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Anti Spam Bills Continue
Brian D. writes "Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.'s has a great bill -- $500 penalty for each piece of spam a company sends. It passed overwhelming in the House last year, but this year businesses are being persuaded to "take off the gloves" to kill it." It makes interesting points, for example differentiating between spam, and spam with bogus headers (for which I think a $500 is to light. Punishment should be sweet and simple: launch spammers into the sun).
Ok... this will of course get immediately modded to flamebait, because the moderators are all crackheads... but... I have to say this anyway.
Now.. I hate spam just as much as the next guy and all, but I don't see the difference between spam, and regular snail mail junk mail. What is the difference? None of you are hammering your representatives to pass a law making it illegal to send unsolicited advertisements thru the US Postal system? What is the difference? Tell me. Don't start to bitch about how spam clogs up your mail servers, blah blah blah, because we all know thats not the case. You can say that all you want, but give me a break... whats the percentage of mail traffic going thru your server that is spam? 10-20% at the max? Big fucking deal you whining babies. Ehhh... I don't know why I'm wasting my time... This is going to get modded down so fast most people will never read it anyway. Fucking crackhead moderators.
Don't worry, if you only worked for the company, we'll only send you to the moon, not all the way to the sun.
If you are paying per e-mail you receive, paying for extra bandwidth from spam etc. Go get yourself a new ISP
And you call us ignorant. Who do you think pays for all the bandwidth that spammers use on the Internet backbone? ISPs. Who do you think pays for those ISPs? Us ISP users.
It doesn't matter whether ISPs bill us directly for the amount of bandwidth used, because we end up paying for it when they have to charge us extra to upgrade their connections just so we can receive all the damn spam that assholes like your ex-employer send out.
Personally I disagree with anti-spam laws, because there are better technical solutions; but people who don't understand how spam costs us money are far more ignorant than those who call for laws to protect them.
When your telemarketer calls me, you pay the long-distance fees.
When you send me bulk postal mail, you pay for the printing and the postage. (Indeed, bulk postal mail ends up subsidizing non-bulk mail, since it comes pre-sorted and thus costs the Postal Service much less.)
When you send a messenger around town who hangs a leaflet on my doorknob, you pay for the printing and the messenger.
When you send me spam email, I pay. I pay in ISP fees, which go to defray the costs of bandwidth consumed and disk space taken up. When you spam my work account, my employer pays. When you spam a public university or government account, the taxpayer pays.
You have every right to put your message out to the world at your own expense. You have no right to put it out at my expense, my employer's expense, or the taxpayer's expense. Spam is theft -- or, more accurately, spam is piecewise mailbombing; and mailbombing is a computer crime.
Rep. Bob Barr, others challenge House bill to reduce junk e-mail.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
I believe this displays a key defficiency in our government system. The people don't want the spam, business wants us to recieve the spam. Strangely they decide to side with business, so much for democracy.
The issue with spam faxes is much the same except that businesses didn't want to pay for that particular spam. Therefore a law got passed preventing it.
dagone it! When will these people get a clue.
Binder
This sounds remarkably similar to the Washington state junk e-mail law. Which is a pity, since that law's constitutionality has been challenged, and as far as I know, it has not yet emerged from that challenge.
I dunno, if I did my math right, $50K of gold is only 15.5 pounds... It might seem a bit heavy, but then they might just have an old laptop. :)
Don't you mean south of Canada? Last time I checked, most of Canada was at a higher latitude than Detroit. :)
Actually, the fact that there was no "User Unknown" error returned by your mail server is enough proof to the spammer that they sent the spam to a valid email address...
A spammer has put my Email address in the envelope-from. I get all his "user-unknown" bounces.
Does anybody have any hints on how to report this guy for forgery? We have about 3 weeks until we stop being able to catch him red-handed.
Roger.
So what I'd like to see would be like this: One unsolicited e-mail allowed from a business to one address.
The problem with this is that there are soooo very many "wannabe rich quick people". Or "small businesses". Whatever you want to call them.
And the hardcore spammers are the ones who will set up a new business to do a new run of that old database anyway.
So if you allow one spam per "from address", that would mean that there still is a very LARGE pool of people who can legitimately SPAM me.
The problem with spam is that it costs so little. Making a flyer and getting it distributed costs real money.
There would be no spam problem if sending a spam would cost 5 cents or so. If spamming were made legal, and the ISPs would be able to collect in bulk on those 5 cents, I wouldn't mind getting the occasional spam.
It would keep my internet costs down.
Roger.
The problem is not SPAM, it is people who respond to the ads and promises of SPAM. If, instead of going after the junk mailers, we proscecuted the idiots who respond to it, it will die off quickly. After all, SPAM only exists because they are getting people to respond.
If advertising on TV was shown to be 100% ineffective, guess what? No advertisements anymore (and also no TV).
Well, if the FBI sets up some bogus companies, sends some SPAM, and throws the respondents in Jail, boom, we get people afraid of the crackdown and they won't respond to any SPAM. Soon, the SPAMers quit.
Or, of course, we could just pummel the people who do respond and make them public displays of idiocy for everyone to laugh at and ridicule. That might work too.
...but they just keep bouncing off the case of my Enterprise 4500 server. It's turning into quite a mess in there.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
You dont think spammers connect to the internet? Are they not also paying for bandwidth? I do some consulting work for a company that has done a lot of spamming in the past. They currently have a 10Mbit/sec connection to the net. And there paying commercial prices for it.
A lot of spam is porn related. And porn sites have pictures. And movies. And Sound. And live movies. That takes up a lot of bandwidth. And bandwidth cost money. Probabaly a lot more then your mom and pop ISP pay.
As for hijacking some random mail server on the internet, thats a different issue. Thats unacceptable, probabaly illegal, and with a doubt immorial.
Of course, to win a case against a spammer who's sent you an email, you're going to have to prove he did it.
That's going to use up a hell of a lot of your time and resources.
Plus, in order to prove you didn't fake the whole thing, the court is going to need expert testimony as to the state of your system, to prove you didn't fake it.
It'll be too expensive to bring in an auditor every time, so of course your system will have to be monitored by "uncrackable" government-approved software.
Or, the law will be unenforceable, and just be yet another of the many thousands of laws on our books that nobody pays any attention to, and that contribute to the general decline in respect for the law in this country.
My procmail filter stops a hell of a lot more spam than the last anti-spam bill managed; all it did was add an extra few lines onto the end of each spam. Hitting the delete key wastes less of my time and resources than going into our already-overcrowded court system.
The most effective methods of fighting spam don't involve inviting Big Brother into closer scrutiny of your private life. Get over spam; if it's not effective advertising, it'll go away on it's own.
Could be bad when the Earth gets into litigation with the sun for sending unsolicited spammers...
That's OK, it's a one-time mailing, there is no need to request removal, and they were clearly marked as such in compliance with etc...
I'd lean towards lack of use. It's amazingly risky to carry around that much money in a single bill. Would -you- carry around a 10,000 bill, and risk forgetting to take it out when you washed your jeans?
-lx
I knew someone who went through airports regularly with way more gold than that. They never actually noticed...
-lx
They'd die of oxygen toxicity first. Oxygen becomes toxic to humans at ~2 atm pressure.
I'd start forwarding my spam to the honorable congressmen who support it, but Barr's Web site doesn't have an email address I can find (perhaps because of spam? ), and the link on Goodlatte's page to "e-mail Bob" goes to a lookup page for representatives' mailing addresses. Morons. (And what's with the cookies on the House Web site?)
I suppose the Securities Industry Association ("We are engaged and active in trying to slow this train down") will have to do.
Won't help. No matter what ISP you use, they have operating costs. Spam increases those costs. Either the ISP can absorb that cost instead of making a profit, or that cost will be included in the price that their customers pay, regardless of whether or not that amount is explicitly shown.
BTW, though, I agree that I don't want government involved in this, except to protect people from fraud. But some types of forged headers, done to avoid accountability, are a form of fraud. And that is especially true when it's done not just to avoid blame, but to shift that blame to an innocent party.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'd settle for recieving a cubic centimeter of flesh for each spam message sent
;-)
So, that would be one spammer penis then.
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The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
If you did that, you deserve what you get. I think for people to which $10k is a lot, that they'd be careful enough. Its an awful lot of bills to make $10k with $100 bills.
The government isn't that concerned about single $10k bills floating around, but the briefcases full of them going through airports, etc. The government is paranoid about money laundering and they think that making cash more of a pain to handle they will slow that down.
Fill in the blank:
"A $500 is to light as a _______."
A. CmdrTaco is to "ispell."
B. Dirty green paper is to luminescense.
C. CowboyNeal is to a social life.
D. Jesse Berst is to a competent technical reporter.
E. All of the above.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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Poliglut
I've been tracking the "Received" lines for a long time. But it is often difficult or impossible, even with the correct address, to send a complaint. The spam tends to get routed through a hijacked mail server, which in return often does not include the originating spammer's IP address. And if the hijacked server is not in the US, things get more complicated. I have received a lot of spam from Korea lately, where the mail server's hostname is not available (only its IP), and whois only turns up the country's national network contacts. Additionally, many of these hijacked hosts do not have valid postmaster addresses. From some discussions I've read, some countries' ISPs are notoriously unresponsive. They may not understand English, after all.
