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Stronger Anti-Spam Law Proposed
NumberField writes "The fight against Spam is making for some strange bedfellows. A new bill sponsored by Senator
Charles Schumer (D-NY)
and the right-wing Christian Coalition
that would let individuals sue spammers for $1000 per message. What isn't clear is how they will define spam broadly enough to outlaw it, but narrowly enough to avoid making it a bonanza for lawyers. For more information, see Schumer's
fact sheet (PDF), or his
press release." Update: 06/13 14:20 GMT by M : The draft bill (pdf) is available.
You can propose all the anti-spam laws you want. But if you keep it restricted to one country, you won't go very far. Spammers will use other locations to send their spam from. So it only works if you have an international law.
That's all very well, but for a large chunk of spam, identifying the spammer if difficult, and to it in a way that would hold up in court would be even harder..
I lay awake last night wondering where the sun had gone, then it dawned on me.
They too get spam, you know (or they'll make sure they'll get it.)
Did you consider that the whole idea might just BE to make it a bonanza for lawyers?
I propose the following:
1. Get local spam under control.
2. Start sanctions agaist countries / ISPs from which spam originates.
Not sure this makes any sense though, but if countries like China find themselves at a disadvantage due to a handful of local spammers I would think they would be more motivated to deal with the problem.
I'm not proposing any tehnical solutions though... anyone have ideas on that?
.: Max Romantschuk
If the law is drafted in a manner which allows authorities to go after the people benefiting from spam, rather than just the people actually sending it, then they could make substantial progress. Most of the spam I receive is for US-based companies, even if it was actually sent from China.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
let individuals sue spammers for $1000 per message
I don't think many individuals would bother with this, it's easier to just the delete the spam mail than it is to risk loosing money on some lawsuit, and even if they did decide to sue them they would only have "defeated" one spammer (or his team or whatever it could be). 1 down 50000 to go.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
When right-wing religious groups start supporting something I believe in I always have to re-evaluate my belief.
Is that $1000 per message, or $1000 per message times the number of users it is sent to?
Anyways, it will be a huge amount of money if they catch a spammer and I doubt if the spammer has that much...
Most spam comesfrom OS anyway. CHina etc. In oz we get it from everywhere.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
... that the politicians are getting spam too.
Do you think they'd care that much if they didn't?
The press release is only about Porn targetted at children,
shouldn't that be unwanted email targeted at everybody??
Even though most spam is porn, you should be able to sue went you get other crap
The ONE country affected and profiting from spam and anti-spam s/w is never known to suffer in silence when other countries cause economic harm to it. In other words, if outside spam was the real problem, this would have been solved a million times by now.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Senators can sponsor bills, not right-wing political organizations.
A pretty good idea to team up with right-wing christians in the US. They're close to being fanatical when it comes to family values and their influence in the current political climate seems considerable.
:)
Explain to them how bad pr0n-spam is for kids and family values, and they may start executing spammers like they do abortion-doctors.
How about the spammer gets 1 minute in jail per recipient for any unsolicited commercial email they send?
do we need to prove that those emails suspected of spamming are truly unsolicited? how do we prove that we never subscribed to a certain mailing list? can spammer 'fake' subscriptions?
and with the "Do Not Spam" registry of e-mail addresses, wouldn't it make it easier for spammers to request such do-not-spam list and spam it??
If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. like the article stated, it might endanger legitimate Internet services.
I don't see the point in having a 'do not spam' list for the US, when the majority of spam the rest of us are receiving on this planet comes from the US. Is the US govt seriously going to compile a list for all 6 billion of us?
This proposal still makes it a civil matter for the recipient, having to sue the spammer for damages. What's needed is a federal US law making mass junk emailing a criminal offense. Instead they are just pushing it back onto the people to fight in civil courts. The only winners here are the spammers and lawyers.
Dude, I feel the Nigerian spammers already trembling;o))))....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
If you'd like to see it passed, ask your Senator to cosponsor
Christian Coalition endorses Schumer bill that would for the first time impose tough criminal and civil penalties on spammers; New law would create no-spam registry like highly-effective do-not-call registries that have stopped telemarketers
Political odd couple find common ground protecting children from obscene emails
Pornographic pictures appear in 1 out of every 5 spams; 1 in 5 kids are sexually solicited on the Internet; and 1 in 4 had an unwanted exposure to obscene pictures
US Senator Charles Schumer and Christian Coalition President Roberta Combs announced today that the Christian Coalition is endorsing Schumer's Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act (The SPAM Act), legislation aimed at cracking down on pornographic email spam that is sent to children. Internet and email use among children has skyrocketed over the last few years, with America Online and MSN reporting millions of child users.
The avalanche of pornography being sent to kids by spammers makes checking email on par with watching an X-rated movie. Parents need to be able to keep offensive material out of the family room and I'm working with the Christian Coalition to do just that, Schumer said. The bottom line is that America's children have been under attack for a long time from violent TV shows, racy music videos, and now pornographic spam. The v-chip gave parents control of the TV. My SPAM Act will give them control over the computer.
I stand side-by-side with Senator Schumer in the fight against pornographic email, Combs said. Parents need the ability to keep their children from being subjected to lewd material and Schumers legislation will do just that. I am proud to stand with Chuck on this issue and we will continue to work together until this bill is law.
Purveyors of spam have exploited the popularity of the Internet and e-mail to gain access to millions of consumers from all sectors of the population, advertising everything from herbal remedies to get-rich-quick schemes to adult web sites. The traffic in explicit images is particularly acute according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which reports that pornographic pictures appear in almost one out of every five emails that spammers use to advertise adult web sites. Many of these explicit images reach the in-boxes of millions of young e-mail users.
In a June 2003 survey by the California-based Internet security firm Symantec, 47% of children reported receiving junk email with links to pornographic web sites. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, one in five kids between the ages of 10 and 17 are sexually solicited on the Internet, and one in four had an unwanted exposure to pictures of naked people or people having sex but only 40% of these children told a parent.
According to a 2001 Department of Commerce study, 75 percent of 14-17 year olds and 65 percent of 10-13 year olds use the Internet. The same survey also found that forty-five percent of the population now uses email, up from 35 percent in 2000, including millions of children. As of November 2002, America Online had 16 million screen names limited by parental controls while MSN, the operator of the popular free e-mail site www.hotmail.com, had an estimated 3.6 million subscribers under the age of 18.
Schumer and Combs said that the implications of these studies are disturbing: parents are not only powerless to prevent such imagery from being sent to their childrens in-boxes, they also often d
--- Christian Coalition is endorsing Schumer's Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act ---
.....
Spam fighting spam
Spam is a bad thing, but this article and this line in particular really made me wonder. Do you have any idea to what extent religion, whatever its origin, has 'spammed' society in general? Let me guess, it never crossed you mind? If so, I advice you to switch from CNN to, e.g. National Geographic Channel from time to time. Don't be afraid, the worst thing that might happen is that you learn something. Feel free to 'believe' I'm wrong.
