Slashdot Mirror
Lawsuits Against Spammers
apc writes "Pretty good overview of the state of the law
regarding spammers, and some stories about people who have sued them and won. Nice to see the topic getting mainstream attention."
It talks about several different states and several different people who
have won cases. I still think its fairly hopeless, but I also believe forging
SMTP headers should be legally punishable by castration.
Instead of encouraging litigation, why don't we develop (easy) and attempt to gain acceptance (harder) of an authenticated e-mail format?
I would much rather see technical (or social) solutions to the spam problem... laws have a funny way of not going in our favor, don't they?
Let's hope some people see this as a business opportunity, and start a business or organization to sue on behalf of all of us who don't bother now, and collect a percentage. So that more of us can use our lawful right to make the spammers pay for their nuisance.
We could donate proceedings of successful spam litigation to open source projects or to the EFF.
What we need is national legislation against spam. There are too many state laws that legitimize spam in one way or another. This gives every spammer a one time get out of jail free card, and does nothing for spam problem in general. New spammers pop up all the time - it doesn't make sense to 'opt out' of every new spam list you get onto.
The article makes a good point about laws that require spam to be labeled. This isn't a solution, and there are also conflicting requirements between state laws. One law requires "ADV: ADLT" on the subject header, another law requires "ADULT ADVERTISEMENT". This is a perfect example of laws being too specific - legislation has no business dictating changes to the SMTP protocol. This isn't useful either: shouldn't spam laws apply to more than SMTP? Say, ICQ spam? Internal AOL spam?
This is why we need a national spam law. No conflicts, no SMTP requirements, no opt-out. Make spam illegal, period. Spam is harassment, theft of service, and usually fraudulent. It costs ISPs millions of dollars that are passed on to YOU. Companies lose productivity because of workers receiving spam.
If you think this is any different from junk fax laws, you're kidding yourself. Spam and junk faxes both hurt the recipient. Spam is not free speech. Spam is not a constitutional right. Banning spam IS the right answer.
Tired of not making enough MONEY ? HOW ABOUT $3000 PER WEEK OR MORE !
No, this is not a joke, YOU TOO CAN QUIT YOUR JOB AND MAKE THE MONEY YOU DESERVE !
HOW ?
Very recently, I have discovered that anybody on the internet receives "SPAM" emails, and that it is usuall possible to sue those "SPAMMERS". Most often, "SPAM" originates from VERY LARGE COMPANIES who have a LOT OF MONEY MOST OFTEN, and these companies don't want to lose their reputation in the "SPAM" industry, therefore they are usually willing to give plaintiffs A LOT OF MONEY to settle their claims.
I CAN ALREADY HEAR YOU SAY "HOW CAN I SUE SPAMMERS TOO AND RECEIVE A LOT OF SETTLEMENT MONEY ?" !
IF YOU SEND ME A RESPONSE AT THE EMAIL ADDRESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS MESSAGE, I'LL INTRODUCE YOU TO MY NEW BOOK CALLED "HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY SUE SPAMMERS AND RECEIVE A LOT OF SETTLEMENT MONEY". MY BOOK NORMALLY COSTS IN EXCESS OF $85 FROM NORMAL RETAIL CHANNELS, BUT ONLY FOR YOU, I OFFER YOU THIS INCREDIBLE MONEY-MAKING TOOL FOR ONLY $19.99 !!
DON'T PASS UP YOUR CHANCE TO MAKE THE MONEY YOU DESERVE. SEND ME A RESPONSE RIGHT NOW, OR CALL ME AT THE NUMBER BELOW.
THANK YOU DEAR FRIEND !
email: SUCKER_RESPONSE@HOTMAIL.COM
phone: 1-800-YOU-SUCK
**********
THIS IS A ONE-TIME EMAIL, YOU DO NOT NEED TO DO ANYTHING IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO RECEIVE ANYMORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS INCREDIBLE OFFER.
The only reason spam is so prevalant is because there are still enough suckers out there who respond to it and buy into the schemes. We need to do one of two things. Either successfully educate the suckers so the spam becomes uneconomical, or compile a real list of suckers and find a way to convince the spammers to ONLY spam them, and not the rest of the world.
Neither of these things will happen, unfortunately.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Well, AOL had a trademark complaint about GAIM. This has absolutely nothing to do with spam - what are you saying? If you're against one lawsuit, you shouldn't support any laws whatsoever? I guess you disagree with some trademark laws, so you believe that we should live in anarchy because SOME laws are bad.
This is why XNS (a next generation DNS replacement) needs to be adopted ASAP by the worldwide technical community. For example, here is the white paper on spam filtering. In a nutshell, if someone who is not on your acceptable email list wants to send you an email, they must first (and this is all automatically handled by the software) accept an agreement which dictates your exact privacy requirements. If it is a personal email with actual valid content, clearly they will simply accept the agreement and automatically be added to your list. On the other hand, bulk email spammers (hereafter referred to as "Dickwads") will probably not like the section talking about your fees for accepting bulk advertising. :)
Spam is Free Speaaech (A Troll)
No more government regulation (aynrand666) All problems have a technical solution. Just hit delete.I know more than you do (karmawhore23) I am cleverer than you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The simplest reasons that spammers "get away with it":
1) Forged headers (SMTP auth would alleviate)
2) ISPs turn a blind eye or aren't as responsive as they should be. Many are repeat offenders which labels them "soft" on spam prevention.
A lot of people have already commented on #1 so I'm going to skip that one.
In short, the accountability should come to the ISP, because they are the ones you inevitably allow this to happen. @Home or similar could implement a per day limit on outbound emails, same for the fre services, Yahoo! and Hotmail. There needs to be a clearinghouse for spam notification, someone who tracks spam and spammers, period. Fines should be imposed on ISPs who allow bulk email to originate from their service. Their choice should be simple: don't let spam originate from your system or face the penalty (steep fines, this could be used to fund the clearinghouse). Leniency could be worked into this, an ISP may have X number of reports per day based on the number of IPs they have. X should shrink every year.
The clearinghouse should also be audited on a yearly basis and the results made public (what ISPs spam the most/least, amount of fines paid, etc)
Hammer of Truth
U.S. businesses generally oppose restrictions, equating advertising with free speech.
"If you ban me from this type of medium, you have severely limited my ability to enter into the marketplace," said Jerry Cerasale of the Direct Marketing Association.
God DAMN IT, for the LAST time, spam is not a free speech issue, it's a property rights issue. My computer is NOT a public utility for every sleazy marketing dink in the world to use at MY expense.
If Mr. Cerasleazy wants to "enter the marketplace", he can damn well pay for his advertising.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Example protocol:
220 foo.bar.com CASHMAIL System
...
HELO
250 foo.bar.com Hello
MAIL FROM: spammer@mail.com
250 spammer@mail.com... Sender ok
RCPT TO: foo@bar.com
666 foo@bar.com requires payment of 20 cents
CASH: 82kd0xma893mcos0
667 foo.bar.com accepts payment of 20 cents
DATA
I think some work in the IETF has been done on spam prevention, but no one has even tried to standardize it.
Many of these spammers send from hotmail.com or from email addresses that are not in the US. So how would I go about suing them? Even assuming that I could sue them, how could I manage to go about collecting my settlement from them?
I'm afraid suing is not the answer to ending all spam, just a small class of spam.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Signup at http://www.oNumber.net, and exchange oNumbers with friends. Avoid putting e-mail address on business cards etc and use oNumeber instead. By using the guest list system, only authorized people get to see your actual contact info. It's not free, but it's free of advertising and O'WONDER (who own oNumber) will not sell or release your info to anyone. Slashdot reader feedback encouraged.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
220 foo.bar.com CASHMAIL System
HELO
250 foo.bar.com Hello
MAIL FROM: mom@aol.com
667 foo.bar.com accepts payment of 0 cents
DATA
..
MAIL FROM: unknown_spammer@hotmail.com
250 unknown_spammer@hotmail.com... Sender ok
RCPT TO: foo@bar.com
666 foo@bar.com requires payment of 200 cents
CASH: 82kd0xma893mcos0
667 foo.bar.com accepts payment of 200 cents
DATA
...
MAIL FROM: known_spammer@hotmail.com
250 known_spammer@hotmail.com... Sender ok
RCPT TO: foo@bar.com
666 foo@bar.com requires payment of 1.0e09 cents
CASH: 82kd0xma893mcos0
666 foo.bar.com detects fraudulent/forged e-coin. Forwarding to fbi.gov
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I run my own mail server, running qmail with the rblsmtpd daemon, pointing at several "underground", i.e. not for pay, black hole lists. In addition, there are spam _content_ filtering tools out there such as spamassassin, which looks for common telltale fingerprints in email. WORK FROM HOME, MAKE MONEY FAST, etc. etc. etc.
It can be done, with a little work.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I was delighted the other day to find out that Iowa had an anti-spam law. I promptly requested 'remove' on all the 'psudo-opt-in' type spam (no, buying a list from someone does not mean that the people on it want your crap). Of course, under Iowa law I need to opt out before I can do anything, unless the spam is forged.
