Slashdot Mirror
FTC vs Spammers
binaryDigit writes "The San Jose Mercury News has an article on the FTC getting ready to take action on an (alleged) spammer. 'The Federal Trade Commission said today that after receiving about 46,000 complaints it had asked a federal judge to halt the operation.' Too bad it took 46000 complaints to prompt some action, but at least some action is being taken. The FTC will focus on the "deception" involved (innocent and misleading subject lines, bogus (but real) from/reply to addresses, etc)."
after receiving about 46,000 complaints
You've got to wonder why they didn't wait for 100,000.Microsoft please hi
About time :)
Lets see if it actually helps deter them or if it just forces them to take different paths to annoying us further...
-DaedalusHKX
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
It's a shame that nowhere in the article does the FTC even imply that the spammer will be sent to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
evil adrian
Hopefully Mr. Westby will heretofore be "Lonely with Guido" in a minimum security facility for at least a few years.
We can only hope.
Don't use my phone, email, pager, mail, or any personal communications methods to try and sell me something without my prior consent.
God spoke to me
46000, and then they decide to take action... that's awful.
- colin
This is the obligatory SPAM thread plug for bayesian filtering.
If you're not already doing it, give it a go in one of its many forms.
I've been using POPFile for ages and it works a treat.
...if we get 46,000 complaints about Rick Berman, the FTC will take some action!
Your paranoia is about as subtle as the alien probe in your neck.
Does this mean that Slashdot can now sue trolls and crapflooders?
All spammers are bad, but they gotta start with the worst in these cases. It's true that a deceptive email subject line bringing you to a porn site is alot worse than someone trying to sell you a pair of shoes (to parents anyway).
So even if it's not everything, it's a step in the right direction, I am happy
Posting useless rant since 2003.
Possibly uce@ftc.gov? That's the address I've been sending them to.
"Want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first." - My Dad
Yeah, that's just what we need -- governments passing laws to outlaw things that the majority of the population doesn't like. I wonder other unpopular things they're looking at banning. At least Ashcroft hasn't labeled spammers as enemy combatants engaged in cyberterrorism and shipped them all off to Guantonomo Bay without a trial -- yet.
Why do all these news submitters keep on analyzing the stories they are submitting? It really bugs me when people say "too bad" or "microsoft should learn" or whatever in a NEWS ARTICLE... analyzing is what the discussion is for.
The FTC has become a joke lately. Even Congress thinks so (on the issue of privacy).
From credit to business mergers to privacy, and, yes, spam, the FTC seems to always screw up something. (While the companies were busy forgetting due diligence, you can bet the FTC was, too...)
They'll likely compile a list of all the email addresses that were spammed to and make them available to spammers.
Now that's my government working for me!
justen
Y'know, it's funny how while laws might require them to have an address to contact to become unsubscribed from the list, I'm wondering where the enforcement is. Or, where they're required to have a working address?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Oh cmon, these people are so picky. What sort of shut-in do you have to be to consider sex with dogs and horses "sexually explicit"?
Sheesh.
If this article confuses you, don't worry. It was posted yesterday in a much clearer fashion.
... but the other 54,000 complaints turned out to be spam.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
We've seen info on some spammers with their mansions and high priced lifestyles paid for by spam revenues here on /.
As long as they are hit with simple fines or only shut down temporarily, or only forced to change their tactics, they'll keep going. They make too much money to stop.
They'll only stop when sending spam costs more than their rewards. When they are fined enough or sued for enough that they lose their expensive new houses and other trappings of luxery, then they'll think about it.
In the meantime, don't expect the FTC or anyone from the Bush administration to do anything more than slap the hand of anyone making a good deal of money.
Okay, so my bash script was responsible for 32,767 of those, who was the other guy?
If you outlaw spam, only criminals will have spam. They can take my spam from me when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Over 50% of the people in the United States do not unwanted solicitation to private communication. Yet the laws don't change to reflect the people's desires. Go democracy.