Ah, but most of them make the ISPs do the work for them. They may have fat pipes, but they are not used for much of the spamming. They hijack mail servers, pile on the addresses, and make THEM do the hard work of delivering each address. I have not received any spam in recent memory that came directly from the spammer's machine. They all came from hijacked mail servers. When porn sites do use their heavy duty bandwidth to deliver porn, it is to serve a revenue-generating audience that pays for it. The problem is when they force ISPs to pay for their advertising.
There are ,however, limits to free speech. One cannot yell out FIRE! in a crowded theater. And this isn't really a free speech issue anyway. It's akin to making unsolicited sales calls to a business' 800/877/888 (toll-free) number. The business recieving the call has to pay per call on the toll-free number.
In the case of spam, the admins and companies have to pay for resources in the form of servers, disk space and bandwidth.
What the REAL focus of the bill needs to be is that point. And they need to be fairly specific in regards to what is defined as spam. I think the comment Taco made about forged headers should probably be the key as it shows a conscious attempt to disguise the source of transmission.
Under a very specific set of rules defining spam, I would be all for a law like this. If it were too broad, I could be sued for sending an email to all my users letting them know about server changes. Technically, that would be unsolicited.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
What I really hate about spam is the fact that they provide this statement at the end going on and on about how this mail conforms to bill such and such, and if you want removed, just send an e-mail to remove@blaablaa.com.
So I send an e-mail, and of course a minute later get it bounced back because it's an unknown address.
How do you fight that besides sorting through headers and writing to abuse@blaa.com or whatever? Even if they pass some $500 fine per piece of spam, how can you enforce it?
--- witty signature
> People pass laws that restrict freedoms in order to reduce behaviors that they find objectionable. It's a fact of life, and not always a bad thing.
Except sidewalks are usually government owned. The internet shouldn't be this way. I stand by my belief that laws like this are a very slippery slope.
You raise some good points, some that I haven't considered. I'm actually not sure if DOSsing an ISP should be illegal. On one hand, you're causing the company to lose money via sabatoge. Usually that type of thing would be best handled in the courts (civil matter) rather than specific laws. As this type of thing would get more common, people would likely take better security precautions in the first place to prevent it.
Comparing this to SPAM is hard for me to envision. What types of costs are associated with SPAM? Who specifically is the cause of these costs? Who pays for them? I've seen some statistics that say SPAM costs X million dollars per year, but I'm not aware of the details.
Do you honestly think I haven't heard this argument before, or thought of the analogous real-world situation? Obviously I've already considered this.
Perhaps you should have read the first sentence there more carefully. I'll repeat it again:
The only concept of "private property" on the Internet is through implementing security measures.
This makes the Internet special. Over time it's been generally agreed upon that we need some type of government to protect our rights and property in the real world. However, we can't assume the same to be true for the Internet.. in fact, I'd say the opposite seems to be true thus far.
Because sending me e-mail cost me money. I pay my ISP for access. And downloading spam takes time. Time that I'm paying for. Much like with junk faxes, the reciver has to pay for it.
Spam filter. Lots of ISPs probably have some even. Just as technology has made it easy for advertisers to spam people, technology has also made it easier to ignore them (you don't have to download the whole message before determining what it is... see the TOP POP3 command for example).
How would you like to receive collect phone calls WITHOUT approving them before hand.
I wouldn't.. of course, note that it's the phone company that setting the collect call policy, and not the government. It seems to work fine..
The point is, these laws are NOT about content-based filtering. Spam is simply about whether the sender had permission to send his shit or not. Would-be (would-have-been?) anti-spam laws are about the same thing: Did the sender have MY prior permission to use MY resources?
Why should he need your permission? The only concept of "private property" on the Internet is through implementing security measures. If you want only those who have your permission to e-mail you, then you can configure your SMTP server or mail client to do that. Problem solved, and I guarantee it'll be much more effective than anything a government can do.
Nearly everyone here seems to have defaulted to the view that anti-spam laws are a great thing. Why is this? What if it were a law related to content filtering? What if it were something like the DMCA?
Face it, government intervention and legislation on the internet is bad. Very bad. You can't have it both ways. If you allow the government to say what's okay and what's not okay to e-mail, then you give up freedom. Just because spam is annoying and everybody hates it doesn't change this. We need to handle these matters our own ways, and many are already doing that (spam filters, organizations that provide black list services, etc.).
Don't fall into the trap thinking that the government is the solution. I'm sure most of you can imagine what a nightmare enforcing something like this is anyway (forged spam to get someone else fined, whatever).
No way, I want to warm my bones in a bath of neutrinos riven from the atoms of Spamford's body.
Either that, or give them all toothbrushes and chisels and have them remove Chernobyl.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
How about getting your mail software to forward a copy of every piece of spam you get to your Congressmen and Senators? After all, if they are that interested in making sure that people can spam us whenever they like, they must like getting spammed too. So how about we share with them what we have to see everytime we check our e-mail?
Just my $0.02.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Bob Barr's e-mail address for signing up for his newsletter is mailto:press.barr@mail.house.gov
mailto:bob.barr@mail.house.gov bounces.
lets hope it does some good
but if you want to be a little more active you can follow the goatsex free link in my sig to find out more about ways to screw spammers
http://Lenny.com
You use a $500 bill to light things on fire? That's a little expensive.
Maybe we should sponser a bill to eliminate that damn D.O.S. clause.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
The funniest thing about this comment is the moderation. It is given a 5, *insightful*!! Even funnier is that I agree with that moderation.
When was the last time you actually received spam with *YOUR* email address in the To: header?
It's been months for me, instead my name appears in 'Apparently-to' or some other crap... I toss all of those. Anything that isn't directed to me, either via To, Cc is tossed into a pile. I sift through it once in a while and delete 99.9% of it as trash. I've found 2 messages in there by mistake.
That does mean you have to specificly filter any mailing lists your on to go to the correct group, but I don't know about you, but I want that stuff sorted anyway.
If move to TINI If not in To or Cc file in trash
Simple.
Plus, launching them into the sun takes a huge amount of delta-V. It's more expensive to drop something into the sun than to launch it to solar escape velocity. One of the strange-but-true facts of orbital mechanics.
Personally, when it comes to spammers, my thoughts run more to something lingering but amusing involving boiling oil and molten lead.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Unfortunately, unlike the sun, Detroit could legitimately be seen as cruel or unusual punishment.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
One point, which I did not miss, was that many people differentiate spam from snail-mail mass-mailings in who picks up the tab on the transport of the message. Here, they make it a bandwidth issue.
The Holocaust trials held after WWII were extraordinary circumstances. Germany had just lost a war and had no respectable legal infrastructure. This is by no means the norm.
Another point (and yes, IANAL) is that if you receive a piece of spam from a Taiwanese company selling products/services in Taiwan (and these are more and more common in reality), you have no legal recourse. After all, what are you gonna do? Have Taiwanese courts hold them responsible? What do they care? The company hasn't broken any Taiwanese laws. Have US courts intervene? This sets a bad precedent. Does this then mean that China can sue US citizens and companies over web pages that criticize Chinese policies? After all, in China, they would surely be illegal.
Yes a web page is different from an email, but both are made readily available on the Net for all to see. In the case of the individual receiving some Taiwanese spam, that individual can either (a) hit the delete button (or press 'D' in pine or whatever) or (b) set up a filter so that they, most likely, will never see it. In the case of the web page, China sets up the Great Firewall of China to block the offending site. Where is the difference?
Many people respond to spam. Many people give spammers a livelihood by buying their products. Many people apparently feel that it is performing a useful service. What happened to freedom of choice and personal responsibility? Properly set up filters get rid of 90% (or more) of spam.
Personally, again, I hate spam. I hate it vehemently. However, simply because I don't like it is NOT a valid reason for banning it. Porn makes a great deal of money in this country. It is also one of the most villified segments of the Net. Disagreeing with and villifying are perfectly reasonable actions to take in a free society. Deciding for others that it should go away when there is no significant detriment to your life (mail filters, changing the channel, choice of patronization, etc.) is NOT. With all of the issues involved with the Net, while spam may be one of the most annoying, it is not something that infringes greatly on our lives.
You and I may agree that Americans should make all purchases with wisdom and foresight, but we have no right to force this behavior on others. It is the right of every American to be stupid no matter how annoying we may find it. Hell! It's my right to write a post that you may find ignorant. This is not murder. This is not theft. This is a minor inconvenience. It is important to recognize the difference.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
*sigh* OK, one last go...
Considering the Holocaust, would you seriously entertain the possibility of going to court in the country that intentionally put millions to death or would you try to go to a more objective court?
But that aside, let's look at your other arguments.
- Web pages and links never trick? What about goatse.cx links on Slashdot? What about incessant popup windows on porn sites? Everything on the web is factual? No on ever got taken for a ride because of a web page?
