Spammers Threaten Techdirt With Lawsuit

An anonymous reader writes "Found over at Declan McCullough's Politech, some spammers who had been written up in the NY Times found their contact info displayed on Techdirt, after they wrote about the NY Times story. Apparently, someone was trying to pull a Ralsky on the spammers. The spammers got pissed off and threatened to sue Techdirt - even though all the info was publicly available and other court cases have shown it's legal to post spammer's contact information. Techdirt, interestingly, took the contact info down because they feel that no one should get spammed. I'm kind of torn on this one. On the one hand, I respect Techdirt for taking such a stand, but on the other, I feel that the spammers clearly deserve to be spammed back. The fact that they threatened Techdirt, despite them not having done anything wrong (it wasn't even the folks at Techdirt who posted the info - but some readers), makes me even angrier at the spammer."

Comments

You have the money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you risk the lawsuit. We all know what American justice is like. I'm not suprised at all, and their decision (to pull the info) has nothing to do with morality, or right and wrong, just common sense.

Re:You have the money?

[frankie]

Then you risk the lawsuit.

RTFA. Techdirt specifically said the threat had nothing to do with their decision, since it was unlikely to happen and even less likely to succeed. They pulled the information out of respect for privacy.

Personally, I disagree. In general, a business has little or no right to privacy; their address is required by law to be public knowledge. IMHO, a business that intentionally intrudes on people's lives deserves none at all. But more importantly, contact information for Alyxsandra Sachs is public, not private:

• Whitepages
• Infospace
• Switchboard

Furthermore: from the NYT article: "These antispammers should get a life," she said. "Do their fingers hurt too much from pressing the delete key? How much time does that really take from their day?"

Between downloading it from our mail server, sorting it into a local folder, skimming the preview, and pressing delete, my office spends a couple thousand dollars a year in salaried employee time. Does that answer your question, Alyx?

Re:You have the money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore: from the NYT article [nytimes.com]: "These antispammers should get a life," she said. "Do their fingers hurt too much from pressing the delete key? How much time does that really take from their day?"

If it were only the time to delete the spam, I wouldn't be terribly upset. I did a back of the envelope calculation at a previous job and determined that my employer could save money by dedicating 2 people full time to stopping spam if they could reduce it by at least half. However, here are some of the costs of spam:

• I spend time deleting it. That is time I could spend doing more worthwhile things, like flossing the cat. I get to decide what is more important than spam. Any spammer who thinks otherwise can FOAD.
• It takes up space in my mailbox. When I'm down for days because of a storm, I risk other e-mail bouncing because spam is taking up my quota.
• It contains stuff that crashes some older mail clients.
• Spammers forge fake reply addresses. If you lie to me about one thing, everything you say is a lie.

Re:You have the money?

[minus_273]

ah you mean this:

Sachs, Alyxsandra

112 Catamaran St
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292
(310) 578-1728

Re:You have the money?

[www.sorehands.com]

If a company uses a baseless lawsuit to try to shut me up, I become louder.

Bullies should not be allowed to win. By allowing a bully to win, you encourage them to bully others.

Laughable.

[Tinfoil]

they feel that no one should get spammed

How very naive of them. Why shouldn't the people that force us to take extreme measures for a little bit of privacy, convenience, not be made to deal with the same garbage that we do?

Re:Laughable.

[bwalling]

How very naive of them. Why shouldn't the people that force us to take extreme measures for a little bit of privacy, convenience, not be made to deal with the same garbage that we do?

Because they are idealists, which means that they will never get anything done and they will always be inconvenienced by their ideals. That said, we can all benefit from those who believe so strongly in their ideals since the majority of us are weak enough to compromise our ideals any time it is convenient, profitable, fun, or whatever other excuse we invent.

Re:Laughable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having beliefs and living with them are two different things. Convictions mean the most when you can afford them the least.

Of course, what I think is interesting also it that ultimately it is the lawyers that won. Techdirt attracted attention to itself and the issue, the spammers had their information taken down (although I suspect more people will find that information in the Google cache or other websites) and the lawyers got their $500 fee for sending that letter.

