Slashdot Mirror
When Spammers Try To Sue You
An Anonymous Coward writes: "I was looking for information about what recourse there is against spammers when I came across this site. It appears that Bernard Shifman sent email to several people trying to solcit employment via spam, and when they replied to him, asking him to stop, and reporting the spam to his ISP he threatend them with a lawsuit. It's a very entertaining read."
Even I've received spam from this dimwit, and I'm looking for a job in the same industry. If you wouldn't waste time reading the spam, don't waste time visiting the link.
Was it in regards to actual employment postings or were you just on a fishing expedition ?
Unsolicited email is unsolicted. And depending on how many addresses he sent the resume to it may be justifyiably SPAM.
UPS Sucks
When Neil Schwartzman, the person who received the spam, forwarded it to the appropriate places why did he include the spammer on the email?
I hate spammers as much as the next guy. I report them (without copying them on the email) and move on. Although the spam receiver is, of course, blamess in this, I think he could have avoided this whole silly mess.
But, the title is misleading, it would seem as though he did not try to file suit, but just threatened. From what I can read, if an attorney did file the attorney would be personally sanctioned under FRCP 11 making a friviolous filing where it could not pass the giggle test.
Fight Spammers!
Your a troll but not a good one :)
... I think in any given day I recieve between 15 and 25 spams either via email or messenger, this is between quite a few accounts (10 email accounts, maybe 6 messenger accounts). Where do my rights not to be bothered with this bullshit start, and "free speech" begin ... Im sure I spend (just) 5 mins a day deleting spams or closing AOL/ICQ spam windows ... Thats 12 seconds per spam if I recieve 25 a day. Do the math, thats 30 *hours* a year dealing with spam.
The problem isn't of course any individual spammer but the problem as a whole
Im sure you'll have lots of trollish responses, but one had best not be "then don't use email."
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
The thing is, this guy didn't JUST spam, he threatened Neil with a lawsuit for the basic act of reporting the spamming. THAT is flatout illegal, as it should be.
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Spam is not really an issue of free speech. It's a matter of freedom to listen. When a spammer sends me email, then it costs my ISP (and hence me) money. If the net were truely a free resource then we still have issue that spam wastes my time. Not being immortal, I only have a limited amount of time available, and I don't want to use it reading spam.
Hence the point: Although I strongly believe in freedom of speech, I believe more strongly in the right to control what I listen to. I have no right to force people listen to what I have to say, and I expect the same in return.
Colin Scott If you build it, they will be dumb...
What the odds are of this resulting in a suicide...
If he does take this too seriously, as it seems he does. The odds of him getting employed with-out redicule in any tech savvy computer industry are greatly reduced.
All it will take is one slashdot reader/appropriate internet surfer with a decent memory to recall his name and make mention of it.
We've effectively killed his internet persona.
Name change maybe? heh.
Computational Madness in a round package.
But first, he'll do this: The fellow will take your insulting e-mail, find the little address you have attached, and plop it onto as many spam lists as he can find. So, he wakes up in the morning with one insulting letter and the good man gives you 100 messages a day about Free Horny Teens.
After you, sir...
- DaftShadow
Your troll would be so much more convincing if you didn't hide your email adress.
Think: In which world is speach most free:
1) A world where you can send single personal messages to anyone, but can't send multiple copies of the same message to people who haven't authorized you spending their ressources that way.
2) A world where you only can send messages to people who have explicitly authorized you to do so.
If we win the fight against spammers, we get world 1. If we lose, we get world 2.
Some people believe free speach, and thus world 1, is worth fighting for. Some feel the battle is already lost. Personally, my email filtering is now based on a whitelist, i.e. I have already joined world 2. Just like you have, by hiding your email adress.
Problem with your "free speech" and spam metaphor is that it does not cost me anything to hear someone.
Spam is push, not pull like software. It clogs bandwidth, which I pay for, it clogs hard drive space on my mail server, and it also is one of the biggest reasons why e-mail viruses are even still around.
Hows aboot where spam must have a "text/spam" mime type (or something), and I get to choose whether or not I download spam?