God spoke to me
Cut them some slack, OK? Even Government bureaucrats have to use the can now and then.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You got first post, because you didn't take the time to use the shift key.
and he said: Praise be to O'Reilly
Microsoft please hi
If it's going to take over 40k in e-mails per spammer to get the FTC to take action, think how much in terms of time and resources it's going to cost us just to report these guys. It's almost as if the FTC is some sort of reverse spammer, draining network resources by forcing us to spam them to get them to do something about spamming... Somewhat ironic if nothing else.
Overrated Moderation: This posts sucks... because.
Hey Malda, why didn't you convert your patent encumbered gifs to png?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
s/heretofore/hereinafter/
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
A slashdot article FTC Encourages Consumers to Forward Them Spam was posted on September 7, 2002 stating that the FTC wanted people to forward them spam at uce@ftc.gov.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Well, they once worked. Of course, after the first few thousand complaints, even Hotmail and Yahoo pull the plug. Besides, they were over quota (it's not like anyone was actually reading them, after all.)
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Ah, I guess the scare halted all the porn emails I've been getting on hotmail.
Using a practice called ``spoofing,'' the spam also contained false information about who sent the e-mail, the FTC said. Responses to the spam flooded the e-mail accounts of people uninvolved with the operation.
We all just need to change our corporate spam filters, to forward all unwanted spam to the FTC. I'm sure that will get the ball moving...
I'm a bit confused about how these addresses were both "bogus (but real)?" Would someone like to clarify the author's intent with this comment?
Thanks.
who carries a pager now adays let alone spams them?
Please God let it be those fuckers carpet bombing the planet with the 'Click Here to meet Married Women in your town' spam. Their return address and Subject lines morph into something different every message, the entire message is HTML encoded to break up every character of every word (makes it a bitch to filter,) and they are fire-hosing down every email address I have so I don't think it was me 'opting-in' to anything because I wouldn't have opted in every damn email address I have.
If it is this Brian D Westby fellow doing this, I say douse him in gasoline and light his ass on fire.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
is this funny?
parent poster is obviously a moron...I couldnt have done a better job of pointing it out
I run a small mail server with a dozen or so accounts. I have been using spamassassin for quite a while and it has been awesome.
However, there have been a slew of recent spams that have made it through. The subject lines are simple things such as "Hello". This is also the same subject line of ALL of my mother's emails; after all, that's how she answers the phone. The content is nothing more than an image tag pointing to a screenshot of the ad. Spamassassin doesn't complain since there is not enough wrong with the email - they usually score around 1 or 2 (which is way too low to set a threshold, 5 is reasonable). I could alter the scoring rules, but that would create way too many false positives since many emails are just links to political cartoons and the like.
I don't think bayesian filtering would help the problem.
I keep forwarding them to uce@ftc.gov. Maybe I'll submit the 46,000th entry and win a prize!
Seriously. It's about time these lowlife scumbags do something about the other lowlife scumbags flooding the net with porn. I have over 150 filters on my mail server now, and I JUST started seeing real results. (I'm not going to say what I did) Anyone in the "know" knows that these unsubscribe pages are either fake (enter *@* and see what happens) or used to confirm good addresses. The fucked up thing is that who knows what legit mail is being lost due to the filters we're forced to use.
I hope all spammers' souls live an deternity in a horrible place. I have more admiration for pimps and bag ladies than I do these people.
So, my new script will be to forward this crap to every House member and Senator.
Here's the actual FTC announcement...
Why do I h8 apple?
I'd say you were the mongoloid if you can't figure out how to block a single spammer. Moron.
I agree - when I see Enterprise in the subject line of the TV Guide, I immediately go it it, expecting that I will be viewing a show about Star Trek. When I do open it, it is just porn (with pointed ears).
Result? In Outlook, you get all your POP3 accounts and Hotmail, delivered into one inbox with no spam. Never need to manually check Hotmail etc. And with a hotsync, it all goes into my Palm Tungsten T. Sweet. And for the un-1337, POPFile is easy to setup and use on Wind0z3 b0x3n :)
One more thing... DISABLE ANTIVIRUS E-MAIL SCANNING before you install POPFile. Don't re-ename the scanning software until after everything is talking to everything else perfectly.
