Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Files 15 Lawsuits Against Spammers
Popsikle writes "A Seattle Paper reports that 'Microsoft Corp. announced it has filed 15 lawsuits against alleged e-mail spammers in Washington state and the United Kingdom on Tuesday.' It states the tough anti-spam laws in UK and Washington allows ISP's to sue spammers. This could be a good test of the new anti-spam laws." There's coverage on CNN as well. Microsoft has picked a good venue for such a case.
It's amazing how while suing spammers and getting all the good PR, MS ise ws/business/61 13665.htm
also blocking anti-spam legislation.
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercuryn
"We have personnel around the world engaged in those battles, and we are tapping that expertise and working with these people to fight spam as well." Can't they do the simple exercise of examining their own user's spam - hotmail users can give billions in a day.
If hotmail users could even get $5 per spam, they'd be richer than Tiger Woods.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
A full list can be found on microsoft's site:
u n0 3/0617SpamEnforcementFS.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/J
</karmawhore>
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
But... who do we root against? If only Linus were somehow involved, it'd all be so clear!
My brain hurts!
We hate spammers.
We hate Microsoft.
Microsoft sues spammers.
Dangit.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Let them sue until they die of old age!
And this time I don't even care how much money is sunk into the greedy hands of their respective lawyers.
AFAIK, some spammers go to great lengths to keep their identities hidden (hi-jacking other people's computer systems etc) so although the threat of legal action will be a big deterrent there's always going to be spam unless we can come up with a technological solution to stop it.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
If Microsoft is able to successfully stop the spammers will your views towards them change? Power in the computing industry is not always deleterious to its constituents.
I hope the Slashdot crowd shows a little maturity on this one. I dislike many of Microsofts tactics as much as the next man but in this case Iâ(TM)m rather pleased to see the might of their legal department behind something that could benefit us all.
Ok, I read this and the little Mr. Cynical on my shoulder says, this is all just PR. Yes, they are filing lawsuits, etc...but in the grand scheme of things, this is just advertising.
Microsoft: "We're on your side"
Microsoft: "We hate spammers too!"
Microsoft: "We're fighting for the little guy"
etc, etc, etc.
The cost of a few million (drops in their bucket) of court costs might go a long way in falsly convincing some people that Microsoft actually cares about the little guy.
Just a though.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
The first rule of Slashdot Club: never side with Microsoft.
The second rule of Slashdot Club: never side with Microsoft.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Please M$ add Network Solutions in your list to sue. Those frickin bastards tell users their whois database is not to be used for commercial spam, and yet they turn around and do the same anyways.
eTrade SUCKS
Hate Microsoft; hate spam.
Hate Microsoft; hate spam.
Evil greedy corporation; slimy pollution of the Internet.
Illegally abusing their monopoly; illegally hijacking servers.
Overpriced software; lowest mortgage rates ever.
Bug-ridden products; barnyard porn.
Embrace and extend; extend your manhood.
No concept of security; special offers on SystemWorks 2003.
Never innovating; always innovating.
I'm siding with Microsoft.
*sob*
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Mainly just to see first hand an accused Spammer being cross-examined by a Microsoft Lawyer, dressed up in that stupid butterfly outfit...
The hatred against the spammers is stronger 'round here. I've never seen a Slashdot campaign to subscribe Bill Gates to hundreds of magazines and newsletters, after all; and the worst I've seen done to Ballmer is the Monkey-Dance video.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I've successfully sued as an "interactive service provider" under this law. The justification seems to be that the spammer is engaging in unfair/deceptive business practices at the expense of the "interactive service provider", so that provider should be allowed to seek compensation for that.
Have fun,
Nathan 'Nato' Uno
http://web.unos.net/
I wonder what cost spam has on MS itself... Think of all the resources on Hotmail that get taken up with sent and received spam... Surely it would add up?
:)
Then again, it might not matter to such a large company... but it's MS, there must be some monetary explanation for all this
My oldest account on Hotmail (about4 or 5 years old) is plagued with SPAM. I keep it because people still use it to send me MSN conversations.
While Microsoft is suing the spammers, they're not doing much to block them. Are they? Some bayesian filters and RBLing with a bit of context analysis (50K people get the same email in 2 minutes) might just prevent them the agony of having to sue people.
Forget the beer, pack off and watch your purse very carefully.
/ 61 13665.htm
It's not so straightforward as you think:
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You know, you don't really save bandwidth this way.
You just shift the data over to other servers, who may or may not be able to handle the load better.
