Slashdot Mirror
Rep. Bill Jones Thinks Spam is "Innovative"
GMontag writes "Wired is running this story:Candidate: Spam in Every Pot about candidate-for-governor Bill Jones' spam campaigning. The most telling quote: "Jones spokesman Darrel Ng said the e-mail wasn't spam, commonly defined as unsolicited commercial e-mail. Ng instead classified Jones' non-commercial mass-mailing as an "innovative way to use the Internet.'" Another interesting item: "An examination of the e-mail sent out by the Jones campaign revealed forged headers. The e-mail, purportedly sent from an MSN.com address, was actually routed through the server of an elementary school in Chonnam, Korea.""
How else would I have enlarged my wiener and got back my hair and made my millions of dollars?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
He should make his campaign slogan "a spam in every mailbox." That will get him elected.
How the hell are you supposed to pronounce "Ng"????
- vir sine vestibus
I can't help but think "so what?". This seems to me to be very standard political spin. A politician uses spam to try to further his campaign, and then defends it as "innovative" just because email spam *is* new in the domains of campaigning. Obviously anybody with a brain can say "it's not innovative unless the concept is new, not the application". By his logic I could spam for saving purple elephants and be "innovative".
It's just playing with words and being a political spin doctor. I, for one, am only surprised that email spam has not been used for campaigning earlier.
But I'm not in california, I used the "never get this again" link after the first one, and subsequently got 3 more, and it was freaking html! Does California still have the death penalty??
Thinking about this further- does he think of mail fraud as an innovative use of the postal system? Many spam laws aren't against the spam themselves but are against falsifying header info.
If I don't ask for the e-mail, and I don't personally know the person...its SPAM, ableit better than p0rn spam.
I hate to say it, but I think we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality coming from our elected officials (and candidates). You have to realize they farm this sort of thing out, and to them it's all a broad spectrum of marketing/contact/fundraising/etc.
I doubt the candidate in mind was even aware of what was going on, but when confronted he responded as you would expect any politico to respond. doublespeak and warm fuzzies, with a handful of buzzwords.
Hopefully there will be a day when there is a representative we can stand behind- the only way we can get there is for all of us to make our voices heard, and to use the system to fight the system. as many have said before, make phone calls or write actual letters spelling out WHY you feel something is bad, and rational reasons as to why they as your elected representative should be against something.
my 2 cents. have a good weekend!
EOM
It's not theft, it is an innovative way to acquire resources.
It's not murder, it is an innovative way to use a gun.
I call it "proof by I call it something else so it isn't bad"
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
By this time his mailbox will be flooded with forwards from spam users have received...
But thats just a gues...
In a new state record, Candiate Bill Jones received only 1 vote. Many blame his poor showing on the fact the he hired his campaign spokesperson because he promised to "Get Vote$$ fa$$t"
TODO: Something witty here...
What a moron...please add his address to the black-hole lists.
Just another example of politicans writing laws at the demand of consumers only to manipulate it to their own advantage. I hope this turkey loses his office over this.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Shouldn't this be under the category "Its funny, laugh"?
But many who received Jones' e-mail are not California residents. Some aren't even U.S. citizens. Evidently, the address harvester used by Jones' vendor assumed that all e-mail addresses containing ".ca," a suffix that identifies a Canadian domain, belong to California residents.
Well, clearly if he could get the much coveted Canadian vote he'd win by a landslide..I bet the Canadians aren't voting for any other Californian Politicians. I don't know why no one has ever tried this before. How innovative!
air and light and time and space
bacon
ham
chopmeat
bologna
moldy bread
Some leftovers from the fridge
Mixed it in a pan, and left it in the oven for an hour.
It tasted just like spam.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
It will be interesting to see if the effects of this SPAM will have negative result on the number of voters voting for Bill Jones. I would say that if you are against SPAM then this is a very good reason to vote for someone other than Bill Jones
-- Find the Truth...
At least he's not Grayout Davis.. I think Bill Simon might have a shot at this.. with the help from Rudy G. and Riordan getting so much negative ad time.
Unfortunately for us, this may turn out to be a good thing for the candidate.
Anyone in the public eye gets their name out to the public, and it sticks in some peoples' heads. Bad publicity or good, this happens. Unfortunately for us, this can translate into mindless votes on election day. Knowing a name often translates into thinking that person is the best candidate, and voting for them.
I hope I am wrong about this...
Mark
Well, I'm actually registered to vote in California, so I can let him know how I feel about spamming me in a way that might have some impact. I have a feeling that some other people around here might feel the same way; if your primary name recognition is as that spamming bastard it's not likely to win many votes. (Though this raises the spectre of forging spam from an opponent in an attempt to smear him.) Of course I wasn't planning on voting for him anyway, but it's one more reason not to like him.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Ng said Jones' campaign was unaware the e-mail was being processed from off-shore servers and promised to address the issue with the e-mail marketing vendor that did the mailings for the campaign.
Sounds like that standard disclaimer when a company spams. If I lived in California, I'd go out of my way not to vote for this guy.
what if every one of us sent a message to his primary email address with an image of something random and telling him some way to get rich in the next 24 hours, every day for the next month and see how innovative he thinks spam is after that.
If this moron gets elected, then we can expect every political candidate everywhere, in every country, state, and district, to spam each and every one of us. Obviously, then, He Must Not Win. Who is he running against, so that I may I donate money to them?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
... Politics are honest...
Mr. Ng claims that spam is 'unsolicited commercial e-mail.' Unfortunately it seems this definition is held by all, but shouldn't we really say that spam is 'any unsolicited mass e-mail for personal gain?' That way, we cover political sharks, over-eager charities, AND commercial enterprises.
This story claims that it's all okay because a) it's within the law, and b) he provided an unsubscribe link. Hello? Does anyone actually EVER use unsubscribe links on unsolicited e-mail? I've learned that it's a great way for a spammer to validate your address is real and that some idiot is reading the mail. Even if the unsubscribe button isn't legit, aren't most tech-savvy folk going to think the same?
P.S: I got this e-mail when he sent it. What sending his political BS to someone sitting in the countryside in the United Kingdom achieved, I'm not sure.
mogorific carpentry experiments
young getting in on politics... from the article "The e-mail, purportedly sent from an MSN.com address, was actually routed through the server of an _elementary school in Chonnam, Korea._ "
But wait, I digress...
However, ask yourself, why do you vote for a candidate; do ad campaigns effect how you vote? (really... do they)
Accentuate the positive, don't waste your mod points on the negative.
