Slashdot Mirror
Spammer Sues List Broker
BuckMulligan writes: "This article describes a lawsuit brought by a spam company against a list brokerage warehouse for selling e-mail addresses of persons who didn't opt-in. What this means is that those marketing lists created by data brokers aren't even accurate enough for sending spam."
This brokerage warehouse wouldn't happened to be called HOTMAIL.COM ... would it ?? ;-)
...do lists of people who opt-in for spam even exist? Are they big enough to fit on one 8.5x11" piece of paper?
Who the hell would be stupid enough to opt-in for spam?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Maybe they could just send an email to everyone asking them if they've like to opt-in.
--It's Pimptastic!--
That all those fake addresses people have been 'seeding' the internet with have finaaly begun to have an effect. Maybe the whole industry will eat itself from the inside out. Hopefully the two sides here can sue each other to oblivion.
Do a google search before posting.
The sad part of this is that tax dollars are funding the ability for these cretins to sue each other.
The company said it used the Mindset Interactive and Inurv lists to send messages to thousands of e-mail account holders. It claims the companies said the data were collected with the consent of the owners and could be used for direct marketing.
This is most likely false. How many e-mails have you received stating that you indicated you wanted to subscribe to some form of mass-e-mailing, but didn't? And how do people receive spam only 8 hours after setting up an e-amil address?
Spammers can sue people? That just aint right. Regardless, if you buy 10 million e-mail addresses, look at how many of those addresses are going to be canceled, or changed in just one day. Our ISP has 400 users, and we change usernames, add, and remove users daily. And thats just a 400~ customer base! Maybe if the list makers get sued, they'll have to adhear to the actually 'Opt-in' theory! Then maybe I'll stop getting stuff about Viagra that I don't need, Hair loss products that I don't need, Viacream *shudder*, Ferimones, and the other list of absolutely stupid shit that I can't believe anyone would buy, let alone try to sell! But thats just my opinion.
Can all fish swim?
Drug dealer files lawsuit against drug supplier for selling him some bad weed, and some cocaine "padded" with baking soda and talcum.
A Google search did not return any information about Inurv Inc.
Personally, I think this is the best line in the whole article. Google, final proof that you do, or do not, exist.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Proper Opt-in lists are a good thing. Now, if someone sells a non-opt in list or SPAMMING software, making the claim that it is a valid marketing method, they should be hung out to dry.
I for one would be happy to testify in this type of case.
Bitching and moaning, does not cut it. You must fight the SPAM!
Fight Spammers!
It'd be interesting to have an agency that you could send your e-mail address and preferences to that could be checked by potential buyers of e-mail lists.
It could serve as a free service to the people who care enough to act on their need not to recieve spam. Any reputible company would check their databases with the 3rd party database and remove the e-mail addresses of people who opted out of all spam. Maximizing their direct marketing costs of sending out mailings.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
As always, it's the lawyers who win!
One scumball sues another, or the good guys sue the bad guys, or the bad guys sue the good guys, the lawyers never lose!
Forget IT, that's what my career should have been.
Why, that wouldn't happen to be this bunch of spyware monkeys, would it?
And your telling me that their email list gathering methods might be unethical? Who'd have thunk it?
rOD.
Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
I always "opt in" on these things with a fake email address. I hope to water down thier lists so they will eventually just give up.
If enough people did this, those lists might go away.
Another place where you get this is on product registration. Usually the agreement is in the fine print somewhere on paper so you don't get warned during the registration. Usually something about business partners.
They also use web 'bots that search the internet for all email addrs and spam anything they find. Heck, you could even use dns to spam every domain such as abuse@x.com webmaster@x.com etc. Evil, and spammers do far worse. Heck, all those "enter to win a prize" at your local radio stations, etc. probably sell their info to the spam listers and mass-mailers to make addition revenue.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
The best technique I have seen for this was a usenet
The poster had visited the websites the spammers were advertising (usualy p0rn sites) and collected legit e-mail addresses from the html source (usualy billing@ sales@ etc).
He/she added this to the usenet .sig (with the explanitory note) and let the spambots harvesting addresses do the work for them :-)
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Why can't we spam the spammers? Add their email addrs to other spammers lists, etc. Heck, here is where to deprecate Virtumundo Inc.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
I used to invoke mutt with a script that sent a complaint message to abuse@postmastergeneral.com every time I read my e-mail.
They claimed that all their lists were opt-in, but actually they had no idea. They accepted lists from their customers and took their word that they were opt-in. They would happily remove you from their mailing lists, but the next customer that submitted a list that included your name would automatically re-add your name.