The best part about free speech is that I have the freedom to also not listen. But with spam I am forced to have to at the very least read the subject to decipher whether it is a real message.
Spam filters can filter out messages from companies that I have given my e-mail for product updates or announcements.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
French Slashdotters may have heard about David Hirschmann. In short (if you don't like Fish) David Hirschmann was supposed to have some misconception of the corporate world which he shared with one of his female co-workers an inapropriate way. She then would have forwarded it around the Internet and at the end DH may have comitted suicide.
This got covered quite a lot by the French Press but finally appeared to be a hoax as no one of these protagonists actualy existed.
Now in this case I'd also tend to think that it may not be real...
I don't know people as stupid as this b.shifman that would have an internet connection.
There's something extreme here. it smells like comedy...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Unfortunately, many, many people buy things because of spam. It's actually one of the more effective ways to mass-market all kinds of crap. As long as there's good money in it, we'll have to deal with spam, regardless of what laws are passed (think offshore servers, etc.).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
You are free to say what you like on your web site. You are not free to send me spam telling me about it.
You are not free to prevent me from listening to my stereo by playing yours so loud, I can't hear my own.
my thoughts exactly. and why a cell phone as your main buisness number? I have the feeling that his "SUITE" is a small little mailbox rented to collect postal mail.
...but that's not Spam
Of course it is.
It was unsolicited, it was bulk, it was email. UBE. Spam.
The mail including the headers was valid
Spam isn't about invalid headers. It's about unsolicited bulk email. UBE. Spam.
and Niel decides after recieving one unsolicited message that it's spam.
Yes. Because it was unsolicited, bulk and email. UBE. Spam.
Bullshit, if I send this guy an email by mistake am I spamming him?
If your message is easily identified as being a bulk message, thus being an unsolicited bulk email or UBE or spam: Yes. If it wasn't bulk, it wasn't spam and you'd be entirely safe.
Just sending large numbers of the same email out IS NOT spam.
Yes, bulk mail to people who solicited it is ok.
But sending out the same large numbers of the same email to people who haven't asked for it makes it unsolicited bulk email = UBE = Spam.
Do you get the point now?
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
I have lots of different interests. I have a life. Really, even if it doesn't feel that way now and then. ;-)
There are hundreds of organizations and corporations that I have some interest in, that I may buy products from, and who may entitled to assume if they are not doing further checks, that I'll be interested in hearing from.
If only those who have something I might be interested in e-mailed me a couple of times a year, there would be thousands of messages a year. There would be tens of messages every day, that would demand my attention.
Most of the time, I'm not interested, and my attention is the most precious thing I have. They can't just come in here and take it. If I would have to devote attention to tens of messages from companies that I might have an interest in a day, I would stop using e-mail (nowadays, well, I get tens of spams every day, but they are deleted without giving them much attention. I deeply despise spammers nevertheless for the resources they steal). That's why the only way is opt-in. If I am interested, I can go and search for the information. I'm pretty good at that.
This spammer obviously did no research at all when he spammed people. If he even looked at Steve's website, I think he would go away.
Instead of spamming lots of people, those who are interested in giving someone employment would search a database of resumes. It's much more effective for everyone.
It was definitly spamming that was going on.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I know there are a lot of you that think spam is no big deal, but for those of us that are dealing with a lot of domains and a lot of email addresses, it is getting unbearable. Yes, I can filter 99% of it, but geez, it is REALLY becoming a waste of my bandwidth even if I throw out my time wasted. Bandwidth = Money.
Missouri's new anti-spam legislation should go into effect with the next couple of weeks but it's not going to be effective without more states getting involved.
For those of you that care, write or email your local representatives and ask what anti-spam measures are in place and what can be done to get more if yours aren't effective. Tell them about the Washington law and it's effectiveness.
At a bare minimum, another thing I would like to see is a federal law that allowed every domain to have some email address (maybe postmaster) that it would be illegal to send spam to. This address would be strictly used for individuals needing to contact the administrator of a machine or domain. Imagine that...