One of the 'university diploma' spams was illegal under Iowa law (invalid return address), but, of course how do you sue for something like that? I tried looking on reverse phone number sites to see who owned the phone number advertised, but nothing showed up.
Are there any ways to find out who sends these out without incurring a large expense?
Hrm, I wonder how long before someone starts sending out "make money suing spammers, call today for your free kit." spam.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think it's time to apply Truth in Advertising standards to spam.
You say your product will help me lose weight? We send a rebuttal picture of your naked fat ass to everyone you know.
You say your product will make my penis gain 3"? We get testimonial from your two mercy fucks about how you need to use this product yourself.
You say your product will get me hot dates every weekend? We distribute a copy of your busy social calendar - with a note that you were stood up for the sole entry, your Jr. Prom in 1989.
And lest we forget it, you say your product will net me $50,000 in only 10 weeks? We show your credit card bills, and how even Miss Cleo has cut you off as a deadbeat.
The best thing of all si that this doesn't really require any new laws. (Well, the suggestions above do, but not the concept.) Don't just nail the spammers with small fines for sending spam, hit them with large fines for fradulant advertising, participation in criminal enterprises, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I've sued phone spammers, the type who use a machine that calls people and plays a recording, which as been blatantly illegal for almost 10 years.
I've won, but it takes more work than the $500 you win is worth even when you do win, and on average it's something you do only on principle and not for money.
And thus few do it. When I have been in court the judges/commissioners have said they don't often (if at all) see these cases.
Laws are not the answer to spam. In spite of what people say it is not just a question of "it's not a free speech issue it's a property issue."
Spam involves rights in conflict. It's a free speech issue AND a property issue AND a privacy issue, all in one. The answers are not so simple as these laws suggest.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I think companies like MSN/Microsoft/Hotmail, yahoo, excite and @home should be doing the suing.
Everytime someone forges an e-mail address using their domain name, and someone forwards it to abuse@something.com then it costs them money to research it. It could also be considered slander if someone sends you an e-mail from something like animalsex@microsoft.com.
Don't they care about their PR? I mean now I think that Microsoft has something to do with bestiality. How do I know that it wasn't really from them?? I'll just keep assuming that till proven otherwise.
The problem with a national law, with any law, is that it defines "safe turf" for both sides.
If Congress debated such a law, I'm sure that the DMA would yell and scream and "compromise" that it is willing to make it illegal to send unsolicited email of a criminal nature. Outlaw the pyramid schemes, outlaw the cock&tit creams that don't have FDA approval, etc.
Meanwhile, in the same spirit of compromise, it's now Federal law that companies can ignore repeated requests that you be removed from their spam lists because you have a bona fide business relationship. It doesn't matter that this "relationship" was a one-time purchase of a Christmas present a decade ago for a person who's long been out of your life - you might need another left-handed bacon turner some day and if they can't sent you reminders, you'll buy it elsewhere!
Likewise the legislation would undoubtably protect affiliated businesses - the reason I briefly got investment solicitations from my car insurance carrier, until I made it clear they were about to lose the latter account. It will even protect attempts to woo you away from existing businesses - you drive, so therefore you should hear about Fly-By-Night insurance rates. And Bob's detailing shop. And on and on and on....
I'm not saying that legislation would never be appropriate, just that it's too early to do it at the national level. Let's get a clear concensus that spam is a problem, then use the federal law *only* to normalize things like mandatory subject lines.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Unsolicited bulk email is used with such frequency because it is so incredibly cheap. This convinces those who use it, that it has a positive return on investment. In order to reduce the amount of spam, it is necessary to increase the cost of sending it. Digital postage is the only way to reduce spam.
This would be analogous to the stamps used on snail mail, now. If nobody else steps up to the plate, some corporations will try to do this for a profit, or national governments will try to do it for control. The better solution, however, is some sort standards-based decentralized digital postage, where everyone can issue their own estamps. It is then up to each individual to decide, how much a spammer has to pay to get to their inbox.
Of course to be widely adopted, this has to be well integrated into email clients. It also has to be completely painless to insure that your friends always have enough of your stamps on-hand.
Once in place, the benefits include:
- less spam
- no need for email size limits, because there would be an obvious mechanism to allow billing for arbitrarily large emails
- automatic payment method for email based customer support
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Well, not exactly. You're right in that that's all it technically does for us. However, this leads us to two potential advantages:
- When the spammer is identifiable, they don't tend to last long because the volume of incoming complaints tends to overload the ISP.
- It makes it easier to create a groupware blocking system - for example, 10,000 people subscribe, and the system requires three subscribers to complain about an address before it's blocked. A spammer sends spam and it hits 8237 of the subscribers. The first three to see it click the "this is spam" button, and the system automatically removes the mail from the inboxes of the other 8234 subscribers who got it and blocks all future email from the sender.