Everyone wins, except us.

Every time a website that posts spammer's addresses recieves that letter, they remove it, but ask that some others continue the fight.This could create a model for civil disobedience, where the primary intent is to provide overwhelming numbers of targets that sending all of them cease and desist letters would be financially ruinous.

Just some thoughts.

Re:Laughable.

[Daetrin]

I've always been an eye for an eye type guy myself. If you knowingly commit a crime or immoral act, then you forgo your legal/moral protection from the same. No one complains when a thief gets fined or when the murdering bad guy in a movie gets killed (people get much more worked up about state-sanctioned death penalties, but that's more of a political thing)

If they want to send unsolicited junk mail, either because they think that it's okay, or they don't care that it's wrong, they've got no right to complain about the same thing being done to them, and people who have been spammed by them suffer no karmic penalty for doing so.

Likewise, if the spammers are going to try and claim that the right to free speech protects them, they've certainly got no right to try and sue people who use their right to free speech to tell their friends which incoming email addresses they should block.

Which spammers?

[gbjbaanb]

So, just out of idle curiosity you understand, who were these spammers that threatened the legal action?

Re:Which spammers?

[christoph_s]

it would be great if someone posted their addresses here - talk about going from bad to worse... i'd rather be flooded by the techdirt- than the slashdot crowd ;-)

The reason you're torn...

[DoofusOfDeath]

It's very much like capital punishment, or the "eye for an eye" rule in the Old Testament. The normal way out of this connundrum is a follows: What makes a certain act wrong, normally, is that a party without the proper authority does it. I.e., it's more OK for a judge to send someone to jail than for you to. Same thing in the Old Testament. You can't just go around killing other people, unless it's doing so to uphold a law established by God. So in this spamming scenario? If it's not breaking the law, then retribution at *least* seems just.

Re:The reason you're torn...

[Surlyboi]

If the whole world acted upon "an eye for an eye" then everyone would be blind.

Ah, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man
is king!

Moral? You get one eye poked out, hide out and wait
for the poking to stop, then declare yourself king.

Re:The reason you're torn...

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

OT reference: Exodus 21:22 "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely [5] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

Leviticus 24:19 If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. 21 Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death.

Deut 19:16 If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse a man of a crime, 17 the two men involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the LORD before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. 18 The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against his brother, 19 then do to him as he intended to do to his brother. You must purge the evil from among you. 20 The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. 21 Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

New Testament reference: Matthew 5:38 "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'[7] 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

The nature of the "eye for eye" in the OT was not one of personal revenge, but of defining appropriate punishments to be handed down by lawful authorities (i.e., the courts). What Jesus was referring to was the idea of taking the law into your own hands, and doing it out of a sense of revenge (justice's ugly cousin). It is also interesting that the OT seems to have the harshest words for people who commit perjury.

Re:The reason you're torn...

[fredklein]

It's all well and good to sit back in your comfy chair (or whatever) and say that a judicial system based on brutality would only affect "them" and not "us," but it simply isn't true.

Yes it is. With "them"= 'those that hurt others' and "us"= 'those that don't'.

Ever exceeded the speed limit? Ever crossed a street against the light?

Both of those are victimless crimes. No victim 'blinded', no need for the one who broke the law to be 'blinded', either.

?But our society embraces the idea of proportionality. If every teenager who ever shoplifted a pack of gum from the bodega were to have his hands cut off, we'd be living in a world of amputees.

Firstly, that's not necessarilly so. *I* don't steal- do you?
Secondly, this is a Strawman argument. The topic at hand is "an eye for an eye", not "lop off a hand for a pack of gum". YOU are the one ignoring proportionality.
A teenage gum-pack theif should have to give back the gum (or pay for it), and then be penalized the equivelent of an extra pack of gum. A pack of gum for a pack of gum.

So unless you're prepared to be the first person to step up and accept your wildly disproportionate "eye for an eye" punishment, shut up.