Hundreds of spam a day should make him happy
I submitted my page on Bill Jones's spams a couple days ago, and it was rejected:
2002-02-28 00:58:56 California Gubernatorial Canidate Resorts to Spam (articles,spam) (rejected)
Anyway, I'm not bitter. Check out my page on it anyway: http://polpo.org/jonesspam/. Basically, I pick apart the mail and the "click here to remove yourself from our list" page (which involves some novel Javascript-based HTML obfuscation) and find out who one of the spammers might be.
After talking with some people about this and doing a simple Google search I found that he's been doing this for a couple months now, with MSNBC doing this story on it in December. They have a followup story here.
By the way, don't count on Bill Jones's office writing you back when you complain to them about the spam. I haven't recieved a response yet.
Ian
Do people really think we're ok with getting spam? Sure, you can just delete it, but it feels like an invasion of privacy, like nothing is completely personal anymore, like someone is always knocking on your door. You don't have to answer it, but you'll always look out the window to see if it's someone you know, and you get sick of seeing another door-to-door salesman.
I think the "market" (i.e. voters) will take care of political spam just fine by reacting negatively to its use. Remember that spam works for scammers and hucksters because a tiny portion of those targeted will send money to the sender; ergo there's no disincentive to pissing off all the other recipients. Political elections, however, don't quite work that way...
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Someone's been paid off by the "innovative non-commercial mass-mailers".
--Metrollica
Spampaign. As in, "in 2004, many candidates are expected to spampaign for president, but only one will win".
To be fair to Jones (and as a Californian I hate having to be fair to one of our Republican candidates :-) it isn't unsolicited commercial email. Of course I'd still consider it spam but technically he's right, especially in the context of CA's spam law which does explicitly define it as commercial email.
However the Wired article does mention the spams are using forged headers and were sent via an elementary school's servers in Korea. Now this is pretty despicable, even if it is not technically illegal (I don't know relevant Korean law). This would-be governor is stealing server resources from Korean school kids in his bid to get his political message out. That's a low tactic indeed. I do hope Mr. Jones doesn't support laws that make using someone's computer resources without permission illegal...
Sailing over the event horizon
If your computer has a fax modem attached, a printer attached, and fax software, then it is a fax machine for the purpose of the federal definition.
What you should do:
Lets make an example of this SPAM scum.
This is not legal advice until I go to law school, graduate law school, pass the bar, and confirmed that your retainer check cleared.
Fight Spammers!
http://www.vote-smart.org/vote-smart/profile.phtml ?ID=BCA70462&dtype=B&state=CA
feel free to spam mr. jones with your comments on his spamming activites
was actually routed through the server of an elementary school in Chonnam, Korea
Seems obvious to me - the guy is for better relations with china as well as furthering education! Damm where do I vote? Such an innovative speaker!
On a serious note, I hope this guy gets his head put on a pike and placed on display as a warning to the next ten generations that some things come as too high a price.
Not everday you get to use a B5 quote now is it? =)
Just so the candidate is not seen in bad light an underling has to answer the questions.
That underling further blames the company he hired.
Mr NG is certainly right that spam email is less obtrusive than bulk mail and tv ads, BUT mr Jones would have to pay for TV ads and Bulk mail, while by sending spam he can defer the cost to others.
I'm dumbfounded that a real life political candidate would exhibit that degree of cluelessness, yet attempt to stump on the Internet.
Alluded to in the article, but still worth repeating, is that this is a clear example of why anti-spam regulations should focus on unsolicited bulk email (UBE), not unsolicited commercial email (UCE).
The effect on the network is the same regardless of the content , whether it's commerical, political, religious, or whatever. Hence the catchphrase: "It's about consent, not about content".
Unfortunately, it's probably unrealistic to expect that politicians would ever pass laws limiting their own ability to spam. Any legislation that comes out of this will probably just be along the lines of "no forged headers" and "must support opt-out".
Sigh.
We had a local politician using spam to email students in a student dominated district. He also called it an "innovative way to reach out to students." He only received 7% of the vote. Most voters said they voted just to vote against him...
ISPs should block port 25 (TCP/SMTP) to all servers other than their own. This prevents lusers from using open relays to email their spams.
Most major ISPs I think already do this, but there are many smaller ones that do not.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
"...we're going to see much more of this kind of mentality" is right, and the reason is: "'There are a number of California anti-spam laws but, like all laws, they were passed by politicians. So there is a huge loophole that permits politicians to spam,'" --quote in the article from anti-spam activist Laura Atkins (emphasis added).
And "politician" is one of the word-oriented professions that has most difficulty adapting to computers or anything cyber at all. Lawyers, preachers, journalists, professors, politicians, writers, and a few other types predictably resist learning and using computers. I learned about this pattern when I was doing ISP tech support.
A properly filled-out ballot is an innovate way to show your disgust of these practices.
Here a link to his election website. Let him know what you think. It may already be slashdotted though! ;-)
-- Find the Truth...
If I understand correctly this Korean elementry school's bandwidth was used to bounce the messages off of, right. I suppose that if I am correct that this cost this elementry school money, I am more appaled by that than anything else
"Alcohol, cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson
the email i got said that it was targeted at me a 30-something, liberal, registired democrat who has never voted republican on anything.
targeted as defined by these morons is stupid at best.
i personally like targeted as in - i have your house targeted by a tactical nuke.
Jones says that the mail is fine because it isn't commercial. Does that mean that if I send him 50,000 copies of a piece of mail expressing my ire - and perhaps including an entire dictionary in each one, so he can look up the word 'spam' - that this too is okay because it isn't commercial?
It used to be, before the web, that hosing an offending ISP that refused to chastise a spammer was considered to be a perfectly acceptable response. I say - given the obvious effectiveness of legislation against spam - that we return to those days once again.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
[...]unless you're a real idiot and try to pronounce it as "Nig".
I'll second that ammendment. Nig shall be the slang defamatory word to all politicians...niggers with less brains...aka "nig"
What's up, my niga ermm, i mean nig?
The thing is, it's actually even more separate.
It's political speech - in fact, most states restrictions on Unsolicited Mail and Unsolicited Doorbellers specifically exclude political uses.
So long as he's a registered candidate, he is most likely exempt from any and all such regulations.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
IANAL but I think that forging headers is a deceptive practice and he should in the least have a class action civil lawsuit used against him.
