Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
how is he being charged in the US?
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
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.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Hell, I know I feel like "disabling" these spammers who refuse to take you off their lists.
Sugapablo
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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
stuff |
What kind of help? I'll loan him a gun or two. Can any /.'er surreptitiously provide the anthrax spores?
Ain't it great to see that our government has nothing better to do than protect spammers, as in "Hello, we've been harassing this guy and now he's threatened to retaliate. Please arrest him for us."
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There's more information (including the company name, which Wired withheld) here.
This is for repeated threats over a period of two months. Consider that before judging this guy. (Unless, of course, you're one of those few who actually read the article.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"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.
sig
But in May, Booher received one piece of unsolicited e-mail too many. Booher sat down at his keyboard and began firing back e-mail after e-mail threatening to kill the alleged spammer, according to law enforcement officials. On Thursday, federal agents arrested Booher, 44, at his home and charged him with 11 violations of interstate communications.
Released on bond, Booher faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Other news from Google News
harmonious design
Well if this company would have to actually listen to people when they opt-out instead of just confirming that email address exists and spamming it more, this wouldn't have been an issue. What the man did was wrong, but the company in question should also be liable for damages.
This guy is a computer professional?
Must work for the government, or something.
You threaten to do harm to someone, for whatever reason, its a crime.. you should goto jail...
If that's true, then can we please send the government and police to jail?
Well, in the extreme case, if you kill someone who presents an immediate threat to your life or limb, or that of your family, it's self-defense, which is a legitimate defense in most states. Granted, the spammers didn't present any such threat to this guy -- but then, he didn't actually physically attack anyone, either. I would say that just as deadly force is a reasonable response to deadly force, violent threats are a reasonable response to unrelenting harassment.
Maybe the best legal solution, instead of anti-spam bills that are doomed to failure anyway (opt-out lists? Oh please) would be to grant immunity for electronic acts committed against spammers which would otherwise be crimes -- e-mail threats, DDoS attacks, worms, etc. Right now, spammers have the exact same rights under laws like the DMCA as everyone else. Take that protection away, and there will be a lot fewer spammers very quickly.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's not like they guy sent the email to the FAA, threatening an airliner or something like that. He said, 'Take me off your spam list or else', only after asking nicely tons of times. Is that worth a quarter million dollar fine? NO! Just take the freakin' guy off the email spam list the first time, and it never would have escalated. This is a company that found out just how mad spam can make people... they should consider themselves lucky that he wasn't a REAL nutcase and didn't drive a truck full of nitroglycerine through the front door (very very bad)! Making personal threats of violence is wrong, but i ask this: what should be his recourse after being infuriated by being ignored and spammed countless times?
stuff |
I'm sending a copy of the Wired article to President Bush and asking him him to pardon this guy as a demonstration of how we feel about spam. If that doesn't work maybe he could use the "Twinkie Defense".
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
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement.
poor guy if he finds one of those enlarged pennis in jail...
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Oh my GOSH, REALLY?!?!?
We should just let everyone go then.....thank you for your public service Anonymous Coward....
Kiss my shiny metal ass
Yeah, but it was a very minor crime. It's the equivilant to me yelling, "I'll tear off your head and shit down your neck if you ever come near my wife again!" if I caught you kissing her at the bar.
1. I was provoked
2. There's no real evidence I have the strength to tear off your head so it's probably not serious
3. I make no actual agressive moves toward you
It's just blustery anger, the guy doesn't deserver, and probably won't get, jail time.
TW
Booker identified the object of his rage as Albion Medical, which claims to produce the "Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement."
That's from the Wired article. It would appear they didn't do much withholding.
- b
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.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
This is the first time a reply on spam is read. This is like putting somebody in jail because he shot somebody that came to rob his house. Maybe the justice system needs some more tweaking or at least one or twoo spam floods.
I'm sure the jury will have quite an open mind towards a company promoting penis enlargement. And they'll surely think him a complete wacko, as most people like spam and are elated when they find these lewd messages in their mailbox.
Look it's a joke about my sig IN MY SIG! LOL!
It is interesting to consider the fact that the company did absolutely nothing to stop harassing him, but did report him to the police. That shows that they were getting his messages and completely ignoring them.
Then he'd only be facing about a year in jail.
--- Ban humanity.
> You threaten to do harm to someone, for whatever reason, its a crime.. you should goto jail...
Oh bullshit. Tell that to the same legal system that didn't do a god damn thing when my fiance's ex threatened to kill me a couple times. The police couldn't care less.
He's getting attention probably because he used the magic "a" word... Anthrax.
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.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
In which case you would already have considered that the company in question launched a malicious attack against his system and refused to even acknowledge his complaints for over two months, then decided that if ignoring him wouldnt get rid of him, maybe getting him put in jail for becomming irritated by their harrassment would.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
He also threatened the head of his IT dept. for bragging about "uptime".
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
apparently he got a stream of video from downloading a program from the internet. well, duh. don't download crap off the interent like that. the dude's a programmer? he MUST be a windows programmer. probably visual basic too.
oh yeah, obligatory open source reccommendation too.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I never said that the law is properly or equally enforced, but its called intimidation, and around here its a class D felony..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"I will hunt down and castrate your employees unless you take me off your e:mail list".
Now can anyone tell me what on earth is so unreasonable about that?
But seriously. The fact that the Canadian company failed to take him off their e:mail list the first time he complained / threatened could surely be seen a provocation. (At least in terms of lessening the guys sentence)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
"a barrage of pop-up advertising and e-mail."
Now what kinda 'computer programmer' hasn't heard of mozilla and procmail with spam blocking?