YOU are the one who thinks "an eye for an eye" means "lop off the hands of theives", and you tell ME my ideas are "disproportionate"?!?

It's a sad fact of modern life...

[JessLeah]

...that all it takes to bring virtually any effort to a screeching halt is for somebody with more money than you to threaten a lawsuit. At that point, whammo, you have to stop what you're doing.

When you are a small site, or an individual person without a tremendous income (read: everyone short of a CEO), that basically means "any company, or even individual, can threaten to sue you, and there goes whatever you were working on."

This seems to be a rather disturbing new part of our market reality.

Recall the DeCSS case. Several dozen named defendants, and several hundred "Does", were threatened in court by the DVD-CCA, acting as a representative of the interests of some of the largest companies on Earth. Whammo, most of the people capitulated, the courts bowed to the pressure of the RIAA's fat pocketbooks, and the DVD-CCA's will became law-- DeCSS is now effectively "illegal". Cases like this spam one seem to be the result of "trickle-down" thinking-- or as Star Control 2 would have it, "dribble-down"-- whereby smaller and smaller companies begin to adopt the same nasty tactics.

Let's face it-- if you run a small and/or non-profit site, and if some company or businessperson with lots of money (or even a moderate amount of money) makes a credible threat to send in the lawyers, you're at least as likely as not to give in to their pressure. It's simple survival instinct-- no one wants to get sued, especially (A) in this economy and (B) by someone with much fatter coffers than themselves.

What this is leading to is a situation where the rich can effectively (and, as close to possible, directly-- about the only more direct way would be to put a gun to one's head!) force the poor to do whatever they want. No laws (legal, moral or otherwise) really seem to touch the really "big fish" (RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, etc.), and they get away with a slap on the wrist-analogue at worst; now, even smaller entities like these spammers can effectively throw their monetary weight around to silence dot-bomb-impoverished techies running innocent sites.

I fear that this trend will become far more pervasive, and will get far worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better... I personally do not believe that the current Powers That Be in the US really care that much about "the little guys" getting spurious lawsuit threats every time they do something someone Richer-Than-Thou happens to dislike...

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[selderrr]

I agree with you, but compare this to the situation in the past : 100 years ago, we had the same issue with industrialists. 200 years ago with big farmers vs small farmers. 300 years ago with big guns vs small guns.
Don't pretend this to be the disease of the 21st century just because we're using the law instead of money or guns. And then again, the laws have always been bent by the guys in charge.

While i don't approve of it, it seems to be the nature of the human beast. It's amazing how we haven't exterminated ourselves.

As a side note : i find the way Berlusconi is CEO of Italy far more frightening than what the US is doing. After all, we europeans excpect US politicians to be puppets in the hands of the big corporations. But Berlusconi is a whole other matter.

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[surprise_audit]

Recall the DeCSS case. Several dozen named defendants, and several hundred "Does", were threatened in court by the DVD-CCA, acting as a representative of the interests of some of the largest companies on Earth. Whammo, most of the people capitulated, the courts bowed to the pressure of the RIAA's fat pocketbooks, and the DVD-CCA's will became law-- DeCSS is now effectively "illegal".

I realize this is wishful thinking, and way too late, but what do you suppose would have happened if the various DVD-player-for-Windows software houses had taken that lesson to heart and declined to produce their players? Would the sudden lack of legal players for Windows have had a noticeable effect on the MPAA? It would certainly have had some effect on their potential market, but would it have been enough?

Ah well, too late now. And anyway, it would only have required one software house to not give a damn...

BTW, do any of the legal Windows DVD players work well in Linux?

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[Rick.C]

Let's face it-- if you run a small and/or non-profit site, and if some company or businessperson with lots of money (or even a moderate amount of money) makes a credible threat to send in the lawyers, you're at least as likely as not to give in to their pressure. It's simple survival instinct-- no one wants to get sued, especially (A) in this economy and (B) by someone with much fatter coffers than themselves.

