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

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."

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: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.

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.