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?
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
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.
I like this.
But I can't see any reasable hope of pursuading people to replace DNS. But I suppose people won't care what kind of name lookup their email software is doing.... Hmm...
Or what about something like ICQ where you can say who you want to be able to receive communciations from. Anyone else you have to authorize before they can send you an actual message. I doubt spammers could be bothered to do this, they'd go find some other way to annoy people.
How about doing this?
Your email program looks at the headers of emails being received. If the message is from someone in your address book, or is from someone you sent an email to *recently*, or is from a recognised mailing list then you get the email.
If it does not fit any of those conditions, it must first validate the sender. To do this it sends back a message to the senders From address with instructions saying under what terms you are prepared to accept the email, and a code to send back saying that you accept those terms. Your client would then accept one, and only one message from that address to be delivered to you. If you want to accept more in future you can add them yo your local address book.
The fact that the "spammer" must explicitly accept your terms for accepting your email would give a lot more legal protection to filtering and blacklists of known spammers.
Hmm. Must think about this some, and implement something!
Sig is taking a break!
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."
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.
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."
YES! Most times that I get spam, I trace down the headers to find the source and report the spam to the ISP hosting the address, and the spam stops.
MOST times. It took a while to get through to hinet.net about their 'tom lee designs' spammer, but even then, when I finally got through to somebody the spam was stopped.
For the last three months, I've been dealing with wads of spam from what I believe to be the same spammer due to the headers:
The ISP in question is AT&T Global. (mail to abuse@prserv.net ends up at postmaster@attglobal). For the last three months or so, I've diligently forwarding the messages, with headers, to abuse@prserv.net (or postmaster@attglobal.net). Until recently, they've been universally coming back with form-letters saying 'this problem has already been reported'. Sometimes the spam stops for a day or two, sometimes it doesn't.
I even looked up their contact number on whois and called THAT a few times (the only human beings there seem to be overworked and underpaid tech support people). The last few days, I've been getting my reports returned in a form letter stamped 'not our domain', as if whoever's getting my messages at AT&T Global is either 'in on it' or just doesn't want to deal with it any more (or perhaps is's just a 'new guy' who's not used to dealing with the headers, or thinks that only AT&T Global user's complaints about spam from their network should be dealt with)....
Point is, with roughly 80 spam messages from the same spammer forwarded, the spam has continued unabated, and I honestly wonder if some salesdrone at AT&T Global's Austin, Texas area POP has an 'understanding' with the spammer and has been willing to re-sign him every time he gets kicked off. Unfortunately, none of the emails I've sent to 'postmaster@attglobal.net' requesting more information about the spammer (including requests on the order of 'who do I contact to find out the proper legal procedure for obtaining the spammer's identity so that I can look into taking action myself') simply come back with more form-letters, or are unanswered...
I called them again today (after last night's two spams came back from them stamped 'not our domain') and for the first time, actually got to speak to someone in the postmaster department. She actually seemed helpful and polite, so hopefully something might finally be DONE about this spammer...
So, anyway, to get back to the point - the ISP's are the ones who have the power to do something about spammers on their network, and if they choose not to, there ought to be some sort of recourse. Small ISP's, you can complain to their upstream provider, but when you're dealing with AT&T Global?....
'scuze the verbosity of this post - this particular spammer/ISP issue has me pretty irritated at the moment...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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 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.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"