You're right, but again, the volume of incoming complaints (and denial of service attacks) tends to make the ISPs balk at hosting spammers. Once they're tracable, the attacks begin, and the ISPs dump the spammers.The problem is, we need a completely new email system with authentication, and we need mail clients that handle both it and the current standard seamlessly... because practically nobody is going to make a hard switch over to a new email system that will prevent most of their friends and associates from emailing them, and very few people are going to be willing to run two separate email clients. It would be best if the server-side software supported both standards as well, so server admins don't have to feel that they're getting an additional piece of software to support. Moreover, everything has to support every major platform and some of the more prominent minor ones so it can support a massive switchover and won't piss off users of any particular platform by not properly supporting them.
Java, anyone?
Try calling your state's attorney general's office and explaining the situation to them. Sometimes they can be surprisingly helpful, particularly if you can do a good job of explaining yourself (like pointing out repeatedly that they're doing this *incredibly* *loathesome* thing in *your* *name* and that it's just *destroying* the good name of your business) and can come off as genuinely hurt and confused.
If you got any threatening complaints about the spam, you could bring those up too, and claim that you fear for your life because of what this person is doing in your name.
The police might be willing to help, too.
You have public law enforcement resources. Use them. It's not just the RIAA and MPAA that have a right to call in the cops. You do too. Go for it. If THEY catch the spammer, and prosecute them for identity theft, defaming you, or whatever, the spammer will be in for a lot worse than having their relay shut down.
The main thing I see is that the best idea is to somehow transfer costs back to the spammer. So an idea that forces the spamming computer to use up resources is fine.
similarly, a solution that causes you to spend time implementing more technical solutions is costing you time, and probably money.
bottom line: Make the spammer pay.
In my original example, the smtp could also be set to have several levels of trust, with corresponding levels of computional feedback for the sender.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Well, thanks for backing up your statements with all those statistics. Since you've pointed to studies, news articles, and online discussions backing up your facts I feel confident believing your statement that most companies spam from a shadowy data haven outside of the reach of law.
Of course, if you had said that my spam comes from some crazy island in the Pacific without backing up that statement with ANY FACT WHATSOEVER, I wouldn't believe you. Oh wait.. You don't have any proof to back up your statements. Never mind.
This is revealing, however the real text of the interview is more so:
Interviewer: I'm calling regarding Congressional action on spam.
Jerry Cerasale: If you ban me from this type of medium, you have severely limited my ability to enter into the marketplace.
I: But surely with all the ads for porn, casinos and viagra substitutes that you'd be competing with, it's not going to be of any use to you anyway.
JC: You're not listening. I said if you ban me from entering the marketplace. You can ban everybody else.
I: So you're saying you want to ban everybody except Jerry Cerasale from using spam?
JC: No, I want to ban unethical marketers from using spam.
I: How do you define unethical marketers?
JC: They're the ones that forge stuff and won't honor remove requests.
I: So won't they just start following that law and you'll still have the volume problem?
JC: No, because they're unethical marketers.
I: So who are the ethical marketers
JC: They're the DMA members
I: So if the unethical marketers join the DMA do they become ethical marketers?
JC: Of course.
I: Even if they still forge and don't honor remove requests?
JC: Yes. If they join the DMA, then what they are doing is ethical marketing.
I: Surely all the spammers will just join the DMA then and they can all spam.
JC: That's OK.
I: But then won't email be useless for everybody because of the volume? After all, there's got to be hundred of millions of potential marketers out there who might want to use it.
JC: Yes.
I: So you're opposed to laws that will make spam unusable for marketing?
JC: Yes.
I: But you realise that if the laws aren't passed, spam will be unusable for anything.
JC: Yes.
I: Including marketing.
JC: Yes.
I: So really your opposition to laws banning spam achieves nothing to protect it for marketing, and just succeeds in destroying it for everybody.
JC: That's right - if me and my DMA buddie's can't use it for our purposes, then nobody can use it for any purposes.
I: Isn't that a little childish.
JC: Well since they won't play by my rules I would take by bat and ball and go home, but I don't own the bat or the ball, so the only way I can stop them from playing is by destroying the bat and the ball.
I: Mr Cerasale, thank-you for your time.
JC: My pleasure.
I think companies like MSN/Microsoft/Hotmail, yahoo, excite and @home should be doing the suing.
