Man Arrested for 'Spam Rage'

Mirkon writes "We've all gotten frustrated at some point with spam. Perhaps we've even been motivated to send nasty, threatening messages back to the spammers, just to vent some frustration. Wired reports that 44-year-old computer programmer Charles Booker did just that, and 'now faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.'"

Comments

They kept telling him his penis was too small

[corebreech]

So of course the guy goes nuts.

Now I see that they are able to send you animations/videos that get past Mozilla's image-blocking feature. Saw the first one yesterday, trying to sell me a Sony VAIO. How long is it going to be before I get one featuring erotic acts with barnyard animals?

The only thing that surprises me about this is that it wasn't a father who went nuts when seeing his little boy or girl subjected to some of this crap. Yeah, the penis ads are truly obnoxious... but to see your kids exposed to this some of this stuff? I could really sympathethize with someone going postal because of this.

Re:They kept telling him his penis was too small

[ekephart]

Well I don't sympathize. Why can't some people block this stuff mentally? I get penis, hot love4u, debt consolidation, viagra, etc. spam all the time. Those emails I DO NOT OPEN. They go straight to the trash. Additionally, I keep the adware off my machine. I don't really have any problems.

That said, advertising's worst enemy is indifference. Whether one is influenced to buy or influenced to get angry one is still influenced.

Just ignore it.

Re:They kept telling him his penis was too small

[stephanruby]

Well I don't sympathize. Why can't some people block this stuff mentally? I get penis, hot love4u, debt consolidation, viagra, etc. spam all the time. Those emails I DO NOT OPEN. They go straight to the trash. Additionally, I keep the adware off my machine. I don't really have any problems.

Indifference to the death threats should also be the response of the spammer. Just consider it a cost of doing business. When you email a couple of million people and when you refuse to unsubscribe them, you're bound to upset a few deranged people.

If the spammer wins, this is going to open the flowed gates for thousands of prosecutions. And as a taxpayer, I don't want to pay for this crap. Our government has better things to do.

Re:They kept telling him his penis was too small

[miu]

Fucking hell, I'm so tired of hearing this "ignore advertising" answer to spam complaints.

Spam is not advertising. Spam is theft, assault, pandering, and fraud. To ignore that sort of bad behaviour removes the only real cost associated with basing a business on such activity.

Before anyone panics

[squiggleslash]

...this is about a guy who made fairly severe death threats against the company concerned. We're not talking about Slashdotters needing to worry about life in prison because they threatened to sue, or demand other ISPs cut off some spammer.

It still sounds like the potential penalty is probably a little severe, but this isn't the type of reaction most of us would have.

If you're thinking of threatening savetrees.com (or whomever) with death threats, go and drink some chamomile tea, relax, and decide, in a rational way, what you're going to do about it.

Re:Before anyone panics

[Hard_Code]

So what you are saying is, that instead of using a tax to deter spam, just legally sanction shooting spam employees. Hmm...I might get on board with that.

What ever happened to feelings?

[192939495969798999]

I must say, I am disppointed that no one is allowed to be legitimately pissed off without getting a lawsuit. Back in the late 1800's, people who were annoying were called out in the street and shot at. I'm not saying that shooting people is the answer, but we should be allowed to vent frustrations so long as they don't include actual, specific assault against someone. Email is not an assault, unless the person says they're gonna hurt you, and you have some reason to believe that they are not kidding around.

Re:What ever happened to feelings?

[t0qer]

If the neighbor's dog craps in my lawn every day and no complain of mine gets the owner to react, that doesn't empowers me to make threatening phone calls to his house

I have a neighbor that purposefully lets his dog out to crap on the neighbors lawn. (he brags how the dog never shits in his own yard)

First time, I let it slide. Next few times I turned the hose on the dog, and warned the neighbor. One day I walked out to see the neighbor standing in front of my house, his dog squatted over my lawn dumping a big steamy turd where he wasn't supposed too. I finally lost my cool.

I walked up behind the dog, grabbed the turd before it even hit the ground and flung it across the street at the neighbors car. Before he even said a word I warned him I had pictures of his dog shitting on my lawn, without a leash, and dared him to call the cops on me. After an exchange of words he went back home to clean the shit off his winshield. Needless to say his dog has never been on my lawn since.

I think there is a moral to be learned here. Spammers no matter how much you beg them to get off their "penis enlargement" lists just won't do it. Maybe the solution isn't blacklisting, perhaps the solution is to just hit reply and send the shit back to them.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Overreaction

[ekephart]

"Booker said the problem stemmed from a program he mistakenly downloaded from the Internet that brought a continuous stream of advertising to his computer."

Um, remove the ad-ware.

What's funny is the company Albion Medical "claims to produce the 'Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement.'"

He definitely overreacted. There is no reason to ever threaten employees of a company with anthrax infection, torture by ice pick or power drill, and castration. Come on. Then again, what jury would convict? Or at least convict and sentence harshly.

Whats so bad about this?

[cluge]

Booker threatened to send a "package full of Anthrax spores" to the company, to "disable" an employee with a bullet and torture him with a power drill and ice pick; and to hunt down and castrate the employees unless they removed him from their e-mail list, prosecutors said.

Hmm, nothing wrong with that, lets look at it a little differently. The company in question -

1. Insulted him repeatedly about his penis size. Thus making the internet a hostile and intimidating place.

2. They made his computer unuseable causing a loss of income.

3. They intruded into his home and refused to leave his personal property alone.

And the government did nothing about it. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, all of these were infringed by the spammers. I think the defendant has his atitude wrong. He need NOT apologize, instead change his defense to "I was being harmed, pursued, harassed and the government refused to come to my aid. What options were left I was was to continue on with my life?".

Now THAT would be interesting, instead, all that we see is another story about hwo bad spam is. It will drive you crazy.

cluge

Double standard?

[carcosa30]

Oh, so a corporation making ridiculous claims and flouting numerous laws in doing so is just fine, but when someone replies with empty threats, the judicial system brings down the hammer.

Yeah, this guy is obviously a total moron, but the case shows both how stupid the laws are with regards to spam, and how angry it makes people. It's like the kid on the schoolbus who gets poked and needled every day and nobody notices, but when he finally snaps and slugs one of his tormentors (or worse) it's a terrible thing.

I've done this in the past. Threatened spammers, that is. Nothing so dire nor graphic as this fellow, but I was angry enough that I wanted to get back at them somehow. I know someone who's said that he wants to torture and kill all spammers, and he's a totally meek, mellow guy for the most part. The anger people express about spam is very surprising, even more than telemarketing. It's surprising also that the bastards can make any money at all on a practice so universally reviled.

I used to care, back when I got maybe 20 spams a day. Now that I'm up above ~500, I don't care anymore.

Re:Double standard?

[WNight]

Why should we have to? It's as if companies had parked huge speaker trucks on the road outside our homes and were blasting lewd and deceptive ("This is your mother, let me in! ", "This is the police, we're evacuating the area, please listen ... haha, penis spam!") ads around the clock.

But then some helpful guy on Slashdot says that by buying the right kind of insulating foam and covering your house with it (the inside - if it's on the outside the spammers will tear it off while you sleep) you can avoid most of the noise. Of course, not all of it, and you'll miss some legitimate visitors and noises, but that's okay...

Fuck that mentality. They're the problem, the solution involves getting rid of them. I'm not going to go shoot them, but if there was a paypal account to buy ammo for a sniper who did, I might contribute anonymously.

For personal email, having your own domain with spam traps, and having a bunch of filters (the ISP runs a filter, plus is on a blackhole list, and we run SA locally), it's mostly fine. However, try running a business this way with ads in the yellow pages, etc. You get random people emailing you, there's no way to whitelist them, they won't jump through reply-to-be-verified hoops, and they don't send consistent subject lines. Hell, many of them make typos, which triggers spam filters these days.

So you need an unfiltered address and you need to open about 10% of the spam, the stuff that has deceptive subjects "Re: Your Mail", "Invoice", etc.

To continue the analogy from above, it's like having a public business where you needed unbaffled windows to let people know you were in business, but that meant you had to sit through painfully loud advertisements all day in order to handle the customers who came by. But, of course, less customers would come by because of the noise.

The people who prey on others like this are scum. They know that nobody wants their email, they even know that everyone is trying to avoid it, but instead of stopping they start lying, hacking mail servers, trojaning PCs, etc. Exactly why can't we kill these people? What slight bit of good are these people doing for society? And even if you could find some, does it outweigh the pain they intentionally put people through all the time?

The only mistake the guy in this article made was threatening them instead of demonstrating his intentions a bit more... forcefully.

Too bad he didn't actually murder someone

[HarveyBirdman]

Then he'd only be facing about a year in jail.

Re:Well he DID commit a crime

[Directrix1]

For real. Also this guy did not unconditionally threaten them. He said he would do these things, if the company continued to send him unsolicited emails. Compliance is easily accomplished and negligible. If he doesn't win this, I will be seriously pissed off (anyone got anthrax, just kidding). But honestly, who in their right mind doesn't think this anyway when they get a barrage of unsolicited emails. The real sad part of this story is that the guy didn't actually go up there, and do these things. Kill em all, I say.

