Slashdot Mirror
Motorola Sues Over Pager Spam
erroneus writes "There's been a lot of talk about pager spamming. I've got to hand it to the spammers. Their combination of low conscience and creativity makes them the continual annoyances they are today. But many people are charged for each page they recieve. " Update: 07/10 06:22 PM by H : I apologize to the people who were mislead about by the summary - I had assumed that it read one way, and did not. Here's a summary from nategasser: "...when in fact
they're sending regular email offering an off-brand pager and calling it a
Motorola."
That stinks -- people are also charges 2 cents or so for each incoming SMS message on their phones.
ZD's article is fluff. The story above contains no information. How is this news?
Twoflower
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Twoflower
Weird Al said it best: Spam is everywhere :op
It's nice to see companies standing up for this, though it's obviously for their own interests.
Screw 3...
Good for them. Sue those bastards back to the stone-age.
As for spam, I go and read the ZDNet article and then hit "back" on my browser...what pops up but a FULL page browser window ad. A whole new browser for a single ad served up from ZDNet. How ironic is that?
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
It'd be fun to see how motorola (add many other companys to this) would handle this with international cases? - For an example, where I live, in Sweden, many forms of "mass messaging" (e.g. SPAM) recently got allowed because of a new law, making it impossibile to sue many persons over here. I'm not educated in law or anything, but how would a company like motorola handle that? /040
SUE THE SPAMMERS! Then, send $1 to each of the last 6 people who did the same, append your name to the bottom of the list, and send away.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
The problem is that the spammers claimed to be offering Motorola pagers when they weren't. The main problem in this case seems to be misuse of trademarks and (not surprisingly for spammers) fradulent misrepresentation of what they were offering. But I do hope Moto puts the hammer down nice and hard on these cockroaches of the internet.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I didn't read anything in the linked article about people spamming pagers. The article seems to be about Motorla suing a company that was email spamming people claiming to give away Motorola pager, when they were really giving away a different (inferior) brand. It appears the lawsuit is more about false advertizing and trademark dillution than the actual spam.
You realize that the article is about a company spamming people (via EMAIL) to get them to BUY their service and get a free Motorola pager.
This has nothing to do with spam sent via pager or SMS.
I won't even go into the fact that the article is a month old.
This would be better titled "Motorola sues over trademark violation." The fact that the ad was sent via pager is totally irrelevant. The fact that the ad said they were offering a Motorola T-10 pager, when in fact they were not, is the reason Motorola was suing.
It would be nice if the article was about people spamming pagers, but it's NOT - IT'S ABOUT PEOPLE SENDING SPAM OFFERING FREE MOTOROLA PAGERS
/. for my wasted time because article descriptions don't match up the the articles they link to? It gets really frustrating.
Can I sue
You might try *reading the article link*. Slashdot editors and submitter comments are *NOT* to be trusted.
You would see that the primary reason is that they say they are offering T-10 pagers but are, in fact, not. Also this apparently has been ongoing since before February. Additionally the company is ignoring opt-out requests.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
I've heard complaints about the editorial staff getting lazy...this proves it. The article (which I remember reading on News.com when it was first posted more than a month ago) is about a company falsely advertising a Motorola pager. Do the editors even look at the articles to make sure that they pertain to what they person was talking about?
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
"Punch the moving slashdot editor and win $20*"
*There is no slashdot editor
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
Well, I can't say too many details. But, it involved 3 people 5 years ago and and toneloc. (A DOS based wardialer).
Accept, they where not using this to spam ads to people, but more to get them to call enemys. These people where able to keep the local pizza huts phones busy all day long. Making it impossiable for customers to order. In time, they where forced to close down.
This went on for many many months. Many bussiness where forced to shutdown, MANY people simply disconnected there phones perminatly (even to this day! :)
This people also thought about advertising some of there website, but feared a connection. So, they started spamming porn sites for some very nasty things.
Also, remeber, back then alpha numeric pagers where much more expensive then today. $200 for the pager, ~$60/month. Most pagers didn't have 800 numbers for operator dispatch, they used a computer and a "special program" to connect to it. It is as easy as connecting with 1200 bps and sending some simple strings.
Today, its much easier ... becuase you can use websites to send the pages :)
Let's take a look at some of the more recent articles on spam, and the editors commentary.
:
Web-Based Emailers That Allow an Access List?
Here Cliff writes
"It seems like this would be a fairly easy thing to implement, I mean, how difficult would it be to stick a web interface in front of procmail? Does your e-mail web-based service do this? Maybe it's time to start sending some polite emails encouraging them to do so, if they aren't."
Maybe we should send some polite emails to the slashdot staff asking for filters?