I am currently working on a spam tracker called spaminizer, spam is out of control. There is nothing inovative about it. Anyway, the idea is to track spam based on metaphone values of the subject and in the body of the messages. http://astaroth.intercosmos.net to see the current work in progress, open source though no downloads yet. cheers
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
He could have taken a page from former Vice President Al Gore's book and claimed to have INVENTED Spam! ;-)
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
Sorry if it's a redudant post, had to find an online Portuguese to English dictionary for 'sty'.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Too bad it was South Korea they routed it through. If it was North Korea we could get the press to jump all over his ties to a country with nasty human rights issues. You know they'd love that. It sells papers.
who the hell needs stories about spam? I've got enough of it here.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
Just how does using an open forwarder in *Korea* better relations with China?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I don't see how theft is innovation. As far back as recorded history theft has been with us and considered a crime. The only "innovation" is that these thieves have so far not been subject to any criminal proceedings.
I think an appropriate punishement for SPAMMERS would involved kneecaps and baseball bats
ENOUGH already, My penis is TOO long as it is
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
If this guy had the balls to stand up and say "this is political free speech, it's not spam, get over it!" a lot of spam fighters would give him a bit of room. We understand that there are no simple answers when dealing with politicians (and political issues in general) that are often excluded by a mass media that is focused on ratings, not public service.
But this idiot doesn't even know the first rule of politics - no matter what you did, you can make it far worse by trying to cover it up and failing. He spammed header information - he should burn in Hell for that regardless of the merits of the content of the message! I hope every person who got that spam writes a check for $5 or $10 for his opponent, telling the opponent exactly why they got that donation... with copies send to this moron and the local TV stations. Let him learn that forging headers means that's he's not fit to pick the dog shit up in the city parks, much less represent a district.
(Of course, if it turns out that the opponent forged the headers and got checks... suddenly that's fraud by misrepresentation. Criminal indictments tend to put a stop to that *very* fast.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Uhh, this isn't a troll, it's a true story and it might shed somelight on how spam operators do their dirty deeds.
About 2 months ago I had the chance to take a road trip with one of my best buds to go see his father down in bakersfield. For those that don't know what bakersfield is, it's a shithole of a dirty little town somewhere between Sacramento and LA on the I5.
Now if it's a shithole of a little town, why would I in my right mind want to go there, sleep on a floor for 3 days, and eat crappy food. Well, my friends dad *supposidly* had a T1 line going into his apartment and was running spam operations from that. I told my friend that's bullshit, Ma bell don't run T1's to anything but businesses, i've ordered enough of them to know.
We got down there, I was expecing to walk in, and find a wirespeed DSL modem or something. Upon closer inspection I found a CSU/DSU and a cisco 2500 router. Holy shit this guy really did have a T1 line. I started talking to him about the legal/social ramifications of his business. After about 30 minutes of talking to him I could tell, he got a hair up his butt one day thinking spam was going to be a big money maker for him, paid someone to set him up and that was it. Not only did he not have a clue that hijacking someones SMTP server is bad, but he said SMTP servers that don't run open relays are interferring with his ability to do business and started screaming "ITS MY RIGHT TO SPAM AND ANYONE WHO TRIES TO STOP ME IS INTRUDING ON MY AMERICAN RIGHTS TO RUN A BUSINESS"
I stopped talking to him after that. He just would not accept that using someone elses server without their permission is just plain wrong. Anyways...
He started trying to talk me and my friend into getting into the business with him. I told him it would be a conflict of interest for me because I am a sysadmin of course, but I would be more than happy to watch him work to learn for myself.
His network consisted of 6 win98 machines, 1 BSD box that he had no idea what it did. They ran some windows GUI based tool called SMTPscan. Basically it had 2 boxes to input your IP range into, it would scan that range and report back usable servers. I can't remember the actual name of the program he used to send the mail with, but I remember him pasting that list from SMTP scan into it.
Also to note was his lack of a true list management system. His remove e-mails pointed back to a hotmail account so his main server would be isolated from any attacks. He would manually go into his hotmail account. These removes did nothing though, let me explain it from his point of view.
Basically when your remove yourself from a spam list, it's just for that spam. The spammer still has a list for some new product that he hasn't sent out yet, if he hasn't sent it out how can you be removed?
So this guy maintains a list of 4,000,000 e-mails and ALLWAYS spams to all of them. Legally he's found a loophole to cover his ass and can happily spam the same list as long as he's selling something different.
I just wanted to post this so everyone would know, spammers aren't really the most technically minded people. To them it's
1. Spam
2. ****
3. Profit
While to us it's
1.Spam
2.Flood someone elses server, slander some legit company by relaying pr0n spam. Eat Bandwidth
3. Profit
I hope you enjoyed this post, please mod accordingly if you did.
--toq
Let's send an email to good 'ol Bill Jones with the title "SPAM IS INNOVATIVE" I'm sure if we send at least 20 each we might get him to change his mind :P (or cause his secretary to have major headaches.)
I'm surprised that politicians aren't against spam. Don't they usual get tons of it? Doesn't this disrupt their work, and cause them to not read important emails? Or does this give them an excuse not to read their email at all?
As for me, I'm going to vote for Davis (yes I'm turning 18 in June, scary isn't it?) Because he seems to be the only one that's pro-mass transit. The rest seem to just want to build more highways, and if you've been to California, widening highways has not helped. When Sonoma County government officials for fighting for US101 highway widening they never mentioned rail. When they met with Davis people protested outside and in the end he gave tons of money for rail service and only $10 for the highway widening.
I'm just giving my reason why I'm voting for Davis, if you don't like him, I respect that. Although I think Simon is probably the better of the Republican candidates.
It said that:
> Your email was selected off the Internet based on your voter demographics.
They must have pretty crap demographics
analysis because as a non-US citizen living
in Texas and being more inclined to side with
the Democrats - it' would be hard to find
someone less likely to vote for him!
I got three copies of this email.
So, "VOTE FOR...erm...THE OTHER GUY!"
Not only does this not surprise me, it will be no surprise that crap like this is only going to get worse.
I have noticed a *very* disturbing trend in the reams of spam I receive. More and more of it is coming from seemingly legitimate BigCos.
In the last week I have received spam for several different forms of service from AT cellular and long distance. I have also received three different spams for the Columbia House CD/DVD club.
I'm fairly certain that a number of these spam have been merely a test; just a dip of the toe in the pool, so to speak.
Can you imagine what would happen if an AT&T or a Columbia House (Sony, isn't it?) were to decide the spam was a 'legitimate market channel'?
