Slashdot Mirror
Spammers Stoop To New Low
mathowie writes "I received an unsolicited spam this week from MonsterHut, extolling the virtues of their "products" which are "email marketing" (they're a spam cannon). After reporting it at Spamcop, I received an interesting email from their bandwidth host. It seems that before they could cancel MonsterHut's account for violating their terms of service, MonsterHut began suing them. The worst part? A judge granted MonsterHut a temporary restraining order, forcing Paetec to keep their site online while they continue spamming, before Paetec even knew about the suit. Paetec is collecting affadavits from people that received the spam, so if you did, fill one out. It may be their only chance against the court. How far will spammers go to get their word out? When's it going to stop?"
Nicely put. But in USA(c) or United States of America (for Corporations), what did you expect? A sane legal system?
The thing I can't understand is why has PaeTec sold the service to MonsterHut? I thought MonsterHut is a well-known spammer. If someone is well known to violate the policies of the corporation I work in, they end on our 'corporate blacklist' and will not be dealed with. Sometimes we share the blacklists with a few of our competitors so that someone having/being a constant problem will not be able to change from one to the other provider. For example, if someone can't keep his deals with one of our competitors, why should he treat us differently? We don't take risks like that. No company can be forced to sell/buy a service/product. This is also a good way of saving legal costs and trouble. I think 10% of our customers make 90% of the trouble.
Activities that will generally put you to our blacklist include spamming, paying bills only after 3rd reminder, and some other things.
Why I hate spam ? Easy, here are the reasons :
...).
1. It's a violation of my privacy. In the country I live, it is illegal to collect and use information about individuals without notifying them and let them correct the info.
2. It hides non-spam messages. As spammers do not mark they messages as advertisements, it is sometimes difficult to spot real email among a list of spam email.
3. It forces me to hide. I cannot use my email on usenet, on the web. I have to use tricks when I have to give my email, those cost time. Multiple email are mandatory to protect your privacy.
4. There is no limit in the amount of spam email you can receive. As it costs almost nothing to send spam, the number of email you receive can be very impressive and cost you time and money. It is worse if you have multiple emails (work, home, topic1, topic2, school, work2, usenet, mobile phone,
5. It can interrupt your work. like said in a previous post.
6. It is a menace for children. Some spam are offensive, illegal or pornographic making the internet a unsafe place in the mind of parents.
7. Spammers hide themselves and forge emails in their messages. You can not answer, complain to their messages.
8. More, as they use a hotmail, yahoo or other email address, these services are sometimes blocked or suffer bad image.
9. Remember that unlike postal advertising, YOU pay for spammers, the whole internet community pays for them.
10. It is illegal, period.
When I'll have time, I'll publish this on my web site : http://unixe.net .
M.G.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Spammers are scum. When I used to be an active anti-spammer (gave it up a few years back as it got to be too much of a time suck -- kind of like SlashDot is now. ;-) ) I had to deal with mail bombs, death threats, revenge spam, etc. Very interesting times.
:p) my e-mail address was numeric (ie. my phone number). After getting dozens of spam messages delivered there (no stretch to send e-mails from 090-0000-0000 to 090-9999-9999, right?), I got sick of it and registered my alias. I hadn't even started USING the address and I'm already getting about 5 spams a day to it (what, did NTT Docomo sell my damned address or something?) The damned phone WAS set to ring whenever I got an incoming mail, but I got tired of being woken up at 3:00am when some damned deai advertisement arrived, so I had to disable THAT too.
The ones who are really pissing me off now are the mobile phone spammers. I live in Japan and have to pay 300 yen (about $3.00 US) every month for the "privilege" of e-mail. Before registering my mail alias (I used a word which is NOT in common use in Japan
Not only do I pay 300 yen a month, but I have to pay per packet, so everytime one of these SCUMBAGS sends me spam, it's an actual yen or two increase in my monthly bill -- per message. It doesn't take long to add up.
So to the previous person who said, "Just calm down and hit 'delete'", there are many, many reasons to disagree with you.