So, the perfect solution to me was to simply complain about all the goddamn spam regardless of whether I had received any or not. That would remove my name from all their mailing lists *for that day*. It solved my problem completely. I don't give a fuck about whatever problems I might have caused for them.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Oh, sh*t. A search for "Anonymous Coward" didn't turn up anything on Google either. I guess that means that either I don't exist.
Well, at least I can't get modded down.
Here's a link to an earlier article than the newsbytes story although it's very sparse on details. Looks like they *might* have contact info for Inurv though... Phone number perhaps?
"Officials at Inurv could not be reached for comment."
Couldn't resist this. I checked and "Anonymous Coward" (with the quotes to get the exact phrase) appears in Google about 30,200 times. And the second instance is (of course) Slashdot.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Assuming that Virtumundo really did get screwed when they were given a bogus database, then kudos to them for showing that they are a somewhat responsible company.
It would appear that they are different from Joe Spammer who uses Korean mail servers and provides a bogus reply-to address. The fact that they even read the complaints they got proves that they aren't out to (purposely) screw people.
I've gotten some things that I thought were complete spam, but when researching where they originated from, I realized there were times when signing up on a website, I forgot to uncheck all of the "I want to receive e-mail from our partner sites" buttons. While they really should be opt-in, instead of opt-out, it's my own damn fault for not double-checking my work.
I have no problem receiving advertising mail if it's because I forgot to uncheck a box, or accidentally checked a box. The problem is when there's no way to get off the list. It sounds like these folks actually read replies and care about whether they're spamming or not, and if so, good for them. Personally, I think e-mail marketing is a waste of bandwidth, but if I can prevent myself from receiving junk mails in the future, I don't have a problem with it.
(On the other hand, they could just be some schmoes who spammed knowingly or on purpose, and are now just trying to pass the buck.)
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Better yet, give us his IP address and we can let our fingers do the walking.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
In Washington State, it is illegal to send spam period. Isnt this the case is California as well? Why don't you post his name/address so a right minded Californian can do something about it?
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Got it ;o)
;o)
./ effect.. Probably the funniest thing there is that guy's name. So, Google has triumphed once again.
Posted somewhere down the page, I listed a link found on Google to a earlier article by bizjournal.com. In that article, they list Inurv Inc from Glendale, CA. No searches of general business directories for Glendale CA turned anything up, but this tells us a whole lot more... Of course, the Secretary of State should have some good info
I'll post the general info here in case Sec State website are susceptible to
Corporation
INURV, INC.
Number: C2381410
Date Filed: 9/28/2001
Status: active
Jurisdiction: California
Mailing Address
210 N. CENTRAL AVENUE #210
GLENDALE, CA 91203
Agent for Service of Process
GEORGI KARAYACOUBIAN
1443 ROCKGLEN AVENUE #4
GLENDALE, CA 91205
From the article: (20020320/Media Contact: Richard Stern, Virtumundo, 816/931-1831 /WIRES ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/)
......... nah....
They would be related would
Yeah, except for the people microsoft sells your email address to. 3 months ago, as a test, I created a VERY random 16character email account name on Hotmail.com. 8 days ago, I received spam from four different servers, all corporate.
Bernard Shifman sends his "resume". The honeypots can his resume and trace the origin back to Shifman. One such offense is in England, where spam is punishable by time in a dungeon. A class-action suit is brought against Shifman because of his spam. In response, irate recipients of Shifman's resume tell DoubleClick to pass off every spam they get to a specific user profile (matched to only send to Bernie). Bernie gets the idea that he can make money selling address lists and saves all the addresses he gets from the recipients and multiple forwards. One spam company decides to sue Bernie for a bogus list. Just imagine the scene in the courtroom with a bunch of whiny little kids arguing before Your Honor.
That wouldn't really make any sense, MS dosen't want people sending you spam, it just increases their bandwidth usage.
If they really wanted to stop thier users from getting spammed, they would not have all of their users listed in the member directory by default.
Isn't it nice to have your email instantly published to a list for a spam bot to pick up?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Besides, most people that are karma whores, probably are already at 40-50 by now, so it's not like it matters if they get anymore. Like me, I think the Karma cap actually encourages me to think less before I post, because I am less concerned about my karma. Actually, I don't care at all anymore.
What?
Did you at least find out how many people out of 4 million actually are stupid enough to order a product from the spam?
Those of you thinking about finding where this guy lives and kicking his ass, forget it. We need to track down the stupid asses who buy from spam, and take their computers away forever!
"And like that
I'm sure that selling hotmail addresses is really a profitable business for MS. That must be how they can afford all those nice offices, eh? Did you every think that maybe people just pound away at hotmail's servers with dictionary files, and other techniques until they find e-mail addresses that work? It wouldn't be that hard to do.