Why don't they just pray it away?
(from the pdf linked in article):
Prohibit Harvesting of E-mail Addresses and Dictionary Attacks:
The bill will also prevent spammers from assembling e-mail lists through the practice of address "harvesting" carried out by software known as spam "bots" that mine web sites, chat rooms,
I really wonder how one can prevent harvesting, and how that could be enforced without making non-spammers pay.
main(char O){O++&&(((O-291)*O+27788)*O-868020?1:putchar(O++
Recently there was an article posted here about taxes on cable modems here, but it occurs to me that spam, like postal junk mail, could help pay for infrastructure just as easily.
Not an original idea, but like a state sales tax (or one of several European VATs), the onus would be on the merchants, or in this case those relaying spam, to collect and pay up.
Now, since American companies are being required to collect and disperse VAT for sales made in Europe, surely there will be some sort of reciprocity there, and in general America (or the states therein) would impose sanctions on countries that did not abide by these new spam tax laws.
With spam in the news as much as it has been lately, surely some government types will take notice, that there is cash sitting in their inbox (or in their filtered spam folder if they're smart). And SpamAssassin catches a huge percentage of the spam I get lately, so if my mail machine has to do a little bit of filtering so that middle America can get cable modems and dsl, and so that maybe the last mile can be fiber someday, well, I'll bite the bullet, as long as I don't have to pay cable modem taxes or any other such things and get this spam.
If they are able to legally define spam (not that easy), the spammers will immediately find an alternative which is not illegal...
It's useless for the same reason P2P can't be wiped out!
Long live the freedom of information!!
I want my karma, and I want it now!
Tomorrow I'm planning on start a lawsuit each of the M. N'boko Kiganya, Queen S'tlaka etc.....
should be :
So you can steal get a money they promise, if you doesn't reply to there're mails!
Obviously you have not get enough of those spams, so you're still not an adept of the Nigerian spammer's style;o)))))....
Anyway, with or without those laws, I doubt it will make a major difference. A *lot* of the spam is coming from outside the US, and especially from countries that don't/won't have sanctions regarding spam.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
would this bill be used to attack people you don't like rather than the real spammers??
:)
one would think that sexual harassment lawsuit is used when you're fired by your female superior, not when you're sexually harassed
Spam is so easy to kill: add authentication to SMTP and create a new email network of authenticated email. Servers won't accept email from unauthenticated sources, and spammers will be unable to hide their tracks.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Will come out with some astonishing news that A: "Spam is a major threat to our great nation" and B: that posesses "Tools for Mass Spamming". Oh deary me.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It is not the government's place to tackle the spam problem. If they try, they'll just fuck it up, like they've fucked up so many other things in the past. Spam has all the telltale signs of a problem that legislation won't help. It's a relatively victimless crime (or rather, its victims, with the exception of those companies who run the huge backbones, are at most marginally impacted by the problem), it can be done in a relatively anonymous fashion, and any laws banning or regulating it will be very difficult to enforce. Problems like that (drug abuse and so on) are never helped by laws, and instead just get worse with each additional crackdown.
The problem can never be fully solved by technical means, being a sociological problem, but technical solutions can do a much more effective job in curbing the problem than any legislative solution, and cause fewer additional problems in the process. Rather than try to get the government to pass ineffective feel-good laws, let's fix the problem from our end. It's time to replace SMTP with a less trusting protocol - the Internet is clearly a very different place than it was when SMTP was originally created, and we need a new mail protocol to match the times.
Keep the government's laws off my Internet, people. It is a medium that spans the entire globe and is not under the jurisdiction of any one government anyway, so laws will never do the job. They'll just cause more problems and never solve anything.
What's wrong with it being a bonanza for lawyers? And what exactly do you mean by bonanza? Surley you dont mean the television show from the 60's? why do you have to bring Mitch Vogel into this? Or Michael Landon for that matter?
Seriously though, if the judgements are only $1000 I can't see this creating a lot of work for laywers. Besides whether you like lawyers or not they do have a place in society and to craft legislation based on whether laywers will get involved is retarted.
in my pr0n 'junk'-filtered messages
One scary thing about a federal spam law is that our national government tends to not know when to stop when it comes to 'protecting the rights' of the innocent.
Add to this the variable of an extremist right-wing organization... this proposal could end up taking away more rights than it protects.
Remember that fiasco known as the Communications Decency Act?
this whole spam thing is like an arms race. The more laws and regulations and filters that are created the more sophisticated spammers become. my suggestion is to just make spammers register and leave their name address IP and credit card number on all spam. Then the fun can begin.
"right-wing Christian Coalition"
You know, I've never liked right-wing religious groups before. They are, after all, the people who thought up things like the 'sin' tax. Alcohol, smoking, gambling.. Sins? According to whom?
They're the ones who would have games like Grand Theft Auto removed from the shelves of stores. Good movies censored to the point where they become comedies, because no one can say the word 'sex'.
More seriously, they're the types that would make second class citizens out of women once again by denying them the right to do as they see fit with their bodies.
But you know, today, I look at the right-wing religious lobbyists and say, "Hey, good job."
$1000 per spammer. Who gives a flying fsck if the lawyers get richer off of it. If I, and everyone else, can easily sue every damned spammer that attempts to fill our inboxes, the lawyers deserve a few more Mercedes for doing it.
I was hoping for legislation that would allow the bounty hunting and subsequent execution of spammers. (And no, that wasn't a 'joke'.) While I seriously doubt such legislation will ever see the light of day, I'd settle for $1k a pop in the meantime.
I don't even give a damn about the money; the lawyers can go buy barrels of new car scent to go with their Mercedes if they want. I simply want to make life as difficult as possible for spammers.
Most of the spam that I receive comes from South Korea, Russia and China, not the United States.
If the spam is advertising goods or services sold by someone in the U.S., the spam came from the U.S., regardless of what physical server delivered it. As they say, "follow the money." I don't care that Alan Ralsky pays for his spam to be sent through Brazil. His spam still came from the United States. An effective anti-spam law will allow you to sue him for a significant sum of money ($1000 or more) and federal, state, and local law enforcement to prosecute him for a crime.
Want to deal with overseas firms sending spam to U.S. citizens? Then handle it like the "war on terror." Pressure other countries to turn over spammers for prosecution for violating U.S. laws. This can be done with multiple tools, including threats to revoke a country's "Most Favored Nation" trading status, reduction in aide to countries where we provide same, tariffs, and even federally-mandated blocking of Internet traffic to and from that country.
heres an article on what Australia along with other countries are doing to fight spam.
1 09 20208.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/09/10550
I like the sound of this. Defining Spam would be a problem.
If you could prove that there is either no way of requesting an end to the spam or that it didn't work when you clicked on the link then that might stand up in court.