Oh no. No no no no NO. If someone spoofs millions of spams, coming from your e-mail address, and you end up being sued for vast amounts of money as a result, would you consider it fair? It is in no way Microsoft's fault that someone faked their address, and as such they shouldn't be sued for it.
I'm not sure they should be suing for it, either, although I'm strongly of the opinion that pretending to be someone else, in whatever medium, should be illegal. I believe in the right to anonymity, not the right to tell everyone you're me!
Gee, you mean like producing a secure operating system and email applications? How funny would it be if it goes to court and the spammers had to testify how easy it was to hijack Windows systems.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Doesn't mean it has to be Good vs. Evil.
Fights can be Evil vs. Evil, too.
cygnuhchur
Yes, it's all supposedly "opt-in," but the bcentral spams I have received tell me otherwise.
sulli
RTFJ.
Of course Microsoft cares about the little guy. Or rather, about him and the billion other little guys with a few spare bucks in their wallets.
The little guys impressions are important, as long as they add up and might seriously affect business.
In this case, Microsoft is the biggest karma whore of them all.
Regards,
--
*Art
It is good to know that Microsoft is taking a major step forward to combat against Spam. We need more major corporate to do similar thing as Microsoft is doing right now. These corporates have enough power and money to deal with spam in a legal way. Of course, if the spammer chooses to send out junk through an SMTP server that's outside the US territory, there is nothing much we can do. It is sad, but I am glad Microsoft is taking actions! Go Microsoft!
So this ends up in the next global legislation mess: we all agree that we need global legislation, but the big fight is whether is will be US, European or one of the SE Asian.
And this mess will only be solved when all governments have the same interests.
Why are Microsoft seemingly seeking to stop spam, when there own hotmail service is the most spam prone email service I have ever used. I get about 10 spams into my inbox everyday, (and another 30 into my junk mail folder), even though I have fairly high "so called" spam protection enabled!
Compare that to my yahoo account, in which I have never ever recieved any spam in the 12months that I've been using it...
surely Microsoft are doing something wrong somewhere? How is it that Yahoo can make it so that I recieve ZERO spam, and Hotmail can't?
(also why do I have bad karma?)
Root for one well placed hand grenade during the proceedings.
/syle
You must have a easily guessable hotmail address.
My hotmail username has a number & a special character in it. It has never recieved any spam in the 5 years that I have been using it.
DEATH STAR (AP) 2003/06/18 --
Darth Vader, Lord of Sith and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet, has announced today his intention to sue Sauron of Mordor, the official "Dark Lord" of Middle Earth, for violating his Intellectual Property (IP).
Darth Vader spokesdroid K4VC5 briefly commented to the intergalactic press: "Darth Vader is, most certainly, the original Dark Lord, and we feel that Sauron of Mordor, no matter how creative and evil, has no right to call himself the 'Dark Lord' of Middle Earth". He added that Darth Vader legal team would pursue damages worth "several billions" of Galactic Credits.
Sauron, Dark Lord of Middle Earth, was unavailable to comment, but well-informed sources close to Mordor report that "his evilness" promised to rain death and destruction on the first legal storm trooper to ever set foot on Middle Earth.
Darth Vader spokesdroid also confirmed that Lucifer, the star attorney of Mephistopheles, Baal, Satan & Associates Law Firm (LLC) has been retained to defend a case which promises to be one of the toughest legal fight in the history of Evil(tm).
Lucifer first (and best known) legal battle involved the semitic God YHWH (pronounced: "Yahweh") for the control of the "Garden of Eden" real-estate property. That case was widely considered a draw, and was settled out of court.
Dr Evil, widely considered as an authority on Evil(tm) only commented: "Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!", and declined to elaborate any further.
That's all for business news. Film at 11.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
The only solution is to make it unprofitable. I suggest planting whatever program Sen. Hatch plans on using for destroying computers into all the adware on the internet, I'm guessing the people who download that are the same people who actually buy stuff from spam.
Ahh.... No. I help lots of my friends unfsck their computers from things like adware and viruses, and I have noticed that the majority of people who end up with adware on their computers (all intelligent college students) end up with it for two reasons 1) they use MSIE and 2) they fail to understand that IE's design makes it so that the simple act of visiting a website will make you subject to viruses, drive-by downloads, adware, and many other goodies that take advantage of IE's "extensible interface."
This usually results in me educating them on 1) the dangers of clicking "yes" on any dialog box without actually reading it, 2) enabling ActiveX and JScript by default, and 3) the virtues of using a well designed browser. I then remove the adware, install Mozilla, show them how to turn off software downloads and popup windows and they are quite happy.