- Unsolicited advertisements are a type of content, just like porn or the daily paper. It can come on paper, leaflets, email or a newsgroup.
- This is the difference between changing the channel and putting in a new filter rule. Changing the channel (assuming you have a remote handy) takes a couple of seconds to find another, more worthwhile program every time you come across something you don't like. A few seconds here and a few seconds there... An email filter takes a minute to setup once and it continues to work without further intervention in the future unless you wish to add further restrictions. This is like watching TV, seeing another stupid Budweiser commercial, and programming your remote to block all Budweiser commercials from then on.
You state that the worldwide bill is $10-billion. Have you seen the worldwide economy lately? $10-billion is a drop in the bucket. In addition, the lion's share of that bill comes from the EU et al who still have per-minute or per-byte charges. If you look at the cost adjusted for just the US, the numbers get much smaller. So again, why are we pushing for US legislation for something that doesn't affect Americans? I am all for the global village, but limiting spam coming from the US means that people will jump over to Mexico, Canada, or any of the myriad locations in the world that have no spam laws. And legislating spam coming from outside the US is not going to happen.
While we're on the topic of money, do you think that any effort on the part of the US government (and other allied governments) that even hopes to staunch the flow of spam will come with a lower price tag than $10-billion? Do you remember all that hubbub about Big Tobacco? Remember how they got stiffed with a massive fine? Would it surprise you to learn that the tobacco companies paid very little of that money actually made it back to the people? After all was said and done, the lawyers involved made a killing, big tobacco is still jumping, and the average citizen doesn't have much to show for it. Cigarettes are still heavily used across the US. What guarantees can someone give me that anti-spam legislation will be fundamentally different? The fact that there are more potential defendants? The fact that individually they have less money? Be still my beating heart!
And please don't bring up the bandwidth issue again as I would rather not restate that porn takes up far more bandwidth than spam today at your local ISP. And of course spam is growing exponentially. Internet use is growing exponentially. What would expect of spam? To remain static or linear?
With regards to your comparison of spam with me and a megaphone outside your house at 3am, are you serious? When has spam awakened you in the middle of the night similar to a person standing outside your house with a megaphone? Do you have your PC speakers turned up too high at night or something? When it comes down to it, spam is a minor inconvenience in much the same way as the asshole who cut you off in traffic on the way to work except that no one ever died from spam.
And with regards to this massive effort, spam filters thus far are not used on a massive scale and enough people buy the products and services that it contributes to continued spam tactics. A war on spam would be like the war on drugs; Right or wrong, legal or illegal, while people are buying, it will persist.
If you can produce a magic wand that instantly makes spammers see the error of their ways AND makes them discontinue their activites, I'd love to see it. The proposed legislation is NOT that magic wand. Let's llok at real solutions and avoid knee-jerk reactions that may in fact cause more harm than good.
How about a spam filter checkbox on new email package installs so that even grandma can easily say no to spam? Or a call-to-arms to all of the script kiddies out there to stop harassing Uncle Sam and start mail bombing spammers. Hey, they've obviously got plenty of spare time on their hands. I'm all for solutions as long as they look like they will make a positive difference, but I'm not so sure about the bill(s) going through Congress at the moment.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
I would like to thank you raju1kabir. I have no problem with being wrong as long as someone has made an intelligent rebuttal.
I stand corrected.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
...but the bandwidth issue is a red herring. If you want to put a dent in bandwidth usage, shut down the porn newsgroups on USENET. When you ask ISPs where their bandwidth goes, it is not email (spam). Spam is a nuisance, but not a bandwidth killer. The mail server may choke, but that's not a network bandwidth issue; it is a server upgrade issue. The bandwidth is getting sucked up by alt.binaries.pictures.*, alt.binaries.movies.*, and live nude streaming web sites.
I used to be in the "legislate spam" camp until a very important point was brought up. What happens if the spam comes from Taiwan? U.S. spam laws will mean precisely dick! What if someone jumps over the border to Canada or Mexico to send spam? U.S. spam laws will mean precisely dick!
Any spam legislation will only affect U.S. entities physically located in the U.S. sending to U.S. recipients. If any of those prerequisites is missing, any U.S. legislation means precisely dick!
The only way to stop spam is to stop the source, close all open gateways, close access to all open gateways, or (most effective, but most difficult) get Americans to stop patronizing businesses that spam.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
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Do you really think CmdrTaco and Hemos (and most of the rest of /. staff) actually *read* the postings? I've never seen anyone besides maybe HeUnique post anything in the comments.
People who are merely trying to spread some message could use some haven (more likely, given the usual annoyed/receptive ratio of spam, the smart ones would send their opponent's message to irritate people in the other direction).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Too Bad Detroit has Net access =-{
It is quite likely illegal to demon dial them, so I would not suggest it. What I have my computer do instead is filter spam and, for messages containing toll free numbers, call them and play the Spam skit. One message inviting me to call equals one call from my computer. That seems fair to me. One spammer apparently spammed me enough to get sufficient calls to actually call me back and (he claimed) start doing a phone harassment investigation on me. I called him back and told him to go for it! If I only call (once) when I'm invited to call, I don't see a problem with it. If it comes to a legal battle, I'm quite willing to nail this jerk and set a precedence for email harassment.
If you allow the government to say what's okay and what's not okay to e-mail, then you give up freedom.
Sorta like the vehicular homicide laws restrict my freedom to drive on the sidewalks.
People pass laws that restrict freedoms in order to reduce behaviors that they find objectionable. It's a fact of life, and not always a bad thing.
Well most companies and web sites have mailing list for customers/visitors to subscribe to. If those are counted as spam then you'll just restrict email to inter-person communication and kill all automatically generated email (mailing list, announce list, mail on demand, etc...). There's a difference between "I just turned 18 and made some nude picks" and legitimate mailing list like announce@apache.org or whatever.
Except that sometimes someone will forget that he subscribed to a mailing list or accepted received marketing emails. I've seen it - people who will create user accounts with all the details (name/adresse/phone/email) and check "send me some email", then 6 month later receive said email and will write to abuse@ complaining that they never heard about this website and never created any account. With this law they could sue for 500 $ (and loose, but then it's cost time and money to deal with).
If those things can happen with a 5000 addresses list - I shudder to think how costly it would be for amazon or other big serious online business to generate emails... I'm all in favor of jailing the "get rich quick" spams with bogus return adresses, but there must be protection for legitimate emails.
I'd settle for recieving a cubic centimeter of flesh for each spam message sent. This way, spammers can send me as many trash emails as they wish, but the costs are a bit more personal.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
the bandwidth issue is a red herring. If you want to put a dent in bandwidth usage, shut down the porn newsgroups on USENET.
Gosh, if the goal is to reduce bandwidth usage, the simple way is to just turn off all the routers.
Of course, that's not the goal. The goal is for us to stop having to pay for a lot of bandwidth and hassle that does not benefit us. If you don't want alt.binaries.* coming down the pipe to your news server, you can change a configuration file and you're good to go. But if you don't want spam coming to your mail server, that's not the case. Indeed, despite the large amount of effort put into fighting spam, a lot still gets through.
Any spam legislation will only affect U.S. entities physically located in the U.S. sending to U.S. recipients. If any of those prerequisites is missing, any U.S. legislation means precisely dick!
Ah, you would be a lawyer, then?
I'm not either, but my understanding is that this would affect any company with US assets. It's certainly the case that non-US citizens can sue in the US for things that happened outside the US. Note, for example, the suit by Holocaust survivors in US Federal Court against many Germany-based companies.
The only way to stop spam is to stop the source, close all open gateways, close access to all open gateways, or (most effective, but most difficult) get Americans to stop patronizing businesses that spam.
Yes, that's the only way to stop spam. But pending the day that all american consumers make all purchases with wisdom and foresight, perhaps we can pass some legislation that will reduce spam.
SURE! Call the FBI! They'll be happy to track down that dirty spammer. Just tell him you're a young girl from New Zealand and that you just saw him on a chat site posting about killing his parents and classmates, and that now he is sending you nasty pr0n.
Dear Rob,
This is to inform you that you are inviolation of the DMCA for using the SPAM(tm) product image in association with the term SPAM when refering to UCE, thereby circumventing our techonological means to prevent unauthorized association. Our technological means are as follows: we told you not to.
Federal law clearly states that if you do not cease and disist this association you have no chance to survive make your time.
Love,
Hormel Foods
>> Commentators here could have fun speculating as to whether the pressure or asphixya kill the spammers first.
>
> Either way, what bliss.
And just think how many spammers we'd have to throw overboard to get a valid statistical sample to definitively answer the question!
I'm beginning to think a lot of companies like spam, similar to how anti-virus companies like viruses. Makes them money. I just priced some email filtering software for Exchange and it's like $6K! You've got to be kidding me.
:)
So... this is another win for free software. Instead of spending $6K on commercial-ware I'm building a Linux system to act as a mail relay and start using RBL and some simple content filtering. What are people's results with doing similar things? No one here cared about doing such things until the VPs started getting XXX teen hot pr0n spam.
First off -- I'm wondering if her jurisdictional concerns are as warranted was she believed. I have to think she merely got some bum advice.
