FTC Sues Six in Spam E-Mail Round-Up

TamMan2000 writes "This story over at Yahoo makes it look like the federal government is going after some spammers with gusto... Although they seem to be busting them for fraud via spam rather than just the fact that they spam, it is still good to see them going after them. Also interesting, it looks like one of the things they are nailing them for is the fraudulent 'remove me from your mailing list' that actually brings more spam."

Comments

Good

[phreaknb]

I am glad to see that the federal government is addressing spam. Now if they could make it illegal, that would be better.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Litigation will solve nothing. Someone else will just come up with their own brand of partially de-fatted meat fatty tissue product, and we'll be right back where we started.

Re:Good

[Dragon213]

It could never be made illegal...simply because it's a form of unwanted advertising. Ever take a trip on the highway and seen all the billboards? I don't like the way that the billboards cover up the country side. I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point?

Re:Good

[chimpo13]

And to comment what zillions are thinking, billboards don't cost me money. Spam does. But I like the idea of paying money everytime I see a billboard.

Re:Good

[AKnightCowboy]

I almost don't need spam anymore. I can get my penis pills and magical diet pills (Trim Spa, Body Solutions) from the radio and Howard Stern's commercials these days. Now all they need is an ad with a guy speaking Chinese and giving a 1-800-555-1234 number as their contact address for more information and I could get rid of my e-mail address completely. Why isn't the government going against ALL fraud? Are you telling me penis pills actually work? Trim Spa magically makes you lose 100lbs while still being a fat ass eating whatever you want? Come on, where are the truth in advertising laws for not only spam, but radio these days??

Re:Good

[Ponty]

There are no billboards in Alaska.

And that's just not much of a point. Billboards are unsightly, but they're passive. You don't have to take specific action to avoid dealing with them. You don't have to delete them, and they don't take up any of your resources (unless they start making roads windier to allow for more billboard space.)

Re:Good

[dacarr]

If they made it illegal, what good would it do for the id10ts in Nigeria, or South America? Remember, US law has no precedence in either of those locations.

Re:Good

[coryboehne]

I think I speak for us all when I say "Yay!". That's it, nothing more insightful,interesting,or funny, just that and nothing more....

Re:Good

[Anonvmous Coward]

"It could never be made illegal...simply because it's a form of unwanted advertising. Ever take a trip on the highway and seen all the billboards? I don't like the way that the billboards cover up the country side. I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point?"

No, I don't see your point. As a matter of fact, I think your metaphor is heavily flawed. As posted elsewhere in this thread, "billboards are passive and don't cost you resources to see."

As a matter of fact, Fax machine ads are more akin to e-mail SPAM than billboards. They've been outlawed too. Why? It costs people ink.

Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to make laws against unsolicited mail as they did for fax machines. The main reason being that it's a lot harder to prove that any significant amount of computer resources were used. It's easy to prove that somebody cost you a sheet of paper, you can even provide a mathematically sound cost for that resource. But that's a lot harder to do with digital bits. You don't pay for bandwidth, the electricity cost is negligable, and your e-mail address could have been acquired anywhere.

Worse yet, when somebody faxes you, you have an item on your phone bill that indicates where it came from. It's a lot harder to spoof a phone number than it is an e-mail address. (Isn't it irritating how fundamentally flawed the current e-mail system is today?)

What's my point? It's simple: The reason that law hasn't been passed is that nobody has a clear idea how it can be fairly enforced. It's too easy to send e-mail that's virtually untrackable. Even if they're tracked down, it's hard to enforce, especially if it's done overseas. And, it's relatively easy to block. The ones that don't get blocked... well pooey, it cost you a few seconds to delete.

I don't think the Gov't is going to get kicked into gear to deal with the SPAM until a corporate entity with thousands of comptuters claims it lost millions of dollars dealing with SPAM.

Re:Good

[jokerghost]

That's not true, and even your example proves it. There was a Highway Beautification act passed a long while back that made billboards along highways illegal. It ended up getting repealed. So- someone wanted those bilboards- they were far from "unwanted" advertising.

-jokerghost

Re:Good

[trotski]

No I don't see your point.

You should notice that while billboards must adhere to certain guidlines such as obsenity guidlines to be legal, there is no regulation on spam.

I mean, most of the spam people get are a) scams, b) illigal, and/or c) pornographic. Now just try to post a pornographic billboard... won't happen.

Re:Good

[its_all_about_the_bl]

You're saying that either to justify the action of spamming... or you are a true ignoramus who got modded up by some stupid people. I pay for my e-mail account, nobody has the right to spam me. As a citizen I do pay tax thus I am entitled use the highway and see the billboards, but nobody is allowed to put a billboard on my garden without my permission.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

does truth in advertising still apply for items you cannot reasonably expect to be real?

ie its your own gullible fault if you expect the diet pills to work?

i feel no pain for people that fall victim for those types of things.

Re:Good

[rodgerd]

No force of US law in South America? Now *there* speaks someone majestically unaware of history.

It's only a matter of time before Venezuala joins the Axis of Evil if it keeps seeing off US backed coup attempts...

Re:Good

[offpath3]

No billboards in Hawaii either. On the argument that natural beauty _is_ Hawaii's main resource. Top industry is tourism after all.

Re:Good

[Dragon213]

To answer some of the replies to this post:

• Yes, I am aware that some municipalities do have laws regulating the use of large, corporate-sponsored ads, and they are limited in scope as to not be illegal, poronographic, or scams.
• They are not a passive form of advertising, you have to think about ignoring them, they don't just go away on their own....about equivilent to deleting a spam email IMO.
• As for not costing you anything, someone has to pay to put up and maintain those huge hunks of worthless metal, and the cost of advertising is passed on to who? That's right...you and me in the form of higher prices on consumer goods...or more ads on a radio station, or any number of other ways.
• That's not true, and even your example proves it. There was a Highway Beautification act passed a long while back that made billboards along highways illegal. It ended up getting repealed. So- someone wanted those bilboards- they were far from "unwanted" advertising.
  Who do you think wanted those billboards?!? The people with advertising on them.....not the average consumer.....
• And my personal favorite:
  You're saying that either to justify the action of spamming... or you are a true ignoramus who got modded up by some stupid people. I pay for my e-mail account, nobody has the right to spam me. As a citizen I do pay tax thus I am entitled use the highway and see the billboards, but nobody is allowed to put a billboard on my garden without my permission.
  So you're saying that you pay taxes to see advertisements made by large companies while your driving along a highway that your taxes also pay for? And you forget the governmental principle of Imminent Domain. If the government wanted you to have a billboard in your garden, then they will put one there and there's nothing that you can do about it.

I'll grant that my metaphor might be slightly flawed, but there are plenty of other examples of unsolicated advertising that gets crammed down your throat everyday. Junk mail through the postal service, commercials during a television program, ads on the radio, telemarketers, even the previews when you go to a theater (or rent/buy) a movie that you paid to get into! Spam isn't just an email phenomonon, it's just an unregulated form of unsolicated mass advertisment.
That's the true cause of the uproar surrounding spam...not that it clutters our inboxes, or that it takes up network bandwith, it's the fact that there is no regulation stating that you can't send advertisements of X, Y, or Z types across the internet. When you get down to just the facts, I'm sure that there wouldn't be half as many complaints with spam if it wasn't:

1. Poronographic
2. Illegal
3. Scams
4. Other types of stupid advertising
   

If there was some way to keep all the poronography, illegal, and/or scams out of your email inbox, but keep the other advertising that meets the same guidelines as, say, television ads.....99% of people would sign up for that program.
Don't kid yourselves into believing that the Internet and email services shouldn't deliver advertisment emails.........it'll never happen.

Re:Good

[Pig Hogger]

And that's just not much of a point. Billboards are unsightly, but they're passive. You don't have to take specific action to avoid dealing with them.

But, unlike spam, you don't have to pay out of your pocket to see (or to ignore) a billboard.

If people were forced to pay for billboards, whether they want to look at them or not, they'd be outlawed in less than 34 nanoseconds flat.

Re:Good

[1u3hr]

It's a lot harder to spoof a phone number than it is an e-mail address.

However, if someone is actually trying to sell you something, they have to give a way to contact them -- a website, a physical address, a fax number. A little investigation could use this to make a solid chain of evidence. It's just law enforcement can't be bothered; indidually each spam is below their threshold. (Except if they're selling something highly illegal, like drugs or kiddie porn.)

Re:Good

[its_all_about_the_bl]

Well.... since you said: I don't like the way that the billboards cover up the country side. I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point? "Delve not into the affairs of Dragons, for thou art small and crunchy"

I can put up with billboards, but I can't put up with spam. So, to prove that you're then make your e-mail address available on the web and see how you react to having ton of spam. By the way, is equivilent a new word in Oxford dictionary, oh Mr. Dragon?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Why arn't the Stones on the cover of a rolling spam? aarf.

Re:Good

[Killall -9 Bash]

dear god. another aritificial intelligence experiment with access to a spell-checker has learned hypertext transfer. we are doomed.

Re:Good

[Isofarro]

I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point?

No. The comparison only makes sense when the billboards are placed on the road directly in front of you, and you have to stop your can, get out, move the billboard to the side, get back in your car to continue driving only to repeat the exercise minutes later. You can swop you car for a bulldozer, which comes with its own road-furniture remover -- but then you lose the convenience of the car, especially when parallel parking.

Since with spam, you have to wade through it and do something, otherwise you'll have an unusable inbox. The bull-dozer option is filtering

Re:Good

[Isofarro]

Spam isn't just an email phenomonon, it's just an unregulated form of unsolicated mass advertisment.

No. The presence of an inbox does _not_ give you the right to populate it with your garbage. You are basically saying that you are allowed to park your car in my garage because garages are for cars. No its my garage, and I say who can park there -- not you.

Which part of the concept of private property eludes your comprehension?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't pay for bandwidth

Yes you do. Many non-home-user-folks aren't on flat rate lines. I pay per MB in both directions, so spam DOES cost me money.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

It could never be made illegal...simply because it's a form of unwanted advertising. Ever take a trip on the highway and seen all the billboards? I don't like the way that the billboards cover up the country side. I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point?

Why couldn't it be made illegal? People do not like murder, so murder is illegal. People do not like theft, so theft is illegal. People do not like spam, so... You get the picture.

Spam causes massive irritation to large parts of the population. Making it illegal is a question of political will, not because ethics or constitution somehow stop us from doing it. The political will is missing because the current generation of politicians do not suffer much from the problem - as soon as they start doing so they will move to stop it.

I'd vote for a guy who made spam illegal...

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't "theft of service" or "unauthorized access to a computer system" enough?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

So, when was the last time someone put a viagra billboard up in YOUR garden?

Nobody tries to outlow advertising on your own server (e.g. webserver). The problem is when you put your ads on somebody elses server (like with a mailserver).

Re:Good

[delong]

It could never be made illegal...simply because it's a form of unwanted advertising. Ever take a trip on the highway and seen all the billboards? I don't like the way that the billboards cover up the country side. I think that billboards are a physical equivilent of email spam......see my point?

Billboards are on private property in a public space. Billboard advertising is a 3rd party effect. Spamming an email address, which is strictly a private communication channel, is a direct effect. It's the difference between overhearing an ad playing on your neighbors' radio on his property, and someone stuffing flyers under your door. Someone stuffing flyers under your door is violating your privacy and property rights.

Derek

Re:Good

[Sir Tristam]

Hey, take it easy on him. He probably makes his living out of sending spam, and he's got to try to justify it to us if he's ever going to be able to justify it to himself. Just don't remind him that he's a thief, and he's raising the costs at our ISPs for everybody. If 36% of the email traffic is now spam, doesn't that mean that probably about 10% of our provier's bill is due to spam?

So, if a spammer wants somebody to respect them more, do they actually lie and say that they're a lawyer for the MPAA?

Chris Beckenbach

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

How stupid are you?

They are not a passive form of advertising, you have to think about ignoring them

Yes, they ARE a passive form of advertising, because they don't cost you money

someone has to pay to put up and maintain those huge hunks of worthless metal

Yes, but that someone isn't me.

the cost of advertising is passed on to who? That's right...you and me in the form of higher prices

Ahem, BULLSHIT. If you're that set against billboards, then simply don't buy the products advertised that way, and you won't be paying for them. With spam, you don't have that option.

I pay for my e-mail account, nobody has the right to spam me.

Exactly right. Just like nobody has the right to make harrassing phone calls.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

"And you forget the governmental principle of Imminent Domain. If the government wanted you to have a billboard in your garden, then they will put one there and there's nothing that you can do about it."

Man, do you even have a clue as to the concept that you're talking about? Not only did you give it the wrong name (hint: it's not 'imminent' domain, whatever that is), but the government has to pay you fair market price for your land, and kick you off of it. If the government wants to put a billboard on your land, you will get paid for it, and you can fight it in the courts by showing that you are not being properly compensated or that the seizure is not necessary.