What?
Phillip-Morris claimed that they didn't know cigarrettes were addictive.
Napster claimed that they were unaware of people trading illegal music on their network.
What's next? Some crack dealer claiming that because he bought his stash from someone else, he assumed the other person was selling a legal product?
Gee...I should have bought those offered speakers off the back of that van that one time and then claim I thought it was a legit store.
Try recylcing an on-topic +5 comment in the same story. If you time it right, you'll get modded up every time.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
No that's not what it means, though that reason is listed, the focus is on the emails that were not legitimate opt-in's. And I'd think that the fact that this angered the company in question means that they aren't a spammer, they seem to be attempting to send to opt in's only.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Interestingly enough, I did receive a spam from Virtumundo, saying that they got my address from Mindset Interactive. When I sent them my standard reply above, I received an actual reply back the next day from Virtumundo Customer Support Manager saying that she had personally unsubscribed my address from their database, and that was indeed the last thing I have received from Virtumundo.
Chris Beckenbach
I never said it wasn't - just it wasn't original. As in new, fresh. It's a failing of the mod system that lets people recycle old work, file off the serial #s, drive it across the border and call it new.
That's what I'm talking about.
My karma was well over 200 before the cap, so some people think I post pretty good stuff some of the time. And I've never had to resort to AC to protect that karma. Frankly, because I never cared about it.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
The above definition is, of course, from Dictionary.com
Mostly it's just sort of sad. I've had it done to me (a comment lifted from k5 and posted here, or maybe it was the other way around), and while it was kind of flattering it was also fairly pathetic. If you just think the comment was relevant, then it doesn't cost anything to attribute it.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
A physical business fax-spammed you? That's great! Write them a polite note, explaining that sending bulk faxes is wrong. Attach a copy of their spam to it, with all identifying marks removed of course. Go to their office, tie it to a brick, and toss it through their damn window.
What's a plate glass window run, $100-200 dollars? If you do it in the winter, even better, no heat for the bastards when they come into work the next morning. Too many expensive lessons like that, and they'll quit.
Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to track email spammers. I usually try to have their accounts cancelled, but that's about it. Then a couple of weeks ago, some dumbass sent me one of those chain-letter "Buy Reports on Internet Marketing" pyramid scheme things. The one where you expect people to send you a five dollar bill in the mail. That's right, the moron attached his REAL ADDRESS. It's two hours from where I live, even better. Not worth a trip by itself, but if I ever happen to be in the area, I'll stop by. Saved the address.
Communication is only possible between equals
Litigation is in the air like LA smog. Wow maybe some posters and /. will be served next.
'Virtu*mundo'?
It's cool they're starting to feed on one another, and, although, I personally find cannibalism repugnant, in this case I'll hope for mutual annihilation. The econiche of bottomfeeders is an ugly place.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
Exactly! When you go through one of those registrations that requires an email, make it, for instance, abuse@their.dom or even better abuse@their_upstream.dom. Don't opt in for anything, if they're good guys nothing happens. If they are spammers, they spam themselves, or their upstream.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
This post is a troll! This guy posts this every time there is a spam story - and gets +5 every time...
I'll pay for moderation - and look at the banner ads
From: LendWare Info
To: waldoNO@SPAMwaldo.net
Date: 07/13/01 2:16 PM
Subject: Thanks for Applying for a Loan OnLine
Dear Waldo Merideth,
Replace with Lender Name Here is pleased to inform you that your online loan application has been received and we will be contacting you in the near future.
Thank you for choosing Replace with Lender Name Here
Sincerely,
Replace with Company President's Name Here
President
"Not only did he not have a clue that hijacking someones SMTP server is bad"
Not only is it bad, it's criminal trespass. IMHO spammers need to do jail time for it.
"An e-mail marketing firm on Tuesday said it has filed lawsuits against two e-mail list providers, alleging the lists it bought from the companies were full of non-existent addresses and people who hadn't asked to receive commercial marketing messages."
So what you are telling me that either there are ethical spammers or they are worried that they aren't getting their moneys worth.
Hmmmm.... I wonder what they are going to do about all those fake email addresses?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
which was in response to your
(assuming I've got the cast of characters right. With a couple people in the same thread posting AC it gets a little confusing.)
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Put up a empty www-server on your computer, change the 404 not found page to a empty page and put ad.doubleclick.net to 127.0.0.1 in your host-file.
So you're saying that you didn't inhale?