Do any of you know how to trace down these 800 number companies that are sending spam off servers from overseas? Server admin's overseas either can't read my english requests or don't give a crap about spam coming from their servers. I've actually started calling the 800 numbers leaving valid contact information in hopes that they'll call me and I can rip someone's head off for two seconds. Amazingly enough, I haven't even gotten any responses!!!
I think I even got a fraudulent spam the other day. This "company" was claiming to be a non-profit child abuse organization. I'm almost sure they weren't and they were simply suckering money out of people. I tried to report it to both the real company and the FCC but I don't know if I got to the right people or not.
Are there any groups that are actively standing out against spam and lobbying the politicians? If so, I'm ready to join, if not, I need to start one.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
From the read it seems readily appearant that their only "provocative" actions were to forward a complaint to the postmaster addresses of whatever ISP Bernie was using at the time. From there this little shithead goes ballistic, threatens legal action, calls people names and generally harasses them. The guy is a moron and deserves every bit of it. Okay, so they don't let up when it becomes obvious that Bernie's full of shit, but big deal..
;-)
I personally think the only appropriate response left is just to have him whacked and be done with it (hey, I know some people in Chicago, you know?)...
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
My definition of the word is more specific than yours for the very reason that people are quick to define any mail that they aren't interested in as spam. When you have a publically accessible medium of communication you are implicitly agreeing that anyone may attempt to contact you at least once. That's just the way it is. Assuming that the headers are correct and there is a way to let the sending party know that you don't want this mail anymore AND they stop sending it, it is not spam. When there is no way to unsubscribe, or no way to contact because of forged headers then it becomes spam. It doesn't matter that it's bulk or not, that's just an attribute usually found with spam. Let me ask you this, if I repeatedly send you a mail trying to sell you something, and I've forged the headers so that you cannot contact me, and my unsubscribe link does not work, am I spamming you? What if I'm only sending to you? It's not bulk and by your definition not spam.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Instead of spamming lots of people, those who are interested in giving someone employment would search a database of resumes. It's much more effective for everyone.
Do you know that spontaneous job applications are common practice ? They are appreciated by many companies and human resources managers who read them and put them in a database even if the company has no job available at the time of reading. Later, if a position needs someone, they usually look first in this database before posting ads or other means of asking for candidates.
I read somewhere that spontaneous job applications account for 50 percent of some hiring.
Of course, the person looking for a job should research the company he is sollicitating and customizing any email he sends. But opt-in only for job sollicitations is not appropriate and even human resources managers would not like it.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Has anybody gone through his resume and attempted to contact his (supposed) former employers to hear what they have to say about him, if anything? Did he really work for who he said he did? Is he committing fraud?
I believe everyone needs a hobby, and these anti-spam people are no exception
For many it's no hobby. Some are sysadmins, network admins, abuse staff. This is their job, and their systems are being abused by thieves. By organizing against spammers they are doing a service to the entire Internet community and they should be commended, not called 'vigilantes.'
When you describe any group (anti-spam, linux users, bow hunters) as 'these people' it tends to set them off too.
He seemed to have made an honest attempt to ensure that only HR Departments receieved his mail.
Still spam. After he made his 'honest' attempt to target his spam, he made another 'honest' attempt to harass people who reported him to his ISP. What are you saying they did wrong? Should they have not reported him?
Hey, at least you didn't say "just hit delete" anywhere in your post..
Which is where your apology (in the sense of explanation) falls apart. The original email was not sent to a posted address of a target company, it was a badly targetted unsolicited commercial communication.
From the recipient's point of view, badly targetted and untargetted look exactly the same. Without further communication, there's no way to tell, and further communication these days generally means you disclosing that your address is active, which just solitics more spam. Also, most spammers these days slather their dross in laughable disclaimers like "This is not unsolicited email" or faux-intimate personalisation, and there's nothing in Shifman's original solicitation (sent from an @home address rather than his own domain) to mark it as being badly targetted through ignorance rather than untargetted through malice.
