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Inappropriate Spam Reaching Children?
peeweejd writes "Wired has an article stating that four out of five children receive inappropriate spam e-mail touting get-rich-quick schemes, and almost half receive spam linking to pornographic materials. Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out? Can someone sue a spammer for offering to sell 'adult only' items/services to children?" There are more details from survey originator Symantec's press release - and yes, Symantec does sell mail filtering software.
Are you one of those go getters?!
that hairy gentleman in the third row showed me his hormel....
Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out?
Yes.
From the underlying study:
The survey, conducted online for Symantec by Applied Research, a
full service market research firm, interviewed 1,000 youths
between the ages of seven and 18.
I wish they disclosed the breakdown of ages. There is a vast
difference in seventeen year old reading e-mail without their
parents and seven year olds.
I would like to know how many of the children in this study were
12 or under.
When asked how often they check emails, 72 percent of the
respondents said a few times a week to a few times a day. When
asked how important it is to always have mom or dad check emails
with them, nearly one in three said it is not important, 21
percent said they don't care and 16 percent said they don't want
their parents to check their emails with them. Furthermore, when
asked whether they get parents' permission before giving out
their personal email addresses to friends or even people and Web
sites with which they are not familiar, 46 percent of the youths
responded that they do not..
Again, this is highly dependant on the ages of the children.
Younger children would be more likely to ask their parents to
help them get their e-mail, while teenagers would be far more
likely to want their parents to just leave them alone.
It's difficult to infer anything meaningful from these numbers.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
What is their to think about? Yes. If you are offering porn to my (or anyone's) children, you should held liable by either your or my state law.
Just imagine if you had started enlarging your penis at age 6.
What's worse is those HTML emails that have porn already in them, with misleading subjects. So the even the kids that know to delete them but use the preview pane in Outlook will see it.
Should be illegal.
I know that plenty of "children" (14+) are major pr0n consumers. Let them receive the spam. Those that don't like it just wont bother. They don't have credit cards anyway.
at least with email you can specify who she can receive email from and block everybody else. if you gave her a cell phone whats to stop some creep from calling her and talking nasty and/or lurring her out someplace.
if your kids are walking by themselve's down the strip in vegas chances are they might catch a glimpse at one of the millions of bunny ranch flyers flappin in the wind and just all over the place. the internet is a similar place.. 18 and over seriously!
bite my glorious golden ass.
About the birds & the bee's...
Then, you can explain what viagra & penis growth formulas are...
I wondered why my 6-year-old was refinancing his mortgage.
Your paranoia is about as subtle as the alien probe in your neck.
Why do I get the feeling /. just got trolled?
Ah well. At least we can use this article to prove something needs to be done. (Like we needed proof.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
"Inappropriate spam"? Ehm... is there any other kind of spam?
that's like saying that Girls Gone Wild is offering anyone watching TV at night, despite age, and should be punished. Why don't the parents add a spam blocker? Better yet, why are the rents not putting some sort of parental controls on the internet connection? Or hey, maybe the kids are getting that spam cuz they keep filling in those "Get free porn in your mailbox" things. I hate spam and wished it would die, but people need to take responsibility for their own actions
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Can someone sue a spammer for offering to sell 'adult only' items/services to children?
This assumes that you can find out how old a person is simply by looking at their email address. The very nature of spam is that it doesn't care where it goes.
Maybe I am being pedantic but isn't spam inappropriate in and of itself? What would appropriate spam consist of? An advertisment for free juvenille diabetes screening?
"What we do in life echoes in eternity." Maximus Decimus Meridius
Using Outlook should be illegal.
I receive some really raw spam, and not just words but pictures. If I were a parent, I'd be in favor of flaying alive anyone sending this kind of stuff to my kid. I can't imagine how parents cope these days.
This is why I run my own mail server. With SpamAssassin, nearly all spam is nuked. There's still a very small amount of stuff slipping through, but none have reached my daughter's mailbox (yet). When one does, I will definately go after the company responsible if they are US based (not much I can do about the foreign based companies).
-- Will program for bandwidth
I remember back in university, people used to forward those stupid spam jokes and messages all the time. Whenever I pointed out that it really WASN'T free and they were contributing to a problem by doing so, I would get all sorts of angry e-mail back.
Now that spam accounts for the majority of e-mail traffic according to some studies, and those former classmates' companies have to pay for mail administration, filtering and other anti-spam and anti-virus measures, I wonder how they would respond now if I sent them the same type of spam they used to send.
The bottom line is that it's an abuse of the system, and just like you can get a ticket for driving too slow or recklessly on the highway, maybe there's a similar measure that taken against spammers.
Perhaps a small streaming camwhore site could lead to the big time later!
I know I don't want to be the one to deny the next Jenna or Kobi.
Follow that dream, Billy!
Any teenagers in that half were so, so lying.
The coolest voice ever.
I someone was caught trying to sell children a dildo in the street that person would probably serve jail time for that. Cant see how offering dildos to kids through the internet is different.
Sindri Traustason.
Most pornographic e-mails that I get contain hardcore graphic images inline, that load just by clicking on the message.
With titles like "re: what's up?" and stuff, I *have* to open them because it might be someone I sent a message to a while back...
In the U.S. it is illegal to show pornography to minors...so you'd definately have a case.
A substantial number of the 1,000 children ages 7 to 18 interviewed for the survey by Symantec said they felt "uncomfortable and offended when seeing improper e-mail content."
There's an important watershed around 13-14 when kids start looking for this stuff behind their parents' backs. When this happens, no-one is likely to be in a position to stop them seeing it.
Hence for every 14-18 year old offended when seeing improper content, there will be 10 saying "cooool!".
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
This may well be the only issue where 'just think about the children' will result in something good.
And now anti-spam legislation will be SO much easier to sell to congress/general(dumb) public (if it CAN be any easier to sell...)
And obviously so. We've got to start coming down hard on these people, setting some prominant examples.
I don't think you've seen a lot of the porn out there.
"Mommy, what's that lady doing to that horsie?"
We aren't talking about playboy and cheesecake here. Some of it is wildly inappropriate stuff.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
When I was a kid I wanted porn spam...
I've been a proud surfer of internet pr0n since the 5th grade.(college freshman now)
four out of five children?
Oh no, I think it is closer to 80%.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
A good percentage, about 10% or so, of the spam mails I receive are touting Norton's Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam products... who are made by Symantec.
:)
Sure, It's not Symantec themselves that are spamming, but I'll hold them responsible, dammit!
How the fuck was that modded Troll? Looked perfectly reasonable to me. I bet some mods took offence to being called bad parents. Well guess what, you are bad parents, and modding down anyone who tells you so will not change the fact that you are bad parents.
No wonder the western world is so shit.
They have a lot of nerve to complain about Spam. Yeah, I know they claim to have nothing to do with the spammers selling their products, but if they don't why do they refuse to do anything about it, to the point of refusing complaints? Other companies in that spot take action, Symantec ignores it at best.
Oh yeah, also, 'inappropriate Spam?' Is there any other type? Jeez.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Any laws that would regulate spam, making it illegal to send any kind of spam to minors, should be identical to state laws that don't include technical solicitation.
If it's illegal to send a 16 yr. old boy a Playboy, it should also be illegal to send that same boy an email inviting him to a cyber peepshow. Otherwise, the law would be unfair, unbalanced, and unjust.
Should we make children responsible for their own actions?
Don't 4 in 5 adults get the SAME EXACT SPAM?
How could we make sure that spammers know that an email address is a child? Saying the addy is surefire spam target, and saying the age is surefire pedophile target.
"win a Playstation,"
"meet singles online,"
"lose 15 pounds in two days,"
"buy herbal Viagra online,"
Damn, they're that coherent? Mine don't make nearly make that much sense. Why, here's a sampling of subject lines straight from my Hotmail inbox:
"hard vertilde suvereniteetti"
"Att: a gargantuan thing ffx"
"Ssrt life skillss rrewaarrdded - whhy waiit"
"embrafeable stronlhold"
"Kimberly said you"
"bending moment"
"pebble ruimnaalden orrella nnthayer"
"How is it applied?"
"varnish-treated"
I don't know what an embrafeable stronlhold is, but I know I've always wanted one. Varnish-treated.
The coolest voice ever.
Don't you have to be over 18, or have permission from a parent/legal guardian to purchase an Internet account? Shouldn't it therefore be the account-holders responsibility what a minor sees using their account?
Would you expect to be sued (or arrested) for dropping porno promos in your neighborhood letterboxes? Why should spam be any different?
lord knows i looked.
at 1200 baud in monochrome.
once i think i saw a nipple.
Spam has long been out of control. Where I work currently, spam consists of about 81% of all incoming email. This is at a company receiving over 1 million emails a day.
There are laws existing to protect children from exposure to 'adult' materials. These permit their parents to control, to some extent, the exposure of such material to their children.
Spam is getting away with breaking these laws. I can't see any parent, no matter how open minded, wanting their child to see breast enlargement, penis enlargement and watch this teen fuck barnyard animal emails.
When they see this stuff, they start to form opinions. Without guidance, these opinions can be off base by a large margin. Seeing the enlargement ads, children could well get the idea that they need to have 44DD breasts or 14" penises (penii?) in order to 'fit in.'
Exposing kids to the hard core images in these emails surely must be against some laws and if not, they should be expanded to cover it.
Also, Spam email should be part of the telemarketing crack down. There should be an opt-out email list to keep from getting unsolicited email.
These adjustments to law would go a long way to reducing wasted bandwidth on the net, as well as improving the moral growth of our nation's children. Sheesh, I sound like Jerry Falwell, but I'm far from it.
is inappropriate ;)
Linux with kernel panic...
MadPenguin.org
"Daddy, what's a penis enlargement?" when he's 6...
What about this one, "Daddy, why do girls suck on guys dicks?"
Spammers are just the scum of the earth, along with the RIAA, MPAA, Congress, Senate, MS, etc.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Mine don't make nearly make that much sense.
God, see what reading that crap has done to me?
The coolest voice ever.
Some would say that any forum where minors might legitimately participate cannot allow anyone to directly present them with inappropriate material.
Others would say that parents have a responsibility to supervise their children.
I don't think these views are mutually exclusive. For instance, a child should be able to walk down the street without porn vendors showing him their wares, but that doesn't mean parents should turn their five-year-old children loose to frolic and gambol downtown alone, either. Parents and society have responsibility.
I have to say that this article is obviously an attempt to use parents paranoia to sell their products. It all sounds so much like a FOX news headline. "Are your kids reading X-rated emails: more at ten". Sure, they have an important message to convey, but it's intertwined in a cheap advertisment for their spam filtering software.
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
Why the fuck do your children need email accounts?!?!?!
...you people and your "parents should be more responsible" line of reasoning?
It's not that I don't agree that parents need to be more proactive with their children as a whole, but this idea that a parent can control everything their kid does is plain stupid. Where are the tools? After all, parents need help too. What are the options?
1) Filtering software. Zzzzt! Can't get it all - especially with these active pages using Shockwave, Java, and/or Flash to display content. How do you filter that from an anonymous source?
2) Block them from using the Internet altogether. I suppose this works for the Amish, but I suspect this might be a bit extreme for most families.
3) Sit down with your kids every time they are online. Not a bad idea, but at some point, kids get older and do appreciate their privacy online and with their friends. Does that then mean that a 15 year old girl should be subjected to the trashy pop-ups and email? And even when the parents sit there with their kids, one wrong click can take them to pop-up or spam hell.
When was the last time you received SNAIL MAIL 1/4 as offensive as some of the stuff you get through regular email? Why then should this garbage be tolterated? The companies that send this stuff unsolicited should be drawn and quartered. END OF LINE.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
One would think the COPPA laws could be reasonably extended to include pornographic spam since html email is essentially a website that is sent to your inbox.
Alan Ranklsy come to mind?
Maybe we need to send him more paper spam.
And oh yes!
I don't need a dating service spam.
"This friend of mine at a school 20 miles away, she is kinda strange, you are kinda strange."
And five years later, I'm married, have two kids and don't regret it one bit.
-Grumpy old internet email user.
note: fictional story. it actually ended in divorce. no kids, no child support.
I think that spammers should be held responsible for the content that the flood the our children's mailboxes with. The burden should be placed on them, under the law, to confirm that the recipient of any pornographic emails is an adult.
The problem is enforcing the law upon the spammers. Pyramid and other get-rich-quick scams are already illegal. Period. Yet the spammers are not caught and prosecuted.
I agree.
I mean really, if the corner gas station attendent was selling cigarettes, beer, or pornagraphy to underaged children, would he be held responsible? The obvious answer is yes, he would. So, why would we treat spammers any differently?
...interesting if true.
The only place his email address is posted is on his web page. His birthdate is on the same page, so it is obvious he not even two years old yet.
He already receives spam for credit cards, porn, penis enlargers, etc.
I would love to sue these spammers, if only for the time I spend keeping my son's mailbox clean of this junk.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Parents need to educate their children about the dangers of spam and how they can avoid being exposed to offensive content or becoming innocent victims of online fraud
...