Implicit in spam is the idea that the spammer wants to sell you something. Politicians don't sell you anything, they simply take.
On a serious side. Think of all the crap that politicians receive in the mail. The stuff our representatives and senators get make your 80 pieces of spam a day look like a cake walk. For that matter, Tom Daschel gets Anthrax. I would rather get ten thousand offers for a fake university degree than a single bomb.
Not only do they run tons of commercials on TV and radio, I'd say the very nature of kickbacks, bribes, and fundraising makes it quite commercial.
Infuriate left and right
My only concern would be that the email doesn't reach people who are out of the voting district (I can't vote in the FL gubernatorial election) and that it isn't excessive. I, for one, would like to get information about all of the candidates via e-mail. One e-mail per candidate. If I get any more, he's just lost my vote...
You can't say "get the money out of politics" and "don't take advantage of this free form of advertising" and expect to get away with it. Now excuse me while I don my asbestos suit.
-bugg
The really telling thing is the forged headers. Even if you could argue the points of political mailings being spam/not being spam, as far as I'm concerned, using a fake email/forged headers makes it spam. Forged email/headers trumps all other arguments. It is spam.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
"I used the "never get this again" link after the first one, and subsequently got 3 more..."
Lesson learned, right?
It may not be possible to prosecute under California's SPAM law, but given the large number of messages sent to people who are clearly not eligible to vote for Mr. Jones it would seem to me that he is engaged in a massive conspiracy to commit voter fraud...
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
Generally, Bill Jones' core support comes from people who don't have email accounts. Sending emails to Californians, Canadians, or whatever wont make a difference. The on-line crowd is going to either support another party, or one of the other two guys in the primary. Simon is the "business guy" who will appeal to that crowd. Riordan is the "can win democratic votes" guy who will appeal to those Republicans who do not want to see the Democrats keep the govenorship, and Jones is part of the out-of-touch crowd who crashed the Republican party into the iceberg of prop 187.
That depends on whether it's North or South Korea ;-)
It might be amusing for Wired, or one of Jones's opponents for that matter, to get in touch with the Korean embassy on this issue. I know (believe me, I know) that a lot of Korean sites are doing precious little about their open relays ... but what, I wonder, would the Korean government think about its educational resources being stolen for the furtherance of an American politician's campaign?
"We've replaced this antispammer's whack-a-mole mallets with axes of evil. Let's see if he notices ...."
Since billjones.org is down (either slashdotted or still disabled because of his upstream ISP) I have created a petition. If you are a registered California voter and want him to know why he won't get your vote, please make your voice heard.
(b) ADDITIONAL VIOLATIONS- (1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;
B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or
C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.
2) As used in this subsection--
A) to `circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure' means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological measure; and
B) a technological measure `effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, prevents, restricts, or otherwise limits the exercise of a right of a copyright owner under this title.
Of course the DMCA covers everything, otherwise there might be someone somewhere that hasn't broken a law...
Gimme dawg's email address and I'll use it when I post to newsgroups:)
We'll see how long Bill likes Spam after that.
hehehe (evil laugh)
Not that I'm any fan of Jones, but was his mass mailing any worse than the campaign techniques of the other candidates? Bill Jones has not flooded my doorstep with flyers or printed material. Nor has he put his face all over TV ad spots.
Politicians always broadcast their message to millions of uninterested people. And it takes less effort to hit delete than to toss a letter at the trash can, pick up the letter after it misses, and pack it into my already overly full trash can.
Having said that, I am put off by the fact that Bill Jones was careless and not entirely honest about his mailing. Had he used a more legitimate looking mail server and a more selective recipient list he might have avoided a lot of flak.
The sad part is that another Republican (Riordan) spammed my answering machine with a recorded message as to why he should be elected. I deleted the message as soon as I heard the name...
"It's ... certainly less obtrusive than TV commercials."
I hardly think so.
TV commercials are always there; it's only a question of whose.
In order for TV commercials to be intrusive, you have to watch TV. TV is entertainment. It is a well-understood bargain that there will be commercials if you seek cheap entertainment watching TV.
Mail is different. You check your mail because it contains important communication with people you care about. Checking your mail is not optional.
Junk snail-mail is easily identified by the packaging.
Identifying junk email mandates the effort of writing filters and scanning headers for the shit that gets through the filters.
Insinuating your message into an activity that I essentially must perform is PRETTY DAMNED INTRUSIVE!
A snake can deny being a snake all it likes, but that doesn't make it any less a snake. Spammers are spammers and they know it, no matter which side of an imaginary legal chalk line they stand on. Spammers are snakes.
Then again, politicians are lawyers.
Bill Jones is not a U.S. Congressman. He's not even a member of the California Assembly or Senate. He's the California Secretary of State, an elected official.
In other words, calling him ``Rep. Bill Jones'' is wrong.
Oops.They are close... Kindof. My bad.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase
... who I'm NOT going to vote for next Tuesday.
Hell, I got the spam message and I'm from north of the 49th.
I know I won't vote for this asshole....Oh yeah, right. Wrong country.
Anyone know where this clown stands on SSCA?. I am sure Eisner or Hollings would love him.
Help fight continental drift.
Just guessing, but the list may be available under some open election laws.
Fight Spammers!
Tacky? This guy:
In short, he used all the same tricks p0rn spammers do to avoid paying the costs and mis-direct complaints to stop their site from being shut down.
I hope I don't need to remind anyone here that it's you as the recipient that is paying to receive this spam? It's currently estimated that 20-30% of all email is spam. That means that 20-30% of the cost of your email account is going to fund spammers like Bill here.
How would you feel if Bill Jones "borrowed" your car for use on the campaign trail? How about if he spray painted "Vote Bill Jones" on the side of your house? Called you collect to discuss his policies?
Sorry, but I don't care if it's political speech. What I object to has nothing to do with the content of his message. He's stealing from others and calling it "innovation".
Do I think there should be a law banning political spam? No.
Do I think there should be a law banning all spam regardless of content? Yes.
No flame, simply strong dissagreement.
The problem is that spam isn't free for the recipient. The primary argument against spam is not simply that it's annoying or that it clogs an otherwise useful communication medium with noise but that it's a collect call that the receiver can't refuse.
If you're on the end of a pay per X pipe, like many wireless net plans, then spam actually costs the receiver money. Some internet mail hosts charge users per X of storage, once again spam costs money. There are more and better examples which other people can cite who understand the situation much better than I.
Using spam in this way shows just how out of touch the candidate is. He's ran past the "I'll buy your vote" argument all the way to "You'll pay for my sales pitch".
