Slashdot Mirror
Feds Cracking the Whip on Spammers
Britano writes "Fox News is reporting that the FTC has started to go after spammers and online scammers. So the governement has finally started on the side of the consumer. "The Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday that is has created a nationwide task force that has already brought 63 law enforcement actions against Web-based scams ranging from auction frauds to bogus cancer-curing sites." Hey, this way we don't have to spend our own money on fighting this problem!"
Where do you think our tax dollars come from?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I bet them spammers like the taste of the whip! Filthy bondage whores...
From what I have heard, it isn't so much spammers as scammers. They are shutting down the illegal scams. If you have a real business, but use spam to advertise your product, I haven't read anything to indicate that they are being targeted.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
That it took so long for the Feds to finally realize that crimes on the Internet are no different than those off of it? Bogus charities and pyramid schemes have existed long before the net. It shouldn't be any different, should it?
If I weren't nailed to the penis, I'd be pushing up the daisies!
Um, who do you think pays for the FTC to do this in the first place?
If you can manage to track the spammers down in another country...
Anyway, this is mostly about scam spam. This wont even effect the "buy a million addresses on a CD" spam as long as they are actually selling that product.
This just cracks down on something that was already illegal--it really doesn't have anything to do with spam.
for the government to get it's invasive little paws into the stream of email everywhere! Sounds like an excuse to install "Herbivore". "It's a SPAM-fighter! Honest!" Can't wait to see my tax dollars at work.
"Cyberspace is a wondrous place, but we are quickly learning it can also be a dangerous place for the unwary," she said. "Con artists who once relied on telephone boiler rooms and mass mailings can now rip people off through Web sites and e-mail."
In a related news story, Fox reports that gullible people often get ripped off.
Ok, here's the thing. I strongly believe spam would go away if people would QUIT BEING STUPID. If they would just think for a minute and say hmm, it seems this magic Cancer cure is too good to be true. Why haven't I heard about it in other sources? Now, I will say that these bastards selling hope in the form of a cancer cure is genuinely despicable, and they need to share a room with Bubba for doing it. However, WISE UP PEOPLE!!!! Do you really think xsegry17l33t@yahoo.com is a viable businessman? Come on!
-5 redundant
Sent from your iPad.
So, add that to Securities and Exchange commissions abuse site enforcement@sec.gov and you have some good places to forward your spam.
Send all "Great new stock tip" crap to the SEC, send all the ripoff products to the FTC, and copy Spamcop on everything, and maybe we can crush these bastards.
(Hey, by placing these addresses on a public site like
www.eFax.com are spammers
.. because after I read a story here last month and found out about the uce@ftc.gov address they want spam forwarded to, I've probably crashed their email servers 10 times with the volume I've pushed to them.
People - use this address to bounce your spam to - it appears something is actually being done about it!
(This is debatable) Better to have the feds go after these people then report to spamcop and have, well, ISPs breathing down your back.
I understand the desperation that's felt by someone with cancer, but really, what kind of person is going to believe that the miracle cure for cancer is sitting on some shady website and not in the hospitals?
A fool and his money are soon parted...
I have automatically directed some SPAM to the FTC. I have an address on my website, for SPAMBOTS to grab. This address has an automitic forward to uce@ftc.gov. Some spammers might be smart enough to filter out .gov, but this avoids the filter.
Fight Spammers!
That's a good idea... And if you order now, you can become part of our "NO-SPAM / SCAM" list, at the low cost of $299.99! Your name, address, and email will be collected and stored in our special database in which we promise never to spam or scam you again. Trust us!
=-Jippy
Yes, send it to them if they want it.
One thing you shouldn't do, which sadly, too many end up doing.. is bouncing it back to the (fingerquotes) sender (end fingerquotes).
More often than not, bob@randomisp.net isn't the one spamming you. Bob is just your average Joe who thinks spam is that stuff in a can that tastes darned good friend up on toast. (No, really, try it sometime.)
Anyway, the people who think they're 'sticking it to the spammers' by sending spam back.. Are really just contributing to the problem. IMO, they're no better than the actual spammers.
*hands out clues* E-mail addresses can be forged. Servers can be used to relay things. Maybe you should talk to a system admin somewhere, but it's not going to be Bob, who's just trying to check how his shares of Hormel are doing.
I'm suspecting that Shifman Consulting won't be on the list of people to be sued. I don't recall ever seeing Bernie Shifman providing or ever promising a service, other than providing hemorrhoids to his spam recipients.
Apparently the state of Washington is already going after this Walker guy, as of last October. So the feds are a little slower, at least they've jumped on the bandwagon...
Got Wisdom?
Shape them up. Get them straight. We need to go forward and move ahead. Try to detect spam. It's not too late to whip them. Whip them good.
There should be a spam tax, or something similar.
This is all commercial speeach, and so therefore the government can charge a fee to defrays the costs to the system.
My own solution is to make every spammmer have a spamm license, so that they are easily traceable for billing purposes. We can all bill them. I have also suggested a cute orange ear tag for spammers, nut this is merely an optional element for the plan.
