Slashdot Mirror
NY AG Sues MonsterHut Over Marketing Spam
Ian Hill writes: "This BBC article tells how NY State Attorney Elliot Spitzer has sued marketing firm MonsterHut.com over "millions" of unsolicited e-mails. He claims MonsterHut.com falsely told its clients that e-mails sent on their behalf were sent to addresses who registered themselves as interested parties. Also at question is how exactly these addresses were collected." eviljim adds a link to a press release from New York's Attorney General and a reminder of how MonsterHut was disconnected from their ISP.
It is about time some of the cost associated w/spam got moved to the spammer. More of this can only be a good thing. If it gets too expensive, maybe it will slow down.
I do worry though about legal remedies just moving the problem to where the laws don't exist.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It'd be really cool to see mandatory micropayments for UBE - I would be willing to accept the extra load on my mailservers if I know I was making a tenth of a penny per message.
:).
Hell, running an open relay would rapidly go from moronic to profitable
--
Phil
On a sidenote (with regard to the quest for the email address source), it's fairly common knowledge (enough so that Paetec mentioned it somewhere on litigation.paetec.net back when they were soliciting affidavits from spammed parties) that a number of the addresses used came from WHOIS records.
...came to my attention last week when my wife signed up for text messaging for her cell phone. Her plan allows the first 100 messages each month free, with extras for an additional price after that. What happens if (when) that number gets on spam lists it can be sent in the form of an email, ie, cell-number@provider.com? At the rate I get spam in my inbox, surely she'll run over the 100 limit, and it WILL cost me money to receive spam. Surely there's cause for recourse at that point?
Wouldn't be too hard to take the ball and run with this one. Get on the message boards and put your number in your sig. Too bad I don't have the time or resources to do it.
I hope there is a lot more cracking down on this method of marketing. I've always wondered why it works for them in the first place? Seriously, why do they think that if they keep sending me five copys of the same email EVERYDAY, eventually I will answer? Or why would I answer if they use a completly misleading subject line so that it gets through my filters? They say that they are complying with whatever laws apply by giving you an email address to be removed, but it you mail that, it's either not a valid email, or they just sell your email to others, and you get tons more emails. Obviously some people must answer these emails, but I don't understand how it would ever be worth the cost of thier investment.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Spam on the computer, is generally bad because it's so cheap to send (virtually free). So we end up with tuns of spam. Also, because computer spam is so cheap, it's not at all targeted, for some reason, mail ads tend to be much more interesting.
;-)
And, opting out is easy in your mailbox. Just write "Return to sender" on the unopened message, and put it back in your mailbox. The USPO will charge the sender to return it, and the sender will usually abruptly stop. If you want to get nasty, tape the letter to a brick first
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Yes, kudos to Mr. Spitzer for finally doing something about spammers. His litigation may make some of the more egregious, mass spammers think twice before trying to force-feed our Inboxes with herbal viagara and penny stocks.
But here is the HOWEVER.
With technology regulation a) not particularly well defined on the books, and b) almost always implemented the *wrong* way (DCMA?), I have little doubt that many legitmate newsletters and mailing lists will get hit by Mr. Spitzer's shrapnel. There are plenty of Attorneys General out there who are not quite so intelligent as sheep (let alone, Mr. Spitzer), and will follow New York's example to the detriment of legitimate mailers.
Damn. Another message for teen sex in my Inbox. Heck, maybe it's worth it....
-FC
I am a New York State resident and I must say that Elliot Spitzer has been nothing short of wonderful when it comes to protecting the consumer.
.02
First it was unsoliticited phone calls (we were one of the first states to set up a no-call list). Now I recieve maybe 1 unsoliticited call every 2-3 months instead of 1 or 2 a day (and at dinner time.... arrrrgggg).
Then it was dissent on the microsoft case. In all likelyhood, New York State served as a keystone for the 9 dissident states.
Now we've got Spitzer battling the evil spam demons. My guess is that once again, Spitzer will come out on top.
Spitzer is a definately a defendant of consumer rights and privacy and has been unwavering in his cause.
my
What good is governement if they want to govern me? (pennywise)
If we want the government to stop trying to creake things like mandatory age checks before accessing adult material, then we need to stand up and tell them not to create spam laws either.
It is a problem that can be solved technically. We should strive to find better technical solutions instead of finding ways to sue them.
Okay, Niagra Falls is in NY so suing is cool, but 500 million emails to just New Yorkers? Of course if all of the 19 million people (last census) in New York state received an equal number of emails that would make about 25 per person which seems reasonable, but if we extrapolate that same rate to the 280 million in the US they sent about 7.5 billion emails from March last year to April when they were cut off. (Think about it, the extrapolation is reasonable) At a very conservative 1kB per html-email this makes about 7.5 terabytes of data they've sent in a little more than a year. Which makes about 20.5GB of email a day. That seems like a bit much to me.
This is all mental math, so please correct me if you've got the time.
uce@ftc.gov [mailto]
:)
... buh ah ha). After about a month, the spam stopped. That was two months ago, I have been spam free (for that account, at least) ever since.
i have a yahoo account, get about 5 spam emails a day, and forward most of them right on to the FTC. not sure if they're actually doing anything, but it makes me feel good
I do the exact same thing, but I think it actually worked. One company had been spamming me for months (I made the mistake of clicking the "remove me" link). Well, one day I started forwarding my spam to the uce@ftc.gov (and spoofed the 'remove me' link to remove uce@ftc.gov
I like to think my tax payer dollars actually did some good.
If the recent internet Libel case goes to verdict, it may impact the power of current anti-spam laws as well. If it turns out that people can be sued for libel in the jurisdiction where internet content is being viewed, it then follows that spammers can be sued for breakage of anti-spam laws in the jurisdiction where the spam is recieved. Only time will tell how this will paly out but there is a silver lining to everythnig, if you look hard enough.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I'll call your ruling:
Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.
Not that I think that spam is good, rather the argument that "My mail server is mine, thus spam is illegal" does not follow.
- Justice Black, U.S. Supreme Court, Marsh v. State of Ala., 326 U.S. 501 (1946)
I'm the best IRC client ever.
You don't think that allowing anyone to mail you is making your mailbox "freely accessible and freely used by the public in general?"
Please, leave my infrastructure intact. I'd rather that I get the mail and filter it than have random messages dropped because I couldn't let the public at large email me.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
I'll be honest ( and hide under the Anonymous Coward name ), I work for an email marketing company. I can't say who, but it should not matter, I think I will be hated for it no matter what. I do get to see the inner workings of the email marketing world everyday though, and I'd like to throw a little education out there.
Something we all know is that the whole system is corrupt. The current laws passed by the 106th congress are almost never enforced, and spammers blast out billions of email in a totally un-targeted fashion through relays or by deleting their headers. The anti-spammers are just as corrupt, using sweeping generalizations of anyone even remotely associated with the business, coming almost to the points of slander, and using blacklists as extortion tools.
" Extortion?? " Yup. We have found you can easily get off a blacklist with $1000 or more in hand, but if you simply ask to get off the list because you are not a spammer, "Nope. You got on there at some point for something, you must be!" No record check, no records at all. Your business name can be sullied if someone simply puts your URL in a piece of spam. Bribe or no bribe, they don't ask questions of the validity of the argument, but only one way will get you off the list. Not everyone does this, but not all spammers hide their identity or blast millions either.
The entire system is almost defunct. In fact, in my experience, anti-spammer have created their own problem with some fuel from a few abusive spammers.
The email marketing business is like any other, adapting to ensure their way of life. When it first started, removal lists were gold, always honored, and mailings were done through the proper channels, like private or bulk servers. Then a news article pops up about a guys spamming the world, and everything goes to hell. As anti-spammers make it harder to spam, spammers make it harder to be detected. This means removal lists never get made, and no one is ever able to get off of a list. Anti-spammers are so busy taking down sites and killing mail boxes, they are almost making it impossible for even the current laws to be used as guidelines. Spammers are no slackers either. New software is always being created to hide their servers, or are sending from outside the country. Politicians aren't going to help. Much like anti-spammers with no scruples, they will go to the highest bidder.
Email marketing needs something along the lines of traffic cops. People to enforce the laws of "No tampered headers, a valid return address, and a way to be removed from the list" without interference from vigilante groups. ISPs can still enforce mailing limits so people don't use them as cheap ways to blast out millions, and they could also respond to complaints by deleting the account, but also have extra power to report to a working federal authority. Large bulkers would use special bulk ISP's like today, and the government or some regulatory body would be able to keep tabs on the whole process.
But still there is that lingering cry of people saying it puts the costs on the receiver. Though I have never seen one ISP raise their rates because of spam, I would be interested in someone showing me one. But then again, that is the premise of the internet. Requesting a pages means you have to hop through a bunch of servers along the way, costing them bandwidth. Same goes for email. It costs a lot to deal with a complaint, doesn't it? Perhaps even the same or more as any other email? Granted, spam is in overwhelming bulk due to the shoddy system we have now, but the internet still works on the same premise it always has. An inter-connected network of computers sharing the costs to make it cheap for everyone overall. No one is happy about ISPs in Australia charging by bandwidth used, but no one even speaks about the same demands being made on a piece of mail. Everyone pays $40 or $50 a month for their cable modem or DSL, but the people who only use it once a day are not whining that we geeks take up gigs of use a month. 1% of high speed users take up 30% of the bandwidth, but I don't see any of you advocating to more fairly divide the costs.
Is spam a problem now? Yes. Email marketing works, and helps small businesses make their presence known. Unfortunately , many legit marketers get squished in the uncaring cogs of anti-spammers, while most of the major problems are unreachable to CAUCE and Spam Cop. Yes, there is a lot of crap, yes it needs more finite guidelines, and yes, there are a few who are ruining it for everybody. Instead of trying to pass laws and kill email marketing, try and educate and make the system work.
No free speech problem, since the spammers are still free to send their messages. I'd just be choosing not to view them. People who actually wanted to see spam for some reason could opt in at their ISP. I'd be willing to guess that it wouldn't even hurt the spam business too much because spam-haters like me never buy anything advertised via email on principle.
The one thing I don't know is how to allow real (meaning actually opted-in) email through when I've really requested information on a product. So here's a challenge to all you slashdotters - how can you phrase a law to only allow truly requested messages through without opening a loophole for the MonsterHuts?
The Mighty E