Spammer Ducks For Cover

rabidgremlin writes "The New Zealand Herald has an article about a NZ based spammer who has shut up shop after being at the receiving end of an anti-spam campaign. Good riddance I say, but some of his comments ("never intended to break any regulations" and "I'll just stick to search engines and web sites - that's still plenty of fun and money.") had me wondering if he and other spammers are as really naive as the article makes out."

Comments

Re:Huh?

[Audent]

while there are no specific laws in NZ that say "thou shalt not spam" (and the government is looking at introducing something along those lines one of these days), there are plenty of laws already in place to hassle this guy with. The NZ Privacy Act is a powerful tool that says you cannot gather information for one purpose (eg domain name registration) and use it for another (eg spam), so he's probably in breach of that. He's also potentially breaching the health act by selling a product that makes a medical claim without either a: evidence to back it up or b: a licence to sell medicine. He's also probably breaching the Fair Trading Act by offering a product that doesn't do what it says it will.
InternetNZ (the NZ Internet Society) is laying a complaint with the various bodies about this guy:
(http://computerworld.co.nz/webhome.nsf/nl/5 E241ED D85A39586CC256D8600210CBB)
Can't give you a link to the InternetNZ release because they haven't put it on their website yet!

Re:You hypocrites

[kaltkalt]

It's not hypocrisy. They're doing it to make the guy realize that hey's being an annoying prick. If you're so simple minded that you can't get past "sending a spammer spam to make spam stop" you shouldn't be reading stuff in the first place. Just watch reality TV. This is like posting John Ashcroft's personal info on the internet to make him think twice about TIA/big brother stuff. It's not hypocrisy when you're doing X solely to the guys who do X to make them realize X is wrong. It's not hypocrisy, it's not ironic, and it's not coincidental. It's a valid way of making certain people realize they're acting like asses.

Keep in mind

[AndroidCat]

had me wondering if he and other spammers are as really naive as the article makes out.

Rule #1: Spammers always lie.
Rule #2: When a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see rule #1.

Re:20 phone calls?

[kudos200]

what if, instead, everyone called collect? the phone would still ring and become an incredible annoyance, but at no cost to us, the poor, proletariat spammees.

i know i don't feel like paying just to be an annoyance, but maybe i'd do it for free.

seriously, there's got to be a way to make spam end. i sure hope so.

Naive?

[Squidgee]

Naive? I doubt it. More likely those comments were to paint him as a kind man; so that way, he doesn't look like the scumbag he is.

This happens a lot, actually; criminals do it all the time...

Re:Change of Heart?

[z3ngine]

Yes that's right - its very inconsistent.

I see that one of two things could be derived from this:

1) over-exagerative or simply poor journalism or;
2) Atkinson's stance/comments to journalists have been inconsistent

If 2) is the go then his actions could be very deliberate in trying to quell some of the hatred headed his way. By openly saying, "OK anti-spam community, you got me, I give up" he may simply be trying to throw people off the scent.

Somehow I imagine that he will simply be more careful in setting up his next spam venture to make sure it can't be tracked back to him.


Cheese is nice.
z3ngine.