make sense to go after every spammer who spams you? Probably not."
I think you are probably correct...
I get about 20-50 spams a day. I go after a small percentage of them by going through mail headers, and tracing it back to the isp. Sometimes with social engineering, I can get a lot of nifty info about the people behind the spam and have some fun. Sometimes there is actually enough info in the mail to identify people down to their home address (if you use the very useful tools/databases available to you on the www). You just have to get creative on how to track them down with the little info you have. I have found that social engineering is absolutely the best tool.
Now, I have never taken legal action before, but I have gotten quite a few booted off their isp, or added a significant amount of difficulty to their lives. I don't think it would be worth it or even possible to take legal action against all of them, because of the volume (in my case). My current technique takes up about 1-3 hours of my day, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. My sysadmin job is so boring, that spam fighting actually lightens up my day. =)
Anyway... the point is, we might not be able to sue them all, but I think if a few of us put some effort into it, we might be able to make it not worth it for the spammers.
daniel
s.e.c.r.e.t.m.e.d.i.a.g.r.o.u.p - secretmedia.org
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!