The other part of this is to make it profitable for people to track down illegal spammers and get them arrested, make them pay the fees we shoiuld be charge them. Enough people do this for no money [track them down], and are expert at it, so why not let them get some financial reward out of it?
Future spam:
Make Money Fast Tracking Down Illegal Spam!
[smile]
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
it's always interesting to read all the possible things a guy can be tricked into doing with his penis (enlarging, pumping, drugging it with viagra (herbal or normal), etc...)
it's a whole new world for a gel
Not that spam is meat, but anyone notice the appropriateness of the name Carnivore?
Dude, you can't legislate against stupidity. You can't buy a commercial on national television and shake your finger sternly at the world and say "stop being stupid!" and suddenly all of the suckers disappear off the face of the earth.
You and I would walk by a game of three card monty and laugh. A rural teenage tourist would possibly be suckered in and lose $20. That's why you still see that game on the street. It works, and it always will.
"There's a sucker born every minute" as Barnum would say.
What about the elderly, who might be losing their faculties and are preyed on by these folks? Is it still the victim's fault in your eyes? Blame the victim, blame the victim. "Look at what she was wearing! She deserved to be raped." How does that sound?
The point is, if you are in a position of greater knowledge, looking at a group of people with less knowledge and saying "stop being a bunch ignorant fools!" doesn't do a dang thing for anyone, doc, except maybe for your feeling of self-righteousness, sorry to break it to you. Ironically, your attitude reveals a naivete about how the world works, similar to other forms of naivete that suckers of scam-artists possess.
"Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."
In your book is it "fool me any time, shame on me"?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/04/spam.htm
Plenty of further links to PDF's of the FTC's spam actions.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
This is a start. But it doesn't go far enough. The real problem with SPAM isn't that alot of it is scams or cheap porno get-your-dick-sucked come ons. The real problem with SPAM is that it STEALS OUR BANDWIDTH. By being responsible for 30% of the traffic on the internet, SPAM steals the true potential of the internet from us all. OUR Internet is slowed down 30% because of SPAM.
I am a moderate Libertarian, but this is something where the market can't regulate itself. There are many such situations, where the market doesn't regulate itself on par with the ideal. M$ is one such example.
In this particular case, SPAM, it doesn't matter if everyone blocks it out using filtering that won't even d/l SPAM from the server. REGARDLESS of whether or not YOU block out SPAM, its still stealing from YOU. Because your ISP's have to devote huge amounts of their resources to sending SPAM around, they put the tab on your bill. Furthermore, its still slowing down the Net at large, and ultimately you, whether or not you download it. This is my proposal:
PREAMBLE: Any violations of these statutes can result in jail time and severe fines paid to the state, the individual harmed, and the individual's ISP. The following proposal applies, unless otherwise stated, to E-MAIL, FAX, and the TELEPHONE. SPAM in all of these areas SHIFTS almost ALL of the cost of advertising from the ADVERTISER, to US and OUR ISP.
(1) What's needed is an OPT IN ONLY system. ONLY people who OPT IN get sent stuff from organizations.
(2) Furthermore, the OPT IN should have to be exclusive; opting in to receive e-mail from IBM NEVER gives them the right to let their "partners" send you crap. If they want to let their partners send you crap, they should have to contact you, explaning which partners they want you to let send you stuff, and what those partners do. Misrepresentation of this information should be considered a violation.
(3) Unsolicited solicitations encouraging people to OPT IN are SPAM themselves. That is, if some organization (i.e., bigdicks.com) sends you an unsolicited "one time" request to "opt in" -- irrelevant whether that request is text-only or not -- its SPAM and a violation.
(4) That said, the only legal way to propose to someone that they opt-in would be if they went to your website (and you had an opt-in option on your site) or requested information from you on opting in and you sent it to them. BUT, such opt-in options MUST state how large the OPT-IN proposal is in KB or MB accurate to 99%.
(5) Any Opt-in proposals (either on the website or ones send by e-mail/fax/phone) must state the following about the commercial communication that consumers are opting into. (1) How frequently they send their communications, or on what bases [i.e., is it once every month? Or does it go by "whenver there's news"?] (2) How large is the average communication that is sent, plus or minus standard deviation? (3) Opt-in proposals must also state accurately what the communication sent is about. Intentional or unintentional misrepresentation of ANY of these pieces of information is a violation.
(6) Said information in (5) must be updated at every new communication, correcting for that communication.
(7) All such solicited communications are to include clear removal instructions. In ALL cases, the option to remove MUST be presented such that the individual need only respond with REMOVE in the subject field. The removal must be immediate, or quick enough such that the individual gets no more communications from that entity.
(8) All such communications are to include an appropriate 3 letter header: Adv, Upd, or Nws. Adv applies for any commercial entity trying to sell you something. Upd applies for an update on a situation or software (i.e., an available upgrade). Nws applies for news (i.e., the stuff slashdot sends my e-mail).
(9) This law is not intented to cover the communications of private INDIVIDUALS, but ONLY of organizations.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen