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Firm Pays 6.5 Million for Fax Spamming
Geopoliticus writes "This article over at the Chicago Tribune tells of a car dealership in St. Louis that will pay up to 6.5 million to people it sent junk faxes to. Now, if we could just get this kind of settlement for all the crap in my inbox I could stay unemployed forever." If I got a quarter for each piece of junkmail
in my inbox, it would cover having a pizza delivered to my house every day,
and still have enough left over to get a few comics to read each day while I
ate!
See junkfax.org if you want in-depth info on how to get junk faxers to pay you as well :)
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
PIXY MISA NUMBA 2 YO
If I got a quarter for each piece of junkmail in my inbox, it would cover having a pizza delivered to my house every day, and still have enough left over to get a few comics to read each day while I ate!
Still to figure out sendmail.cf, Rob?
----
Homer Simpson do this?....at least he got away with it.
user: 578929835
pass: 578929835
If there was a precedent set for email spammers to have to pay, would you then go put your email address everywhere fishing for spam to get paid for?
At least with a fax number, it's not as easy to get spammed.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
Not quite fax spamming, but my brother read about a great way to get back at someone through their fax machine, especially if they have one of those machines with rolled paper, not individual sheets. Wait until night when the fax machine is unattended. Take about 4 sheets of paper (with lots of black on it if you're feeling particularly evil) and tape them together seamlessly. Insert it into your fax machine, and begin sending. As the first sheet comes through, tape it to the last sheet (which hasn't been fed in yet,) creating an endless loop that keeps cycling through like a multiple page fax. When the person comes to their fax machine the next morning, his toner and paper will have been all used up.
Now, if we could just get this kind of settlement for all the crap in my inbox I could stay unemployed forever
in the mean-time I will continue to invest in e-mail storage solutions and spambot technology
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Well, scratch that, it's been out of hand...I get many, many more junk emails to my inbox every day than legitimate emails...and I'm getting sick of it. Unfortunately, the email address is the one I've been using for years. This creates a dual problem. On one hand, everyone has it, so it would be a pain to tell everyone I've changed it. But also, since I've been using it for so long (6 years at least) it's been exposed to every single spammer on the planet.
What I want to know is where the hell are the lawmakers and the courts on this one? The senate's too busy going outside to say the pledge...get the hell back in the building and vote on some anti-spam laws!
Also, in an election year (such as this one...hey!), I'm still surprised an enterprising poltician hasn't brought this up in tech-heavy districts...I'd go out and vote if someone running for congress would at least make it sort of an issue...just give me something!
If I got a quarter for each piece of junkmail in my inbox, it would cover having a pizza delivered to my house every day, and still have enough left over to get a few comics to read each day while I ate!
Taco bitches about all his spam every time he posts a story.. "Ooh, i'm an internet old-timer, i'm tough enough to handle thousands of pieces of spam in my inbox every day."
Install SpamAssassin. I did, a few months ago, and all my spam is dropped in a special folder. False negatives are very rare, and i've never gotten a false positive.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Anyone have a registration username/password? Evidently, the NY Times strategy has paid off, and major newspapers all require logins now. I'm aware of the NY Times Random Login Generator but I don't think it can be modified to keep up with every Tom, Dick, and Harry newspaper. Just think, slashdot encouraged it, with constant barrages of links on the front page.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I could stay unemployed forever
Considering you are a open sauce programmer, I wouldn't worry about gaining real employment anytime soon
I would think Fax spamming would be more costly to the receiver... You'd be using a peice of paper for every page they sent you... if you got tons, that could start costing you...
Junk email or snail mail doesn't cost you anything.. (except it uses a tiny portion of your bandwidth) So I doubt they'd ever make spammers pay you for receiving that.
This is interesting. I may be the only one, but I have recently received a lot of spam (via SMS messaging and email) on my cell phone.
Has anyone else had this happen to them?
Maybe I could be next getting a big payout? heh...
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Now only if I could get the judge to agree to telemarketing calls as Junk Calls, and pay me up to $100 per junk call. They are wasting my time, calling me on inappropriate hours and it never stops. Can we get legislation on this?