...
and when Mom and Dad are done teaching how offensive, disgusting and dangerous spam can be, little Johnny will hurry to the couch to catch Reservoir Dogs. Then when the show is over, he'll go play a little Grand Theft Auto
Come on, kids today know more about sex and violence than their parents when *they* were kids. I'm thirty-ish and I thought Terminator was pretty cool and clean when it came out. My parents still think it's a gross movie. And today's kid know better about trust on the internet than their parents too, and I doubt they're taken by plain-text spam that easily.
Different generations, different tolerance levels
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'm sure kids in the "Eastern World" never have these types of issues on the Internet either...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out?" Who else COULD be responible? The fact you ASK this question shows incredible stupidity. Unfortunately, it is all too common.
wow, doesnt take much to be insightful on this site, does it?
Since nine times out of ten the spam is sent across state lines, should the penalties be a Felony?
Dolemite
__________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
I was modded down on slashdot and now I'll need those wang enhancers to feel like a man again!
Any post you make is subject to moderation.
Accept it.
Is MicroSoft evil?
Is the sky blue?
Are taxes too high?
Should we eat and drink and be merry? I mean, come on, guys, the answer is patently obvious. -1 on the article for redundancy.
This sig no verb.
ah, but how? maybe like the evil bit RFC we can implement a pr0n bit that can be reliably used by filtering software keep pr0n available where it's badly needed and far away from those who shouldn't know about people's parts and how they fit together.
closed minded is as closed minded does
Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out?
s/'be held responsible for'/'be made to print out and eat'Should pornographic materials be allowed in emails?
Should parents protect children from those materials?
Should ISPs prevent those materials to reach household with children under certain age?
Should children under certain age be allowed to have access to device/venue where inappropriate materials can be attained? imagine if children are allowed in strip club and saw something naughty, who's to blame?
nah screw it, i think spammers SHOULD be held responsible for ANY spams they send out?
don't get me wrong, sexual hypocrisy is a problem in the world, especially in the us.
but everyone can support a legal measure that insists on a hands-off attitude towards children and sexual overtures from adults... from sexual conservatives like john ashcroft, who has to cover up naked breasts on statues behind him on stage (snicker), to righteous liberal sex-advice columnists, like dan savage. nobody likes pedophilia, period. no slippery slope here folks.
now, since spammers spew indiscriminantly, they have no way of knowing if the account they are sending to is owned by a child. meanwhile, responsible email mass-mailers have means of knowing who their audience is and can easily avoid this pitfall.
result? a legal weapon against spam everyone can get behind. it can be mercilessly enforced, with moral and righteous indignation. no grey areas, no controversy. pedophilia is evil, period. jail time anyone?
this is an excellent development. bravo symantec.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This guy's right, "What about the children?" might actually get something done here, as much as I hate the argument.
This sig no verb.
Blocking the dirty spam is along the same lines as why video stores put the porn in a back room and why gas stations keep the porno mags behind the counter. Its inappropriate material that has laws concerning the age of the person who views it, and therefore MUST be treated differently.
Since the stores don't know the age of their potential customers, they have to keep those adult things seperated. Same goes for spam.
If I went to the post office and got 10,000 post card stamps and then printed a picture of some boobs on there, and mailed the cards out to 10k random people, I bet I would get my ass sued by at least 100 of them. Why can't the same thing happen to spammers?
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
- I give out my address only to thoughtfully selected individuals. I check mail here several times a day.
- I have a second address, which I call my "public" address, which I give away freely (and check about once or twice a week).
- For both addresses, I set up a whitelist which includes all the people that I have given the address to. All other messages get filtered to the trash. I empty the trash occasionally, quickly perusing the "From:" lines in the list of unread messages before doing so.
I have an idea to extend the whitelist policy: Each person would set up a "deposit" sum on their email address. This deposit could be any amount you want, from a few cents to billions of dollars. Each person's email address would be tied to some sort of payment system. If you want to send a message to someone whose whitelist you're not on, the system will charge that person's deposit fee to you. If that person accepts your message, your deposit is refunded. If that person rejects your message, they get to keep your deposit. Get paid to reject SPAM mail! What do people do who don't have credit cards, bank accounts, etc.? They'll deposit some sum of money (like a hundred bucks) with their mail service provider, and deposits will be deducted from that amount. People in the spam business will be out of business, really damn quick. Yes, this would require changes to the mail protocol. People who continue to use the old protocol will continue to receive spam and will be unable to send mail to people with the new protocol unless they're on their whitelists.Very few "wanted" messages end up in the trash. My "wanted" message traffic is pretty high, too.
Guinness. Because friends don't let friends drink Bud Light.
A well organized suit (individual or class action) that is also delivered well and well funded has a good chance of success, especially if it involves harm to minors. This type of suit, in particular, would be a good thing for the internet community. It would help put the brakes on the massive amount of spam out there.
Think of it this way. Freedom means that you can go out and get something for yourself, even if it is a bad thing. It doesn't mean that someone else has the right to throw it in my face. Post on your own site, not in my mailbox. If I want to refinance my house, I'll do a search. I'm paying for my internet bandwidth, not you. If you use up my bandwidth with things that I didn't ask for, then you are definitely stealing from me.
SPAM is to email what "active content" is to programming. It lets in things that shouldn't be there.
Wonderful programs like SpamAssasin are great but too cumbersome for most people to figure out and web blocker services aren't Linux compatable. Both content providers and spammers are as responsible for the damage that they do as a bartender who keeps feeding someone drinks way past the safe level. You can drink yourself to death alone, but not at the bar.
'nuff said.
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
When I was a kid...god damn, am I that old, that I'm talking like that?
anyway. When I was a kid, Hustler was about as nasty as it got. I thought that what was going on in those glorious pages was about the nastiest thing I'd ever see. Stuff like severe s&m, bestiality, and clown porn wasn't behind the counter at the liquor store. You had to go to adults-only places to get the truly weird stuff.
Nowadays that shit shows up in my inbox. It used to be that if you wanted it, you knew where to get it. Now it's being crammed down our throats.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I would expect that *everyone* gets the same kind of spam. So the penis enlargement spam I get, a 12 year old probably does too.
The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is. An email address is just an alias, the person who checks that box could be 8 or 80, there is no way to tell. Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who checks the mailbox is, there is no way to hold people responsible for sending emails inappropriate for children to that mailbox. You can send porn to a physical mailbox, and the person who gets the mail may be a minor, but you can't be held responsible for that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.
They should e charged for sending spam (where applicable) but trying to prosecute them because they are sending mail to an emailbox where a child has access is very slippery, because there is no way to know who the box belongs to.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
ummm. i hate spam
luckily spam assassin catches mine
BUT, you wouldnt hold the clerk responsible if the kid looked like a middle aged man
email addresses have no age. they have no way of knowing for sure who they link to
the obvious solution is a special NOspam domain for kids. kids.us or somesuch, where spam would be totally illegal as only children could hold such addresses.
Hey, clue-stick people. Spammers don't care. They don't give two shits about who they are sending to or in some cases, what they are sending to them. They are either sending out whatever email that someone pays them to, or they have a list of email addresses they bought and couldn't care less if the emails are a) legit or b) in the demographic they asked for (if they bothered to ask).
The way that spam works is the more people you send to, the more chance you will make a profit, regardless of the risk. The cost of sending a few million email messages, or getting a new AOL/ISP account if your old one is shut down is minimul compared to what you'll get back if just one sucker sends you money for viagra, penis enlarger, fat loss pills, or spam blockers.
If you reduce the number of emails you send out by screening for certain age ranges that means that instead of sending out 5,000,000 messages you're only sending 4,999,900 (or whatever) and that's less potential eyes, and therefor less potential buyers.
In short, as sick as it is, it just doesn't make financial sense for spammers to care about who they are sending to (at least the non "legal" spammers anyway). Based on the number of spams for breast enlargement, they don't even check the most basic demographic information anyway.
This doesn't mean that a) when I have kids they're going to have either a spam filter or white listed email coming to them as well as parental guidance / watching and b) all spammers don't deserve to be hung and quartered, then violated by a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, but not necissarily in that order....
What kid wouldn't want to be hung like a stallion before reaching middle school?
Seriously I've wondered about this for a long time. I have a normal hotmail account that I use mostly that I don't give out that gets pr0n mail constantly, and a yahoo account that I use for junkmail that never gets pr0n mail but gets nearly 100 e-mails a day for other spam.
if there were ever an angle that would justify the legal wrangling that would be required to pass a law that would ban spam, (and the Internet anonymity that spam relies on), this would be it.
"won't somebody please think of the children" pulls any American's hearstrings a lot louder than "right to privacy" or "right to free speech" or "right to make lots of money". (but not necessarily "right to bribe congressmen").
The spam problem, at it's root, is born from Internet anonymity. Internet anonymity is a powerful rights issue. As long as Internet anonymity exists, spam will exist, whether it's banned or not.
This is a very sticky issue - and it became a sticky issue when the Internet was changed from a network of academic and scientific interests to a commercial enterprise. It was not a well-thought-out plan. This was unforseen fallout.
Clearly, there have been huge benefits to humanity at large from this transition. But these are some very thorny issues to work out. In the end, it just doesn't make sense to combine the Information Superhighway that will educate and enlighten with the freewheeling Las Vegas style business environment it's become. How do we reconcile it?
It's not as simple as quoting Zappa; "Protecting the children is a good way to raise a generation of kids that can't stick up for themselves."
I have young kids, and I do not let them surf the internet or read email unsupervised for this very reason. And probably won't until they're 16. It becomes a VERY time-consuming task for a well-meaning parent. I'm certainly not afraid of explaining homosexuality to my kids. I'm not afraid of my 9 year old son seeing a breast. I'd be worried about him watching a film of a guy getting it on with a donkey. I'd be especially worried about my daughter watching a "BDSM scene" castration mpeg. Most adults can't handle watching that stuff.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
All it takes is bounties:
1. Turn in their identity to the authorities.
2. Collect your $10,000.
3. They stop.
I don't have any kids (yet), but if/when my kid gets explicit e-mail, you can bet I'm going to hunt down the dirtbag down. If a lawsuit doesn't work, maybe a baseball bat will...
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
While I'm the first to agree that kids ought not to be receiving unsolicited porn email, I am very hesitant to invoke the familiar "save the children" cause in prosecuting spam-- I presume that the bulk of pr0n spam is sent from fairly unprosecuable locations anyway, whether they be sufficiently obfuscated or from a riverboat off the coast of Nigeria.
If I were a parent I'd set up a POP account for the grommet and then whitelist filter incoming stuff at the server anyway.
oh. and use something like eudora and "don't automatically download images" (no email/web bugs). By the time they're smart enough to get around these measures, they're smart enough to be getting their own porn anyway.
wow, doesnt take much to be insightful on this site, does it?
Nope.
If morality and honesty and nature were the issue, it wouldn't matter. children mature at different ages, both mentally and physically.
......
It's the legalities that are in question here. It's not exactly illegal to make it available to the 'general public', which, sorry to say to all you soccer moms out there, includes teenagers and younger (whether they buy it, or you buy it for them).
Some states have laws where shops have to 'tint' or 'fog' their windows, others do not. In some states, it's illegal to 'attempt' to purchase cigarettes underage, some states it's not.
Maybe they should have to put stars over a woman's nipples/vagina or a man's penis, as most fliers and advertisments directed at the general public (which means they don't care who, they just want the money) are. That way, until a sale is made without identification, or a minor breaks the law by hitting the 'over 18' button, WHO CARES!?!? And if your kids want to be looking at porn, you should already know that, sheesh! By the time I started explorin' my sexuality my parents were more than aware of it, lol. Either way how does our government expect to afford yet a new nationwide police force for the internet? They can't even manage our country properly, pfffft.
Personally, I think soccer mommy needs ta' stop worrying about the blind spots in her behemoth SUV and focus a little more on her child's development. But hey, if it takes a village to raise a child, someone else must be paying attention, right? **shudders** didn't she just write ANOTHER book???
mike
Agreed, but measures can be taken to verify someone's age (requiring a credit-card ID seems a rather popular one). However, given that a spammer is posting to millions of addresses, he/she is doubtless well aware that a portion of them are underage so the comparison between such individuals and someone going up to a child and showing them pictures should be a valid one. Since these emails typically include links to "teaser" images (which then pop up automatically for someone using Outlook Express without a suitably configured firewall), this should make it a serious felony. Which, BTW, is probably why every spammer that has given a public interview has always said they "don't do porn". Ha!
Bullshit. If you can't be sure that you aren't sending obscene materials to minors, then you have no business doing so. The crudeness of the internet is no excuse to ignore corporeal sensibilities.
If some other adult gave you some indication that it was acceptable to send such materials to a particular destination, that's another issue entirely. You would not be acting with reckless disregard of the foreseeable consequences of your actions.
This isn't just about legally obscene materials. Business proprietors should have a legal incentive to not act like total morons.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
True.