Well, maybe, perhaps not. Companies will sue if it's in their interest. If their network becomes good enough to handle the congestion from spam, and the amount of spam doesn't vary too much as a customer moves from ISP to ISP, it's conceivable that the providers might begin to view spam as the customer's problem (as they pretty much do now). And even if they do start suing- who benefits from that directly? Besides the obvious value as a deterrent to spammers, there isn't much justice being done if the plaintiffs are all going to be large ISPs. The parties most damaged by spam are the end users and especially the smaller ISPs.
I always thought class action lawsuits by the actual recipients of spam are the most logical way to counter spam if the approach is going to be via the courts. After all, have you ever received a single, individual spam that's caused you to consider taking the case to court against that particular spammer, with lawyers and court costs and all that hassle? With a judge that might ask "well why didn't you just hit delete?" And getting that single spam email message isn't really what you're suing over. It's the degradation of your daily routine, the tedium of having to delete a hundred emails a day year in and year out, the loss of almost a day of your life per year deleting countless messages about herbal Viagara and credit repair software and diplomas from prestigious non-accredited universities and hair loss and government grants info packages and an EZ way to consolidate debt and reducing all payments by 60% and frisky teens. Going to court over a single spam seems to miss the point. And it's expensive and inconvenient to sue as an individual, so a spammer might very well recognize that his individual spam probably isn't going to elicit a lawsuit if it isn't outrageous enough for a spammed plaintiff to choose as THE spam (out of the 10000 in his box) that he's going to go to court over. In fact, people tend to sue when the spam particularly offends them (e.g. when it talks about sex with minors, or has nude photos in it and is received by a minor). Unless things proceed to the point where every spam message sent out results in a lawsuit, a spammer that keeps his emails polite and sticks ADV in the header is pretty much safe from being sued. So you don't even get much of a deterrent effect.
Unless we switch to using class action suits, which don't have these problems if someone with the resources starts consistently nailing all spammers with them. It's much easier than taking a case to court yourself. Someone is doing the suing for you and you get to hang on like a million other freeloaders and enjoy the fruits of your class action. I almost wouldn't mind getting spam if I knew there was a chance that I could stick it to the spammer for a few cents along with thousands of other people. If I even got a fraction of a penny on average per message, we could still be talking about some serious money. And it certainly wouldn't be too hard to set up. In fact (if this were 1999) you could probably build a dot-com out of it somehow, to coordinate the spam submissions, identify plaintiffs and defendants, litigate in court, hire collections agencies, and process the payments back to all plaintiffs. That's more of a business plan than many dot-coms had. I think that if there weren't so many jurisdictional problems with the idea in general (and if there were more spam laws) someone would try this.
I mean now I think that Microsoft has something to do with bestiality. How do I know that it wasn't really from them??
Strictly speaking, even if it turns out the email wasn't from Microsoft, it still doesn't prove that Microsoft has nothing to do with bestiality.
"If you ban me from this type of medium, you have severely limited my ability to enter into the marketplace," said Jerry Cerasale of the Direct Marketing Association.
Here's the punchline:
Jerry Cerasale
Direct Marketing Association
Washington Office
1111 19th St NW
Washington, DC 20036
UNITED STATES
phone: (202)955-5030
fax: (202)955-0085
web: http://www.the-dma.org
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Since he considers spam a legitimate business practice, make sure you forward all your "HOT WET PUSSY!" emails to him so he doesn't miss out on any great deals.
-Legion
A single lawsuit won't do anything to stop spam, but once fifty or one hundred people start suing, it will get too expensive for many spammers. In Washington State, we've nearly a dozen folks filing lawsuits, some of them going for some serious amounts -- to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you've got spam with a phone number or ordering address in it, you can (usually) track it down to a specific company or person. If it's only got a URL, like those mortgage spams, Washington litigants are filling out the contact forms on the site, then going after the mortgage company that contacts them. When these mortgage companies get hit with a lawsuit, they either want to settle right quick, or they rat out the spammer they hired. I've been focusing on spam with phone numbers, as I find it relatively easy and fun to track down the company behind the number. It may not always be easy to find the spammer, but it's not rocket science either. Anyone can do it given a little bit of time.
The Seattle Times had a good article on Saturday about the anti-spam law, some folks who've been using it, their wins, and the troubles they've encountered with the court system. The biggest issue in Washington is that court clerks and judges aren't fully educated about procedural issues like whether one can sue an out-of-state defendant or for punitive damages in small claims court. (The answer to both is yes.) It's been pretty frustrating for us "trailblazers," as the judges are saying contradictory and often quite stupid stuff.
Here's some nifty links:
For a copy of my 24 page zine, Zen and the art of small claims, send some stamps to PO Box 95227, Seattle, WA 98145. You can also just read it online at my site, but any zinester knows that it's just not the same.