"Junk faxes are not only an inconvenience to consumers, but they waste money, time and interfere with crucial businesses operations. In order to do business in today's world you need a fax machine. The intent of the machine is to communicate with friends, family, and business partners. It is not an open invitation for unscrupulous advertisers to block your phone lines, run up your operating budget, and waste paper."
;) Although this quote pertains to faxes, it summarises my feelings about spam email if you replace "paper" with "bandwidth" and "phone lines" with "mail servers."
- Dan Jacobson, Legislative Advocate, CALPIRG
If that doesn't make you want to buy Dan a beer, the terrorists have already won.
Email spam costs you money (phone costs required to stay on longer to download spam, hosting cost increases because your mailbox is loaded down with spam) and ties up your resources (your mailbox).
If the law doesn't get extended soon legislatively, someone on a dialup should file a class action suit to try and judicially establish the concept.
A year or so ago I used to work in a place that used those little nextel phones. Well one day an automated spamfax machine kept dialing my bosses nextel phone number. At first he decided to ignore it but during the week it started happening more and more. So we figured out the fax number it was coming from, and sent them about 1500 faxes back telling them to not dial his number. Ahhh good times.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
I figured someone would have gotten and estimate on the cost of pizza and comics in CmdrTaco's area and calculate the number of spams he recieves every day.
(Pizza + comics * 2) / 0.25 = # of spams.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Link
Some people have a way with words, others not have way.
I can't get in with that user/pass, although the settlement must not be that much per person. I can only imagine the phone bill they had.
If I got a quarter for each piece of junkmail in my inbox, it would cover having a pizza delivered to my house every day, and still have enough left over to get a few comics to read each day while I ate!
News Flash - Over 90% of /.ers don't care about the spam in Taco's inbox, claim "He should install a fscking filter if he doesn't like spam."
Okay, so that's not really news. But then, neither is the state of Taco's inbox.
In other news, Microsoft still sucks and you're still stealing television content when you take a crap during the commercial break.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Isn't there some website or something that some people to sign to petition the government; at least in the United States, maybe more universal world wide via the United Nations, since it does cause problems by eating up bandwidth that could be used for more efficient services).
or
We could just sit on our asses and don't do any lobbying ourselves, no wonder things don't get done around here.
-sb5
"I DRANK WHAT?!?" -The Immortal Last Words of Socrates
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
The other day I got a spam with a ICQ-number in it. Well, what the heck, I thought and requested authorisation. To my surprise I got it. I even got the chance to talk with Mr. Spammer. It didn't get very technical. :)
He had 400.000.000 addresses and 30% were outdated blah blah. it took 7 5 hour days to spam all the addresses.
Well. all in all it was funny to talk the spammer, but it took him some time. He's wasting my time, i'll wase his.
I also love to call a spammer if possible. Ask where he got the addresses, ask what kind of product it is and after a while tell you're not interested
Privacy is terrorism.
My own pet solution Involves spammer licenses, charging for spam by the government, at least for Unsolicited Commercial email.
Included in this would be Internet Bounty Hunters, also known as Spam Hunters, who, for the benefit of a piece of the action, would go go out and hunt down illegal spammers, or help in the collection of deliquent fees assessed to spammers vy the government, backbone providers, ISPs, consumers, etc
I also think that everyone who has to deal with spam should be able to get their nickle, dime, or quarter for dealing with it. I know I would gladly cede my share to my ISP to get a discount on my broadband bill.
Of course, tagging spammers with an orange ear tag is optional. But it could be useful.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If people who do not have enough knowledge/time to code could sue the spammers, and with the money fund OSS projects (like Blender, which still needs 100,000 US$), then we can all contribute to these projects!
Just a small estimate: say that 80% of Open Source users would not be able to contribute to the code, and only 1% of these people would actually start to sue spammers. Say there are around 4 million OSS users around, and an average user could sue a spammer in around 2 weeks. That would deliver a staggering 64000 cases each month. To continue: say for each sued spammer, we would win 50 US$ (which is low), then we could contribute a total of $3,200,000/month. $38,400,000 each year!
If CmdrTaco would stop signing up at all those pr0n sites he wouldn't get so much spam!