However, it is highly unlikely that an underaged person would look like a middle aged man. When I was in highschool I worked for a small grocery store, and I did various things, running a cash register among them. I was trained to card idividuals up until they looked ~25 for cigarettes and ~30 for alchohol (this was before my state passed a law requiring a checker to be 21 to sell alchohol). This was to make sure that no adult material was sold to minors.
I agree. This is a really good idea, and I wish I would have thought of it. :-)
...interesting if true.
Fuck your fascism, American pig. Sex doesn't need to be looked upon so conservatively like you damned folks seem to believe.
Yes.
See, it's all bold and stuff. He really means it. The period says "and that's all that needs to be said about that." Whether or not this argument is sufficient is irrelevant. Just look at that conviction.
If he had said "well, I suppose so," it wouldn't be insightful at all. No conviction, and more importantly no bold.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Actually you can't legally send porn junk mail through the US mail.
39 USC Section 3008
Whoever for himself, or by his agents or assigns, mails or causes to be mailed any pandering advertisement which offers for sale matter which the addressee in his sole discretion believes to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative shall be subject to an order of the Postal Service to refrain from further mailings of such materials to designated addresses thereof.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I just had to set up a new email address for an acquaintance with pretty serious cancer, because she's using the Interweb a lot at the moment and was being made physically sick by some of the material she's been getting.
If you sent this spam in print form to someone, adult or child, you'd be up in front of a judge in no time. The same should be true for email. I have nothing against pornography, but I do have a problem with thousands of people being forced to view it against their will so that some spammer can make a fraction of a cent per unwilling viewer.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
I may need some clarification here, but wasn't there some sort of child protection law passed that had to do with children under thirteen years of age. I recall seeing it when I created a hotmail account for some reason and when you registered an AIM screen name. I think that most have been exposed to a certain degree to handle the porn emails by 13, but that's beside my point. Does the "child" need have parental consent before 13? I don't feel like reading the bill. Does anyone know more about this? Perhaps if the individual (let's not use the connotation "child") is younger than thirteen are the parents responsible or what?
Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who checks the mailbox is, there is no way to hold people responsible for sending emails inappropriate for children to that mailbox. You can send porn to a physical mailbox, and the person who gets the mail may be a minor, but you can't be held responsible for that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.
Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who walks by is, there is no way to hold people responsible for posting pornographic billboards inappropriate for children on that street.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see your argument. 'Broadcasting' is no excuse for exposing children to this stuff. It's not acceptable out in public, nor on TV (unless you subscribe to something, in which case the control is on your side), so it sure as hell shouldn't be allowed on the Internet.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
It's another of those things that's different just because it's the internet. Would we even be having this discussion about the local sex shop visiting the infant school to sell penis pumps and breast enlargers? No - because it wouldn't even happen. And if it did you could bet the sellers would do jail time. So why should it be different just because it's the internet? Dear ima2yearold@kids.com, get a bigger penis! Dear spammer, goto jail, do not pass Go, do not collect £200.
How does the law prevent criminals from doing anything, exactly? Criminals break laws; that's why they are criminals.
If you want your children to be safe, you must actively protect them. Laws only provide for justice after the fact. What good is that if your child is kidnapped, raped, or killed?
Furthermore, the purpose of the Internet is not to educate children, it's to connect people. Not everyone needs to be connected to your children. Your children don't need unsupervised access to the entire online world. Nobody is obligated to make it suitable for children, nor should they.
That said, unsolicated spam, pornographic or otherwise, is reaching nightmare proportions. I can't see how giving children direct access to SMTP-based email can be anything but a mistake at this point in time. For children, white-list correspondence should be the rule, not the exception.
-Hope
No, it'd be like playing X-rated segments from Girls Gone Wild during the Power Puff Girls.
There's spam out there with graphic pictures of women having sex with donkeys. Someone randomly sending those out without the faintest hint or intention to filter kids out of the list doesn't merit a "cavet emptor" defense!
Said spammer does, however, certainly deserve to be the model in their next donkyphilic photmontage.
My video compression blog
I don't have any kids, and probably never will (if I'm lucky, anyway), but I don't see the problem in them seeing these materials. Sure, spam annoys the hell out of me, and I'd be the first in line with a baseball bat to teach the spammer a little "cause and effect", but I'm not going to pretend it's because my kid saw a naked body.
unless you subscribe to something, in which case the control is on your side)
And email is not a subscription service? Where exactly is this freely broadcasted Internet?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I turn HTML off in (gasp) Outlook express, and do a view source before looking at any unknown e-mail and find that they all are loaded with comment tags to break up the text so it makes it harder to filter works. So an e-mail might be likei i53dx5--><!--k7r5me2prx4w-->
Th<!--7nzy172ft2g9ms-->at W<!--o78l9p37i8q-->an<!--vft4hc2nd6fk-->t S<!--15jjw11kvzakp1-->e<!--waeto62cb9w-->x<!--xo7
I set OE to junk any e-mail with <!-- in it but it doesn't seem to catch them because it isn't an exact match.
The spammers like to claim that all the email they send out is opted in for. Where this true children wouldn't be getting this stuff.
The problem is that spammers lie. I know I never asked to recieve ads for child porn, yet I get it. And I can't make it stop.
Spammers must be forced to post real contact info, which I don't think is going to happen.
My 14 year old neighbor is always coming over here to use the computer, work on her website and use our high speed connection. She is very upset by porn spam. She isn't requesting this stuff either.
I think the only thing to to is make legit businesses see how much spam hurts them. I get email from 4 or 5 companys that I actually requested and want. Most of the time I don't get these mails becuse of the strict spam filtering I have had to use to stop the 300+ messages a day I was getting. If big business gets pissed then perhaps we will see some action.
I'd rather be allowed to hunt and kill spammers, but that's me.
It's a good start to weed out the obvious spam, but spammers write their messages (more and more) to get through specific filters like that.
Better idea:
1) use SpamAssassin
2) use a further white list for "authorized" emailers
3) anyone not on the whitelist gets an auto-reply saying "You have reached the email address of a MINOR, and your email has been temporarily blocked. To be un-blocked, send an email and the reason why you are contacting daughter@mydomail.com to daddy@mydomain.com"
If the reply-to address bounces, it was likely spam anyways.
Works for me... wouldn't have it any other way.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Actually, the law that you posted means that one can legally send it, but only until he is asked to stop. That's pretty much how the spam law works now in the US.
I for one don't think inappropriate e-mail will hurt kids one bit as long as there's a parent around to explain stuff. I for one cycled through a part of the red light district of the city I lived in to get to school from the age of 12 and as far as I can determine I'm as sane as the next guy.
But if there are influential people who see the fact that inappropriate spam reaches children as a reason to seriously start fighting spam I'm all for it.
Cool. I'll pretend to be a kid to be rid of spam, no problem.
I can't recommend this open source program enough for stopping spam. Anyone can set it up, and while no heuristic based spam stopping program can be 100% foolproof, this will certainly stop a large amount of inappropriate spam from reaching your children. It works by matching unique words in mail, and you can constantly train it. After just going through a few pages of mail and training it I get absolutely NO mortgage, porn, penis enlargement, or viagra spams at all.
Download it here
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
In short, that's the vendor's problem, not the consumer. When the vendor makes a choice about how they market their material, email is one of many options...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
fuck you, you smelly Eurotrash piece of shit. Would you want your 8 year old sister exposed to "Black Cocks with Pearly White Cum"? Maybe you would, you sick piece of festering scum.
I don't even think that it's the majority anymore that believes such things. It's just that the minority that does is currently holding way too much power, and our system of election is quite flawed. The whole concept of less than 500 people making the laws for a country containing almost 300 million is questionable at best.
And email is not a subscription service? Where exactly is this freely broadcasted Internet?
You can get free email anywhere you like. It's not a subscription any more than my house address is. My work email, for example, is not something I subscribed to.
What would YOU call sending ten million emails indiscriminately?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
No comment...
But I consider an offense against my kids as an order of magnitude bigger than an offense against me. If you slap me, I may get upset, but I'm man enough to let it slide. If you slap one of my kids, you'd better watch yourself.
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
People like you make me ashamed to be an American. If you're going to insult someone, at least do it right, you nausea-inducing son of a one-legged fishmonger! Go back to your trailer where you belong, and start to delete some of the porn you so detest. Yes, that's right, we know you have it. While you're at it, wipe off that monitor and wash your hands. Not even a cockroach could survive in that shithole you call your home.
But he *is* a piece of Eurotrash shit. Those Europeans are such filthy polesmoking cockmunchers, and don't care who knows about it.
how exactly is that possible when spammers are forging headers like there is no tomorrow?
the reason these kids get porn is because they goto porn site's on mommy and daddy's computer and release their email.
Something does need to be done, but I don't see how any of it can be fixed without changing the basic infrastructure of email communications.
What would YOU call sending ten million emails indiscriminately?
His day job.
But if your kid gets beaten up by some football player at school, all the school will do is give the jerk a slap on the risk. I would know from experience. (sadly)
I'd expect you to be a lot stronger than you are, what with having to carry that huge chip around on your shoulder all day.
Get over it.
There is spam and there is spam. While all spam is annoying, I mind the type that suggests I visit some online embroidery shop (actually got such a spam once) or the like, much less than those with penis enlargements, women screwed by horses, and mortgage refinancing scams.
I wouldn't really care if my hypothetical kid were to see an ad for an embroidery shop. I'd care a bit if it were for some toy, because ads like that do seriously corrupt little kids, but then they get enough of that on TV. But bestiality porn? That would piss me off.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
99% of spam originates overseas (ok, that's probably an exaggeration...).
Joe Spammer in China couldn't give a rats ass if it's illegal in the USA to send porn to kids... it's too much bother and cost to try to verify/edit their distribution lists for NO benefit to them.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
I agree. This is a really good idea, and I wish I would have thought of it.
RIght, because spammers won't spam you if you ask them nicely...
> I don't see the problem in them [kids] seeing these materials
Maybe you don't have a problem with it, but I sure don't want MY kids thinking teenage girls F*ing a horse is OK. That is the picture that arrived in a spam this week.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Parents are to blame here. That's pretty much all there is to it.
scott
rubbed his greasy spiced ham on my leg once. and by the way...he is left turning!
Software to Preview Mail before Kids Read, if you wait for the preview pane you are way too late. http://www.deerfield.com used to provide a desktop firewall/mailserver which would sandbox your kids mail until you approve it then it would forward into their LAN account. Pre-Approved addresses pass without visual inspection. This product was discontinued. The discontinued beta is floating out there, but may not be reliable. Anyone know of software to meet this need? Defiant!
It's like going to a playground and pushing viagra, drugs, porno and taking their lunch money while saying you'll be right back with a 100$ loan for them. Or if an old man came on the playground and started talking to your 10 year old kid about enlarging his penis, would you really have a problem with that?
Joking aside, I dont see spamming kids with this info as being much different than asking them verbally.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Sexual/violent themes sent to children is reprehensible. So is any genre of spam.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
> Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who checks the mailbox is, there is no way to hold people responsible for sending emails inappropriate for children to that mailbox
So you are claiming that it would be alright to put a box of triple-X and beastiality in the middle of a mall with a sign 'take one' and claim there was no way to know that a child might take one?
> trying to prosecute them because they are sending mail to an emailbox where a child has access is very slippery, because there is no way to know who the box belongs to
Gee, then maybe they SHOULDNT BE SENDING THIS CRAP TO PEOPLE WHO DIDNT ASK FOR IT?
Duh?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
the problem is that most spam is illegal anyways, so it's not like they'll stop because they're sending porn to kids. They're going to stop because we come down hard on them, and we should do that even if porn isn't getting to kids.
Well, sometimes it's hard to tell if the person across the counter is 17 (too young for cigarettes) or 18 (old enough for cigs but too young for pr0n & b33r), or 25 (old enough for all of them). That's why the law requires checking IDs before selling it.
Which law? 17 is old enough for cigarettes, and 18 is old enough for pornography and alcohol here in the U.K. Are you suggesting that U.K. spammers should be beaten with a baseball bat if they send explicit material to an 18 year old in the USA, despite it being perfectly reasonable material for somebody of that age in their own country?
I'm sure that in some countries, people would suggest that USA porno merchants be beaten with a baseball bat for daring to show women naked to anybody of any age. Should this also be carried out?
Well parents should be the first line of defense. Just because there are filtering programs, that doesn't mean they shouldn't play an active role in that.
But just as any adult material is required to do for snail mail, there should be a disclaimer (perhaps in the subject), so that should be able to be easily identified by programs, or people.
Cool. I'll pretend to be a kid to be rid of spam, no problem.
Exactly what I've always thought. If there was a ".kids" domain that didn't get spam (or at least, less highly offensive spam), every adult I know would move their own private email onto it.. I sure would.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Is there any good reason that a child shouldn't have a white list of address? Maybe wishful thinking but anyone that your child will be corresponding with via email you and your should know about in advance.
Does your state use FarmFriends.com for sexual education? What about Horny House Wives?
