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Class Action Lawsuit Against Spammer
sfjoe writes "California-based spammer eTracks is being sued by the law firm, Morrison and Foerster (who have a very cool homepage). M & F's press release says they are "...seeking other relief, including attorneys' fees and statutorily authorized damages of $50 for each email delivered in violation of the law, up to $25,000 per day".
California's anti-spam law has already held up under appeals court scrutiny so this may very well be a major setback to the spam industry."
I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each
forged header.
How cool of a name is that?
..... um, i mean, arrested.
Judge: And the defendent is MoFo and associates.
I'll have to hire them if I ever get caught
Didn't we see this a little while back?
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That is one clean page web page design.
You know, this could be good, vigilante action for profit against spammers, I likes it!
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Unfortunatley, odds are that as soon as they win the case, the spammer will disappear and resurface somewhere else, only to repeat the process.
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
Morrison & Foerster (MoFo, www.mofo.com) said, "We're Gonna Get These Mofos! Err, not us, MoFo, but those Mofo Spammers..."
Yes, they really call themselves MoFo!
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
Pseudo phone call: Hi, this is Jay Williams, Oh Hi, my favourtite client... I've just had someone spam me... That mofo.. I'll get him! Wow, cool... .. such mofos... @$$#! ....
Yeah. In California.
Sorry to be cynical, but these guys _can_ just move, y'know. *Sigh*
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
"I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each forged header."
nah, make em donate a piano. Baby Grand or something...*rim shot*
Ok, it's stupid, but what can you say about this? Cool, I hope they win, spammers suck, do people actually buy into these spam emails? Why isn't it illegal in all states/countries, etc.?
The horse is almost dead, I hope. We've beat it enough.
Sent from your iPad.
who have a very cool homepage).
Not anymore in say... 30 minutes ?
Mr. Turd, this is MoFo.Prepare for some heavy slashdotting
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Why has this been happening so much of late? You'd think the slashdot editors would actually read slashdot.
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The big problem is how can we get at all of the garbage that originates overseas? Half of my spam comes from ".tw"
While it would be nice to get rid of spam, I will miss the daily opportunity to have my penis enlarged.
I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each forged header.
Personally, I would prefer if they donated pianos.
sales@etracks.comc ks.com
staffhelp@etracks.com
busdev@etracks.com
email_removal@response.etra
isp@etracks.com
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Not to be confused with Mark A. Fry & Associates.
That name is great on so many levels. According to their site, they seek $50 in damages per email! Where does that figure come from? Also, they stated that at $50 per day, their spam suit would be valued at $25000 per day. A bit of math shows that's 500 pieces of spam. I get nearly 100 pieces per day (which I consider pretty low). So does it "cost" me $5000 to click "delete" 100 times? If so, does anyone want to hire me to click "delete" for them? $50 per click.
stuff |
Since when is commerical speech protected to the degree that individual speech is?
There is a right to free speech. There is not a right to force that speech on others.
It would be nice if someone could find a way to sue X10 for those goddamn banner ads that pop up every 30 seconds...
California's anti-spam law has already held up under appeals court scrutiny so this may very well be a major setback to the spam industry.
Only if other states have enacted already or will enact tough spam laws like the ones in California.
And for those who consider spam free speech: E-mail messages cost bandwidth. An individual e-mail does not cost much, but when multiplied by the number of spams an individual may receive, and multply that by a corporation's user base, it could add up to a lot of money wasted in unnecessary bandwidth usage. It's definitely not free speech! Just ask the spammees.
I know when I e-mail my lawyer they charge me for about 15 minutes in most cases at an hourly rate of 250 an hour so it makes sense that if this spammer is mailing them all day long they should get charged as well.
--MD--
Speech isn't "free" when I have to pay to hear it, assmunch.
I think their homepage sucks.
CmdrTaco, I'm all for it if the SPAMees pick which organ. (*WINCES*)
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Because they cost us money. Bandwidth, CPU, and disk space are NOT free and you, your provider, and the backbone providers are all spending money to handle SPAM. Just because you don't see it on a bill doesn't mean you're not paying for it.
There are specific laws in most states against sending spam with forged headers.
These people are not legitimate marketers. They collect names, that much is probably legal, but the illegal part comes when they commit computer trespass, exploiting poorly configured servers, and signing the mail with fraudulent return addresses.
If these crimes take place in other countries, it may be legal, but it is illegal in most of the united states. VA has a personal juristiction clause in the law. If you spam here, then you do business here, you come to court here.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The lawyers are suing the spammers.
On the one hand, I want the spammers to die a deserving death. On the other hand, I've worked with lawyers and would kind of like it if there were about 1/100th the number of lawyers we have presently.
I kind of want to fix the whole problem with a daisy cutter or something.
fifth sigma, inc.
Now they need to hire Samuel L. Jackson as their spokesman and they will be SET!
Next can we sue the folks who send us local coupons via snail mail? I am tired of looking at those "lost kids". What's more damaging? the handfull of junk snail mail I get everyday (to the environment) or clicking delete for an email?
A large proportion of spam IS illegal -- Ponzi schemes, "miracle" drugs that don't work, Nigerian bank scams, attempts at stock pump-n-dump, off-shore internet gambling, copyright infringement, importing pharmaceuticals, and other miscellaneous fraudulent activities. That's because most of these can't be advertised legitimately.
Commerce *is* subjected to regulation, you know...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Why is spam such a big deal?
Because it effectively constitutes a denial-of-service attack. When I can no longer reliably pick the legitimate mail out of my inbox because of all the forged/deceptive spam coming in, I have suffered a very genuine tort.
Also, because it constitutes theft of services. You do not have the right to use my resources and my ISP's resources without permission, regardless of the nature of your "speech."
This really doesn't require any substantial legislative expansion... they should just enforce the existing laws regarding theft of service against spammers.
It is lead attorney, Jo Moma!
someone please mod this crap down
My kingdom for some moderation points!
Very nice.
[snip]Morrison & Foerster employs approximately 1,000 attorneys and 1,350 non-attorney staff in 18 offices worldwide. [/snip]
/. read slashdot. I know I get a kick when the company I work for or related subjects are news posts.
[snip] Morrison & Foerster was named by Fortune Magazine in its first list of 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. [/snip]
Thats alot of desktop computers and servers for a company, Always wondered how many people from the companies in articles on
Come on MoFo IT/IS guys, post some replys!
According to their own website, eTracks is owned by Learn2.com.
I'd rather have them waste a few CPU cycles than give up the essential liberty of the internet; anyway, I imagine that a lot of those wasted resources (perhaps not the bandwidth) come from ineffective spam-prevention measures. It's easier just to click delete. And let's not forget that the spammers pay for bandwidth too.
