Dutch Court: Bothered by SPAM? Get A New Email Address

Brenno de Winter writes: "The earlier mentioned ruling on XS4ALL has been analyzed by Linux Journal in this article. The ruling states that it's easy to change e-mail addresses, so don't worry about SPAM too much. Yeah right! RFC's don't apply to the Direct Marketeers since they were not involved in the standarization. Neither in our consitution, btw .."

Comments

easy to change email addresses..

[martin]

yeah right.

let me see I've on 12 mailing lists that I know of right now (plus others that mail less han one a month).

Plus all those register sites(like /.) that mailmy my passwd etc when I forget...

Not to mention all my 'internet' buddies that drop a line once a year or so, to check if I'm still alive...

no it's not easy to change addr's for people that actually rely on email quite heavily like I do..

Like virus's, put the solution where the problem is . For virus's it's the windows desktop so you need a solution there beside gateways etc. For spammers it's the 'sender'. There needs to be a body that has legal powers to track them down and prosecute - a UN agency for policing the internet perhaps?

Right now I'm trapping approx 50% of all incoming email at work with my anti-spam tools. Now thats just a small company with 200 email addresses, God only knows the length and resoources the IBM's of this world must be apply to the problem.

ChoiceMail

[climber]

Bob Mossberg reviewed ChoiceMail from DigiPortal in a recent column, and said his spam dropped to zero as a result of using the product. It's a permissions-based e-mail software package. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting.

Here are their emails

[www.sorehands.com]

This is the email from the spammers. It is located in their form.

• Algemene Informatie
• E-commerce
• Telecommerce
• Strategie & communicatie
• Direct Mail
• Fondsenwerving
• Antwoordnummers informatie
• Bibliotheek
• Juridische zaken
• Lidmaatschap
• Research en Educatie
• Persberichten

Now, don't spam them. :)

As long as there is recourse, spammers dont give a

[t0qer]

fuck. No I'm seroius! I met a spammer in person! I reposted "Spamming for Dumbasses" on several spam related stories so do a search if you want some more detail.

Basically from the spammer I saw and met, they completely take the argument of network resources out of the argument. If its on purpose or not, they play completely dumb to the problem of cloggin up mail servers.

Right now, spamming IS and WILL be a legitimate business until proper legislation is made. As the spammer I talked to said, "Spamcop is interferring with my AMERICAN right to do business" Not that I agree with him, I was a sysadmin for 7 years so I know what damage he does to the systems out there. Funny thing is though, he's right! As anoying as it is, as much as I hate to admit it, spamming isn't really illegal anywhere yet.

Another problem is with the laws that are created. One such law states something along the lines of, you must remove someone from your mailing list if they ask you. My spammers way around that was to keep a master list which he never touched, and just remove people from the sub list. I.e.

His company was Company X
He spammed for and from Company Y
He gets a remove from list for company Y, but not X
and the spam just keeps on comin.

I made another +5 post about the Italians deleting that guys web site hosted in america. If we really want to put an end to this problem we would not allow spammers to look for loopholes like the one I explained above. Anyone that tries to find loopholes in the laws has no respect for them at all. Last time I checked all our laws are written in english, I may not have a law degree but I can follow the books well enough. Why does our goverment allow loopholes and circumvention to laws to be legal? Maybe we SHOULD take a hint from italy.

You live somewhere, you follow the laws, simple as that. Be it real world or internet. People that circumvent those laws are scum.

--toq

Re:As long as there is recourse, spammers dont giv

[ShaunC]

Funny thing is though, he's right! As anoying as it is, as much as I hate to admit it, spamming isn't really illegal anywhere yet.

There's a hole in this argument. In fact, there are twenty-five holes in the US alone, making it nearly impossible to send spam to a list of any size without violating the law somewhere. Half of our 50 states have laws which either prohibit spam outright or require some/all types of spam to conform to specific rules. In several states it's even illegal to create or distribute spamming software.

Spamming is illegal in quite a few places. The problem is that in most of those places, the remedy available to victims is too small for individuals to bother pursuing, and the laws are never used by state AGs to initiate criminal proceedings. In my state I'm entitled to collect $10 for every spam I receive which violates the law (no forged headers, must have valid contact information, must be properly labeled, etc). I get hundreds of such spams every week; if it were really possible to collect any money from the spammers, I'd be retired.

I wish the laws worked. They don't, and I'm not sure that they ever will; even if all 50 states had them, and even if a federal law were enacted. The pro spammers will move (as in physically expatriate) to China, Korea, or any number of other countries where their ill-gotten gains could buy them an extravagant lifestyle, and resume operations outside the reach of spam laws.

Shaun