Give me a break. There's a big difference between what's used in education vs. what's available on FarmFriends.com.
Note: I'm not actually sure that's the URL... I could turn off my spam filter for 15 minutes and check, but it seems not worth the effort.
I dunno. Might be one way to discourage little Brittany from getting that pony she's been wanting.
:)
As a collector of pr0n, I'll trade you two "shaved curious cheerleaders", a "hidden shower cams" and a complete set of "World's largest gangbang" messages for that one.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Schools all over the country are changing their rules to allow kids to carry cellphones. If I had an 8 year old kid in public school you bet your ass she'd have a cellphone with her. The reason this has nothing at all to do with email is, of course, even with cellphones I can look at the bill every month and track every one of her calls back to the sender's number. Ever tried to do that with email spam?
From the article:
"Four out of five children receive inappropriate spam e-mail touting get-rich-quick schemes, and almost half receive spam linking to pornographic materials."
This only tells me that one out of five children do not have an e-mail account, and that nearly half of all children are able to use spamassassin much better than I can.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
You're making this too complicated...
If they have no way to ensure that the person who's checking that email box IS over 18, then they shouldn't send porn at ALL!
That's like a magician saying "Gee, I have no way to tell how many kids will be in the audience tonite, so I guess I'll just go ahead and do my live-sex-act-with-both-nuts-tied-behind-my-back trick anyways."
If you can't be sure, don't do it. If you do and it "happens" to reach inappropriate recipients, pay the consequences.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Look your not going to jail all the spammers just like your not going to jail all the file sharers. (I accept the spam and I accept the file sharing) It is annoying to get the old "cock and balls spam" and think gee kids are looking at this. But that the way it is. It goes with the saying "I couldn't watch stuff like that on TV at the same age these kids today" Cats out the bag. Best thing to do is get anti-spam software and Quit Cryin.
i think if you let your kids access the internet you should control what they can see... it's just like buying booze or going to a strip club... after you pass the control you may pass but you can look at the advertisement anyway
set up email filters, restrict the websites they can visit... but don't blame those who supply them.
a kid may not be able to buy a filthy magazine but it can still look through it until somebody notices. it's not that the spammers offer them free access to their site
and no i am not a spammer
it's not about mimicking reality, it's about believability
Well, let me ask you this... in the long run, what's more harmful for the child, out of the following choices:
1. The child sees a sexual act in a spam message, and you, being the responsible, intelligent and loving parent you are, explain to them what they're seeing, and how it's morally right or wrong.
Or...
2. The government steps in and makes spam e-mail illegal because there's no viable solution for checking the age of an e-mail recipient before sending the message. Given how government generally operates, it should only be 3-5 years before snail-mail junk is outlawed also, leading to several hundreds (if not thousands) of lawsuits within a year. After that, probably another 2-3 years until someone comes up with the idea that since they don't approve of some e-mail or snail-mail they're getting, it's offensive and unwanted, therefore, must be spam... leading to more legislation defining the term "spam" and "unwanted commercial e-mail", eventually leading to the breakdown of even more of individual's basic human rights, especially Freedom of Speech, Press, and (although not specifically mentioned in the Constitution), Privacy. (My sig has particular relevance here.)
Granted, I'm not going to run aroun showing dirty pictures to kids, but in the grand scheme of things, there are only 2 groups of people that can do anything about it -- government, and IT. We're the IT, so let's try to come up with a solution before the government starts.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Track 'em down and charge them the same way you would charge anybody who publicly displayed lude material.
A very smart women once told me that you must choose your battles. Some battles are not worth the cost of winning.
I think this is as true for spam as anything else in life.
I think we need to look at the battle to kill spam and reduce it in scope a bit. This idea of simply 'spam bad, kill it' is actually too broad.
It leaves open too many issues, like companies that allow opt-in lists and the like.
I can't wait for the first time that some kid decides to send an email to every kid in his school and the kid or the school gets sued under some spam law. That would prove the validity of my point.
However Porn (yummy) is a fight worth winning.
It is so clear and concise. How can you argue against it?
Playboy and Penthouse have some fascinating articles in them sometimes (or at least they used to, I haven't read one in years). Would you have a problem with me giving your 12 year old a copy of Penthouse just because I thought some article in it would interest him?
I just don't see how any reasonable person can find any circumstance where putting porn in the hands of kids is acceptable.
If the companies say that they don't know how to tell the difference between a 12 year olds email address and an adults I think we should just agree with them that that is a real headscracther.
It just might not be possible to spam porn.
The hardship in this fight needs to be squarely placed on the shoulders of the porn industry. There is no reason to force kids to register special email addresses, that is what they porn industry would ask for and they need to be denied it.
Tell the porn industry this. If someone pays you money to access your sight then you can spam the email address that is tied with that account.
That way you got the industry in a trap. If some kid stole daddies card and daddy finds the porn in the kids mailbox later on then the porn industry is still at fault for distributing porn to a minor.
Well, at 18, not a baseball bat so much. I think they should be legally culpable for breaking the laws of the US, just as someone in the US should be culpable for advertizing Nazi memorabilia across the internet to someone in France (if I remember my google / ebay precedents right). [BTB, I agree with American policy there: it may be bad to sell Nazi memorabilia, but I don't think it's the government's call.]
Very good question, actually. I started by thinking, "Well, anyone who sends that stuff to a seven-year-old is really fsck'd in the head. They're seriously morally reprehensible and such behavior shouldn't be tolerated." I think in our culture, most people would agree with me.
But pornography for adults is reprehensible and depraved as well -- not to the same degree, but it is. Why should I tolerate one, and not the other?
Especially since pr0n spammers aren't content to sit and wait for people to come to them, but actively seek out people, who may be trying to avoid it. Porn addiction is a real thing; there are many men who struggle with it, who want to quit, but can't. I've never been much tempted in that way, but I've had friends who are. Many pornographers know this: that's why they spam and put out teasers, because they know the bait works.
It'd be like a drug dealer, not willing to simply let people come to him, sending out "free samples" of heroin or coke in the mail, that when you opened it automatically injected you with something. It's preying on the weak-willed, just like casinos, and even credit-card companies (Are you paying off your bill every month? Let's raise your limit, so you're tempted to spend 'till you can't! I have like a $13,000 limit on one of my cards due to this effect.)
Or perhaps more apropos, like a liqour company sending out airline-size samples of their warez to random people, not caring, probably even knowing that some of the recipients were recovering alcoholics.
But getting back to your question: I live in a culture that takes a laissez-faire attitudes towards adults. If you want to pollute your body & your mind, we'll let you do so; it's your responsibility (once you're old enough), not ours. One advantage of that kind of a society is that when you do reject that crap, it actually means something: you're doing it because you want to, not because you must. And I think that makes the choice more valuable.
So no, I don't intend to attack the pr0n industry with baseball bats. Still, if you send pr0n to someone in Saudi Arabia, you should be legally culpable. =)
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
set up email filters, restrict the websites they can visit... but don't blame those who supply them.
I don't have a problem with people providing access to pr0n - But there's a huge difference between someone going out and finding pictures of cheerleaders screwing bulls and having someone deliver such pictures to everyone indiscriminately. I *do* blame those who supply the spam.
Since arguing by analogy is de rigeur on slashdot, here's mine: Someone opening a porn bookstore down the street is fine. The same owner tacking porn to my door is not.
As a male, Ive been recieveing "enlarge your breasts now" spam for quite some time...
and damnit, Ive been on a diet to reduce them!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Human children do not have to be protected from every single 'danger' that this world has to offer. I hate spam (btw. I am not a US citizen and I never lived in the States) but there is no reason why children have to be protected from any information that HUMANS have created over the course of history. Children are ALSO humans, they will do the same thing that grown ups do after a while, they deserve to know the truths of the world. If someone sends them a hard-core porn spam they probably will see it and what chance do you (parents) think you will have of protecting your children from every single internet site or image or a newsgroup or a magazine or a flier? None. What you should do is sit down with your child (if he/she is old enough to use an email account) and go over the spam messages with him/her and explain what it is. At least you will be sure that your kid will not freak out the next time when he/she sees something like that and will behave accordingly to what you have explained to him/her. I think this is more correct way of solving the problem.
If the same attitude was applied to many of the other sides of life maybe there would be less violence, fewer narcotics users, fewer drinkers, smokers. Maybe the society would not be as sick as it is today - the harder you try to prevent your children from learning something about this world the fewer chances you create for them to actually understand the world and its intricacies. Knowledge is power and power is knowledge that prevents us from making stupid mistakes in our lives.
Of-course if you don't actually care about your child's mental development and you are only seaking easy alternatives to teaching your child something important, you may vote for imposing various laws upon citizens of your country.
You can't handle the truth.
Nambla like pedophilia.
All the kids i know use hotmail, you can't get much worse in the way of spam
Everyone here familiar with the federal 'Do Not Call' list for telemarketers? Wouldn't it be possible to create a similar product for the web? A 'Do Not Spam' list? Anyone sending say... 100 emails a day would have to cross-reference the recipients addresses with those on the list. And just maybe to support the thing... pay a dollar per account to get your name added... maybe... If you care enough about your kids to keep them from seeing pr0n, pay the buck, if not, don't pay the dollar. Kinda like a mixture of the preposed Public Domain Enhancement Act and the federal 'Do Not Call' list.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Maybe you don't have a problem with it, but I sure don't want MY kids thinking teenage girls F*ing a horse is OK"
Why would an email convince them its okay?
I gave my daughter an email account on hotmail last year (at age 11). I told her that she will get some email that is disgusting and perverted, and that she should just delete it. If she's puzzled or concerned, she can call me to look it over. And never talk to anyone unless you've met them in person first.
I'm sure she got the spam that you speak of (most of the internet did). It didn't twist her because she has the *foundation* to know right from wrong at age 12.
Its like when she asked to see the Matrix movie (she's in 7th grade), I said "well, it has some rough language". She said "Dad, kids talk that way all the time, I don't use that kind of language". Its just what I wanted to hear and I let her see it.
By age 12, kids really do understand right from wrong. Hell, 100 years ago, 12 and 13 year olds were already married, so the idea that children are fragile is a relatively recent thought (since WWII).
Anyway, if kids think that email confers a degree of acceptability of an action, then I suggest the child has more fundamental problems and probably shouldn't have an unsupervised email account to begin with.
The problem is kids on the web unsupervised, not spam. As if there were such a thing as "appropriate" spam.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
>>set up email filters, restrict the websites they can visit... but don't blame those who supply them.
a kid may not be able to buy a filthy magazine but it can still look through it until somebody notices. it's not that the spammers offer them free access to their site
As soon as someone invents a filter that does so without blocking good stuff I'll let you know. Baysean email filters are pretty good and I'd definitely install one, but let's see that stop mail if the kid signs up for hotmail or something.
"A Girls Gone Wild commercial contains no nudity,"
It really does. Full boobs, fuzzy nips. And so it makes it family friendly?
What's the magic of the nip that makes people crazy?
18 is cutoff for porn and 21 is for alcohol most places in the US.
No. When I see naked bodies popping up on my screen, it's my problem. For about the last year I've been recieving several pornographic emails a day in all three of my accounts. I turned 18 one month ago. I, for one, don't want to see that.
Don't tell me "If you don't want to see it, set up a spam filter.". Spammers try to get by filters. Fake senders, subject lines, misspelled text, use of images instead of text... Using a spam filter is an obvious sign I don't want spam. Spammers only hope that I'm addicted to pr0n, so I'll visit their site. All they want is to hook another soul.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
Someone can sue a spammer any time they want IF they can find out who the spammer is. That's the problem.
If spam is getting to inappropriate people (i.e. children) that's just yet another potential illegality among many that have been continually perpetrated, among many that the authorities on virtually every level seem uninterested in enforcing.
I keep saying over and over, the spam problem is not one that needs new legislation. It's one that needs state, local, national and international authorities to enforce the laws already on the books that are currently being broken. People need to start asking questions of each new elected official as to whether or not they're going to prosecute spammers or continue to ignore the laws they break.
Maybe this particular crime's political incorrectess might finally motivate the authorities to actually pursue the spammers? One can only hope, but since almost every spammer already breaks numerous federal laws, it's a crap shoot to determine if anything will be done.
I don't see the problem here. Why should it blocked from young people? This eliminates the need for us to pay for sex-ed! What can't you learn from spam?!? I never learned about MILF hunting or animal sex in school and now I feel I am at a disadvantage.
What if, instead of a .sex, we have a .safe, where spam may not be sent, under penalty of fine. It seems this would be the optimal solution to the issue, a vountary opt-out program.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
The real problem is kids having unsupervised email accounts. If you are the one giving a kid an unsupervised email account, then _you_ are the one exposing them to inappropriate material.
It's like getting full-cable access, showing the kid how to use the remote, and then letting 'em watch TV by themselves. You *know* pornography is out there (and if you don't, you're too stupid to be allowed 'Net access anyway, so you're not reading this), so it's a bit late to be complaining about it now.