If you still get spam then you should be able to forward it onto some Government organisation who would deal with the company with an army of beurachrats.
Here in the UK, we have a good system for stopping unsolicited phone calls and text (SMS) messages. It is called TPS (Telephone Preference Service). You basically register your number(s) with this organisation and marketeers aren't allowed to use that number. If they do you can report it, they can check phone records or something and fine them something like £5,000. This system does work.
From the fact sheet:
Anyone who sends spam to these addresses will be subject to stiff fines. The database will be protected by military-caliber encryption to ensure the protection of its contents.
Nonsense. How can the database be encrypted if all potential spammers are deemed to have notice of every address on it?
Such a provision would make it easy for anyone to cause harm to a company or individual by forging spam that appears to be benefitting them. It's a bad idea.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The movement can be called Gas - for short.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
My suggestion is that the SUPPLIER of the advertised goods is fined, not the spammers. The supplier is, after all, paying someone to send the spam, and they're easily traceable (otherwise they'd have trouble fulfilling your orders for Viagra, septic tank cleaner and goat pr0n).
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
One thing spammers always get correct in spam, is the details of how to buy whatever they are advertising
Why don't we ignore the spammers and punish the companies who's products are being advertised?
Spam wouldn't exist if people weren't paying the spammers to spam.
Target the advertisers contact details, like how BT disconnects numbers advertised on tart cards in London phone boxes.
"Sure you can advertise by spam it'll cost you $10000 for 2^8 mails unfortunatly within 12 minutes of the 1st mail going out your contact email and website will be deleted."
Alex
How many of my email addresses will I be allowed to register? Let me see, assuming a maximum of 64 characters per username (it's probably more), and 36 different characters (actually there's more there, too), that would be potentially 40119919145476304800650533877024438126904024877418 12225955731622655455723258857248542161222254985216 addresses. Of course no one would have that many and no database could store them all. But spammers could dynamically generate random ones. As more and more mail services support tagged addresses, spammers will likely start adding random tags to make sure they have a defense of "no match in the do-not-spam database".
I use a different email address for every mailing list I subscribe to. Should I register every one of them with the database? Most of them have already been spammed (probably harvested from online archives of those mailing lists).
One possibility is requiring that tagged format address be matched with respect to the base address (tag characters usually being "-" and "+"). Another is registering a whole vanity domain making it applicable to every username possibility. I'm sure aol.com will get registered like that, as will just about every domain out there. Mine will be.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Spammers are smart people. You are never going to get the definition of spam such that it will block out all the forms of spam. And if there is a hole, spammers will rush to take advantage of it.
I'll illustrate with a snail-mail example:
A few years back everybody could get a sticker (the yes/no* an no/no* stickers) which we could stick on our mailbox to prevent "unadressed mail" (read: yunkmail) from flooding your mailbox. Good initiative: saves paper, time, money and irritation. BUT: Suddenly all yunkmail got addresses prionted on them and we were stuck with the same pile of paper we didn't read and had to take out to the paper recycle bins.
Nice initiative, didn't work. Wait, that's not entirely true; it still has a function: It blocks the local newspapers.
* yes/no for local (free) newspapers; no for unadressed mail.
IT WORKS!! BELIEVE ME!!!!!! Here is what you have to do: check your INBOX and look for unwanted mail, no matter who send it to you. AND THEN SUE THE PERSON WHO MAILED YOU AND SEND ME A MERE 1% OF THE AMOUNT YOU RECEIVE!!
Everytime you do this, it adds $990 to your account. I couldn't believe it either until the $$$ started to flow my way! My wife does it, and now we have no more financial worries!!!!!!!!
Don't feel left out, check your inbox today and start to make money!!!!
By the way, this mail is not spam. No, Sir. Honest. It just a one-time mailing. Really. Trust me.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Spam merchants are brain-dead. Look carefully at my e-mail address {once you've sussed out the auto-munging that Slashdot has thoughtfully provided} and see what you notice about it. Then explain why I keep getting advertisements for products that are only available, or only work, in the USA. Like cable descramblers ..... British cable TV is digital, for crying out loud .....
Spear the spam-merchants with this! It won't stop it altogether, but at least it'll give you evidence as to who is harvesting your address and how widely it is circulating.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
So so so true. You have to make the law so that the company advertised is the one that is responsible for the spam, then fine that company. They needs to be an automatic service where you can report the spam and then the Government(?) fines the company. After all this is how it works for phones in the UK, you request for your number to be put on a list and if you get called the company gets fined £5,000. Why don't the geeks make the laws, or at least advise, when its something to do with technology?
i just don't think it's right to have such extreme penalties.
it's just like the same crappy laws that college students
get busted under, like $150,000 per song! thats
just nuts. $5 a song is more than enough for damages
plus punishment. all these laws suck. you shouldn't
try to make up for law enforcments lack of ability to
catch everybody that does something by punishing
one person in a way to make up for everyone else doing
it. the punishment should fit the crime.
I agree. Email marketing should be strictly on an opt-in only basis. That's something Europe seems to be headed in the right direction regarding.
But I do support and stand by our First Amendment. I do consider it a "Sacred Text" (as I do for the others, like the Second Amendment). I actually do receive some email advertising which I actually want. That's not spam. Spam is not about content. The definition I use, and the definition I think most people would use once they think about it, is "unsolicited bulk email". The "unsolicited" part means "I didn't ask for it" (and just because I buy something from some company does not mean I ask for their advertising). The "bulk" part means they are doing more than having a person literally type in my email address and the message text for each message sent.
Yes, the definition I gave for "bulk" does include mailing lists. But it's not spam if you subscribed.
Actually, governments might be more inclined to tax it. Just make sure it doesn't apply to email address provided as part of confirmed subscribing.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This article in the UK "Guardian" claims that the recent blitz of viruses was done by spammers trying to generate open relays.
Funny : Yet another group that want's to "protect" people from the devious/develish influences of {take your pick}.
Most of those organisations (commercial/ideological/gouverment) don't bother with trying to place the control of that "protection" in the hands of the people it concerns. They all (seem to) know what's best for us, even if we're *as much an adult* as the ones proposing the "protection".
Some group: "Parents ! We're going to 'protect' your kids from {take your pick}."
"Oh, by the way : As a result you, as a grown-up, won't be able to chose to see/hear/obtain {take your pick} anymore either"
Don't misunderstand me, I positivily *hate* it finding all that junk-mail in my box. But where is *my* choice ?
Make it mandatory for businesses to add a single, unique marker (like "[Adv]") in the subject-line of their messages, and it's *my* choice to filter them out, or not.
Every business that (directly or indirectly) sends-out an commercial e-mail expression (read : advertisements) that does not have that marker can be fined/sued (comparable to being forced to having functioning lights on a verhicle : You do not need to be driving at the 'dark side', but you *must* have them, even if you only drive in broad daylight), and I can filter them out easily (or instruct my ISP to do so).