Here we go:
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.
The rest is just blablabla...
Its called intimidation, and around here its a class D felony.. Not quite what id call 'very minor'.
:p
And he DOES deserve jail time. Getting spam isnt quite the same emotional event as finding your wife in a bar making out with someone..
We cant have people running around threatening bodily harm just beacuse they are in a bad mood, unless you are in the WWF
---- Booth was a patriot ----
of your email. How fun. He still has to read the titles, though. He should get Spamassasin -- now that's indifference
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
How dumb is this? He probably was furious with the spammers, the same as I am... I unsuscribe from their newsletters and they still don't stop sending me stuff... I hate them
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?
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
This guy should be nuts. I mean, come on, why would anyone even say NO to an offer of 30% of US$10,000,000 ( Ten Million US Dollars only ) and FREE Pills(TM) to improve Sex Life(TM) ?
getSexySig();
Booker said the problem stemmed from a program he mistakenly downloaded from the Internet that brought a continuous stream of advertising to his computer.
So, he downloaded spyware or adware. That there reduces the amount of sympathy I might have towards him.
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.
That's just retarded. Threatening to send Anthrax though the mail in the post-9/11 world is a surefire way to get a visit from the FBI. Also, the death threats he made were pretty specific. They're not going to start going arresting everyone who was ever said "Drop dead!" to a spammer.
Also, this guy is apparently a "computer programmer". At the very least, he should know enough to backup his data and do a full reformat and reinstall of his OS (that's standard procedure if software has been installed without your knowledge). He probably should know about Spyware removal software, and if he has any networking skill, he'd know how to either: a) block their site; or b) use a browser that blocks pop-ups.
Yes, spammers are annoying. Yes, they are lowlifes. And yes, they probably deserve to get everything this guy threatened.
However, law enforcement absolutely must take every threat they receive seriously. They don't have a choice. They can't say "oh, well, the report came from a penis pill maker, so it's probably nothing." Sending specific death threats to anyone is illegal. Add Anthrax to it, and you'll be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay before you can say "What seems to be the trouble, officer?" This is not another example of "the man" cracking down on poor Internet users. It was a death threat, plain and simple. The motivation just happened to be spammers. I'm pretty sure the penalty would be the same if this guy had make the exact same threats to some clerk at McDonalds because they kept sending him ads via the postal service.
Move along folks, nothing to see here.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
I think we should alls end them many emails saying how we feel.
and click on their website links
a LOT
Gone there, found out where everyone lives, then go from door to door one night asking if they would
please take him off the list. I mean, the religious pushers do it legally...why not him...
Blar.
First, tell that people who like music are thieves and prosecute them.
NOW...arrest and fine victins of bad internet usage.
What is next?
"land of freedom" yeah yeah yeah..I know.
-><- no
One word: discovery.
If this guy has any brains (perhaps not a warranted assumption) then he's going to get a defense lawyer and let the subpoenas start flying. This company's criminal behavior is all going to get laid out in black and white as part of the discovery process. This is why Emarketers America dropped their suit against spamhaus and SPEWS -- you better believe this guy will have discovery under criminal proceedings.
That said, it's really not nice to aim your death threats at secretaries and customer service people.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
It's important to note that the offending company did not even have the slightest amount of decency to apologize, not that I'm surprised.
So what happens to the company now? Do they just get off scott free having harassed this guy for a few months with advertisements for snake oil? Doesn't Canada have an equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission to investigate their deceptive advertising? I say give the guy who made the threats some community service time and some anger management classes, but then have the Canadian authorities haul the asses of the company into court.
Besides, everybody knows the only reliable penis enhancement device is a Penis Mightier.
Booher said the nature of the spam he received set off an emotional trigger. He said he is a three-time survivor of testicular cancer and that he was bombarded by e-mail and pop-up ads for penile enlargement. No matter what he did, he couldn't get them to go away.
Ouch!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Depends on what you are in to. Some folk on the net are quite into going to bars to watch their wife making out. Mind you some of the same folk are also into restraint.
I don't think there is any group of people who get a kick out of receiving spam.
[Googles for "spam fetish"]
Well you live and learn. Apparently there IS a SPAM fetish involving the pink canned meat and 'golden showers', whatever those might be.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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?
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
...to telemarketers. Well, did the same thing before the do-not-call list.
I'd usually screw with the phone operator. I'd keep them on for a few minutes like I was interested, then ask a question like, "..and this affects my rabbits how?" then go back to a real question like, "How much is it again?" Rinse, repeat.
Occasionally I'd bust out with, "If you ever call my house again, I will hunt you down and stab you to death." Their voice would get shakey and they'd hang up.
I'd *love* to see them try and come after me for that, hahaha. I don't blame this guy either. Hey, if they can spam him, then he can call in death threats. Eye for an eye!
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Let me get this straight - one sham "penis enhancing business" is blaming *another penis enhancing business for actually joe-jobbing the spam? Let us consider the content of the two quotes below:
"The object of the Californian's anger was Douglas Mackay, president of DM Contact Management, which works for Albion Medical, a firm advertising the "Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement."
So, he touts *HIS* company as *the* penis enlarging business to go to. heh.
He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business. "
And he also claims that his penis enlarging business doesn't send spam. It's all just a big misunderstanding! Of all the penis enlargement spams people get, none of them come from *his* company. None at all.
Are we supposed to believe that?
Sounds like a very convenient excuse - blame "rival companies" after you spam the hell out of people.
Maybe someone has a copy of one of these spams and can trace it?
" Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business. "
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It is exactly for that reason that I am now pushing to have internet access removed from local classrooms. The spam and popups have gotten so bad that my second grader sees these messages come up on their classroom computer several times a day. The school has a good IT department, lots of filters, and policy with the best intentions but they just can't keep up with it.
I used to be one of the most vocal about getting/keeping internet access in schools and public libraries. All that has changed now that the spammers have turned the net into the cesspool that it is.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Is that five years in a Canadian or US prison? I mean the way the economy is in California a short stay in Canada (even in one of their prisons) might be preferred. Atleast you'll get three meals a day and some poutine if you're good.
If the fine is in CAD then I suggest paying it quickly. This time next year the CAD might be equal to the USD ...
Bonne Chance
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
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
Un-news
The main reason vigilante actions are "wrong" is because individuals and mobs are more likely to make mistakes in judgment and thus dispense inferior justice. You might be lynching someone who just looks like the guy who mugged your wife.
Spam however, because it's carried out in the digital realm, can often be traced with certainty back to its perpetrator. Yes, you might just find a hijacked machine, but even then good detective work might track who hijacked it. And when the spam directs you to a Website selling something, you know damn well who is guilty, even if they hide behind the pretense of "affiliates" sending the spam in "violation" of their policy against it.
Let's change the laws to view spam as assault, and classify actions against spammers while they are conducting active assault as justifiable self-defense. If the spammer is engaged in wide-scale assault, even extreme measures could be viewed as justified. It would still be up to the self-defender to prove that the subhuman being acted against was truly the source of the spam. But when that can be proved, why should spammers have any more protection under law than muggers or carjackers?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Preferably choked full of normal people who have access to computers and e-mail, Please? ;)
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Here is an example from New Jersey.
This is silly. 5 years in prison and $250k fines? Isn't that a bit harsh? It's not like he actually did anything. People can get really creative when they receive spam. The magnitude of punishment he got for the threats is about the same as the spammers would have gotten if the guy actually did what he thretened to do. And then again, it was the spammers who started everything.
Hmm, what I'd really like to see is news about someone really doing what he thretened to do to a spammer.
Not that you'll receive any, not too many prison cells have internet access.
Better start complaining to your and forward all your spam to him/her/it to document your complaint.
Not that it would have much effect, but harrassing politicians is just so much fun, and besides, we pay them enough. Let them be usefull for a change.
...as learned from Corporate Mechanics:
. ht ml
http://www.corporatemechanics.com/pagesa/ourexp
Looks like they (DM Contact Management, aka the spammer) took CM's advice and liked it:
"Corporate Mechanics has been a key member of the set up team for our business. Corporate Mechanics and the guerilla management methods they have developed have streamlined our operation, technology, staff training, and development. Their assistance has cut our growth curve by a large margin and provided us a strong management and business platform to both operate and grow our firm effectively. The savings of effort and resources has been instrumental in our growth and profitability. The level of diverse experience coupled with the cutting edge solutions have served our company extremely well as they would any business. They get the job done period!
If you are looking for business effectiveness specialists Corporate Mechanics is the real article without question!"
Andrew MacKay, General Manager, DM Contact Management
Customer and Support Services Provider to Internet Marketers
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
So I suppose we should add Brian R Bowman (CEO of Corporate Mechanics) to the s#!t list of bad people who support such badgering of "clients". Maybe even drop him an email at group3@intergate.ca or give him a call (1-888-980-7520) to let him know what you think of the tactics which make otherwise sane people become email murderers.
Yeah, it's illegal to send threats, but I think this guy should get off just on the principal of it. Kind of like sending email threats fo Osama bin Laden or Saddam - kind of chicken soup for the soul.
Of course, being CA, maybe this will spark a 3 day waiting period on ice picks and power tools.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
EXACTLY. There's a really big disparity between being jailed overnight to cool-off and being "locked in mental ward and given meds".
/home/asshat or C:/docu~/yummy with kiddie pr0n.
/home/mp3 or C:/docu~/share with .mp3s .mp3s
There again, if you're going to be fined/sued/jailed for "taking action" against a spammer, at least have the balls to get busted for rooting their boxen and taking them all down for a while. That's far more interesting than idle threats.
Example 1;
1. Root boxen.
2. Fill
3. Alert authorities to presence of said pr0n as an "anonymous, employee tip".
Example 2;
1. Root boxen.
2. Fill
3. Alert the RIAA to the presence of said
4. Make popcorn.
5. Wait for Taco to post the story.
(Note: I will not execute and am not responsible for the execution of any suggestion I make. Anyone using the examples above, while heroic and worthy of the hottest, buttered grits, will probably be crushed under the jackboots of Hier Ashcroft et al.)
-TPH.
There are plenty of uses for them: dig a canal through a desert, build homes for the poor, organ donors,
I'm sorry ... were you saying something ... ?
I wasn't paying attention...
Here is a california law about WMD's and electronic threats (Anthrax is a Biological agent, so I beleieve it's covered here)
California Penal Code 11418.5 Threat to use weapon of mass destruction
11418.5. (a) Any person who knowingly threatens to use a weapon of mass destruction, with the specific intent that the statement, made verbally, in writing, or by means of an electronic communication device, is to be taken as a threat, even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out, which, on its face and under the circumstances in which it is made, is so unequivocal, immediate, and specific as to convey to the person threatened, a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution of the threat, and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety, or for his or her immediate family's safety, which results in an isolation, quarantine, or decontamination effort, shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail for up to one year or in the state prison for 3, 4, or 6 years, or by a fine of not more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars ($250,000), or by both that fine and imprisonment.
