Spammer Bows to Lawsuit

Compulawyer writes "The Washington Post is reporting in this article that spammer Alan Ralsky has agreed to stop sending spam over Verizon's lines and to pay Verizon an undisclosed sum of money. Although Ralsky denies any liability, this sounds like a clear win for Verizon to me."

Comments

Hmmm

[smoondog]

We get spammed and verizon gets paid. Sounds like the American economy is working normally.

Too bad there are too many spammers in the world for this approach to actually work.

-Sean

Obligatory reference

[MainframeKiller]

Verizon to spammer:

Can you hear me now? Good!

Maybe why

[www.sorehands.com]

Maybe Ralsky surrendered when Verizon went to sieze Ralsky's assetts. A while back, Ralsky was quoted, in an interview, that he may move to China to avoid a judgment.

I forwarded a link to Verizon's attorney so that they may get an order to sieze the assets.

I don't know if he did get the injunction, but the attorney was appreciative for the link.

Re:One gone...

[fmaxwell]

"Ralsky said he doesn't send offers for pornography or any messages to people who indicate they don't want them."

I guess that the above statement "could" be legit - but I bet it's more bullshit than anything else

So some ten year old kid gets spam advertising "Fantasy Black: Hot ebony sluts who love gettin' their salad tossed" (taken from an actual ad) and, after being horrified by pictures of tongues in rectums, he can then click on a link to "opt-out." Or someone can get that at their job and have IS report to their boss that they have been for visiting the site -- when it was just their HTML e-mail client picking up the pictures from the web site. (Note: Don't lecture me about how e-mail clients should not do that. I agree, but Joe Average uses the e-mail client he's told to at work.)

There is never an appropriate time to send unsolicited commercial e-mail of any kind -- but that is especially true of porn spam. The sender has no idea whether the recipient is a 20-something guy, an elementary school kid, or an elderly nun. I'd like to see the spammers that send this kind of stuff to little kids be prosecuted just like they would be if they were handing out hardcore porn magazines to little kids in shopping malls.

Clear for who?

[Servo]

Clear win for Verizon, but thats all. It doesn't do any good for us in general. You think Verizon is going to pay that money back to the actual users affected?? hahahha

Not only that, but spammers are like crack dealers. The potential for huge profits are so high that as soon as one dealer gets arrested, another pops up in his place.

The only way to "win" is to create a secure infrastructure and/or methology that helps keep from spam happening in the first place.