The simple solution is to make it illegal for a minor to use any service on the Internet without direct supervision. Then if you complain about your kids getting access to pornography, we can fine YOU can turn your kids over to CPS on account of your being a sorry excuse for a parent.
I am a VERY liberal middle-aged guy who abhors censorship when it comes to folks choosing what they wish to see or read.
But when it comes to young children, who have no mental toolkit for evaluating HOt RuSSian BABEz or Ho's N Horses, the dangers of misunderstanding, and the disturbing notions that can take root in their, literally, virgin consciousness, are too awful to contemplate, let alone sanction.
I have no magic bullet solution. But I do know that toleration of this is unacceptable.
if pr0n spam was involved?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Don't be afraid of what they might tell you.
After all, I'd rather hear my kids say "geez, I got an email with a girl and a horse", than be afraid to tell me.
If we talk, we can create understanding.
If we create understanding, the perverse looses its power over us.
And yes, I have a teen girl and a pre-teen boy.
The FCC has ruled that the Internet is not broadcast, it is not subject to the same rules and regulations.
I'm against spam as much as the next person, but we have to be careful. Your line of reasoning is how things like the CDA came about, remember that?
If you say things like "If you can't be sure the other party is of age, then you can't send anything that is adult", then we wind up with a G-rated Internet for kids, and we no longer have a free venue for expression.
I'm not arguing that spam is free expression, or anything of that sort, only that your line of logic, when extended to other protocols, could be very dangerous.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Many spam filters these days use words and context to filter mail.
So to get around this kind of block, they put in deliberate misspellings that can't be blocked with either a context or keyword filter.
Which is why most spam has nonsense words in the title.
ah, good point. As with most Americans, I tend to forget the scope of issues on the internet. My apologies.
Still though, I think that lack of intent does not necesarily mean that no crime was committed. I'm sure that this idea is manifest in several countries.
DO IT QUICKLY. Crimes of passion cannot be well thought out. ;)
web pages are the primary harvest points for email crawlers.
(rolling eyes)
I'm not condoning spam, I think its idiotic, but why did you flaunt an email address that way? I have one public address (hotmail), and then a private address that only people know about (close friends). That account *never* gets spam.
"i mean cannibalism is more acceptable than pedophilia, for crying out loud."
I am so hungry to eat what's on the front of the latest Maxim magazine.
Up! Up! Up!
I don't see why you all talk about the spammers, when they obviously do this for money. If the spammer is ALSO the owner of that porn site (that picture of the horse is coming from somewhere), then you got it easy. If he is HIRED by a porn company to spam the crap out of everyone, then forget the spammer, GET THE PORN SITE. They have an address, right? If the site is offshore and the spammer is offshore, then, I guess you're screwed, and maybe I just lost my point..
Maybe there are worse things for a child to see than porn. (I'm not sure I agree, but that is a different matter) I still think it is wrong for a child to see it. Most Parents agree with me, so we make it illegal as a means of protecting our kids from an evil. There are other parents with different values. Parents outside the US (or at least in Europe) are not as bothered by their kids seeing porn, so they have not made an effort to prevent their kids from seeing it.
Will they see it anyway? Yes of course, but that isn't the point, we prevent as much as we can, and ends up being rare for them to get an opportunity. To be a perfect parent it impossibal, we all do the best we can. We can't be there all the time.
P.S. I am not a parent, and don't mean to imply it, though I think I did.
Are we talking 7 year olds or teenagers here? Calling someone who is old enough to drive a car a child is like calling Grandma Moses middle aged, or calling a 30-something like myself an adolescent.
As much as I hate spammers, I hate the "save the children" crown even more.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Then contact your congressman, and make them change the law so that like ciggerette sales the burdon of proff is on the Spammer. If someone who is 20 goes into a bar and gets served alcahol the bar will lose their license (to serve alcahol) even if the 20 year old showed a fake id. Bars know this and are very careful to check not just the id, but the validity of it. (They get good at finding fakes)
Symantec has long been the victim of people using their name to spam-peddle their software without their consent. It's interesting that they conducted this study. I wonder if Symantec is looking for some way to wipe out spammers, since if a spammer will advertize illegal/unauthorized software sales, they're likely to advertize porn. Maybe Symantec is looking to get some revenge on the entire spam industry by whipping out the 'Think of the CHILDREN!' guns?
I'm mildly concerned about this. Anything that has the rallying cry of 'Think of the CHILDREN!' makes me worried since that's a way-overused excuse for more regulation of a whole mess of things. At the same time, spam is not free speech, it's not socially acceptable, and it's annoying as all frickin' hell. I'd say to watch this very closely and carefully so that (a) it doesn't get out of control, and (b) we can roast marshmellows over the flaming husks of the ex-spammers.
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Until your 8 year old little girl wants to know why she needs a bigger penis.
The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is.
Since when has government concerned itself with the limitations inherent in the real world ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
"Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out?
Yes."
Hell no they shouldn't! Just because they email a little kid a picture of ladies fisting themselves does NOT mean it is their fault! They are just trying to make a buck!
Every PC I've ever owned has had an option to set a password in the BIOS. On some boards this can be reset by tweaking a few jumpers, but a) if your kid resets your BIOS password you'll know about it the next time you boot up and b) if your kid's old enough to know how to do it, he's probably old enough to cope with adult-oriented topics.
A friend of mine has two daughters, one's in college and the other one just turned (I think) 11. The one who's in college has pretty much always had low-supervision access to the internet because by the time they got a computer she was already old enough to use it on her own; back then, spam wasn't nearly as much of a problem, and you weren't likely to find porn unless you went looking for it. She got her own computer when she was 16 or 17.
The younger daughter, though, is constantly supervised online. She doesn't even know the password to her own AOL screen name! If Mom's not around, she can't get online, period. When she does get online, Mom signs onto her account, clears anything nasty out of her email, and only then does she let the daughter sit down in front of the computer. In the past, she had some sort of "log everything" AOL add-on running, and the daughter knew it, to discourage anything stupid. Within the last year or so she got rid of the program since the daughter is getting to where she wants to talk to friends without Mom seeing everything.
She's still supervised, though. The computer's in the living room, which is also visible from the kitchen, so Mom can keep one eye on what's happening whether she's watching TV, reading a book, ironing clothes, or cooking dinner. Every now and then, Mom looks up the AOL profiles of her daughter and the people she's been emailing. All of this - the email screening, checking out the buddies - takes maybe 5 minutes a day.
Symantec surveyed people aged 7 to 18. If there are 7 year olds out there getting porn spam, there must be 7 year olds who aren't having their email screened by anyone. What's a 7 year old doing with unfettered access to email and the internet, what's a 7 year old doing allowed to turn on the computer and do what he or she pleases in the first place? The world is not guaranteed to be "child-proof", nor should it be. At 7 years old, I don't think most kids should have unfiltered access to anything - TV, radio, coming and going as they please, and certainly not the internet.
I've heard my friend say more than once that the younger daughter won't be allowed online unsupervised until she's allowed to date - probably a good policy for just about any parent. You wouldn't let some guy take your 11 year old daughter out to dinner and a movie, why would you let some random stranger from a chat room do it virtually? Different parents will always have different ideas about the right age for their kids to start dating, but chances are, if you're OK with your kid making out with his or her boy/girlfriend, you're OK with them taking responsibility for their own email.
No, nobody should have to be subjected to this junk, but a 15 year old girl should be old enough to deal with it (and not be "uncomfortable" in doing so). There are a lot of 15 year olds having sex these days, I doubt there are many who can't even bear to think about it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's OK for spammers to broadcast porn to any email address they can find. What I am saying is that any parent
And email is not a subscription service?
Of course it is, but the source of the pornographic spam is probably not the ISP. Hence, signing up for email service is not the same as signing up to receive unsolicited pornographic email.
The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is.
Just like TV/Radio advertising I guess, they have rules and laws as to which ads can be shown and when and how accurate they must be SPAM should be regulated like this as well
In short no other advertising medium would allow this kind of content
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is
That's not my problem.
That's the spammer's problem.
If the spammer can't solve his problem that's again not my problem.
Actually no, you are wrong on this case. The method is opt-in, by doing an opt-in they can ask for the age of the person using the computer. If the persons says they are over X age, then you have to beleive them and then if they are not over age X then you are not responsible because you asked the question with no reasonable method of verification.
But the way spammers work is they send it to anyone that they can reasonably find has a legitimate e-mail address, not how old the person is that recieves the spam. It would be akin to sending nude magazines 1400 10th avenue leavenworth kansas, just because you found out the street address existed and accepted e-mail. When the address is actually to a high school, so basically you would be sending porno to a high school. Now I knwo that it wouldnt be veiwed by children in that case, but it shows indiscriminiate spamming and how it can get to people.
You can easily know who the box belongs to, you ask. If they trick you, then your not liable, because you were tricked. The same reason you are not liable if someone comes on and buys a dildo off your web site with a valid credit card and other information, and then you find out that that person is a 10 year old buy who knows a little to much about his computer and his parents credit card.
It is also a good reason not to be liable if a child comes to your web site and you have a warning on its index page, this way you are not responsible if they see bad content, because they violated the agreement by being too young and you had no method of verifying that they were who they claimed to be.
In fact, I would say there was 100% liability for sending porn spam to a random box and not having any verification it was a child at all. You are pushing a supply onto the user, instead of recieving a demand for your product from someone you cant verify.
In fact, child porno, and other indecent things, might be one of the best reasons to ban at least sexually oriented spam, and spam inapropriate to children. (IE drugs that could be dangerous for children to have, because it would increase interest in taht drug from someone who might not be mature enough to make a good decision regarding how the spam is handled).
Buzz OUT
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
I'm offended by a lot of the Spam I get. Interestes rates I can ignore, I'll buy from someone I trust (like my credit union, or a broker that spends advertising money on media I'd like to see supported instead of free advertising) Porn offends me, even though I'm 29 I don't want it. We as a socity have decied that it is bad (this is the US, other countries are different) and those who like it take efforts to prevent offending us with it. Suddenly however I can't get email without seeing some message that offends not just me, but most adults in my country. (even adults that subscribe to playboy are offended by some of the porn I get)
all the school will do is give the jerk a slap on the risk.
That is much, much worse than a slap on the Stratego.
Amen.
The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is. An email address is just an alias, the person who checks that box could be 8 or 80, there is no way to tell. Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who checks the mailbox is, there is no way to hold people responsible for sending emails inappropriate for children to that mailbox.
If you didn't ask for it: Sure you can! Who the hell are they to send all kind of perverted shit to email addresse of people who never asked for it!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
You might also want to look into putting a "ROBOTS.TXT" file on the website. Google "robots.txt" for more information on how to do that.
:-)
robotstxt.org - no Googling required.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Actually, it is acceptable on breadcast TV. I was watching CBS's morning show at 9:00am on a Sunday the other day and they showed a photograph of a woman completely topless, and they didn't blur it out. It was an art shot. It was not some native in Africa, or some educational piece about biology. It was just during a montage of photos from a particular photographer. It was a shot that took up the entire screen for a good 5 or 10 seconds, so it wasn't something someone accidentally missed.
Now, I have no problem with it, but there are definitely people who would. Luckily, we don't have to live by their stupid rules.
Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who walks by is, there is no way to hold people responsible for posting pornographic billboards inappropriate for children on that street.
;)
That is why, in the US at least, you can't post pictures of naked woman have sex with horses on public billboards.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Can someone please tell me how pornograpy is any more harmful to children than it is adults?
So perhaps spammers shouldn't be allowed to send such explicit emails to servers where it's known that kids have accounts, and only be allowed to send emails to servers with exclusively adult audiences.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
When I was under 18, I had to scour usenet late at night to get my porn. In the snow. Uphill each way!
Now kids get it delivered to their email box for nothing????
Perhaps you misunderstood my post - by saying "it's the vendor's problem", I meant that it's the vendor's responsibility to make sure that their message is sent only to appropriate audiences. They shouldn't have free license to broadcast objectionable content like that. If they wish to market their material, they have several ways of doing so - email is only one option. Just because email addresses by themselves don't identify a person is no excuse to hide behind...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
How DARE you parent your child without the Government's permission and/or blessing.
And doing a much better job than the Government, too. * tsk tsk tsk *
Have you no sense of propriety, you AC?
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Thats what parental blocks are for.
...what with their embrafeable stronlholds and their vertilde suvereniteettis and their ruimnaalden orrella nnthayers. The Welsh are the single greatest threat to human language and they MUST be stopped before it's too late! Heed my warning or the human race will be doomed to saying LLANFAIR for all eternity!
It should be obvious that a kid with an unrestricted e-mail account is going to get load of the same damn twisted porn spam everybody else gets. We don't need Symantec to tell us that. Anyone who lets their underage child get unrestricted e-mail is setting them up to see some seriously twisted shit. The only way my kid is getting e-mail is if it's whitelist-only. Even a whitelist would be risky with header spoofing, which I predict will become more of a problem once challenge-response systems start gaining popularity.
And email is not a subscription service?
