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AOL Sues Spammers

Posted by timothy on from the pink-mist dept.

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?"

4 of 322 comments (clear)

  1. Re:May as well be the first to say it by k-0s · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  2. backbone by Eric+Smith · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.
  3. Difference.. by Inoshiro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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  4. Re:May as well be the first to say it by gujo-odori · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.