916-349-2002
they tried to support their actions, citing 1st amendment and an unsubscribe.
I told them to go to hell.
But many who received Jones' e-mail are not California residents. Some aren't even U.S. citizens. Evidently, the address harvester used by Jones' vendor assumed that all e-mail addresses containing ".ca," a suffix that identifies a Canadian domain, belong to California residents.
.foreigners?
Any idiot that would assume that a state would get it's own TLD before a country has no business campaigning to become an elected official.
Does he think all TLDs belong to the US with the exception of
1-916-349-2002
they tried to support their actions: 1) by citing 1st amendment rights and 2) by including an unsubscribe button.
People should flood them with complaints.
Bill Jones is California's secretary of state, not a US Representative. He's running for the Republican nomination for governor.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Also, I do not see anything that suggests that the forged headers/spam email were sent by the Jones campaign.
A common classic campaign tactic is to take your opposition's bumper stickers and plaster them on car's front windshields when no one is around.
This is just the same tactic being done in cyberspace.
Of course, the inaccuracies here are pretty typical of a slash dot post.
We have a new moron who thinks he deserves your place on the podium.
At this election, you're probably worried about how your government is going to spend your money, whether your child is going to get a decent education, whether your candidates actually cares about the issues, or will do anything to get elected. What would you say if one candidate decided to use a primary school's facilities to send out thousands of publicity messages to electors worldwide, many of whom couldn't even vote in that election? What if that candidate didn't pay that school a penny, despite disrupting that school's ability to use its computers while the candidate exploited them? What if this kind of behaviour wasn't just immoral, but probably illegal too in this country, and so the candidate had evaded American law by using a school in a third world country to send out his publicity? And what if that school had never given him permission, but he'd hacked into the school's computer systems anyway, like a common criminal? Representative Bill Jones did exactly that. And what's more, he called his abuse of third world primary children "innovative". At this election, you might want to innovate in your own way, and elect XXX XXXXXX for YYYYYYY, telling Bill Jones that you want someone you can trust. Not a penny pinching computer hacker.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It fits in with the republican attitude.
i feel your pain, i have un-registered from freshmeat prolly 20 times, to no avail.
I'm outraged at this egregious act of allowing advertising to impact upon the free exchange of information! Why MUST the Internet serve to support those who wish to use its power for their goals other than online community and information sharing?
I, uh... oh. Wait, I thought I was posting on the Slashdot subscription topic.
My bad.
UCE means unsolicited commercial e-mail - mail sent to your account intended to get you to buy something, like Temple Kiff or spy software. What they did was UBE - unsolicited BULK e-mail - mail sent to your account with a message or subject not always related to getting you to part with your money.
It's apparently true that Jones didn't violate state law, but only because he wasn't asking anyone to send him money. (If only he'd been asking for campaign contributions...) This is *still* spam by the standard set out in any number of anti-spam projects, groups, or campaigns.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
While Korea government officials are busy whining about a little dog eating joke, their country is getting cut off from the internet because its servers are remotely harboring e-terrorists. Korean government officials and bureaucrats need to get some clues. A lot of clues.
Maybe Jay can do a joke about how the Koreans use dogs to run the treadmills for the generators that run the Korean spam servers in all the schools and government offices ... before they chop 'em up to be put in little cans to be sold as meat.
Seriously ... block Korea ... I do ... and I don't regret it.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I think it would be appropriate to sign up Mr. Jones with a varied assortment of "innovative" web sites and see how much he really enjoys spam.
...and i live in galway ireland.
and here i thought florida had the weirdest voting laws...
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Indeed. And this sort of thing has been going on long enough that there is even a saying that can be applied to determine whether it is spam or not.
" If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. . . It's a duck"
KFG
... Time to subscribe him to the X10, "get rich from home," and PR0N mailing lists....
-Baka!
Before I write to my congressman proposing this, I want to toss it out on /. to see if it's a valid idea.
Should forged headers be illegal?
The exception being anonymous remailers. In which case the remailer identifies itself as such.
But forging headers to make the email appear to have originated or been processed by a machine that wasn't involved in the delivery is, IMO, a malicious act.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Here's a bit of synchronicity. Just this morning I received a spam in my personal mailbox. I have 5 addresses: work, personal, and 3 spamtraps that go to trash by default. Whenever my 2 real addresses get spammed, I go medieval. Headers revealed the spam was sent through an open relay at ... Naju Noan Elementary School of Chonnam Province, Korea.
What's the deal with the Korean school system? Did someone donate a few thousand default-setup NT servers to them after the dotcom bust?
According to NameSpace, the class-C block belongs to Soonhwa Cho (jeonnam3@soback.kornet.net), and the class-A belongs to Korea Network Information Center (hostmaster@nic.or.kr). I've written to KrNIC before, and they flatly disavow any and all responsibility for net abuse in their subdomains. They refer me to their WHOIS server.
Now, there are a few problems with that position. The most important is that NajuNoan's whois entry belongs to yang yeon ho (noan1@edunet4u.net), and that address bounces back as invalid.
So what to do? AFAICT, the only answer is for some off-white-hat hackers to 0WN the whole damn Korean edu network and secure those servers remotely whether they like it or not.
Let's hope Mr. Jones doesn't set a precedent. The next article at Wired talked about how the Catholic church sees the Internet as a great opportunity for evangelism:
... the positive capacities of the Internet to carry religious information and teaching beyond all barriers and frontiers. Such a wide audience would have been beyond the wildest imaginings of those who preached the Gospel before us.... Catholics should not be afraid to throw open the doors of social communications to Christ, so that his good news may be heard from the housetops of the world."
Foley also quotes the Pope as saying, "Consider
I can see it now, hundreds of "Get Eternal Life FAST" and "Jesus and his horny college teen friends want to see you in church" from HotPope@blasphemy.nu all sent via open Korean servers. Sigh.
Sailing over the event horizon
Forging an email address is a criminal activity in California, regardless of whether or not it's commercial. It is a crime to:
"Knowingly and without permission uses the Internet domain name of another individual, corporation, or entity in connection with the sending of one or more electronic mail messages, and thereby damages or causes damage to a computer, computer system, or computer network."
Whoever forged the MSN address while really going through a Korean relay would seem to be a criminal.
No doubt, Jones' is person running for office, and this is legal since he is technically not a service or good.
Nevertheless it is tacky. Mass unsolicited emails are annoying, and routed ones are even more annoying.