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
If I got a quarter for each piece of junkmail in my inbox, it would cover having a pizza delivered to my house every day, and still have enough left over to get a few comics to read each day while I ate!
:)
We only need one CowboyNeal
I stole this Sig
This is an AP story, so it's on the usual news sites.
/ 20020710/ap_on_bi_ge/brf_junk_faxes_settlement_1
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap
(I'm capped, no karma whoring here, nosirree.)
Yahoo! News also carried this AP news story.
I wonder if the Chicago Tribune will have a large influx of new accounts being created today?
The main reason why there is more email spam than fax spam is that it is cheaper (almost free) to send email spam. If I had a thousand email addresses to spam, I can easily signup for a yahoo! mail account and send my spam for free. Sending 1000 faxes involves 1000 (possibly) long-distance phone calls.
All your favorite sites in one place!
Why does everyone complain about spam? All you guys want is free money because some guy is making a living by sending you junk e-mail. If someone sends me junk snail mail I don't go clamoring the government to make it illegal, and I don't try to have a lawsuit to make me money. I just toss it in the trash. As for spam it is a little more annoying to toss in the trash, but you know what. I used to get spam, back in the day, but ever since I got to college, nothing. And its not the college protecting me from spam with a filter, because other people here get tons of spam. I created a yahoo e-mail address the other day, and its got more spam in it in an hour than I've seen, ever. You know why? I don't type my e-mail address into forms I don't trust. I opt-out of everything. I am *gasp* careful. I dont' even have a little program that filters spam out, I use lite Eudora with only the PGP plugin. Guess what? I've had 1, count 'em ONE spam e-mail in 2 YEARS. Don't ask the government to do something for you, if you can do it yourself.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
U.S. Accuses BP Of Accounting Scandal
"In all likelihood" (to borrow a phrase from
the President-Vice), Cheney will claim everybody is doing it.
Learn basic HTML you AC fag
I highly recommend using TMDA on your mail server to defeat SPAM. It works by maintaining a whitelist of valid senders. If someone emails you and they are not in the whitelist, then they receive a confirmation request email. They must reply to it in order to be added to the whitelist (at which point, TMDA will deliver their original message, and allow all new ones to pass through). No having to report SPAMs, no worry of maintaining a never ending blacklist. TMDA does it all for you, putting a minor inconvenience on first-time senders.
The end result is that I get no SPAM. Zero, zlich, nada, not one -- with no effort on my part.
I believe there are other packages out there similar to TMDA that you may want to try. Regardless, I'm convinced that a whitelist-centric strategy is the way to beat SPAM.
spamassassin is great. it does sort out out a lot of mail. but, it is possible to get a false positive out of it. it took me a few days to get some of the newsletters i receive on to the whitelist properly. and i have had a couple false positives on inbound personal emails. and that's after i set my threshold higher than the default. it does eliminate 90%+ of it though. in my case i've set it up with a dual threshold of sorts. the junk with a ton of points goes straight to /dev/null and what's in the middle goes to a special folder. still, i'd rather spam go away entirely or i'd like to have a quarter each. it really would add up quickly.
geek friendly VPS's and free API enabled DNS : zerigo.com
not that it bothers me all that much that /. links to these sites, because most of them i probably am already registered at anyway, but the process is annoying.
i know some of these sites have urls that allow you to get through without registering that they use when they want to distribute stories to people who may not necissarily be registered...
Firm Pays 6.5 Million for Fax Spamming
Fools! I get it for free!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Here's an anti-spam system. Let's say it costs the sender one dime ($0.10) to send an e-mail to a single person. The receiver, on deciding that the mail was valid non-spam e-mail, can push a button that effectively returns the dime to the sender. This can be automated so that trashing an e-mail, as opposed to filing it, prevents the dime from being returned automatically.
If a spammer wants to drop a dime every time they send me something, I'm all for it. It's their money, and it goes to upkeep the bandwidth they waste. For me, it only costs me something like $7.00 for the maximum amount of outstanding e-mail I'll ever have. (Big parties on evite cost money, but you're inviting your friends, so you'll get your dimes back.)
Naturally, this only works if everyone's on the same system, but all it takes is one of the major e-mail address vendors to implement it and everyone will have to jump on to be able to send e-mail to their clients...