Second off -- I'm heartened that she actually thought to address the issue. This means she's probably open to suggestions. It would be handy to have a pre-drafted and well thought-out bill to send her. Moreover, it would be VERY nice if there were one proposal that most all of us could back; so that we could each demonstrate a unified front by sending such a proposal to our respective state senators. I'm thinking this would have to increase the odds of it being accepted.
Surely someone has prepared one. Does such a template exist?
Want to fight back? There is a super easy way to doing it.
First, report all spam you get. It's easier then you think too -- Spamcop is a great free service which parses the headers of a spam and reports it for you automagically. It's pretty keen.
Second, check out Sneakemail to prevent spam from reaching you -- period. (See the Sneakemail descripion for a full explanation of how it works. Suffice to say, it is tres cool.)
---
I am simply going to forward Bob Barr every piece of spam I get. I think if we all did this he might change his tune and finally support anti-spam legislation.
-sirket
That's pretty bad. They're a pretty established and legitimate company. Looks like spam is getting mainstream.
Subject was "Your Family Trip" if you want to compare notes.
I usually try to call the 1-800 if they give one and I feel vengeful. Anyone know how much they pay for each call? Anyone got software that keeps calling them through the night? Is that somehow illegal?
After that, we marry them [forged-header spamsters] off to the Bush daughters ...
What have you got against the Bush daughters?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Wood Chipper. Feet first. Use the resulting mulch to grow something useful.
www.eFax.com are spammers
1. First track down the culprit and remove their genitalia.
2. Shot all immediate family members including parents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren, neffews and nieces.
3. Seize all assets and distribute those assets to all politcal parties which the culprit was not a member.
4. Remove the culprits name from the voter rolls, remove the culprits social security number and destroy the culprits birth records.
5. Emmerse the culprit in honey.
6. Cover the culprit with Texas Red Ants.
7. Release a swarm of African Killer Bees near the culprit.
8. Take a flamethrower to the culprit while simultaneously unloaded a 12 gauge shotgun into the culprits knee caps.
9. Urinate on the culprit's charred remains.
10. Scoop up the remains into a small jar and place the jar on display in the "This is what happens to spammers" Department of Justice Building.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Anything that potentially legitamizes spam is a bad thing. Most legitamate companies won't spam you because they know it'll alienate more customers than it gets them. If we put a legitamate air on spam, that could change and we don't want that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I suggest something equally gruesome, and much cheaper. Weld the spammers into 55 gallon drums weighted down with cinder blocks and drop them into the sea above the Marianas Trench. For a little more, you could add a little window through which the spammer could watch the sunlight diminish and die and they plummet into the icy depths.
Commentators here could have fun speculating as to whether the pressure or asphixya kill the spammers first.
Stefan
We have laws against trespassing on a person's land, but that doesn't keep me from visiting my friend's house, with their invitation and permission. Spam is just another form of trespass, and anti-spam laws are just another form of anti-trespass law.
The point of trespass is that you are only in violation of the law if you are acting without permission- nobody suggests that anti-trespassing law restricts our freedom to travel. And anti-spam laws do not restrict our freedom to send or receive email.
If you walk on a person's land without their invitation, without their permission, after they put up 'No trespassing' signs, you are open to prosecution. I want the same protection and the same prosecution after you send me unsolicited email despite the 'NO UCE' banner on my SMTP server.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
There's this one guy who goes to the bars and nightclubs every Friday night, walks up to each single woman in the place, and says "Wanna fuck?".
Each Friday night he propositions over a hundred women, gets slapped in the face dozens of times, receives a couple of death threats from angry boyfriends, and gets banned from at least one bar.
But at least once a month, he gets laid.
This is the same law of averages by which spam 'works'..
It costs next to nothing (except your self-respect) to walk up to every strange woman you meet and ask "Wanna fuck?". It also costs next to nothing to spam tens of thousands of e-mail addresses.
But neither is socially acceptable behavior. And neither approach works in the long run- you will permanently piss off thousands of people, ruin your reputation, kick you kicked out of every establishment you frequent, and destroy any chance you might of had for long-term relationships.
And those are just the consequences of spamming- the "wanna fuck" approach can get you STD's, stomped, or even killed.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Your right to free speech ends at my SMTP server.
Congress may make laws restricting your ability to trespass on my property for the purpose of 'excercising your freedom of speech' without violating the first amendment. Many anti-spam claims are based on the concept of 'trespess to chattel', all we need to do is codify that.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The big picture is if the govt can limit one type of email they can limit any type of email. As much as I hate spam, I don't want this (or any) law.
The internet is the last bastion of anarchy. You should fight against any governments attempt to encroach upon it.
I just don't see how anti-spam laws survive a First Amendment challenge. A major point of the First Amendment is to protect *unpopular* speech.
That fact, combined with the global nature of the Internet -- which pretty much ensures that an Internet bulk mailing company can begin with offshore servers and still reach the Americans in the target audience -- means that a *legal* solution just won't work.
That is not the same as saying "you can't do anything about spam, so give up."
The market has provided a number of anti-spam tools. The blackhole list, brightmail, and good e-mail filtering tools like Eudora leap to mind. If you really hate the stuff, make sure your ISP uses those tools, and filter the mail you WANT into organized folders. (I love Eudora. I can ignore listservs until I have time, but always catch mail from Mom or from a client.) Federal Trade Commission enforcement of e-mail fraud is also a constitutional way to go after bad actors in the e-mail universe.
But what I really don't get is why people get so mad about spam--and I'm really not trying to troll here. It's just a piece of e-mail. Look at your inbox and delete the obvious crap before even opening it. It takes about 10 seconds a day for me, maybe 15 seconds on the days I check my AOL accounts, because I've mysteriously managed to land on some silly diet spam lists. But I get around 200 e-mail messages per day, and deleting spam is just not that awful of an ordeal.
Liza
These opinions are my own. My employer is not aware of them, does not endorse them, and is not responsible for them.
The problem with launching spammers into the sun is, that I would lose some of my dearest friends, who regulary feel the urge to send me one of these stupid chain-mail jokes or -- even worse -- so-called virus warnings.
Wouldn't wanna do that.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Huu? Could you please elaborate, why there's no way of deleting headers from mail? I mean, it's all plain text, isn't it?
I admit, that I don't know RFC 821/822 and I haven't read the sendmail source, but would hinders me from modifying my spamailer, so it deletes some headers and who says that I have to fully comply with the RFCs?
Free Manning, jail Obama.
There are plenty of poorly configured servers which either don't add received lines, or which just echo into the received line whatever name was given in the HELO, without recording the actual IP address. Spammer's routinely seek out such servers, to help cover their tracks.
Not to mention the fact that you are allowing the government the power to effectively censor email. Where is this going to end?
I always find it amazing that people are so narrow minded and hypocritical that they only see their side of the issue. The majority of the people that are saying these spam laws are a good thing would be screaming bloody murder if there was about laws passed to censor cryptography from email.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Dumbass.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Then don't post your damn email. If I wanted my phone number private, I could make it so. Besides the fact that I don't complain about people calling me, I have a filtering device, perhaps you've heard of it, it's called caller id. Just like the devices I have to filter out unwanted mail.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
It's simple, really. Allow the receiving ISP
to bill upstream for carriage of bulk eamil
(just like any physical delivery service).
Then, having an incentive to make money, ISPs
will do as much as possible to bill other ISPs
who send them bulk email, and will do as much
as possible to prevent it's sending, so as to
avoid bills from other ISP's.
The final step is to allow users to set a
reading fee. At 10 cents a pop, I'll willingly
read whatever junk people want to send me, if
it goes towards my ISP's monthly charges.
At 1 cent, I can't be bothered. Let each
user set their own rate.
Daniel
sure, an improved mail protocol is nice idea.. but the transition would have to hurt i tell ya.
How about improving on the efforts already beng made around blacklists and blocking open relays..
i think whats needed to really make them effective is more $$$$..
that, and perhaps, is a new protocol for reporting spam - especially if we can get it built into the next email clients
lets call off the war on drugs and start a govt funded war on spam!!
no, really
--
who ? wha?
After This guy has already spent so much to get there? The injustice of it all!
Each peice of mail has 'Recieved' headers that allow you to trace the path a message took to reach you. Unless the spammer is relaying thru an anonymous open relay, like some older versions of Sendmail, the originating IP can be found. With this you can track this to the ISP that controls that Ip and thus find the spammer. In many cases you will need to subpoena the ISP for the info. But, if you are suing, getting a subpoena should not be too hard.
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Spamcop does make mistakes when parsing headers. This has causes several ISPs to blackhole all SpamCop based complaints. There are several spam header parsers out there. I would suggest learning about headers and using one ot those tools as a guide. Let the parser look at the headers and attempt to ID the spammer, but you should look at it and make sure it is OK before sending it out. This will cut down on misfires and help you learn headers to the point where you do not need the parser.
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That is what you will have to do in most cases. If you are suing a spammer, getting a subpoena should not be too hard.