(b) For the purposes of this section, "sustained fear" can be established by, but is not limited to, conduct such as evacuation of any building by any occupant, evacuation of any school by any employee or student, evacuation of any home by any resident or occupant, or any other action taken in direct response to the threat to use a weapon of mass destruction.
(c) The fact that the person who allegedly violated this section did not actually possess a biological agent, toxin, or chemical weapon does not constitute a defense to the crime specified in this section.
(d) Nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent punishment instead pursuant to any other provision of law that imposes a greater or more severe punishment.
If the guy was a computer programmer, as the article claims, why the heck didn't he have the knowledge to remove the offending program, rather than putting up with a system that "had been rendered almost unusable for about two months by a barrage of pop-up advertising and e-mail."
Even if it doesn't uninstall through the control panel applet, he should have known how to use msconfig, or a registry hack to stop it from running. (I'm assuming this is a Windows system, since no spammers that I know of have written spambots for Linux....)
If this is the calibre of programmer that works in Silicon Valley, I need to go apply for a job there, and put them all to shame...
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
a Silicon Valley computer programmer (!!!)
So, I see. Installs stuff "mistakenly". And what about other stuff he didn't notice? not all spyware stuff spawn pop-ups.
I guess his machine is infected with crap; now this guy writes code - probably distributes binaries. It seems to me that he is clueless about what is running on his machine - didn't even install a spam filter. He's a programmer, not aunt Sally, that's frightening.
What was the name of the company he was working for, again?
So what's the problem with what he did? =]
VICTIM #3: I mean, I killed fifteen of those buggers, sir. Now, at home, they'd hang me! Here, they'll give me a fucking medal, sir!
-Valiss
This guy should have formulated his threats in a Official-sounding, Religious kind of way. Like:
I, Jesrad, Pope of the DIscordian Church of Kalliste, Hereby demand that your company removes Me from whatever email lists it maintains. Failure to comply will result in [enter list of gruesome curses and obscene tortures in a ritual kind of procedure].
In the name of our Lady of Confusion, [dated, signed]
This way your threats can pass off as protected religious practices. Goddess knows my religious practices often pass off as threatening, so the opposite shouldn't be that hard.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
...Booker said the problem stemmed from a program he mistakenly downloaded from the Internet that brought a continuous stream of advertising to his computer.
:)
Gator? Oh wait... I forgot Gator don't make spyware !!!! Whoops I used the words Gator and spyware in the same sentance - whoops I did it again!
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.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Here's what I don't get... This guy is a programmer and he not only can't block spam emails effectively, but look at this quote from the article (yep I'm one who actually reads them ;):
Booker said the problem stemmed from a program he mistakenly downloaded from the Internet that brought a continuous stream of advertising to his computer.
So this is a guy who clicks 'Yes' to popups that say Do you want to install HorsePornSpamSender.exe?! And furthermore, doesn't know how to download and run AdAware or SpyBot (or even search Google to find out that they exist)?
Doesn't sound like a programmer I'd want working for my firm...
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
Someone explain to this guy that in the united states, you have to be elected before you are allowed to threaten other, smaller countries.
----- sXe
will convict this guy. He just needs to make sure he has a good lawyer and that they do lots of discovery to document the behavior of the comany.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
Now that these stupid fucks have exposed who they are, is the RCMP going to arrest them and shut down their scam company?
Do you have ESP?
Registrant:
Leading Edge Marketing Inc.
PO Box CR-56766
Suite #1210
Nassau, New Providence ---
BS
810-815-1672
Domain Name: ALBIONMEDICAL.COM
Administrative Contact:
Leading Edge Marketing, Leading Edge Marketing domains@leminternet.com
PO Box CR-56766
Suite #1210
Nassau, New Providence ---
BS
810-815-1672
Technical Contact:
Leading Edge Marketing, Leading Edge Marketing domains@leminternet.com
PO Box CR-56766
Suite #1210
Nassau, New Providence ---
BS
810-815-1672
Record last updated 06-20-2003 03:25:11 PM
Record expires on 05-23-2008
Record created on 05-23-2001
Domain servers in listed order:
UDNS1.ULTRADNS.NET 204.69.234.1
UDNS2.ULTRADNS.NET 204.74.101.1
Gee...that was tough.
And what kind of retarded programmer is this that he doesn't even know how the internet works in this day and age? You don't reply to spam. Of course it's going to get worse. You simply launch a ddos attack on their mail servers while talking to their ISP and forcing them to stop hosting the wankers. And if they don't, then ddos them and talk to their ISP. Etc.
Here's a start...
Starting nmap 3.48 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap ) at 2003-11-22 12:23 Ea
Interesting ports on 65.39.243.197:
(The 1650 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
PORT STATE SERVICE
22/tcp open ssh
25/tcp open smtp
80/tcp open http
443/tcp open https
587/tcp open submission
801/tcp open device
873/tcp open rsync
Device type: general purpose
Running: FreeBSD 4.X
OS details: FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE
Uptime 123.792 days (since Mon Jul 21 18:24:33 2003)
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 20.954 seconds
FreeBSD. Good. More of a challenge =)
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
Ok, let's test this:
Send me repeated vulgar emails and I will pee on your lawn, have an affair with your wife, have a baby with her and leave you to raise the child.
10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
I'm still here!
Oh, "in person". Blah, I was waiting for you to press a button on your death satellite.
