Spammers Busted

Scud_the_disposable_ writes "CNN has posted an article about the "shutting down" of several spammers who sell fake international driver's licenses. These licenses are supposed to win back suspended driving priviledges, and make holders immune to speeding tickets and other traffic violations." What makes me even more sad is that people fell for it. So far today is a slow spam day for me. Only 81 spam, but its only 9:30.

Comments

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't actually busted for spamming.

This is good, but..

[Control-Z]

Ok, it's good the FTC is cracking down on illegal/fradulent product spammers. But that still leaves all the spammers who are selling legitimate products (such as all that refinancing crap, I suppose that could be real), and then what about all the spammers from overseas? And the US ones will find a way to base their operations overseas should the need arise. What about sending them from the middle of the ocean in International waters?

We still gotta fix the Internet mail system. It would probably take the support of *shudder* Microsoft in an upcoming version of Windows to affect a major change like that. Or a saavy small company with good PR/marketing.

Re:This is good, but..

[sam_handelman]

I don't want to make a presumption here, but most of the proposed "improvements" in the e-mail system have been bad for ALL of the following reasons:
1) Centralised control allowing censorship. *
2) Ease of central monitering of communications.
3) Proprietary issues.

* I don't see how you could stop spam without enabling whoever made the decision about what was "spam" to censor anyone they wanted.

That said, I'd love to see all those small island nation / crime havens brought to heel. The spam, though, is really a very small issue. Billions of dollars in costs, yes, but compared with all the money launderers and tax cheats doing business out of island nations, it's chump change.

Re:This is good, but..

[swb]

How many spams are for legitimate products? In the financial services category I'd wager that most of them are not legitimate. The closest to "legitmate" I can think of are ads for porn sites, and I wonder how many of them aren't also credit card scams or trojan-spreaders.

Going after the fraud that makes up a majority of spam would have a huge impact I think, and its the one way you can go after spammers without crippling email with restrictions, laws, etc.

The only potential downside I can see to this is that by removing the criminals from spam, it might 'clean up' spam's image to the point that businesses that have stayed out of email marketing due to the association with fraudulent entities might want to get into it if it was seen as more legitimate.

Re:Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code

[stevejsmith]

If you are referring to that one case where a spammers address was published on Slashdot, it was perfectly acceptable. Why? Simple: the man was not caught. What people were trying to do was call attention to the fact that there need to be laws to stop spam. When we sent massive amounts of letters to the guy's house, it was perfectly legal. That is what needs to be changed. The point was that this man was not doing something illegal, when he should have been.

Another thing: he continues to do it! If a rapist is in jail, they are not raping anybody. This man, however, is probably as we speak signing deals with XXX PENIS XXX ENLARGERS XXX SEVENTEEN INCHES XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!!!.

So what if they fell for it?

[KDan]

There's really less realistic spam around than "stealth" driving licences... I mean, the people I'm really worried about are those who fall for someone selling them pills that will (all at one time):
1) Stop aging
2) Increase their IQ
3) Increase the size of their penis
4) Make them earn more money NOW

Now the people who fall for that are really in need of psychiatric assistance, and there must be some or the spammers wouldn't bother.

Daniel

Playing Games you don't understand.

[nuggz]

Many people throw away money like these irrevocable drivers license, Nigerian bank scams, the stock market bubble.

The people doing this are trying to cheat, and beat the system, playing games they don't quite understand.

They deserve to lose their money.

If you try to steal millions from the people of Nigeria, I hope you DO lose your money.
If you want to get an irrevocable license so you can keep drinking and driving and killing people I hope you lose your money (among other penalties).
If you go and throw every penny you have at some complex financial system you can't possibly understand hoping to make a quick buck, you get what you deserve.

People need to take responsiblity for their own actions.

That being said, fraud isn't acceptable and should be punished. But a reasonable person should be able to tell these are scams.

Re:Playing Games you don't understand.

[tsg]

There's an old con-artist saying:

"You can't cheat an honest man."

Re:So much spam!

[krisguy]

My e-mail address tends to change every 2-3 years. So far I've had this new one about 5 months perhaps, and only get one spam e-mail every week or so. Of course, I don't know how much of this is because my ISP is doing its part to stop spam.

I don't know how much my ISP is doing to stop spam either. That's why I decided to build my own mail server. At least this way if I get spam, I can block the address and/or host with a little change to my access file.
I know that there are better ways to do it, but for the little amount of mail I get, it makes me feel good I can do something to stop the spam.

Nuisance Suits

[Omkar]

Anyone know of efforts to stop spammers by pestering them with nuisance suits that they have to defend? Could work, at least until they move abroad.

Or we could just burn them for fuel.

And this is why...

[foxtrot]

We will probably always be stuck with spam.

I keep looking at it and saying, "Who buys this stuff? Who's so stupid to buy stuff from a spammer?" I look at it and wonder how spamming could possibly be profitable. ...and then we find people who believe they can buy a drivers' license that'll reinstate their revoked one and make them immume to speeding tickets.

As P.T. Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute, and I get the feeling if he were around today, he'd find lots of money in spam...

Re:SPAM will go away - eventually

[Anonymous Coward]

YOu'd think so, but then I saw a page that was ranting about spam. It included some examples. Turned out the guy had *lots* of emails asking him for more information - about the spam.

When you read them, many of them are young guys, 13, 15 etc. They are too naive to know that life doesn't work like that.

Re:81 spam?

[greenius]

Surely, the point is you shouldn't need to obfuscate your email address when posting it in a public place, or to set up fake hotmail accounts.

For example, If I advertise sometime in the classifieds of the local paper I can put my real phone number and don't expect to get added to any direct mailing lists because of it.

If I put my real physical postal address on my web site I won't get inundated with extra junk mail.

But put your real email address anywhere on the web/internet and you start to receive spam in a very short time, the majority being for illegal items (if not they should be, e.g. fake univerity degrees) or things that are not applicable in the country I live (e.g. refinancing loans).