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There are legit uses for email marketing. Spam is not so much about advertisements as it is about permission. I get several emails that are ads per week. I have signed up for these and the company tries to market various computer parts to me. i don't mind getting these, and infact, I enjoy getting them. What I do not enjoy is getting email marketing that I have NOT asked for. I think the legislators are trying to prevent the law from hitting emails like the ones I get and still smack the spammers who send me the junk I don't want.
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I don't think a spammer would give a rats ass about any notice on a SMTP server. Plus, how is he going to see it?
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Adding headers is trivial. Adding headers that make sense, is not. (also, there is no way to delete headers from mail)
It's also trivial to spoof your IP address
During an interactive SMTP session? You might want to check on that.
could create an email message here on my machine, add a couple of headers that say it was routed through Microsoft's and Sun's SMTP servers, and deliver it directly to your ISP's SMTP server with a spoofed IP that looks like I'm sending it from slashdot's IP address.
True, but i would throw those out as being bogus due to the fact that there is no reason for slashdot to send mail thru Microsoft who would then pass it to Sun who would then pass it thru you who would then pass it to me.
Your IPS's server might attempt a reverse DNS lookup (probably wouldn't), and even if it failed, it'd probably just mark the thing as "unverified."
Who cares if rDNS fails? I have your IP address, thus i have you.
There would be no way to trace that message back to me.
I think I could. In fact, I know I can.
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If you're curious, you can see graphics of these old bills.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
f.
A little while back, there was a story posted about an LA Times reporter who followed up on all SPAM that came into his mailbox for a week. I noticed that nearly all the spammers fell into a small number of categories:
1. Multi-level marketing promotions, sometimes referred to as "pyramid" schemes.
2. Businesses either blatantly illegal, banned from doing business in certain states, or operating offshore.
3. Businesses making false or questionable claims.
In each of these cases, there are already other legal recourses, and in many instances listed by the author, some legal action had in fact been taken. Yet they still persist in sending SPAM.
In short, our legal system is already overwhelmed by these losers, and passing another law (even if it is a good one) isn't likely to have a significant effect. What we really need is to increase significantly the chances of actually CATCHING and CONVICTIING the scofflaws. That's the only thing that really will help.
Catalina is a hotbed of spam, let me tell you!
--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I'm not picking on you. These help me.
--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
They charge you less for presort because you are doing the bulk (NPI) of the postal service's work. They're still making money off bulk mail.
Want to really save postage? Presort and deliver your own mail. ;-)
--
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A clear message need to be sent to spammers (and would-be spammers) that this deluge of crap email will not be tolerated. The main selling point to spammers now is that it's free, but wait till someone slaps them with a huge lawsuit ;)
--
Sinepaw.org: Grape Winos
Our company has twice been used as a mail relay host, when mail relaying was left on our mail server, hogging our line and stopping any of our employees checking there mail. Annoyingly after we tracked down the spammers to a dial-up account in Canada using netstat, the ISP refused to give us the offenders details.
The second time we got hit it was a new email server that our SUN reseller had only installed a week before. These guys must be checking mail servers for open relays every minute of the day.
If I ever find a spammer like these fsckers i'll personally put on a spiked iron gauntlet and anally fist them to death. After having first removed their eyes and poured vandaloo sauce into the sockets. You don't even want think about what i've got planned for their genitials.
This is a mild spam bill. It's "opt-out", not "opt-in". It doesn't require the "ADV:" marker that California law requires, although there's a vaguer marking requirement. It has a "limited private right of action", and doesn't allow class action suits. The enforcement organization is the FTC, which rarely brings criminal prosecutions even where the law allows it.
It's mostly a relief bill for ISPs. Spammers are required to avoid spending spam to ISPs that don't want to take it. This sounds like something AOL is pushing.
One particular nice feature covers anti-spam policies expressed during SMTP negotiation:
(ii) NOTIFICATION IN COMPLIANCE WITH TECHNOLOGICAL STANDARD- Such policy is made publicly available by the provider of Internet access service in accordance with a technological standard adopted by an appropriate Internet standards setting body (such as the Internet Engineering Task Force) and recognized by the Commission by rule as a fair standard.
Of course, when forged headers are used (as is mostly the case) you rely on the cooperation of the ISP to obtain the users identity.
Or use SpamCop to parse the headers and automatically route the spam to the abuse department of the ISP where it originated.
Will I retire or break 10K?
According to Hormel Foods' SPAM Trademark Policy, "We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term." Hormel just doesn't want SPAM Luncheon Meat to be confused with UCE.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hm.. maybe Detroit would be a good choice..
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
Commercial speech is not entirely protected. One of the Supreme Court justices (I'm too lazy to look up which right now) wrote a decision (on telemarketing, I beleive) that stated that while anyone has the right to free speech, they DO NOT have the right to force others to listen to it. That is the case with spam. The firm may have a right to advertise, they do NOT have the right to force me to receive their ads, nor to make me pay to receive them.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
"Here's Douglas, discussing the Supreme Court's First Amendment (not the old-fashioned one on paper, an archaic irrelevancy), and concurring with the majority:
In asking us to force the system to accept his message as a vindication of his constitutional rights, the petitioner overlooks the constitutional rights of the commuters. While petitioner clearly has a right to express his views to those who wish to listen, he has no right to force his message upon an audience incapable of declining to receive it. In my view the right of the commuters to be free from forced intrusions on their privacy precludes the city from transforming its vehicles of public transportation into forums for the dissemination of ideas upon this captive audience. [50]"
The above cut and pasted from: http://www.krusch.com/real/supreme.html
Now to paraphrase:
While spammer clearly has a right to e-mail his ads to those who wish to read them, he has no right to force his message upon an audience incapable of declining to receive it, or not wishing to receive it.
Can it be made any clearer? You can NOT force me to listen to your message if I don't want to hear it. If you insist, I have the right to take action against you.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
I think that's where the word "unsolicited" comes into play...
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I hate to admit it, but I don't mind legit spam. Say I sign up for an account with a website, I fully expect them to send me information via email. I also expect them to respect my wishes if I unsubscribe, etc. Spoofed spam (spam with forged hearers, email address, ip addresses, etc) I fully support maximum punishment by law.
Yet another well reasoned and insightful solution by Taco.
Pun intended. Deal with it.
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
But, that might start TV ads that say, "You have been SPAMMED, we can get you money -- call 1-800-SUE-THEM" or "Show SPAMMERS that you mean business call David Pitard. He will get you money."
Fight Spammers!
Now, regarding the international part of your question, this bill won't help you recover from American spammers. It is specifically limited in the language of the bill to spam sent to computers in the United States.
If this language were not present, then you could take action in a court in the spammer's juristiction.
According to this site it is barrb@mindspring.com
But is it *really* fair for him to receive 10,000 spams a second?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Legislation should be narrowly targeted to provide law enforcement with the tools they need to combat abuses without opening the floodgates to frivolous litigation or interfering with legitimate uses of e-mail for marketing purposes," said the [competing] bill's sponsor, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. - (emphasis mine)
:)
Um. Excuse me. I thought that was the point?
Since I'm on @home, I can use my local @home smtp server to send a message as myrealaddress@home.com, othervaliduser@home.com, fakeaddress@home.com, and even address@someotherdomain.com. Sure, abuse@home.com can track me down, unless I use an open relay. Many spam messages are sent from machines are setup as open SMTP relays, meaning that they will send messages from anyone to anyone, without verifying that the address first. So, a spammer can forge mail, and it can't be traced easily. But, shutting down open relays isn't a complete solution. IHMO, the solution is to change the structure of SMTP. Without too much detail, only an authorized machine can send mail from that domain, along with the recipient machine verifying the sender (possibly using a DNS record, sort of like an MX)
Once SMTP is fixed, blocking spam would require analyzing the content/user patterns, and blocking/holding messages which may be spam. Spammers typically send similar messages to different recipients. Sending too many of these messages means that a user may be spamming. Another solution is to look for patterns which spammers would typically use (How many emails do you write with the text "to remove your address, send an email with the subject remove to..."?) For valid bulk mail, the ISP maintains a list of valid senders, so that these restrictions are bypassed.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
We need to bring back tar and feathering (or would that be tar gzip and feater ?), beheadings, boiling people in oil, and crusifictions. (How ever you spell it)
No, this is not OT or a troll post. I am being quite serious, I think the problem in the world is that there isn't enough capital punishments. If someone does somethign seriously wrong, you beat that seneseless with a baseball bat. With in a few years, people would stop doing stuiped things in fear.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
And you tacitly condoned it. Amazing.
If you read the numbers its not that many people that really are concerned about SPAM. The ones that are ANTI SPAM are just vocal about it.
Bullshit. As an ISP, I hear concerns about spam all the time, from regular folks who are tired of the crap they get in their mailbox. Especially concerned are parents who's mailbox gets filled with porn ads. Just this morning a customer wrote in to say he's tired of getting 20 spams a day! Well, sure we have mail filtering available. I, however, have to spend my valuable time keeping those filters up-to-date, our mail server has to spend valuable CPU cycles checking these emails, and filtering is never 100% effective, since spammers love to find ways to get around your filters. They don't give a rat's ass if you don't want it, they'll spend their useless lives trying to figure out how to shove their spam down your throat.