This guy should'nt be put on trial, he deserves a freakin medal.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
I know I wouldn't vote to convict no matter what he said to them. I'm not sure they could find 12 people who would. If he'd actually follwed through on his threats, that'd be another story (Although if he went on a bitch slapping rampage, I'd still be inclined to vote "Not Guilty" to any charges applied...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
typical example of the blind application of law. This is why we need lawyers, unfortunately. I dream of a world in which I wouldn't need a lawyer to defend myself against that kind of crapy sue.
I think everything has been said already in the forum.
Except that we should get ready with our petition forms, because this guy will certainly be recognized culprit.
Ready ? Go ? Spam !
Regards,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
For a programmer he doesn't seem to be very smart about computing.
While what he did was wrong, what the company was doing was not better or justified. Behavior which pushes a person to unreasonable behavior is a crime per se. Imagine someone who was always picking fights with people because your the son of a whore who was born with a small penis. Do that everyday you are likely to get someone who is going to attack you. In some cases it is justified. You cannot always say what you want without expecting some retaliation on the part of someone else.
Since this person's behavior was triggered by an offending event, there is cause. How valid that cause is for a judge to decide. In addition you have to take into account how intently did this person intend to follow through on their attempt. Since he did not own any guns, plan to own a gun or actively was searching the internet looking for Antrax spores it is not likely that he would be considered a serious threat to society. Judges can be reasonable, procesutors in the US can be very unreasonable in their actions to persue someone, just to make a case.
Don't take the charges put up as the fact that he will be found guilty.
My computers used to be named Cholera, Anthrax, Rabies, and Smallpox.
Anthrax was a file server running OpenBSD.
Because of minor concerns that someone might think those names had some kind of significance beyond just being computer names, I finally changed them to Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, and Hobbit.
The company in question claims that they didn't send the spam. From their point of view, they just got death threats without having done anything, just because someone else used their name.
Whether the company should have known that those threats were empty or whether they actually should have been taken seriously is really impossible to tell from the press info. That's what we have courts for to figure out.
If this case goes before a jury that knows what spam is, I doubt they'll convict him. I surely wouldn't.
(Then again the legal system is a wacky, unpredictable circus.)
well he was clearly too inept to do so. i mean the guy didn't even know how to effectively combat spam. he didn't know better than to click "Cancel" when prompted with a popup that said "Would you like to download the super-spamming porn bot?"...
so can he really launch a ddos? doubtful.
on the other hand, even if he didn't know how to launch a ddos, but if he weren't SO STUPID, the slashdotters would have done it on his behest/behalf. way to go stupid guy! you're doubly-screwed! don't have the spammers or the anti-spammers on your site. lol.
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
Just how many Twinkies did the guy consume before making these threats? And, did his coffee come at or above 170 degrees Fahrenheit?
But seriously, this guy is a nut job. You don't make threats over the phone, mail, or internet. Is this hard to understand?
~S
what prudent,prissy american law did he exactly get charged with?
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Sounds like he went on a spampage
Here's what's going to happen after February 21:
-
You're going to get tons of spam, and from major companies. This becomes legal, even in states where it used to be illegal.
-
The headers will be correct. There are penalties for forging headers.
-
The spam won't necessarily have the company name, just some unsubscribe URL and a P.O. box for written "opt-out" requests.
-
You can go through the motions of "opting out", but it won't do much.
"Opt-out" is interpreted narrowly, on a "per sender" basis. "Sender" is defined narrowly - "The term `sender', when used with respect to a commercial electronic mail message, means a person who initiates such a message and whose product, service, or Internet web site is advertised or promoted by the message." (from S.877) Note the "and"; it's not there by accident. Each combination of spammer and advertiser may be considered a different "sender". That clause could even be interpreted to completely let third-party spammers off the hook.
So advertisers get to throw away the opt-out list every time they change spamhauses. There's even a "separate line of business" exception to make this explicit - spammers with both "Viagra" and "refinancing" spams don't have to use the opt-out list from one with the other.
-
You can't sue. Only the FTC and the U.S. Justice Department can sue.
This was all carefully crafted by lobbyists for the Direct Marketing Organization, who will be celebrating as soon as they get some sleep, having been up all night getting this through the House.I get these funny-looking mails all day long: (which Spamassassin promptly kicks off to "trash")
I D=d1
/
;)
From: "Theodore Abernathy"
To: xxx@xxx.xx
Reply-To: "Theodore Abernathy"
Subject: ukrqine actapon
Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 02:15:59 GMT
X-Mailer: MIME-tools 5.503 (Entity 5.501)
ENiLAmRGE YOrUR PcENeIS RIqGHT NOkW!
ENTfER HERvE: http://www.pulmanconsulting.com/v2/index.php?AFF_
nro momre oftfers
http://www.pulmanconsulting.com/homepage
What the hell is "ukrqine actapon"! Enquiring minds want to know!
And what sort of English Dandy would send such filth through the in-tarnet is beyond my understanding...
The syntax, words and spelling suggest a 12-year old boy with a serious appetite for LSD, paint remover and Viagra combined!
Resolution: Spammers in locked room with me invoking Duke Nukem whilst loading a Spas12 shotgun!!!!!!111!!!!
(Mmmm, that felt good. A bit nerdy - but good.)
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
Would you convict this guy? I say not guilty!
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
a computer programmer going to jail because a criminal gang provoked him into pressing some buttons on a keyboard
or
the actual torture, poisoning and death of spammers?
I say give the guy some powertools and a bag of anthrax spores and let him get on with the job that the forces of law and order are failing to do.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I'm assuming he'll be asking for a jury trial. How would you vote were you on the jury.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
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
That is, itself, rather spammish. But provides a convenient anchor for self-proclaimed karma whores like me.
What really disappoints me about this whole thing is that the dude only threatened to go postal on spammers.