The issue here is your "comfort zone." If you, a geek, start talking tech in a threatening way to your techno-phobe neighbor, he's not going to argue with you or try to fight back. He's out of his element. Same with a geek who is being intimidated by someone who is law-savvy. We tend to cringe, apologize and hope they go away. The fact that they might be able to hurt us financially makes us take their threats seriously. If they did the same thing to a lawyer they would probably get a far different response.

Think about it - you and you neighbor have a little spat about a fence or a barking dog or something. You threaten to "route his Roadrunner connection through your proxy sniffer and VPN his DoS to every kiddie-porn site in the country." Imagine the expression on his face. What are his options? Hire a techie to defend himself? That costs money. He doesn't even understand what you said, except that it sounds bad and you sound serious. He's gonna fold.

What we really need to do to stop this legal-bullying is to get more familiar with the law.

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[CausticWindow]

If this is indeed how americans view their legal system, then I think it's time for them (you) to do something to change it.

It's one thing that your only measure of quality of life is wealth, another one entirely that relative amount of money is the only thing separating right from wrong. While the judicial system is no absolute in right vs. wrong in theory, it is in practice.

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[JessLeah]

It's mighty easy for someone (an American or otherwise) to throw that idea around, and terribly difficult to actually make it a reality.

The sad fact of the matter is that there hasn't been an effective widespread protest movement since the '60s here in the US. And there won't be any time soon.

The apathy of the American population is growing, not shrinking. Attempting to motivate them to protest anything at all is an exercise in futility.

Not to be a pessimist, but... that's how I see it. YMMV.

Re:It's a sad fact of modern life...

[Zoop]

Which is why lawyers, if they are officers of the court, should be court employees as well, and free to anyone who wants them.

This of course will mean they are civil service rather than high-flight professional jobs, but will democratize access to legal representation. Since it won't be he-who-has-the-best-lawyer-on-retainer wins, it will be a much chancier thing to threaten a lawsuit.

It might even make people take a deep breath, step back, and think whether we really need 1/5 of our economy or more to be tied up suing one another.

sounds like spammers can't take their own medicine

[prmths]

This type of story is too common lately. Spammers get their emails discovered, the address is posted and they whine and bitch because they get spam. How about all of us get together and compare notes on which spams we get, find the responsible party and get busy on 'em. After all we are 'hackers' are we not? I'm sure that within the slashdot crowd lies the potential to really deal a blow against spammers. heh
we should launch the friggin holy war of tech against spam.
we have bayesian filters, RBL lists, white lists.. all sorts of tools that only attack the tip of the problem. We all need to get together and destroy the many bases of spam. The US government has its war against terror. We nerds should launch our war against spammers. We are just as capable to fight this war as the US is to fight theirs.

Re:sounds like spammers can't take their own medic

[worst_name_ever]

We all need to get together and destroy the many bases of spam.

I thought that the war for all the bases wasn't scheduled to start until A.D. 2101...

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Joe the Lesser]

Or as Ghandi said, after awhile, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

Re:Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Angry White Guy]

Then we start on the ears!

Re:Two wrongs don't make a right.

[nurightshu]

That's true -- Mohandas Gandhi favored ten eyes for an eye. When the Nawab of Maler Kotla issued an edict demanding ten Muslims dead for every Hindu killed in the state, Mr. Nonviolent-Resistance gave it his blessing. Oh, and let's not forget the fact that up until World War I, he was just fine being an officer in the British Army (fought in the Boer Wars and the Zulu wars). Or that he let his wife die because he didn't want her to receive a penicillin injection to fight her pneumonia (hey, the guy had his principles). Of course, those principles didn't extend to refusing the quinine that saved his life when he was suffering from malaria.

Not to jump all over you in particular, Joe, it's just that I'm sick and tired of everybody talking about Gandhi like he wasn't a total dick. I mean, Christ, the guy told the Jews that they would be better off killing themselves than resisting the Nazis.