It's really just not a big deal, and until you can show me some convincing numbers that suggest it is, it's going to appear to me that you people are all up in a tizzy about nothing.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
Can forged headers constitute mail fraud? Identity theft? misrepresentation? Since some (if not most) Spam is sent in a manor to hide the identity of the sender, is it not covered by some existing law. People treat Spam as unsolicited, but its deliver may be more suspect, and in this case, more attackable.
Ok, I can understand slashdot reposting a story that was reported, say, two months ago. But this story was posted _yesterday_. You can tell they're the same story just from the three line blurb on the front page.
Sigh.
Okay, let's start by going back to mail-bombing the service the spammer is using to dump his mail. Hey, it brings down the ISP and inconveniences the customers, but damn me if it isn't effective at getting a spam account closed down right quick. I did this a number of times in the 'old days' when an ISP proved unresponsive to reason.
Oh, wait - mailbombing is *illegal*, even if it's in retaliation for spam from a stupid or amoral ISP. But spamming, which is a mail-bomb en masse, *isn't*.
So I'm a terrorist; the spammer is a savvy capitalist.
Go figure.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
The main problem is that were policing ourselves and losing the war.
I use a blacklist and I risk blocking potential customers.
I use content based filters and I risk blocking legit email.
Faked headdres, open relays, isp hopping. I've even had reports of spammers paying people to root boxes and install their own software.
They won't stop until it gets expensive, and until then there are just enough stupid people online to make spam a profitable buisness.
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MoFo is actually a fairly well known and respected law firm.
That's well targeted mail. Who would benefit from a ... more self secure male friend? Right.
How about because spammers take up network resources and user time without being asked to, without being authorized to, and without yielding benefit? It costs a spammer essentially nothing to send an email that will consume perhaps thousands of dollars in lost bandwidth, CPU cycles, and user effort. The cost is not borne by the instigator, but by the unwilling recipient.
Let's say I decided to drop by your house every day and scrawl an ad (or an offensive message) in chalk on the sidewalk. It's easy enough to erase -- just a little water spilled over it. Is it OK, then? What if I decided to do this every day to every house in your neighborhood? What if I got the chalk by, say, dropping by the local public school and absconding with it?
And I don't know what a good anti-spam law would be, but I wish to death that people would stop acting as if it were a priori impossible to write one without somehow opening up all imaginable governmental ills. Good laws do exist, though it's fashionable on slashdot to pretend they don't. A targetted law helping to assign some economic cost to sending spam would help restore the operation of normal market forces. Not all slopes are slippery.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Um. Paper sometimes gets used for writing death threats. In blood! Let's outlaw paper and blood.
visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
This story seems oddly familar
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
insert some message here saying how funny that was and I wish I oculd mod it up
well... the majority of slashdotters have terribly small dicks... thus, the 100 daily reminders of just HOW small their dicks are, is certainly cause for concern within the community...
/. mentality is contradictory... are you anti-spam psychos libertarians or not? why would you want the government regulating who can and cannot send you e-mail? Oh, I forgot, that small penis thing.
I agree with you that the general
why not just let the FBI run carnivore at YOUR.LOCAL.ISP and have them eat all the emails with keywords in them... like "life, get a"
-h
I'll go with coolest, they have the Working Mother Award. Think about it...
They're just trying to make money
Sure, by using up resources that they did not pay for. 1) I pay for internet access so that I can communicate with those I want to 2) resources are being wasted to store and forward the spam emails 3) resources are being wasted to delete the email
It's really not hard to do a lot of stuff. Like protecting yourself against criminals isn't that hard, perhaps we don't need police? Seriously though, it doesn't matter that it is not difficult. It is the sheer volume. I have some email accounts that I use as "fake" email accounts when I think I'll be spammed by the people I'm giving out my email to. One of these accounts gets at least 50 spams a day. Now if I were some poor newbie, tell me how much effort it would take to filter out the one email a day I get that I did intend to receive. If you don't get enough spam to think it is a problem, just change your email address from samsa@@@anitisocial...com to your real address.
Why in the world should it be illegal? Because in California it is.
Yeah, and so are drug dealers and kiddie porn peddlers.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
It's beyond just annoying when you have to spend any significant amount of time sorting through garbage day after day. Sure company's have the right to get the word out about their product, but not at the expense of people's personal time, and the time businesses such as mofo pay their employee's.
to say spam is just an inconvenience is rediculous. we don't have to let government regulate commercial e-mail, we just need laws set up to punish spammers who have been warned time and time again not to harrass people with unwanted junk
If it works as supposed (by law) to, email_removal@response.etracks.com will add spammers address to the list of removing, effectively removing this address and spammer's kissmeplenty20022@hotmail.com from the list.
But if works as it usually works, you effectevely created a cycled list of selfsubcribing spam lists!
Awesome!
Here's the quick and dirty as to why many of the slashdot community have a violent hatred toward spammers: We run mail servers.
:)
I run vectorstar.net, a free hosting service. I would easily wager that greater than 90% of the mail that wriggles through to our users is spam. Thus, 90% of my mail-related disk space and 90% of my mail server processing goes to handling unwanted, unnecessary spam. That's the difference between being able to run a Pentium 100 server or a PIII-1ghz server. Thus, it costs me a LOT of money to deal with spam mail.
The same situation falls true for the majority of businesses. Their mail servers handle far more spam than they do valid email. It leads to serious expenditures on mail server hardware, (in some companies) software, and staff to maintain the servers.
So that's why we hate spam with a passion.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
Why is spam such a big deal? Why do Slashdotters go hog-wild and advocate violence against spammers, whose profession's name cannot be typed without heaps of disdain?
They're just trying to make money, and it's really not that hard to delete the stuff.
I know you're trolling, but this is an argument I've heard from many people who are not trolls (such as legislators). Generally people confuse spam with a First Amendment issue, or view attacks on it as if laissez faire capitalism were at stake. Spam is a big deal because we are starting to drown in it. Spam traffic has been increasing exponentially. It doubles every X months (although I don't know offhand what X is). After 10X months, when you are receiving 1024 times as much of it as you are now, your ideological blinders might fall off.
Also, they're not "just trying to make money" if they're scamming people.
As soon as we start allowing the government to regulate commercial email, other, less welcome regulations are sure to follow, in the ostensible interest of national security, or justice, or any of the other stock government facades.
Unlike other "problems" the government is looking into (SSSCA, etc.), this is one that really does need fixing.
Right here.
Spammers most certainly do NOT pay for bandwidth. It's a side benefit to using open relays. 1 msg with 200 recipiants is a lot of b/w savings for the original sender.
And lets not forget the mail bomb of bounces/hate mail sent to whoever happens to own the domain the spammer is foraging.
there site is still up and serving pages with decent speed, either is a really slow day on slashdot or the MOFO's have a decent sysadmin/setup
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
"Even after receiving formal notice of Morrison & Foerster's policy against spam, Etracks has sent at least 6,500 unsolicited email advertisements to Morrison & Foerster's California users."
