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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?!
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 wondered why my 6-year-old was refinancing his mortgage.
Your paranoia is about as subtle as the alien probe in your neck.
"Inappropriate spam"? Ehm... is there any other kind of spam?
you gave her a cell phone whats to stop some creep from calling her and talking nasty and/or lurring her out someplace.
The law, jackass.
the internet is a similar place.. 18 and over seriously!
Yeah, what use could children possibly have for the most powerful educational tool in the history of Man? More thinky, less typey.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
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
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.
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)
that's like saying that Girls Gone Wild is offering anyone watching TV at night, despite age, and should be punished.
A Girls Gone Wild commercial contains no nudity, no graphic descriptions of sex acts. It airs during the late-night hours, when children are likely to be in bed. It does not air on childrens' television stations. There are rules governing content like that, in order to lessen its exposure to minors. In other words, your analogy is crap.
hate spam and wished it would die, but people need to take responsibility for their own actions
And what actions would those be? Receiving unsolicited porn email? Yeah, I say hang 'em! Nice one, champ.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
"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.
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.
the most powerful educational tool in the history of Man does not absolve parents and legal gardians of THEIR responsibility!
Apply this test to the spam: If someone sent that same image to a child via the post office, could they be prosecuted under federal statutes? In many cases, the answer to the question is "yes". Why, then, is spam treated any differently from regular mail?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
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.
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!
Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out?
s/'be held responsible for'/'be made to print out and eat'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
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...
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
> 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
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
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
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!
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
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.
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!
"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.