Sources: Richard Grenier's article "The Gandhi Nobody Knows," published in the March 1983 Commentary, and William L. Shirer's Gandhi: A Memoir (1979).

the motto

[VanillaCoke420]

"Let me spam in peace," or
"I hate spam, please let me spam you"

they're missing it

[muyuubyou]

What's wrong with showing their contact information to everybody?

For instance, I would benefit those rich guys so much by offering some business opportunity in Nigeria I'm into.

Ah, praise the lord for those helping guys, always wanting to inform you about the latest and greatest offers, and refusing to accept anything in exchange...

Re:no.

[UnknownSoldier]

> If somebody punches you, do you punch them straight back?
That depends if he has friends with guns. :)

> Do you think doing so would leave you with any credibility?
Depends.

So a burgular breaks in and punches you. You beat him up enough so that he flees. The wife is happy because now your home is safe. You gained credibility for not being a wimp.

There is no question that they deserve it.

[Baron_Yam]

That if spammers had what most slashdotters considered a fully-functional mind, the old "giving them a dose of their own medicine" routine would wise them up.

Since spammers seem to have selective ethics at best, all we can really do is enjoy them drowning in their own kind of filth for a while without the warm fuzzy that they're actually learning their lesson.

I firmly believe that people who engage in anti-social behaviour that negatively affects their social group should be subjected to appropriate retribution from the affected group... I'm very disappointed that as I post this, I have yet to see someone suitably sleuthful track down and post the censored information.

The BEST way to stop spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Folks, spammers are the messengers. You can shoot them all day and the spam will keep coming.

The target must be those who hire the spammers. After all, spammers are doing this for the money. No money, no spam.

Target the spammers income stream.

Re:The BEST way to stop spammers

[vadim_t]

No, we have to go after both. What you suggest is something like going after the person who hired an assassin and leave the assassin go free because he was doing it for the money.

I know this isn't a very good analogy, but the point is: Everybody involved in commiting a crime should suffer the consequences. Not just who paid for it.

Re:The BEST way to stop spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Great.

Now I'm envisioning the commercials with the Bambi-eyed teenagers saying "I helped waste bandwidth"... "I helped clog thousands of mail servers worldwide"... "I helped send penis enlargement ads to my grandmother".

"Where do spammers get their money? If you buy drugs, some of it might come from you."

shudder

Thanks.

Okay, bring 'em on

[chazzf]

Alyxsandra Sachs
112 Catamaran St
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292-5769
(310)578-1728

Sue me. I'm a poor college student with plenty of free time and malicious friends. Make my day.

Re:Okay, bring 'em on

[akadruid]

in case anyone lacks the imagination, some good places to start might be:
Free Catalogues!
Free Samples!
Free Magazine Trials!
my favourite:
Free Serenity Pads!
and a load more here...
Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff! More Free Stuff!

A free gift for anyone who signs him up for more than 100!! Just post your address...

It is our duty to reward them for making a stand for spammers everywhere. These free items will come in handy for filling the extra space in those big houses.

from google

[Anonymous Coward]

http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:5ZxgA2bz1tUJ: www.techdirt.com/articles/20030424/2023243_F.shtml +techdirt+spammer+times+site:techdirt.com&hl=en&ie =UTF-8

and

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030424/202324 3_ F.shtml

not the original, but has the links to the spammers involved.

Re:sounds like spammers can't take their own medic

[SanLouBlues]

I say posting their personal emails all over the place would be a good start. Imagine the irony of accidentally crapflooding yourself.

It'd be hilarious for two weeks until they exclude their own emails in the scripts they use. But then ISPs could red-flag anyone who recieves very low amounts of mail as under suspicion.

Re:no.

[spot35]

Agreed, two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do...

Spammers are scum

[rf0]

Plain and simple spammers are scum. They steal, in terms of using open relay servers and other peoples bandwidth. The lie in that 99.9% of the things they sell don't work. They cheat in trying to hide information. Also taking the amount of spam I get can make it really hard to filter the good from the bad even with filtering each and every message

Rus

What kind of idiot are you?

[Baron_Yam]

If somebody punches me (and I didn't deserve it)... I'd do whatever it took to ensure he never hit me again.