Here's to wishful thinking...
I find it funny that the settlement notice ws also then sent by fax ot the same numbers...
"A notice of the settlement was sent -- by fax -- to the 33,000 numbers turned over by the company that did the faxing for the dealership. "
When I received and read the enclosed, these thoughts occurred to me:
d =28%2C29 )
c tory/
d ccd.tar.Z
> %%help-news:
> %%dev-news:
> %%bug-news:
1. Golly, the FSF noticed the DCC. I'm flattered.
2. HOLD IT!--What's that about a copyleft on my code!?--oh, it's
probably only on the contents of their directory listing, which
they seem to have copied from the Freshmeat listing.
(See http://freshmeat.net/projects/dcc-source/?topic_i
3. Is this bulk mail? It is unsolicited. No, the DCC is too obscure
and too far down the Freshmeat rankings to leave any doubt that
Ms. Casey sent essentially the same missive consisting of a little
"targeted customization," some boilerplate, and the contents of a
Freshmeat "protject page" to other Freshmeat "project owners".
Yep, http://www.gnu.org/directory/All_Packages_in_Dire
was not compiled without power tools.
4. What's the difference between one of the Executive Whos Who
spammers scraping my particulars from my InterNIC handle, whois
data, or my or some other website and then sending me an offer
to update my listing and what Ms. Casey is doing?
5. The answer is "there is no difference, because all unsolicited
bulk mail is spam even if your mother sent it and its promises
to make you healthy and grow your wealth, breasts, and penis
are real." So the only question is whether Freshmeat cooperated
and so violated its privacy policy (http://www.osdn.com/privacy.shtml )
6. The little doubt that remains evaporates after reading
http://www.gnu.org/order/deluxe.html and seeing that this mail is
not only unsolicited bulk email (UBE) but probably unsolicited
commercial email (UCE).
Spam is about consent. It has nothing to do with the motives of
the sender or the sender's reputation.
Why don't I contact Ms. Casey directly?--because I avoid contact with
senders of unsolicited bulk mail. I've long since had my share of
odd phone calls, threats of violence, mail bombs, sendsys bombs,
test-group bombs, and other expressions of spammer displeasure. My
certainty that Ms. Casey would do none of that or anything else execpt
apologize does not justify my violating that firm policy.
Vernon Schryver vjs@rhyolite.com
> From jcasey@gnu.org Mon Jul 8 15:25:05 2002
> Received: from spider.localnet (rampart.gnu.org [199.232.76.163])
> by calcite.rhyolite.com (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g68LP45M007775
> for <vjs@rhyolite.com> env-from <jcasey@gnu.org>;
> Mon, 8 Jul 2002 15:25:04 -0600 (MDT)
> Received: from jcasey by spider.localnet with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian))
> id 17Rg0B-0004yd-00
> for <vjs@rhyolite.com>; Mon, 08 Jul 2002 17:24:59 -0400
> To: <vjs@rhyolite.com>
> Subject: 'dcc'
> Message-Id: <E17Rg0B-0004yd-00@spider.localnet>
> From: Janet Casey <jcasey@gnu.org>
> Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 17:24:59 -0400
> Hello! My name is Janet Casey; I work for the Free Software Foundation
> assembling a directory of free software, which is why I'm writing to
> you.
>
> We have you listed as the developer for 'dcc'. Can you check
> the information below to see if everything is correct? I'd appreciate
> it greatly.
>
> FYI- a short explanation of some of the fields. Not all fields apply
> to all packages; fill in whichever are appropriate.
>
> Programs- Any additional programs that come included with this one.
>
> Interface- Command line, interactive, X windows, console, library, Web, daemon
>
> Support- Resources for paid commercial support only
>
> Related- any packages that might be of interest to users of this package
>
> Use Requirements- Required for using the executable
>
> Build Prereq.- Required for building this package
>
> Weak Prereq.- Useful (but not mandatory) to install before building
> this package
>
> Source Prereq.-
> Packages whose source code must be present in order to build this package
>
>
> Thank you very much for your help!