Is it possibly for stories to be posted without someone's cynical or uninformed opinion? Yes, I realize this is Slashdot but it is beyond annoying at this point. How does the submitter know what the relevance of the number of complaints is? Maybe the FTC has some minimum number of people that must complain before they take action and many of the complaints were from the same person.
...why spammers continue making money is that people continue to click through to their sites. People still are sending their credit card numbers via non-SSL enabled pages to them. People still seem to believe their manhood/member can be 3"-6" longer in mere weeks.
There have been studies in the Boston area, where I live, that demonstrates a few simple utopian rules that would significantly reduce traffic in the area- one of them being that if people allow some space between themselves and the car in front of them, much of the traffic congestion could be avioded. On the spam issue, if people stopped falling for the ads, got a little educated, and didn't allow themselves to be so easily deceived, then the problem would be significantly reduced and only the most illegal of spamming would make itself obvious.
Au contraire..
...
FTC privacy regulations are being accused of being too hard to follow for website operators! Aren't Slashfolk for _more_ privacy?
FTC apparently is doing a pretty good job overall..
Excerpts from recent Wall Street Journal article:
(April 4th 2003 by John Wilke)
"Devout Reaganite Becomes
An Unlikely Enforcer at FTC"
"Indeed, of the few federal regulatory agencies that really matter, his stands out because it's functioning vigorously: The Federal Communications Commission is nearly paralyzed, with board members in open revolt against the chairman; Harvey Pitt went down in flames at the Securities and Exchange Commission; and the Justice Department antitrust chief, Charles James, resigned amid criticism that he was a reluctant enforcer who caved on the Microsoft Corp. case.
Mr. Muris, unexpectedly, has become an aggressive enforcer. He's filed lawsuits against drug makers for cutting cozy deals with rivals and moved to promote competition where it is lacking in the health-care business, by investigating hospital mergers and alleged price fixing by doctors' groups. He has clipped attorneys' fees in class-action cases and told lawyers they aren't needed to close real-estate transactions. He has scolded funeral directors for banning online casket sales and targeted state rules used to restrict the sale of wine on the Internet. He has forced Microsoft to drop plans to harvest consumer data from its software, and in antitrust -- despite predictions that he'd be a soft touch for business -- he has challenged mergers in markets from ice cream to pickles.
Mr. Muris's most visible public legacy may be a federal "do not call" system to protect Americans from telemarketers, which he pushed through despite resistance from his own party in Congress. The system could be in operation as soon as this summer, allowing consumers an easy way to shield themselves from dinnertime calls from telemarketers."
"Most votes on the agency's five-member board are now unanimous. "We're the only game in town right now, where government is actually looking out for consumers," says Mozelle Thompson, a Democratic commissioner and early Muris critic who is now an ally."
On dealing with spam:
"Mr. Muris dropped that tack and instead boosted law-enforcement resources by 50%, and began prosecuting more identity-theft and fraud cases. He targeted unwanted e-mail by filing charges against hundreds of deceptive spammers. And he delighted in showing visitors "the refrigerator," a large data-storage unit deep in the FTC's granite headquarters where the nastiest forms of spam are stored and studied by FTC sleuths.
Consumer advocates say the FTC hasn't gone far enough to stem the rising tide of junk e-mail. "We're disappointed they haven't done more," said James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, a Ralph Nader-affiliated nonprofit. He specifically criticizes Mr. Muris's decision not to seek new laws to restrict spammers."
WOAH.. the FTC commissioner wants to use existing laws instead of passing new fun filled blanket laws?
This happened about 2 weeks ago.
Our internal email in our office scans incoming and outgoing mail for viruses, spam, etc. Some spam slips through. In this case it was one of the numerous increase penile length spams.
