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Receive Spam, Make Money!
Bud Dwyer writes "Wired is running the heartening story of Bennett Haselton, who was awarded $2000 from spammers under Washington state's anti-spam law. From the article: 'Spam fighters hope that if enough individuals take spammers to court, it could eventually drive the industry out of business. And, some savvy individuals could make some easy money along the way, and with a clear conscience, too.'"
Spam is one area where a very aggressive attorney making a career out of class action suits would be doing a public service. Some clever attorney out there ought to get on the ball with this.
Tastes Like Chicken
I find it works well for starting the fireplace. Just remove the little plastic window from the front of the envelope (you get good at just tearing the front of the envelope off real quick) and burn baby burn! I haven't bought any kindling yet this year. Seriously. It's effective, secure (I don't like throwing away credit card applications, etc.), and very satisfying.
Some of you may like this
For a while now, my company has been in "hot pursuit" of spammers. Getting them for the message itself is mostly a grey area legally (the Washington state makes an exception), but using corporate resources without authorization is illegal. So we send them hefty invoices (for relay easily in the $500,000 range) and enforce them worldwide with the help of a collection agency, which adds 48% to the original cost to the spammer (we operate under the assumption that none will pay voluntarily, and all cases go through the full court process).
Currently there are $1.2m pending in courts, 90% in the US, the rest in Japan and Korea. And a vast majority has not even been invoiced (we have spent a ton of money on that already, but it does take time to research proper addresses to serve documents).
The goal is to get a few major judgements against the people who have their goods promoted this way (if we can collect on that, is another issue; and they can see if and how they can collect from the actual spammers). Once that is done, and press releases have been issued, we hope it sends strong enough a signal to spammers and their clients to stop it worldwide.
Any surplus beyond covering our costs will be donated to the EFF. Top EFF lawyers were very helpful in validating the legal approach. We are not looking to make a profit on this.
For more information see:
http://www.meliorinc.com/html/policies.html
[Why? We were shut down once too often by relay, at a time when we had to keep some servers open for special customers]
(I didn't remember my SlashDot login, and the password didn't arrive yet via e-mail - sorry for the "anonymous" sender address)
Thomas J. Ackermann
CEO
Melior, Inc.
i've got a bunch of hotmail addresses i keep to use when i sign up for stuff. some of them haven't been given out yet though, and they still get 10-30 emails a day, all of which are spam.
Free Webmail
Not quite spam, but I remember a month or so ago, that a user billed spammers at the rate of 125$ per hour with a minimum of 10 hours to filter out their email to his/her domain.
Anyways, recently, Radio shack posted my home phone number as one of their local stores. I emailed them a couple weeks to change it and got no response, so I gave them a notice to remove it within 24 hours or I'd bill them the same amount (1250/10hours), to route their phone calls to the correct store.
I went to the store and they also have it listed on their reciepts and said they're having it listed in the phone book. They told me that they shipped in the notice to not print it in the phone book and were working on the reciept prints, but the website was up to corporate, so that's who I'm billing.
They have until 5:32 tonight to change the number on their website or they're getting a daily invoice.
I don't care if it works or not, I'd love the cash, but I'd love even more the phone to stop ringing off the hook, its worse than spam.
Tidbits (a MacOS maillist & web site that happens to be based in Washington state) sued a spammer in 1998. They won in 2000, but by then the spammer had fled across different state lines a dozen times, and you have to file new paperwork every time. They eventually gave up on collecting from him.
The article doesn't specify if Bennett has actually received money yet, or just a judgement. It's quite possible he won't see a dime.
If you actually take the time to read the spam, you can get much harder punishment for spammers.
.de, this can get spammers to prison for a couple of years.
Simply be creative in what you report.
"MAKE MONEY FAST": Report them to authorities not for spamming, but for fraud. Punishment is much harder.
"LOOK AT MY XXX SERVER!": Report them for sending pornographic material to children (spam will ALWAYS reach kids as well...) - at least in
Other spam: If you're running your own mail server, call it theft of service (your mail server's resources were abused against its terms of use -- therefore, it's theft of service).
I've actually tried the second variant on a major repeat spammer; the court hasn't come to a decision yet, though.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
What does $5000 per day mean? Per day I receive spam? The Tennessee spam law reads:
(2) If the injury arises from the transmission of unsolicited bulk electronic mail, the injured person, other than an electronic mail service provider, may also recover attorneys' fees and costs, and may elect, in lieu of actual damages, to recover the lesser of ten dollars ($10.00) for each and every unsolicited bulk electronic mail message transmitted in violation of this section, or five thousand dollars ($5,000) per day. The injured person shall not have a cause of action against the electronic mail service provider that merely transmitted the unsolicited bulk electronic mail over its computer network.
Ok, so Hotmail is owned by a Washington state corporation, right? Assuming that the mail servers (and hence the final destination of the messages) are located in Washington, could I file for violations of that state's law on all of the spam I get to my hotmail account? IANAL, but if my mail all ends up in that state, wouldn't I be protected by that state's consumer protection laws?
- Freed
"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." -Turkish Proverb
Untrue. Damn untrue.
The USPS started doing a study of that, some years back. The DMA got huffy about it and ran to Congress, who promptly passed a law forbidding the USPS from actually making an accurate study of which class of mail subsidizes which other classes.
I don't know why the DMA would be covering that up, unless they were worried that a 2001 1st-class stamp would be a quarter if they weren't around. If you can think of a perfectly innocent reason for them to seek a legally-mandated coverup, I'd like to know what it is.
you can find ways to fight spam here
http://www.lenny.com/spam/
http://Lenny.com
4 great justice!