Sad to say, there's now only one sensible response to receiving any piece of UCE, from any sender. Refer it to the sender's upstream provider, and let them deal with it. If the sender has made one - or a couple - of innocent mistakes, they should have no problem convincing their provider of that, right?
What's most telling is Shifman's response to the initial and impersonal complaint. He took it as a personal and malicious attack, which indicates either that he doesn't understand why Bill interpreted his email as untargetted (rather than badly targetted), or that he simply thinks that there's nothing inherently wrong with untargetted UCE. A simple, "Sorry, my bad, targetting error" would have sorted the whole thing out.
Note that by the time Bill's chums leapt it to join the Shifman taunting, he had already dug his own grave with his ignorance and belligerency. Cruel as it is, it is undeniably funny to read his frenzied frothings.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
my sole response to spammers and morons: nothing. Once you send a reply it will go on and on, wasting hours and hours of your short life. It costs me not even a second to delete a spam or moron's email and thats the maximum time I will invest.
I recall an online altercation that I had a few years back. A post appeared in one of the UK ISP groups advertising a "too good to be true" service. This was at the time when narrowband access was going nuts in the UK, with companies taking a year's money off of people, then going bust the next day.
As a warning to the terminally gullible, I posted the whois info for the domain, and noted that it didn't match the trading address on the website.
A few hours later I received a vicious email from the poster threatening legal action because I had posted his home address on the group, when he was only the admin for the site, and threatening to post my home details all over the place.
Well, fuck me sideways, I thought, and let loose with a tirade about how anyone could possibly call themselves an admin when they didn't even understand that whois records are public - which mine were, and so I couldn't give a damn about what he did with them.
Two minutes after I sent it, I thought... wait a minute. There's a real human being receiving this.
And so I hammered out an apology, a genuine and heartfelt and sincere apology. Oh, I didn't mean a word of it, of course. The guy had screwed up, and was too stubborn to admit it. But I screw up every day, and don't like having it pointed out, and it was simply cruel to heap any further misery on this poster.
So I apologised for posting his address, and he replied in a calmer manner, and we had a chat, and he turned out to be a decent (if slightly clueless) bloke. He declined my offer to post a public apology on the group. I would have had no qualms about doing so, because knowing that I was absolutely in the right meant that I really didn't have anything to prove, and that my priority was to reduce the amount of human suffering in the world (in a small way, but every little helps, right?).
It's a shame that Bill didn't take the opportunity to defuse this situation. It's so obvious that Shifman is in the wrong that it really doesn't need to be laboured. He's clearly not very bright, and so it's rather cruel (funny, yes, but cruel) to taunt him so. I'm sure that Bill could just send a without-prejudice apology and walk away from this, and we'd understand that he's doing it from kindness and generosity, to dig Shifman out of the hole that he's dug for himself.
The fact that Bill doesn't do this, and that he's taking care to avoid actionable statements even though he claims that Shifman has no case rather implies that Bill isn't entirely confident that he's in the right here. And that's a shame, because he could end this with one brave and courteous gesture, for pity's sake, and out of strength, not weakness.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Actually, a lawsuit is "valid" (whatever that means) when it is filed with the court. The next thing that happens is that notice that the lawsuit has been filed and a copy of the suit are served on the defendants. This can happen many different ways and varies depending on what jurisdiction you are in. In Ohio, for example, Certified U.S. Mail is the preferred means of service of summons, with other means (such as personal service and service by publication) available if Certified Mail fails. Service of summons is not a subpoena. (A subpoena is an instrument that compells the receiver to appear in court at a specified date and time - service of summons does not do that directly).
If the governement taxed email, say a penny a piece, legitimate users would harly notice, but spammers would be tanked.
Better yet, if they charged 34 cents per spam -nobody- would -ever- send out unsolicited messages to people in mass quantities. <roll eyes>
Aside from that the government has no business taxing what goes over a privately owned network. If high speed bandwidth came along with being a tax paying citizen of the US I could see email as being taxable -- but there's no way something like that can, should, or would go through.
If it does next I'll expect a tax on swearing to keep me from doing that too.
There is a lesson to be learned here...
