Microsoft and the SPAM Game

The Seattle Times reported a while ago that Microsoft is pushing for Washington State Senate Bill 5734 which will overturn most of Washington State's laws that specify monetary penalties for companies who send out spam. This will completely exempt ISPs from current Washington spam laws, which Microsoft just happens to be. It seems that they are jumping the gun a bit. They are having a company named Digital Impact (save that address for you spam filters) send the email for them. Thankfully I live in Seattle so maybe I can collect an easy $500 before Microsoft guts the current law.

Comments

This will completely exempt ISPs

[stratjakt]

Frankly it sounds like a good bill, and just because MS is supporting it doesnt mean you shouldnt.

Do you want the laws to lead down a path where your ISP is financially liable for your actions? Because that road goes to the place where your ISP turns over audited logs of everything you've done to avoid liabilities.

Panic story?

[m00nun1t]

How many people have actually gotten spam from Microsoft? I get a few newsletters which I can unsubscribe to at any time. I get very infrequent mails (once every month or two) which are generally pretty targeted to my interests, I think most of them have an opt out.

This sounds like the way "spam" should be sent - target, restrained, and with the option to opt out. I don't see a problem.

What experience have other people had?

Re:Why spam?

[Guppy06]

"Why the fuck does m$ need to spam?"

They don't. What they intend to do is interpose themselves between an advertiser and MSN's captive audience. They want to send other peoples' spam. For profit.

Oh, that's nice...

[allism]

You put some poor unsuspecting sap's e-mail address up to get harvested and slammed, when it's quite likely that the addresses were forged...

and I hate to tell you this, but spam.thatgeek.com sounds like an invitation to me...

Re:Great....

[GammaTau]

i think its the worst kind of spam possible. no other spam msg has made me feel so helpless and so angry. The fact is only hotmail itself could spam its users in this manner...they have a system where the "this is junk mail", "block sender" buttons etc, do not even appear when u view the msg.

I haven't read Hotmail terms of use and I don't feel like reading that legal stuff either, but at least in theory it would be completely acceptable to run a free public e-mail service that gets its income from sending advertisements to the users. Spam is, by definition, always unsolicited. If you have registered a free e-mail address and you've agreed the terms of use that give the provider the right to send you advertisements, then you have opted in.

Re:It's all the other spam...

[gizmonic]

Okay, I have a few problems with this, especially the comment, "Make ISPs responsible for ANY fraudulent email they transmit or relay. Legally reposnsible as in fines and jail terms.".

I work for an ISP. I spend about 30 minutes to an hour of my 8 hour day, 5 days a week, tracking down and banning people who spam through our network. Our SMTP server is locked down to our own IPs, and limited to the amount of email it will send for one user, and we have outbound port 25 filters in place across the network. But, people still spam. They run form mail scripts against unsecure servers (we can't exactly block port 80, now can we?). They find open relays running on other ports. And they spam, and I ban their asses.

Considering the amount of money and time (I'm not the only one at my company who devotes part of my workday to killing spammers) we spend fighting spam, you now suggest we become criminally liable for it? I can tell you right now, if that law passed, we would shut down our SMTP server and that would be that. No outbound mail for anyone. Don't have to worry about spam when their is no email, period.

You want a workable solution? Allow us to block access to anyone blocking caller ID. Most professional spammers block caller ID because they know we can and do block them by their phone number, if we can get it. But blocking access to anyone who blocks caller ID violates privacy rights according to the FCC and we can't do that. (Mom and Pop ISPs might be able to, but we are a wholesale ISP.)

Why would blocking by phone number work? Because professional spammers use stolen IDs (credit cards, names, etc) to buy a throw away account that they use until we knock them offline. (We get the subpeona's for logs all the time to track down these people. Most never get caught.) They can get 10 stolen credit card accounts in an hour. Phone numbers aren't as easy to change.

Take it from someone fighting spam in the trenches, the concept of billing an ISP for any "bad" mail that passed over their server would simply shut down email. Period.

I won't even get into the debate that if an ISP *were* responsible and accountable for every email you sent, you better damn well believe that they would read and approve of every email you sent before forwarding it. Yay Free Speech! (Free as in hand-cuffs.)

Whew. Enough ranting. Mod away... :)