Senator Says Spammers Have First-Amendment Rights
Commentary by CmdrTaco:
"...Spammers take away my property and happiness. Isn't that a right too? And opt-out is a joke. I've opted out of countless things, but I still get a hundred+ spams a day. Thank god for mail filters."
Wouldn't it be nice to have slashdot filters?
When Spammers Use YOUR E-Mail Address?
Cliff again:
"SPAM is one thing, but cowardly spammers who have to use someone else's address for their crap advertisements is something else. What can one do in this situation?"
Sounds sorta like what happens around here. Cowardly spammers posting to a public forum. What can one do in this situation? Add filters!
Buried in email?
CmdrTaco again:
"Filtering my mail is the only thing that makes reading my email possible."
Boy, he sure loves those filters. We'd like to use them here also!
To sum things up, how about some filters? I sure would like to ditch anything I personally find offensive.
The pager spam adds up, especially if you have AOL Mail controls set to forward your AOL mail to you. I do the same with outlook express, and a filter of if each message is 1k.
However, I still get "Check out Britney Spears and Natalie Portman making out XXX!" in my pager sometimes. Very annoying, as well as pushes me over the char limit sometimes.
Story at 11
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Not true. Many forms of spam pass the cost on to the innocent "spammee". For instance, email spam places a burden on network infrastructure, and increases the required size of email inboxes. The cost for this is then passed on to the consumer via increasing cost for ISPs.
The best way to combat these types of spam is to shift the cost of spamming onto the spammer. For instance, charge people who send the pages, rather than those who receive them (perhaps allow some number of "free" pages per month from each originating phone number). Charge those who send emails, based on the volume of email sent. Again, have a maximum "free" amount of email that can be sent before being charged for it.
In fact, if costs of spamming could all be shifted to the spammers, then the revenue from that could be used to provide "normal" users with the free (gratis) services that they've come to expect from the internet economy, at the expense of having to deal with increased targeted advertising. Think of over-the-air TV, where the advertisers foot the whole bill.. The same thing could be done with email, pages, etc..
-TomK
Beyond that, how could anyone believe Motorola would sue someone for using their pagers? They're equipment manufacturers, not service providers. Duh.
I can hear slashdot getting stupider...
That was probably a troll but...
commercial speech is NOT protected in the US. you have a right to free speech, not to advertise your products. There are many laws which reflect this fact, eg, the anti-junk-fax laws.
If they really need to have us hear about their new product, they can pay to mail us stuff, they can pay to advertise on a TV program or newspaper or website, but they have no right to send us postage-due advertising for free like junk email, junk faxes or junk pages.
Folks, how can you expect an on-topic writeup when the story is submitted by somebody whose chosen nick is a misspelling of a word meaning "wrong". The very universe would break if that blurb had been factual.
The problem is finding those who send the emails. A lot of folks bounce them through open relays, using web-based mail systems that are never necessarily seen by an ISP. Who charges them... the ISP who magically "sees" email going out via a web-based service? Or do they simply sit at the recieving ISP or hosting company until the bill has been paid?
-Mynn the Museless
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
And they NEVER record the lists of people who request to opt-out as people who read their email and, are therefore, good people to send spam to.
Next time please read the article more carefully. General reasoning about spam doesn't apply well to this situation.
that's not quite acurate. first of all, remember that loads of people still have per-minute charges on net connections, either through their provider, like AOL, or via telephone charges. that's a direct cost. also, keep in mind that this method is the only real option in many parts of the world outside the U.S. - again, a very real, direct cost. another direct cost - although a much smaller one - is the storage of that email on my system. this is generally neglegable and recoverable, but i've worked in environments where everything is backed up permenantly to WORM media. that's a direct, tangible cost in terms of a used-up resource.
also, in cases where the cost of spam isn't directly on my shoulders - such as when my ISP bears it by way of providing the bandwidth or storage, don't think for a second they're not passing that cost on to the end user.
for even less direct costs, there's the issue of my time.
so no, i'm afraid pager spam isn't the only spam with direct end-user costs; it's just more easialy aparent.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Go to here and filter away!
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
-Mynn the Museless
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
The important cost is the human attention cost for the recipient. I've got this facility that I need to pay attention to in order to do my job, and yet every asshole spammer in the world can also yank on the same chain (I never give out my work e-mail address for non-work purposes, but still, the address leaks out).
I'd really like to have a more limited e-mail address -- an address that I can give to foo.com which will accept mail only from an authenticated foo.com mail server.
No, it's exactly this kind of stale, factually incorrect story writeup with no redeeming content which will kill the community.