So, how did your company send good amounts of spam and not feel any pain, i.e. RBL'd, blackholed by various networks around the world, etc? Spammers that manage to keep sending spam and never get filtered are usually the ones relaying via insecure Asian mailservers and using throwaway dialup accounts, or else they hire someone who does that. Personally, I'd feel like a sleazball having to resort to such tactics, and to work for such a company? You're a pariah.
We've been seeing major problems with email protocols for years now. SPAM and forged headers are just some of the many problems that the current infrastructure possesses. It seems to me that a new secure mail protocol could be developed that would solve many of these problems and keep all the medalling Feds out of everyone's business.
- Any law that legitimizes opt-out mailings is going to make life hell. Everyone will be selling mailing lists. Every company will be sending you email. Every email will require a different mechanism to get off the list. But it will only get you off one list, in the meantime your name will have been sold elsewhere. Don't believe me? Go sign up at JackPot.Com and see how much fun you have getting off the lists that they don't own, but which they sent your address to before they even sent you mail. (No, I didn't sign up, but someone signed up using my email address.)
- UCE vs. UCPM. People use the price argument (email costs the recipient), but it's not a strong argument. The stronger argument is scalability. *Everybody* can afford to email every email address on the planet. And everybody will. With paper mail at least there is some level of cost which makes it expensive to run, and encourages cleaning lists of bad addresses.
- Finally. Opt-in. Web-based opt-in is a farce. There's no way to prove who entered the address. If you think phone-slamming is a problem, you haven't seen anything else. If we don't require positive confirmation of email addresses (no reply, address gets tossed), then we're going to find that legalized opt-in is no different than legalized opt-out.
Somewhere.Com - Two million bounces served every year.By that argument it's unconstitutional for the federal government to charge postage.
The reason you only get 20 pieces a day is because right now sending spam gets your ISP accounts closed, and web sites shut down. The reason that happens, is because organizations like MAPS and ORBS work very hard to make it difficult for anyone to get into the spam business.
Legalize opt-out mail and you won't be getting 20 pieces of spam a day, you'll be getting 200 pieces of spam a day--if you're lucky.
*Think* about scalability. *Think* about economies in which the entire cost of dealing with the problem lies with the consumer. You're right--right now spam is not a real problem. But it will be.
I'll be watching my inbox for this if this law is passed.
Get rich quick!!! New anti-spam law passed. Recieve up to $100 per unsolicited email you collect.
Here at Shark, Leech and Parisite incorporated we specilize in prosecuting cases of unsolicited email. For $39.95 we will send you our patented unsolicited email collection system. By creating multiple mailboxes and exposing the addresses in public places you soon will be a magnet for bulk e-mail. Using our system you gather the offending messages and ship them off to or legal bot. Once every 20 minutes the bot generates a lawsuit and delivers it to a random court some where in the US. Should a lawsuil be succesful you will receive your check for the total award(after we take out costs and expenses).
Relpy to Johncrapper24601@hotmail.com if you feel recieved this message and error or would like to be removed from our list.
By signing on to the internet today you have indicated your consent to recieve this message. This is not "spam" because we say it is not.
I think I need to patent this business model!
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Senate Causes Economic Disaster
[AP Washington, D.C.] - The passage of an anti-spam bill has been blamed for the worst inflation seen in the whole of human history.
"We never realized the consequences of making each unsolicited "spam" email cost $500," said Rep. Heather Wilson. "Everyone in America with an email address suddenly and instantaneously saw their income magnify over a thousand-fold overnight."
The well-intentioned Anti-Spam bill, when passed into law, caused email-accounts to become an instant gold mine. The average user, who gets between 10 and 25 unsolicited, or "spam" emails per day, resulting in a net income of between $5000 and $12,500 per day.
But many internet users hold multiple e-mail accounts, and each could be a potential boon in the new economy, which replaces traditional manufacturing and service jobs as the primary means of income with civil suit legislation.
"This is better than being Bill Gates," said John Q. Public. "Finally all those promises I've been seeing about becoming an internet millionaire by doing nothing have started to come through. I have an AOL address that's been active since 1992 -- that baby's generating over $200 million a day for me."
The resulting inflation, however, has sent the world economy into a steep downward spiral which few, if any economists predict will reverse any time soon.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Of course, when forged headers are used (as is mostly the case) you rely on the cooperation of the ISP to obtain the users identity.
Cauce has a pretty good tutorial on examining mail headers for useful information, if you're interested.
^]:wq!^M
Can I file a complaint agains a US citizen violating a US law outside of the US?
^]:wq!^M
Those headers are only reliable if nobody futzs with them. And futzing with them (or deleting them) is trivial. It's also trivial to spoof your IP address. I could create an email message here on my machine, add a couple of headers that say it was routed through Microsoft's and Sun's SMTP servers, and deliver it directly to your ISP's SMTP server with a spoofed IP that looks like I'm sending it from slashdot's IP address. Your IPS's server might attempt a reverse DNS lookup (probably wouldn't), and even if it failed, it'd probably just mark the thing as "unverified." There would be no way to trace that message back to me.
Any e-mail I get which I did not solicite, or which is not from soneone I know/met, is SPAM. If a company sends me information on their latest products, and I have never asked that company to send me information, that is spam. Obviously, ALL of the get-rich-quick, see-pussy-now e-mails are SPAM.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
God bless Rep. Heather Wilson. At least there is ONE person in our government who cares about problems that the citizens actually care about, and that actually affects us.
I couldn't care less about some fucking fish going extinct. However, I certainly do care about spammers stealing my bandwidth and my ISP's bandwidth.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
What is UCE? How do you draw the line between:
"Open This E-Mail, 18 year old Babette is waiting for you!"
and
someone sends to your LUG's mailing list that Yet Another LUG In the Area has started. I subscribe the Connecticut Free Unix Group's email-list, and someone had sent an email to the list that was announcing the first meeting of the Southern Connecticut LUG or something, and the list admin denouced the sender as a spammer. I didn't think that sending the announcement was spam, but some people evidently thought it was.
So where do you lower the bar to? My university sends broadcast emails about once a week that is a digest about stuff happening at the university. I didn't subscribe to the list, they got my email from the University Master Student List. Does that constitute spam? Technically, it's UCE (because I did not ask for it), but I am not paying for the receipt of the mail, so it is more of the University's loss than mine if i just delete it without reading it.
Don't they give out meddles for medalling in our affairs? Umm, wait...= ====
========================================
Spam sucks, there can be no doubt about it. But how can the Slashdot community, who professes to be so keen on freedom of speech, put themselves behind the criminalization of spam? What am I missing here? It would be far better if we put our energy into making better privacy laws to keep our addresses out of the hands of spammers to begin with. Once they've gotten your email address through legitimate means, however, well I'd say it's fair game for them to spam, spam away.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
These are good resources that spam haters should know about. Both sites have lots of good background information on the whole issue, and the creators should be commended for being good guys.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
ROFL; that's why it would have to be maintained by bunch of white-hats, folks we would all trust with our e-mail addresses. But in general I'll trust most legit businesses that far -- even though may dislike M$, I don't think they'll sell my name if I've told them not to do so. Pissing me and everybody else off wouldn't be worth it to them. It's the anonymous boiler rooms that create the problem. That's why I think part of the solution has to come from the top down, to the extent there is a 'top' to the Internet. I don't mean legislation; I mean assigning IP address space and domain names.
By the way, that above post was mine, I don't know how it wound up as AC (I went back and verified that 'post anonymously' was not checked). Another little mystery.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
It's been said before, but I think it bears repeating: An 'opt-out'/'unsubscribe' mechanism on an unsolicited e-mail simply can't work.
I won't respond to spam with an opt-out clause, because I know that many of those spammers are simply using my reply to validate my e-mail address -- they won't stop spamming me. So I'm afraid to opt-out through that route. It just generates more spam. I'm happy to opt-out on websites I visit, and I respect vendors with responsible privacy policies. No problem there. But once somebody has sent me a piece of spam, I'm powerless, and the situation just gets worse.
Another big problem with opting out is that an unscrupulous spammer can work around it so easily. What does opting out actually block? Another copy of the same message? Another message from the same advertiser? Much spam is sent out on contract, by little service bureaus. These outfits appear and disappear, change names, change IP addresses, etc. If I opt out of "Call us first for your copier supplies" they might remove me from that distribution and I won't get another version of that spam. But instead they'll send me "Training opportunity" or "Our next stock pic," or they'll pass my name along on one of those "CD's with 1,000,000 verified e-mail addresses." How do you opt out of a CD? How do you filter out the future incarnations of today's spammers? How many legitimate businesses advertise this way -- I rarely see a name I recognize or a permanent website or mailing address? And why should we have to spend time doing this?
The good guys will respect the intent of my opting out, but the good guys aren't the problem. It's the bad guys who will find a way to spam me no matter what. Even if they potentially have to pay a fine, many will simply evade the law. It's going to be hard to cut down on the spam, and it is we, the recipients, who are paying the cost of receiving the spam.