What would you do, Mr. Idealist? Stand there and take it while saying, "Please don't do that!"? Perhaps if you one day end up lying on the ground in a pool of your own blood you'll rethink this and consider that MAYBE you should have defended yourself.

Re:What kind of idiot are you?

[Jedi Alec]

What would you do, Mr. Idealist? Stand there and take it while saying, "Please don't do that!"?

Some people have suffered that same plight often enough to a) start thinking it's normal and b) take pride in it...quite often it starts in school gyms for one reason or another.

For those who are either young enough to still be in school or old enough to have kids in school already...yes, it is ok to hit back, and it's even better to give the other kid taking a beating a hand. Standing next to it and looking at it with a stupid grin only shows the fact we're still apes, just with a little less hair...most of us, in any case...

New York Times culpability for attacking spammers

[GGardner]

I was surprised to read the article in the paper about these guys -- the NYT actually printed their picture.

I wonder if the NYT hates spam as much as the rest of us do, and knows that publishing articles about specific spammers will cause certain unpleasantnesses for those spammers?

I wonder whose e-mail addy this might be?

[Anonymous Coward]

alyx@netglobalmarketing.com Maybe we should find out. Maybe we should help the person at this address find some great deals on genetalia enhancement or how to make money fast! Perhaps they can use a college degree!

Re:sounds like spammers can't take their own medic

[nurightshu]

Thankfully, they'll be able to enlarge their penises (penii? :) one to three inches with the new herbal supplement they're e-mailing each other about.

The end of Slashdot

[anonymous cowfart]

Score:5, Offtopic

Okay everybody, the game is over and JessLeah is the winner. Slashdot will now be closed.

LAST POST!

Re:The end of Slashdot

[JessLeah]

Heh, I love how negativistic SlashDot's moderation system was on this one. Almost as bad as pessimistic lil' ol' me.

The post started at 2 (cuz I have nice karma), and got a bunch of mod-ups and ONE mod-down ("Offtopic"). So the Slash code did the math and dutifully reported the score as 5 (correct)... and of course focused solely on the fact that my post was modded "Offtopic". Of all the modding done to my post, it only noted the ONE NEGATIVE MOD in the Score line.

And I thought I saw the world through blue-tinted glasses...

What happens

[tmark]

Sure it's funny to imagine that these spammers are themselves getting deluged with spam. But what happens if some nutcase firebombs their house, abducts their children, or murders their wife, as a direct result of seeing of the spammers' "outing" ?

Would it be funny or just then ?

Re:What happens

[sik puppy]

at the risk of being flamebait

after your scenario happened once or twice, I think we would see a dramatic reduction in spam.

I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been a case of spammer lynching as yet.

Like most people the only thing that keeps me from doing it is the thought of spending 30 years in prison. Not worth taking the chance of getting a couple of fellow rabid anti-spammers to sit on your jury.

That said, if you were sitting on a jury for the trial of someone who killed a spammer, would you vote for conviction?

Re:What happens

[Idarubicin]

That said, if you were sitting on a jury for the trial of someone who killed a spammer, would you vote for conviction?

Um, yes? Premeditated murder is one of those things that most civilized societies prefer not to condone. (Save for when approved by the state in times of war, or when commited by the U.S. 'corrections' system.) Talk about a disproportionate response. Spammers are really, really, really annoying, and they're thieves without question--but we stopped hanging thieves more than a century ago.

On the other hand, maybe if someone just gave a spammer a really good beating, I could let that slide...

Re:Which spammers? These spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be known spammer Alyxsandra Sachs 112 Catamaran St Marina Del Rey, CA 90292-5769 (310)578-1728 info@netglobalmarketing.com 323-871-2000x11 Fax Number: 323-871-0625 Albert Ahdoot aahdoot@yahoo.com

The next best thing

[KrisJon]

OK, if spammers get their knickers in a twist and some have ethical issues with posting that information, do the next best thing:

Create and post a HOWTO showing how to find the information yourself. You can't find everyone on Google and unless you want to pay a service $$$, there is an art to finding someone's meatspace info.

pro se

[zogger]

--done this myself on a few occassions. It's learning some normal court room procedure and buzz words that is the most important. Usually the county clerk will help as well, finding the correct forms, etc. You can also research similar cases to see what worked and what didn't. I was actually so well prepared in two cases, cases actually against the government, that they capitulated shy of the actual court. One got to the court house steps before they caved though.