I can honestly say that not one single person I have helped out such a predicament would actually buy anything from spam. As a matter of fact, they are usually pretty good at spotting spam, they just don't know how to get rid of it (i.e., filter it before it gets to them).
What stops Microsoft from appending some legal agreement in an EULA that specifies that their software can not be used by any individuals for the purpose of proliferating spam email. Define spam. Define a harsh penalty per email sent. Then try to enforce it.
What might stop this from happening? Why wouldn't we make this a part of the GPL? I think everybody besides spammers hates spam, right?
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
- Register of Known Spam Operations
That and the news.admin.net-abuse.email and news.admin.net-abuse.sightings groups contains plenty of good information on who these scumbags are and how they operate.You're just not paranoid enough.. Let's see. Spam is only spam when it's send by a company with who you don't have a bussiness relationship. Wasn't that the basic idea behind the american anti-spam laws?
Well, guess who has a bussiness relationship with 99% of the computerusers?
They're just killing some competition, making a few bucks and some goodwill. And soon we will see the announcement for "Windows DC" for "Direct Communication with our valued custommers".
Don't you worry, with a little fantasy MS is still the evil empire and what ever good the do is first and formost good for themself..
Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!
Just this morning I got 5 emails from hotmail accounts asking if I wanted:
:-)
Spammers fake the sender's address all the time. If you dug into the mail header details I'm willing to bet they didn't come from Hotmail servers.
Try typing this in exactly as shown:
telnet your.smtp.server 25
HELO somedomain.com
MAIL FROM:
RCPT TO:
DATA
Subject: junk subject line
junk body text
.
The blank line after the subject and the dot on the line by itself are important.
Congratulations - you've just sent yourself a forged e-mail. Easy wasn't it?
The above link also states that more than half of U.S. currency is in circulation *outside* of the U.S., so there's less than $330 billion in circulation within our country. Amazing isn't it? No, that doesn't mean that Bill Gates has 20% of the nation's wealth. It just demonstrates how money is created by the banking system. There are those that misunderstand this process (or don't believe it, amazingly enough!) and state that for someone to become rich someone else has to become poor. Thanks to the banking system this is NOT necessarily the case and also explains why a $10 trillion economy can work with only $330 billion in currency.
...is to plug the holes that allow for all of the email harvesting within Outlook via viruses, and consequent loads of spam from Windows based virii.
But Big Up to M$. Using their power for good.
See i do say nice things about M$ when they deserve it.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
``We don't think all commercial e-mail should be banned,'' he said. Microsoft favors self regulation by the industry ``to establish standards that can evolve over time,'' he said.
and you think it's reasonable?
It's typical duplicity from M$, "I won't let you do what I do, and that's how we make our money and bring you software that does what you wan." Microsoft has been trying all along to criple it's "client" machines so that they are dependent on Microshaft "server" machines and all dependent on M$. It does not do what I want it to and never will.
Mass mailing is just one more instance of "client" gelding and they have media help for it. A lack of mail agents in M$ software is typical, where the free world has many such as Sendmail and Exim. Their intrests here line up with traditional publishers who wish to keep the playing field uneven. To bring this lack of mailing ability to free software, AOL/MSN and others have sucessfully threatened smaller ISPs to block both inbound and outbound port 25 traffic. Forcing a cable company to give up a competitive advantage like web and mail serving stinks like an anti-trust violation, but that's what a tech told me happend recently when I was forced to use their smtp server as a relay for the first time. The excuse given was to keep cracked M$ boxes from spamming, so M$ created the problem to begin with and the cracking spammers did not lack mail agents, and it's not likely to help. No other smtp server could be used but theirs, enabling Carnivore and censorship, disabling TLS and privacy.
This is absolutely what the internet is NOT about. The internet is supposed to be a network of peer computers. There's not supposed to be central control or a difference between the ability of one computer and another. Microsoft never liked the internet anyway. They really hate free software that gives people ability that M$ doea not want them to have. Microsoft thinks it owns the internet and can make it into the next broadcast TV. They can, as long people think such things are reasonable.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yes, today I really hate Microsoft. They have reached out and screwed me, though I don't run their software and have nothing to do with them. It's personal now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What stops Microsoft from appending some legal agreement in an EULA that specifies that their software can not be used by any individuals for the purpose of proliferating spam email. Define spam. Define a harsh penalty per email sent. Then try to enforce it.
.5 seconds, which was inadequate to read the entire document, that he did not know how the scroll bars worked and thought what showed in the window was the complete agreement, that he purchased the computer with the software already installed and he never clicked "I agree" at any point, etc., etc., etc.