Death of Slashdot imminent, film at 11.
Twoflower
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Twoflower
By the same token, why should spammers be responsible for charges associated with junk e-mail that gets forwarded to a pager alias? Presumably there's nothing stopping the user from filtering the pages (either with their own software or with their paging service provider's software).
At first glance, the issue seems to be that no "postage" is being paid for this junk pager mail, but perhaps the real (or more readily addressable) problem is that paging service providers' filter software/access control/etc. is not up to snuff?
--
"Shayna, Shayna, Shayna. They bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into -- I say, let 'em crash!"
"(Maybe we'll get a SeaLand-like spam haven with its own domain? Is .sh, "SpamHaven", already taken?)"
If we did that, would all my shell scripts be considered SPAM?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Since late April, I've received 18 spams with the words "Motorola Pager" in the subject. Obviously, as with most spams, remove doesn't work and only lets them know that your email address is indeed valid. All of those spams contained one of two 800 numbers:
1(800)443-0596
1(800)761-0511
I offer those numbers as a service to the slashdot community since I know you all might be interested in getting yourself one of these "free" pagers.
Now, I just love spammers as much as the next guy... so I would recommend making sure that as many people as possible see this message (hint, mod me up to +5). Then if everyone calls to inquire about the pagers, think of all the business these spammers will get! Don't call too many times because as you know, each call to an 800 number costs the owners of that number MONEY. We don't want their phone bill to be too high, now do we?
And don't call unless you're actually interested. We wouldn't want to waste THEIR resources to take care of our pointless calls, would we?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I think you mean "has killed the community."
The US has junk fax laws. I was under the vague impression that spam comes under those, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
/Brian
By that token, should it be unlawful to withhold a person's phone calls?
What about voicemail?
Pages?
SMS messages?
If the US courts behave liked their theory implies (act on precedent), we have a couple of results:
A) It will be illegal to withhold a person's sent mail because it would be withholding some other person's email.
B) (This one's chancy) It will be illegal to ban the sending of any email, because to ban the creation of an email message which would have been created had it not been banned is the same as withholding the receiver's email because the email would have been received otherwise.
Bear in mind that this law you are stating applies only to mail through the US Postal Service, which is a branch of the federal government. Interfering with the USPS is a federal offense. The same is not true with email. Email is distributed by private companies, government agencies and universities. It is not illegal, nor is is likely to become illegal, to ban sending of any email or to withhold email.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
But this is the 'trend' today. Always an 'opt out' options, but hardly ever an opt in option. ... opt out of letting financial institutions from selling your personal info, opt out of recieving telemarketing calls, opt out of spam..
Where are my rights not be disturbed with crap I don't want?
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Do your politicians have e-mail addresses? Spam them until their e-mail boxes bounce mail. Or better still, just forward all your spam to them.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Sending advertising to mobile phones, pagers and other similar devices is already illegal. It's included in the same law that prohibits junk faxes. If you receive one, ka-ching! you can sue for $500.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
> Plus, here in the US, spam is protected speech.
For the last motherfucking time, spamming isn't an exercise of the spammer's free speech rights, its a VIOLATION by the spammer of my PROPERTY rights.
If you have no regard for property rights, then fine: I'll come to your office, and take the computer that you're using to send out the spam.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Now, if I were paying a set fee per email, could I sue spammers, or my ISP (or whoever is providing the email service) sue the spammers, since they are effectively costing me money. Anyone have any idea how well this would hold up???
CALL ME
0900-555 55 55
($3.95 a minute)
The whole spacing was intentionally, of course. And I very much suspect, that those scumbags just fired blindly into a random spectrum of phone numbers (i.e: 079 350 00 00 - 079 359 99 99).
Now, my sweetie is certainly not dumb, but she's generally not interested in the finer aspects of technology.
If I wouldn't have been around, she'd interpreted the message (CALL ME) literally and would have been out of a couple 'bucks.
Now this is not spam, in my book. This is outright fraud...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
First, if you use a pay phone, this is anonymous and as we all know, who read USAtoday and Time, anonymity is used by terr0rists, kiddie pr0nographers and sm0kers of the wicked weed. Now, you surely wouldn't smoke this stuff, right? So why be anonymous ?
Also, when you call from a pay phone, those fine and ethical sound business people incurr higher costs. Now, you don't want them to pay through the nose when you dial 1(800)443-0596 or (800)761-0511 . Right ?
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Of course, seeing as I'm so over qualified, I'd like £20,000 p/a, but I'm sure you could spare this.
Hey, chuck in a new PC and I'll even read all the way through Jon Katz's articles!
Oh, and I'd like my official job title to be Meta-Moderator