If he had actually done it, I'd clip out the newspaper pictures of the dude and frame them. They'd sit on my little shrine amoungst the framed pictures of Newton, Edison, Einstein and Bohr.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
There are tons of services that do anonymous e-mailing for you. I'm thinking of setting up such a service on my own site but I have to figure out a way to avoid it being used to anonymously send out massive amounts of spam first.
And also any legal things I should know about liability.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
I got one of those, and placed it in the trash. And I pay my bills!
Somehow I ran across it later, and to my suprise it was with a company I had done business. Upon checking, I was given credit for a return but I only assumed I was later charged for the replacement.
My assumption had been incorrect.
It is best to get the best spam filter you can get, because I am now getting more spam where I work on assignment than work related emails.
At home, on Linux - Mozilla has been doing an excellent job. Recently I had been wondering why I was seeing so few appearing in my junk email directory. [I got my first one in weeks just today - but I am assuming labeling it and transferring it will spare me].
Another source are companies you have done some sort of business with in the past - that forever more send emails. Hence, I no longer provide my email address to most requests. On these latter, I tend to ignore their emails unless they have something about a 24 hour sale - that gets an immediate deletion. Others can sometimes be of interest, particularly for information that does not enhance their attractiveness. For example, I had been dealing with a company that while priced higher than some others I order through has been extremely reliable. Moreover, they had a good return policy. With their ads I see that have been acquired - though I sometimes check their prices on items it is very unlikely I will chance another order from them. Anyone remember Fat Brain? I only began to noticed the difference that the shipments arrived using USPS (which can be excellent though usually slower). Only later did I learn they were acquired after encouraging my son to place an order with them that was nearly botched.
So the above my be viewed as my SPAM rage - so much easier to take with pretty good filters. Also I never respond to any of the junk.
Woah! Maybe I can get his job!
As much as I would LOVE to see that happen, there are too many roadblocks in the way. Most of them created by about 10,000 kilometers of red tape. Thinking about it, that would actually give all those people who want to create viruses, etc, a legal (and helpful) place to focus their energies rather than the general public. So in fact, it might help kill two birds with one stone.
They want their softer version to go into effect prior to CA so that at least one important state will not notice how much they have short changed the protection features in the soon to go into effect California law!
...
Where there is cash you can buy anything
Legalities aside, I think that what this guy did is more inline with what is truly right and wrong than how the US sends suspected terrorists to 3rd parties to be tortured, which is legal.
Spamming, at this point in time, is unethical. It costs us all time and money, whether we want to deal with it or not. I can understand how people snap over it, and I think that any spam company deserves anything negative that they get.
So while the nation that claims to champion decomcracy, human rights, etc. sends people to be tortured in 3rd world countries without any hearing, this guy gets busted for making empty threats to some scum-bag spam operation based in some outside country. It's not like he sent someone to be torture
Why do I keep typing pythong?
No, but the relentless amount of spam he was recieving and the consequences of that may be almost as aggrivating and stressful.
The name is Charles BOOHER, not BOOKER. This guy is a notoriously eccentric character in the Bay Area programming scene. The Mercury News got his name right:
News Article
He'd never be convicted by a jury of his peers!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
$250k and 5 years in prison for making fictious threats? Jesus we can't allow ourselves a moment of rage nowadays.
While a death threat is certainly a worse crime than an e-mail (or two, or three, or four-thousand), it's important to understand the morals of the entities involved.
The Spammers: Knowingly (and calmly, I would assume) do their thing. Their "thing" being taking advantage of (addmittedly ignorant or stupid) people for profit. Or in other words, they are doing something wrong, are aware of this, and are indifferent.
The Dude: Reacted out of frustration and anger. He was not (necessarily) in his right mind making these death threats, and though it could be a sham he put on to seem more sympathetic for his trial, he stated that he shouldn't have made the death threats because it was an overreaction.
The spammers are intentionally and knowingly doing something wrong, as where the guy just blew up. The potential consequences of their actions differ, but IMHO, until the spammers stop, they deserve no sympathy for anything that happens to thhem, and deserve no human rights what-so-ever, even if nobody else has a right to take advantage of that.
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.
s'wut i sed.
Do spammers check whether email addresses in replies they get actually come from people they sent their messages to? I've been wondering what will happen if I reply to spammer X with forged sender address of spammer Y and reply to spammer Y with forged sender address of spammer X. Can try spoofing IP addresses of senders for good measure too... what do you think?
I was just reading the ZDNET story on the House passing the antispam bill. It says that "sexually oriented messages" must be clearly labeled, and email cannot have deceptive subject lines. If that's true, can't we filter them out more easily? Or can we configure mail servers so when such an email message does get sent, the DATA part of the transmission goes on for eternity + 1? Hang up the spamming mail servers, keeping their sending down?
Also, does this new law completely preempt citizen's rights? If the email does turn out to be fraud, can individuals still sue?
Jury nullification.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Hope this helps.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Think of the hilarity that would have ensued at Albion and the spamhouse if he'd sent them envelopes that had unscented talcum powder in them.
Imagine being shut down for a few days, having the police poking around your establishment, having to reimburse the fire and police after the 4th or 5th time they have to come and deal with what may or may not be anthrax.
If you're the spammer, having to leave your home while the mysterious powder is analyzed, and maybe hacving the cops poking through your home and files.
No one should actually DO THIS, as it would be illegal and get you into serious trouble.
Amusing to think about, though.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
"Booher 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."
Is it that hard for them to remove him from their list? Or at least give him a reasonable response?