Microsoft does not want to risk the courts ruling that EULAs are not legal, binding contracts. If Microsoft were to take that case to court, the spammer could challenge the legality of the EULA, showing that it was not signed, that there was no evidence that he read read or understood it, that the click-through agreement allowed him to click on "I accept" without even forcing him to scroll to the end of the document, that he clicked it in
There is a reason that the BSA and software companies take pirates to court for copyright violation rather than for violating the terms of the legally questionable EULAs.
That's the amount of cash in circulation, which is tiny fraction of the actual money in the US, let alone the world. Remember, money is a fiction, no matter whether it's given a physical representation or not.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Well, except that they haven't been enacted yet, and there's this little thing called Ex Post Facto. Also, the most effective anti-spam bills are unfortunately not the most likely to pass Congress:
- Schumer's bill endorsed by CAUCE
- Schumer seeks international anti-spam treaty
But Tauzin's pro-spam bill will probably get the votes.The idea that Microsoft is doing this just for PR is silly. The idea that Microsoft is doing this to make people happy is silly too. The fact of the matter is, MS, like any good company, is doing this for money. Spam costs them a LOT. The cost of spam is huge and it is rising. Email systems aren't free, and when 80 percent of what you have going is garbage, you could save a ton of cash if you could cut that out. I dislike MS as much as the next guy, but this is getting out of hand. Some of you think that MS doesn't do ANYTHING unless it is either evil or underhanded. Fact of the matter is they do what they do to make money. Sometimes that's good for us, sometimes it's bad.
Before that it was chinanet.com.net (or some other stupid variation). They stopped about two weeks after Sprint started asking for copies of the spams. Thank you Sprint.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
If that's the standard, then no document is binding on a spammer unless it's written in orange crayon using Dr. Seuss vocabulary.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
That's not entirely true. Some spammers will send out fake spam, often as a means of retaliation against various anti-spam advocates. For example, here is one such case.
If it becomes standard practice to sue the advertisers in spam, spammers will just include more random, innocent third-parties in their spamming runs. The result will be enough doubt over guilt that it'd be impossible to figure out who was really responsible.
SECTION 4 - RESTRICTIONS ON USAGE
You may not use it to send spam!
You may not use it for a scam!
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Depending on your age, it may just be a matter of waiting a little longer. I see exactly that happening all around me. The bullies who gave me such a hard time in middle school have wound up in jail, rehab, or some kind of probation. The jocks have either matured into working adults and gone on to lead fairly successful lives (and still have a hot chick), or have attempted to stay jocks forever and ended up in jobs with the local janitorial services.
The geeks, on the other hand, have almost all turned out okay. Most of my geek friends are either in some kind of graduate program or working at a tech job with a respectable salary. And as far as "screwing hot chicks" is concerned...that's not what makes you happy. But dating is fun, and when you're young and 've got a good job, it comes fairly easily.
I'd suggest that you try to get past all the "evil" things MS did.
Also get past all the good moves MS did (yup...there are)
I see MS...or any company for that matter as an entity.
An entity with attributes. Attributes may be good or bad.
The MS entity does nothing for nothing, it has a goal, not all goal are approved by other entities but there are still goals to reach.
And again, in these goals, we may add attributes to classify them as good or evil goals.
I'm being a little abstract here, let me try to clarify that.
Sure MS did some very nasty stuff...well ok, not some, a LOT!
But that doesn't make all of their goals nasty.
In this instance, filing a suit against spammers, IMO, is a good goal.
Now. OF COURSE MS has some idea behind the head with that and of course they will also try to get a benefit out of it. Who wouldn't ?? Wouldn't you ?
But then, as always, we will find a way to get around MS and things will globally remain unchanged. That is, 90% of the end-user will go for MS and the 10% (that's us, the geeks) will use our own means.
Quite honestly, I don't care what MS intends to gain out of the Anti-Spam war, is it for the PR, is it for a long-term dominance ?
I...don't....care
I'm so sick of spammers that if someone can effectively reduce the number of spammers, let it be, we'll deal with the consequences later.
One problem at a time, as always. Try to do all at once and you fail everywhere.
I'm no MS evangelist, I despise many of the anti-trust violation they make, I despise their agressive tactics, the way the crush down their opponents instead of making their product better to actually compete.
But if MS also happens to be the only organization with enough power, enough strengh to scare spammers, let MS put its power for a good use for once.
Programmer In Training (who was wayyy to lazy to log in)
friends don't let friends install MS junk, your sig says... surely Microsoft-hating husbands don't let their wives open hotmail accounts? For someone accusing MS of duplicity and double standards, your own standards seem pretty flexible...
