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)."

Comments

Government in action

[rcathcart]

after receiving about 46,000 complaints

You've got to wonder why they didn't wait for 100,000.

Re:Government in action

[dragoncortez]

In related news, the former Iraqi Minister of Information held a press conference that the reports of spam are all lies. "These reports of alleged unrequested email are all falsifications of the infidels." He went on to claim that email itself is simply a hallucination brought on by watching Fox News.

Re:Government in action

[Rick.C]

You've got to wonder why they didn't wait for 100,000.

Thank God they didn't!

I don't think I could have typed another 54,000.

It's a shame

[Evil Adrian]

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.

Re:It's a shame

[ralico]

Well, if they did, it would be a new avenue for pr0n spam, "Get Free pics of spammers getting poiunded in prison..."

Re:It's a shame

[wwcsa]

Or: "Planning to pound a spammer in prison? Try the latest in penis enlargement technology...."

Re:It's a shame

[Tackhead]

> > [ debate about whether one gets more ass-pounding in federal or state prisons snipped ]
>
> It's a shame that you think state sanctioned torture is acceptable! Why the hell would you endorse rape?!

Whoa, wait a minute there. This is spammer ass we're talking about getting pounded.

That's not rape. Bestiality, sure, but not human-on-human nonconsensual sex.

Besides, the fact that he's the "married but lonely" spammer... the irony is positively delicious. Wait'll he finds out just how "lonely" Guido's been, especially having been locked away from his wife for six years, with his only email contacts with the outside world have been thousands of spams telling him about all that h0t 4ss cr4v1ng h4rd d1ck1ng!

Mr. Westby, while you serve your time, may you be buggered repeatedly (if you don't want Guido's unsolicited dickings every night, just OPT OUT!), may you contract AIDS from said buggerings (if you wanted to be protected from viruses, you should have bought a pirated copy of NORTON SYSTEMWORKS 2003 from George Allen Moore!), may the disease cripple and sicken you for years (you could have taken EFFECTIVE HERBAL REMEDIES to prevent this!), and may you finally die after a protracted but ultimately futile battle with pneumonia.

May the last thing you hear be the echoing of your raspy breath against the cold steel walls, may the last thing you smell be the latex on the gloves of the medic who intubates you, and may the last thing you taste be your own blood-tinged sputum, and may every other spammer on the face of the earth be watching, live, via webcam.

Yes, Mr. Westby, you and your kind are that hated.

FTC - you rule. Sometimes it's necessary to put a few heads on pikes, "pour encourager les autres." Please. MORE HEADS. MORE PIKES.

Lonely

[The Bungi]

The FTC accused Brian D. Westby, of suburban St. Louis, of using the e-mail spam operation to drive business to an adult Web site called "Married But Lonely."

Hopefully Mr. Westby will heretofore be "Lonely with Guido" in a minimum security facility for at least a few years.

We can only hope.

Maybe...

[Madsci]

...if we get 46,000 complaints about Rick Berman, the FTC will take some action!

Bogus Unsubscribe addresses...

[lionchild]

Consumers who selected an option to ``unsubscribe'' and stop receiving these e-mails received an error message, the agency said.

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?

Re:Bogus Unsubscribe addresses...

[Suidae]

It seems that the usual method is to take a master list or lists and generate new lists from it. Any requrest to be taken off 'the mailing list' are honored by removing the names not from the master list, but from the generated list (if it wasn't simply deleted). As a bonus the address identified in the remove request can be marked as 'known live' so that the spammer can make new lists of 'known live' address to sell to other spammers.

Legislation on remove requests is just stupid, there are too many ways around it. Better legislation would simply require that all penis enlargment messages be flagged as such in the headers so users could filter it, with stiff penalties for violators.

Deceptive Subject Lines??

[ToadSprocket]

When consumers opened the e-mail messages, they were immediately subjected to sexually explicit solicitations

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.

They did...

[Chocolate Teapot]

... but the other 54,000 complaints turned out to be spam.

Re:Keep the government out of this!

[Evil Adrian]

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.

Not yet is right -- what if those spammers are trying to sell Weapons of Ass Destruction?

Who was the other person?

[chrysrobyn]

after receiving about 46,000 complaints

Okay, so my bash script was responsible for 32,767 of those, who was the other guy?

Re:46000

[GGardner]

The article didn't mention how many minutes it took for the FTC to get these 46k complaints...

I found someone who actually reads spam

[select * from]

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.