When an email that is sent out and is blocked for some reason we are automatically notified. In this case someone forwarded the penile lotion lengther spam back to his home account so presumably he could read it later at home and perhaps try the product. This time it actually caught the spam going out when he tried forwarding it.
This "someone" was the president of our company. So far he hasn't asked us why the email he forwarded didn't go through. Of course we'll know if he eventually got it to go through when he starts wearing a loin cloth to work.
Some people consider this to be a nice surpise. "Oh look! It's porn and here I thought it was something about my resume". Then their spirits are lifted for a short while!
:)
Back in the land of reality this spammer should burn in hell
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
Unless someone's prison hotmail account got so spam-bloated that they missed some good pr0n attachments a buddy on the outside sent them, I doubt anyone in prison really cares about spamming. They'd probably be like, "You got sent to prison for throwing meat at people? wtf".
It only takes that many complaints for the FTC to do something about a Spammer? Geeze... Thats not alot.. Should be Soo easy to wipe out the big Spam kings if it only takes 46,000 complaints to the FTC... considering there are Willions of people that it pisses off enough to do something about it... Not many know what to do about it... I Guess the answer is Complain to the FTC!
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
whois.networksolutions.com
Registrant:
Westby, Brian D. (PORNSEEKER2-DOM)
1752 S. 5th St.
SAINT CHARLES
MO,63303
US
Domain Name: PORNSEEKER.NET
Administrative Contact:
Westby, Brian (BW11618) bryanwestby@WORLDNET.ATT.NET
Westby, Brian D.
1752 S. 5th St.
SAINT CHARLES , MO 63303
3149161554
Technical Contact:
ValueWeb (HOS237-ORG) hostmaster@VALUEWEB.NET
ValueWeb
3250 West Commercial Blvd. #200
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33309
US
954-334-8000 fax: 954-334-8001
Record expires on 24-Aug-2005.
Record created on 24-Aug-1999.
Database last updated on 4-Jan-2003 04:28:55 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.CALIFORNIA.NET 216.131.95.20
NS1.OAKWEB.COM 216.131.94.5
There's this enormous flood washing over us, and we see a few tiny people down there, holding up their hands trying to stop the massive amounts of water drowning the village.
Yeah, that'll work.
I hardly think this is the kind of crime we should be sending people to jail over. I'm of the opinion that jail is something that should be reserved for violent offenders; and maybe repeat non-violent offenders. For the same reason I think it's absurd to send a kid to jail for downloading mp3s, I don't think this guy belongs in jail.
On the other hand, I'd be more than happy to see him fined up the wazoo and opened up to lawsuits from victims.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
- Because the "Married But Lonely" spam forges the identity of the sender, it is
unclear whether Westby sends the spam himself or whether he employs someone else
to send it. Even if he does hire someone to send the spam, he is still liable
for these practices. Westby is liable for deceptive or unfair practices he engages
in himself or for those of his employees or agents who are acting on his behalf.
Under the FTC Act, a principal is liable for misrepresentations made by agents
with actual or apparent authority to make such representations, regardless of
any unsuccessful efforts by the principal to prevent such misrepresentations.
- See Southwest Sunsites, Inc. v. FTC, 785 F.2d 1431, 1438-39 (9th Cir. 1986);
FTC v. Skybiz.com, Inc., 2001 WL 1673645, at *9 (N.D. Okla. Aug. 31, 2001);
FTC v. Five-Star Auto Club, Inc., 97 F. Supp. 2d 502, 527 (S.D.N.Y. 2000).
It is inappropriate for a principal to "`reap the fruits from their [agents']
acts and doings without incurring such liabilities as attach thereto."' Skybiz.com,
2001 WL 1673645, at *9 (quoting Goodman v. FTC, 244 F.2d 584, 591-92 (9th
Cir. 1957)).
Note what the FTC is saying. They don't even have to prove that the business being advertised by spam paid the spammer. If someone benefitted from the spam, the beneficiary is liable.If a court agrees, as is likely, you don't sue spammers any more. You go after the deep pocket - the business being advertised. This is going to bring spamming on behalf of legitimate businesses to a screeching halt.
