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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."
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.
Remember, Capone was busted for tax evasion -- not for his worst crimes. Get 'em any way you can.
How much would it cost to extradite Koreans and Chinese for spamming - thousands of them a year??
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.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
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.
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?
Download my list of spammers, which is updated every day or so: /etc/firewall/blacklisted_nets and run a bash script:
/etc/firewall/blacklisted_nets`
http://enthalpy.homelinux.org/spammers.txt
Then dump it in
for I in `cat
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!
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.
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."
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
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
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!
"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.
"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.
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.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press