If you don't like MS sticking ads into hotmail messages, don't use them - it's not hard. It's not like you don't have other options for email.
So damn Microsoft for making your life worse by providing your wife with a free e-mail address. And damn them even more for suing spammers because its in their interests do do so (no company - not the most benevolent corporation in the world - would launch a legal action against spammers out of sheer public spiritedness - for a start, it's kinda hard to get a court to rule in your favour if the person you're suing has done nothing to harm you)
As to your linked post, well.. if your ISP blocks port 25 traffic, change ISPs. Demand an ISP with an open routing policy. You may have to pay for the privilege, but if enough people do it, market forces will change that. Remember that connecting to the internet through someone else's server is always a privilege, not a fundamental human right, though, and it's up to them to choose what conditions they offer that service under.
You're moaning about MS forcing you to look at hotmail ads, and lobbying small ISPs to shut their gateways to outbound port 25 traffic, but it seems like pretty easy stuff to get around to me.
The BBC's The Money Programme are doing an edition on junk (postal) mail and spam tonight at 19:30 BST. The Money Programme tends to be fairly influential and usually has high journalistic and production values.
If you're in the UK, or have access to BBC2 tonight, watch it!
Aren't these the same people who won't actually sell your hotmail address but will collect and sell every none hotmail address that you send to or receive mail from?
Microsoft is the 800 ton gorilla that's been trying to crush Linux for so long.
The spam community is just as resolved at surviving any attacks as the Linux community.
I'm against all forms of commertal e-mail myself not becouse it's all evil but becouse spammers are so evil in the way they twist everything.
The opt out system was part of e-mail lists everywhere. Someone somehow accadentally opts you in or worse dose so as a prank so you opt out again. Spammers then include the opt out system and ignore it or worse use it to scoop up e-mail addresses.
Every time lagit commertal e-mail finds some way to make it obveous they are lagit the spammer community copys them and suddenly the spam looks lagit too.
I've nothing against opt in spam. I've opt in to some spam myself BUT what I've welcomed into my system is flooeded over with junk I've never agreed to.
Every now and then I get this "Thank you for joining !!!!!" if you don't opt out you get spam from them if you do they sell your e-mail address.
And there are thousands of other tricks. They just keep comming up with new ways to thwart filters bypass spam blockers and be generally annoying.
So now Microsoft is taking on spam.....
Well... ummmmm Go Microsoft.. we hope you'll be successful in a way we know can't happen.
But hay you'll give spam a big black eye put it in the hospital for a while and drain your FUD department of all resorces.
Now how can the Linux community help Microsoft on this. I think with a little more effort Spam won't be going to the hospital but the morge...
Muahahaha
I don't actually exist.
I agree. I get several e-mails a day from ISPs saying that they deleted a virus attached to the e-mail I sent them. Turns out that someone is spoofing my domain name. Seems like if it's illegal for someone to sign my name, it should be illegal for them to pretend to be me on the 'net, particularly when they could potentially be exposing ME to a lawsuit if they happen to send the e-mail to one of the states wherer it is illegal.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'll bite. The established business relationship idea is teh same as what is written regarding junk faxes and prerecorded solicitations. That law has been around for over a decade (Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991). Just because you had an EBR (establish business relationship) it does not mean that you cannot end it. For example, my local paper made a telemarketing call to me, and since I have an EBR with them, there was no problem. I asked for, and received, a copy of their policy regarding their do-not-call list and stated I was terminating the EBR in terms of future telemarketing. No, I can still be a subscriber, yet any telemarketing calls I get from them in the future will be illegal, and I can subsequently claim statutory damages.
If they allow you to unsubscribe, or more pointedly terminate the EBR in regards to future marketing, then there isn't a real problem that I would see. Most of the spam is not from reputable companies, it is the fly-by-night ethicless scammers. I have no problem unsubscribing from a EBR and can be comfortable that I won't have to do it again.
What we need to a powerhorse like MSoft to bring the first fights and have solid case law that we all can use later. This, in tern, allows smaller ISPS to use the case law to their benefit without having to go to the enormous expense to see a case like this through. It will take several cases before spammers back off, but if this goes through, then you will see things start to taper off. The exact thing happened in the junk faxing world..a few cases open up company's eyes in terms of compliance.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
MicroSoft: BOO!
Spammers: BOO!
Suing Spammers: YAY!
MicroSoft sues Spammers: BOO!--no YAY!--no BOO!--no ka-poW!!
I'm so confused...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.