Re:Good

[Dragon213]

And the presence of my normal mail box does not give people the right to populate it with garbage either.....but it still happens. I pay for my house, I pay taxes for the US Postal Service, and I pay for stamps for the mail I want to send.......care to tell me how this is any diffrent than spam emails? It's junk, I throw it away without reading it, and it clutters up my mailbox. And my mailbox is on private property (yes, I'm still paying the mortgage, but it is my house)

And as to the comment above mine, I don't make a living by sending spam...I'm a computer technician with the Military Department of my state. I do have filters setup on all my routers and gateways to block email from most outside sources, but spam still gets through.......

Re:Good

[mbogosian]

It could never be made illegal...simply because it's a form of unwanted advertising.

This is somewhat correct, with the very real exception that SPAM results directly in the diminishing of the receiver's tangible monetary resources (in the form of bandwidth, disk space, etc.), similar to junk faxes (which are illegal).

One might argue that a shocking or distracting billboard does the same by causing automobile accidents, but there's no law against exposing bad drivers (though there probably should be a law against licensing them in the first place, but that's another story altogether).

However, I do applaud the government for taking this tactic. Practically speaking, most SPAM comes from a few sources. Demographically, they are mostly porn and fraud. If we eliminated the fraudulent SPAM, we'd be getting rid of a ton of it. One might suggest that sending adult advertisements to a child's e-mail address is not legal (as is selling a Penthouse to someone under 18 in some states), but that is a different battle.

Go FTC

[Telastyn]

In other news the FTC reached a settlement with Miss Cleo (the companies that run her stuff rather) for decieving customers and generally being assholes.

Re:Go FTC

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite part is the last sentence:

During a deposition in June, Harris [aka Miss Cleo] repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, refusing to discuss a birth certificate that shows she was born in Los Angeles to American parents.

Re:Go FTC

[panaceaa]

Beales said that during three years of operation [Miss Cleo's Psychic Hotline] charged people about $1 billion and collected half of it. The amount involved eclipses the record $215 million that Citigroup Inc. agreed to repay customers in September to settle deceptive lending charges involving mortgages and credit insurance."

$1 billion gotten illegitimately?? Holy crap that's a lot of money. And no one is going to jail!!!

Re:Go FTC

[fmaxwell]

$1 billion gotten illegitimately?? Holy crap that's a lot of money. And no one is going to jail!!!

No. They fall under the current administration's protective "big business" umbrella. If you or I stole a Sony Walkman from Circuit City, we'd probably end up in jail, but if a business tries to bilk people out of $1 billion, they get to keep half of it. Just look at the wrist-slap that the Bush administration gave Microsoft for monopolistic practices that destroyed competitors and cost consumers billions of dollars. Until we have a "regime change", this kind of thing is bound to continue.

Re:Its about time....

[Meowharishi]

99% of the spam I get is from Asia. So my reaction to this is: So what?

Finally.

[tevenson]

It's about time, I reckon. If get one more:
"FREE VIAGRA SHIPPED FROM MEXICO"
or
"Re: You want to have HOT ANAL sex!!!!"
email I may drop kick my computer across the room.

What scares me is the people who don't mind this.

Re:Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Install the latest Mozilla (nightly build) and spam will become a non-issue...

Re:Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or continue having spam be a non-issue on your Macintosh.

Re:Finally.

[Flyskippy1]

As humans, we have an amazing ability to adapt.
We find ourselves able to zone out and ignore almost anything after awhile. I'm sure that every /.er has grown acustomed to Spam as a fact of Internet Life.

It's what we trade to have freedom. Of course, the Spammers have freedom too.

Re:Finally.

[commodoresloat]

What's worse is that people not only put up with it; there are some who will defend it as a necessary annoyance in a free market.

Re:Finally.

[Jucius Maximus]

"We find ourselves able to zone out and ignore almost anything after awhile. I'm sure that every /.er has grown acustomed to Spam as a fact of Internet Life."

I think a better strategy here is to manage your e-mail addresses properly from the beginning. I get 2-3 spams per YEAR at my main, real e-mail address. (And it's always the same spam too... something about skin blemish removal.)

When you properly use sneakemail, spamcop, an auxiluary spam e-mail account (the one you see attached to this post), proper spamproofing, and aliasing on your own domain name, and you do this all from the very beginning, you can prevent nearly 100% of spam, so no filters are needed.

Re:Finally.

[silvwolf]

My boss doesn't only not mind it, she enjoys some of the spam she gets. She reads through each and every one looking for something interesting to buy... Wouldn't surprise me if she read the "HOT ANAL sex" emails too.

She was on vacation in July and I had to read her email looking for things that people wanted done. I deleted all the junk, and she got kinda upset about it when she got back.

Don't think she's ever bought anything due to a piece of spam... yet.

Re:Finally.

[funkdancer]

I thought of that a bit too late, and I'd still like to keep my main address because I like it so much.

So I signed up with http://bluebottle.com/ , an excellent [pay] service for filtering mail. Whenever a non-approved sender gets on the line, the service sends an email back to them that they have to reply to in order to get "approved". Once approved they come straight into my inbox. This can be coupled with block and approved lists you can set up a priori.

I do find myself spending some time to review the "pending approval" list for automated mails that I want to get through, but the main thing is that I don't get any more spams in my inbox.

To stem the tide a bit I'm using my hotmail address exclusively now when signing up for anything new. That one's got from 50 to 100 "bulk emails" at any one time; I guess a major reason might be that I've registered a few domains with that as the technical contact email.

Hate them spammers....

Re:Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, yes, the only way one can enjoy spamless email (which is disturbing when you are looking for 2-3 important messages in a list of 100 crap messages, because by the time you're done you are too exhausted to actually read the good ones), is to sign up to the new "Miscrosoft-Net-Messaging service / we care for you"TM, which is the new innovative serivce that allows "distribution" of "electronic" "content" and in which everybody is known and his/her account can be deleted by "authorised personel" in the case of "improper behaviour".

Give up a freedom to gain another freedom?
I think that's lame.

I see that the problem is simply found in SMPT protocol where SMPT servers *redirect* several copies of a message to other SMPT servers. Can they just turn off this "feature"?

It has nothing to do with adaptivity of human species, but rather with a malused protocol flaw.

Get them any way you can.

[trentfoley]

Although they seem to be busting them for fraud via spam rather than just the fact that they spam, it is still good to see them going after them.

Remember, Capone was busted for tax evasion -- not for his worst crimes. Get 'em any way you can.

Re:Get them any way you can.

[WatertonMan]

The Syphilis they gave him was going a bit far though, wasn't it?

Re:Get them any way you can.

[wakinyan7]

They are committing fraud by providing false identities (in email headers); while I am glad that the FTC is finally doing something... I must also say it is about time.

Re:Get them any way you can.

[Pig Hogger]

Although they seem to be busting them for fraud via spam rather than just the fact that they spam, it is still good to see them going after them.

The Syphilis they gave him was going a bit far though, wasn't it?

There was no CIA during Al Capone's time.

Re:Get them any way you can.

[Teknogeek]

That's what they WANT you to think!

All that will happen is...

[Malcolm MacArthur]

... the spammers will move abroad, to countries where it is not illegal.

How much would it cost to extradite Koreans and Chinese for spamming - thousands of them a year??

Re:All that will happen is...

[Anonymous Coward]

George Dubya doesn't believe in extradition. He has another (much cheaper) method that I'm sure he would use if he could get away with it. Any foreigner that spams an American citizen is declared a terrorist and then the US Air Force bombs that country.

Re:All that will happen is...

[Anonymous Coward]

they should just kill these people.

Re:All that will happen is...

[ctr2sprt]

Of course, if Korea and China can't control their problems, the spammers just won't get extradited, period. China is working very hard to regulate its Internet access, so it clearly has the ability to filter email easily; the fact that it's not doing so suggests it might deliberate.

I don't know what possible benefit China would get from this; perhaps they hope to use spam as an excuse to regulate the Internet even more. "Spam here is terrible, we have to scan all emails to stop it."

Re:All that will happen is...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a problem for me, most of their IPs are already on my block list. ;)

Re:All that will happen is...

[Hamstaus]

... the spammers will move abroad, to countries where it is not illegal.

Give me a break... are you saying that it's absolutely worthless to pursue these people and have them shut down? Are you kidding? This is great news. If you were an American citizen that got a cease-and-desist order from the FTC, would you say to your wife/kids/boss/dentist/dog "Well, that's it, I'm gonna move to China. Life is better there."

I doubt it. Some of the operations might have resources to re-locate there, but most spamming operations are small, run out of Joe Six-pack's house. Moving servers to foreign countries might work in the short term, but it's still a huge hassle and no guarantee, since you still operate out of the States/Canada/wherever.

Go FTC!

Re:All that will happen is...

[mickwd]

"... the spammers will move abroad, to countries where it is not illegal."

This seems to suggest that you think the people who actually send most of the spam are from the US.

"How much would it cost to extradite Koreans and Chinese for spamming - thousands of them a year??"

So why are you now blaming non-US-ians ?

Isn't one of the main problems with spam that it uses up everyone's time and resources. So if much of the spam is sent from the US, via Korean/Chinese/whatever open relays, don't the Koreans/Chinese/whatever sys admins have a valid point that their time and resources are being used up by US-ians, too ?

Yeah, they should do more to fix the problem. But if they write/e-mailed you in Korean/Chinese/whatever, how would you respond ? But many people expect them to respond to e-mails written in English.

You're just lumping Koreans/Chinese/whatever all together as one big lump of people. Why shouldn't the Koreans/Chinese/whatever do the same with US-ians, and figure that if US-ians are abusing their computer systems, let US-ians suffer because of it, in the hope that eventually the US will do something to stop the problem AT ITS SOURCE.

Re:All that will happen is...

[Malcolm MacArthur]

No, I was just making the point that these scammers will work from jurisdictions which are not as heavily regulated (or where there are no anti-spam laws at all) rather than from the US.

Perhaps one solution would be for some nice people who can write Chinese and Korean providing some web sites where you provide the details, paste in the e-mail, and it sends a form letter in Chinese/Korean, pointing out the problem, to the person involved. This would be quite a nice tool for one of the anti-spam sites to implement...

Re:All that will happen is...

[djupedal]

Spam is not legal in Korea.

Re:All that will happen is...

[w42w42]

I think China probably views Spam as a means to help their economy. How much spam do you get that ultimately asks for money? Pretty much all of it.

I don't remember ever getting a piece that questioned or targeted the Chinese Government.

Re:All that will happen is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just post "I am a nitwit"? Much less typing.

Re:All that will happen is...

[The Turd Report]

Some spammers *have* moved there. No, they haven't physically moved to China, but they have moved their operations there. This causes a problem for those who are trying to link a spam back to a US citizen. If the IPs and networks are all registered in China, how do you track it (easily) to Joe Spammer in Florida?

Re:All that will happen is...

[Dinjay]

I don't think that another conspiracy theory offers the best explanation. IMHO I think China just hasn't caught up with internet technology.

If more spam gets routed through China, then more and more of their network resouces will be consumed while more and more western sites block their traffic, so China will also eventually have to act to stop the problem.

Re:All that will happen is...

[El]

Wouldn't it be easier to simply filter all email from China and Korea? I know __I__ don't normally correspond with people in those countries...

Re:All that will happen is...

[WalterSobchak]

Unfortunately I do not have the link to the article here, but China's Internet Access policy actually promotes spam. To be more precise, some ISPs leave their mail relays open simply because they would like to offer chinese internet users a way to send relatively untraceable eMails. I did not have the impression, the quoted ISP was using this as an excuse.
And as pointed out in another reply, I receive very little chinese spam from chinese servers, most of the spam I get looks like the guys at the top of the foodchain sit in some western-industrialized country.

So I really welcome the FTC tactic. This is not like getting Capone for tax evasion. Wanting these scumbags for spamming is like wanting Al Capone for a firearms violation, when he also commited murder. Oh, don't get me wrong...
#wildrage on
DIE, SPAMMER, DIE!
#wildrage off
Those who just want to sell me perfectly legitimate pr0n or whatever shold also be sued. I get pr0n free elsewhere ;)

Alex

Re:All that will happen is...

[fermion]

This is so silly. It is like when MS threatened to leave the US for Canada if it fines in the antitrust suite were too high. I mean give me a break, MS doesn't even like to pay the meager US taxes. Did anyone really think they would be willing to pay Canadian taxes?

That is not to say that companies would not contract with off shore spammers, but nothing is stopping them from doing that now, and it appears most don't,

Re:All that will happen is...

[Bios_Hakr]

The answer to that problem is fairly simple: Block the networks sold to Chinese and Korean ISPs. It may seem harsh, but if the governments of those countries won't turn over suspected criminals, it may be the only choice. Kinda like a "Digital Embargo".

You crapflood my networks, and I'll ask you nicely to disable the crapflooders. You refuse, and I'll just take care of it myself.

Re:All that will happen is...

[Jucius Maximus]

"How much would it cost to extradite Koreans and Chinese for spamming - thousands of them a year??"

This is when big IPSs start blocking China, Korea, etc by default, so if those countries want to e-mail North American networks easily, they would have to keep a handle on their own spammers.