"protection" of adults or the "protection" of kids without giving the parents a chance to do it themselves has got little to do with protection, but more with power : I can force you to adhere to my believes, regardless of your own.
Cool. I made a fortune and filled in the missing step.
Summation 2
Easy - Use md5sums. Give spammers a list of md5sums which they are not allowed to market. They must check every email against that md5 list.
So its just plain old normal Senator Schumer, but RIGHT WING Christian Coalition? Sheeesh, no wonder lefties are blind to the world.
Try Left Wing Senator Schumer and Right Wing Christian Coalition. It would help your point about strange bedfellows make more sense to those who have no clue who Schumer is even.
in the C|Net article it warned that the bill could outlaw anon remailers
Remailers have been harshly criticized by governments in the past, but their supporters point out that anonymity can be of use to whistle-blowers, human rights activists and people living under repressive regimes.
but why doesn't anyone ever think to describe the content of the message? exempt things like whistle blowers and only make spam that has the intention of making the spammer money in some way be banned? the law could require anon remailers to keep logs and could add the fact that the message would have to be sent bulk to be considered spam. wouldn't that create enough of a safeguard for ligitimate free speech usage of anonymous email? hell when you think about it how many people use remailers when you can make up a name in 5 min to get a yahoo or hotmail acct to blow your whistle?
You've just inspired me. I'm going to start up an Internet business using direct spam marketing to sell tin foil hats.
Not only have you demonstrated there is a market for them, but that the target consumers are afraid of any laws to stop the messages.
The Internet is generally stupid
...will never work, or so I've heard from so many on /. when it comes to copyright infringement and digital rights management. As long as the internet remains as open as it is and anonymity is so easily attaied, spammers will find a way around the blocks put in place. Spammers will forge headers and utilize open relays in other countries where there are no anti-spam laws. Either live with the spam or start learning to deal with a little less anonymity on the internet. You can't have it both ways.
I'm tempted to say, "Keep your nose out of our Constitution."
We Americans do view the 1st Amendment as "Sacred Text" mainly because we don't trust today's politicians to amend anything in the Constitution. They would seriously fuck it up because of "political correctness".
I (we) don't want to live in your socialist 21st century. And I'll keep my firearms just in case you want to force me.
Our Constitution is what separates us from you and I'd just as soon go down fighting rather than give it up. In other words - it must truly suck to be you.
I was in a meeting yesterday with a company in corporate gift sales. They have started doing and are excited about mass emails.
They mail 500,000 pieces from a list costing $99.00. The response is 500 inquiries. Actual sales results are not available yet, but their breakeven is only 4 sales.
We discussed radio because the company had great radio ads in the past to reach locals. Now they believe it [radio] is ineffective and way too expensive. They no longer use it. Do the math.
I suspect that corporate america will manage to get Schumer's bill to only apply to porn. Because they see a growing advantage for spam sales. But broadcast media may step in and lobby to destroy an effective but damn annoying competitor.
Interesting fight ahead.
What, did you expect them to try NOT to make their positions/agendas known? That would be like Planned Parenthood trying to hide the fact that they support abortion.
"... define spam broadly enough to outlaw it, but narrowly enough to avoid..."
Yeah, right! These are legislators and lawyers, etc. Like they're not going to get that bit arse about and make it illegal not to send spam! 8-)
Since when have a government ever got it right on technology, you just have to look at the D.M.C.A. to see what's coming here.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
I see a lot of people posting who really don't like Christians (these same people talk about how we must respect Muslims all the time). Is it so wrong to not what pr0n to be sent to children? I know I wouldn't want my children seeing the subject lines in some of my spam.
The bias in the header of this post is abundantly clear. From my experience, Christians are good people, but whatever (I'll surely get modded down for saying so).
Whatever the motivation, its good that spam is being fought. On moral grounds, I think even some of the most liberal people can agree that pr0n being sent to children is wrong (you can probably agree, unless you are between the ages of 10 and 17 and looking forward to each and ever pr0n spam). It undermines efforts to make the Internet a useful place for young people. I know if the Internet was around when I was a kid I would have clicked through on every nasty link that got emailed to me. Instead we just had to steal dad's Playboy...
[FromTheMorning]
If intdividuals could pool their damages and start a class action suit, spam kings could be sued for more $$$ than the RIAA could dream of.
My rights don't need management.
Spam--come on if the christian coalition (caps left off on purpose) want spam stopped so their children do not have to see t&a they should filter their email better and stop having their children sign up for the sex mailing list in the first place.
As for spam in general. laws will not help but will just serve to allow lawyers, RIAA and others loop holes to screw over the internet. When it is time to err it needs to be in favor of the freedom of speech-take care of spam yourself with a good filter, deal with it the same as you do your mail box with postal mail-->the argument about spam being free is BS it has to be written and (maybe spell checked) and then has to be sent, it is just cheaper than postal mail. The government need to stop trying to legislate everything and let us live our lives freely.
If you think the suicide bombers are sent by Israel, then you must be smoking something. Every one of them has been identified and even their families identified. Hell, their friends and families are even proud of them. And they have ALL been Palestinians (or should I say Jordanian exiles?)
Spamming for microsoft, for example, getting them another lawsuit. (Hmm maybe this doesn't sound so bad
Anyway, any company could simply say "hey, we didn't ask for this, somebody is trying to fsck us over !"
Even if they actually were responsable for the mass mailing.
A recent flame fest in the gps news group is because I told a major contributor of the group that his ads aren't welcome and I told that to his ISP to get the point driven home.
:-(
Now it seems that there are many supporters of this guys ads but none of these people see where its going if one person is allowed to put up and ad, how about 10 or 100 or 1000 every day?
A month ago I go down the the local pub to find out a guy there just paid $2000 for an opt-in mailing list that is telling him stories. The guys out the money and thinks they may be legit.
Meanwhile I've got a joker still tring to nail my NT honeypot to relay spam to all ends of the earth.
Maybe its time to just agree with the spamers and hand them the net on a silver plater
Here in Slovenia we've got spam prohibition approved somehow strange. It's not prohibited per se, but Act on customer rights requires opt-in and anything else is punishable by an amount around 25.000 US$. Law states (probably bad translation): Anyone seeking any benefit (money, etc..) can use autodialing without human interaction, fax or email only with prior permission of recipient. And subject of payment is the one who is being advertised.
You call the Christian Coalition is "right wing," but Charles Schumer isn't called "leftist," "left wing," or even "liberal."
Subtle.
All it takes is one person to actually buy the crap they are selling. Then, you can follow the money very easily.
The people in the do not spam database have - at some point - taken a conscious action to have their e-mail addresses added to the database. Thus, it is safe to say that they are, somewhat, more sophisticated than the newbies when it comes to spam.
