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."

Comments

Make Money Faster Than God

[LaNMaN2000]

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.

Spamming is not the main problem here

[b1t r0t]

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.

This is about email spam

[StormCrow]

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.

Bogus headline, bogus writeup

[dillon_rinker]

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.

Come on people

[Zaknafein500]

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?

Re:Come on people

[Erasmus Darwin]

Do the editors even look at the articles to make sure that they pertain to what they person was talking about?

Let's not forget the submitter's culpability in all this. Slashdot editors have a multitude of stories to deal with. This submitter had only one submission to worry about, but managed to still completely fuck it up. The only thing I can think of is that the submitter was desperately watching news sites for Slashdot-themed news, and didn't want to miss out on the chance of being first submitter by wasting the time necessary to actually read the article.

New SPAM!!

[ageitgey]

Recently seen on website banner:

"Punch the moving slashdot editor and win $20*"

*There is no slashdot editor

Look how easy spam is to stop everywhere but here!

[Crewd]

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.

Slashdot readers sue over bogus bullshit "news"

[duffbeer703]

Story at 11

Re:International

[Black Parrot]

> It'd be fun to see how motorola (add many other companys to this) would handle this with international cases?

Exactly half the spam I get is from .tw -- and about half of that is in a language I can't even read.

If I bust a USA spam source with spamcop I generally never hear from them again, but when I bust .tw sources it doesn't slow it down in the least. I assume the upper-level ISPs over there think spam is cool.

At any rate, I'm sure there will be laws passed against it in some countries, but the spammers will just migrate to spam havens and keep on spamming away. (Maybe we'll get a SeaLand-like spam haven with its own domain? Is .sh, "SpamHaven", already taken?)

All that to the side, I really don't understand spammers. Most of them act like they are more interested in annoying you than they are in selling their products. Maybe it's just a special style of trolling?

--

Re:Makes sense

[tomk]

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

Re:Get the article synopsis right, will ya?

[don_carnage]

Wouldn't it be great if this article was about how to hack a toaster so that it could spam text pagers on a certain frequency? That would be a good read. Aside from the FCC violations that is.

--

Re:I've seen SMS spam too

[kilgore_47]

I've never heard of sending spam directly to pagers, though I don't doubt that it could happen. The ZD article, however, is about good old fashion email spam that is about a free pager offer. The /. blurb makes it sound like the spam is sent to pagers (But many people are charged for each page they recieve.) but thats not what the story is about! For those too lazy to read the link (ie hemos perhaps?) the lawsuit is regarding "free motorola pagers" that are not actually made by motorola.

___

You want slashdot filters?

[flimflam]

Go to here and filter away!

Re:I've seen SMS spam too

[iso]

Yep, the writeup is completely wrong. Look at it again. The username who submitted it is "erroneus." That's awfully close to the word "erroneous" which of course means: "containing or characterized by error."

I think this story may be a troll, and if it is it's a pretty good one! :)

- j

My Motorola Pager spams...

[sdo1]

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

per email payment

[debrain]

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???

Oooh, oooh; Me Me Me!

[Dr_Cheeks]

I'm looking for a job and this sounds just dandy. Let me get this straight - the other editors do what they're already doing, then I check that they can spell and that they're actually halfway informed about the article by reading it myself. No problem. I've even got my own dictionary! And screw needing an English degree - I am English. And my karma's up at 50, so I must be a useful member of the community.

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