I personally think Mr. Jones' soft-money-funded-self should be looked at like "product." I mean, lets get real here, I imagine any republican, democrat, or republicrat running for the governor of California is going to have his fare share of corporate interests residing in his political rectum. By electing someone like Mr. Jones' I can guarantee you that my tax dollars are going to purchase something crappy.
God I hate politicians. I think slashdot readers should pool geek salaries in order to buy a big island that was only run by geeks. Breading could be a problem though, every other person would be goofy looking and sterile from caffeine.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
any more annoying than all the political ads that used flood the airwaves right before an election.
Notes:
1) Now, thanks to the campaign finance reform bill (and Tauzin-Dingell), we don't have to watch any of this.
2) Right. (and it'll pass the senate. The conference committee will slip in some extra uglies to "compromise")
3) The candidates are actually paying the networks for the airtime, and if I don't like it I can vote with my Doritos and Pepsi somewhere else.
4) Uh, the networks don't own the airtime, I do. Refer back to Telecomm Act 1997, etc.
Do not vote for Candidate Bill Jones because he thinks spam is innovative.
Sent this email to all your friends
That depends entirely on the definition of "damages" wouldn't it? I'm sure all of *us* would consider the time it takes to hit the delete button as damaging, but it didn't do any damage to our *system*.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
I've heard "uncolisoted political email" (UPE, I guess) refered to as Tofu.
Just passing allong the meme.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"The e-mail, purportedly sent from an MSN.com address, was actually routed through the server of an elementary school in Chonnam, Korea."
Contact the school and get them to file a complaint or at least send a letter whimpering about how terrible it is that the children can't get on the Net because their bandwidth is being stolen by spammers. Get a California newspaper to publish the letter.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It's a blatant case of an email that lies about its origin. But what else can you expect from politicians except lies and deception?
Like all spammers, he should be given a fair trial then given a first class hangin'.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"That depends entirely on the definition of damages wouldn't it?"
Many recipients will have replied to the MSN address, thereby wasting MSN's resources. That's damage.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Now people at my school are jumping on the bandwagon. I just got a mass email from somebody running for my school's student union... This is going to be damn irritating if everyone that's running does this.
Looks like I'm going to go and NOT vote for Sarah.
Sure, not like his financial circumstances will change if he gets elected, right? Oh no. No juicy kickbacks from friendly corporates wanting small favours. Goodness me, no. How could I even think it?
Um, wouldn't governorship of California qualify as "services"? Perhaps the esteemed attorney needs to read the statute again.
In addition, someone misused a Korean school's resources and bandwidth, probably getting them blackholed for quite a while. That's damage. Under California's civil spam laws, it's clear that UCE is considered tantamount to theft of bandwidth, ISPs with "no spam" policies may collect $5 per recipient from the spammers for abusing their network and bandwidth.
Pity that the California laws are mostly untested theory. I'd bet that in the years they've been on the books, not a single spammer has spent a day in jail.
Half of my spam now says on it "THIS IS NOT SPAM, we are strongly opposed to spam". Apparently, if you just declare your spam non-spam, it is no longer spam.
I've had spam from it many times, contact it every time, and it still keeps spamming.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Or all the AP to all ports under 1024 then you are wrong. I get SO much spam for Korea and Korean schools, I've recieved multiple spams from that_exact_school_ multiple times, I have tried to contact them and many others have tried to contact them, the spam keeps comming, BLOCK THEM !
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Who do we write to to get this jerk's membership in the Republican Party rescinded?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Can I send him all the "innovation" in my inbox?
Table-ized A.I.
The buzzword is 'spampaign^TM'.
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
"I've had spam from it many times, contact it every time, and it still keeps spamming."
Which means that the sysadmin is either incompetent or is being paid to allow the spamming (or both).
Don't email him. Contact the administrators of the school system by telephone or snail-mail.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'd like to gently remind people to think of the potential consequences to our society of banning any form of political speech, regardless of how tacky it might be.
For the last goddamned time, spamming is NOT a free-speech issue, it's a PROPERTY RIGHTS issue.
I don't give a damn whether the spam is this asshole shyster trying to get elected, or some idiot cult member trying to save my soul, or the run of the mill porn pusher trying to sell me stolen MPEGs of Tammy Faye Baker fornicating with Pete Wilson, the issue isn't the CONTENT, it's the theft of services from me, and everyone else the spammer sends the crap out to.
I am getting bloody tired of people getting the right to speak confused with the PRIVILEGE of using someone else's property.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Maybe spamming by a politician is innovative, but so was crashing an airplane into an aircraft carrier when the Japanese invented it.
It would also be innovative for this scumbag to advertise his campaign by hiring punks with spray cans to write his name across my windshield.
I just hope this asshole's political career goes down in flames, but I'm afraid I have very little hope of that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
2. They have a policy that all their clients should have fully qualified (opted in) lists, any client found to be breaking this rule becomes an ex-client. As they are in Australia this would be in breach of the privacy act, and they have no wish to be associated with criminal activity no matter how petty.
This is the critical point. If one "opts in" for mailings, then by definition it isn't SPAM as it is not "unsolicited." If I check "send me notices of good deals" on some web site I'm buying something at, then I've opted-in, ie solicited, the bulk emailings.
SPAM is unsolicited bulk email (mostly, but not always, commercial, but again, the emphesis is on unsolicited bulk email).
If someone uses my servers, and my hard disk space, to store their unsolicited advertisments then as far as I (and several states, but alas, not Illinois) am concerned they are guilty of tresspass and should be treated accordingly: with stiff fines and some jail time. If, on the other hand, they are sending a mass, but soliticed, mailing (for example, I get mass mailings from AOPA all the time, which I have explicitly asked for), then there is absolutely no abuse and all is kosher.
You claim to not be in the habit of sending unsolicted bulk emails. Excellent. In this case you run a legitimate, inoffensive business and I wish you the best. If, on the other hand, this claim should turn out to be untrue, then I would be the first to cheer for the legions of system crackers tapping at your electronic Windows and smashing your servers.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I think it would be just TOO great if the owners/operators of the mail server that was used to relay all this spam came in and sued the ass off of this guy for server theft, hacking, and whatever else they could think of. In this case (and this case ONLY! ;) I'd love to see slimy ambulance-chasing lawyer go after him on their behalf. :)
$0.02 (CDN)
I was under the impression that California had anti spam laws in place.
I dont know to what extent they are inplace or how they are applied as i dont live there and their laws dont really affect me.
But shouldnt this affect this guy?