Also, this would be VERY easy to track down. 1) Get yahoo/hotmail account 2) Add to do not spam db 3) wait...wait... 4) If you receive any spam, you know the db has been compromised
We don't need a law that would be "narrow enough" to prevent a "bonanza for lawyers." We need a law that shuts down spammers period. If lawyers profit by shutting down the spammers, then so be it. Seriously, are lawyers as evil as spammers? Remember, with these private rights of action, it will be the lawyers who save us from spam. There are a lot of good lawyers out there working in the public interest. Also, keep in mind, once spamming dies out, so will the business for lawyers.
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." Albert Camus,
People say that spam is a social problem, not a technical one. However, it is a technical problem, moreso than a social one, and that is why laws such as this one are not going to work: You can't sue someone until you identify them. The reason that spam is such a problem in the first place is because a large percentage of spammers (or, more likely, the spammers' mass mailing programs) go through great lengths to disguise the origin of the message. Obviously, if the message had a reliable source address, it would be much easier to track down and stop spammers, since they would have a finite number of source addresses to work with. Yes, it would create pandemonium for ISPs, but if ISPs responded (by threatening them with a $1000 per message lawsuit) to complaints about spamming quickly, it would not be a problem for long. Of course, this wouldn't work as well overseas, since there would be no such law, but so long as a new system that prevents email spoofing is implemented worldwide, the problem would still be largely under control.
The problem is actually replacing SMTP with something more reliable. It's like trying to implement IPv6... it's not going to happen in a day.
Maybe this is a bad idea, but one solution is to have a protocol where the emailer must get a connection to the emailee. Don't allow any relays.
This is not how spam works. You're operating from the assumption that only people who ask for spam get it. The best spam filter in the world, based on solid research, still needs to be retrained fairly often because of the spammers ability to circumvent spam filters.
Spam is not free speech - its harassment hiding behind free speech and its costing everyone plenty of real dollars. Legistlation is required because its apparent only the threat of jail time will incite these miscreants to play nice. Civil suites are nice, but it alows the spammer to continue for years while the case is resolved.
Let me send you a bill for the productivity my company has lost today dealing with spam clogging up mail servers, mail boxes, and eating up bandwidth. It is not the same thing a postal mail. If spammers had to spend 14 cents per message, would they send out 120 million a day to unverified addresses?"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
This plan would give the 2nd sleaziest profession in the world a financial incentive to attack the sleaziest profession in the world. Overnight, a new cottage industry would spring up -- spam-specialist lawyers.
I can see the commercials now: "Too much Spam? Kids getting porno in their email? Call the law offices of McSchyster and Schultz. Our team of legal and technical specialists will track down the source of the spam and MAKE THEM PAY!!!!"
You are all missing the best solution: We need a bill which requires that all opt-ins be in writing and either notarized, or kept with the original postmarked envelope. This would shift the burden of proof for opt-ins squarely to the spammer, and I doubt they'd bother to try to mail themselves opt-ins from thousands of different cities (the advantage of postmarks.)
This does make it difficult to subscribe to email we want, but much of that could be better handled as web pages anyway, where the user has to consciously go to a site to get the information.
This still leaves the possibility of out-of-country spammers not subject to U.S. law, but if the majority of opinions on this subject are correct, most spam originates in America anyway, and as soon as we can prove the origin, a spammer can be put out of business.
...to do something that I really want done.
Sen. Chuck E. Cheese Schumer (D, NY) and the Christian Coalition (Ralph Reed runs this I think) are about as far apart as you can get on the political spectrum. I hate both of them, truth be told. Yet they are doing something I like.
Weird. I can understand the porn spam interests of the Christian Coalition. Where is Chuck E. Cheese's angle? He kind of likes nuisance issues, never met a camera he didn't like, and likes to do press conferences about gun violence and the like. Spam though. Doesn't seem like him.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The Schumer SPAM Act
-Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing-
Senator Charles Schumer has introduced the stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing (SPAM) Act to combat the mounting toll unsolicited commercial e-mail, commonly known as "spam," has taken on the Internet, businesses and e-mail users. The Schumer bill, S. 1231, is a effective comprehensive effort to address the technical problems associated with stopping spam, providing effective enforcement mechanisms to end the fraud and harassment perpetrated by junk e-mailers, and constitutes an important step in returning control over e-mail in-boxes to users. The SPAM Act will use six mechanisms to accomplish this goal:
Create a National No-Spam Registry
Maintained by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the No-Spam registry will be a database of e-mail addresses for people who have "opted out" of receiving spam. Parents will have the option of putting their children's email addresses in the registry with a special designation to ensure that adult content does not reach their child's inbox. Anyone who sends spam to these addresses will be subject to stiff fines. The database will be protected by military-caliber encryption to ensure the protection of its contents.
Require ADV Labeling
E-mail marketers will be required by law to include "ADV" in the e-mail subject line of marketing e-mail, permitting Internet Service Providers (ISPs), employers and individual users to filter spam from business and personal email. Legitimate marketers who comply with the highest electronic mail standards will be designated as trusted senders, relieving them of the need to comply with this requirement.
Prevent E-mail Fraud
According to an FTC report, 66% of spam contains false, misleading or deceptive information. The bill requires e-mail subject headings, header or router information of all commercial e-mail to accurately reflect its source and contents.
Provide an Opportunity to Unsubscribe
The bill will require all commercial e-mail to provide recipients with an opportunity to decline any future e-mail from that sender. The notice and opportunity to unsubscribe must be functional, clear and conspicuous so recipients can fully exercise this choice.
Prohibit Harvesting of E-mail Addresses and Dictionary Attacks
The bill will also prevent spammers from assembling e-mail lists through the practice of address "harvesting" carried out by software known as spam "bots" that mine web sites, chat rooms, news groups and other internet fora for publicly displayed e-mail addresses. It will also ban unsolivited e-mail sent by dictionary attacks, a practice that generates e-mail addresses by the random compilation of names and numbers.
Improve Enforcement and Increase Penalties
The Schumer SPAM Act will enhance the FTC's anti-spam efforts by giving the Commission additional resources and tools to find and prosecute spammers. It will permit state attorneys general, ISPs and e-mail recipients who are harmed by spam to file civil suits against spammers themselves.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
I dont think the proposed bill goes far enough. It doesn't seem to restrict bulk emailings, made by friends, co-workers and family members, of jokes, good luck chain mail, funny animal photos, and (the worst offender) sentimental get-to-know-me questionares.
No, I dont need to know what your Star Wars name would be or that Im a Gen-X'r because. Can I unsubscribe from this? Please?
Has been oh-so-successful in dealing with China on its human rights record by applying pressure. I'm sure they'll cave right in on the spam.
As flamebait.
This law would impose criminal penalties, not civil ones. Therefore the only people for whom it would cause more work are the attorney general's office. And, in these cases, they usually don't procede unless they are slam dunk cases. 90% of consumer fraud cases are settled out of court, and done so rather quickly - as there is rarely any way to contest the overwhelming evidence.