The solution is not censorship of e-mail, though some folks seem to view any anti-spam step as censorship. We're not talking about personal liberties, or protected commercial speech. We're talking about harrassment. It's the same as calling my home phone every hour from a different payphone and trying to sell me insurance.
I'm sick and tired of spending such a large part of my day dealing with e-mail from people I never heard of, never wanted, can't stop, and can't easily filter out without risking the loss of legit mail, which is the reason I pay for the connection in the first place.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
You have the right to say whatever you want, but you don't have the right to force me to listen.
Just a thought. It'd work like regular email except that it only accepts email from other registered service members and requires a sign-up method that has a traceable criteria (ie: a phone number).
This way, it'll automatically reject all email that isn't from the service. Furthermore, if you join the service and send spam, you can be traced and prosecuted under spamming legislation.
There are times I think I'd pay for a service like this. It'd take a long time to gather steam, and you'd probably never want to use it for touchy stuff (like discussing illegal activity), but in the end, it could prevent an average person who uses email to make simple arrangements and send friendly notes from getting spammed.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Apologies for any gramatical errors; this was written while watching "The Simpsons".
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
This shows that congress and many corporations still don't get it.
It's almost as if they had blinders on, all they see is an inexpensive form of advertising. If they were to really look at it they would see that there is no legitimate marketing purpose in something that annoys a vast majority of their potential customers.
If Godzilla did not exist, man would have had to create him.
They wanted to wait till they could charge him with sending spam under federal laws and make it a really serious offense.
...
Seriously, I may be against capital punishment, but I think life imprisonment for forged header spamsters is reasonable.
Or we cut off their fingers, one for each spam sent. Then their toes. Then their nose. Then tattoo them with "Spam Dog" in bright blue ink.
After that, we marry them off to the Bush daughters
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
How can a $500 fine be assessed against an off shore entity? Honestly abot 90% of my or more is open relay spam. Most of it comes from somewhere in Korea, China, or Taiwan (no offense guys). What's to stop these mass mailers from going overseas for their bulk mailing?
One's existence elsewhere has nothing to do with US enforcement. We have the power, we have the nukes, we have the marines, we have the ships, we have the airplanes (ok, so two are down), and we have the Net.
I can see it now:
Join the Marines! The Few, The Proud, The Anti-Spam! We hack more foreign spam servers before breakfast than most people will see in their lifetimes!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
And what doofus would confuse UCE with luncheon meat of questionable origin?
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
I have a hard time with outlawing spam on a 1st ammendment basis. Taco seems to be for free speech on most topics, yet here he is advocating congress suppress free speech.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
This is a very slippery slope that we are about to decend.
When VPNs are outlawed, only outlaws have VPNs.
"Punishment should be sweet and simple: launch spammers into the sun" And pollute the sun? Are you nuts?
If you smoke after sex, you're doing it too fast.
My proposal is as follows:
1: Get two boxes running something that can handle a HUGE load, such as FreeBSD or Linux.
2: Put them in California. Get an autoresponder going on both of them.
3: Have one forward all Spam collected in a month to the other one. It auto responds to the one that sent the mail.
4: The other box auto responds.
5: Repeat 3-4 until California is blacked out.
6: Blame it on Spam.
7: Repeat when California is back up.
8: Keep doing this until Spam is banned.
Or to just plain get email banned try Humorix's Soultion.
--Volrath50
If he can oppose an anti-spam bill, then he must have some kind of dazzling personal defense mechanism that limits his exposure to spam -- perhaps he would like to share it with the rest of us.
Then again, maybe he just needs a demonstration of the spam problem. Anyone have a folder full of spam? Ready to forward?
It wouldn't be all that hard to forward all of our archived spams to every member of the House and Senate.
Although I dont object fining spammers or even hurling them to a fiery death, I think theres a better solution. Why not concentrate on stopping spam at service provider level. What I mean is that more service providers should focus their energy on upgrading their SMTP servers. There has been some great software written. Check out http://www.mail-abuse.org. I think this would be a safer first step.
The only statement that cannot be questioned, is that every statement can be questioned.
Why not just have the "HELO" message in the mail system announce what type of e-mail is not welcome. All we need is a standard that is clear. I suspect that with such a standard in place the analogy to an apartment complex having a "no solicitation" sign up would be obvious to our lawmakers. Mark
As Nietsche famously said, "If you stare too long into the Abyss, 1d4 Tanar'ri of random type will attack you."
Considering five hundred bucks for every piece of spam...
That is quite crippling to a company if you take the time to think about it.
Companies might send 5,000 spam, multiply that by 500 and you got a 5 million dollar fine. Most of the companies that do spam, that would do major damage to them. For the small company, 50 spam alone would cripple them.
But, spam is quite annoying, can we apply this law to chain letters too.
The court though, might find 500 too extreme and lower it to 50 to 100 bucks...
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
$500 for the _first_ unsolicited e-mail is a little steep, and IANAL, but probably it would be rejected by the courts. In some long-ago case the Supreme Court decided that for a city to ban _all_ door to door sales violates the first amendment, and that's certainly more intrusive than e-mail. However, I think that first contact is about all that's protected; there can be (and I hope are) laws against salesmen carrying false ID or coming back after the homeowner tells them to stay away.
So what I'd like to see would be like this: One unsolicited e-mail allowed from a business to one address. Unless the addressee responds in such a way as to specifically invite more mail, the second one (from the same or any associated business) costs $500, the third $1,000, etc. Unsolicited commercial mail with a bogus return address: $10,000, with prison time possible if the offense is repeated.
Finally, a strict opt-in policy for any web sites that collect e-mail addresses or other personal data. That is, you have to check a box or something by the question "Can we send you e-mail announcing new products or services." It cannot be checked by default. It has to be distinct from permission to e-mail in regards to your existing business relationship; that is, if you tell them they can e-mail you about delivery of your order, that doesn't allow them to e-mail advertisements. And finally, to give your e-mail address or any other personal information to others requires another opt-in -- and selling your e-mail address without permission will cost the seller on the same per e-mail scale as with unsolicited e-mail.
...do you track "every piece" of junk email someone sends? Sounds like a great idea, in theory, 'cause nobody likes spam. In practice, I'd be interested to see the methods for tracking the spam and proving it came from the spammer (especially when they forge headers, etc). Suggestions?
It's all Hood
I get so-called "Spam" quite frequently. I, frankly, don't really see the problem with it. It's just people wanting some help. For instance, yesterday I was contacted by two 18-year old college freshman that were becoming models. They just wanted me to give them feedback on some pictures they took. I went to their site and not only were there pictures of them, but their friends too. I guess college girls are really into amateur photography these days. So I responded to the girl's email (her name was Justine) and gave her some feedback (for instance, I suggested she not let her friends make pop-ups and things on her site (they must be in an HTML class together, I guess). I also suggested that she urge the photographer to use better lighting.) Unfortunately, my email never reached her, I'm not sure what went wrong; it seemed like a valid email address (free_warm_pr0n_4u@yahoo.co.uk). Oh well, I hope that Justine reads this message so she can get my feedback.
I personally enjoy receiving "Spam", as it allows me to help out other web designers with their sites. In exchange, I get to learn about interesting young woman (with some amazing talents). Even better are the ideas people send for me to earn money. Tell me that the human soul isn't a benevolent one, when every day I get mail from people looking to help me earn free money.
God Bless America.
iluvpr0n.
Great point! Heck, they can have all of it, I just want to receive a mail that says: "Thanks in part to your contribution, Jane Q Spammer has just had her assets seized pending payment of her $20,000 fine." Mmmmm, yummy.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If you want to kill UCE, don't try to get the spammer. The guy who hits Send can hide behind bogus headers, but the company that's advertising is right out in the open. Make the company being advertised liable for fines and damages(when email crashes a mail server). Once they start getting hit with fines, they'll rethink the spam stradegy.
My two worth, and priced just right!
NO MLMs!!! NO SELLING! HARNESS THE POWER OF QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMIC ATTRACTION TO ATTRACT WOMEN WITH SIX FIGURE RESIDUAL INCOMES!!! ORDER OUR 90 MILLION ADDRESS CD-ROM TODAY!
I admit it. I worked for a company that spammed people often. They got alot of business from it thus they continued to do it.
Some of your arguments are flat out IGNORANT though. First off anyone in the US that says "I have to pay for ISP access so I shouldn't have to pay for spam" is talking without thinking. If you are paying per e-mail you receive, paying for extra bandwidth from spam etc. Go get yourself a new ISP. If you can't figure out how to FILTER your mail, then read that HELP FILE. If paying for access is what you are saying is the point, then get a P.O. BOX and file charges against all the unsolicited mail you recieve at that box since you have to pay anually for it(the P.O. Box).
People continue spamming for 1 reason. They get results. I know of a long distance company that gets 75% of its customers via SPAM. Why would they want to stop that?
If you read the numbers its not that many people that really are concerned about SPAM. The ones that are ANTI SPAM are just vocal about it.
Do I like spam? NO
Do I want the government to regulate it HELL NO!