So, my mail server I pay by the byte. Why should I pay for any spam, even the headers? If I'm forced to stop because of that, aren't they inhibiting my First Amendment rights?
Read the law. The mail:
Must be labeled advertisement
Must have valid contact information
Must not have forged headers
Must cease mailing upon request How is any of that against the First Amendment?
The reason people spam is that the cost is low, even in the worst case.
Spammer's worst case just got much worse.
If spamming becomes a risky, possibly very expensive proposition, the big spamhauses could be in trouble. They've got deep enough pockets to be hurt badly by such a suit. Bad news for them; good news for the rest of the Net.
Sadly, it's probably not much of a threat to spammers in China, Russia, etc.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Well in general we have the right to chose whom we communicate with, if I don't want to listen to someone I can just go away, hang up the phone or tell them not to contact me.
In this case the law firm, this is NOT a class action case, claims they received spam from the company without a valid return adress or a toll free phone number as required by CA law so people can remove themselves; it is also claimed that Etracks did not identify thier comercial messages as required by CA law. The firm then suposedly tracked them down and told them not to send any more messages to them, they did not comply.So the law firm sued.
While one might complain about the need to identify messages in the subject, it seems to go a bit far to say that one should not be able to make someone stop sending you stuff. The supreme court has ruled that the rights to free expresion and free speech do not allow one to annoy others on thier property. A round of messages could be defended as free speech, but to continue mailing after you have been asked not to is to make a nuissance of oneself.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
Exactly, someone mod this up.
"The guide is definitive, reality is frequently inaccurate."
Don't be an idiot. This has nothing to do with free speech. It is not the content of the messages that is being regulated, it is the the method of delivery. If California said that you could not send out e-mails about (for example) Islam, then you would have a free speech issue. Look, a guy who wants to sell condoms can set up as many signs as he wants on his own property. He does not have the right to break into your house while you're sleeping and come into your bedroom. That is what spammers are doing (in a nutshell.)
Geez, don't people read the linked material before posting? Or don't the editors make corrections before sending the thing to the main page? This is not a class action suit. It's Morrison and Foerster suing on their own behalf because of spam sent to users on their own network.
And the brethren went away edified.
Spam has rendered my hotmail address absolutely useless. I've had that address for around 4.5 years, now. It was a nice address. It was easy to remember, because it was my name@hotmail.com. No numbers, no funky underscoring, banging, etc. It was simple, elegant, and nobody ever forgot it. (My name@biggest free e-mail provider.com).
Now, however, I receive about 20 spam a day to that address. I miss messages that I should be receiving. After going two months while travelling without internet access, I returned to discover nothing *but* spam in my inbox -- hotmail had automatically deleted the older messages on the assumption that I would want to keep the newer ones.
Now, my hotmail block-list is full, and I have about another 200 addresses I would like to add to it. I cannot use that account, because it is now fundamentally useless. And spammers don't cost me money?
Spammers cost money everytime they send an ad that a distracted person clicks on, and gets shipped off to a porn site. That red-flags the corporate internet policy manager or whoever, who has to then go TALK to that employee about their going to a porn site. Sure, they just show the spam and say "Oops". It costs both of those people at least half an hour, though, and at $100 an hour, that's an expensive piece of e-mail.
The bandwidth used is not inconsiderable, either, particularly for people who are using dial-up accounts in regions where they pay-by-minute.
Spam is hardly a victimless crime, it's just a stupid one, and it's all opportunity or possible cost, so it's hard to really say "oh, that cost us money". It definitely costs money. It cost me my fucking hotmail account, and discarded my lengthy correspondence with folk hero Donovan, for Chrissakes.
Bah.
l
Not their legal services. I just want a vanity e-mail address at their domain!
spam-this@mofo.com
Instead of everybody going to the 'cool' homepage of the lawyers how about the entire slashdot audience go to www.etracks.com like 10 times a day for the next month or so. See how they like HIT-SPAMMING. Be advised I have trademarked that term so when hit-spamming becomes popular and everybody is doing it. I'll become rich.
Some more:
e tracks.com
c eo@etracks.com@ etracks.comc ks.com r syth@etracks.comt racks.com. comt s@etracks.com
contact@etracks.com
support@etracks.com
jobs@
job@etracks.com
career@etracks.com
jerry.sandoval@etracks.com
jerry
jsandoval@etracks.com
sandoval@etra
todd.lorenz@etracks.com
todd@etracks.com
tlorenz@etracks.com
lorenz@etracks.com
paul.fo
forsyth@etracks.com
pforsyth@e
paul@etracks.com
brian.shefts@etracks
brian@etracks.com
shefts@etracks.com
bshef
It's really just not a big deal, and until you can show me some convincing numbers that suggest it is, it's going to appear to me that you people are all up in a tizzy about nothing.
When @Home shut down their email servers I went from 60+ messages a day to 1-5 messages a week, and have not had more than 2 people say they haven't been able to get ahold of me because I forgot to tell them my new email address. The vast majority of those messages on @Home came from @Home selling their email addresses in the first place, and were a complete waste of time spent searching through messages for those that were actually important to me.
Not to mention that the spammers have gotten extremely good at bypassing filters, and I just love seeing my own email address in the from and reply-to fields.
funny how the stats about mofo's employees list that their are 6 openly gay employees there, like they know they got some closet cases too
A friend of mine works there, I'll have to ask him how they stood up to a slashdotting.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
my grandma loves reading about tight teen anal sex... misspent youth i guess.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I'm not?
Let's see, I have a domain where I pay by the byte (well, megabyte).
In the EU, people pay by the minute for net time.
How is this spam free again?
I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each forged header.
Maybe even one to the church Kathleen and Rob will get married in. ;)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
> In the EU, people pay by the minute for net time.
FYI, you don't know jack valenti..
I believe the $50/spam figure is specified in the California law, not an "actual" damages figure computed by valuing the resources lost to each spam message. Similarly the $25k/day is a statutory cap imposed on the damage award.
Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you
That's a poor analogy. In what way is spam analogous to paper/blood?
Paper is a physical object I write on. Blood is a physical object that supports human life. Spam is an unsolicited commercial mailing, which has no implicit form. It could be on paper, in an e-mail, or in words spoken. In this particular case, we are referring to e-mail spam. Outlawing spam doesn't mean outlawing e-mail. It means outlawing companies from sending unsolicited commercial messages to be by way of e-mail.
And don't raise first amendment rights either! Like the post to which you replied said, organizations aren't people. Commercial speech is regulated and regulateable, which was also the posters point. It is perfectly logical then, that the government could rightly regulate spam via e-mail.
If I'm not mistaken (and I probably am), death threats written on paper are indeed illegal to some extent. That doesn't make the paper it is written on or the blood it is written with illegal.
WegBert
Its running windows 2000 and IIS and we can't take it down? You call yourself zealots get out the oc-48s and keep hitting it.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Good grief.
So according to your logic, I should be able to blast at 200 decibells, "Come to my store" at all hours of the day? Including outside your house when you sleep?