Have all the countries with TLD's get together and sign a treaty supporting extradition of spammers. If anyone refuses, have the signing countries turn off those TLD's until they comply. At a minimum advocate that servers in their respective countries do so. When .hk finds itself unable to communicate with America and W. Europe, for instance, they would likely comply quickly.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The Schumer SPAM Act
-Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing-
[Ed: Pr0n or Marketing? Which is it Chuck? Let's concentrate on one thing at a time buddy.]
Senator Charles Schumer has introduced the stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing (SPAM) Act to combat the mounting toll unsolicited commercial e-mail, commonly known as "spam," has taken on the Internet, businesses and e-mail users. The Schumer bill, S. 1231, is a effective comprehensive effort to address the technical problems associated with stopping spam, providing effective enforcement mechanisms to end the fraud and harassment perpetrated by junk e-mailers, and constitutes an important step in returning control over e-mail in-boxes to users. The SPAM Act will use six mechanisms to accomplish this goal:
Create a National No-Spam Registry
Maintained by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the No-Spam registry will be a database of e-mail addresses for people who have "opted out" of receiving spam. Parents will have the option of putting their children's email addresses in the registry with a special designation to ensure that adult content does not reach their child's inbox. Anyone who sends spam to these addresses will be subject to stiff fines. The database will be protected by military-caliber encryption to ensure the protection of its contents.
[Ed: Encrypt this list? You mean the list that spammers have been doing well without anyway for all this time? Good to know we're protecting things that don't make much a difference to these spammers. And if this list isn't available to them, how are they gonna know not to send to them?]
Require ADV Labeling
E-mail marketers will be required by law to include "ADV" in the e-mail subject line of marketing e-mail, permitting Internet Service Providers (ISPs), employers and individual users to filter spam from business and personal email. Legitimate marketers who comply with the highest electronic mail standards will be designated as trusted senders, relieving them of the need to comply with this requirement.
[Ed: "legitimate marketers"?]
Prevent E-mail Fraud
According to an FTC report, 66% of spam contains false, misleading or deceptive information. The bill requires e-mail subject headings, header or router information of all commercial e-mail to accurately reflect its source and contents.
[Ed: And what if they don't?]
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
You don't need to collect a fine from the owner of the China-based open relay if you can collect from the person the spam advertises for ... the printer ink distributer or "Rolex watch" dealer.
If it's a civil case you don't need to show beyond a reasonable doubt they hired the spam on their behalf.
Hit them with a few million cumulative fines and they will have a good reason (with actual dollar damages) to go after the folks who sell spam services.
Email: slashdot3@FreeMars.org (Address will be abandoned when it gets spam.)
Seriously, I'm finding it hard to see any sincere motive in any legislation sponsored by the "Christian" Coalition. Is there a rider giving them an out clause to spam if the messages evangelize about the "true" faith?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
No seriously, nice solution.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
..or derivatives thereof.
Back in 1999, I posted this message to NANAE, about getting spammed by a Jerry Falwell-backed ISP. Well, it has been a long time since 1999, and now I get a lot of messages from various CC-related organisations, most of whom are telling me to vote for various RNC initiatives.
Curious.
You can propose and pass laws all you want.
The problem is enforcement.
Spam needs to say the name of the business that it is representing...
The last time I checked in the USA paying for or hiring out an illegal act is still illegal.
You can't say something like "he was the hitman, I just hired him out, he did all the killing!"
I've thought for a while that one of the reasons the U.S. Congress has been slow to act on spam is probably because most of our Senators and Representatives haven't personally had to deal with spam themselves. I assume (maybe wrongly) that most of them don't have the time (or inclination) to check their own email; their staffers most likely are doing it for them.
So I was gratified to see that one of the reasons Senator Schumer gave for proposing this anti-spam legislation was that "his 14-year-old daughter was inundated with spam promoting pornographic Web sites and that he was 'utterly amazed' to learn that no federal criminal laws existed to punish that practice." I mean, I'm not gratified that his granddaugher is getting nasty spam, but glad that the problem is finally starting to hit home with our legislators. It's about time!
Legislation won't completely solve the problem of spam, but the more we can do to delegitimize the practice, the more successful the fight against spam will be.
Knock off the inferiority complex. Yes, most spam comes from the US, which is undebated. However, if a law is passed only in the US, I'm assuming most of these assholes will move offshore like the guys who run gambling sites, as most of them for some crazy reason think being rich and in Aruba is better than being poor and in jail. Additionally, most spam comes, at some point, through an open relay in Hong Kong, Korea, China, etc. Don't believe that, I'll send you the damned headers. So the point is, even if Ralsky lives here, proving he sent it can be tough, because a server that doesn't even block external SMTP probably won't keep stellar records of who used such services.
And quite frankly, any country that, after a theoretical treaty was signed, WILLFULLY participated in spam has no right to participate in a world that allows free email. Additionally, yes, we could solve the problem unilaterally since ICANN is in the US. But you whiners bitch when we make any decision unilaterally without consulting places like Myanmar first, so my plan made it an international thing so everyone was involved in the decision making process. I swear, some people do nothing BUT bitch.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The rule for spam measurement should be based on recipient end, not on the action of the sender...
If you try to break it up into number of individuals sent to, changes in the text of the message, exactly how "voluntary" the process was in passing email addresses onto the spammer, etc. it will be very difficult to define.
But, for example, "decency laws" such as public swearing, spitting, etc. are based on the relative perception of the community. Thus, if a large enough number of people feel one way on an issue, it can be outlawed. Similarly, if the rule is set on the number of individuals claiming to have received unsolicited commercial email from an individual, and the tracking mechanisms are in place, there is no need to set guidelines on the sender side.
For example, if you set the rule to be that if 100 individuals profess to have received an unsolicited email from an identified source, then the individual could be charged with spamming and their would be little to no debate.
(1) It forces individual spammers to exercise strong caution based on the perception of the individual, not on a technicality of law.
(2) Software could be implemented such that an individual receiving spam could simply click on a button that says "Report This Email as Spam" that could be collected either by the government or lawyers, etc.
(3) International issues could easily be subverted by attacking any funds produced through the email (whatever profits were afforded the spammer because individuals responded to the spam were illegally attained, and would be returned to either the individual or the state w/o refund of whatever products or services were purchased)
Just my 2 cents,
Russ Jones
rjones@email.unc.edu
There is one big problem with going after the people who support spam.
And that is this: If I have a competitor A, to cause them problems I just spam 30 million people in their name, linking to their website and products. Not only will a bunch of feral geeks be on their case, but they will also have to face a government investigation. All of which will no doubt incure financial losses even if they're not guilty.
Atleast their motives, whether they are misdirected or not, are of good intent. In this case, I think their motive is to protect children from seeing pr0n in spam.
Honestly I haven't seen any religious spam yet. Spamming from religion I would predict would be easy to filter, since deception (hiding headers or even subject) would be a no-no.