Throwing some cash at a good paralegal in advance helps too, they are usually the ones who prep their lawyers anyway, and are heaps 0 cash cheaper.

Think of court like any other construct. this does this, this does that. This comes first, then that, then that. If you follow their rules, they will let you play. and it really is just a big game, a game combined with some drama.

I haven't done it in a long time though, I imagine it's even easier now with having the internet to help with research.

I am sort of wondering now why there aren't more court cases brought against spammers in the states that have some laws against it. Even if it's hard to collect damages, just getting convictions in anti spammers favor helps establish more precedent.

Another really useful tool is to hold elected and appointed politicians and bureaucrats feet to the fire to uphold the laws via investigating if they're NOT doing their jobs, and are therefore in violations of their respective oaths,job descriptions, etc and see if they have ethics codes violations based along those lines.

Re:Which spammers? These spammers

[FyRE666]

Just read the article you linked about Alyx Sachs and her cohort. To quote her:

"These antispammers should get a life," she said. "Do their fingers hurt too much from pressing the delete key? How much time does that really take from their day?"

By contrast, she said, "70 million people have bad credit. Guess what? Now I can't get mail through to them to help them."

Did anyone else reading that feel a powerful compulsion to punch her in the face? As someone who recieves anything up to 200 pieces of spam a DAY now, I know I did.

This COMES from /.!

[I)_MaLaClYpSe_(I]

I followed the link to a cached version of the techdirt site someone linked to, and you know what?

The Address of Alyxsandra Sachs was not posted on techdirt but a link to... you guessed it, slashdot! Someone only posted this link :-).

I find this extremely funny :-)

Re:sounds like spammers can't take their own medic

[FyRE666]

It's pretty simple to make their businesses unviable. Just visit the sites they're advertising! Not just once, not twice, but 24/7. Reload the biggest pages all day long everyone! Think a spamvertised company can still turn a profit while paying for 500GB bandwidth per day? I don't think so...

Re:Which spammers? These spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Reformatted for faster copying to webforms:

Alyxsandra Sachs
112 Catamaran St
Marina Del Rey
CA 90292-5769
(310)578-1728
info@netglobalmarketing.com

Albert Ahdoot
323-871-2000x11
Fax Number: 323-871-0625
aahdoot@yahoo.com

Don't forget

[autopr0n]

google is your friend

heh, heh.

I would dance on their graves

[autopr0n]

Seriously, these people are assholes. If something like that happened, just a few times, I bet Spam would go down a lot. I wouldn't like to see their wives or children hurt, though.

What I'd really like would be to see these guys thrown in jail. Most of these people are "hackers" at least, and could probably charged under the PATRIOT act for 'cyber terrorism' or something, if the government actually gave a shit...

In my family...

[Baron_Yam]

We tell the kids, "Never throw the first punch, always throw the last one."

Note that we use the verb, 'throw' and not 'land'. There is, of course, no need for the guy swinging at you to connect with your nose before you take action.

Congratulations

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations Alyxsandra and Albert. You succeeded in getting your contact info taken down from Techdirt, where maybe 1400 people saw it. Unfortunately, now it's Modded to +5 on Slashdot, and a good 140,000 people are probably looking at it. And taking action already.

Congratulations on your intelligence. On the other hand, I guess if you were smart, you might not have to be a spammer for a living.

Ask her the same questions...

[Mr. Underbridge]

[nytimes.com]: "These antispammers should get a life," she said. "Do their fingers hurt too much from pressing the delete key? How much time does that really take from their day?"