Re:if the company is canadian

[DaveV1.0]

He is being charged in the US because:

1. He is an American
2. He resides in the US
3. He made the calls and sent the email from the US
4. There are laws in the US and in the state in which he resides against making threats.

Any other questions?

Re:Spam Rage?

[TedCheshireAcad]

If you're a "computer programmer", and you don't know how to keep yourself free/less vulerable to popups and spam, then I really don't have much sympathy for you. No wonder all our jobs are going to India...

Here's the real question

[carcosa30]

All of what you say above is true.

But consider what would happen to an individual pervert who sent out hundreds of thousands of sick emails talking about penises, and continued to do so even after the recipients told him in no uncertain terms to stop?

He'd be thrown in jail, that's what would happen.

Why are businesses allowed to do things that individuals aren't?

IUS Anti-spam law vs Candaian Company?

[ONOIML8]

What you have pointed out is correct. The more important question to ask is why the article even mentions the proposed US law against spam. How could that possibly have any impact against spam comming from Canada, India, China, Russia or anywhere else?

The goal

[Trolling4Dollars]

I'm sure we've all said it. We've had enough. Enough of the spam. Enough with the telemarketers. Enough with people interrupting OUR private time. We've also all fantasized about ways to "get back" at these hucksters. Some of us more vividly violent than the others. And sadly, as this case will illustrate, we seem to be powerless. There is little or thing that can be done about this heinous situation. It's the sad and eventual outcome of capitalism run amok. And the people with the dollars have every resource available to them.

Recently I receievd multiple snail mail solicitations for refinancing my mortgage. These came shortly after I refinanced with a reputable lender. I noticed that quite a few of them had business return envelopes and was going to use one of my old 80s techniques to annoy the companies, which was to send it back empty or send it back with useless stuff in it (other mail soliciations from other companies, etc...). But then I realized, we're in a bind these days regarding the mail. Ever since the whole anthrax thing happened after the American World Trade Center bombings, the arrival of an empty envelope or even an envelope with innappropriate contents could bring about a huge investigation.

A similar kind of situation exists with telemarketers. Ever since the world got more exposure to things like workers "going postal" and the Columbine high school fiasco, even the slightest implication of violent language is now cause for concern. In the past, I could have told a telemarketer, "Have you ever seen the movie Falling Down? Well, if you keep calling you're going to get a visit from someone very much like the Michael Douglas character." and gotten away with it. Now if I say that, there's a pretty good chance that within hours I might get a visit from the police or within days or weeks get arrested. (Witness this story)

So... the question... what to do about this situation? I think the first part of answering this is trying to find out what the goal actually is. I would suggest that the goal is to take back our personal time without having to PAY for it. No... caller ID and Privacy Managers aren't the optimum solution. The Do Not Call list was a nice idea, but who knows when and if it will ever actually be permanently implemented. Talking to these jackholes directly does no good and can only make matters worse. Since most of these assholes are driven to do this kind of thing to profit, I suggest that we do everything we can to damage their profitability. For every call that you recieve or every e-mail or snail mail that you get that has a parent company of address, you lodge a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Or perhaps, you just waste the telemarketer's time. Feign ignorance and get them to repeat their pitch multiple times. Keep them on the phone as long as possible. For every snail mail you get that has a business return envelope, send them your own form letter that tells them why you will never use their services or buy their products. (Make sure it's well worded and contains no threats no matter how much you may be tempted). On last ditch effort for those of you like me who like a good prank, is to take advantage of the fact that they called you and you can use them as the target of what would have previously been obscene or parnk phone calls. If the person is of the opposite sex, ask them if they are single. Or maybe you can ask them if their refrigerator is running, or if they have pig's feet or bowling balls... you get the idea. Think of it is phone trolling.

Whatever the case, please go to my hournal and post any ideas you might have in my latest JE.

Your Loyal Friend,
T4D

I mailed this to the SF City Attorney's Office

[Jerry]

Charles Booher, the man who became frustrated with penis ads popping up on his computer, received no satisfaction when he used civility in his attempts to pursuade whom he thought was the source of the email and popups to quit sending them to his PC. Their rejection of his requests moved him to higher levels of insistance, and finally to threats, even though he obviously had no means to carry them out.

He was merely venting his anger at the helplessness of his situation. Being powerless does that to people. People in power don't seem to understand this basic fact or, in their arrogance, they have forgotten it.