And don't try to stop me cause that would be limiting my free speech?
Your myopic perspective demonstrates that you know not of what you speak. My ISP (I'm friends with the owner) handles 16,000 pieces of spam every day, in total. Each one eats up 1-3Kb of bandwidth for the message. The total dollar value of that bandwith to the ISP is US$27,000.00 per year. That cost gets passed on to the customers, and because of that I get charged extra to pay for that bandwidth. Also, I had an address that I stopped posting to public forums in 1997, but until I changed my address I got somewhere around 100 messages a DAY. After about a year of not getting messages because there was too much garbage to crawl through, and having to "just click delete" 85 times a day, it got to be too much.
So, next time you decide to talk about how it's no big deal, could you send me a few hundred dollars to make up for the insignificant impact it's had on me?
Virg
OK, that's not good mail targetting. Even worse, during election times in the US, I tend to get unsolicited mail about various candidates and voter initiatives from the US, which is _really_ pointless for them, seeing how Swedes - living in Sweden, with a '.se' ending in the mail address - normally aren't eligible to vote in california or wherever they are campaigning...
:)
Makes me want to move temporarily so I can vote for their opponent.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
The lawsuit is being filed on behalf of Morrison & Foster by itself and is not a class action. Nobody else is entitled to restitution. Sorry. I'm waiting for better tech to sort out this sort of "editorial" oversight in the future.
I hope Bernard Shifman is making enough money to be able to cover his advertising expenses at $50 per e-mail. I don't think he is because last reports had him still spamming message boards and a few other addresses.
Couldn't Californians bring suit against Shifman if they have recieved one of his silly resumes?
Maybe we should post law firm email addresses all over the place on the net, so they get picked up by the bots.
The lawyers get spams, and they will sue the spammers. If enough lawyers sue enough spammers and win the case, maybe quite a few of spammers will go broke. And maybe the lawyers might have a better image among the geeks too.
"I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each forged header."
Better still, they should be forced to serve as armor piercing artillery. Granted, it might not be as effective as what's used now, but it would be better for the environment, both real and virtual.
The hole in this theory is that most of these people are actually based in the US and spamming because they have squat for money and need to con people to get any. Now, assume they relocate to Mexico they might get away with it for a while, but I wouldn't count on that either. Effectively they'd have to pick up and move themselves to a country without extradition, etc. If they have the wherewithall to do that, most probably wouldn't need to spam.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I seem to recall a Simpson's episode where lunch-lady Doris was scooping from a barrel labeled "Snouts and Testicles." Seems somehow appropriate...
"Good things don't end with eum, they end with mania or teria." - H. Simpson
Some broadband may be unmetered, but much dial-up is. More than half of the UK uses metered access.
I've always wondered... why do the script kiddies and crackers of the world attack web sites to "tag" them. Why don't they do something useful and shut these places down for a few days at a time?!
You might feel differently about ads in the mail if you were being forced to pay the postage for all of it when you received it.
Which is what happens with e-mail spam.
but they need to learn that javascript:history.back() will not always take everyone to their homepage. :)
There are two big differences between spam and junk mail. First, if you ask the Post Office who owns the postal permit on which the junk mail is sent, they'll tell you, and if the company gives them the wrong contact information they'll go to prison (or at least face severe fines and possible loss of corporate charter). Second, you would indeed have grounds for a lawsuit if all of those pieces of junk mail arrived at your box postage due and you weren't allowed to turn them away.
Virg
Perhaps you could pass the information along to someone you work for.
-- Nobody should take away Microsoft's freedom to innovate, particularly since they haven't used it yet
I noticed this on Etracks' page:
.
Response rates:
E-messaging 5%-15%
Traditional direct 0.5%-5.0%
Source: Jupiter Communications
Anybody know how accurate this is? I always though spam was less effective than junk mail . .
Get mine.
Careful with that axe, Eugene.
There's a subtle difference here, if I remember the bizarre laws in the US concerning the US Postal Service...
When a spammer abuses the network and your email account, he/she/it is NOT paying for the distribution, and is, in a way, "tresspassing" on your "property"...
If I recall correctly (I may not), in some bizarre, technical, legal way, "your" mailbox (the physical one that the USPS delivers to) is ACTUALLY the property of the USPS (not sure how this works exactly, but I THINK this is law so as to put the Big Guns of the Federal Government behind dealing with illegal abuses of the Postal Service, rather than having to rely on individuals to report and accuse abusers). If this is true, then when a junkmailer pays the post office to deliver a bunch of crap to your address, it's only (again, in a technical, legal sort of way) the USPS' resources that are being used, not "yours".
I may be totally off base here - if somebody with a better understanding of USPS-related law is reading this, I'd love a clarification...
At any rate, the summary is that with junkmail, the junkmailer is covering the bulk of the cost to deliver, while with spam, the ISP's and recipients are covering the bulk of the costs. (Looked at another way - you don't pay the USPS to RECEIVE mail, so you're not really losing anything. You DO pay your ISP to recieve E-mail [as part of the cost of the rest of the ISP service] so receiving email does actually cost you something, even if it's a tiny amount.)
Besides, paper is recyclable (though I suppose electrons are, too, come to think of it...)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
You can already opt out of all bulk mail from the USPS if you request it. Be aware, however, that bulk snail mail is what basically subsidizes our current low postage rates.
Thanks for your input, Shylock!
LOL..like any of these bozo's ever reads their own email ?? The got some staffer to delete things as they come in.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
shouldnt we post our emails so we get spam and thus get to sue as well?
Regarding "I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each forged header."
Who would want an organ from a spammer in them? I'd sooner trust an organ from a pig, at least it's a mammal.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Then ask them which case they speak of in their Feb 02 internet newletter. The case where you do not have to establish damages for a claim of tresspass to chattel.
Fight Spammers!
If my ISP had a service that would simply drop all mail except that from a white list I provide, that would be worth an extra buck or two a month to me. This would take some database lookups to see whether to forward or drop, but push those lists out as far to the edge as possible and nothing else inside has to deal with it.
I've never configured a mail system, so I'll admit I don't know how much processing power this would save them, but the storage would drop dramatically.
Give me a good interface to manage my white list, give me a daily/weekly/monthly list of all return addresses that have tried to send to me (so I can add new ones to my list) and I'm a happy camper.
Nope, no sig
Maybe the mofos at MoFo can answer this. Can a class action suit be against another class? I'm thinking of starting a class action against the class of people who continue to support and extend M$FT's monopoly. Anyone who implements anything supporting .NET, which is M$FT's latest attempt at World Domination, should be subject to being sued.