Run all incoming mail through Spam Assassin and forward any message that are found spam to the FTC with the subject changed to "Complaint about spammer info and proof within". Lets say that only 0.01% of the population does it and lets assume that there are 7*10^6 net users that each recive 10 spams/days. So that's 7*10^4 e-mails to the FTC a day, every day.
I wonder how many orders to cease operations will this cause
--
Lets make spam the new game of Russian Rollete.
"This is going to bring spamming on behalf of legitimate businesses to a screeching halt."
Perhaps... But 90% of the shit these guys peddle is hardly legitimate.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
With this cost effective ... err..never mind. I just read your message. So sorry, I won't spam you anymore.
:)
Yeah, whatever.
My journal has hot
Pay up sucker
Feel free to make this guys life hell. I've received over 100 of his mortgage offers in the past two weeks and asking to be removed from his mailing list has done no good.
Here is the raw output for domain n0hastlem0rtgage.com:
Organization:
none
Mike Stone
12345 Stone rd
Stoneville, CA 92504
US
Phone: 916.123.4567
Email: vialead@yahoo.com
Amazingly enough, his yahoo account has already been terminated.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
The FTC taking action against Microsoft or Disney because 100 people sent email to the FTC might sound funny, but you wouldn't be laughing when your or a friend's small buisness got shut down because some joker thought it would be funny or a neighbor was annoyed and a single email was enough to get the FTC moving.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Why post a question we all know the answer to?
For one thing, not all of us know the answer to.
For another thing, spambots spidering Slashdot will pick up a highly moderated post and add uce@ftc.gov to their spam lists.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Do not use this info without a second source to verify... but I have reason to believe Brain Westby is very much tied to this company: "321studios.com", which is little more than a 5-10 person operation with Brian quite near the top. The company is struggling for cash, and uses many "schemes" to keep the operation afloat (or maybe the parent company is just a cover for the spam operation...). Please some else find out, it's possible I'm way off base here.
I don't see any real difference between this guy's spam and someone selling shoes via spam, a dating service, or viagra. The crime (in my opinion) if the theft of my bandwidth - so if his emails are larger (due to pictures) then he's worse than someone sending text-only spam. But to me that's based solely on the size of the message, not its content.
If he's selling kiddie porn, priated software, or illegal drugs (perscriptions also) then that spam is evidence of another related crime. But I think that sending spam (with forged headers and no UCE flags) is all equally bad per byte without reguard to its content.
This is a good thing. 46k complaints is not that many, when you consider just how many people there are. It's not fair to directly compare that with the population, becuase it just wouldn't work, but It's still a small percentage of people that complained.
How many of us actually sent an email to the ftc complaining about spam? I bet most of the people bitching about this taking so long never formally complained.
The fact is, no government can respond to every complaint. I hardly hear anyone saying 'yaay, something good's coming out of this'. Oh wait, i know. Dems can't give any credit to President Bush's administration.
Hey, here's a thought. If it takes 46,000 users to alert the FTC to spam, perhaps the FTC should be 'opted-in' to a few of the things we're subjected to. Why bother directly complaining? Let the government attempt to sort out their own mailboxes for a while!
Send your spam to *.GOV - heh.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Deceptive subject lines,
Forged headers (criminal impersonation?),
Harmed reputation of third parties (tort),
The indecent content to minors angle,
Non-functional "remove" link, and
An offensive "product".
Yes, this one has pushed about every "hot button" imaginable. A more unsympathetic defendant would be harder to find. If they convict him, it can set a precedent that not only allows them to prosecute other spammers, but fires a big warning shot at all the other spam kings. Go for it!
I was excited by the prospect of not having to manually check hotmail and discovered that HotPop is Windows only.
Thanks to sourceforge, I'm about to install:
http://hotwayd.sourceforge.net/
I can't recommend it or comdemn it since I'm just now researching on how to configure it for my system, but its sourceforge page says that it is stable/production fwiw.