Congress may finally inact legislation that outlaws spam, giving Mr. Booher, and millions of others, relief from that plague. But, there is something you can do to relieve a plague of another kind: an overly agressive prosecutor who lack common sense or is looking for stepping stone in his/her political career. As a criminal forensic investigator for 15 years, I understand the directive to 'ferret out crime', but I know that prosecutors have their own counsel on whom they choose to prosecute, and why. Work loads, budget limitations, friendships, influence from above, and many other reasons affect whom prosecutors finally choose to prosecute. Many times the choice is arbitrary. Mr Booher probably can't afford a high profile attorney, so he is easy pickings. If the prosecutor in this case would only step back a moment and see how ridiculus this action makes him/her and the department look, perhaps they would reconsider. Considering the circumstances this assult could be dismissed with a 'warning', which I think Mr. Boohers' has already become fully aware.

I can understand his rage. At work, where I am a professional programmer, we have trained IT staff that maintain the interface between my PC and the Internet, and filter out 100's of viruses, trojans, and spam email daily, and their effects on my work PC are greatly reduced. Also, Microsoft Windows environments are extremely susceptible, as you are proabably aware, to such malware and Mr. Boohers' is not the only one making threats to spammers. You can Google the internet and see millions of messages venting the same rage, many of them probably from SF itself. In the age of Radical Extremeists blowing up buildings and murdering thousands of innocent people, prosecuting Mr. Boohers' is like an elementry school principle expelling a first grader for 'possession of a weapon' because he brought fingernail clippers to school, or a girl for 'drug possession' because she has a bottle of asprin in her purse.

If Mr. Boohers' has committed a crime it was that he is using the wrong Operating System. You should advise him to switch to a fine Linux Operating System, like Mandrake 9.2 or SUSE 9.0, and send him out the door. He won't be plagued with any malware ever again, because Linux IS secure. It is also free. That should calm him down even more!

Thanks for your time.
jerry Kreps
Lincoln, NE.

PS. Isn't the current "Politically Correct" environment making you ill? If mind reading hardware were available I do believe that we'd see prosecutions for what we think, too. Truely, the Bill of Rights seems to be a dead
document.

Re:Removing Internet Access From Schools

[ONOIML8]

I agree that kids should have access to computers and I would never want to take that away from them. The problem is the connection to the outside world.

You say to "filter it to a negligible level" but I'm thinking that's a relative term. For me, at no point is it acceptable for a class of children to see popups for penis enlargement, breast enhancement or pr0n. I'm talking about a tolerance of zero per school year.

The problem with an internet connection in the classroom is that, at this point, the supervision required isn't available. The funding that would have to be put into software, hardware and supervision would be better spent on other things as our schools are tight on money as it is. (That of course is due to other things like having a superintendent who makes $150K per year, etc.)

The fact is that commercial use of the internet has begun to edge out any educational use. Blind pushing of pornographic content for commercial gain has made the internet something that is no longer an option for our children without extreme and unreasonable measures for supervision.

timeline

[Rev.LoveJoy]

Your analogy is great if we consider your wife's alcohol-induced infidelities as a one-time thing and thus your response is the product of an emotional shock. However, Mr. Spam Rage (love that title) had been threatening the small-penis spammer over a period of time. What would happen if several months after the incident with your wife, you called the guy and threatened him again? It would cast your response in a totally different light.

If El Rago del Spam snapped one time after asking Penis mailer to quit then I could see this guy owning up and saying, "wow, lost my temper; didn't mean it. Sorry about threating your company, spammers." and let it drop. But he did not, he continued to threaten over a period of time.

Much as I would like ot see rednecks with whichester rifles and Spammer tags, I think it's probably best if we continue to pretend we live in a society governed by the rule of law.

Cheers,
- RLJ

Has the world gone mad?

[WildBeast]

$250k and 5 years in prison for making fictious threats? Jesus we can't allow ourselves a moment of rage nowadays.

Cant wait to see the record of Jury Selection...

[slappyjack]

Can you imagine the tediousness of getting people to sit on the jury of this thing?

Prosecutor: Do you own a computer?
Prospective Juror: Yes.
Prosecutor: Do you use electronic mail?
Prospective Juror: Yes
Prosecutor: Your Honor, I need to disqualify this juror on the grounds of a predetermined prejudice against electronic mail marketing companies.

Seriously, in San Francisco they're going to have to get a jury of 12 homeless people to find people with no computer experience and who dont hate spammers to their core.

"Peers" my ass.