This story claims that it's all okay because a) it's within the law
Spam is already defined and illegal, according to the junk fax law (47 USC 227). The law defines "fax machine" so as to include any computer with a telephone modem.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'll bet Al Gore didn't see this use for the Internet back when he first started building the thing.
According to Jones' logic what Enron and Anderson Accounting did was to find innovative ways to use the accounting.
Yes close. Like Pakistan and India.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Umm.. interesting that a candidate for governor would violate his state's own laws in such and open way. The California anti-spam law expressly prohibits forging e-mail headers as I read it.
Wouldn't such blatant disregard for the law disqualify him from the race?
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
This is the same guy who, when B-1 Bob Dornan lost his congressional seat, decided to go on a federally-prohibited witch-hunt by merging information in federal government INS database files with state of California voter rolls. Moreover, he didn't even have legal access to the INS files leaked to him via congressional privilege. The only thing that stopped him was a complaint from a civil rights organization promising a class action suit for violation of the Computer Records Matching Act additions to the landmark 1974 Privacy Rights Act. FWIW, this same guy denied access to his political and professional calendar as Secretary of State when a request was made under the California Public Records Act. These things I know because I worked with the civil rights group filing the complaint with the US Department of Justice, which finally prevailed upon Jones to follow the law with respect to his buddy's lost election.
That works nicely if enough people do it, especially if they spread around lots of spambait addresses. But what about an active response - if you receive mail from an open-relay machine (either on the RBL, or one that you test, e.g. yet another Korean school box), you could send it ten simultaineous messages, v...errr....y...s....l...o...w..ly. Not enough to flood it, or kill it permanently, but enough that if it's trying to spam N destinations at a time, it will have some fraction of them tie up a few percent of its incoming SMTP capacity, and therefore quickly block its relay capability.
It's a bit dodgy, and you need to check your ISP's acceptable use policy to make very sure you're not violating it, but it's basically a scale attack which won't harm any systems that have real people sending out real mail, might bother real systems sending out real mailing lists (so obviously don't do this to systems you subscribe to), but will interfere with abused machines being abused by spammers as well as with spammers using their own machines directly.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
But 90% of the other"opt-in" mail I get is from liars claiming that either I've opted in to their service or somebody else opted in for me - especially if they have "opt-in" or "marketing" in their domain names or email addresses :-) Many of them say they'll continue sending me opt-in mail unless I opt-out (which at best seldom works, and may confirm to them that my address is correct.) I view this as a direct threat to spam me further, and actionable by any means necessary.
(I've been rereading Vernor Vinge's excellent novel "A Fire Upon The Deep", so I'm motivated to comment "Death to Vermin" about these spammers :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Spam is annoying, but doesn't really deserve the death penalty. A *much* more appropriate traditional punishment is the "pillory" - tie the guy up in public and let the public laugh at him and throw rotten vegetables. The Internet makes it possible to virtualize and democratize this service - you don't even have to be in town to email a rotten tomato to the guy.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
what's his IP?
sulli
RTFJ.
If you propose it, you might want to make an exception for address mungers where the message contains sufficient information (e.g. simple instructions in the signature, or an obvious munging scheme) where a "reasonable person" with minimal effort could identify the correct e-mail address.
And probably a forger should be liable for damages incurred by the holder of the forged addresses and systems (this especially goes for spammers who use the e-mail addresses of people who pissed 'em off, as the "From:" address of their next spam).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The DNC is spamming using cheetahmail.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I called the campaign when I received my copy (I actually thought it was a dirty trick against the campaign until I read about their spamming history). The staffer I talked to seemed shocked when I described relay rape and web-bugs. I also (lied) and said that they had lost my vote. (I was already planning on voting for Riorden).
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Bill Jones, Karma -1.0e40: Troll
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
actually, as another respondent to you points out, not a lot of them use email. this is not usually because of "not knowing how", though- it's because email is subpoenable. remember Iran-Contra and Ollie North's emails? President Bush (Shrub Jr) has told all his correspondents, family and friends that he no longer will be using email solely because it could be subpoenaed later down the road (and it also becomes a matter of public record.)
Any politician faced with having his/her "personal" correspondence becoming public record will stop using it immediately. anything can be taken out of context!
Imagine if Dick cheney had discussed his plans for Enron's energy plan for the US via email. what would happened? we might have know the truth about what was going on, for goodness sakes!
silly comments aside, this is a very real fear among politicians and their hangers-on. having your own words put the sword in your back is painful, and having your waffling pointed out in hard copy is never fun.
EOM
I got 4 of these spams in 2 days.
The thing that I found equally offensive and hilarious, is that it said "Your email was selected off the Internet based on your voter demographics." My voter demographics?!
Okay, anyone who knows me at all knows that I am about as far from Republican as you can get, and I am about as likely to vote for Bill Simon as I am to cut off my own leg.
So what exactly were they going for, by targeting my "voter demographic"?
Mod parent up. This is a good idea and a good contribution to the discussion.
Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach him how to fish, and though he'll eat for a lifetime, he'll call you a miser for not giving him your fish.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
While the actual use of spam may not be innovative, this ploy by campaign managers was. The candidate has managed to piss off every geek and nerd for miles, but has picked up a ton of free publicity for his campaign. Some folks just run out and vote for who's fresh in thier minds. Being splashed all over the news is a cheap and easy way to implant this candidate in all the mindless masses that follow this particular voting method... Innovative, yes... Ethical, probably not
I'm usually strictly opposed to "vengeance spam" because it hurts the involved routers and ISPs, but if this guy thinks spam is innovative (and tries to push laws based on that), maybe the only way to LART him is to get him singed up to some more spam lists. I wonder how innovative this ***** will find his mailbox being swamped with 500 spams a day.
Please post a mailto: link to his address in clear form...
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
The e-mail, purportedly sent from an MSN.com address, was actually routed through the server of an elementary school in Chonnam, Korea.
I regularly check my full headers in www.uwhois.com and fire of a complaint to the isp's in the headers. In the last week i have recieved a couple of spams that have come through korean elementary schools and high schools. I am guessing these are abused open relays.. or perhaps the schools are making a little money on the side?
"Our Korean schools are commited to being at the forefront of techonology. By the sixth grade our students are fully trained to fake headers and prepare bulk email for our American comrads."
