Slashdot Mirror
In Pursuit Of A Spammer
Kyle writes "Over at DSL Reports, We are currently pursuing a spammer from the West Palm Beach, Florida area. This wouldn't normally be news, but we think Slashdot readers may be interested in just how successful we have been. What's more interesting is that the spammer appears to be posting in the thread."
And I've said it before, you're free to do what you wish so long as it doesn't impact on me or my freedoms.
Spam costs me money. Every time I open an email I don't want, every time I have to update my anti-spam software (well, that's free but that's besides the point) it costs me time and money and I object. It's fine if I've signed up for a newsletter or advertising (yes, I've done that - Think Geek sends me notification of stuff even though I'm a dirty foreigner and can't buy any of it) but when I haven't it's costing me. Where can I send the invoice? To you?
I am a leaf on the wind
They're using my bandwidth and my resources with my approval. In most cases, they're also using someone's server without their approval and forging various information. If they were honest about who they were, and what they were selling, I'd have a lot less of a problem with it. Instead, they try to use subjects and senders to trick you into reading it and wasting your time.
t's their right to send it and it's your right to block it.
Sorry, that theory fails when fraud comes into the equation. Rule #1: Spammers LIE.
Lying, in this context (trying to steal your service), is fraud.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Who has the right to send a scam to people? I don't think scams are protected under the first amendment and I don't think advertsing should be either. Certainly the framers never considered advertising as political dissent in need of protection. So why do you?
This person spammed a forum which is wrong, but what do they really expect to happen this company? Do they want their domain revoked, a reprimand, a fine? Do they have proof that they spam on a massive scale or send massive bulk e-mails. It's one thing to send 1,000 e-mails a day and another to post an ad in a forum (on the same subject for that matter).
Fire + gasoline == big-ass fire
Seems like the spammer did the worst possible thing he could have done, heh.
Imagine if Bush had actually attacked Iraq in addition to bitching at them, for example.
. . .
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
What really bothers me about spam is that they have to be so cowardly about it and spoof source email addresses like kajfaiojiu@iouem.com. I wouldn't mind it if they were honest about where they're sending SPAM from, then I can easily excercise my right to block it.
$cat
the USPS does not charge you for each letter it puts in your mailbox.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
So a particularly stupid spammer spams a forum frequented by technically clueful spam haters. After much effort, these guys might make life difficult for this particular spammer. At best this will result in a reduction of spam that's too small to measure. So why should anybody care?
Don't get me wrong, I still applaud these guys efforts, but it's an steep uphill battle.
The First Amendment has been interpreted by the US courts to me the protection of personal expression. .. E-mail could be considered to be therefore protected.
While the text of an email can be considered "speech", it's irrelevant - it can still (and should) be regulated, as the first amendment only guarantees that you have the right to speech, it doesn't guarantee that you have the right to any and every method of expressing that speech - especially when it's the receiver, or some other third party, which is paying for it.
Think about it - should you be able to walk into a TV station and demand to be given airtime to talk about your "100% natural penis enhancment" product? Of course not! Why should email be any different?
The first amendment gives you the right to say what you want. It does NOT guarantee you the right to force people to listen, nor the right to force someone else to pay for your speech.
Well, if UCE costs you money, you need to either work on making the practice illegal (which I don't care one way or the other about) or failing that, decide whether the financial cost you bring upon yourself by using the international e-mail system is worth the benefits you recieve from it.
It is NOT theft of service for you to recieve an e-mail you didn't request. It is a symptom of the system working exactly as originally designed. The e-mail system has the automatic and unquestioned acceptance of all messaging as it's fatal flaw. It is part of the deal. It's what allows you to send e-mail to your long lost friend that didn't know your e-mail address, or to e-mail some customer support service at Amazon or what not, or e-mail your family to let them know you're OK after surviving the Twin Towers disaster, or whatever. That's what it was designed to do. It has strengths and glaring weaknesses, and when you participate in the system, you are willingly putting yourself at the mercy those weaknesses. If someone sends you a truckload of stuff you don't want through your e-mail service, and you pay by the byte for downloading it, your service is no more being stolen than a zillion people hitting a website where they pay by the byte for traffic, because the service is functioning the way it was designed. If you couldn't afford all that, you shouldn't have signed up for a per-byte Internet service. If you want to avoid the pitfalls of e-mail you need to find or make yourself a service that doesn't have this particular fatal flaw. That, or keep working to make the practice illegal wherever you are, which patches a technical hole with a legal or political tub of spackle. However, unless they invade another person's equipment to send the UCE to you, they aren't committing any kind of crime by doing it, at least in the USA. And even if they do that, you aren't the one who's having the crime committed against them, unless it was your machine they used as the relay.
