Earthlink Wins Another Spam Award: $16 million

linuxwrangler writes "U.S. District Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr. awarded Earthlink $16 million and an injunction against Howard Carmack for Carmack's use of Earthlink to deliver spam. Given that Earthlink is still awaiting payment of the $25 million it won against Kahn C. Smith last year, it views the injunction as the bigger of the two wins." A few more of these, and maybe the tide of spam will eb. Maybe. Nah.

Comments

I wish I could get in on this

[AyeFly]

As my subject line says...I do, but I dont see how anyone other than large corporations can go through the process to actually get a judgement. I mean, I get mostly spam these days, even on an account I made, but never used a single time! Anyway, thats my rant for the day.

Re:I wish I could get in on this

[egburr]

No, it's a lot more ridiculous than saying that. Earthlink won a judgement. To do so, earthlink spent a lot of the customers' money on lawyers. To actually collect the money awarded in the judgement, Earthlink will have to spend more of the customers' money on lawyers, collectors, etc. If they get more money back than was spent on the process, I will be surprised.

So, spam does cost the recipient money, not only in terms of bandwidth, CPU time, storage, download time, frustration, irritation, etc., but also in all the unrecovered costs of prosecuting, persuing, and attempting to collect on the judgement. Customers may not directly pay for all of that, but their monthly rates reflect all those costs.

Awards vs. Injunction

[sssmashy]

Last year the company was awarded $25 million in damages in a suit against another big junk e-mailer, Kahn C. Smith of Tennessee. Youngblood said the company hasn't collected that award. But the monetary award, Wellborn said, is less of a victory than the injunction.

Nobody will ever collect civil damages from a spammer, because the vast majority of spam does not come from legitimate companies with assets. Most spammers tend to be individuals: low-rent sleazebags with bad credit and a history of illegal or borderline illegal activities. If they actually had millions of dollars they wouldn't stoop to spamming.

The injunction is a good thing because if one of these lowlifes tries spamming again, they can throw him in jail.

Re:Awards vs. Injunction

[dubl-u]

Spam is most definitely an area where very large financial gain is possible. This obviously precludes spammers being "low-rent" sleezebags.

Even if somebody lives in a high-rent place, they can be a low-rent sleazebag. Hollywood is full of them, for example. And that the gain is possible doesn't mean that all spammers get it; the spammers I've taken the time to track down and talk to have often made very little from it.

Generalizations like this do *not* further the anti-spam cause.

Well, actually, they do, especially when they're true. It makes it much easier from a PR and lobbying perspective to be able to say paint spammers as beyond the pale.

I recently chatted with a fellow who's in the on-line porn industry. Although he doesn't spam, he knows a number of spammers. He seemed quite convinced that they were sleazebags. I've met a few myself, and all of them, excepting the once who were just plain clueless, were all sleazebags.

And all the ones I've seen profiled in the press were pathetic excuses for human beings, too. Like the guy in Minnesota, who previously was a cop. Until he got busted for selling drugs to children, that is.

So if you know some spammers who are smart, upstanding, concerned citizens, hey, share the details with us. I'd be fascinated to find once who is a vegan pacifist buddhist. No, scratch that, I'd be fucking floored.

stolen identies/cc #'s

[Pootie Tang]

Carmack and others kept the bulk e-mail flowing through Internet accounts opened with stolen identities and credit card numbers.

Considering this and the fact that he didn't even show up to defend himself in court, why bother obeying the injuction? They don't arrest people for this stuff anymore?

Obviously Earthlink isn't going to get $16 mil out of this. I take it verizon didn't collect on their $6.9 million judgement either.

I don't understand

[theirpuppet]

If Earthlink, and company, have been doing side deals with spammers for years, and some people have the documentation to prove it, why isn't there a class action lawsuit or something. Lately, in the interest of customer appeasement, brand recognition, and some more advertising many companies like Earthlink have been suing spammers, except we all know they'll never get any money. They already got their money from the 'secret deals'. They are now flaunting their 'respectability' and 'anti spamness', and this should be more reason to applaud them for their legitimate efforts and penalize them for their shady dealings.

I'll never understand why people accept apathy. I know the reasons, but they still get on my nerves.

Why isn't he in jail?

[runchbox]

The WSJ article said he'd used 350 stolen identities and credit cards to set up accounts. We've got the laws we need to put people in jail for credit card fraud -- so why is he at home avoiding phone calls?

Re:Why isn't he in jail?