Play nice, the world is now a very small sandbox.
The corollary here is:
Anytime you are about to interview somebody for a job, do a google search on them first.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Hmm, completely insulting to someone who makes innocent comments, results to vulgarity to get his point across, admits to asshole tactics because "he deserved it". Wow, you sound just like Shifman! It really makes me wonder that the whole thing wasn't made up afterall.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Hee-hee. Dying tickles!
I have to admit that we didn't make things all that easy for the subscribers - we only sent out mailings every few months, so it was easy for people to forget they'd subscribed, and the business people were always changing the names of the lists, and merging the lists, and splitting the lists, so it was easy for people to get confused about what exactly they were receiving. Still, it was an eye-opener to be on the other side of the fence.
SpamCop isn't the problem itself - the idea is good - but let's face it: Internet users are largely the same users who call their monitor the computer and their computer the hard drive, or think you can get the Internet on CDROM, or click on any attachment they get. Do you really think they're going to be capable of using a tool like SpamCop properly?
So, a couple tips (which I wish I could send to the Internet population as a whole, since the /. types need it less than others):
-Read the whole message. If you don't recognize it, make sure it didn't just change its name or merge with another list or something.
-Check to see if it has unsubscribe instructions. Yes, I know, every spam these days says "mail jessica12345@hotmail.com to unsubscribe!", but if you get a message from "newsletter@example.com" that says "You are receiving this message because you subscribed to the Foo Newsletter at http://www.example.com/subscribe; to unsubscribe, simply forward this message to unsubscribe@example.com; if you have a question or a problem, please contact us at newsletter@example.com" - then it's probably real and MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY ACTUALLY FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS. (Instead of just picking an email address at random from the mailing and demanding to be unsubscribed!)
-Don't start swearing at people and making threats right off the bat. If the sender is legit, there will be a real human reading your mail, and pissing him off is probably not a good way to get stuff done. If you've already tried to unsubscribe and it hasn't worked, consider the possibility that there was a technical glitch, and maybe the sender isn't just trying to piss you off. (I was amused to notice a certain correlation between the number of swear words the angry recipient used and his (claimed) rank in his organization. If the email began "Fuck you, you cocksucking spammers...", it was a pretty good bet it would end "...Joe Johnson, CEO, MegaSite.Com")
When Governments start to tax, they don't stop. You say ligitimate users would hardly notice at a penny a piece, but there is no guarentee that the government would keep it at a penny. Better to pay end users to receive email. Better yet, make spam illigal and keep email free. I'd rather spend my time deleting a few unwanted emails then pay out my hard earned money!
You could always reply to the spamcop report and show the recipient the e-mail they sent when they went through your confirmed opt-in procedure. Unfortunately many marketers don't use confirmed opt-in, which opens you and your customers to a lot of misunderstanding. If you can prove to someone (complainant, or your ISP) when they subscribed to your newsletter you'll save yourself some grief.
.com hey days.. I specifically told them I didn't want any e-mail. The company goes bust, my e-mail address gets bought and sold a few times, and someone's database conversion 'forgets' that I unchecked the 'spam me' box. It happens. If your company bought "opt-in" e-mail addresses to put on your list, it's likely your list is dirty.
Changing the names of newsletters / businesses will also get you complaints. Say your company made widgets, and I as a consumer of widgets subscribed to your "Widget news and deals" newsletter. The widget biz turns sour and you get eaten up by a sprocket company. Now I receive "Sprocket Center" every day and I'm left wondering when I subscribed to it.
Last, the vast majority of "corporate / mainsleaze" spam I get is just that, spam. Let's say I signed up for some service that was giving out free money back in the
Other than guesses based on the impersonal content of the email and the recipient address not being associated with a typical resume-receiving operation, I don't think he could've known for sure. Similarly, it's theoretically possible, for example, for someone like me to take a copy of Make Money Fast and send it to CmdrTaco.
