Slashdot Mirror
AOL Awarded Millions in Spam Case
c.derby writes "MSNBC.com is running a story that says: " A Virginia federal court awarded America Online nearly $7 million in damages as part of the Internet service providers' legal victory over a junk e-mail operation, AOL said Monday."
The company said the legal decision should send a warning to junk e-mailers.
"This is an important legal victory in the fight against spam," Randall Boe, AOL general counsel, said in a statement. "It sends a clear, distinct message to spammers: AOL is prepared to use all of the legal and technological tools available to shut down spammers."
" 145 pieces of spam so far today. Can I have a piece of the 7 million? (oops, duplicate. Oh well. It's still good ;)
No offence, but this is becoming a joke. How many dupes a week/day/hour are we up to nowadays? If the 'powers that be' don't even bother reading their own site, then why the hell don't they pass their mod status to someone who cares.
-- 7 string electric violin + live loop samplers
Well, despite the fact that I hate Microsoft like everyone else here, the act of them fighting against the loads of spam that dumps on Hotmail accounts (even Hotmail accounts that are unused and have never been given out) would be a sign that they're actually listening to their customers, and thus a Good Thing.
Uh, doesn't the fact that hotmail accounts that are unused get tons of spam suggest that they're not listening to their customers as much as they are selling their customer lists to spammers?
That's, to me, decidedly not a Good Thing.
Maybe, when VA Whatever finally goes bust, Slashdot will be taken over by Google News and totally automated. That might be an improvement.
It wouldn't be hard. Google News can pick stories and can tell which articles go together. Just provide a set of selection criteria that match previous Slashdot history, and let it feed the Slashdot story engine.
When this machine learns your job, what are you going to do? - bus poster, 1970s
Yes, the exact same story was posted yesterday, but obviously there is method in their madness. Since the first story came out at 5 PM (CST), I'm assuming that the East Coast had already gone home for the day.
/. reposts a story, realize that there are those that are less fortunate... :)
That same story of course would still be "fresh" for the Westies. So, in getting around this whole we-live-left-to-right instead of north-to-south issue, we need to repost some stories from time to time. Naturally, a good, fresh story that has gone "stale", may be, reposted to let those Easties catch up with the rest of us.
I'm sure there is an algorith that could take in the time it was posted, time left to view in the normal working hours, etc.
So the next time
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
The AOL users are the ones who were injured by all this spam, why is the money going to AOL and not distributed to all of it's user base in the past 4 years.
answer 1: Because the users did not press a lawsuit.
answer 2: The spam injured AOL by increasing their operating costs while driving away users.
answer 3: AOL has approximately 35 million users. The $7 million equals about 20 cents per user. After subtracting the legal expenses, postage, and costs to print and process 35 million checks, how much would be left? (hint: it's a negative number). Do the math before you post next time.
This wasn't a virtuous act on their part.
When you've got that many mail accounts and that many clueless users who don't know how to avoid spam, the costs (bandwidth/storage/administration/etc...) are a massive figure. It's just good business sense for cutting a huge expense.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I have to sit here and look at dupes like this, and have my own submission rejected; a submission about a new law in Egypt slapping a 3 year mandatory jail term on anyone using encrypted e-mail, and a new law also criminalising wireless networking.
Oh I wholeheartedly agree.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Actually, seeing the complexity of the system they've built already, it would be ABSOLUTELY TRIVIAL TO WRITE A SCRIPT TO DETECT DUPES. The site posts no more than 10 stories a day, that's hardly an overwhemlming amount of data to work with. Start by comparing cited URLs. That'd find 50% of the dupes right away. The rest might be found by (as the editors can't be fucked to scan the list of stories using thei own eyes) running them by news.google and seeing if they come up with any others under the same heading.
A solution to Slashdot's increasing lack of professionalism would be easy. And it's well past time.
Too right. And Taco's "oops, duplicate. Oh well. It's still good" is just insulting to the readers and shows he needs a long holiday, or maybe it's time for him to move on.
Is AOL keeping all the money and doing nothing for it's users? Or is it going to do something to redistribute it's winnings, like refunds or discounts on on-line fees for a few months?
What do you think 7 Million amounts to with AOL? Refunds or discounts for a month (let alone a few) would be more than 7 million. Most presumably money from the legal department gets divied up in several ways, company profits, ongoing litigation and I would bet in this case to the war on spam. So, in that respect even the fact that they won the money IS something for their subscribers, but I doubt they will see a penny of it.
I realize that Rob & the rest of the crew just want to post what they're interested in reading
I'm sorry but this argument hasn't held water since they started receiving compensation for the site well above and beyond the normal running costs. As the product (which we are since this is now an AD based, subscription and "eyes on" site) we are allowing ourselves to be exploited by continuining to approve of this behaviour and even encourage it with statements like the one above.