[silentbozo]

A WSJ article from last month says it all. Basically, the credit card companies aren't interested in prosecuting fraud because they pass the costs directly to the merchant to accepted the card (with extra penalties to boot.) If you (as the merchant, or the customer) try to get the credit card company to follow up on a fraud attempt, they'll just ignore you. As a consequence, identity theft goes unpunished, customers are lulled into a false sense of security (oh, we'll just deactivate your old card and issue you a new one), and merchants get a lossage rate of up to 2% when accepting credit cards for card not present transactions...

Besides, for criminal cases, you need a prosecutor to file a case. Unless the amount is above a certain number, they'll typically just ignore you.

At ~.02 per spam, that's still a bargain

[BreadMan]

Without knowing what he charged his customers, his fine doesn't seem all that large.

I think it's about time ISP's started charging for each e-mail both sent and received, somewhat like stamps. Something tells me the elasticity looks very vertical in this market and a small cost will do wonders for reducing spam.

SPAM? What's that?

[tony1c]

I'm starting to believe that the SPAM problem is more of an educational issue now. I've used two different programs that have been highly effective against SPAM (spamnet and POPFile). I use POPFile exclusively now, and I've almost forgotten what SPAM is. Yes, it's still a major problem for users out there (especially those using web-based clients), but there is highly effective technology out there to counter it. We don't need to launch costly and ungainly legal offensives against spammers - we already have software that can render them irrelevant.

The money should go to the victims of SPAM

[Hao Wu]

The moneys should go to the victims of SPAM. Earthlink should take the 16 million dollar prize, divite it by it's members or whatever, and then give cash to the people who hate SPAM.

Re:That's "ebb"

[adamfranco]

While "grammar nazis" seem like a PITA, their presence does help make the comments on /. better spelled. While my "grammar" might not always be the best, I at least paste into OpenOffice and spell-check so as not to look like some completely ignorant fool.

Yes, "grammar nazis" can be annoying, but they do serve a purpose.

Re:Death of a spammer

[jaa]

We asked the ISPs to identify the site owner, as required by law (because he accepts credit cards)

Can you explain this a bit further? I'd like to be able to use that approach myself when applicable, but I'm not sure exactly what you are saying here, and what law you are referring to.

Re:Is it just me or....

[Raven42rac]

Basically, spammers make money because some "John Doe", who does not know any better is buying their stuff. If no one clicked through and bought their stuff, it would just fizzle out. But hopefully these huge settlements will scare the "casual" ass, I mean "mass e-mail marketer" out of the "business" and the rest will be sued into oblivion. IMHO, the crux of this matter will be proving that someone either did or did not "opt-in" on some website somewhere with some "checked tiny ass checkbox" located on many websites. "I did not sign up for that", yes you did, on this date at this time. On the other hand, if you contacted them and they did not stop sending you things, then you should have a legal ground.

Moral is: do not buy their wares, and scrutinize all websites that ask for you e-mail address, read the privacy policies, and make sure you do not inadvertantly sign up for mail from "affiliates".

how big is the fish ?

[huistr]

I'm wondering how does he size up against the "top 180 responsible for 90% of all spam". Apparently, he is not in the ROKSO list.

Re:SPAM? What's that?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing an important point. Even if you don't see your spam anymore, you're still paying for it. Spam is a major part of your bandwidth bill - why are you and I paying for their actions?

Subpoena SWBell to get his address

[billstewart]

It shouldn't be too hard to get his address - doing a lawsuit in small claims is probably enough to get SWBell to cough up the address of that DSL line. And you should be able to come up with an excuse to sue him. You might be able to get the SWBell security folks after him, but more likely they'd just cancel the account and it'd be protected by their privacy policies.

OK, I have a friend who is a sleazebag^W spammer

[Simon Brooke]

I went round to see a friend last night. She is a mostly sensible, mostly reasonable, fairly tech literate person. Her values are on the whole mostly in the right place. She runs a small bunsiness and until recently her business has been mostly servicing a government contract. That contract ended and was not renewed. She has laid off most of her staff, but she has no income and still two employees to pay, and she's desperate to find new work.

A couple of months ago she came and talked to me about how to set up a bulk email thing and I thought I'd succeeded in persuading her that it was a seriously bad idea and she shouldn't do it. Apparently I hadn't; last night she told me she'd started sending bulk UCE.

This isn't someone whom I'd describe as sleazy, and it isn't someone who's stupid. It's someone who is desperate. I think you will find a lot of spammers are.

The problem can be tackled, it seems to me, at two levels. Yes, if there's legislation (particularly if it has real teeth) then peopel will get a good clue that this is not a good thing to do. But it also needs there to be a professional ethic among systems and network administrators that we will not allow the infrastructure we control to be used for this sort of thing, and that we will kick offenders off and cancel accounts; and that if our management say different we will refuse to work for them - a sort of hypocratic oath for geeks.