It's much easier and more cost effective to implement a technical situation than it is to implement a diplomatic/legal one.

Re:All that will happen is...

[kesuki]

Of course, if china makes spamming illegal, you end up in a slave labor camp, err JAIL making radios 14 hours a day. yeah, Let the spammers move over to countries that might decide they make good slave labor someday. Spam that seems to come from china, usually isn't from china, it's from open relays. The spammers are pulling the same stunts that any con-artist would, by trying to stay two setps ahead of law enforcments attempts to track them down. Do you see con-artists moving over to china to practice thier trade? no, you don't. China is sure to have some spammers in their midsts once technology has pervaded thier society, but at this point in time, america is the heartland of spam, no matter what country it seems to be coming from. Because it's easier to stay a step ahead of the law here, due to the constitutional rights that are oh so slowly slipping away. then of course there are the spam kings who don't send scams, but rather work on the principal of sheer volume to make money spamming. someone, somewhere is going to accidently click that refferal link when thier kids are pulling on thier arm as they try to drag it to the trash, if you can send a few million of them every day, you're gonna make good money, without needing to run a scam.

Re:All that will happen is...

[fishnuts]

Look up the ip addresses of any websites advertised in the next several spams you get. Chances are, if it's about mortgages, russian mail-order brides, spamming-for-spam, collecting J U D I C I A L J U D G E M E N T S, etc, the website is likely hosted in china. So there are certainly people or companies in china involved in the hosting of these fraudulent or deceptive services being spamvertised to america.

And the american counterparts in these spam campaigns get their websites hosted there not because it's legal, but because it's nearly impossible for any US agency to track down the owner of the spamvertised web page (or email address) without significant cooperation from chinese officials. This practice alone is a flag that they're doing something that they KNOW is illegal or bordering on illegal.

Re:All that will happen is...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny because it's true.

Re:All that will happen is...

[michaelwb]

That's why we have to invade Iraq!

Because Saddam is supporting spamming!

- Michael

Re:All that will happen is...

[Sir Tristam]

Hmmmm... That sets one to thinking. What you basically seem to be stating is that the reason China allows (encourages?) open relays is that it presents more benefit than harm to them.

So to make them want to take care of open relays, those open relays would have to be preceived by them as causing more harm than good. How can this be done? By using the open relays to do something that they don't want. I would suspect that if those open relays started being used to send messages promoting Falun Dafa or other ideas that PRC doesn't want to addresses in China, we'd start seeing China pay more attention to the relays.

Of course, I'm just postulating this as a student of human responses. I'm not encouraging anybody to ever actually do this. This also doesn't address if there are any benefits that Chinese opposed to the PRC derive from the open relays, and if encouraging closing of the open relays would harm them.

Chris Beckenbach

Re:All that will happen is...

[BlackHwk98]

In China a man caught spamming got his hands cut off. Well isn't that nice?

spam

[phaderphox]

It isn't even good when it is from a can.

i want strong spam laws

[Anonymous Coward]

if you send me spam, i want to take to arbitration (leave the courts to the enron fuckbags):

1. the spammer
2. the company advertising

$500 for each email. if i get 15 spams from Joe Online Uni, i want 15 x $50 from the spammer *and* Joe Online Uni, $1500. that will stop them right damn quick. just yesterday /. ran a story about the economics of spam. success rates were ~ .05%. should be easy to clean up spam.

plus, we need to do away with the current email system. something like smtp with an ipsec or pgp like core, would be a start.

Re:i want strong spam laws

[El]

Punishing the company advertising is problematic. Let's say I want to put one of my competitor's out of business... what's to stop me from hiring someone to flood the internet with ads in their name?

Re:i want strong spam laws

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, i blanked. =)

put the more secure email mechanism in place first, then the fines.

Re:i want strong spam laws

[herbierobinson]

If that's happening to them, they should have no problem with filing a complaint against the spammer and/or suing them. It violates trade dress laws in most states and if nothing else, it would be trespass to chattels.

It's about time.

[Blimey85]

I know that there have been laws in place in various states/countries to help combat spam but until now, I hadn't heard of much in the way of enforcement. I think this will be very good in the long run in both stopping current spammers and possibly keeping others from ever getting into this activity.

I especially like them going after people who have the fake "click here to be removed" which really means "click here to get a thousand times more spam". It's nice to see that one of the better laws is finally getting enforced. I always laugh when I hear about some of the crazy laws we have and how many we have that never get enforced.

For example, in South Dakota it is legal to shoot Native Americans under certain conditions. There are a couple laws regarding this. One law states that if there are 5 Native Americans (the law uses the term Indian but I will refrain from that), on your property, you may shoot them. Another one that may be only applicable to the town of Spearfish is that if there are three Native Americans walking together, you may declare them a war party and shoot them. Another law says they have to be crossing a bridge to be a war party and shootable.

So many crazy laws in this country. But back to the point, the anti-spam is a good law, in my opinion and it's nice they are finally going to enforce it.

Re:It's about time.

[jpt.d]

Stupid laws - you try and do it, you WILL be charged with murder. Then those laws will be brought out in the open (and assumingly repealed)

Re:It's about time.

[Dragon213]

And don't forget Oklahoma's up-until-recently Native American law:
It was fully legal to shoot a Native American (again, the wording of the law changed for the reasons stated above) for a covered wagon....but what qualifies as a covered wagon? :D

Re:It's about time.

[WeaponOfChoice]

There's a funny old Irish law that still holds in one of the counties making it legal for an Irishman to kill a Scotsman provided the Scot is wearing a kilt at the time...

My favourite is one from Aus (Newcastle) where beating a rug on the front lawn of your house is punishable by public flogging. I find the fact it's still [technically] law amusing but the thing that gets me chuckling is that there was a time when people beating rugs on their front lawns was such a problem they had to pass that law to make them stop... funny world.

Now if you gave a spammer 1 lash for every spam you'd soon have, well, less spammers I guess...
(Mr Spammer sir, I'd like you to meet my good friend here - the Lash'o'matic, which will be administering the first million of your 250 million lashes...)

Re:It's about time.

[aridhol]

I find the fact it's still [technically] law amusing but the thing that gets me chuckling is that there was a time when people beating rugs on their front lawns was such a problem they had to pass that law to make them stop... funny world.

Well, if they weren't using cats to do it, it wouldn't be a problem.

(If you don't get it, watch some Monty Python).

Re:It's about time.

[Anonymous Coward]

In anchorage, it's illegal for two moose to have sex in the street. What I want to know is, who do they arrest?

Re:It's about time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, in the south, it was legal to shoot a nigger until about 30 years ago... heh those whacky laws.

Re:It's about time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since one moose can't have sex by itself - no thumb, so no grip - that must mean that moose can only have 3-ways or better. Right? So you don't arrest them - you bring them a designated party moose!

Re:It's about time.

[Black Copter Control]

Another one that may be only applicable to the town of Spearfish is that if there are three Native Americans walking together, you may declare them a war party and shoot them.

Great. So if you're a native in The Dakotas, don't start a spam company, or someone is likely to take advantage of wierd statutes. For the rest of us, however, I don't think that this is much of an issue. (and I'm not willing to shoot someone just for sending me some spam)
______

In the meantime, I think that it's probably about time to start UDP'ing large chunks of the Asia Pacific netblocks. Those guys have shitloads of Spamvertized sites, and they're not going to do anything about it until it starts costing them traffic.

Sending these spam-friendly ISPs complaints doesn't do any good. They just let the email pile up until their mailboxes fill up and start bouncing.

It's not going to do us any good to wait for our local governments to come to an agreement with China about proescuting something that isn't even a crime over here. It's time for us the users of the internet to use our own marketing clout and technical expertise to lock down people who put hundreds of spams into our mailboxes and force us to spend time and cycles wading through this garbage.

When these foreign ISPs start to realize that letting spammers onto their net makes their IPs useless, then they'll start getting pro-active about the problem.

Re:It's about time.

[meringuoid]

There's a funny old Irish law that still holds in one of the counties making it legal for an Irishman to kill a Scotsman provided the Scot is wearing a kilt at the time...

I hear there's an old law in Hereford making it legal to shoot a Welshman provided he's inside the city walls on a Sunday. Am I the only one that thinks the SAS could take advantage of this for training purposes?

Re:It's about time.

[Jucius Maximus]

"For example, in South Dakota it is legal to shoot Native Americans under certain conditions."

Also, in Chester (county Chechire) England, it is still legal to shoot, with a crossbow, any Welsh person, as long as you do it inside the city walls and after 11 PM.

Re:It's about time.

[Michael Woodhams]

Dr Skeptic is wondering how you know all this.

Have you seen the statutes yourself, and confirmed they are still current?

Have you personally spoken to a lawyer who has confirmed the statements?

Have you simply repeated these statements as true, after seeing them made by someone of unknown trustworthiness and knowledge?

Re:It's about time.

[Anonymous Coward]

One law states that if there are 5 Native Americans (the law uses the term Indian but I will refrain from that), ...

You mean the First Immigrants?

Re:It's about time.

[Phroggy]

One law states that if there are 5 Native Americans (the law uses the term Indian but I will refrain from that), on your property...

If the law says Indians, you should say Indians - that word also applies to people from India.

Re:It's about time.

[mOdQuArK!]

So many crazy laws in this country.

I always wondered if it might be a good idea for laws to have constitutionally-required expirations, so that they have to be renewed by the legislature or they become no longer valid. That would take care of a lot of this leftover cruft, and might keep the legislature busy enough maintaining the existing laws to slow them down at coming up with new ways to screw over the general populace.

FTC E-Mail To Spammers

[Doomrat]

From: antispam@ftc.gov
To: evilspammer@somewhere.kr
Subject: !!!!NEW!!! SPAM BUST!!

Yes, YOU! We are busting you up big time for crimes against humanity. This is a free service to you from the FTC! A unique one time offer!

To be acquitted and removed from our list, please go to this web site and leave your home address.

Earn cash with your computer...

[Duderstadt]

Addresses left in chat rooms were certain to receive spam, they found. In one instance, an e-mail address posted in a chat room started to receive spam eight minutes after it was posted.

Eight minutes?! Damn, that's what those ads for 'make money fast over the internet' are all about. All you have to do is hang around chat rooms and sell email addresses to spammers.

Seriously, though, eight minutes? If it's a bot, I'm really impressed...

Re:Earn cash with your computer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the AOL chatroom 'Hot Anal Sex With
Young Teen Cheerleaders' wasn't a neutral place
for the test?

Re: FTC Sues Six in Spam E-Mail Round-Up

[Dunark]

Of course the federal government is going after spammers. The Direct Marketing Assoc. just recently changed their position on spam because people were so sick of it that the DMA members' "legitimate" ads weren't getting through. I think the DMA screwed themselves, though: By preventing legislation against sending spam, they forced the spam victims to invent better ways of avoiding it at the receiving end. Those methods are now doing a wonderful job of killing the DMA's crap.

What about

[larry2k]

What about somo spam fun:

http://thespamletters.com/

Hang 'em high

[MacAndrew]

It's not widely known, but the FTC does excellent consumer protection work.

I worked on a (for a court) regarding those TV ads that promised you could buy a Corvette at government auction for $10 or get a credit card regardless of your credit history. The FTC involvement was important because it took an incredible amout of work to nail the slimeoid who ran the schemes -- he just kept repackaging them. He finally ended up in jail, unusual for this sort of low-grade fraud, but a last resort after he scoffed at every other penalty.

Sound like a spammer?

My reaction?

[BWJones]

it looks like one of the things they are nailing them for is the fraudulent 'remove me from your mailing list' that actually brings more spam.

Yeeeaaahhh. Get those bastards and make 'em pay. This one in particular has caused an acquantance of mine (in her 90's) problems. She honestly and naively attempted to remove herself from many of these spammers and only ended up getting more and more frustrated before calling me to inform me that due to the porn spam she was getting, she was cancelling her email account unfortunately isolating her from an important communication medium to family members and friends scattered all over the country.

Re:My reaction?

[skeedlelee]

Make that two Yeeeaaahhh's!!!

Your friend could also probably switch her email account, but that's beside the point.

I will pretty much only ever click one of those things if I honestly remember signing up it, in which case it's rarely spam and usually from a company with a reputation to protect.

On the other hand I have a few messages that I get routinely that I haven't quite figured out how to filter out. The entertaining thing about one... a bunch of crappy boiler plate quasi content and one link... a link that sez 'remove me,' talk about an email harvester if I ever saw one. They're selling something but give you no way to respond (different email every time), they aren't even trying to appear legit.

This behavior makes it impossible for people like that spam-queen they had on WSJ the other day (yesterday?) to claim legitimacy. The 'Remove me' links don't work as a rule so claiming people can always opt out of their list is like saying you can avoid getting mugged by putting a big sign on your back, "please don't rob me, I'm carrying a lot of cash and now would be a bad time to lose it". If you're genuinely dealing with a well intentioned mugger it might help, but usually it only makes things worse.

uce@ftc.gov reminder...

[Anonymous Coward]

As the article points out, Uncle Sam wants your spam! Forward your unsolicited commercial email to uce@ftc.gov - it will go into a magic database that they can use as ammunition against spammers!