His punishment: His address will be given to Slashdot, who will proceed to bury him alive under mountains of dead-tree style spam
Can 45999 of you do me a huge favor and complain about the bastards spamming me with stupid "find the best loans ever" bullshit. Unsubscribing just rotates your email from one of their lists to another, 4 of which i am on. I'd be more likley to buy a rolex from a bum than get a loan from a spammer. After trying everything else I eventually told one WFiege@aol.com (administrativ contact for MASTERLOANZ.com) exactly that, but they think more spam will change my mind.
Id be eternally greatfull to whoever can tell me who is hosting their website at http://200.216.233.100/masterloanz/ so i can complain some more (yeah)...I ask cause their site isnt acutally hosted by godaddy.com which is where The MASTERLOANZ.com name is registered.
Too bad it took 46000 complaints to prompt some action
Here at home, I usually average about 74,000 complaints before I get any action. *sigh*
Now consider that at that ratio, you would basically need 11,500 of me to do this per week for four weeks. Seeing as it's more likely that the UCE addr4esws provided is not well known, it's more likely that it took a couple of months to amass that many spam complaints regarding this.
This sig no verb.
And in other news the government has now agreed to accept that anyone receiving "large volumes" of unwanted snail mail is probably a spammer. They are asking all postal employees to report possible spammers.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
I did not unsubscribe! Maybe that is why I get so much spam.
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
I'm not an American (I wonder how much karma I lose for saying that?) but if I was I'd be mailing my congressperson to complain about the FTC not doing their job properly.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
They're not going after the spammer, they're going after the person who sent them 46,000 messages.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
They'll likely compile a list of all the email addresses that were spammed to and make them available to spammers.
Oh yeah, if I were a spammer, the addresses I'd want to add to my list are people who previously complained about spam to the FTC. That'll be great for business!
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Have you ever gotten spam from the email account you were using? Now that's scary. For example say my email address is Joe123@hotmail.com and I get an spam from Joe123@hotmail.com. That's happened to me. Does anyone have similar experiences? Anyone understand how it happens?
In the meantime, don't expect the FTC or anyone from the Bush administration to do anything more than slap the hand of anyone making a good deal of money.
I don't think it is that simple. Drug dealers and porn producers can make tons of money, and the Bush people love to kick their asses. Where spammers fall on their moral scale is anyones guess.
Include a nice donation, and maybe they'll listen to you. Seriously, these agencies have much to do with limited resources. They can't possibly investigate every complaint even if their resources were increased orders of magnitude (and that's not about to happen with a recession going on). Their best strategy is to prosecute the big fish, and make a big splash doing so. That scares off a significant number of the small fry, providing the maximum possible benefit for the money spent. Perfect, it isn't--but it's as good as you can do under the circumstances. There's bigger problems in the world than spammers.
Please call 888-340-9733 and ask about the special on Penis Enlargers or Boob Enhancers. He (Robert) has great offers ;
He also sells SPAMWARE as well. He will be happy to hear from inquiring customers ; >
Please check out
Info on Soloway
Please send Catalogs to:
Business Addr:
279 Granite St.
Ashland OR
Alleged Home Addr:
1547 Upland Place
Medford Or 97501
Remember, waste SPAMMER's time & money like they waste our's.
This is the obligatory SPAM thread plug for bayesian filtering.
:)
That's missing the point. So I haven't seen any spam for a while -- so what, I'm still paying for it! I still have all the associated bandwidth costs, and my ISP still has those plus the associated storage costs (which, of course, they pass along to me and their other customers). Spam isn't a problem that can be solved by shutting your eyes and pretending its not there. It's time for a MILITARY solution! Bomb the suckers back to the stone age!
Thank you so very much for that link, that is the best thing ever.
I have a rule so all [SPAM?] tags get sent to uce@ftc.gov and I see that atleast 50 a day go there and I have been doing that for atleast 3 months now..