Of course it is, but the source of the pornographic spam is probably not the ISP. Hence, signing up for email service is not the same as signing up to receive unsolicited pornographic email.
Actually, signing up for an email address is signing up for anyone to send you anything at any time. An email address is an open invatation for anyone to send you email. It is not a "white-list" service (unless you make it one using filters on your end). Email is set up to take any mail from anyone, with any subject. Signing up for an email account is the same as signing up for every piece of email you receive. Unless the way email works is changed, having an email address is an open invation to send you mail.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
While in theory this sounds like a good idea, this is how things like the CDA get passed. Since we don't know who goes to a site, unless you have completely banal material that no one would ever object to, you need to make sure everyone who visits your site is over 18. Want to talk about homosexuality? Need to verify age. Want to talk about breat cancer? Need to verify age. Want to talk about STDs? Need to verify age.
Not everything can or should be brought down to a childhood level. Hell, you shoudl verify everyone is 18 before reading your post because of the comments you made (mine too).
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Spammers could at the *very least* take precautions such as to prefix the subject line with "ADV:" or "PORN:" This would make filtering easy, and then I would take that argument. But no, spammers use misleading subject lines such as "why didn't you call me?" The business of most spammers is completely illegitimate.
IC 35-42-4-4 Child exploitation
Well I'll write up the paperwork if someone will loan me a trial rule book and access to a good law library. It's just that little bit of community service that we all should do.
Lets see, it's a class C felony so they lose the RTKABA a plus, jail time is blurry, hope a good judge is sitting.
I can bump it up to a B if a deadly weapon is used. I'm SURE I can convince a jury a computer is a deadly weapon when I bloody the bastards skull with one or can find a juciy legal precedence or some sort.
And of course it goes all the way to an A if the child whose 'fragile little mind' has been warped runs to mommy and trips and has a boo-boo er ah, 'serious bodily injury', and tearfully testifies to such in court.
And if the jury doesn't buy all that we've slapped on 'Conspiracy Too' so they get five years anyway as most jurist will allow it.
In Indiana you have to get double the time you think the bastard deserves because they get parole after half is served.
And you thought all that legal mumbo jumbo was just for lawyers! Someone will punish me for this.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
By that logic, signing up for phone service is an open invitation for anyone to call, including telemarketers, stalkers, and prank callers. Last time I checked, the police don't take kindly to the last two, and telemarketers are soon to face some real regulations. If someone were to set up an autodial machine that left sexually explicit messages on people's answering machines, that someone would soon be in big trouble. Why should email be any different?
I have to question how many people posting comments actually *read* this article. It says that 47% of children have recieved spam with links to pornographic materials, not the pornographic materials. If I (unknowingly) send a child an email with pornographic pictures attached to it, then yes it is pretty much my fault. On the other hand, if I (unknowingly) send a child an email saying "If you want go here!" and the link has the usual "Click here if you're over 18" intro page, then it shouldn't be my fault. If the parents want their children not to see any pornographic material, then they either not allow said child on the computer(s) without supervision, or they should install a NetNanny-like piece of software on one or more of their computers, and designate it/them as the kid's computer(s). In short, as long as they're doing nothing more than linking to a porn site (seeing a link to a porn site should not 'harm' a normal kid, no matter what the Soccer Moms in the crowd may think), spammers should not be held responsible for anything. If they send actual pictures, then yes, they should be reprimanded.
...no child will "stumble" onto a BDSM castration mpeg, or some guy getting it on with a donkey.
That stuff costs money to obtain, or you have to know someone who has it. If they find it, it's because they wanted to. That kind of weird shit doesn't fall in your lap.
My baby brother uses the net unsupervised, and unfiltered, and he mostly uses kazaa to download Simpsons episodes and visits Strongbad.
I've checked... (logs).
Sometimes there aren't monsters under the bed.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
I agree with your comments, but I think the there is a distinction between push and pull type information.
Web sites, etc. where people voluntarily go seek out information are a different story than email thats spam-blasted to everyone they can get an address for. Unsolicited porn, penis-and-breast-enlargement offers, and get-rich-quick schemes in my 9-year-old daughter's inbox is where I draw the line, sorry.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
You are a stupid shithead, dumb son of a bitch! Why the hell are you trying to split hairs over the spammer's inability to determine the age of the mailbox holder? If you were sending your porn in bulk to every snail mail box on the block, you can bet your sweet ass would be being pierced by Bubba in the federal pen right now!
The point is SPAMMERS ARE CRIMINALS. They spew crap to any and every address they get their hands on. THAT is the problem, not remote determination of age. What were you going to suggest, spammer? Publishing lists of all email address holders, complete with the ages of their owners, so you know who to spam your horse porn to and who not?
regardless of whether the state prevents them from getting it at the library Net station...
/....
Seriously, this is stupid. How the hell can an email sender determine whether someone who checks the email account is of legal age?
What's the matter? Iraq over with (supposedly) so now we start worrying about porn again?
You want to get rid of spam? Devise a technical solution. Otherwise, forget it. Even making spam illegal will never get rid of spam (it might reduce it somewhat) and dragging up this sort of complaint is just a waste of everybody's time.
Not to mention that the only way to get rid of spam is to convince EVERYONE in the world to NEVER CLICK ON IT! LOL!
Must be a slow news day at
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Sure there is. It's called an opt-in list. The only spammers who don't know their target audience are the scumbags who reap emails from lists and webpages and then spam-away without any concern for the recipients. These people should be strung-up from the highest branch anyway.
Though maybe hanging is too good for these pricks. We should bring back public floggings.
Fucking awesome. Option 2. Definitely. If it means even 12 months of spam-free bliss before the world comes crumbling down around us, then I'm all for it.
And then they should be shot and killed.
Or fed to aligators.
Whichever is more convenient.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
How exactly are the spammers supposed to know the real ages of JuicyLou2456@hotmail.com, 34tMikeCunt@earthlink.net, etc. (et al) ?
Your fictitious email address gives me an idea. We have top-level domains that are safe for parents to let their kids visit - .kids, websites with safe content opt-in. Why not declare the .kids domain to be unfit for "adult" spam, and crucify any spammer that violates this? There's no reason this should apply to websites and not to email.
I know that if I were a parent, I'd gladly pay a good sum of money to get my 12-year old a _safe_ email account. I don't want to have to read all his/her mail before they can see it - I just want to know it's safe.
"It'd be like a drug dealer, not willing to simply let people come to him, sending out "free samples" of heroin or coke in the mail, that when you opened it automatically injected you with something."
Important difference: porno won't fuck you up nearly as badly as drugs.
2. The government steps in and makes spam e-mail illegal because there's no viable solution for checking the age of an e-mail recipient before sending the message. Given how government generally operates, it should only be 3-5 years before snail-mail junk is outlawed also, leading to several hundreds (if not thousands) of lawsuits within a year. After that, probably another 2-3 years until someone comes up with the idea that since they don't approve of some e-mail or snail-mail they're getting, it's offensive and unwanted, therefore, must be spam... leading to more legislation defining the term "spam" and "unwanted commercial e-mail", eventually leading to the breakdown of even more of individual's basic human rights, especially Freedom of Speech, Press, and (although not specifically mentioned in the Constitution), Privacy.
No, we don't all share your prejudices about government.
Federal law passed in 1991 (known as the TCPA) makes it illegal to send any material transmitted via facsimile that advertises the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods, or services which is transmitted to any person without that person's prior express invitation or permission. If the fax was deliberately sent to you (as most junk faxes are), federal law entitles you to recover a minimum of $500 and, depending the judge's discretion, up to $1,500 for each such fax that you receive. Junk faxes are illegal (I just got a $500 settlement from a junk faxer) and that has not ended civilization as we've known it.
Title 39, United States Code, Section 3010 authorizes the Postal Service to keep a list of persons who do not wish to receive sexually oriented advertisements through the mail. You can add your name and address to the list by filling out a "Form 1500" and submitting it to any post office. When your name and address have been on the list more than 30 days, it is unlawful for anyone to mail you a sexually oriented advertisement. Mailers who violate your protected status make themselves subject to court enforcement action by the United States Government. You can also have any of your children under 19 years old who reside with you or are under your care, custody, or supervision included on the list. Has that law ended all forms of direct mail marketing? Has it resulted in the government suppressing free speech? Of course not.
Not all of us hold opinions about the government that are similar to those of Ted Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph, so please stop your anti-government rants. It's silly and gets in the way of considering whether legislation is part of the answer to the problem.
How many kids have a mail box?
I didn't get one till I went to college
And honestly, when I was in high school, I didn't know ANYONE who had their own mail box. They just used their parent's address. And in college now, I still stick my parent's house as my address. Dorm address is only for temporary things.
Now as for email. even my 9 year old cousin has one.
PSH.
give me a break.
Because of different levels of accessability, there needs to be different rules when it comes to SPAM and a physical box.
-Grumpy Old man.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Are you suggesting that U.K. spammers should be beaten with a baseball bat if they send explicit material to an 18 year old in the USA, despite it being perfectly reasonable material for somebody of that age in their own country?
Well, at 18, not a baseball bat so much. I think they should be legally culpable for breaking the laws of the US, just as someone in the US should be culpable for advertizing Nazi memorabilia across the internet to someone in France (if I remember my google / ebay precedents right). [BTB, I agree with American policy there: it may be bad to sell Nazi memorabilia, but I don't think it's the government's call.]
Are you aware that you US was just about the only country that didn't agree on their soldiers being accountable for war crimes in international court.
It seems that you don't notice how you're ok playing the police, but when it's you that's being accused, well, you want to have the right to do anything.
(another example? this goes to flaming, but still. How about biochemical weapons treaty? US revoked their participation yet attacked iraq for weapons of mass destruction...)
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
> I don't see the problem in them [kids] seeing these materials
./ poster had so cleverly presented as a mirror for the article.
Dunno, don't have them of my own, but I do have serious problem with me seeing that crap. If I only could go back to the day I let my sensors down and was tricked to accidentally pressing the tubgirl link some
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
I get tons of Porn Spam that is *VERY* explicit. If the account went to a minor, wouldnâ(TM)t it be like selling porn to a minor in a store? Would pedophile laws be involved if minors were getting messages with sexually explicit pictures in it?
Thank the powers that be for SpamAssassin!
>By age 12, kids really do understand right from
>wrong. Hell, 100 years ago, 12 and 13 year olds
>were already married, so the idea that children
>are fragile is a relatively recent thought (since
>WWII).
Not necessarily. Do remember that Anthony Comstock built his entire career on the theory that childhood was a "plastic" phase in one's life, and that even a drop of perversion would destroy a child's entire being.
And he kept all sorts of "smut" out of the mails for quite some time...
-D
Should be considered "Indecent Exposure" since Children most likely did not ask to be shown the Crap, and if so, the adult material directed at minors is illegal. For all you PRON guys, no problem, if you solicited it. But for the "Minors" this is not acceptable! Opt In with validation should be required WITH verification or the spammer goes to JAIL!
Someone must invent a system that delivers an electric shock (with possibility of death) to spammers. I don't know how it would work (but it would be flawless), surely everyone would support it.
No Problem, let your parents sign you up...then go to Jail! If you really are a Kid you need help. If your Parents sign you up they are beyond help!
Lemidan
I don't put forth the effort to get new brake pads for my vehicle because I don't want to spend the time/money. I end up hitting somebody and killing them b/c my brakes wouldn't work. It's involutary manslaughter and negligence. If there were some sort of age verification possible for the porn spammers and they did not use it, they would be guilty of showing porn to minors and negligence. I think something like this already exists too. How do porn sites verify age? Through credit cards or checking or something of that form. Additionally, this type of thing also would benifit spammers b/c they would only be sending out spam to those people who could spend money at their sites. A win win in my mind but I could be wrong. Any comments?
- I believe that the Internet is, first and foremost an adult thing. By its very nature it is not necessarily suitable for children, and making it so would do it a grave disservice. I wouldn't like my kids to be wandering alone in certain parts of town, with the bars and the hookers and the dealers. OTOH, I believe it is perfectly reasonable for an adult to decide what they put into their own body, or look at on the Internet.
- I believe it is the responsibility of parents - not the government - to bring up their kids properly. Sure, there will be some with special requirements, and it is the government's responsibility to arrange for those to be met. {Otherwise poverty would aggravate special needs, which is clearly unacceptable.} But learning right from wrong is something that has to come from the family. Part and parcel of this is the idea that parents have to be responsible for the material to which their kids are exposed in print, on TV, in films and on the internet.
- I also believe that if parents default on this responsibility, then they should be punished. Obviously, this needs to be done in a way which does not exacerbate the problem.
- BUT:I don't believe that anyone should be exposed to any kind of unsolicited advertisements. If I want to buy some viagra substitute, I will ask. If I do not ask you for something, it is because I do not want it. And if you do offer me something I do not want, then if I ever do want it in future, I'll get it from someone else who hasn't invaded my privacy.