However, Mr. Schwartzman didn't close down Mr. Shifman's ISP account. If it was closed, it was closed by the abuse desk at Mr. Shifman's ISP. They should've been able to determine whether or not Mr. Shifman was sending out bulk email. It takes 30 seconds to do an fgrep on the mail logs for mail sent from Mr. Shifman's account. If they see tens of thousands of hits, they know something's not quite kosher.
The right thing to do is double-opt-in. I've received a good share of spam mails claiming that I've at one time subscribed to a service or a list. This is almost always complete bullshit. I am tracking subscriptions and the address on which these mails appear hasn't been used to subscribe to anything for years. Also, don't join, split or rename lists without notifying all recipients of the change and don't blame it on "business people" if you don't keep the recipients up-to-date about their subscription status. You probably didn't do this, but just in case: Don't sell lists to other entities at all. Such a move should always require the users to resubscribe.
Considering how many spams are sent through open relays, which are usually caused by someone (often in east Asia) doing a default install which includes a five-year-old version of Sendmail, or using some broken utility to generate their sendmail.cf file (which can also result in an open relay, since that stuff gets upgraded along with Sendmail), and of which the person running the computer may not even know is running (thanks to the glory days of RedHat turning every inet daemon on by default), the number of broken servers will probably increase at a much higher rate than the servers that get upgraded.
Every time I go to a used book store, or a thrift store, and see years-old distros of Linux on the shelf, I shudder at the thought of how much 'sploitable stuff is permanently etched into those old CD-ROMs.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Harassing phone calls are still recorded at the phone company even if you "disable" caller ID with *67
Two harassing phone calls from the same phone number constitutes telephone harassment.
Moral. Use a pay phone. Use several of them.
Perhaps you're right. I hope you are, because the hole Shifman is digging for himself is becoming awfully deep. I don't think he really needs to be protected from the anti-spam activists who are obviously smarter than him. I do, however, get the impression that he could use a little protection from himself every now and then.
Hee-hee. Dying tickles!
> In my experience, people who use the term 'anti-spam zealots' are
> either spambags themselves, of members of the mainsleaze spam lobby,
> (i.e. Ken Magill of the Direct Marketing Associations, or various
> random clueless marketdroids who occasionally write for mainstream
> rags).
Bah. By this logic, anyone advocating due process for suspicious immigrants is a terrorist, and the HUAC's victims must really have been Stalin's spies after all. Sounds like zealotry to me.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
>If the governement taxed email,
:).
/. faithful?
> say a penny a piece,
> legitimate users would harly notice,
> but spammers would be tanked...
A penny today... $0.34 tomorrow... wait a sec - make that $0.37!. Once it starts, where does it stop? Are you, perchance, an IRS troll trying to drum up yet another source of revenue for the gov'mint?
Also, aren't you being a bit 'US-centric' here?
Sheesh -- talk about needing a 'clue-by-four'!!
/ENDRANT
Ok - at the risk of going off-topic, let's explore a tangent to this comment....
Since we've taken a turn onto the slippery slope of taxation, can anyone explain to me why the following would not work?:
1. Repeal Federal Income Tax.
2. Institute Federal Sales Tax (say.. 10% - or pick a 'better' number if you like).
3. State sales taxes and income taxes stay in place.
4. No tax on necessities (e.g., food).
5. No tax on goods for resale (currently true).
Benefits:
1. I keep the money I make until I decide to spend it on something. Whether I'm an individual, an organization, a corporation, etc. has no bearing. If I spend, I pay tax - period.
2. All this purchasing across state lines to avoid taxes becomes moot. Believe me when I tell you that I do it as much as possible. If I buy a book, a DVD player, a CD, a computer system, whatever, I try to buy out of state to avoid the tax, (ok, I do batch-buy smaller items like books and CD's to cut the freight costs
3. The government collects all those dollars that they are whining about missing out on because of internet sales.
4. The IRS can be re-structured to become a collector of sales tax for the fed. No more need for complicated, convoluted tax forms.
Drawbacks:
1. Puts a bunch of accountants, tax lawyers, etc. out of business. (Or at least makes them re-structure their businesses.)
2. ???
Any comments on this from the
Cheers!
"Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing - and it was everything that I thought it could be."