>
>
> %%comments:
> <p>
> Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> </p>
> <p>
> Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this document
> under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any
> later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
> Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy
> of this license is included in the file <a href="COPYING.DOC">COPYING.DOC</a>.
> </p>
>
> %%name: Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse
>
> %%short-description: Spam detection and filtering package
>
> %%full-description: The DCC or Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse is a
> system of clients and servers that collects and counts checksums
> related to about 1,000,000 mail messages per day. The counts are used
> by SMTP servers and mail user agents to detect,reject or filter spam.
> DCC servers exchange or "flood" common checksums (which include values
> that are constant across common variations in spam, including
> "personalizations").
>
> A DCC server totals reports of checksums and answers queries about the
> total counts for individual checksums. Each recipient decides
> independently how to handle each bulk message. A DCC client reports
> and asks about the total counts for several different checksums for a
> mail message. If a message's total is higher than the threshold set by
> the client, a DCC client that is part of an SMTP server can log,
> discard, or reject the message. DCC clients that are parts of mail
> user agents can discard, file, or score messages based on their
> "bulkiness."
>
> %%category: as
>
> %%license: Distributed Checksum Clearinghouse
> *
> * Copyright (c) 2002 by Rhyolite Software
> *
> * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
> * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
> * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
> *
> * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND RHYOLITE SOFTWARE DISCLAIMS ALL
> * WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES
> * OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL RHYOLITE SOFTWARE
> * BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
> * OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS,
> * WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION,
> * ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS
> * SOFTWARE.
>
> %%license-verified-by: Janet Casey <jcasey@gnu.org>
>
> %%license-verified-on: 2002-07-08
>
> %%entry-added: 2002-07-08
>
> %%maintainer: Vernon Schryver <vjs@rhyolite.com>
>
> %%updated: 2002-07-08
>
> %%keywords:
>
> %%interface: Daemon
>
> %%programs: dcc, dccproc, dccm, dccd, cdcc
>
> %%GNU: no
>
> %%web-page: http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/
>
> %%support:
>
> %%doc: User FAQ available in HTML format from
> http://www.dcc-servers.net/dcc/FAQ.html
>
> %%developers: Vernon Schryver <vjs@rhyolite.com>
>
> %%contributors:
>
> %%sponsors: Rhyolite Software (http://www.rhyolite.com)
>
> %%source-tarball: http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/source/dcc-
>
> %%source-info:
>
> %%source-template:
>
> %%debian:
>
> %%rpm:
>
> %%repository:
>
> %%related:
>
> %%source-language: C, Shell script
>
> %%supported-languages:
>
> %%use-requirements:
>
> %%build-prerequisites:
>
> %%weak-prerequisites:
>
> %%source-prerequisites:
>
> %%version: 1.1.5 stable released 2002-07-08
>
> %%announce-list:
>
> %%announce-news:
>
> %%help-list: <dcc@rhyolite.com>
> http://www.rhyolite.com/mailman/listinfo/dcc
>
>
> %%help-irc-channel:
>
> %%dev-list: <dcc@rhyolite.com>
> http://www.rhyolite.com/mailman/listinfo/dcc
>
>
> %%dev-irc-channel:
>
> %%bug-list: <dcc@rhyolite.com>
> http://www.rhyolite.com/mailman/listinfo/dcc
>
>
> %%bug-database:
>
> %%entry-written-by: Janet Casey <jcasey@gnu.org>
>
>
> Janet Casey
> Free Software Foundation
> www.gnu.org
> jcasey@gnu.org
>
Well, kind of.
.GIF files, one per page of the fax (normally two pages), and then run a little utility that took a file of numbers to send to, a file of numbers to NEVER EVER send to, and the name of the first .GIF file. It made all the control files, and I would leave for the weekend. 4000 numbers, 8000 pages, 4 lines, no problem.
We had a company that did outsourced corporate training. We faxed a list of our upcoming classes to our former customers once a week. Our customer list grew, and I think that our marketing people started buying lists of fax numbers and adding them to the database.