Re:uce@ftc.gov reminder...

[Mr. Sketch]

Could I just give them the email account and password of my 'spam' account that gets tons of spam each day? I don't get anything meaningful there so I wouldn't mind if they went through all the e-mails on that list. I actually haven't checked it in months, it might not be there anymore, but I thought hotmail never actually deleted accounts.

Re:uce@ftc.gov reminder...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla should be modified so spam filtered out by the new bayesian filter is automatically forwarded!

Re:uce@ftc.gov reminder...

[Anonymous Coward]

They thank you, but they don't need your password. They can get it themselves. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/14/144224 2&mode=thread&tid=103

Re:uce@ftc.gov reminder...

[bofkentucky]

perhaps a .forward would be useful, just make sure you don't get false positives in their, grandma might get pissed when she gets that summons.

Re:uce@ftc.gov reminder...

[flegged]

I have uce@ftc.gov in my .forward.

Re:uce@ftc.gov reminder...

[coyote-san]

I have a mail folder boringly labeled "send to ftc," and every 6 hours a cron job forwards the contents of the folder to the FTC.

This usually means that once a day I eyeball the contents of my "spam" folder to make sure there are no false positives, then move everything over to the other folder. Plus about a half-dozen messages that make it into my main mailbox.

But something I have not yet gotten a good answer for is what format to use when sending the spam to the FTC. I want to preserve the original headers (to help determine when open relays are being abused, headers forged, etc.), but that's surprisingly hard to do right. And do I strip out the spamassassin headers, or leave them in?

My current approach is to mime-encode the entire message (content-type: message/rfc822) and send it in a new envelope. I hope they know how to decode it, but Mozilla (annoyingly) doesn't. That makes it hard to verify your scripts before making them live.

'Remove me' is a *LIE*?

[Anonymous Coward]

People sending out spam lie? Shocking!

But what about Jack Booted Thugs(tm)?

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't be satisfied until we hear of Jack Booted Thugs(tm) kicking down some SPAMmer doors!

Re:But what about Jack Booted Thugs(tm)?

[NewtonsLaw]

I have to tell you that sometimes (like this weekend when I received neary 9,000 bounced spam messages after a spammer used various email address at the domain I adminster in the "from" field of their emailings) I feel like becoming a hitman for hire.

Let's see...

I'd put up a website where you could send me your most despised spam and a $5 donation.

Once any given spammer accounted for $25K worth of donations, I'd put on my steel-capped boots and go pay them a visit.

A little basic "attitude readjustment" (courtesy of the said boots and the odd length of lead pipe) would provide significant encouragement for them to mend their spamming ways.

Photos of the repentant spammer (or what's left of them) would then be posted on the website as a warning to other spammers who might consider bothering Net users with their crap.

Now is there anyone who'd use such a valuable Net-community service I wonder? :-)

Re:But what about Jack Booted Thugs(tm)?

[Ryokos_boytoy]

You'd be a rich man

Re:But what about Jack Booted Thugs(tm)?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you need? Let's make a deal.

Re:But what about Jack Booted Thugs(tm)?

[fishnuts]

Noble cause, bad execution.

I'd honestly love to see vigilante groups start doing this and have the government turn a blind eye to the activity, but judging spammers and sentencing them to physical punishment outside of a court of law wont sit well with "legitimate" law enforcement.

It's unfortunate that law enforcement has a monopoly on law enforcement.

Re:But what about Jack Booted Thugs(tm)?

[NewtonsLaw]

It's unfortunate that law enforcement has a monopoly on law enforcement

Hey, according to the FTC, spamming per se isn't against the law anyway.

We're not talking about competing with the police, we're talking about competing with Dr Phil -- a little analysis and a whole lot of attitude adjustment :-)

Is it anyone's fault if they have a little "accident" while you're chatting with them? :-)

Re:But what about Jack Booted Thugs(tm)?

[Anonymous Coward]

find a way to transfer my $5 anonymously and i will contribute heavily to your website.

Spamassassin is the bomb!

[doodleboy]

Install the latest Mozilla (nightly build) and spam will become a non-issue...

Well I don't know about windows users, but I've seen very little spam on my linux system since I installed spamassassin. Every month or so I go through my spam mailbox to make sure nothing got misfiled, and so far nothing has. Now all I see in my inbox is legitimate mail, and I am a happy camper.

Re:Spamassassin is the bomb!

[darien]

POPFile is a very nice Bayesian solution for Windows users (and everyone else).

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the people here seriously pro-spammer? Why would the parent be modded down?

conditions met

[octalgirl]

Wired recently had an article about the FTC and spam.

"The FTC can only legally pursue cases where there are clear instances of spam being used to perpetuate a scam or conduct fraudulent business activities.
"The test is: Does the spam make a representation, an offer of some sort of product or service? Is that representation false? And would an average consumer believe that the representation was true?" Huseman explained. "If those conditions are met, the FTC can act."

Just think, millions of spam messages get sent to uce@ ftc.gov (not easy to remember), yet only six people are on the job.

Re:conditions met

[ZoneGray]

Weird. So the fact that nobody believes those penis enlargement advertisements makes them legal?

I think, then, that what we have to do is reply to and purchse each and every one of them. When they don't work, we can get 'em busted. A deformed penis is a small price to pay for a spam-free mailbox. Especially for /. readers.

Re:conditions met

[Xerithane]

Weird. So the fact that nobody believes those penis enlargement advertisements makes them legal?


Yeah, no shit. I tried it. It works, but not like they say. I'm now a foot in diameter but still only 3" long.

Re:conditions met

[LostCluster]

As spammers are quick to point out, spamming isn't illegal. The FTC is not pursuing people for the act of sending spam, they can't because that's not a crime.

These guys are being brought up not for spamming, but because the offer they made in their spam is deceptive and illegal. It'd be just as illegal if they chose buy a billboard to deliver the same message.

Re:conditions met

[Anonymous Coward]

It works, but not like they say. I'm now a foot in diameter but still only 3" long.

You fool, didn't you read the instructions? They specifically warn you to not sleep on your stomach while you're on the pills!

A good thing?

[pongo000]

Do we really want Big Brother stepping in to regulate our network activities? As much as I believe spam is an abhorrent practice (I am a devotee of TMDA), I don't believe the government is acting in my best interest. How, exactly, do they determine what is spam and what is not? How soon will it be before the feds come knocking at your door after unleashing a flood of e-mails requesting your money back from an on-line vendor?

The bad thing about all this is that the government is making the rules up as it goes along. Anybody who believes this is A Good Thing is deluding themselves. Every time cases like these are prosecuted successfully, a little freedom is taken away from the governed, and a little more power is granted to the governors.

Re:A good thing?

[murphj]

How, exactly, do they determine what is spam and what is not?

I don't think they are going to act unless there is fraud. The laws proscribing fraud are pretty clear. I'm not sure which "freedom is taken away from the govered" - the freedom to cheat people?

Re:A good thing?

[redfiche]

They're going after fraud perpetrated over email, not SPAM(tm) per se. They already prosecute similar types of fraud (see numerous other posts), and seem to be doing a good job. I for one think this is somewhere for Big Brother to stick his nose. I see no slippery slope where soon the FTC will be "knocking at my door."

You seem a little paranoid.

Re:A good thing?

[caino59]

whoa easy there mr. conspiracy theory....

im pretty sure that any unsolicited and unwarranted mail is spam.

i didnt ask for it, so i dont want it. And if it's so amazing and life-changing that I need it, I'm sure I'll find it on one of the many news sites I read.

I think it would be pretty hard for them to throw you in jail or even fine you if you email a vendor regarding a warranty or RMA issue...

caino

Don't touch my .sig there!

Re:A good thing?

[EzInKy]

...they seem to be busting them for fraud via spam rather than just the fact that they spam...

They are busting them with old rules, not new ones.

Re:A good thing?

[coyote-san]

As others have pointed out, this content would be illegal no matter how they distribute it. You can't take a magic pill to grow larger breasts, a bigger dick and get a new credit card despite your horrible credit history.

But even setting that aside, I dare you to show me ANY precedence for your right to come into my house, raid my refrigerator, cook a meal on my stove, eat it on my plates, then leave the mess in the middle of my living room to poison my dog.

Yet that's exactly what spammers are doing (in a rhetorical sense) when they use my domain name to send out their crap, or abuse an open mail relay, or use poorly designed forms on some web site to send their messages to others. They're deliberately and willfully using my resources and good reputation to their own benefit, without my consent and without any renumeration to me.

Like you, I have very mixed feelings about government regulation of spam where the company has the balls to stand behind its own message. Let me blackball them myself. But I have no more qualms about the government cracking down on spammers who "borrow" my good name or resources than I do about the government cracking down on criminals who "borrow" my car, or "borrow" my credit card, etc.

Firewall em

[vandan]

Download my list of spammers, which is updated every day or so:
http://enthalpy.homelinux.org/spammers.txt
Then dump it in /etc/firewall/blacklisted_nets and run a bash script:

for I in `cat /etc/firewall/blacklisted_nets`
do
echo Blacklisting Spammer: $I/23
iptables -A INPUT -s $I/23 -j REJECT
done

It puts a drag on the spammer's system as they try to send mail to you for 5 days or so before their mail server finally gives up and decides your domain is not reachable.

Of course you need to have your own domain to do this, but with Linux and free Dyn-DNS services, this is not a problem. And it WORKS!

Re:Firewall em

[neafevoc]

That's pretty neat. I'm guessing this is for Linux's IPTables...

I was wondering if anyone out there using IPF (on *BSD) would know how to implement this blocking scheme. Any ideas?

Re:Firewall em

[GigsVT]

Be careful taking these kinds of lists from random people and dropping them in your firewall.

One list that was posted here on Slashdot about a year ago blacklisted several sites that I have noticed so far, including digitalblasphemy.com and avery.com (the people that make labels). A lot of these were /18 and /19 subnets that were in the blacklist. That is a pretty large chunk.

Since vandan is using only /23, assumedly it is more finegrained, but it's standard practice these days to hand out only 30 IPs per T1 customer unless they ask for more, that's /27, which means each /23 entry is banning 16 of these sized blocks.

I still use the list, so it wasn't too bad, but I'm considering pulling it back out of my ruleset now, or at least the larger blocks.

Re:Firewall em

[y2kill]

I think you want that to be $i/32. $i/23 contains more hosts than a /24 (class C). /32 is a single host.

--Dave

Re:Firewall em

[orkysoft]

You can always, if you decide /23 isn't finegrained enough for you, change the script to /27 or so.

Re:Firewall em

[Parsec]

Forgive my iptables/smtp interaction ignorance, but wouldn't we want to deny the packet instead of reject it? Better yet might be a rule or patch that allows the connection to come partially up before it disconnects, forcing the sending system into a timeout situation. Might not have a nice effect on those whose systems were compromised to send spam, but could cut down the success rate of the spammer.

Imagine a distributed set of these systems, with spam poison sites feeding those addresses to spammers.

Re:Firewall em

[GigsVT]

That won't work, because you wouldn't know which of the 16 /27s to ban out of the /23.

Re:Firewall em

[orkysoft]

Oh, okay. I thought they might actually have been specified.

I guess you should build your own spammers list, or use one of the public blacklists, although some of those presented problems in getting off of them later.

Re:Firewall em

[vandan]

Fair call.
We use the IP list here at work, and if an IP range causes us problems, I find about about it pretty fast and remove it from the list.
As for whether you can trust that I'm telling the truth - I'll leave that up to each person.
At least people can build their own list and use the above script anyway...

Re:Firewall em

[Anonymous Coward]

I've discovered a small and lightly documented trick with iptables, namely the 'MIRROR' action.

According to the documentation, this causes the TCP/IP connection to be 'mirrored' back to the originating host. I tried it on one open relay that seemed to have fired up a big spam run with a dictionary attack, and noticed the connection attempts drop off massively after only a couple minutes.

Re:Firewall em

[bgeer]

Not to accuse you of anything personally, I'm sure you mean well, but downloading and automatically executing commands on files from random people on slashdot is not such a hot idea. All someone would have to do in this instance is to put `echo + + > /etc/hosts.equiv` or `echo [key data] > /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts` into the blacklisted_nets file and your system is 0wned.

Re:Firewall em

[vandan]

Remain calm dude.
The link is simply a list of IP addresses.
The only code I suggested people run I put in plain text in my original post.
Geeeeeez...

Some good out of my forwards

[DeadSea]

You can forward your spam to uce@ftc.gov. Some spammer took a random address from one of my domains to use as a return address. I was suddenly getting hundreds of bounced spam per hour. I redirected that address to uce@ftc.gov. Hopefully they are using some of those bounces in this roundup.

Re:Some good out of my forwards

[bonewah]

Hell im gonna use uce@ftc.gov for all the software and websites that require you to give them an email address. - bonewah

Re:Some good out of my forwards

[NewtonsLaw]

Some spammer took a random address from one
of my domains to use as a return address. I was suddenly getting hundreds of bounced spam per hour

I had the same thing happen to me.