Not trying to single you out, but this argument gets paraded everytime they do shoddy work. All I know is I would never hire any of these guys (asside from Timothy) to work on any of my critical systems. They just don't care enough about their own work.
--- I do not moderate.
Good guestion.
This reminds me abut the "no sales calls" list that I pay $10/year to be part of. If I'm on the list, and I get a sales call, that person is fined roughly $10k per offense, but I see exactly $0.00 of that $10k. Why is that? I'm the one who was inconvenienced by the sales call, right? I'm the one who paid to be on the list, right?
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
duh! - but it doesn't mean that it didn't hurt(annoy) them too.
I never said that the users were not annoyed. I simply said that their failure to file the lawsuit is why they have will not get money from the lawsuit.
I think AOL should also sue Amazon for all those extra emails its sending out to its users (again being cynical here)
Amazon does e-mail marketing right. It's an opt-in system. They send e-mails to people with whom they have an existing business relationship. The e-mails are sent from Amazon's servers, not some open relay in Korea. The e-mails include "unsubscribe" instructions that actually work. Amazon, to the best of my knowledge (and tracking) does not sell the e-mail addresses.
The whole idea of the original comment was a rant that although this may be a victory against spam it does not help all those people who were hurt by spam.
The spammer in question is unlikely to continue spamming AOL's users after that crippling loss. It is also likely that potential spammers, having seen news of the $7 million award, will reconsider their "business plan" and that will further reduce the amount of spam that pollutes the Internet in general. I see this as a big help to users.
This showed up in my e-mail inbox today, sent from a friend. It's a little less DIY than the parent poster's solution, but it's all right too:
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 13:18:16 -0500
I declare December 2, 2004 to be "the end of spam" day.
As of December 2nd, everyone has to use a new e-mail protocol which fixes the fundamental problem of SMTP: untrusted sources.
The new protocol isn't "new". It's just that on Dec 2, 2004, everyone should stop accepting SMTP connection that don't use the STARTTLS extension to SMTP as described in RFC2487.
STARTTLS has the benefit of creating Received: headers that are cryptographically signed, and therefore meaningful. Internet email is sent like a bucket-brigade... you send your email to your ISP, which passes it on to another ISP, which passes it to another mail server, which sends it to final receiver's mail "Inbox". With STARTTLS, there is an audit path of who passed the email alone each "hop". There is still a possibility that you won't know who the original sender is, but you know the first ISP that let that message into the system. That's good enough.
After Dec 2, 2004: when you receive email that is spam, you will be able to identify which server let the spam into the Internet. That site can be punished, by starting a DoS attack against it, or by declaring the site to be "terrorist" at which point the Bush Administration, which will have just won re-election (and being in its last term will have no need to follow any laws) will bomb the email server. They will be given 24 hours notice, 48 if it is a 3-day weekend. Bombing will not happen if the owner of the mail system can demonstrate which user sent the spam, and that they have been removed from the system. With the threat of being bombed, mail system administrators will be under extreme pressure to make sure that all email that leaves their systems is certifiably marked by the actual creator. (Thus fixing the "but who was the original sender?" issue). Then we can arrest the user that sent the spam.
I encourage all countries to make it illegal to send email that is unreplyable. Thus making it possible to use "active filtering" systems, which accept email from "known good parties" and everyone else receives an automated reply saying, "If you want to get on my 'known good' list, here's how...". With STARTTLS in use, we can track down who is permitting unreplyable email into the Internet, and bomb them.
Before Dec 2, 2004 all mail systems should begin deploying STARTTLS. It is backwards compatible with older mail systems. It doesn't require the risky and dangerous "throw the switch day" conversions like some new computer systems. While I'm at it, Wietse Venema should be gagged and bound to his computer until he merges in the "STARTTLS" patch to Postfix.
Before Dec 2, 2004, email client authors should add features that let users see which email they would have missed if the post-Dec 2, 2004 policies had been in place. (Simply mark the message a special color if any of the Received: lines are from non-TLS systems.) This will encourage users to apply pressure to their friends to move to STARTTLS-enabled ISPs.
Finally, you might be asking, "How did you pick December 2nd?" The answer is quite simple. It's my birthday and I can't think of a better birthday present I could receive than the end of spam.
Can you?
Sincerely,
Tom Limoncelli
Of course, read with tongue in appropriate position, ie. in cheek.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
I have to say I've noticed the frequency of duplicates has GREATLY increased in the last couple of weeks. It's hardly a joke anymore. I think they probably average 2 or 3 duplicates a week now - they seemed to be much more rare before. Recently they are dupes within 24 hours as well. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY that the Slashdot Editors read the other editor's work before posting a story. No one has a memory that short.
Random is the New Order.