This was accomplished with two two-line Hayes JT Fax boards, IIRC, installed in an old 386 (for reference, this was the early Pentium era). I built the box, I ran the cable (a single strand of 8-wire cat 3) and kluged up four-headed RJ11 ends for it. We bought some software that could watch a directory for instruction files and pump out faxes accordingly. We would make a series of sequentially numbered
Further technical note: about once a month I would go into serious log analysis mode, and remove the 50 slowest fax machines from my list. Most fax machines at the time were 9600 baud, with some 14.4kbaud, and a dwindling minority of 4800, 2400, and some 300 baud horrors. We only sent on the weekend, so it was in our interest to only target fast recipients.
Every Monday, we'd have a pile of response faxes, normally just "take me off your fax list", often with no phone number to reference, but sometimes we would get counter-spam numbering in the dozens of pages. We were happy to add anyone who wanted to the NEVER EVER send list.
The punchline: In almost a year of doing this, we had two or three people take classes because of our faxes - not nearly enough to cover the cost of the fax server, let alone my time maintaining the whole system (never less than 2 hours a week, often more like 4).
Spam is bad. It doesn't work. I can't figure out why people keep doing it. Is the word not getting out there? IT DOESN'T WORK.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Junk email doesn't (usually) cost the receiver, but with faxes you have to pay for the paper, ink and it ties up a phone line so they're hardly comparable.
Reminds me of Sound Ford in Renton when they spammed people in WA State. Too bad they learn anything from the Aurora Nissan spam incident about 3 years earlier.
My Consumer Responsive Anti-spam and Privacy Solution (CRAPS) proposal is that Spammers be required to show where you opted in or failed to opt out, and trace the legal transactions that landed your address in their possession. Such a law should require them to provide you with that information upon your request with reasonable frequency and delay. It won't stop Spam, but it will give American users a start at not only stopping unwanted Spam, but also limiting the propagation of your address (within the US).
I recently complained about junk faxes being sent to my home telephone number at 2am in the morning and received this letter back.
s onal Information Removed)
http://pingalingadingdong.com/junkfax.jpg
(Per
I was very disappointed to say the least. I'm not real sure what to do about it though.
Any ideas/suggestions?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Lets all bleed a little for Taco.
Everyone would sign up for an AOL account. Sure you'd have to pay $20 a month, but the payments from the spam would more than make up for it.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I was particularly alarmed by the language "up to" $500 per fax -- it sounds like not everyone will get the statutory damages. Where is the actual text of the settlement? Where is the text of the "notice" fax? (If it turns out that people must "prove up" their damages, and only get a nickel or a dollar for making a claim based on lost paper and ink, then this is a fraud.)
But clearly, this should scare off a lot of the junk-faxers. I am now getting 8 to 10 junk faxes per week, most of which contain "opt-out" instructions that do not work. The stock-promotion-scam faxes never contain any valid contact information at all, and most of the others just have a voice mail box which promises but never actually makes a callback.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
The tinfoil hat crowd on alt.privacy laughs when they see paranoid posts like yours. Lighten up a bit.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
I remain upset that in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks, we gave in and gave the terrorists exactly what they wanted: a less free society, in which armed guards are present in many public places, and where many more people are now afraid of people with brown skin or different beliefs. I'm also unhappy that we killed many more thousands of already-victimized civilians in an overkill campaign against Afghanistan. "Oh yeah? My trillion-dollar army can beat up your army of children with sticks."
Likewise, adopting the spammer's illegal attack strategies serves only to reduce us to their level. I am not a criminal, I am not someone who harasses other people, even people who engage in illegal harassment of me.
Certainly, do what's legal: call spammers and complain, send complaints to the ISP and backbone providers (and follow up when it appears an ISP has "dropped the ball"), and of course fax removal requests back to the junk faxers. If you want to yell or use profanity in your calls and emails and faxes, that's probably legal in most places.
But sending death threats, flooding spammers with millions of copies of their own spam, or launching DNS attacks on their servers. Don't become "one of them" because then there are more criminals and fewer good guys.