Well arent we on our high horse. ITS NOT THE LAW FIRMS FAULT THEY SWITCHED FROM LINUX - Blame the IT Director, im sure the switch from linux has no bearing on the cluelessnes or lack thereof of the LAWYERS, Some people JUST LIKE WINDOWS BETTER. Dont attach your OS prejudices to this righteous cause :P
You should read the YRO section more often, there's some good stuff there, like this
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Hey! Stop posting on slashdot and get back to work, like the rest of us! Uh, oh, wait....
(mr edrugtrader is my employee :)
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Usually when I'm asked for some verification email address I use postmaster@site.com or webmaster@site.com. So, to help out the friendly webmaster at eTracks: postmaster@etracks.com webmaster@etracks.com
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
A previous slash dot story reported how this candidate for a california state position sent a bunch of spam to canadians,,becuase someone thought that the .ca their emails ended on stood for california.
Each class of mail service must be self sufficient.
Fight Spammers!
They are cool, not clueless. Vince Flanders of webpagesthatsuck.com related how he (or an acquaintance) emailed them, in essence,
"Um, Mr. Morrison & Foerster, are you aware your URL, mofo.com, is, well, kindof obscene?"
Their PR person replied, basically, "Yes, we're aware of that. We're cultivating an image of a firm you don't want to mess with."
Given that, I will heed their advice and not mess with them. :)
Fight for your right to read books!
-J
As they say, "Freedom of speech is great... right up there with the freedom not to listen"
Never confuse your right to write with the lack-of-right to spraypaint that message on your neigbours' walls.
received, can you see this?
As the karma-burners say, mod this up. It's a valuable well-thought opinion against the flock of slashdotters' group-opinions.
I was thinking that for every e-mail address in a spammers distribution list, they should loose one cubic millimeter of an arbitrary organ, skin being the first to work with. If there is an insufficient supply, then the excess should be extracted from relatives, significant others, etc. Then again, maybe I just don't like spammers...
You never know...
I have no problem with outdoor advertisements. I have no problem with
billboards, or bus placards, or fancy lighted neon marquees. I can
avert my eyes as I drive by them in my car.
I do have a problem with graffiti. When you sneak up in the night and
spray-paint "Eat at Joe's" on the side of my building, you are using MY
PROPERTY without my permission. And I want to see you tarred, feathered
and drowned in your own paint.
Spam is grafitti. My computer, my disk space, and my bandwidth are
things that I pay for; they are my property. When you use them, without
my permission, to transmit your Nigerian Bank Scams, your porno ads,
your Ponzi schemes, your stock-market pump-and-dumps, and your offshore
casinos, you are spray-painting on my property.
And I want to see you tarred, feathered and drowned in your own flith.
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
That's why it's best to use www.gmx.net, easy to remember, fast & allows pop3 access. I get maybe one spam email a MONTH. (p.s yes it's in German, but hell I don't understand German either but works for me). -Dave
I recommened getting a similar one at Yahoo, I had the same problem you did at hotmail, a yahoo acct lasts a little bit longer, and if you put a number in a weird place in your uniq name spammers rarely pick it up.
I'm not known for my sympathy toward "email marketers." I think we are all fairly familiar with the irritation that these few individuals can cause so I won't go into a rant about why I'm not sympathetic.
Washington State also has anti-spamming laws that have stood up in Washington State Supreme Court. The way the laws are written, however, seems to punish people who are deceptive and use mass email. It requires that the subject line be deceptive and/or the return address be fake.
So, if Mr. Smith wants to email 10,000 Washington residents to try to sell them swamp land in Florida that's OK as long as he says so in the header and he gives a valid return email address. He doesn't have to ever check that email address for complaints but it has got to be valid. I don't think the law even requires him to remove people from his mailing list but I could be wrong about that.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Its a shame that there isn't a federal law or NATO
law reguarding spam email like California's.
I was listening to A C|Net radio show on how to prevent spamming. The covered all the basics.
Use a web-based email address when you need to give one when signing up for a service, only give out you isp email to those you fully trust,etc.
But one thing cought my attention, and that was the issue with alot of spammer's opt-out links enclosed in their emails. Reputable companies like Sears, etc (big name Co's) will remove you from their email list. They don't want to piss people off, they're just trying to make business, and this i can understand. But the majority of spammers opt-out links are either broken or don't work.
The ones that do forward you to a website where you can opt-out, alot of times continue spamming you anyway, and not only that, but when you do get the chance to opt-out the spammers see this and mark you as an active target, meaning that your opt-out is proof that you got the spam, and therefore resell your email address at a premium over non-responding email address. Which creates *MORE* spam to your inbox.
Now I know why every time i opt-out i get more spam instead of less.
I didn't find that surprising, but it was interesting.
A penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
they've been involved in a number of greate pro-bono cases
Can you check your hotmail account with a POP-client? (I know yahoo-mail users can, but I'm not sure about hotmail)
.tw, 'this is not spam', and the like. Modify it as you need it.
If you can, you can get an email program with good filtering (even outlook express can filter well enough) and write some rules for it.
Start off with: delete anything with html, img, remove, unsubscribe, US code,
I know from experience how much an early hotmail account is worth; I'm still fighting to keep owhite@yahoo.com usable. But it becomes an awful lot easier if you can write your own filters.
I guess at work it's easier with an at-work-address, but you need a hotmail account to stop the company reading your personal email. As you say, it's an arms-escalation, and it'll take a while to resolve. Try a POP-client to read hotmail, and delete any HTML mail. That should remove most spam
Take a look at this firm of mostly female lawyers: bitches from hell.
I thought this was a lot cooler when I read about it the first time. Yesterday. On Slashdot.
Only 20 a day? Man, I should be so lucky. I get about 30-60 spams *daily* plus the large amount of email I want. I'm pretty busy and only check my messages at home every couple of days and frequently get downloads of 600-1000 messages to download. I've got many rules, scripts, etc setup to handle it but if I'm not expecting your email it's got a good %70 chance of getting lost...
Anyone know of a good service that will allow me to keep my existing pop3/smtp email addy and filter out spam from a blacklist or something?
I just sent those guys at MoFo an email saying thanks, and win one for the good guys, etc. I think it would be cool to show them how much support they will get for doing this sort of litigation. Perhaps it will persuade them (or other law firms) to go after lots of other spammers. I never thought I'd be so openly rooting for a law firm to win a case. But spam is THAT evil.
Anyway, contact them at info@mofo.com
My wife recieved an ugly bit of unsolicited email yesterday, our son was sitting with her when she came across it. It was an advertising for a sex site and amidst the text were various pictures including a lady having sex with a dog. Our son had alot of questions when he saw that, questions that i wasnt ready to answer to a 5 year old boy. I checked the properties of the email address, it was sent by jwlhSAM@mail.com. The ip adress was traced (love whois) to a isp in Seol Korea. I sent emails to the address's listed by the ip adress (the senders adress turned out to be fake, SUPRISE!) letting them know my intentions if i didnt stop recieving beastiality pics in my wifes email. Ive given my wife many warnings about using her real email address on the net on ANY website EVER and yet she still is the trusting fool. What the hell do i have to do to keep my son from being shown ladies fucking dogs on the computer? Obviously limiting his web access wasnt enough as we are being sent this crap directly unsolicited. Are there no laws against being sent things like this? Do i get a free ticket to korea to kick the shit outa the guy who did this? Every time this happens free speech starts to lose alot of ground folks. Im a father, im pissed, ill tackle any god damn flame you throw my way over this, and if anybody can find out where the bastard is who did this i will GLADY take this up with him/them directly.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. -Fight Club
If ever anyone deserved a "-1 Flamebait"...