This is strange, since I would have suspected there to be an abundance of it. Evangelistic spreading of the "word" is in their charter, yet they've not chosen to use e-mail to do so.
I'm no religious adept, so if someone could find out. Perhaps the link between "The Beast" and the Internet? Dunno. Enlighten me. My guess is that sharing Faith is a personal experience, not an electronic one.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
If that is the case, why aren't all their children/wives complaining about it? Unless these congressmen are regular patrons of pr0n sites and are inclined to "lessen the noise". LOL.
"Oh, that's horrible honey. Yeah it's a big problem these days. Those damn spammers. We're trying to do something about it. Just be patient dear. Now, what was that delicio... I mean horrible site, lemme write that down so we can um... investigate them."
Whether or not (and I suspect you're right) the legislators/politicians actually see spam personally, they must wrestle with the fundamental concept of spam.
Spam, in essence, so far to date, is the ideological pure form of advertising.
- It requires very little cost.
- Reaches millions of people.
- Very quickly.
- Can be tailored to targets.
- Appears in a personal form.
- Can be altered, retransmitted, reused easily
- Has predictable factors and results
- Can work round the clock
- Automated
Legislators and money-makers alike must step through a fragile dance, so that "legitimate" businesses can capitalize on spam.
If they really wanted to reduce spam, they could have done so by now. Immediately I can think of ways to reduce spam. Quite easily.
Employ a bunch of monkeys (new jobs!), receive spam, take the most obvious spam (headers altered, subjects scrambled to avoid filters, etc.) for offering sexual content, shutdown websites they link and sender's. And don't tell me they can't. RIAA showed us how to apply pressure, and they did it long before laws were passed.
"No! Not the pr0n!"
Er... pr0n will always exist. Regardless of laws. It's like alcohol.
This will only reduce the spam from them. Abuse for this kind of outlaw is huge, yes. But two things.
[1] Does anyone really care about the pr0n site owners?
[2] Isn't that what we want to cultivate? FUD among spammers?
"They'll just move their website." Yes. Costly. Until no ISPs will take them (ISPs cost for setting up the site, missed billings, hassles) or they move offshore. I've done it. And it takes a toll on the business. Even offshore.
Then you work your way up. Body part enlargement advertisers and get-rich-quick "opportunities".
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Try reading next time. The preferred idea is to have everyone sign a mutual extradiction treaty. Obviously, using the threat of turning off their TLD is a bit of a motivation. That would last 20 minutes before they caved. The internet isn't a damned right, it's a privelege, and we have no obligation to provide free communication services to a country that refuses to stop its own spammers, and suffer the spam as a result. What we don't need is every country except the Bahamas both making spam illegal and extradicting them, only to see all the spammers move to the Bahamas.
The notion that you consider turning off a TLD in response to spam which is sent from the US to the US through open relays in the sanctioned country is sickening."
Now, try some logic. My plan was an extradiction treaty. I'd hardly NEED a fucking extradiction to try an American, now would I? We'll stop our spammers, you stop yours, everyone's happy except the spammers. Unclosed servers are a related issue, but extradiction doesn't solve that anyway. Hell, we have open servers here too, we'd have to turn off access to OURSELVES, and that wouldn't make a whole damned lot of sense, would it?
Oh, and sign your posts, coward.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
It is possible that the porno spam with images is more easily filtered than the mortgage spam, or that for some reason I don't seem to be on the lists, but my experience does not match what they are saying.
PS: after much frustration I now trash all mail with any html in it, as well as all SpamAssassin results >= 3, and use a white list to skip these. This is about the only way to get usable email anymore.
Sounds like he's good at what he does. lol.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Dont you think it's a greater violation of rights having spyware and adware on your system than just recieving unsolicited e-mail? I think spam is just a nuisance while spy/adware actually affects performance of your hardware, not to mention the fact that its broadcasting your private information to the world allowing you to recieve a large portion of spam (mmm...large portion of spam).It's like me parking my car on your lawn then setting up cameras looking into each of your windows. Unfortnately everyone that recieves spam is aware of it, unlike spy/adware. And hence, public is clamoring for spam to stop. Dont get me wrong I love charging the chumps that install i-mesh/kazaa/realplayer/etc. money for removing the crap that makes there brand new Dell run like a 486, but if your talking rights violations that takes the cake. I say that all of you not already using a spy/ad bot removal program should run one ...youd be surpised what youll find.
PS. Dont forget the growing number of spam coming through windows own messenger service.
WOW, so now i can have zero dollars in my pocket instead of zero dollars! hey, it's not my fault no one emails me... /paul
fact: microsoft > linux
I think he's the naive one. Not the Christians. I'm not Christian. But I still believe the same as Christians that no spammer ought to be sending me offers. For whatever reason. Even if you were to make the argument that I want it, unless I gave you explicit consent that I want you to send this to me, I don't want it to appear in my inbox. It's no different than receiving Playboy in my tin mailbox. Even if it was sent to me for free.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
The problem I have is with the effectiveness of the technical solutions to date and the likelihood that they'll become much more effective in the medium-term future unless they're accompanied by legislation.
It seems to me that the ongoing technology race between spam-blockers and spammers has been instrumental in accelerating the adoption by spammers of increasingly objectionable subterfuges for delivering of their unwanted material and obscuring its origins. The result has been that users of the Internet are incurring measurable additional costs for dealing with the sh*t and that despite this many people find that enough gets through to make the going through their email an activity, as the Economist observed in a recent article on the topic, about as alluring and attractive as sorting through raw garbage.
To put it simply, the technological solutions deployed so far have not worked. Sorry, but I think it's high time for the 'Net community to get its collective head around this unpalatable fact.
OK, laws currently on the statute books have not been noticably effective, either, despite their obvious applicability to much of the spam that's swilling around. Admittedly, the nature of many of the 'products' and 'services' being peddled in this way undoubtedly discourages dissatisfied customers from seeking redress by way of formal law enforcement. And unwilling recipients of the nastier types of material may also be understandably wary of requesting law enforcement involvement. That's a sociological problem in itself, of course, and while technical measures like providing means for forwarding anonymous tip-offs will help, what's really needed is for people to be able to feel confident they can report such stuff to the local police without coming under automatic suspicion themselves of being part of the problem. Intelligently-drafted legislation does have a role in promoting such a consensus.
So I guess I have to put up and then shut up. Here are a few guidelines for legislation which I think could help shift the balance between profit and risk for spamming. Al Capone, remember, was eventually nabbed for tax violations.
...proven tools already exist. (http://www.tmda.net/).
What's with defining the Christian Coalision as "right wing" and leaving the "left-wing" (a well-deserved designation) off of Schumer's name? The implication is that Schumer is 'normal folks' while the C.C. is so out of the mainstream that you have to add a modifier so people know they're those wacky "right-wing" kooks. Either leave off the modifiers altogether or or give them equal treatment.