This all sank in (for me) back in 1996, during the absurd "Yuri Rutman" (Thinner hair, el cheepo, the first Joe-job) spam-then-harassment campaigns. At one point, I posted a web page (which I deleted several years ago) that listed all the information about Mr. Rutman (most of it gathered by others and posted in isolated bits in the net-abuse newsgroup). One of the items was his home address (in addition to his office address, which was probably a mail drop). When I actually got Mr. Rutman on the phone, he asked me to remove his home address, claiming that he had children and feared for their safety -- because he feared that people might engage in physical retribution in response to his repeated, irrational, illegal, and vicious retribution against joes.com and Hurricane Electric. I decided then and there that although I owed Mr. Rutman no courtesy or respect, I would not do anything to endanger any human being's physical safety, especially children (whether or not they really existed), and so I removed his home address (though it was still available in the newsgroups, where a diligent anti-spammer might find it -- but I didn't want the information on my web site where someone stupid and simple might use it to do something stupid and simple. (Though there was no publicity, for his actions, Mr. Rutman was charged and convicted of a crime in Illinois, just a slap on the wrist but worse than what happens 99.999% of spammers.)
Yes, spammers do some crazy and evil things -- like Sanford "Spamford" Wallace filing a frivolous lawsuit against me just to get publicity (he quickly abandoned it), thus scaring off a bidder for my former dot-com business "because we don't want to buy a lawsuit." The next offer for my business was $175,000 less, and I had to pay $5,000 in legal fees to respond before Wallace abandoned the suit. Did I feel like doing something stupid and simple? Of course. But I didn't do it, because I am NOT like these cretins. Life sucks, sometimes, but the solution is NOT to do more sucking.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
all these laws about spamming and faxing are silly attempts to use law to do what technology should be doing. they are anti-freedom, and furthermore, they shore up big business.... which frequently resorts to govt intervention to protect themselves from competition
the last thing "THEY" (whoever "THEY" are) want is competition. this is just another way to protect "legitimate" businesses.... like AOL, MSN, etc.... who are responsible, and only feed of the people who are ALREADY GIVING THEM MONEY!!!
god forbid that anyone should be able to market their products without going thru the big boyz
So who uses fax machines anymore? What I'm more concerned about is the spam from cash4school.com that I received on my cell phone the other day. Apparently, anyone can email my phone and it shows up as a text message... but the thing is, it costs me 10 cents every time I send or receive a text message. Once I was able to explain to the friendly Cingular customer service person what I was talking about, they credited me $5, but it still makes me nervous. Even if it were free, I'm going to throw my phone into a dumpster if I start getting spam on it all the time.
Anyone a geek at Cingular? Or know one? I'd sure like to talk to one about this...
We have the slashdot effect, we have the tools to attack, why don't we take a page from Bush's book and go on the offensive? It may be illegal to attack a server for a long period of time but who gets in trouble for attacking a url for 20min of approximently 20-30 megs of random data sent at them? Espcially if its a spammer's webpage off in Asia.
:) Is there any law about sending bad packets for 20-60min at a time or is it pretty ambigious?
Now take 20,000+ people doing this at random times during the day. It wouldn't be hard to fuck up some ISPs big time and make them think twice about open ended policies with spammers.
What the hell could they do to 20,000 - 100,000 people if they all attacked a know spammer? I'm sure the FBI will get right on that
Their bandwidth costs would skyrocket and it would soon become unprofitable to spam (only way to stop a business is to make it unprofitable. Spam only stops with fines or attacks).
The only problem I see is the tools are mostly in linux (and like bipartisianship, we need Bi-OSing for an offensive) so we need a simple "enter url, push button" kind of interface for all linux, windows, and Mac users. Yes windows users, we could use Mac user's help too, for our enemy of our enemy is our friend. A simple small webpage to update who is the "attack of the day" would be very easy. Hell, make it a screensaver that updates itself daily and attacks randomly, never enough to incur any personal penalty.
Did anyone notice the companies name?
"American Blast Fax"
heh
I'm a newbie administrator running several of my own websites. I haven't dared touch email yet cause I don't want to be blacklisted for a mis-configured server.
Can someone just give a quick and short explanation as to which file to edit, and a couple of config lines on how to block IP addresses from certain countries, or just specific IP addresses where the spam, code red, klez, and other crap originate? I'd like to block them from entering the box, not just a specific service.
Thanks a bunch in advance!
Any other method of notice would either be inadequate (newspaper ads, for example), or would be much more invasive of privacy (compelling the phone company to release the mailing addresses of the owners of these 33,000 phone numbers).