One solution for this might be to have a group of servers, or even a whole second-level domain, reserved for family-friendly content. Let's say,However, I can't see it working, simply because everyone wants something for nothing and everything is somebody else's problem. I.E. nobody wants to admit that there is such a thing as spam nor porn - if they were acknowledged as really existing then too many people would be too embarrassed; and nobody will want to pay for certified family friendly internet services anyway. Not the parents, who expect the authorities to make everything right, and they pay enough taxes, why should they pay more? And not the family-friendly content providers who are already doing everything right, and they pay their hosting fees, why should they pay more?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
In case anyone here uses Outlook (yeah, I know), I find Outclass now eliminates almost all my spam. I trained it on about 15000 messages that I'd been saving. Also, with Office XP SP1 you have the option finally of telling Outlook not to display html, so the rare ones that might slip through don't show any images anyway.
Either they trust their kids more or they don't give them vast quantities of cash to spend as they want... hmm, considering the success of Pokemon, it can't be the latter.
What a crock. Spammers don't get off the hook just because they don't know the ages (or anything else) of the people they're spamming. This is a perfect reason to start regulating spam, rather than exempting it. Hell, the very fact that YOU KNOW NOTHING about the person you're spamming to says that you shouldn't be spamming them. Do I mail deadly bacteria to people in the hopes that one in a million recipients are actually at-home microbiologists who want them? No, so there's no reason I should mail horse pr0n to a million people in the hopes of reaching the few damaged units that actually want it.
Here's hoping your next trip to the country terminates in a unwanted encounter with an amorous stallion.
BBCi:
"Four out of five children receive inappropriate spam e-mails touting online drugs, get-rich-quick schemes and porn, a survey has found." Click here for full BBCi article (very good).
Doesn't this seem to be getting out of hand?
the law should be this clear - don't send e.mails to anyone who has not asked for them. No "cold-calling" or spam at all.
PHP
I didn't submit this article to give you all teh idea that I keep my kids in a cage like veal.. I just thought this is a court friendly way we can sue spammers and make it stick.
one way a spammer could verify the age of a recipient would be to have an opt-in mailing list. that could cripple the spam industry in the us (if we can catch them).
It has always been the rule that parents had the right to shield their children from certain material. And I don't think you'll get much argument that this is a good thing when applied to pre-teens.
That is why retail stores are not allowed to display certain items for sale where they have no basis to believe that they will only be seen by adults.
It is also why Cigarettes are behind the counter.
Clearly anyone who has a good-faith basis to believe that an email address belongs to an adult should be prosecuted merely because they were wrong.
But that would require actually knowing something about your customer before sendig the email. It would end 99.9% of spam.
I am a parant. I'll tell you how a responsible parant copes.
1. No unspervised internet. The computer with a net connection is in the living room, not in a secluded place. The kids can not login. An adult must log in. It even helps keeping the adults from strayin into the wrong places. You wouldn't want the kids asking about your cookies or history.
2. No E-mail of any kind for the kids. I have to treat E-mail the same as adult magazines. It's not for the kids.
It's a shame such a great research tool has to be so limited for kids. If there were no spam (unsolicited email of commercial nature) I wouldn't worry about the kids using e-mail instead of the post office to write Grandma. Unfortunately, the trash in the inbox means only accounts for the adults. Mail for the kids is screened by the adults before printing and giving to the kids. Other than treating internet like the playboy channel on TV and not having it if you have kids, this is the only solution I came up with.
The truth shall set you free!
Thank you for a reflected, insightful comment. If I had any moderator points (and you didnt already have +5) I'd give them all to you.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I think that you should have to give email PERMISSION to send you attachments of any sort. Unless its a trusted source, then no attachment should get through. There's nothing like checking my mail at work and seeing a picture of two 90-year old whatevers going at it and then getting fired for having porn on my machine. Of course if we could get everyone on trillian....
You said you put your *son's* email address on the web page and then are surprised its used for spam.
If you put your phone number on a billboard, would you be surprised to get unsolicited calls?
See, you think you're a real "geek" because you can code some HTML. You had a son (congrats), and you're proud of that. So in a burst of creative energy, you created a public webpage with an email address for a son who can't read.
Perhaps I'm not making myself clear, but I'm trying to put the "blame" back on you for (a) setting up an email account for someone who can't read (b) putting the email address of a child in a public place where a reasonable person knows they will get spam based on that (c) most spam is generally sexual in nature.
Go figure.
It's their responsibility to know who they're sending spam to, just like in the real world if someone orders porn through the mail and a minor opens the letter they can be prosecuted (max. 10 year jail sentence over here).
In most countries outside the US, they would likely be beaten with a cricket bat.
---
When I grow up, I want to be a kid again.
Well, we are talking kids. And I have kids. My youngest is twelve. What I do is create an inclusive email filter. It's just the opposite of
Sendmail's SPAM filter. My kids need to submit the email address of tose they want to recieve email.
Everthing else gets rejected or directed to me so I can go after the Spammers.
The best rule of thumb is, if you don't know how old they are, don't sell. That's why gas stations that sell Playboy don't keep the held open to particularly enticing pictures, directly over the cash register. If they did, they'd get in trouble. The spammers that send porn spam know that they can't actually sell to minors, but they also know that not everyone they show the pictures to wants to see, or should be forced to see, them.
- "That's just the kind of fuzzy-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."
I'm curious -- at what age(s) do parents today allow their children access to the Net at all? At what age(s) are most kids allowed to have an email account? And what sorts of rules do families these days have about Net and email use?
My children were growing up just as the Net was becoming public, and I remember this stuff as being very complicated in real-world parenting even then. It's infinitely more complicated now, I would think, since more people have email and the internet is seen by teachers as a reasonable place to do research. (All these are good things, mind you, they just weren't true a while back.)
It's very easy to talk about how theoretical parents -- or other people -- should raise theoretical kids. Usually real life solutions are much, much more complicated. I dealt with the garbage on TV and what it was doing to the kids by getting rid of the TV for 5 years. I don't see that as a possibility for dealing with a tool as useful as the Internet, but at the same time, I wonder at the practicality of some of the "suggestions" (pronouncements?) I've seen here about parental supervision.
And "talking about it" is only part of the solution. Even if family communication is good, I wonder how many 12 year old girls are going to go to mom or dad to ask about the picture of the horse having sex with a woman -- and how many will be unable to talk about it? And what about kids whose *parents* can't talk about sex at all? Are we going to say, oh, well, too bad, they drew lousy parents in the parent lotto and there's nothing any of the rest of us are going to do for them?
I don't know what the answers are but the whole matter brings up some pretty interesting questions.
OK, now what?
Hell when I was a kid I thought I was lucky to have an Etch-a-sketch.
They don't need a computer, they need an asswhipping and then go outside for some fresh air and exercise instead of sitting indoors and getting fat. What ever happened to reading a book?
Kids today have it too easy, what with their pokemon, gameboy, PS2, DVD, razor scooters, fancy computers then next thing you know they are teenagers with honda civic and putting ass-clown wings on the back.
I never signed up to receive pr0n in my home mailbox, so I have no clue why it's not illegal to be dropping off that filth in my email inbox!
Yes, kids run out to get the paper mail from time to time, and yes, kids have email inboxes too. So of course pr0n in email inboxes is a ridiculous concept! Just because we have the right to free speech, doesn't give anyone the right to abuse it horrendously! Now some of you probably love the porn, but I don't.
More power to all of you who have bombed those spammers with a bunch of catalogues and other useless snail mail! It may not be legal, but until the spammers quit sending their illegal shit, I say give 'em a taste of their own medicine. In about 5 years our legal system will catch up with the new technology and this junk will be *mostly* a thing of the past, and all of you anti-spammers will be able to spend your time in other pursuits of freedom and happiness.
I sure wouldn't want them to see all the "My father fscked me", "farm girls get it from their dogs" and "See Lolita get raped by russian soldiers" spams I get daily. Bleh.
Be an elitist - read Slashdot at +4.
Well, according to U.S.C. Title 18, Section 1470:
"Whoever, using the mail or any facility or means of interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly transfers obscene matter to another individual who has not attained the age of 16 years, knowing that such other individual has not attained the age of 16 years, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both."
So in order to have a strong case, the other party has to know that the recipient is under 16. However, IANAL, but I'd bet that if you showed that they made no attempt to confirm the age of the recipient, you might also have a case.
I am a reasonably well adjusted ADULT and I haven't been the same since I saw goatce.cx ... still cant rid of those twitches...
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
And this is EXACTLY how you should set up a kid's account. Don't want your kid getting email from strangers? Block it. It's the parent's job, not the government's.
- "That's just the kind of fuzzy-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."
That is exactly the argument that spammers use. "If you don't want our ads, get rid of your email account."
But it's a nonsense argument. I have a phone, but if you harass me by calling it, I have legal recourse. Similarly, there are limits on telemarketing. A fax machine? The TCPA outlaws unsolicited faxes.
But you need to keep spouting the nonsense or your spamming business will go all to hell.
People like you can't understand that I pay for my email account so that I can use it for my purposes - not yours. Keep your porn/MMF/Mortgage crap to yourself. And don't force your advertising costs on other people.
Everyone here familiar with the federal 'Do Not Call' list for telemarketers? Wouldn't it be possible to create a similar product for the web? A 'Do Not Spam' list?
No tracability = noone to sue. It's illegal to send SPAM (Unsolicitated commercial email) in Norway already, so *.no should be in every spammers "Do Not Spam" list right? Right...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Spamming using dictionary methods is beyond inappropriate for porn vendors. If Abercrombie and Fitch can get sued for sending their questionable catalogs through the mail to under-age people, porn vendors are in no better position.
Some of you have said, "But there's no way to know the age of the kid." No, but you make a reasonable effort. If you or one of your trusted partners has thier credit card number, either the email address is legit or you have been the victim of fraud. Heck, if someone has simply clicked, "Sure, I'm 18" on your website, you have at least done some filtering. There are ways of at least trying to determine the age of the people attached to the email address. People who deal in porn are responsible for taking those simple steps.
The problem is with dictionary spammers and those who buy the generic large lists. They are advertising porn to children and many are sending them samples. I have to believe this is illegal and if it isn't it damn well should be.
Finally I have to say that I hope this is in the YRO catagory because the rights of kids are being violated. If there is serious concern about the rights of pornographers to spam us, we have real problems and need to look inward.
Are you suggesting that U.K. spammers should be beaten with a baseball bat if they send explicit material to an 18 year old in the USA, despite it being perfectly reasonable material for somebody of that age in their own country?
beaten with a baseball bat? no. held responsible for offering adult oriented items to minors? yes.
Here is a question for you..
Should someone from the netherlands get in trouble for smoking pot on the sidewalks of london just because it is legal where he comes from?
You will keep your kid from 95% of this crap by turning off inline html in mail messages. Most of the porn spam now is just an image and no text.
love is just extroverted narcissism
as someone in the US should be culpable for advertizing Nazi memorabilia across the internet to someone in France
He's saying someone in the US *should* be held accountable for breaking other countries' laws. He just didn't necessarily agree with the law.
BTW, If it weren't for countries like Britain and the US, who are willing to send their young men to die for the causes of others, Finland might have entirely disappeared from the map in 1940...
I can't believe you were modded as Insightful ..
Here is what is wrong with your post:
You should NOT be sending e-mail to people you don't know, do business with, or share a particular interest with, I mean, Is ok to e-mail coworkers, business partners, family, friends, the friendly geek in a mailing list (about a mutually interesting topic), support@company.com, etc. but you should never send an unsolicited e-mail to a random address and let alone an e-mail containing adult only material.
Using your logic, then minors should be able to purchase pornography, cigarettes, and alcohol because "they should know that it's wrong".
I'm all for freedom on the internet, but if you're sending kids pornography you should be held responsible. As for the example of sending pornography to a physical mailbox, whens the last time you got a free brochure of "watch britney suck cock!"? Never (I hope). This is because you are only sent it if you REQUEST it. The senders know that if you don't request it, and they send it out they'd be sued for all they're worth. The same should apply to e-mail.
The fact of the matter is that Do Not Call lists legitimize spam, by giving spammers something to point at and say "if you don't want to hear from me, get on the list."
If I had the funding to get legislation started, I'd be pushing for a Do Call lists - "Do call me, because I want spam" - with tough penalties for spammers that email outside the lists.
Before anyone starts barking about Freedom of Speech, consider this - an entrepreneur can stand on a street corner and try to sell stuff to you as you walk past, by boasting about his products. How would you react to that entrepreneur grabbing hold of you and forcing you to look at his product and listen to his spiel? It may only take a few seconds to hit delete, but those few seconds can add up quite quickly.
You can send porn to a physical mailbox, and the person who gets the mail may be a minor, but you can't be held responsible for that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.
Maybe so, but I've never heard of anyone sending free porno mags out to random postal addresses.
The scenario you're describing assumes that someone at that address, minor or not, ordered the adult materials. We know with spam that it is RARELY the case that the recipient has knowingly and legitimately opted in... if they had, it wouldn't be spam, would it?