I think the idea is for left-wingers to call right-wingers "right-wingers", but not to call themselves or anyone left-wingers.
Equally, I think the right-wingers want to call left-wingers "left-wingers", but not to call anyone right-wingers.
Something to do with a double standard, and not to label ones-self in admittance to receive criticism. I dunno. Does that sound right? or left?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
This is not how spam works. You're operating from the assumption that only people who ask for spam get it.
This is partly true. Those that have popular email address networks get it regardless (mail.com, email.com, msn.com, yahoo.com, aol.com, hotmail.com, etc.)
If you have a relatively unknown domain, like I do, you never get hit with random spam. Only if you register it somewhere. My personal email account is spam-free without any intervention. My hotmail account is loaded.
The best spam filter in the world, based on solid research, still needs to be retrained fairly often because of the spammers ability to circumvent spam filters.
Sounds like good business. On both ends. Arms dealers perpetuate profitable business on such models.
It is not the same thing a postal mail. If spammers had to spend 14 cents per message, would they send out 120 million a day to unverified addresses?
It is quite similar to postal mail. My building receives dozens of AOL trial packages periodically to un-named addresses (just aptartment numbers). But you're right, if they had to spend 14 cents per message, they'd send less to unverified. I might even be inclined to go into the business of verifying and filtering addresses before they get sent to spammers for their use.
"To defeat the bug, one must understand the bug"
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Yeah, I can't wait to see how Congress will fsck this one up. They've still made no inroads into stopping all the junk mail I get in my mailbox at home or work, and I can tell you where 90% of all the junk comes from - Clearwater, Flordia!
:(
Congress has no desire to stop spam, though even they realize that it makes up 50% of all mail traffic online. Congress just needs to take an action in order to show that it cares about the issue. A failed measure is better than no measure at all in politics. There's money to be made in letting the market deal with spam.
Last night on Hardball with Chris Mathews (MSNBC), Former Republican Congressman Bob Barr said candidly that individuals have many options available to them to prevent spam without the heavy hand of government getting involved. Barr stated that we can install filters, firewalls, and pay for services that reduce spam. He admitted that he gets less spam because he's taken these actions and has paid a premium to block most spam. He further said that he was rather amused by the telemarketing calls he got.
What politicans like Bob Barr advocate is that we shoulder the burden and buy off spammers or pay protection money.
How about the spammer gets 1 unlubed, foreign object inserted into and removed from their anus
Foriegn? Why not domestic? What do you have against good old Amerkin object manufacturers?
Buy Amerkin! Look for the Union Label!
We Christians do share the faith on the net, but like non-believers, we don't like spam either, so what we do is put up web sites. For example my churches site is www.FirstTrinity.net and a Christian radio station I like that is streamed over the net is at www.kfuo.org. Both have 2 propose, one to spread the messaged to non-believers, and two to give believers some info about what is going on at the church or some entertainment. So there is no need to use spam, besides spam will just be deleted, if some one ends up at the web sites, they got there on their own so they have a high chance of actually reading what is put up there.
If you are going to call one spade a spade,
then let us play nice and call ALL spades spades!
No offense to any black folks reading this. And
no, I'm not going to use the PC phrase.
I get over 200 spams a day. Less than 10% actually originate from the US for US companies.
Even if I only manage to nail 10 spammers a month, that's a gross income of $120k...
Maybe this is what they mean by "spam pays".
Of course, getting the money from the spammer would be another matter. I'd probably turn the settlement over to a collection agency, take my cut, and let them deal with the scum...
"What isn't clear is how they will define spam broadly enough to outlaw it, but narrowly enough to avoid making it a bonanza for lawyers."
If I had a choice, I'd honestly have to say I prefer lawyers to spammers. The time is near where anything about spam and the senders in particular will be considered ranking slightly above animal pornographers and slightly below neo-nazi hatemongers.
I have seen discussions about technical solutions and legislative solutions, but not a lot of discussion about economics. I receive far more spam than direct (postal) mail. Obviously the huge number of spam messages flooding everyone's inbox means that response rates must be abyssmal -- but since the costs of sending spam are virtually zero as well, people will continue to send them, despite laws, suits, technology, etc.
So why is it so cheap to send email and so expensive to fight it? Here are some thoughts...
Forgery is easy, tracing back to the real sender is hard.
Not all spam is forged, but most is, because if spammers lie about their identity, fewer complaints will reach the real ISP and they can send millions more spams in the extra time it takes to track them down. Analyzing email headers is difficult.
Forged mail also means extra cost for the domain owner whose domain is being forged. This adds to the cost of fighting spam, but the spammers don't have to pay for this. Forgery is just one reason that spamming is easy and cheap, and fighting spam is difficult and expensive.
Something like the RMX proposal [previously on slashdot] would help this problem, but will take a long time to get to full usefulness. That's a good reason to get started now!
Sending in huge volume is easy
Once you have a dialup account, you can send any number of messages, limited only by the bandwidth of your connection. Any node on the internet that can be used to browse the web (port 80) can also be used to send mail to other mail servers (port 25).
It would be easy enough for an ISP to block outgoing connections to port 25, but their users may have legitimate reasons for sending direct and not wanting to use the ISP's servers. This type of policy would make it harder for legitimate users to run their own mail servers (such as DSL users who have their own Unix machines and want to run their own domains) but they can still do this if they set up their sending server to always relay to the ISPs server (or just ask for an exception to the port-25 policy, if they are already a trusted customer).
Forcing mail to go through certain servers makes it easier to enforce other rules, such as limiting their sending rate to 10 messages a day, or something appropriate like that. This is another thing that some ISPs will do and others won't, but it is in their best interests to do so. The idea is to keep the spammers from coming back, and the only way to do that is to make it expensive on a per-message basis to send spam through their network. If you can pay $19.95 for the account and send 1 million messages, and get 100 to 1,000 sales, that might be worth it, but if that ISP limits you to only sending 100 or 1,000 messages before you get caught, you will move on to the next ISP. ISPs that do this will spend less on abuse complaints, and those that don't will get picked on more and more. If this keeps up, it becomes infeasible for the ISP to do business the old-fashioned way, and it becomes infeasible for spammers to spam compared to the cost of other legit advertising.
It is also possible to allow some connections to port 25 and just throttle back after a certain number, or do a rate limit (like one per second)... but the technology to do this is harder than just straight blocking.
Anyway... my personal preference would be to use a technology-based solution, that has no national borders. I don't really object to a legislative approach as well, but my gut feeling is that it will not be as effective if it is not global. However, neither technology nor legislation can be effective without some understanding of the economic and "social engineering" factors.
Microsoft Corp. has filed multiple lawsuits against people it says are responsible for flooding The Internet (well, that's what Microsoft thinks it's MSN service is...) with more than 2 billion spam messages.
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URL - http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technol