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

[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

[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.

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...

[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...

[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!

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.

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: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: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: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: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: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.

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? :-)

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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.