No, just like purchasing anything else, you can do so at any age.
You can't purchase "Internet". You enter a service contract which grants you access to the internet in exchange for money. Even when you sit down at a webcafe, that's technically what's happening.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Important difference: porno won't fuck you up nearly as badly as drugs.
Depends on the porno, depends on the drugs. This is a very tenuous blanket statement to be making when a person who smokes pot or drinks alcohol in moderation can be the picture of health whereas a child pornographer obviously is very fundamentally broken.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Hey, we could require all spammers to receive and record proof of a recipients age prior to spamming that box with inappropriate material. :)
For normal commerce the rule has been, if you don't know the age of someone and you can not verify that persons age certain age specific material will not be sold or given out. I do not see any reason to treat spammers with leniency.
Spammers have made no visible steps to attempt to solve this problem. They don't care about your children. They care about money and if they can make money by sending your child porn ads then that is exactly what they will do and they will hide behind a wall of excuses as to why they should be able to continue. It is our job to dismantle that wall and put the responsibility for the distribution of this material where it should be, with the distributor. If they can not track where they are sending this junk they shouldn't be allowed to send it. If you don't have the ability to card your customers you shouldn't be selling cigarettes.
i happen to BE 14, and i get a lot of porn mail etc on my private E-Mail. even though i never sign up for anything on that name..only on my fake ones...
...unregulatable. Try to regulate it in the US, and people will just move off-shore. Even within the US -- e.g., peer-2-peer, The Free Network (FreeNode) -- it is difficult, or impossible, to regulate. In some cases this is this is good. For example, it allows file-sharing networks to thrive. It also allows political descent or whistle-blowing, without fear of retribution (via annonymosity). In other cases it is bad -- as in, when some prick gets millions of dollars by sending out, "make your dick bigger" ads
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
BTW, If it weren't for countries like Britain and the US, who are willing to send their young men to die for the causes of others, Finland might have entirely disappeared from the map in 1940...
This seems to be a revisionist view, considering the US didn't join the war until 1941 - two years after say Britain and Canada. No, I don't consider sending supplies to have others fight your battles the same as sending troops (and considering George W's present attitude toward Canada, neither does he). Also, it was quite clear that the US rationale for supporting and eventually joining the war (Pearl Harbour aside) was to keep war from eventually reaching the US.
Are you suggesting that U.K. spammers should be beaten with a baseball bat if they send explicit material to an 18 year old in the USA,
;)
Yes, spam is spam
"If you cannot distibute your spam so that it does not target minors, then you may not distibute it AT ALL."
I'm not saying make all children have sex or look at pornography. I'm simply saying that we shouldn't instantly say "Well, due to the fact that you are smaller and more inexperienced than the average adult you may not be involved in any way with SEX . Oh and by the way, don't ever think about sex because if you do, monsters will eat you and you will burn in hell for all time."
I wouldn't be surprised if this will never happen or atleast probably not in the next century, but we should consider it. So I ask you to not let your emotions drive you, sit back and think through what would life actually be like if you had been introduced to sex at an early age, would you maybe not have some of the problems with intimacy or sex that you do today. What are likely outcomes of children being involved in sex in a controlled environment like school? How would it really hurt the children?
> I don't have any kids, and probably never will (if I'm lucky, anyway), but I don't see the problem in them seeing these materials. Sure, spam annoys the hell out of me, and I'd be the first in line with a baseball bat to teach the spammer a little "cause and effect", but I'm not going to pretend it's because my kid saw a naked body.
And I too hope you remain "lucky" in this way.
Seeing a naked body is one thing (even then, naked can mean so many different things). Seeing scenes of brutality, rape, sado-masochism, bestiality, and every other possible psychological oddity is quite another. I don't think this stuff is good for adults, much less children, but I don't think my children should be forced to deal with these concepts. They have enough to worry about already.
Of course, I also think parents who give children unmonitored email accounts are just asking for _far worse_ than just spam for their children.
It's a tough world for parents these days... you always have to be judging and balancing these things carefully.
Sorry about the misunderstanding. I get really tired of spam though.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
There are limits on telemarketers, but only that they must remove you from their list if you request it (and only then if you can prove you requested it), at least until the new laws go into effect. There is no law that I know of against calling your number and offering to sell you a subscription to Juggs magazine (or any other "adult" magazine you can think of). And I can do it through a prerecorded message that plays when the phone is answered. So even if a 10 year old answers the phone, my message will play, and I will not be accountable by law (because it is safe to assume that you must be 18 to have a phone line). I'm not saying this is right, this is just how it works. You can't be held responisble (and probably shouldn;t be held responsible) for sending some thing "adult" when there is no way to tell if the user is and adult.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
By that argument, shouldn't we legalise pornographic advertisements in public? Those who don't want to see them can simply "unsubscribe" by staying indoors all the time, after all.
Hey, I have a great idea for a legal defense for Al Queada! If you don't want to receive waterborne cholera, simply unsubscribe from your water supply! Terrorism is now legal!
Female Prison Rape in NY
You can send porn to a physical mailbox, and the person who gets the mail may be a minor, but you can't be held responsible for that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.
The difference is that snail-mail porn comes in a nice big black/brown opaque envelope. You can generally tell what it is.
With spam, the subject could be "I came to your house last night, but no one was home." That doesn't say anything about the contents of the message... it could be anything from an ad for a penis-pump to some crappy ad about MILF's liking it hot to an ad for micro-racing cars.
You can easily throw out the snail-mail porn without opening it. You can't exactly say the same about electronic spam-porn.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
> The problem being there is no way to tell how
> old the person who checks the email address is.
Why is this a problem? The reason you don't get pornographic snail mail is that you can't determine the age of the recipient safely. The reason you don't see playboy in vending machine s(in this country - yay italy!) is that you can't guarantee the age of the purchaser. That's the reason you don't see cigarettes and booze in vending machines, too.
Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass what a spammer can and cannot predict. If they do not know for certain that the email address may safely be targeted for their scum, their consumption of bandwidth that the unwilling recipient pays for, then oh fucking well, go get a god damned job.
> An email address is just an alias
Wrong. An email address *can* be an alias. However, I have a number of email addresses which go solely to me. If I were foolish enough to say to a spammer that such-and-such an address is safe and a legitimate endpoint for adult mail, then the responsibility would be mine to keep it so, and the spammer would be absolved of responsibility regarding age authentication. However, the problem isn't those spammers, the spammers that pretend to opt you in; the problem is the spammers that harvest your address, sell to it at random, and end up sending my six year old daughter offers for cock pills and nigerian bank accounts.
> The person who checks that box could be 8 or
> 80, there is no way to tell.
This is due to a flawed, predatory business model. As soon as their customers are willing, this will become a nonissue.
> Unless there is some way to tell how old the
> person who checks the mailbox is,
User verification. We've had it in use since ancient times.
> there is no way to hold people responsible for
> sending emails inappropriate for children to
> that mailbox.
Baloney. The person which puts age restricted material into a public vending machine is responsible. Why should the spammer not be?
> You can send porn to a physical mailbox
Not without a customer request, you cannot. Be sure to ask the attorney general about this one on your day in court.
> and the person who gets the mail may be a
> minor, but you can't be held responsible for
> that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.
You really should learn how the law works; there are in fact half a dozen cases in which precedents were set about this very issue, back in the 1960s. Not only can they be held for the minor seeing inappropriate material, but they should be.
The solution for physical mail is simple: plain brown wrapper with someone's name on it, and at the company's choice maybe identifying marks. They're not saying you can't mail the mailbox; they're saying you have to take measures to make sure that the delivery is secure. If someone opens mail not intended for them, then the delivery system has been hijacked, and it's not the company's fault anymore.
Just try to get a penthouse without said wrapper.
> They should e charged for sending spam (where
> applicable) but trying to prosecute them
> because they are sending mail to an emailbox
> where a child has access is very slippery,
> because there is no way to know who the box
> belongs to.
Yah, that's the thing about American law. If a company decides to do something when they can't tell if it will cause problems, but when there's a signficant risk, they are held indemnable.
Cluestick: law books are cheap. Get one or library one before commenting again.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
If they're not actually living in the US, that's irrelevant. The US has no authority over anyone other than individuals that are physically within the US. They can't have a spammer -- located in, say, Mexico -- imprisoned, because he's disobeying US laws. That would be a violation of sovereignty.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Could you please send me a copy of that? My address is billclinton@hornybastard.com.
Why do people always think we need a new law for something that happens online instead of offline. It's the same thing, the same crime.
Would it be acceptable to tape up a poster with pictures of naked women advertising sex services in front of a school, at the mall? Certainly children would be exposed to it. Just because the spammer doesn't know specifically who will see the sign does not mean that he does not know that children will see the materials.
It is not non-intentional, it is completely intentional. The spammer knows he will reach children and chooses to do so anyway.
There doesn't need to be a new law, spammers should be punished exactly the same as someone who hands out adult materials to children in person. He should be charged in every municipality where he commits the crime for every instance of the crime committed. If 500 people come forward saying their children were sent indecent materials by the spammer then he should be charged with 500 counts of contributing to the deliquency of a minor or whatever charge best fits.
On a side note, while this topic was specifically oriented towards children viewing this material, it would be just as innappropriate for a person to go down to McDonalds and start performing sex acts or even flashing people. That person would certainly be charged. Spammers should face the same consequences. We don't need new laws, we need enforcement of current laws and an understanding that rights, responsibilities, and law apply to activities conducted with a computer just as much as anywhere else.
I'm not one bit against nudity or pornography on the internet, no more than in person or hard copy. However, I wouldn't expect to walk into a store named McDonads with the same golden arches and find a strip club. I wouldn't expect to open mail post marked from my friend Bill to find it was really just some scammer using his name to trick me into opening the mail and end up finding porn inside. I get my Playboy because I ordered it. I know what it is when it comes to me, it's wrapped so no one can see what is inside lest it offend their personal beliefs, etc.
I don't have a slashdot account, but I follow it, and I was offended by this message. There's a pretty substantial difference between what parents should allow and what the law should allow. For some families, the law is more restrictive than the parents would be. If it's not OK to solicit pornography to a child in real life, why would it be OK to do that online? For parents less skilled than you, shouldn't the law provide that same type of protection online as it does in the real world? Society has deemed on the grand scale that this type of behavior is inappropriate. I think you have to be sympathetic to those parents who are less skilled or less aware or less competent of technology and the Internet.
It's not that 12 year olds are fragile, it's that they're impressionable (which may be a reason they used to marry at that age). You're speaking from the perspective of a parent; I assume it's been at least 20 years (long before the Internet was widespread) since you've been a 12 year old. I was a 12 year old only 5 years ago, and I can speak from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE that this content sent by spammers has adversely affected parts of my life. I have what you might classify as pornography addiction. I've been clean for a few years, but like an ex-smoker, you never really kick the habit 100%. I'm the type of kid you'd never expect to be involved in this type of thing, and my parents never knew. Do not be lulled into a false sense of security. The type of obscene spam that gets sent to children is a BIGGER PROBLEM than you imagine, even beyond the capabilities of some reasonably responsible parents.
Also, as food for thought, it's also true that by age 12, a lot of kids have enough know-how and curiosity to circumvent or mislead parents' trust or instructions, including to the extent of creating and managing an e-mail account that is not supervised or even known about by parents.
You can set up your own rule weights for SA. See the documentation.
Can different sets of rule weights be assigned to different accounts in SpamAssassin? "The idea was rejected because of the difficulty implementing dual rule sets," wrote grandparent.
Will I retire or break 10K?
how exactly is that possible when spammers are forging headers like there is no tomorrow?
Just because it's a law doesn't mean it can be enforced...
Your message is already illegal under the TCPA. It is illegal to cold call using a recorded message or automated system. For a cold call to be legal, it must have a person there, not a machine. You are already breaking the law.
Your argument that it isn't your fault if a child answers the phone when your computer makes your illegal phone call is similar to saying "I was just shooting - I didn't know he would be standing there."
Especially since pr0n spammers aren't content to sit and wait for people to come to them, but actively seek out people, who may be trying to avoid it. Porn addiction is a real thing; there are many men who struggle with it, who want to quit, but can't. I've never been much tempted in that way, but I've had friends who are. Many pornographers know this: that's why they spam and put out teasers, because they know the bait works.
This is it exactly. I can understand them sending out spam, but lately I've been getting ones that are specifically targetted to get past my mail filtering system. I use Mail.app on OS X, and it's junk mail filter is great, except for when the subject has things like "girls F U C K I N G horses", and the body text is actually an image, reducing the effectiveness of the filter. Don't they understand that the people who go to the effort of enabling and training mail filters are the ones least likely to click their links?
human readers don't see the link (remember, there's nothing between the a tags)
Human readers can sometimes navigate using the tab key to empty a elements and then accidentally activate them. This is more common in text browsers such as lynx or w3m where tab key navigation is the normal mode of operation.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So, in the last two years since your initial exposure to porn as a wading pool, what have you learned about breasts?