First of all I asked the site being promoted in the spam [one of the erotica.com group] to please stop forging addresses at my domain.

Nothing changed -- not even an acknowledgement.

So I started forwarding all the bounces to support@erotica.com and their domain contact address domadmin@aeroweb.com

Nothing changed.

Then I started also started forwarding the bounces to affiliates of erotica.com.

Nothing changed

Then I contacted the upstream provider and asked them to shut down the intermediary site (one of their clients) that was being directly referenced in the spam.

Nothing changed, not even an acknowledgement.

So their abuse address was added to the list of those receiving the bounces.

Over a period of three days, nearly 9,000 bounce messages were received and forwarded to the parties involved.

No doubt they were filtering these bounces -- but what else can you do in such a situation?

The spammers don't care that they're screwing up someone's email system by forging return addresses and the upstream provider (pnap.net) is obviously also a blackhat in league with the devil.

If people think it's annoying getting 30-60 spams a day, imagine what it's like getting 3,000 unwanted email bounces per day due to the sleazy activites of spammers!

Re:Some good out of my forwards

[herbierobinson]

I had some spammer start doing that to me and I filed a complaint with the local police department along with the contact info for their ISP. It stopped real fast.

That kind of forgery was very illegal. If you can connect it with the web site, you can probably sue them for a lot of money. Given that you had to handle the bounces manually, you can probably claim damages of a buck or two for each message and sue as well.

Re:Some good out of my forwards

[NewtonsLaw]

Given that you had to handle the bounces manually, you can probably claim damages of a buck or two for each message and sue as well

Oh no, they were too clever for that. I'm based in New Zealand so there's the thorny issue of lodging a cross-jurisdictional prosecution.

I've noticed that these people are carefully choosing to use non-US-based domains in which to forge their reply addresses. They're also obviously aware that it's just not economically viable to prosecute from outside the USA.

Now if there were just a few lawyers who were prepared to file such cases on a percentage basis, taking their cut from the court awarded damages, then I think they'd be awfully busy.

Unfortunately I also suspect that these spammers have a very cleverly devised financial structure such that their main assets and wealth are protected from any such action. Even if the courts awarded a damaged party any sizeable sum, the chances of them actually receiving a dollar would be very slim.

Re:Some good out of my forwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a word to Internal Affairs. There are a lot of cross jurisdictional agreements, and you may find that you have recourse via the Goverment. Remember Bomber from Channel Z getting done Internationally from the US?

Get the Govt onto it - having the US DOJ knocking on their door will make 'em think twice about doing that again.

Hanging themselves...

[person-0.9a]

From the Yahoo! story:
Internet users can forward spam for FTC investigation to uce@ftc.gov

How many spambots will harvest that address?
How excellent a way is that for spammers to hang themselves?

Re:Hanging themselves...

[Anonymous Coward]

spammers tend to filter out .gov and .mil...

Re:Hanging themselves...

[IBitOBear]

And to keep them from harvesting out the .gov and .mil addresses, everyone who can should set up an email alias that does nothing but forward to uce@ftc.gov and post it liberally on IRC, unused but spider-accessable web pages, and blogs.

Basically put up web pages that have a (graphical) "you better not send spam to these addresses" logo (so it isn't fraud itself 8-).

It seems like the easiest way for ISPs and government agencies to spot the spammers would be to have a suite of these no-real-use addresses and then publicize them on no-real-use fora 8-)

Alternative legislation

[grimsweep]

We may not be able to get agreement on legislation against spam, but there's other ways to nail some of the mass mailings.

How about a law against ALL CAPS in e-mail? At the very least, we'd get rid of the more annoying stuff. Plus, what member of the registered voting population would vote against this? It could even weed out the unsavory elements of IRC.

RedBetty: Hi, everyone!
zerokool772: WHTA R U WEARNG??/?
FTCBot: zerokool772, your use of the capslock key is unwarranted and without license. Cease and desist, or pay the consequences.
zerokool772: WTF DO U THNK U R?
*FTCBot has banned zerokool772 and has contacted the appropriate authorities.

...hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

Re:Alternative legislation

[bonewah]

"It could even weed out the unsavory elements of IRC" I didnt know there were and savory elements of IRC...

Re:Alternative legislation

[fermion]

I remember this problem from about 15 or 20 years ago. I had an old computer and either IT ONLY HAD CAPITAL LETTERs, as was the tradition at that time.

Every time I was on a BBS some yokel would feel the need to tell me to turn off my caps lock. I had to send at least one note a day telling people I was not stupid, I knew that all my letters were upper case, and it was the machine. All the while I was thinking how stupid can these people be not to know some computers only type in upper case. Not so important now, but I was amazed at how aggressive people used to get about this. Like they didn't have a life or something.

Re:Alternative legislation

[Anonymous Coward]

The name of the computer being? Jackass...

Re:Alternative legislation

[Anonymous Coward]

It all depends on your tastes, obviously if you like guys pretending to be female cat people, IRC has some savory bits. But then again, most people wouldn't find that particularly savory...

Re:Alternative legislation

[NewtonsLaw]

How about a law against ALL CAPS in e-mail?

Are you kidding?

What about all those PCs in Nigeria that appear to have had their caps-lock key glued down by law?

How will those poor people earn a living facilitating the transfer of ill-gotten gains across international borders if their emails don't get through?

Shame on you for oppressing the poor and disadvantaged. You must be part of the WTO eh? :-)

Re:Alternative legislation

[IsoRashi]

Act like a pest, die like the rest.

It's... M-P-F-C

[Anonymous Coward]

"...actually brings more spam"

Do you have anything without spam?

Well, there is the spam spam spam spam spam and eggs, which has only a little spam.

The problem is...

[Lordfly]

The only way the FTC can go after spam is for fraud and other things already illegal. It's not illegal simply to advertise via email (yet, anyway). They're doing the best they can with the rules that they're allowed to govern in.

At least they are one division of government that doesn't try to overstep its bounds :)

josh

Actually...

[EvilFrog]

Billboards actually have been outlawed. The only reason they're still around is because the ones that were already in place have been grandfathered.

Re:Actually...

[zaffir]

Since when? I see new ones going up every few months where i live. Have any links with info on this?

Re:Actually...

[Moonshadow]

It's a city-by-city thing, I'd guess.

I live in Scottdale, AZ. There is a city ordinance preventing billboards within city limits. It's nice, actually. However, once you stray into Phoenix or Tempe, they are all over.

I imagine the original poster lives in an area where they've been legislated away.

Re:Actually...

[EvilFrog]

I have some family in advertising, and that's what I recall being told.

I just looked it up, and apparently it's on a per-county basis. In some places they're illegal, some places they're not. Even so, apparently a lot of billboards are erected without any permits, and are actually illegal even in places where they haven't been explicitly outlawed.

Re:Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very interesting. I'll have to look into this further, and see if i can't get someone busted.

Re:Actually...

[werfele]

I think this might be a reference to the Highway Beautification Act. Obviously, the law did not have the intended result.

They are making it illegal

[yerricde]

Now if they could make [unsolicited bulk e-mail] illegal, that would be better.

They are making it illegal, by enforcing the laws against fraud with respect to the list of people who have opted out.

Re:They are making it illegal

[Blaine Hilton]

They should make it illegal, but they also are going to need to enforce it. Just because its law doesn't make much of a difference. They should be arrested/jailed/fined ect. The worst part about email is the opt-out system also provides spammers more "ammo" to go after non suspecting users.

THE PEOPLE HERE ARE FUCKING SPAMMER FUCKS!

[Anonymous Coward]

So of course anti-spam comments are smacked down.

On a related note,

[bobdotorg]

On a related note, Barbara Anthony, regional director for the FTC said, "In all fairness, it must be noted that my husband now has a permanently erect 47 inch penis, our mortgage rates are the lowest in decades, we earn $7,000 a week working at home, and we'll never buy a toner or ink cartridge ever again."

ISP Clause to Sue Spammers

[TheBillGates]

Here's what would stop a lot of spam. The standard ISP agreement says you can't spam, but it has no penalties other than killing your account. Their agreement should say that if you get caught sending spam you have to pay $1 per email address.

Sure, send out your spam if you want to 1 million people. That will be $1M please....

Re:ISP Clause to Sue Spammers

[Shamanin]

That would work fine if they were to spam alot of different people... the problem is they only seem to spam ME many times! ... that will be $1 please.

Wake up!

[dnoyeb]

OF course spam that comes from Korea and China originates in the US anyway. Those Asians just dont know how to lock their servers down, but they are certainly not getting money for it and if anything loosing due to the bandwidth. Imagine if your mail server all the sudden seemed to stop working for 30 minutes but was actually sending out 100,000s emails from America back too America. I'd be pissed.

Remember. I never visit Korean or Chinese websites, so its not them stealing my email address...

Re:Wake up!

[commodoresloat]

Remember. I never visit Korean or Chinese websites, so its not them stealing my email address...

Korean or Chinese spambots could visit your websites and get your email address that way.

Re:Wake up!

[scm]

OF course spam that comes from Korea and China originates in the US anyway.

I get spam in Korean. Does that mean that Americian companies are trying to sell me (an Americian) stuff by sending it in Korean?

Re:Wake up!

[dnoyeb]

Are you saying the majority of your spam is in korean? is even half?

Re:Wake up!

[dnoyeb]

They could...But do you think that is what is really gonig on?

Re:Wake up!

[obdulio]

Nor did I get advertising from Chinese or Korean companies....

Re:Wake up!

[jonadab]

Either that, or Chinese and Korean spambots are harvesting my address
from usenet summaries. Or both.

A spammer can easily forge extra Received: headers to make it seem
as if the message only passed through the originating server, but
it's much harder (impossible?) to do the reverse, and make it appear
as if the message originated someplace that it only passed through.
I get metric tonnes of spam that _originates_ in southeast Asia.
Most of it is written in character sets I can't read, which as far
as I'm concerned is a good thing, because that makes it easier to
tell apart from legitimate messages. I just wish it would all
specify the character set in the Content-type: header, so I could
filter _all_ the Chinese and Korean stuff into the spam folder.
As it stands, about half of the foreign spam I get declares the
charset, and the other half is harder to filter, because it either
doesn't declare or uses a language-ambiguous charset (e.g., UTF8).

I do also get spam written in English, some of which originates in
Asia and some of which doesn't. But the really overwhelming deluge
is the foreign stuff.

And while we're on the subject of the FTC going after fraud... I
sure wish they'd decide that forged headers are fraud and go after
the perpetrators who do that. Spam would be a whole lot easier to
filter if the data in the From field and/or Return-Path had to
contain the actual originating domain.

Re:Wake up!

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I guess that's why my Yahoo! mailbox fills up with spam written in asian character sets? While I agree that there is much spam relayed off their servers, a lot of it's being generated there too.

Re:Wake up!

[Stonehand]

At least until I started some /very/ aggressive filtering, in excess of 90% of the (upwards of 15/day... my e-mail address has been public for some 8.5 years straight) spam I got was in Korean, sent from Korean servers, advertising for Korean servers. Much of the rest was in Chinese, relayed from either Chinese or Taiwanese servers advertising Chinese or Taiwanese URLs. For what it's worth, I don't read either language. Oh, and there's also an Austrian porn magazine that kept sending me messages in German, and I've gotten the occasional Spanish spam from Argentina, Mexico or Spain.

I used to get /very/ little spam that's actually in English, and that's mostly Nigerian bank scams. Of course, now practically all the spam (most of it now bounces, so it's far less) that gets through to me is in English, since I do a lot of filtering aimed specifically at Korean and other non-English e-mail. I filter on Received: lines, Subjects:, From:, X-Mailer: ...

Re:Wake up!

[dnoyeb]

You are wrong. If the mail server is open all you have to do is point Outlook Express at it, and the mail server will be listed as the ORIGINATION point. You can fake your own address, but the server will typically put its true address on it.

Its easy to find a forged header. The IP addresses can not be forged but the names can be. So if the original servers name does not match its IP address, then its forged. I only consider email spam if this is the case. and I report it to the email server owner. Else I just go at the originator of the email.

Hmm reported at yahoo

[qurk]

Hmm Yahoo reporting about the government cracking down on spam. Isn't that like getting pulled over for a shorty brake light then admitting yes I kill the asshole, he deserved it, heres the gun I used.

Just seems a little strange considering Yahoo sells it's subscribers off to spammers after promising "Yahoo for life!" and offering a spam filter (ya right) :) Also for 2 years every email I sent to my friends had a little advertisement for Yahoo which could be considered spam then they decided to charge for the service they promised free.

Yahoo? My ass!!!!

shoulda been

[Elwood P Dowd]

FTC Sues Six in Spam Suit Soiree.

Re:shoulda been

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost posted "IN SOVIET RUSSIA SPAMMERS SUE THE FTC" or something like that. :-)

How do you like Penn? I hear it sucks.

Re:shoulda been

[Elwood P Dowd]

Sucked. I'm done.

Why not a political issue?