Say it ain't so! You mean the guy from the IRS was not here to help me?
I'm still fighting to keep [email omitted] usable. But it becomes an awful lot easier if you can write your own filters.
And posting it in clear view of the spamcrawlers on slashdot will surely be of great help. =P
"I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
Try looking at TMDA... I'm running it on my mail server and I am down from 10 spams a day to one a month. That one is through a mailing list that I would rather not unsubscribe from.
Basically it adds a whitelist of people that you will accept mail from, a blacklist that you will reject mail from, and will allow people to automatically add themselves to your whitelist.
You can also have time limited addresses, keyword addresses that you can revoke, and so on...
It is working for me, if it's not working for you, why not. :-)
Z.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
Especially after your friendly neighborhood hacker has used Code Red to plant a back door and relieve you of administration of your server... But seriously... Linux is cheaper, and in my experience more stable. If you have same independent data to back you TCO claim, post a reference, otherwise please stop trolling...
Can you check your hotmail account with a POP-client?
Not directly, but you can use gotmail to fetch it in a similar fashion to fetchmail.
NT :)
I wonder if I can get a mofo.com email address with them.
God spoke to me
Opposite what?
Edith Keeler Must Die
I think spammers should be forced to pay by donating an organ for each forged header.
I'm not sure I'd ask anything from a spammer, short of their immediate death.
TO: Jace of Fuse!
FROM: Body Organs Galore
Hello! I am e-mailing you about this great opprotunity to get ahold of a high quality kidney! Let me tell you the story! Once not too long ago, a college boy woke up in a bath tub full of ice...
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
This lawsuit made it onto NPR tonight... I was rather amused by one spam executive saying the mail was not "unsolicited" because many users give their names to mailing lists when registering for products... "without knowing it" (exact quote... forgive the lack of attribution, but I'm sure someone can dig up an NPR transcript for around 6:45 PM EST on 15 March 2002).
My question then is this: how is the mail not unsolicited if the user doesn't know he's soliciting?
Plato's Socrates might argue, of course, following the Meno, that the user's psyche solicited e-mail advertisements before birth and merely forgot about his solicitation upon entering the world. Perhaps he would demonstrate this by having an uneducated slave register software and sign up to be notified of special offers that might be of interest to him... but then the Athenians forced Socrates to drink hemlock precisely because they didn't want to put up with that kind of nonsense.
Make spammers pay by being forced to donate $5 per email to each of the following:
:)
Electronic Freedom Foundation
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email
Free Software Foundation
DigitalConsumer.org
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
Privacy International
We'll have enough lobbying power to stomp the NSA, telemarketers, spammers, AND the RIAA
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Perhaps each email company should charge their new users for each email they receive plus a certain amount per kilobyte. This will discourage the new users from giving out their email addresses so quickly, and also to learn to cut out what isn't necessary.
Once they learn to quote properly, and prove that they can be responsible with email addresses, then the companies can give them a better rate.
I personally would also recommend that new user start out with a new user name such as myname_newuser@myserver.com Once they prove themselves by not posting their email addresses unecessarily, then they can get myname@myserver.com
The companies have an incentive to do this now, just as they have an incentive to use a firewall--for defensive measures.
testing out my trending skills
Try the anagram: "Morrison & Foerster LLP" == PORN AD TROLLER IN FOR MESS
Mod parent up,
I've noted that too. It happened over a period of about four days or so. I wondered if @Home going down had something to do with it, it's nice to see someone else saying it.
*sigh of relief*
now I'm down to a dozen or so spams a day (over 125 / day before, argh)
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Shut your mouth!
Spammers cost money everytime they send an ad that a distracted person clicks on, and gets shipped off to a porn site. That red-flags the corporate internet policy manager or whoever, who has to then go TALK to that employee about their going to a porn site. Sure, they just show the spam and say "Oops". It costs both of those people at least half an hour, though, and at $100 an hour, that's an expensive piece of e-mail.
I know the feeling. Nowdays it's an automatic trip to the power switch if something redirects me. It's easy enough to show HR the bad link. (after a reboot, I forward the mail to HR and request they and legal work on a reply for me) They have been quite effective. I very rarely get ADLT mail at work anymore. They also check the source and purge the mailserver for the entire company. It's also kept me out of HR hot water. I think I've had more bad (goat) links on slashdot than I ever got by e-mail. There were a couple times it took me about 5 minutes to open my inbox due to a purge in progress.
The truth shall set you free!
It's also to make life difficult for competitors UPS and Federal Express by keeping them out of the mailbox.
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
They should get into the automobile industry...
Mofo cars.
*drum roll*
Can sue you for being a dickhead ?
Stop pushing your crap ideas about software on the rest of the world - linux sucks.
But i agree its ready for the desktop... i have a redhat cd stopping my desk from wobbling - fits perfectly under the shorter leg.
Linux 1970's technology with 1960's politics.
Nigerian bank scams
That Nigerian Bank thing is a scam!?!?!? Damn, there went my shot at making millions.
I really like the idea of launching class action law suits against spammers...that way every time I receive a spam, it will be followed immediately by emails from lawyers asking if I want to sue the person who spammed me.
It's like trying to fit a round cat through a square hole
Yeah, I bet they're just dying to get their inbox filled with random emails...
Or how about because it pisses me off!
It's like a guy constantly tapping you on the shoulder... after a while, you want to turn around a deck him.
$0.02 (CDN)
Spammers often cite first ammendment rites. In addition to what you posted a key, key point in all of this is:
The internet is a private domain
Wasn't built buy gov't, not owned by gov't, etc, so doesn't enjoy the same First ammendment rights. It is 'owned' by business and individuals.
There have been a couple of court cases that have reaffirmed this but not quite sure what they are.
From reading the press release, it sounds like the headline on this story is wrong. MoFo is suing on their own behalf. The press release does not say that this is a class action lawsuit.
It's a shame though. If it were a class action lawsuit, I'd love to get a share of the take. Assuming they win, of course.
-Cube
My company once was contacted by a potential clients about one of our products.
I nearly sprayed my drink all over my business partner when he told me what their domain name used to be.
And at this joyous moment glimmering with hope of one small victory in an sickeningly impossible war, let us not forget also how much it costs in taxes to haul away the mountains of useless paper spam in our mailboxes every day. Never mind trees. Of all the paper in my appartment probably 90% per year, if not more, is crap i never look at that is shoved in the slot. The same for almost everyone no doubt. And I'm not all that fond of taking out the trash to start with.