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I'll assume the OP was using the english alphabet of 26 letters. There are 26**16 different possible combinations, if a spammer is capable of trying one billion addresses per second (which he isn't, not even close) it would take nearly 1.4 million years to try every 16 character address. So, given that hotmail has existed for significantly less than 1.4 million years, no, I don't think that someone used a dictionary technique (which won't work for a random address) or another technique. It is possible, however, that an admin for hotmail sells the addresses without Microsoft's consent (which still doesn't make Microsoft blameless).
Ok, I'll stop feeding the trolls now.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
I suppose that after reading dilbert off and on for years I should have expected it, but within a week of signing to have it mailed daily, and marking/unmarking every box to the "don't send" category, I discovered
1) the site carring the daily cartoon to which the email links is down about 80% of the time.
2) It took less than a week to spam me for rugrats . .
*sigh*
hawk
Oh sheesh like this is an original idea. Stop patting yourself on the back there, camper.
You are just another hack who not only steals other comments because you can't come up with your own, but you can't even come up with an original idea.
Life is going to be hard for you.
--- I do not moderate.
Sometimes it does too good of a job and filters ads I have actually signed up to receive.
Uhh, that's not a "too good" job, that's what we call a "bad" job. I can write you a filter that takes care of 100% of your spam, if you like...
Microsoft does not sell hotmail addresses, if for no other reason than no one would buy them. The reason your random hotmail addresses are quickly harvest and spammed is because of programs spammers use to collect e-mail addresses. Basically the program just listens to all the traffic that goes through hotmail and when a new address is created it logs it. One of my friends had one of these programs which he used to get new addresses to spam for his new website. I really don't think that a lot of the big e-mail providers sell addresses, if it was ever proven it would be a public relations nightmare.
wowo I can't wait to see the BS storm of lies and hypocrisy as the spammer sue-a-thon gets cooking. No of course they never knew all those people didn't opt in. Whoever would have guessed that direct marketers could be so unscrupulous?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
... should we still call them spammers?
If it's for people who have genuinely opted-in to a bulk mailing service then the mail is solicited, isn't it?
Surely spam is still defined as unwanted, unsolicited mail.
Even if some spammers do blatantly lie, telling me I've opted in for their mailing 'services'.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
What's his IP range, or who's his upstream provider?
Not if the lawyers seize all their computers and network equipment as evidence. Hey, they might be harboring terrorist communications on them or something :D
"You are hereby instructed to immediately, permanently and totally remove any and all information collected in regards to me and any reference to my email address from any and every computer system, on- and off-line storage device or media that you may possess, own, rent or utilize. You are also hereby explicitly notified that you have no permission whatsoever to exchange or propagate any personal information or email address to any "business partners" or other third parties."
Unfortunately for all of us, some things like email addresses are publicly available, and we can't legally prevent someone from maintaining a list of them. (Unless you get in to stalking laws, hit lists, etc.) We can legally insist they do not contact us, but we can't compel them to "take us off the list."
I have every permutation of my home address entered into the DMA do not mail list, I don't have a normal landline telephone, and I use AT&T mail (with their Brightmail filter, which is absolutely amazing) so I generally don't get bothered by spam, except for my hotmail account.
(Yes, I still manually clean 10 spams a day from my hotmail and actively block spam domains (like Virtumundo.com) on this account. But that's it.)
If the pyramid scheme wants you to use the mail in any way (e.g., sending that $5), it falls under the jurisdiction of the USPS Postal Inspector.
Send it to your postal inspector. I believe you can just put it in an envelope with "US Postal Inspector - Pyramid Scheme Enclosed" written on it - no postage - and the carrier will accept it and pass it along.
Even if it's a private mailbox the Post Office could decide to stop all deliveries to that address pending an investigation, turn it over to the FTC or local AG, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
It'd be interesting to have an agency that you could send your e-mail address and preferences to that could be checked by potential buyers of e-mail lists.
s/agency/single point of failure/g
It could serve as a free service to the people who care enough to act on their need not to recieve spam.
And watch it get DOSsed off the Net by the real spammers.
Any reputible company would check their databases with the 3rd party database and remove the e-mail addresses of people who opted out of all spam.
How would the 3rd party database recoup its bandwidth costs?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Also a T1 aint that fast by todays standards, so the story is old as well as recycled.
Next time maybe it'll be changed to OC3 or something.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Scum suing scum. I feel bad about hoping one of them will win. Why can't they both lose?
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
A spammer.. bought a product frequently offered in spam.. was upset when they discovered that the spam they bought into was misrepresented.. and sued... most likely.. another spammer.
Keep it up guys.. This takes care of the email listing spams... has someone's sex drive not grown by 581%?? You need to start suing!
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Dont forget the 26**15, 26**14, 26**13, ... combinations as well.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!