And just how severe were they? Certainly not severe enough for them to take him off their spam lists.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Killing a spammer is not a very good idea, but annoying him definitely is. There are tons of guides to do just that on the Net, if you happen to live close to a spamming company, don't let them live a week without something very annoying happening to their property. :) I am planning to do just that. Not sure what would work better, though, a simple brick thrown to the window or some super-glue in the lock...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
They didn't "intrude" into his house, for one. They sent him e-mail. My ex-girlfriend still e-mails me every so often, and I can't call the cops claiming she refuses to leave my personal property alone, and that she has intruded into my home. They didn't insult him repeatedly about his penis size, they merely sent him e-mails asking if he wanted his penis to be bigger. And if one "upsetting" email can make the entire INTERNET a hostile place for somebody, then you REALLY shouldn't be using the net at all. And finally, how did this make his computer unusable, and cause him a loss of income. He's a computer programmer, and thus should know how to set up spam filters and such. And he is probably making salary, so I doubt he lost any income. Why in the holy name of FUCK would the government come to HIS aid? So what you propose is that if somebody sends you an e-mail that you don't like, you're allowed to threaten them with bio weapons, death, and torture? And this is the Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness you want to live in? Seriously, this is a case of some asshat that thought it would be funny/cool to say incredibly stupid shit to a company he thought would do nothing, and found out he was wrong. How about you take off your tinfoil hat, step down from that box you call a podium, and stfu, k?
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
It's here
I'm going to use it to inform them of some of the exiting products and services avaliable to the internet user of today! (in other words, copy and paste from my uberspammed hotmail account, to their contact form...)
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Not much of a programmer. You can't fix a problem until you understand the problem. In this case the programmer didn't understand the problem. It's not the mail content, but the motive of the sender that needs to be addressed.
Spammers are sending mail to you because it's cost effective. They don't see what they are doing as a problem because it is profitable. Until national and international laws and enforcement make spam unprofitable, it will continue. The problem is not the spammer's to fix.
Therefore the problem belongs to the the receiptant. His first solution begins on his e-mail program. If it doesn't have incoming filters, then he needs one that does.
The second solution is mail download period. When I'm working I turn off the phone. I don't need the interruption. Dido email. It will be there later. Connect when you get coffee and let the email filter's do their jobs.
Assuming this was a home based spam attack, then third solution is to get a real firewall. One you can program to block all access to annoying sites. IPTABLES is a good choice.
If this was corporate mail server, then talk to your boss and/or your sysadmin. Have them add filters on the email server and the firewall. Then change your corporate email address. This last would be easier if company policy was not to use an employee's name for his address (peter.built@mycompany.com, instead of ptb213@mycompany.com). A protected local area directory service (ldap) can then be used to connect real names to e-mail addresses. Making reassignment easy.
But all these solutions require you take on the problem yourself. Spammer's aren't going to fix it for you.
What the Canadian spammers are doing is probably illegal as well... The problem is that it's just not quite as clear how illegal it is and precisely what law to use against them.
On the bright side (if you can think of it that way), if the guy ends up in jail, he'll have lots of time to research a lawsuit against these people... One thing that probably comes out of his arrest is that these people are pobably very specifically identified.
Has anybody looked up the papers on this case to ID the company??? If they're in Vancouver, I can even pay them a personal visit.....
One must learn to eke the most profit out of every defeat.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
He should have just shot someone, he would have gotten less time for that in California.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Would it be possible to get a restraining order against spammers so they can not send you email? I wonder what it would be like to have all the slashdot community get restraining orders against lots of spammers. If you did get spam from them, would they go to jail?
The above is not worth reading.
Since when are threats a crime? This is like pre-crime from the movie Minority Report.
do the penis enlargments actually work?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Because there are clear and established laws about making threats of a physical nature against people. The perp here was actually threatening individual persons with bodily harm. Law enforcement is obligated to assume the threats are serious and not jokes.
So one can't blame law enforcement for arresting and charging the guy.
But why are the spammers not being scrutinized for their behavior? While they weren't threatening the man with physical violence or bodily harm, they were very clearly harassing him.
As has been pointed out, activity like that from an individual person (sexually explicit/suggestive materials forcibly delivered to your mailbox) would be considered illegal as well, at the very least a misdemeanor.
Unfortunately it has become all too common for human society to accept behavior from businesses and corporations that would never be acceptable from individuals. Why have so many companies been able to get away with designing, printing and distributing blatantly racist and discriminatory T-shirts (Target's "88" fiasco, the "Wong Bros Laundry" fiasco) and then pretending it was all a mistake? For that matter, how come we get television ads that are blatantly racist/discriminatory? TV ads aren't made up in a matter of minutes. It takes months to write, produce, edit, review, etc...
It's because people just automatically don't apply standards of social acceptance to companies. Your employer may make you take seminars about discrimination in the work place, but then launch discriminator advertising campaigns, or out-source services to sweat-shops in third-world countries.
In the darkness of future past, The magician longs to see. One chants between two worlds, "Fire, walk with me!"
Is it reasonable to WhoIs a spammer, get an email address, and then send the spammer his own spam for a couple of thousand times? If we all did this would it disrupt the spammer's use of his email address?
Fata viam invenient.
Have you reached a verdict?
We have, your honor.
We, the jury, in the above entitled action, have decided to join the defendant in beating the spammer to death.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Or, you could just post all their company email adresses to other spamlists, I'm sure they would be pleased to get some nice deal from other nice people like themselves.
-H
I believe that spammers can tell whether you are reading their emails if they have images in them since the images usually load from a script that logs what email it was from. With the Mozilla spam filters I never read their emails and I think this eventually gets you off their list since they don't get a response. Spammers assume your address is inactive, and remove it.