[mlknowle]

I'm really suprised that spam-busting hasn't become a bigger political issue. There realyl isn't a large pro-spam lobby, and any senator/rep who campaigned against spam ("I'm going to ban spam! Vote for me") would pick up not only a lot of techie votes, but votes from the general population as well - there isn't really a pro-spam segment of the population, either.

Issues like this, which a few people (the spammers) act against almost everyone else's intrests are ripe for conventional political action... why hasn't it happened yet? Granted, there are examples at the state level, and they have run into legal hurdles, but I'm really suprised we havn't seen federal legislation yet - it seems like an easy way to pick up votes.

Re:Why not a political issue?

[branchstudios]

The problem is with plausible deniability. If the spammer can claim that he "believed" the list of addresses he purchased & spammed were legitimately gathered, and if he's selling a real product (be it herbal viagra, porn, or bad real estate tips), then there isn't much accountability.
It's sort of like romantic comedies. They should be banned, but there just isn't the legal grounds.

Re:Why not a political issue?

[Desert Raven]

I'm really suprised that spam-busting hasn't become a bigger political issue. There realyl isn't a large pro-spam lobby,

Until they finally had a change of heart a couple of weeks ago, there was a very large, and very wealthy pro-spam lobby. It's called the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). They have been a major factor in influencing our government to not regulate spam.

and any senator/rep who campaigned against spam ("I'm going to ban spam! Vote for me") would pick up not only a lot of techie votes, but votes from the general population as well - there isn't really a pro-spam segment of the population, either.

Yeah, but somehow, at the final moment, they always manage to collect enough bribes to change their minds. Here in Arizona, there was a major push to pass an anti-telemarketing law. All the lawmakers were behind it, they were bragging about it to the public, and there was huge public support. Then, one day, it suddenly dropped off the radar. End result? The lawmakers increased their popularity hugely, got paid off and didn't do a damn thing. Our friendly media, who normally would have alerted us to such an outrage, deliberately whitewashed it. Think it's a coincidence that they're one of the bigger users of telemarketing?

Re:Why not a political issue?

[Steve B]

The problem is with plausible deniability. If the spammer can claim that he "believed" the list of addresses he purchased & spammed were legitimately gathered, and if he's selling a real product (be it herbal viagra, porn, or bad real estate tips), then there isn't much accountability.

Nonsense. If some clown tries to defend himself from a fraud charge by claiming that he really believed his snake oil can cure cancer, he's going to get laughed out of court and into the clink. A claim to really believe that 5 million people "opted in" to recieve your junk has about the same level of plausibility.

Not so funny laws

[coyote-san]

Laws like that are almost inevitably racism or similar bigotry masked by a seemingly innocent law.

To give a contemporary example with extremely offensive (and inaccurate) stereotypes, consider a hypothetical 1950s law prohibiting the eating of fried chicken and watermelon on the front porch.

Do you think the authors were really dealing with a problem of greasy chicken bones and slippery watermelon rinds on the nearby sidewalks?

Or do you think the law might be a not-so-subtle way of keeping certain people out of sight?

I have no idea which group beat their rugs on the front lawn, and which group found it a convenient way to "put them in their place," but I would lay long odds against the law actually dealing with an excess of public carpet floggings.

Re:Not so funny laws

[mesocyclone]

One of the more interesting examples of this sort of bigotry was the motive behind the creation of universal publicly funded education in the United States.

This happened as large numbers of Irish came to the country, and was a result of anti-Catholic bigotry. The purpose was to undercut the Catholic school system. The result was the pathetic school system we now have.

Re:Not so funny laws

[Pig Hogger]

To give a contemporary example with extremely offensive (and inaccurate) stereotypes, consider a hypothetical 1950s law prohibiting the eating of fried chicken and watermelon on the front porch.
Do you think the authors were really dealing with a problem of greasy chicken bones and slippery watermelon rinds on the nearby sidewalks?
Or do you think the law might be a not-so-subtle way of keeping certain people out of sight?

This was done as recently as 1985 in the town I used to live then. Orthodox jews were offended at people sunbathing in a city park. They went whining to the mayor (the same guy who, when he was minister of justice 15 years before, declared martial law and suspended civil liberties, then had the army jail some 400 political opponents), arguing that the sunbathing people made the value of their houses drop.

The city promptly outlawed the wearing of bathing suits, under penalty of three months in jail.

Luckily, the law was overturned several months later, well past the bathing suit season, except for Santa Claus, who showed up on the cover of the local newspaper in a red and white bathing suit, right in the middle of the famous park that triggered the whole thing...

Re:Not so funny laws

[Carmody]

The result was the pathetic school system we now have.

That pathetic public school system that gave us many of our greatest Presidents including Lincoln, more than half of our CEOs, our greatest inventors including Edison, and what used to be one of the highest rates of literacy in the world?

Our present day school system is not pathetic because it is public - the countries whose students are kicking ours' asses all have strong public school systems. The reasons for our present day school system's problems is not really simple enough to put into a pithy slashdot response.

But your post saying that the idea of universal publically funded education resulted on a pathetic system is completely ignorant. You must have gone to a private school to be that naive about history.

Re:Not so funny laws

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Apropos; supposedly the original Marijuana laws in the US were drafted for two reasons: a) to employ law enforcement after the repeal of Prohibition, and b) an attempt to slow the immigration from Mexico

Re:Not so funny laws

[mesocyclone]

The major factor causing our public school system to be so shoddy is the fact that it is public and without adequate competition (although that is starting to change). This has led to some of the highest per-pupil spending in the world, with educational results some of the worst in the world.

The current system didn't give us Lincoln or Edison. That was the past system, before the teachers unions became entrenched, the "Schools of Education" became the authority on how to teach, and the school districts too big to be responsive.

Oh, and the countries that were kicking our butt also have strong private school systems and provide government funding to private schools.

The universal publically funded education system really did result in our pathetic system. It took quite a while for it to degenerate to the level it did, but the near monopoly on education by publc systems led to the natural result of a government monopoly - disaster.

As to your supposition. I was educated in public schools and my mother was a public school teacher. When my daughter was born, my mother said that she only had one firm request of us - that her first grandchild not attend public school! The request was honored.

Re:Not so funny laws

[IsoRashi]

This is not necessarily true. French students are generally better educated than ours, and that is the result of the public school system. At least in Paris, you can either go to your local school or attempt to get into another (better) one. If you don't live right there, you have to take tests to be accepted. Private schools are generally for those that couldn't make it in public schools. Did I mention that nearly all of their universities are public? It's not a matter of the schools being public, it's a matter of them sucking (and not all do).

Re:Not so funny laws

[tassii]

Our present day school system is not pathetic because it is public - the countries whose students are kicking ours' asses all have strong public school systems. The reasons for our present day school system's problems is not really simple enough to put into a pithy slashdot response.

Sure it is. The reason we are having so many problems with are school system is:

1. Parents treat school like daycare
2. When a student screws up, in the parent's eyes its automatically the teacher's fault, not the student's fault.
3. Teachers can't deal with the parent's selective blindness (administration won't let them tell it like it is), so they do what's known as "social grading", basically giving the student the bare minimum grade so they can still graduate.
4. It becomes the next teacher's problem.

Now on top of this, toss in the fact that the parent's don't want their kids to be "labeled", so kids that used to be special ed when I went to school so they can get the extra help they need get tossed into general population to sink or swim.

The government penalizes the school for not keeping its grades up, so the school dummies down the tests so everyone can pass. And the schools also give pages of charts and formulas to the kids to use as reference.

Concequence? Uneducated kids graduating high school.

This isn't imagination. My wife's a high school teacher and she sees it every day.

Uhm...

[CoyoteGuy]

Is it just me, or does the article hint to the fact that the FTC is busting them because of FRAUD through spam, not spam in general. It's been known for a long time that the FTC is tracking so many fraud cases involving email scams, this one just happened to get media attention.

We all need to adopt...

[EzInKy]

this site's spam proofreading policy.

Long time friend just got scammed

[t0qer]

Next door to my friends grandparents lived the bo family. Kim Bo was the oldest son, sorta suffered from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and had lived in his parents house well into his 40's.

Nice enough guy, when we were teens he let us put a bunch of carp in his nasty green algea swimming pool. We spent the summer getting high, learning guitar rifts, and fishing for carp in our backyard fishing hole.

Well, eventually, his dad, the glue that was holding it all together died so his brothers and sisters wanted to sell the house and divide up the inheretance. Kim took his 150k share, bought a van, and spent the next 2 years living in his van, driving around playing music and doing odd jobs. It's not like he couldn't have gone and gotten a place, but at 40 this was what he decided to do with his life..

One day he got an e-mail "NIGERIAN OFFICIAL NEEDS HELP IN FUNDS TRANSFERS" or some shit like that. I saw him in person one day and he asked me if it was a scam. From all the stuff on slash I had read I knew it was.. But the promises in the e-mails were just too good for him to pass up.

The scammers had him convert everything to a cashiers check, then had him fly to amsterdam in person to deliver the check. He flew halfway across the world thinking there was going to be some big payoff for helping these people..

3 months later he hasn't seen a dime or heard from the people. He got screwed out of 150k in just one moment of handing over a check..

I know most smart people wouldn't fall for this, their "SCAM ALERT" alarm would go off in their heads. The sad thing is these people prey on people not of sound mind, the elderly, the lonely. To say, "Oh they should have known better" just doesn't fit because the MO of these scammers takes them directly to these types of people.

Kim Bo is doin alright. He had to sell his bass guitar, which he loved dearly and some other music stuff. He's doing odd jobs to keep gas in the van and food in his belly but at his age in his mental condition the outlook isn't going to be so bright in another 10 years.

Before someone suggest he goes to the FBI, well he's done that already, but the FBI told him there's not much they can do. Kinda sucks we got them goin on these wild Osama Bin Laden goose chases because the frequency of these scams seem to be increasing.

I hope the FTC nails these fuckers to the wall. Hopefully they'll be in the same cell as nasty nate and really get what they deserve :)

Re:Long time friend just got scammed

[Bob Vila's Hammer]

Please forward this post to 10 friendly Nigerian Officials in the next ten minutes to save Kimbo's life by keeping more food in his belly, and therefore more gas in the van.
Otherwise if you don't you will be forced into doing odd jobs for ten years in a carp ridden, nasty green algea swimming pool...

Re:Long time friend just got scammed

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, that is such BS!@!

spam not dead??

[commodoresloat]

I thought we had killed
spam dead by writing haiku
I guess I was wrong.

Re:spam not dead??

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought we had killed
spam dead by writing haiku [slashdot.org]
I guess I was wrong.

That's not a proper haiku. Your second sentence has 11 syllables (17 if you count "left bracket" and "right bracket").

All fucking right!

[NineNine]

Yes! Spammers are being arrested now! And maybe tomorrow, they'll start enforcing laws about pirated music and start arresting some (more) P2P users. And maybe after that, they'll start enforcing obscenity laws. Great, the Fed is now cracking down on the Net!

Ya' know with all of the bullshit floating around here about how Microsoft is "killing" the Net, them having a dominant browser is *nothing* compared to the Fed watching over your shoulder. For as bad spam was, at least the Net used to be free...

Remove me

[coyote-san]

IIRC, the "remove me" line is not required by any federal law. (Some states may require it.)

However, the spammers are cutting their own throat with it. Citing S.1816 (or whatever) as proof that the message "cannot be considered spam" is a lie. There is no, and has never been, any law of the United States passed by the Senate alone.

That's somewhat abstract - although it's still a criminal act in some states to claim something is the law when you know it is not. But the promise to remove the person's email address from future mailings is a very specific claim. This means that the spam is asking for something of indeterminant but real value (a valid email address which can be sold to other spammers) in exchange for a specific promise you have no intention of keeping. That's fraud, and I wouldn't mind seeing every spammer who makes that claim get hit with a warning letter followed by a stiff penalty.

Re:Remove me

[Shimbo]

However, the spammers are cutting their own throat with it. Citing S.1816 (or whatever) as proof that the message "cannot be considered spam" is a lie. There is no, and has never been, any law of the United States passed by the Senate alone.

Well to be honest, I wouldn't give a f**k even if it were US law. One, I'm not in the US. Two, you can't legislate on what people think. I can consider what I like spam, and act accordingly.

A lot of spam I just dump rather than report but I make damn sure that *every* piece of spam with lying discalimers like that gets special attention.

My favorite Spam...

[BTWR]

Are the ones where it has a REMOVE link, followed by "Acorrding to US Congress Bill IX, title XIV, statute bi, Spam is legal as long as it has a remove link."

I can almost guarentee such a title does not exist...

Re:My favorite Spam...

[Sir Tristam]

Oh, you mean like this (off a real live spam):

Under Bill(s) 1618 TITLE III by the 105 US Congress, per Section 301, Paragraph(a)(2)of S. 1618, a letter cannot be considered Spam if the sender includes contact information and a method of "removal".

Too bad for them that it was a Senate bill (thus the 'S. 1618'; House bills would be 'H.B. 1618') that died in committee. Basically means that two senators proposed the law to pay back their campaign supporters, but not enough other senators had received contributions from the spammers to convince them to even bring it to a vote. Passed by Congress? Not even passed by a committee in one of the houses. Or signed by the President.