Well, not safe from spam, but you can get revenge. It's against the law in WA state to receive email that is unwarranted and contains a forged header. A *lot* of these spam places forge headers... I know I get about 30+ a day from Taiwan, which seems to hate me for some reason. In any case, if you register your email address (a search for spam and register should pull it up from a WA state page), then you are eligable to sue for up to $250 *per email* that you receive. I haven't done it yet, but my friend has and has made some money on it. The biggest problem with some of them is that the situation is "Yeah, this is a forged header, but where is the real originator?" Some of them are pretty good at hiding it. I figure even if for every 20 emails I got, if I got $250 for one of em, I'd be happy. ;)
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
I imagine that /. readers are of above average intelligence, but to call spam free speech is just plain dumb.
/. readers to understand why spam is essentially stealing, slimey and used only by scum. When will we get some national coverage on a common medium (20/20, 60 Minutes)? Actually, I'd settle for a Fox celebrity boxing. Cmdr Taco vs. (insert spammer here). Make it a pay per view.. But I digress.....
:)
To try and use the 1st Ammendment in an argument, it is best to know what it really says. You are just parroting what you learned from TV/movies about out rights..
Freedom of speech is protection of the citizens from our own government. It does not cover some jerk coming to my house, calling me on the phone or even emailing me. That is not free speech. (It's fscking annoying.)
Spammers "free speech" ends at a users doorstep, telephone or mail server. Period. The end. No 1st ammendment protection.
To those that would reply that the government can't enact a law curbing free speech, that would not necessarily be the case at all. Save your post.
It is sad we can't get
IM Fletcher
P.S. Have a nice day.
+1 funny
Here is some stuff that will hopefully keep the lameness filter happy
Of course, if the spammers were required to donate organs, they'd simply start spamming about great organ sales opportunities...
"Need spare cash? Sell us half your liver! We'll buy any working, healthy organ!"
Followed up by:
"Need an organ? Try our Cheap Plastic Replacements(tm)!"
- Chris Jacobson
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
Holy fuck! You're onto a great idea there.
And how about when spammers lie, and say "this email was not sent unsolicited, you opted-in". I know for a fact that I never opted in to any of the spam places that send me this stuff.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You can check your Hotmail account with Outlook. I don't know if any non-virus-hazard email apps can, since MS unsurprisingly doesn't say anything about using third party clients.
I don't really see the point in using a seperate email client to make up for your webmail's anti-spam shortcomings. IMHO the whole point of a web-based email system is the ability to use it on any PC with a browser, without having to setup a new account and enter a few server addresses.
BTW, I always send any email that is not addresed or CCed to me@mydomain.com to the spam folder. It tends to mislabel any legitimate mailing lists as spam, so you might want to add a rule for them too. This tends to block most of the spam I get. Anything that gets past it gets SpamCopped (I'd SpamCop it all, but manually forwarding a few dozen emails a day takes too much time) and blocked with a new rule.
and staff to maintain the servers.
:)
You'd think that in thisayernomy you'd like a little job security.
Your laziness has resulted in the curtailing of free speech in this country (up until now it had been a constitutional right.)
If that's you, spamford, go fuck yourself.
Spamming is NOT, and NEVER WAS, a freedom-of-speech issue, it's a PROPERTY RIGHTS issue.
Saying what you want to say is a right. Using anyone else's property to publish or broadcast it is a PRIVILEGE. Learn the difference, god damn it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well, for the ones that say that spammers has never hurt anyone, I can only say that they haven't tried to have their own email adr as the sender of some spam mail. If the undeliverable error mails doesn't kill you, the 1000s of mad people thinking that you sent it will sure get to you.
Interesting point made about my mailbox being USPS property (which, from what I understand, permits Federal penalties to be assessed for tampering with my mail and/or mailbox).
Does this mean that the USPS could, in a broad sense, have the ability to set up usps.com accounts for all of us, and apply similar protections?
Looks too close to the work Mafia.
I wonder how Spammer^H^H^H^H^H Governor-hopeful Bill Simon feels about this?
I wonder if we could bring class action against his campaign?
Sometimes I need to buy an IT service quick for a client and I want to spam say 1,000 people with XYZ skillset who I think are most likely looking for jobs.
Is this ethical?
I got their resumes from job sites in the area of expertise.
Or I want to buy something from a certain type of service company, I get a list of 1,000 such compnaies off the net, and I request a bid.
Also, I run a website where people can post infor on other people. I think the target has the right to know about this. May I email the subect/target once to give him a heads up?
These are current questions I face.
Thanks for your advice.
Is this ethical or not?
Hey, this spam gives me an idea for a game!
"Sue the AC for 50 dollars!"
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
Good thing finally about spam. I suspect half of the spam I get is sent by spammers residing in the U.S.A, so any steps to make spammers pay is good.
What is bad about spam is that it is getting worse every month, but what is good about spam is that it is so bad already that even lawmakers and law enforcement officials are getting hopping mad and maybe we finally get rid of spammers.
Well, etracks IS stupid as hell. They continue to try and spam me even though I reject all connections from them with a "550 Fuck off and die" SMTP error. You would THINK that they would understand that I don't want email from them...
I will try to edify even in response to a flagrant troll: Yes, one may certify a class action against many defendants. It doesn't happen often. Usually, it is the plaintiffs who band together to take advantage of the class form so as to make the litigation of many, small claims worth the while of attorneys. A defendant class is most often certified in the context of fraudulent conveyance lawsuits, for example, when a person unlawfully sells shares in a company to many people, and the rightful owner needs to sue all of the purchasers to try to get the shares back. (I'm not opining on the likely success of such a suit.)
- Todd Lorenz, Vice President of Research and Development
- Paul Forsyth, Vice President of Finance and Operations
I did my best to find people that probably the right guys. I could be wrong. Don't get too crazy. If you want, you can track down more of these dudes here.2172 CARLMONT DR BELMONT CA
(650) 620-0059
107 OAK RIM CT LOS GATOS CA
(408) 356-5086
(If the name doesn't ring a bell, that's the crazy US national that was captured fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.)
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
Getcher targets straight, man! There may be good reasons for harassing Bill Simon, and there certainly are for harassing the economically clueless non-defender of our civil liberties and precious bodily fluids Gray Davis, but the spammer we all loved to hate was Bill Jones See Slashdot Story.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Just wait until 50% of the business start spamming and you get a few million spams a day. Will it STILL be "not a big deal?"
Really, this "just hit delete" ignorant attitude is getting old.
Compare that to the average spamhaus or spammer page you've seen that tells how you can !Annoy! People!! Fast!!! or get !!!Bullet-Proof !!!Bulk!!!! Email!! Accounts!!! and !!!Address !!!Harvesting !Software!!!!!!!.
