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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.
When my 13 year old son was getting such e-mails last year I called the Attorney General's office to find out how I can file a criminal complaint. I was told that unless I could prove that the spammer knew my son was a minor they could not even press charges! So unless I were to reply to each spam notifying them that this e-mail address belongs to a minor, then keep all the threads as evidence I could not prosecute! Plus that would only work for a second e-mail from the same company (sounds very much like the opt out flaw where you can be spammed once from each group or company).
Unless we wind up with a list of e-mails belonging to minors (which is problematic for other reasons and not something I would support), I do not see that we would be able to press charges.
To my mind this is another reason why a national do not contact e-mail list is the best policy. Just sign up your kid's e-mail addresses without labeling them as belonging to minors and problem solved. Now all we need are some lawmakers with guts. Hmmmm I guess that isn't going to happen anytime soon.
sorry, you are out of touch with reality. it is quite easy to shield children from beastiality type porn. Playboy, who cares if a teenager sees that. it is not a big deal. but some graphic hardcore pictures being SENT to very young children is quite different. if you cant see the difference, please do not ever become a parent.
Very young children shouldn't be reading email unsupervised. Period.
Flame on AC, I shall not respond.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
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.
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 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.
My seven year old reads email on her own. Any email she receives that is not coming from someone on a whitelist that I maintain goes into a mailbox under her mother's account (this is after spam filtering, of course).
Her mom will drop it into her inbox or whatever when it's appropriate, and let her know that she got this mail, and usually ask me to add it to her whitelist.
(sorry for the confusing pronouns, this would be easier to explain if I had a boy).
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
No problem. SpamHaus is a good resource. So is SPEWS. SPAMCOP isn't much help FINDING the spammer, but News.Admin.Net-abuse.email is always a good choice and News.Admin.Net-abuse.sightings is another.
No, the real problem isn't finding them, it's proving beyond all doubt it's them doing it that is the problem. A quick run through of their hard drives is always helpful.
Some spammers even fail to secure their machines so all it takes is a web browser to browse their hard drive. Hey, what can I say? Spammers are stupid.
So far as enforcing the laws already on the books, only 28 or 29 states have laws against spamming. What laws are you thinking of that apply everywhere? (Think non-US too.)
Spam isn't a technical problem, and can't be completely solved with technical means. However, technical means can make spammy's life a bit harder, and I'm all for that.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
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.
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
Daddy giving Mommy a hug and a kiss is appropriate sexual behavior.
Some pouty-faced bimbo stuffing a camera up her crotch is not appropriate sexual behavior.
It's easy to enumerate instances of what is or is not pornographic. It's hard to draw a line down the middle where the two are separable. The definition is important because what you are advocating is restricting imagery on one side of that line.
My main point is, when people talk about protecting kids from sex, violence, tobacco, or alcohol, the mental image they get is an eight year old smoking, shooting up the school, and drinking whiskey. This makes them (rightfully) indignant, but the problem is that when the law passes, it's minors who are all classified together. As you know, minors can be as old as nearly 18 (in the case of alcohol in the US, 21), and it really isn't sensible to apply to them the laws we imagine will protect eight year olds.
If it makes the kid unfortable to look at then they shouldn't have to suffer through it. What's so hard about that?
Because what makes one kid uncomfortable may not make another uncomfortable. Because what you think makes kids uncomfortable may not be what I think makes kids uncomfortable. Don't think of "mutilated bodies" and "aborted fetuses", because those are easy calls. Think of the gray area in the middle and how you would separate appropriate from inappropriate.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that you've picked the easy cases, and then called the problem "simple".