Chris Beckenbach

Re:My favorite Spam...

[snolan]

Sounds like the beginnings of a great new filter rule (grin).

Busted

[Anonymous Coward]

HAVE YOU NOW SHAME?!!?!

This sentence is a dead giveaway that this is actually Taco himself! Why he would be spreading rumors like this is beyond me...

Oh goodness.

[Anonymous Coward]

If we are going to start talking about what isn't in Alaska then we'll be here all day.

crazy new spam awaits.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a couple of thoughts on this issue. First, I don't know one single person who likes spam or actually benefits from it..so the question pops in my head.. who the heck is spamming all of us?? I mean i know alot of people who use email. I can guarentee that everyone one of those people receive daily spam. And how many of these people are actually send spam out themself?? maybe 1 of them...(my gf likes so forward chain letters alot..dont ask me why). So in this theory theres roughly 1 out of 100 people who are creating the spam and sending out 1000's of spam messages..annoying stuff really.

Also a new type of spam I have received is very interesting. Its not thought email, its actually a windows popup. (like the net send command). I think its part of the messenger service so i could probably disable it. This is very annoying, ill be playing an intense game of cs, and BLAM, my window is disable and I get a popup asking if i want to make more money blah blah. Its interesting because its the same message over and over that i get about once a day. There is a phone number it has to call (212 area code) I was debating about calling it and bitching but then I thought its probably just some scam to drain my wallet by listening to an answering machine...anyone know about area code 212? Ok im done griping. dono if anything useful came out of this blab. eh

I'm glad it isn't

[FreeUser]

I'm really suprised that spam-busting hasn't become a bigger political issue. There realyl isn't a large pro-spam lobby, and any senator/rep who campaigned against spam ("I'm going to ban spam! Vote for me") would pick up not only a lot of techie votes, but votes from the general population as well - there isn't really a pro-spam segment of the population, either.

While I frequently take issue with the libertarian knee-jerk reaction against government involvement in just about any area, no matter how constructive it might be, in this particular case, much as I hate and loathe SPAM, I come down firmly on the libertarian side.

With Spam Assassin and other filtering packages we have the technology to take care of SPAM ourselves. We do not need the government passing new laws regulating how people communicate (even sleazeballs like Spammers), we can and should dump those people in the bit bucket ourselves, with our own software.

The anti-fraud laws are generally sufficient ... the only additional legislation I would favor would be the ability for user's to sue for some amount of money (say, $500.00) for misuse of their system resources, but even that is a can of worms likely to be best left unopened (consider if someone sent SPAM out in your name, purporting to represent your company, and 10,000,000 people sued you for $500.00 for something you didn't do).

We have the means, and the tools, to deal with these lowlifes ourselves. Let the FTC chase down those committing fraud, and let us filter out the rest ourselves.

Re:I'm glad it isn't

[Steve B]

I come down firmly on the libertarian side.

I'm glad you agree with us that the suppression of theft in general, and theft of bandwidth in particular, is one of the (few) proper functions of government.

With Spam Assassin and other filtering packages we have the technology to take care of SPAM ourselves.

With door locks and handguns we have the technology to take care of burglars ourselves. That's no reason why it shouldn't be illegal.

i will

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats your email address, and do you accept paypal? =()

I say again...

[slykens]

The only way to stop spam is to make it far more costly to spam than what one makes from doing it. This includes bringing action against the companies advertised in spam as well. Once they find out it costs a lot more to be sued for spamming than they make from doing it they will stop.

On a side note, why aren't ISPs taking a more proactive approach in stopping spam? I remember here a while ago that people were bitching because Verizon blocked all tcp port 25 except to their servers. This should help dramatically in stopping spam as Verizon can then detect it at their server. People here cried about it. If you want to use your SMTP server at work then use a VPN. It is unfortunate but there has to be tighter controls to stop spam at the ISP it originates from.

pnap is INTERNAP is SPAMHAUS is SHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't care one bit.

Pressure needs to be directed at those who peer with Internap. Ghettoize those bastards.

Spam lovers... here's your radio station!

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen to some spam on Spam Radio. Enjoy! :)

There is a difference

[iconnor]

The billboards can be and in most places are regulated by the local governments. In many cases, it costs a lot of money to have those signs.

That is why you never see anyone advertizing Nigerian money scams there.

Oops... I forgot to say... it's streaming MP3...

[Cheese Cracker]

Enjoy the spam. :)

(sorry for the double post... I forgot to switch on cookies...)

what the internet is about

[A Vengrow]

Wait a minute people, I get spam as much as the next person (about 30-40 emails per day) and yes it is annoying. but I have gotten used to it. I don't think that it should be legistlated, the government already has enough trouble attempting to control the internet. the less legistlation we have regarding the internet the better. after all, how is spam any different form the advertisments via snail mail telling me that I could have won 10 million dollars. what would you do with that type of spam? Face it, as much as I hate it, spam is here to stay.

Re:what the internet is about

[Anonymous Coward]

"how is spam any different form the advertisments via snail mail telling me that I could have won 10 million dollars. what would you do with that type of spam?"

This made me giggle, i remember reading a story about a guy that got one of these checks and deposited it at an atm as a joke. he ended up getting cash in full. read it, its quite amusing and true.

http://www.goodthink.com/$$tablecontents.html

Re:what the internet is about

[reactor]

The difference is that it costs companies a significant amount of money to send out a large amount of advertiements via U.S. mail. It is relatively cheap to hook up a computer and send out thousands of spam messages a day through a dial-up connection.

Additionally, there is far more oversight over people who advertise with Federal mail. For instance, requesting that you be removed from third-class mailing lists generally works. A company doesn't want to waste money sending advertisments to someone who is so against them that they will take the time to request they not be contacted. Generally a physical address is valid and not a "spam catcher". Note how most bulk mailings are addressed " Or Current Resident", so the physical spammers don't really benifit from discovering an address is "valid".

Internet spammers are always up to all sorts of dirty tricks, such as adding addresses to mailing lists when the receive a request to remove the address.

sued six junk e-mailers? - should be in jail

[Skapare]

The Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday that it had sued six junk e-mailers who bombarded Internet users with illegal pyramid schemes, fraudulent loans and e-mail filters that actually attracted more "spam."

Excuse me? These are fraud (a felony) cases! They should be arresting the spammers and putting them in jail for at least 24 hours. The spammers should be facing criminal charges, not civil remedies.

Billboards

[Jetson]

It could never be made illegal...simply because it's a form of unwanted advertising. Ever take a trip on the highway and seen all the billboards?

Ever visit Hawaii? They have a state law that limits visible signs. On the highway this means the only large signs you see are directional signs erected by the Department of Highways. Advertising on the highways is essentially limited to iconic symbols on official tourism signs.

Off-highway limits are less strict but still significant. Corporate identity signs are limited in size and location to prevent "Times Square Syndrome". It's really quite refreshing to drive through a city or town and not see "golden arches" towering above the fast-food district. It can be pretty difficult to tell a high-rise apartment building from a hotel unless you know the address or look for a very small corporate sign over the lobby entrance.

The FTC only has jurisdiction under the FTC Act

[werdna]

Although they seem to be busting them for fraud via spam rather than just the fact that they spam,

This is unsurprising, because the FTC Act only governs conduct that constitutes "deceptive and unfair trade practices."

Here's an Idea

[hackwrench]

Everytime you get an unsolicited e-mail that has an unsubscribe option, unsubscribe webmaster@ftc.gov... also use in a message on a board known to be freqented by spambots. That should put an end to the stupidest of spammers, at least.

What Sould count as Fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

(I think that) If the header of any email addressed/sent to more than one person doesn't contain an email address or phone number that points to an actual human, the email should be found fraudulent.

Go ahead hand have the reply-to be a mail-list-manager or something, but if there isn't a way to reach a real human person (or service corp or something) available in the text in a way that can be easily and dtereministically parsed out of the message, then it isn't possible to know who you are dealing with, and that is a form of fraud. (INAL)

Similarly a reply-to header that causes a bounce or leads to a /dev/null equivelent should be fraud as the return path perports to be a return path, if it goes nowhere then it is not what it perports to be. That is fraud.

Anybody have a others the'd like to add?

Signed,
not anonymous but my password cookie is bad... 8-(

Re:What Sould count as Fraud

[IBitOBear]

Look ma, I Fixed my cookie!

8-)

You have to see this quote from the FTC. LOL!

[SPYvSPY]

"I'm no psychic but I can foresee this: If you make deceptive claims, there is an FTC action in your future," said Howard Beales, director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau.

Priceless.

Is SPAM actually profitable?

[flamelord]

It always amazes me what motivates spammers. I mean does anybody ever purchase or respond to a spam offer?? Wouldn't virtually 99.99% of the people be so repulsed by spam to never offer these people any business?

So how exactly do they fund themselves? Are they funded by free labor from people suckered into these "earn $5000/wk at home" scams?

How do you explain this spam phonemenon?

Re:Is SPAM actually profitable?

[amaiman]

If some suckers weren't buying stuff from the spammers, they wouldn't be sending the spam.

Sure, they may only get a 0.00001% response rate, but since it costs them next to nothing to send out 50 million messages, it's worth it for them.

i want strong spam laws

[obdulio]

Among all the spam I get, I get some advertising anonymous mailers and huge mailing lists.

Shouldn't that be ilegal? I mean, they have my email address and are selling it, making a profit.

POPFILE WILL CURE AIDS

[Anonymous Coward]

POPFILE CURES AIDS

Re:POPFILE WILL CURE AIDS

[flowerp]

This is not a flamebait, the link given is valid. It's a bayesian mail filter for POP3 mailboxes.

One problem though is: this name (popfile) collides
with a commercial offering operated by major record
labels.

It's the equivalent of MusicNet / Listen.com / PressPlay for the German market.

If you keep using this name, prepare to enjoy the cease and desist letters from their lawyers. ;)

haha

Opt out gets more spam

[phorm]

Also interesting, it looks like one of the things they are nailing them for is the fraudulent 'remove me from your mailing list' that actually brings more spam

I fell for this a few times, basically by hitting that link you notify el-spammer that your email is valid, giving him/her/it the opportunity to add you to a list of "verified" people to bombard to spam. This is REALLY one of the slimiest of the slimy tactics.
I don't suppose this court decision would force spammers to think about changing the "remove me" link to "Yeah, spam my ass like there's no tomorrow", since that's what it really does

Re:Opt out gets more spam

[NewtonsLaw]

What I've taken to doing is signing up spammers to other spammers single-opt-in mailing lists.

Of course you don't sign up the email address they give you in the email header -- that's almost always forged so you could be penalising an innocent party. You have to go to the website being promoted (if there is one) and have a hunt around for an email address.

If there isn't one on the site (check the HTML code for embedded addresses for formmail scripts) then see what you can pick out of the domain name registration info.

I'm building up a great list of spammers and their single-opt-in lists that I now unleash on anyone stupid enough to place one of my addresses on their own opt-out list.

Let those who live by the spam, die by the spam!

Re:Opt out gets more spam

[herbierobinson]

What I do with those remove links is traceroute them to find the level one ISP and then add some e-mail addresses from their level 1 (like the NOC address from ARIN). Some of the spammers are undoubtedly clever enough to filter those out, but I'll bet most of them are too stupid. I started doing this a few weeks ago and I've been seeing a lot less spam lately....

The Tune-Out Plague bites back

[IBitOBear]

So I was in the viedo-rental-sore with my roomate.
He says "That looks interesting" and points to a shelf.
I say "What? this?" picking up rather lame DVD.
"Not that... that!" he says, still pointing but stepping closer.
I pick up the cruddy DVD that was next to the first.
"No! This!" he says...

After several dense itterations I realize that he is talking about the rectanngular advertisement that is clipped to the shelf between two rows of DVDs. He is actually touching the sign by this point, and getting kind of upset.

It seems that I have cultured a blind spot for full-color rectangular advertisements immediately above or below anthing I feel is "content". It is so pervasive in my mental state that meat-world advertisements have begun getting the same treatment.

The comercialization of the internet has actually rendered me blind.

Square insets are next, and soon I wont even be able to read a text book any more.

Someone should do a study.

Uh oh...

[JoeRobe]

"E-mail addresses left in news groups and on Web pages were almost certain to receive spam, they found..."

"Internet users can forward spam for FTC investigation to uce@ftc.gov"

I wonder how many spammers are going to spam uce.ftc.gov now...

Re:Uh oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely there's smart enough to filter out .gov and .mil ... as well as abuse@ and postmaster@, too.

Now, if somebody knows the e-mail addresses of alleged Mafia dons, that might be useful... ;)

Not quite.

[PhxBlue]

For as bad spam was, at least the Net used to be free...

It used to also be restricted almost exclusively to universities and government institutions. A dirt road doesn't need lane dividers and yield signs; a highway filled with ten gazillion yahoos does.