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
This is a classic example of Bastiat's Fallacy of the Broken Window. If every spammer on earth dropped dead, the effort and resources devoted to warding off their garbage could instead be diverted to productive uses rather than spent to merely hold the line.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
People *think* spam works. People think spam is acceptable. Of course it doesn't work, but try telling that to idiots that see it in their in-box.
Spam is a bad meme and I've no idea how to counter it.
"the federal law prohibiting unsolicited fax advertising violates the United State Constitution."
That would be the spammers' First Admendment rights. Sensibly, privacy should trump freedom of speech because at present, it is a situation of "everyone is entitled to my opinion" - including corporate entities.
Groucho Marx said that.
Ironic isn't it that half the time you can see better sh*t in your toilet than on tv...
Like i said, it's an AP story.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Get 10 sheets of paper and draw out a 10 frame animation (car driving through the road, flying bird, a hand sticking up the middle finger) and loop that through a fax machine. The receiving end (Spammer, for example) will get a free cartoon flip-book.
$cat
AC's got posts # 1, 3, & 4 in this article and we eat penis?
Take a look in your own mouth before you post, cockgobbler.
Why is it that people are so pissed about receiving spam? Why can't y'all say "the hell with it" and ignore it? There will always be some fool that responds to spam which ignites the incentive for spammers to continue. Until regulations are in place to restrict the activity, don't waste time bitchin about it.
Now, tell me what would happen if everyone ran that program?
Would mailing list posts get through automatically? Or would this thing post to the mailing list asking for confirmation? Or would each sender on the mailing list be asked to 'authenticate' their post? If answer to the first question is 'yes', then instant road for spam. If the answer to the second or third question is yes, then you'll be removed by any competent mailing list admin.
Also, how would you like to, every other time you sent an email, have to handle a braindead acknowledgement. Hell, in that case, I'd hack my outgoing queue to send a test message first, to confirm that the person doesn't have this sort of crap, and if they do, I'd not bother to contact them for any reason. If you want people to be helpful, answer a question, tell you your site is broken, or whatever else... making that inconvenient is the immediate way to drive them away.
I do not, can not, and refuse to accept that as a solution. Anyone who does use it (so far, nobody that I know), will be procmailed into the bitbucket without question.
In the meantime we could take countermeasures like putting up a link to some spammers homepage on slashdot's homepage with the title "spammer of the day", or even "spammer of the hour". Every slashdot reader is sollicited to click on that link and reload the page a few times... the server will instantly get slashdottet!
But first make sure, the advertised link in the spam is really the spammers webserver, to not harm innocent webmaster's business. Maybe we could get fresh addresses of spemvertised websites from databases like spamcop...
This way, the spammers webserver will soon be down, and further (interested) readers cannot see or buy the advertised product.
Make the spammers loose their business!
ms
Of particular importance is the Proposal for a directive concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (PDF) which says:
As legislation goes, this document is remarkably clued-up, and also unusually readable. Everyone move to Europe, quick.Ok, so it's still in the proposal stage, and won't become a directive until given a second reading by the full EU parliament. If you live in Europe, get onto your MEP's now and ask them to support this directive.
To those who think no laws are needed... Why when the spammer is forging your address should you (rather than law enforcement) be the one who has to track down the offender and say "please just stop" (using my address as the reply-to address)? There should be legal recourse and significant penalties for forging in this way. Penalties large enough to get the 100 % contingency based legal lions excited. Personally, I'd love to turn 'em loose.
Most of you won't like this, but I think we should tax e-mails. The reason we get so much spam is that it is so cheap to send. If each e-mail sent cost just a one cent it would not be too much for the average user, but costs would run up for those who send out thousands of spam e-mails a day. $1000 per 100,000 e-mails would start to add up after a while. There could be exceptions for educational and government institutions. Also, the tax could be earmarked for computer education in public schools. This would not stop spam, but it could get it under control. Of couse I will miss the free memberships to farmwomen.com but that is part of the sacrifice we would have to make.
a notice (with collection instructions) that I'm entitled to a $500 settlement. A few of these faxes a day, and I'd be quite happy.