Here's a better for question Alyx. How long does it take to throw out all of those catalogs that slashdot readers have thougtfully sent your way? You know, you could just have someone look through your mail for you (mail filter).

But you complain that the mailman won't deliver your mail when your box is full? Kind of how my mail gets rejected when my online account fills up? Well, get a bigger box! (Watch the lewd comments buys).

You know Alyx, you could just check your mail more often! Hell, put a big dumpster on your lawn for all that!

Or, you can maintain a private PO Box account and assume your public address is ALL SPAM- kind of like I have do online.

See, Alyx, it's pretty much the same thing. And it sucks. So don't cry to me.

Spamming = DoS attack?

[Aidtopia]

Has anybody tried to prosecute spammers for executing what amounts to a denial of service attack? When 99% of your email is unsolicited commercial bulk email, it makes that 1% very hard to find. Isn't this a small scale DoS attack on an individual? Isn't the cumulative effect on ISPs huge?

When I moved into my new home, I discovered the previous owners were mail-order people. I was receiving 100-120 catalogs every week (literally). My recycling company refused to cart off our weekly junk mail. Bills were getting lost, wedged between the pages of catalogs. I registered with the DMA, and I sent over 350 letters and made more than 100 phone calls to snail-mail spammers. Eventually it made difference. Now (three years later) we get about 10 catalogs a week. I spent a lot of time and money (postage, envelopes, etc.), but at least most of the 200 companies respected our wishes (in time, after multiple notices).

With email spam, we don't even have the option of complaining and opting-out. And yes, email bills are sometimes blocked by my ISP's spam filters. So haven't the spammers effectively eliminated our email service by flooding it? Isn't that a denial of service attack?

the address of the other two

[abhisarda]

Registrant:
Albert Ahdoot (NETGLOBALMARKETING-COM-DOM)
Net Global Marketing Inc.
18375 Ventura Blvd
Suite 326
Tarzana, CA 91356
USA
3238459660
2069841344
aahdoot@yahoo. com

Domain Name: NETGLOBALMARKETING.COM

Administrative Contact:
Richard Stewart support@usmnet.net
219 North Main
Suite 210
Bryan, TX 77803
USA
9798222827

Re:the address of the other two

[frankie]

Albert Ahdoot:

• Whitepages
• Infospace
• Switchboard

Richard Stewart is unfortunately a common name. There are at least 50 matches in Texas.

Getting off the junk lists - permanently

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad you spent all that cash on postage begging the mailers... I would have simply gone to the nearest post office, and asked for form 1500 - the one that's used for opting out of pornographic mailings.

Complete one form for each catalog/advertisement that you receive, and return it to the USPS Prohibitory Order Processing Center. The USPS POPC will issue an order against the mailer prohibiting them under federal law from sending you anything again for the next 5 years - better yet, they have to delete your name/address from all their lists (except the do not mail listing) and can't sell, rent, lease, loan, gift, or otherwise transfer your information to anyone.

If they ignore the order, then you send a copy of what they sent you and a copy of the order to the POPC - they'll make a determination and file a complaint on your behalf with the local US Atty General against the mailer... Most mailers comply immediately, some require some followup (the Chicago Tribune took a lot of follow up, but they eventually stopped).

Best of all - you have complete, unfettered, and unreviewable discretion in what is and is not considered to be a pandering and/or erotic advertisement. In fact, you can declare a dry goods catalog to be such if you wish (e.g., coupons, anything qualifies if it's for sale). This is taken directly from a US Supreme Ct. case back in the 70's which was filed by the direct mailers v. a law that congress passed - the USSCt basically told the mailers that it was too bad - the law stands...

I've used it successfully and receive almost NO junk mail. The occasional piece that comes thru gets marked REFUSED, RETURN TO SENDER and goes right back in the box. The second copy that comes gets a Prohib. Order filed on it.

Now if I could only get the morons who deliver those door-to-door advertisements to read the sign that says "DO NOT LEAVE ADVERTISING MATERIALS. NO TRESSPASSING" I'd be set...