"remove me"="spam my ass like there's no tomorrow"

[flamelord]

That's pretty funny phorm! I wonder how many people would click through that link then. But seriously. If the remove link is just a slimy trick, and a lie, they've fooled me. Well, not entirely, I am aware of the rumor that these features don't work. So I tried it one one of my spam-receptacle email accounts, and lo-and behold, this rumor seems to be true.

They do unsubscribe you to that particular type of spam but a few days later you will be getting more spam from a different spam department. So they send you around and around, apperently unsubscribing you to this and subscribing you to that!

I've played this game now for over three months, and one thing seems clear. Unsubscribing does not work. However, it would be nice if email client could recognize this supposed opt-out statement and categorize the letter as junk mail.

Yes, two ways...

[Anonymous Coward]

The innocent and the stupid read their spam...

The innocent includes:
1. The elderly
2. Jr. high kids (and younger)

The stupid includes:
1. Realtors
2. People that aren't old enough to be considered elderly but older than Jr. high kids.

Re:Yes, two ways...

[flamelord]

are you saying that the innocent and stupid don't hate spam? or that they have no instinct on how fight spam by boycotting it?

Easy - you don't have to.

[Backov]

Easy one really.

If Federal legislation gets passed that causes all of the scummy little spammers to move their operations offshore, or to stop spamming, that puts them all in other, easily definable regions, now doesn't it?

China suddenly becomes even more of a hotbed for spammers than it is now? Let's see how they like it when every RBL out there blacklists all of their IP blocks. I think they'd get that corrected pretty fast.

Cheers,
Backov

Re:Easy - you don't have to.

[The Turd Report]

Well, there is a problem with that. Spammers will just move to avoid the blocks. You could just keep adding blocks to your blacklist, but the list would become useless when started blocking more legit mail then it did spam.

The FTC can get Laura Betterly next

[guacamolefoo]

Slashing back to yesterday, the FTC can maybe set their sights on the Spam Queen featured on the fricking front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

There is a way out...

[Eric Damron]

Spammers just need to get a better lobbying group. It seems to work for everyone else.

You cannot be more wrong

[DiveX]

The courts have long support that saying whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want is protected speech. Commercial speech does not have to be unrestricted speech. Take the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 for instance. That federal law (47 USC 227) outlaws and regulates several components of commercial speech. Making a prerecorded solicitation to a residential line, without a prior business relationship, is outlawed.

Believe me, I won a $1500 judgement (plus court costs) against a company that made one single, prerecorded call to my home last may. I settled for a $1000 check cut by the company's insurance. Unsolicited commercial faxes sent to any fax machine, business or residential, are prohibited unless you have a prior business relationship with the company. Live (operator) solicitation calls are not prohibited outright (exception: you are on an official state DNC list) on the first occurrence. Upon your request, they must add you on their list and maintain that request for 10 years. They must also send you, again on your request, a written copy of their policy regarding the maintenance of their company's DNC list. This is a matter of federal law. If you get 2 or more calls in violation of this request in 12 months, (I know, it *is* absurd that you have to get 2 violations in 12 months [which means they can call you every 53 weeks with no repercussions], but that is the way the law is written.), then you may sue in courts for statutory damages of $500 for [b]each[/b] violation and demand treble damage of triple the amount. My suit was for the $500 violation and then the treble damages.

The law was created to prevent the abuse of privacy and the inalienable right to b simple left alone. This law has ultimately been upheld in every major case to date (exception: the cousin of Rush Limbaugh [a federal judge] prevents its use in his district, but it is currently on appeal). The best part of this law is the private right of action that this law creates. Any spam bill passed must contain this portion or it will ultimately be a dead hand law. The government does not have the resources to attack this problem, so the rights of collecting damages has been given to the people.

To date I have received $1800 in settlement due to a single prerecord from 3 different companies. I have a case in December against a local junk faxer and fully expect a $1500 judgement (plus court costs). Do a google search for just the term 'junk fax' and get your eyes opened.

Some try to (erroneously) argue that the government has better things to do than make laws like this. The government does not have to make progress on every front just to make progress on any front. It is not the mere unwanted advertising, it is the fraudulent method and often illegal or illicit methods used to push it. I for one would not have a big problem with the law legitimize commercial email if it set the requirements regarding it such as a simple field that would thus allow people to choose on their own if they wish to receive it. If something as simple as '[ADV]' were required to be added to the subject line and headers could not be forged, then the problem as it is known would die. People can set a single, simple filter to block it if they do not wish,a nd that would be the end of it. Those that wish to get it will retain that right.

You thinking billboards equals spam misses the point [b]entirely[/b]. It does detract from the natural view, however those billboards are on private property using private resources that does not directly cost the consumer anything. What about people placing ads on your windshield or through your open window? One isn't bad, but would you mind of I stuffed several hundred into your car window? That is my 'right' is it not? Obviously you have not been shafted by a 'joe job' where a spammer uses your address as their 'reply-to' or 'remove' address causing you to get hundreds or thousands of bounce messages or angry threats each hour for several days. Try actually doing some research next time.

To really provide teeth to the bill, the consumer must be allowed to enforce it by collecting damages on their own.

outlook

[manofherb]

let's hope none of these spam-kings keep their e-mail addresses in a huge outlook adress book

They'll stay put

[Felinoid]

Most of what they are doing IS illegal inside the US.
It takes less effort to advertise a lagit business via other means than to move to China and continue using spam to scam.

Address

[SeanWithoutPants]

Any username*@(my domain).com will go to one mailbox of mine, but still retain the unique user name. Now, whenever I sign up for things that require an email address, I'll add some initials to the beginning of the user name. (For example, phsean@(a domain).com - PH referring to Pizza Hut) Next I'll stick that address on a paper with other names for future reference.

Now, if somebody spams me through an "initial email" I'll know who sold my name. I'll then follow up teh spam with a nice letter to the company stating why I will no longer do business with them. Seems like a simple way to see just how reliable those privacy policies are. :)

Note: Pizza Hut hasn't ever spammed me, twas just an example.

Spam is theft, period.

[dwheeler]

Hmpf. Spam is theft, period. See my article at http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/stopspam.html.

What this shows is that if laws were passed that made spam illegal, we'd get a lot less spam. You don't have to enforce every spam case to make an effect; just putting a few spammers in jail or fining them will change the behavior of many others. If not illegal (the best solution), at least require all spam to be marked so that it can be easily filtered. And include all spam, not just commercial spam.

Re:Spam is theft, period.

[Steve B]

You don't have to enforce every spam case to make an effect; just putting a few spammers in jail or fining them will change the behavior of many others.

Another advantage would be to get spammers' nuisance lawsuits easily dismissed (unless the judge is particularly dense), on the grounds that there is no legally enforceable right to do something that is illegal in general.

That would be a good thing

[serutan]

When enough spam comes from a country (not to name names [cough-Korea-cough]), the TLD becomes poison. People in the US get sick of dealing with the problem and simply block the whole damn country. Blocking .kr cut my spam in half. Eventually people in those countries whose legitimate email keeps bouncing will get on their own government's ass to deal with the problem in their own special way, like maybe a good caning.

Some of these people absolutely have no clue. Take for example, Laura Betterly, the so-called Spam Queen in this Wall Street Journal article (no reg). Quote: "I'm just trying to make a living like everyone else." Apparently Laura thinks we all make a living by being assholes. Now there's a caning candidate if there ever was one.

Like the ones described here?

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

Why are users banner-blind?

Definition of Irony?

[mt-biker]

The definition of irony: That Yahoo included this GIF as advertising within this article on spam. :)

Eulogising Cloudmark

[cruachan]

I've been running cloudmark (http://www.cloudmark.com) for the past couple of months (in outlook). Very very impressive. With me it has a 100% accuracy rate for marked spam (i.e. I've not seen it create any false positives) and it successfuly filters 95%+ of all spams I get. My only gripe is it's passive - it can't generate a dummy 'address not found' email - but hopefully they may add this.

I've no connection with the company, but this wonderful bit of software has effectively wiped out any problem I have with spam.

Old Computers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Apple 2 was upper case only unless you bought an optional extra, presumably as ludicrously overpriced as the machine itself.

CPC464/C64/Vic-20 were all mixed case.

But look at the stupid penalties

[wildbill2]

That particular Yahoo story doesn't point it out, but the FCC is allowing these companies to "settle" by them promising not to do it again.

Oh right.

The only thing that will stop these spamsters is *stiff* penalties, like maybe a $100 fine per spam or jail time.

Poetic Justice

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm..... I often see a very good reason for scam... all of the scam I get is from people pretending that they are bribing lots of people from poor countries. I might object if someone lost his/hers money when trying to invest in a legal bussines, but when trying in a fraud??? I don't want anyone to get ruined, but losing some bucks will be a good leson.

Let me say this in another way: if someone you know and you can trust that will honour the agreement, asks you for several thousands dollars to buy tools to stole in a bank, and that he/she will return you tenfolds, would you accept? or that is to bring drugs to sell in school.

I don't give a penny for people who wants to abuse other people, but that includes both the scammer and the scammed. The only real difference is that the scammer is more inteligent.

And if your case is that your friend has not common sense enough to manage his money, he should be declared uncapacited and have someone to manage it for him, but that's another story.

script kiddies

[TamMan2000]

I agree with you, I think that physically kicking their ass, may not be a good idea (as much as I would love to hold them down while they recieve a good beating).

Why don't all the script kiddies out there put their DDOS to good use and choke the pipe of those who choke ours?
It would even make the cost of being a spam friendly ISP a little higher, and push the cost of spamming up...

Re:You have to see this quote from the FTC. LOL!

[Hard_Code]

Apparently he was sick of it and was not going to take it any more.

CDnow.com do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I never started receiving spam from music 'bands' until I clicked on CDnow.com's remove-me link.

Follow The Money

[Steve B]

If the IPs and networks are all registered in China, how do you track it (easily) to Joe Spammer in Florida?

If the spammer is trying to make money, he needs to identify a domestic contact point for the suckers to send it. Make spamming illegal, and the domestic contact point becomes implicated in a crime and can be shut down (POB closed by the postal inspector, credit card frozen, whatever) as soon as the spamming is proved.

Re:Follow The Money

[The Turd Report]

Well, any spammer that goes thru the trouble of setting up overseas isn't just going to say "Send $ to 123 Main Street...", they are going to wrap themselves in several layers of re-direction. The spammer just has to have one 'layer' in a country that doesn't give a rat's ass about US subpoenas and the spammer will have no problems.

Dictionary Work In Progress

[Steve B]

Spam isn't just an email phenomonon, it's just an unregulated form of unsolicated mass advertisment.

Now that you've given us your custom definition of the word "spam", I'm curious -- how do you define the words "alone", "sex", and "is"?

Re:Good - You are so wrong on the billboard thing.

[FUna]

no...billboards aren't spam because you aren't paying for them at all...they sit innocuously by the roadside. Sure we pay for the highway system they are targetted at...but THEY pay for the billboards and the outdoor ad companies pay for the land leases.

With e-mail SPAM...we pay for our ISP including e-mail access. My e-mail address is MY PROPERTY that I PAY FOR that is being abused by someone who has not been given explicit permission to send me advertisments offering to make my breasts one cup size larger or add 2 inches (guaranteed) to my penis.

Billboards are like TV ads...magazine ads...they are incidental annoyances. But SPAM is intruding on a service you directly pay for.

Good idea! It might just work!

[phorm]

Unsubscribing does not work. However, it would be nice if email client could recognize this supposed opt-out statement and categorize the letter as junk mail.

That's so simple it's almost brilliant. There are a few bugs with it, but it's actually not a bad idea.
The main bug: You'd have to either have logic for lists you do want, or only use that particular email account for personal emails

But seriously, checking an email for the word "unsubscribe" (and a few other key ones) as a hyperlink would probably work very well for that variety of spam. Since 99% of people won't send you "unsubscribe" hyperlinked, it solves the problem of knocking out the wrong emails.

Has anybody actually tried this? Sometimes there's brilliance in random musing.

They filter .GOV

[The Raven]

Most spam lists filter out .gov addresses for just that reason. They're not completely stupid.

Unfortunately.

Spam is NOT mail

[D4C5CE]

I pay for my house, I pay taxes for the US Postal Service, and I pay for stamps for the mail I want to send.......care to tell me how this is any diffrent than spam emails? ... I don't make a living by sending spam ... I'm a computer technician....

Then one has to wonder why the crucial difference has not become crystal clear to you already:

Advertising by postal mail won't usually be delivered postage due - and if it ever does, AFAIK the postman will not just drop it in your mailbox and bill you for the postage, with no way for you to reject the junk being sent to your house just because some scumbag happened to find out your mailing address.

And because of this difference, most probably you'll get one ad along with maybe every two or three legitimate postal letters, rather than having to find them buried somewhere deep in an entire crate of crap that gets dumped at your door every single day.

IIRC, there are no turnpikes at every billboard either, charging your account for driving by...

Last Post!

[alpg]

I:
The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin
with a silk sow. The same is true of money.
II:
If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would
probably be twice as good as yesterday was.
III:
There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.
IV:
If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.
V:
One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output.
Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average
output.
-- Norman Augustine

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