That doesn't mean that these guys *aren't* just spammers with college educations trying to attract a better-paying class of spammer or trying not to discourage the occasional legitimate customer, but at least on the surface they look respectable. But perhaps Mofo Knows
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You know, looking at your pro-spam postings, it's clear that you are a spammer, work for a spammer, are supported by a spammer, have sexual relations with a spammer, or something to that effect. Either that or you are a pathetic troll.
law firms offering e-mail aliasing to avoid the spammers? :) actualy the impression I got was that mofo has multiple offices in multiple countries and actual uses the internet and Email to conduct real business that actualy generate a profit, and all of the spam was interfereing with there ability to conduct real commerce. It could be that Etract's was just hitting randomly generated user names at the mofo domain. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if the spammers didn't even know that mofo.com was a law firm
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
dam, com taco, u must have real axes to grind or something!?
8) yeah, well i'd not be so extreme, but boy0 mang did i lose massive respect for some computer coder the day he acted like spam was no big deal, based upon it being easy to filter.
as for me my big anti pollution bitchs in order are:
light which blocks one's vision of the night skies
sound in the shape of jack a55's who run power equiptment while other try to sleep
regular postal spam the same crap every body tosses into the circular file'n cabinets
voice or recorded msg tele com spam, those who call while you try to eat
e-mail spam
all of the above are serious CRIMES in my book and any time Real Esquires who care like to keep making bank they should focus, as there are lots of judges backed by the peoples court called:
Lions and Tigers and _______________________ big unspoken word, that when called upon makes justice happen.
sig=joker
When is spam no longer spam? Most people that I see complaining about spam is people that get e-mail with fack headers. But what about people who are really just using it to advertise, and do not fake the headers? Also, why is that people complain so much about getting spam in their e-mail box, when you get just about the same thing in your snail mail box every day... with e-mail spam all it is a signal click that deletes it, with snail mail it never really stops, and all the paper just takes up space in the land fills. And what about the companies that send out the spam e-mails for people, and do keep the remove list, the way that they should, but most people just get mad, and voice out against e-mail spam, but never do ask to get removed, because to many people have all ready abused the system. e-mail spam will not stop, and there are a few companies out there that do keep the remove list and such, but there are more people out there just using our e-mail more because they no that your is a person on the other end. and just about any one that can get on-line can send out all the spam that they want to. with a simple look on the net you can find tons of programs to send out 200,000+ e-mails an hour. and it will come with a 1,000,000 e-mails. I guess the thing is, it is a no win situation that we have.
If the sender's address was faked, like you said, then how can you even know the Korean ISP was responsible for anything other than having an open mail relay? Chances are it was some money grubbing spammer right here in the US that is bouncing mail off of their server. You'll never know unless the Korean ISP checks their logs (if they have any) on their mail server to see where the buttloads of SMTP connections are coming from.
I've said it before and I'll say it again....instead of going after the open relays or ever the people sending out the bulk email, go after the places that are actually advertising by these means.
Every spam has one of two things in it....a phone number or a website. These are both eaily traced back to physical locations in which the company or person running them is paying a telco or ISP for bandwidth/phone-lines. These are the people to go after...once people realize they're going to get shut down or at least fined if they advertise with spammers, then they will quit paying said spammers to solicit their services or products. Unpaid spammers will then move on to the next shady occupation and our email boxes stay free of their detritus.
It's quite an over-exaggerated analogy, but think of it as the gov't letting trigger men for organized crime off the hook in order to go after the people who are paying them. Take away the demand and there's no one to pay for the supply.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
I can't remember the last time I got a "make money fast" "buy anabolic steroids" or "see hot lolitas take it in the ass from horny german shepards" advertisement in my snail mail box.
The vast majority of bulk snail mail is from local companies with legitimate services to offer, and often the coupons have real value. I LIKE getting pizza coupons for my favorite local pizzeria. I LIKE getting menus from the chinese takeout place up the street. I LIKE getting the newletter from my neighborhood association letting me know what's going on with local ordinances that might affect me or my property. I DON'T LIKE getting ads from dubious companies that may or may not even have a real product to sell me. There's a reason that the ads you get in your snail mail box are legit....the US Postal Service regulates the SHIT out of what is allowed to be sent out.
Not to mention it costs a pretty penny to send bulk snail mail, as opposed to the next-to-nothing it costs spammers to send a couple hundred thousand emails.
While I agree with you that the waste of paper is appalling considering most of the junk mail hits the waste basket, it makes me feel better to know that I can locate the person who sends bulk mail to complain about it. (I believe the post office will remove you from bulk lists if you request, anyway. try asking them next time you're there)
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
Keeping an email address secret is security through obscurity. Yes, it's been published on slashdot, but even if it weren't, I still receive emails with awhite@yahoo.com, bwhite@yahoo.com, cwhite@yahoo.com, dwhite@yahoo.com... in the headers.
Do people actually harvest email addresses from slashdot? I'd imagine you could get into a lot of trouble targeting the hackers, sysadmins and anti-spam campaigners who post here. Not to mention the number of email addresses which resolve to uce@ftc.gov, bg1@microsoft.com or whatever/.
Since when is commerical speech protected to the degree that individual speech is?
There is a right to free speech. There is not a right to force that speech on others.
Uhm, how long have you been actually living in the U.S.? The legal process has guaranteed that personal speech can be inhibited over commercial interests in countless lawsuits both ongoing and in the past. This is especially true in cases where preliminary injunctions against various web site owners/operators were shut down based on the lack of apparant injury against the defendant.
Clearly, the interests of commercial entities are held in higher regard than individual rights to free speech when judges favor the potential harm of a commercial interest over that of individual free speech.
So, if the right to free speech is not being enforced or backed up in any way, there is no right to free speech at all.
Whether it's a legitimate case or not, I don't really care - I can't get over the Morrison & Foerster homepage. Mofo overview, mofo offices, mofo talk radio...
I wonder what the employee awards are like - Badass Mofo of the Month?
That is the way to go. Hire John Clease and company to preform the proceedures. :)
Not only is your target moving...It's picking up speed.
And lo, it's taking a U-turn and locking you in the crosshairs!
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
"I receive about 3 ads for penis enlargement a day even if I am from the opposite sex."
Probably for your Boyfriend, from when he registered for a pornsite using your email id.
Just kidding.
-Shaunak.
What? Oooohhhh! I get it - like to play music on n' stuff.
(Why the hell can't I post at -1?)
No. Can you see this?
Plus, if you know who they really are, you can take out a restraining order, or notify them they can't come to your property anymore (not a lawyer, obviously, but you can legally force people not to harrass you under a lot of different laws.), and then have them arrested if they continue to do so after being served. And having them arrested is a lot more fun them having them fined.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Let us know his name and address. Is he really your friend if he's doing that crap?
Let us know the client companies name and address.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Now imagine that you have 50 people with chalk writing on your sidewalk a day.