Here's a decent example...
I don't have cable television service because I have decided that I hate the flood of ads and other comercial idiocy far more than what I would use it for is worth. I could have rigged up a TIVO or ReplayTV or some other one of the myriad solutions out there for removing ads, if I wanted to, but I decided the hassle wasn't worth the cost. Just because I don't want the ads there, doesn't mean I have a leg to stand on demanding that they not be there. I can take measures to remove them or avoid them, and any cost I incur because of those measures is COMPLETELY MY FAULT. Same with UCE. If I don't like it, I either run a spam blocker of some ilk, take great pains to never give out my e-mail address to someone I don't trust completely with it, learn to deal with it, or chuck e-mail entirely. If I decide to do any of those things, I've only myself to blame for the inconvenience/cost associated with them, because it isn't theft for spammers to use the service the way it was designed.
So basically, you can send the invoice to whomever you damn well please, and it'll probably get deleted, ignored, or cause someone to bust a blood vessel at the gall of some idiot on the Internet who thinks he can send bills to whomever he thinks deserves to pay for his problems.
Whats worse? Constantly reading about SPAM prevention or receiving it ?
Duh. Receiving spam. You chose to go to Slashdot, read the article and post in its forum.
Don't forget why this (SPAM) exists....
Because it works.
If companies had the money for TV ads the penis enhancement would be there too....
The only way to stop is to not buy anything from them.
Email was not designed as a marketing tool but the demand made it one. The demand is not from the spammer but from the customer.
Stop ^%&* buying from these vendors and tell everyone to stop also.
2: It's an unrepentant spammer. That is grounds for permanent disconnection. Find out as much as possible about them and do what is necessary to insure that they are never able to connect to any ISP ever again. Unrepentant repeat criminals are removed from society, and unrepentant repeat spammers should be removed from the Internet.
3: It's an unrepentant spammer sending spam about some kind of service to fight spam... I don't even know where to begin on that one.
4: It's a story about how a slimeball spammer is being tracked down and is obviously nervous about it. It's a how-to. It's a recipe. It's inspirational. It is very much Stuff That Matters.
I mean, I dislike spammers just as much as the next guy. But why is this a newsworthy story? Allegedly, someone posts a message about their anti-spam product on an anti-spamming message board. The claim is made that the poster is a spammer. So the story becomes that a spammer posts an advert to an anti-spamming message board.
Aside from it being a bit uncooth, why is this suddenly The Hunt for Red October? Sure, it was kind of a stupid thing, but what's the big wreck that I should be rubbernecking over?
Unfortunately, some spammers are using so called "reverse proxies" installed on hacked machines to host the webpages / email boxes mentioned in the crap they send you. To find the true address for the spammer you need to locate and reverse engineer the hacked machine.
Let's pick this one apart piece by piece.
And spam, like junk mail, is protected by the constitution. So although it may be a great inconvenience, the First Amendment will never fall to inconvenience.
I don't think so. Only because unsolicited faxes, soliciting in public and business areas and other solicitation laws are in effect.
Also, anti-spam laws tend to hurt small businesses far more than established companies.
Yeah, usually Spammer businesses. It's like saying, "But banning small and cute rodent killing will hurt small rabbit killing businesses!"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
It should be made law everywhere that [SPAM] or [ADVERTISMENT] or something like that should be included in the header/subject.
Then any spam that doesn't bare the mark should be sent to some organisation that fines the company advertised.
Chasing the spammers is hard, the people paying the spammers should be targetted instead.
Hey, two out of three ain't that bad, for a spam apologist.