You people talk through both sides of your mouth. You say no to more gevernemtn except when it helps your cause.
Razzious Domini
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
"Punishment should be sweet and simple: launch spammers into the sun."
What did the sun ever do to you to recieve such a harsh punishment?! If you want to banish them to some place of no return, send them to Detroit.
I'm not sure that's correct. I used to work at Kwik Kopy and they had a bulk mailing service. Kwik Kopy did all the printing and sorting and then took it in bins to the post office. Well, because of that, postage was at a markedly reduced rate, under $0.20 per letter. So while presorted mail costs the post office less, they also charge you less for it too.
I think that launching them into the sun may be a bit more complicated than you are giving it credit for... However I do agree that it would produce a deep sense of satisfaction upon completion. Perhaps simply giving them concrete shoes would be as satisfying?
If it didn't cost so much, I'd tape those return postage paid cards to cans of spam and send them back to prove a point.
It takes me more time to open those 5 important looking credit card offers every day than it takes to check off all the spam in my inbox and hit delete.
From the article...
Gloves off, indeed. I will be forwarding spam to his office's email address. Not the pr0nospam, not the 'make money now!' spam, but the 'did we say "opt-in"? haha, we were only joking' spam, and the 'time to convert our customer list to ad dollars' spam.
If you're considering sharing the spam with Representative Barr (or any conservative rep., for that matter), do not, under any circumstances, send pr0nospam. It will only provide fuel for censorship efforts.
The American Dream went to hell in a handbasket when someone decided that "The Customer" was King, and the customer beli
Maybe $15,000 for spammers located in jurisdictions that don't recognize U.S. law.
It's about time we start seriously punishing people who don't let us find them or who we can't legally touch.
-Coach-
(When is somebody going to tell Congress that the Internet extends beyond American borders?)
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
Why don't we just spam them back as V50 has said today? Or even better, we could DDos them. If they want us to lose our time reading what we don't want to, why can't we lose their time fixing what they could have avoid to?
I think that money it's not the solution! I saw wonderful solutions today at this same discussion, but IMHO it's better to hit them where it hurts, money and access limitations.
Don't worry, I'm in pain [to|every]day
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Kind of related to this I've often wondered why we can't do a better job of preventing spam by making our client software interact with the various MTA's out on the market. For example, if I get email from a domain that is not in my addressbook I'd like the message to have a footer added that says something like "click here if this is spam" that would would pop-up a small window that allows me to either a) ban all email from that domain or b) ban all email for that specific email address. Such a filtering method could happen at the administrative level as well. This information can then be communicated to the MTA so that the message is never received from an offending domain. Seems to me that would aid in preventing spam. This allows less technical email users a way with interacting with the MTA. Also, I think any mail servers with open relays should pay some sort of penalty if they are found to be used for spam.
---------------------- Women love me, fish fear me ----------------------
As much as I hate spam, I have to agree with Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. The federal government has no Constitutional authority to regulate spam. Remember, if you let them regulate that form of email, there is nothing to stop them from regulating other forms of email.
I try to stay out of this argument as I do not believe that all spam is bad. (No flames please)
But I am left with the question of "Are the headers bogus or dead?" with the venomous anti-spam people jumping
the gun on anything they do not like and calling it spam, it occurs to me that maybe the header was valid when the
person started the e-mail but by the time it got to you the account was killed. There are also the questions of the
definition of SPAM and in what way it would effect a service like mine that allows users to send anonymous
messages. You have to realize that I read complaints from people stating "This is SPAM!" when the letter is not
spam. (For example I received complaints about raciest posts in the alt.white-power news group and they were
calling them spam) I have had run-ins with providers who have expanded the definition of spam to be "Any time
some one reads or receives a message they do not want." When is it spam and when is it free speech? It is hard to
draw a line and state what is spam and what is free speech. Many will claim "If it is commercial it is spam." Although
unwanted I would not call it spam, just because the sender is a business and the mail is an add does not remove there
right to free speech. It would seem to me to be a better idea to make it a 500$ fine per letter for using as the starting
point of a letter an SMTP server that you have not been authorized to use. Or to make a 500$ a letter fine for
sending an unsolicited advertisement to a minor. Even with the laws and rules there will still be those that break the
law, send the letter, and get away with it. Just because the internet is world wide and how do you press charges for a
US crime that was committed over seas? I personally think it is a bad idea and another law we don't need.
Since web based accounts are often the worst for getting spam, can't a service like Hotmail have an option where if the user so wishes, anybody wanting to send them mail has to go to hotmail.com, type recipients user name and their message. Nothing wrong with making it anonymous since e-mail headers can always be forged anyway. If some spammer tried to use an automated thing to generate random user names then hotmail would be able to detect quite quickly since they would be getting so many errors returned, blocking their IP address for a while. An image of a number could be used to stop spammers as well, if someone typed the wrong number in three times they were kicked out. Then real e-mail addresses could be used for private mail only.
"Legislation should be narrowly targeted to provide law enforcement with the tools they need to combat abuses without opening the floodgates to frivolous litigation or interfering with legitimate uses of e-mail for marketing purposes," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
If it is *unsolicited* email, then it is spam. The people that send out spam probably honestly believe that what they are doing is a "legitimate" marketing practice.
I guess with all the pressure from big business, the government is now trying to classify spam as either "good" or "bad". "Bad" spam would be anything sent from a company or individual that hasn't made copious donations to the Republican party. Fortune 500 companies can send all the unsolicited email they want, because Bob Goodlatte has determined that there is a legitimate marketing purpose driving it.
http://www.tnr.com/052101/krugman052101.html
Also, on Bill's Borg Boxes, you can run Netscape and write protect cookies.txt (after accepting the /. one for posting). Then you don't need to clean out your cookies, just close and reopen your browser.
Whatever you do, when you hit the GoTo page, make sure you see a dollar amount after each link. The value is the amount the spammer will be charged. If you have cookies turned off, the spammers do NOT get charged.
One interesting idea I've heard is to make it a crime to send an email with any false header information, then make it a standard to identify the type of email your sending (ie. personal email, an email to an existing customer, bulk mail spam). Then, if you can easily filter it, and if you lie about bing bulk mail spam your guilty. Make the punishment something like $1000 per incident to the person who it was sent to as a civil penalty wouldn't be a bad idea either :)
--
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
From Spammer@superspam.GOV
10 TOP WAYS TO CHANGE YOUR SPAMMING SYSTEM INTO A SUPERSPAM MONEYMAKER! (READ INSIDE!)
----
just reply to this email for secrets the government doesn't want you to know!
Yeah it's a nice try in the on-going war against spam, but there will always be some lame lawless island in the pacific or something, where you can place your servers and found a bogus company. So I dont get my hopes up too high of getting rid of spam.
But the initiative is good, more country's should follow it !
God created the Heaven and the Earth, then men created the Web, and God upgraded...
I'm not sure how many /.ers are fans of Ernie's House of Whoopass, but this article he wrote about the do's and dont's of battling spam is definitely worth a read if you're interested in stopping or at least reducing the amount of spam flung at your inbox by those people who actually think sending spam is an effective marketing tool. Heh, I said tool.
The article debunks a lot of myths about dealing with spam, like how using the "valid unsubscribe address" (which is required by law to be included in any UCE) will actually hurt you more than it will help. Good stuf in there. Click, Read, Print, Save, Fight, Win, Take a nap.
That is all.
How about calling UCE "digital luncheon meat"?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
the bill would allow fair business use of e-mail, correct? spam must work, otherwise it wouldnt be in these companies' best interest to mail it out. so if it is in fact bringing in new customers for these businesses, shouldn't that be allowed.
wait....are you coming on to me?
but is it illegal to use the "wanna fuck" method of picking up chicks? or should it be? it is just socially unacceptable, same with spam, i and i assume most others, ignore (sometimes get mad at)the spam, just as the ladies in your scenario do.... do we want to start fining people who are rude? not in my country where speech is still free....kinda..
Realtime Blackhole Lists tell your MTA if the sender is acceptable based on a DNS-type query. The two that I know of are Mail-abuse.org's RBL and ORBS
There is some concern that things get denied accidentally...But at this point, I would rather risk losing 1 piece of mail every now and then than be bombarded with 20 spams a day.
SpamCop is great in concept. Unfortunately a spam filter is only as good as the idiot who configures it. As a security admin for a large ISP ... I have come to hate these automated spam programs almost as much as "personal firewalls".
Both these types of software cause more spam than you could possibly imagine. And the obnoxious messages contained within them often are way more offensive than the original porn spam they are complaining about.
If you are too lazy to use your delete key, than you are too lazy to configure one of these programs properly. The proper implentation of the law would state that only ISPs have grounds to sue the spammers (cause ISP's hopefully would only attempt to prosecute ppl within thier ipspace that have been chronic offenders), thus making the disclosure of Identity thingy moot. Afterall you are wasting the ISP's resources ... not the lowley user... Get a grip people. can you imagine if all these anal fools had legal grounds? it would tie up our legal system for decades.... just my 2 cents
I hope you all die you lazy filterers
luv ya
Fish =)