AOL Sues Spammers

mabu writes "Prompted by what they're reporting as over eight million complaints and the result of over a billion inbound junk e-mails, according to this press release, America Online is now stepping up its battle against spam by initiating five lawsuits against over a dozen companies and individuals. Let's hope this is the beginning of a more aggressive effort on the part of ISPs to prove to their users that they are seriously interested in addressing this issue, and at its source. I've maintained that this has never been a freedom of speech issue. It's more an issue of mail relay hijacking, forging header information, and exploiting third-party networks and resources. Perhaps if more ISPs took action, we might see the backbone providers doing so as well?"

Comments

Re:May as well be the first to say it

[k-0s]

So they sue spammers (that's good) but spam my postal mail box with CD's and they think it's ok? I'm a little bit confused.

backbone

[Eric Smith]

Perhaps if more ISPs took action, we might see the backbone providers doing so as well?

Much though I hate spam (I get several hundred a day), I certainly hope you're not proposing that the backbone providers should try to classify or filter traffic. This should be done near the edge of the internet, not in the middle. The risk of misidentification is too high.

Difference..

[Inoshiro]

Online spam can't be opted out of, nor is there a cost to the spammer for sending it.

I think the greater weirdness is how /.ers hate spam, but when AOL fights spam (by blocking netblocks and sueing spammers), most /.ers who are moderated up are against it.

So which is it? Do we support the largest ISP's action against spam, or do we suck up the spam?

Re:AOL doing something...helpful?

[Pharmboy]

AOL is actually doing something that may result in the 'net becoming a better place? Talk about Shock and Awe! Alas, I seriously doubt it's out of the kindness of their corporate heart...more likely, it's because they're desperate to do something to improve the appearance of their customer service and corporate image.

My guess is that with 20 something million customers complaining and over a billion spam emails at your gate every day, composing 1/3 of the total email traffic, their reason is good business. Spam is raising their mail related IT expenses to be 1/3 more than they should be. It is costing them millions. If I owned AOL stock, I would want them to do this, to decrease costs, improve customer relations and lend more credibility to their own OPT in programs, thus make my stock worth more money. IMHO, AOL is conducting good business practices with this, and we are likely to see more of it.

Then again, I never thought AOL was evil. Lame, maybe. Laughable, sometimes. Self distructive, often. But not evil, naw. Big companies screw themselves without any help from us. But AOL is right on the money this time.

Its kinda like worrying about a cat being stuck in a tree. I mean, how many cat skeletons do you see stuck in trees?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Legit Mass Mail Getting Screwed

[!Squalus]

Well, there is also the problem that a lot of us receive email from companies that CLAIM exactly what you are claiming - that we somehow signed on for their crap when we did not ever do that at all. So if you want to see a real difference in legitimate business email - then by God, poilce your own. I don't know of one of those "Unsubscribe" email links I would ever hit, because then the spam meisters would simply tag that as a legitimate e-mail address. SO you see, it's your own industry's damn fault for causing us all the unnecessary bandwidth hogging, lost productivity and other garbafge we don't want. I am so friggin' tired of the SPAM promoters eating up bandwidth and ISP's saying - "it ain't my fault" - that I would rather see a few SPAMMERS be strung up than have to deal with it everyday. Maybe then they might stop sending me the stupid pr0n, drugs, and mortgage emails. I don't need their stinking cable descramblers or stupid SystemWorks either and I sure as hell don't need no damn DRM enabled e-books either. SPAMMERS deserve to be sent up into space in the first "sun refueling rockets". It is their moral duty to burn. Sorry, I just don't see any legitimate way you can expect anyone to want to hit an unsubscribe link - people know that those lists are then sold to SPAMMERS. Get a new business maybe?

Re:May as well be the first to say it

[slumos]

You aren't paying extra for trash pickup to deal with the pound or two of junkmail that you get each week.

Sure you are. Junk mail is not just close to 100% of my total mail, it's a significant part of my total trash from all sources. Garbage trucks have a finite size, so as the amount of trash each household throws out increases, the only choice is to shrink existing routes and add new ones to compensate.

When that happens, do you suppose the company:

• a) allows their bottom line to decrease, or
• b) raises your rates

?

The worst part is that while AOL has to pay, the spammers don't.

Huh? It certainly doesn't cost less to send a billion messages than it does to receive a billion messages. I'm sure it costs more.

If AOL has something to defend against, it's people who sign up, start getting 100 spams for every actual message immediately, and cancel. I happen to believe this is the single largest problem facing Internet penetration in comsumer markets today.

--- anti-spam and anti-BS.

Re:May as well be the first to say it

[gujo-odori]

AC> Nor are you charged by the byte of spam delivered to your email account.

How do you know? A lot of people are charged either for bandwidth, bytes transferred, telco connect time, ISP connect time, or some combination of those. It depends on where you live and/or what kind of service you have. Where I live, I pay per minute for both the ISP and telco connection. Any spam I get costs me money from my pocket. Want another example? How about a company with a co-lo or virtually hosted server in a data center? They may well be paying for both bandwidth and transfer volume. The more megabytes of spam they get per month, the higher their IT costs are.

Spam also costs money to the people whose relays are hijacked to send it. Some might argue that they deserve it, although I wouldn't agree. Their incompetence does not give anyone the right to violate their systems. Even if you think they deserve it, however, *I* don't deserve the end result - spam.

My mail is forwarded through a very aggressively anti-spam ISP where I used to live, so I don't see nearly as much as my wife does (her local ISP does nothing at all about spam), but one spam is one too many.

Suing spammers will help, but to really get to them, spamming will have to become a crime. Use a relay, go to jail.

Re:May as well be the first to say it

[BrokenHalo]

email variety is a worse misuse of resources, considering the volume

Worse than chopping down trees? Not to mention the side-effects of the CD production and disposal process. Your priorities worry me...