I'm inclined to say that this is a perfectly legitimate business, based on your post, however there is one thing you didn't make quite clear. You say they require clients to run opt-in lists only. Do they require true opt-in procedures, what spammers call "double opt-in?" Or, to put it another way, do they require a procedure that prevents one of these lists from being used to spam by a third party - i.e. if I go to a client of theirs and sign you up for the "opt-in" list, do they immediately start spamming you, or do they simply send you a confirmation mail and wait for you to confirm that you really did want to subscribe, sending nothing more until and unless you do?
This is a very important distinction. If it is permitted to use unconfirmed "opt-in" procedures, then it's really permitted to spam. However, if you insist on a true opt-in system, then it's a perfectly legitimate business and a good netizen, not a spammer at all.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
...because people in the political sector live and die by their reputation. Doing something this unpopular will simply kill a candidate's chance of winning.
It's .ca.ca
...)
(Read this if you don't understand
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
I think the parent post is not offtopic, I thought there was a typo in the slashdot post.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
... "This isn't spam!" then it is. Pure and simple.
It is SPAM by definition! Noone complains about receiving email that they requested, knowingly. Think about it! If you have to trick them into "requesting" it, then it is spam.
As for "remove me" links ... I'm sure somewhere there's a hooker who gives it away for free, has no disease, and is a virgin. But guess what? She looks like all the others. You'll never know. Same with "remove me" links.
How do you all exactly describe spam?
p h-phys1012
At my uni we are all on numerous majordomo lists.
Example. I am a 1st year maths and physics student
at a certain college. British here, so 12 colleges provide rooms/food for the students. We all learn together.
My college begins with Tr, and so the lists I am subscribed to are as follows.
ug-year1
tr-jcr-college
tr-jcr-1h
tr-jcr-lin
ma-all
ma-ug
ma-corea
ma-singb
ph-ug-year1
ph-phys1091
These are just the ones that I have recieved e-mail from. There are probably more.
Core A maths, Single B maths and 10?? are all the modules I am taking.
The guy responsible for tr-jcr-college will forward on anything that you ask him to, as will ma-ug and ph-ug-year1.
Examples are adverts for concerts, plugging the student magazine.
When I set up a brass band, all the colleges forwarded for me, so I effectively asked the entire uni in one e-mail for anyone who is interested in playing.
What is your opinion of these 'authorised' spams. I.e. the domo lists are created when you join, and you cannot leave, but all posts go from one or two people who arent that fussy with what they forward?
...he couldn't possibly mind if, say, the people who get his spam send him 30 or 40 thousand notes telling him that you really don't think his tactics are apropos.
I have sigs turned off.
Your sig shows... obviously you're getting around the sig-off option by copy-pasting it into your posts.
People who post sigs in their messages as a copy-paste get enemy'd for me.
Teergrube is good. So is honeypot. Think about it: the spammer sends his spam directly into a black hole. Well, not quite a black hole: you can harvest much useful information from what you trap (like 24 Reply-to addreses used by the spammer to receive the sucker responses. You can notify te ISP of all 24 in a single email. Been there, done that.)
Even if all you do is accept port 25 traffic and never deliver anything you can capture spammer relay tests. Maybe you want to notify the ISP, maybe not (the spammer could just change ISPs.) You have a piece of information about the spammer: think about ways to use this information to the sspammers disadvantage. If you're a little braver you can save a copy and deliver the test message. If the delay isn't so long as to arouse spammer suspicion you should soon start receiving relay spam. Now you can complain to the source ISP about the attempted thefft of service (and it's likely the source ISP won't be the same as that for the realy test.) Check the headers: the spammer may have used an open proxy (in which case you warn the owner of the abused system and advise him to check the proxy logs.) Go to news.admin.net-abuse.email for advice/help if you need it. You'll meet a lot of experienced spam fighters there.
I've run a honeypot for two years (from before I knew to call it a honeypot.) It's a good way to get back at spammers. I ran an abused open relay. I'm still extracting revenge.
Why doesn't anybody complain about snail mail spam? I can't just hit delete for that stuff...
If your computer has a fax modem attached, a printer attached, and fax software, then it is a fax machine for the purpose of the federal definition.
Umm, cite a single court precedent.
This is not legal advice until I go to law school, graduate law school, pass the bar, and confirmed that your retainer check cleared.
Yes it is. In order to use that statement you have to first phrase your untrue legal statements as valid opinions. Your statement which I quote above is patently false and misleading.
this is not spam, this is a "innovative way to use the Internet", in concordance with bill passed by governor Bill Jones.
And those are banned/heavily restricted as campaign tools.
I'd like to know what universe allows someone to steal my resources for political campaigning wihtout even offering to reimburse me.
Is wanton postering of suburban fences allowed as a campaining tool?
I'd also like to know what universe allows campaining using false sender informatrion.
Last time I checked, all campaign messages had to be clearly identified as such and the sender/payer had to be identified correctly.
If this was a print/radio/tv campaign, Jone would be up to his ears in legal action already on this basis alone.
Also the last time I checked, it was illegal to send large amounts of mail with insufficent postage, causing the recipients to have t pay the fees.
I guess innovative means "Hey, this is a way we can do things which are illegal under campaign laws and criminal laws and get away with it!"
It's certainly not a new tool. I had to restrain one of my customers (now a NZ govt minister) from using spam as a campaign tool as far back as 1996. Thankfully he came to me to ask my opinion first and understood instantly when I said "receiver pays"
AB
Why don't you cite a case where it is ruled that a computer described as above is not a fax machine?
While I agree with the sentiment, there's an obvious issue:
The exception being anonymous remailers. In which case the remailer identifies itself as such.
If there's a law against forging headers, the first thing the Staats^H^H^H^H^H^H FBI is going to do is use that law to shut down all the anonymous remailers they can find.
So, does anyone have a procmail recipe that chain-tests headers?
-Z
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
I don't live in California, and don't have a .ca domain, but I got the spam.
And, no, it does not comply with the California law: it is missing the prefix in the Subject and it has header forgery.
The advantage of this approach is that you're not handling the volume of the spam yourself - you're just handling the DNS services, and you can set your timeouts so a given relay machine only bothers you every week or two. (Or you can give them a short TTL for the first time a given machine sends you spam, so you can give it a quick response with some relay you now and then check out whether it's a known open relay or run your own relay check on it.) If it is a relay, you can report it to the RBL, but meanwhile you can set your real mail server to reject everything from the spammer.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
A chink is a small metal part of a chain.
A nip is the amount of brandy I consumed this morning.
Gook is the stuff used on Nickelodean to cover their game show participants. AKA Slime.
Quite possibly blackholed, too.
--
E_NOSIG