Mac OS X Mail is pretty good at nailing the image loading method of read email verification. Every mail that is tagged as Junk, using the built-in algorithm, gives you an option to load images or not.
This is exactly why we need to make it legal to hunt spammers...
All we need is a one or two week open season on spammers to vent and our frustrations. That would prevent episodes like this from happening.
I don't care what charges they make against the guy, they will never make a conviction stick! Find 12 jurors who haven't had spam problems! But it would be interesting to find out if the US is going to stick to the many laws it has past and bring the Canadian spammers into custody.
The idea behind Flash Click-to-View is a really great one, but the installer is broken, there's no uninstaller, the assumptions made by the author about how one browses the web are just stupid (only works as root? please), and the worst part is that he's not fixing any of this. He's not even talking to the users asking for help.
So, it's much like most of the other mozdev extensions I've tried. :-) It compiles/parses/looks pretty! Ship it and ignore it!
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Two wrongs dont make it legal
But two wrights made an airplane!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Here is the spammer's link. And now I urge everyone on /. to visit this highly informative page and see what they can do about their patehtic penises. Let's harness the /. effect for good!
Actually, this would be a great service for the net. A weekly (or even daily) /. of a spam site!
Interesting, if I do a google search for Charles Booker Spam I get many hits to the Reuters story (on yahoo, msnbc, etc). The cached pages show Booker highlighted throughout. However upon clicking through all of the stories have been changed to Booher.
It looks like there was an error in the name in the earlier Reuters and it has since been corrected and sent out over the wires.
Can a slashdot editor please change the name in the original submission?
I've got Evolution set to not load any images in HTML mail.
Now if I can only get a FORWARD rule, so I can send the crap to the proper authorities (Earthlink's spam nomination address, for instance), and an EXPUNGE rule so I can get them out of my inbox before I can even SEE them!
I'll bring my rifle.
Why Albion pissed me off so much.
My name is Charles Booher.
I downloaded Xupiter. Xupiter claimed that it is a Microsoft Product (a crime I have also committed with some of my software projects), but Albion Medical and VigRX made my life a living hell while I was trying to put together
http://www.cafeshops.com/usnoastronomy
and
http://www.cafeshops.com/genomicbiology
I am unemployed software engineer who was trying to extend and enhance the really wonderful science that the US Federal government supports at such web sites as http://aa.usno.navy.mil/ and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
I have always been afraid of doctors, hospitals, and the like and I had to endure two more cancer years in 1993 and 1996. I was treated at Stanford University Hospital and El Camino Hospital and I cannot say enough good things about the doctors and people who work at these places.
I have always had a fear of people wearing medical clothing. This fear goes back to my earliest childhood. Since getting cancer the first time in 1987 this fear has turned into a problem.
Imagine if you are a woman who has had a double mastectomy who is receiving intolerable amount of ads for fraudulent pills that enlarge breasts.
My computer was taken over by Albion Medical, VigRX, and xupiter for about three months. I needed my old email to support software that I used to offer as free downloads to people who wanted it. I was constantly bombarded with pictures of doctors and people wearing medical clothing and if I am not prepared for it.
Albion medical was popping up continuing spasm on my computer screen that showed pictures of doctors. Even when I see doctors on TV or in a movie theater I sometimes need to leave the room.
Albion Medical and VigRX sell nothing but fraudulent products, and Doug MacKay is a pathological liar.
I admit that I may have committed a criminal act. I am 100% certain that the US court system will fairly hear my case. If I am guilty of a crime then I will make restitution and do whatever I can to restore and make restitution for the damages I have done to the US government.
Maybe I should sue the government for making it OK for people to send my 6yr old porn and all the other sexist stuff. If I was a company that stood out on the curb, telling a 11 year old girl, "hey, I have something that will make you have an orgasm in 30 seconds or less". Or how about, wouldn't you like to be stretched big enough to handle all the guys that use viagra? How long would it be before I would be arrested? Where is my freedom of speech then? Oh but wait, doing it via the internet is OK!?!?!
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA....
[barely-related-but-"fun"-story]
I used to work for this startup where SOMA meets Protero Hill in San Francisco. FOr those of you that dont know, this is a Mecca for homeless people. They can hide from the elements underneath hte elevated highways there.
Anyway, We were in this ratty little office and the CEO had to walk down to the local office depot for some shit or other and he sees these two young homeless guys building a PC outside of their tents.
In the middle of the damn sidewalk. Seriously.
Apparently, they had moved out to SF for the boom, which proceed to immediately bust on them before they could really get on their feet after the move. Causing them to have no money and no place to stay. THey movend into thrie tents on the street, And proceeded to start scrounging parts out of the trash (used to be I couldnt walk more than four blocks without tripping over a semi-aged soem newly overpaid kid couldnt be bothered to do anything with), built them into machines, and would sell the things on eBay using free access at the public library.
honestly.
Of course, these guys were nowhere near as fun as "Jeebus." A crazy homeless guy that would sweep the sidewalks obsessively around our entire building. He looked like Jesus, but Asian.
[/barely-related-but-"fun"-story]
s'wut i sed.
"The headers will be correct. There are penalties for forging headers."
Spam is going to get very expensive to send, because almost all those emails gojng oout will be coming back, doubling there bandwidth cost.
but wait there's more::
Whats that, company x sent me spam, well Ill just reply with the 2 meg images. Imagine if they got about 100000 of those?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The human body is not porn. The penis is not porn. ads do not become porn just by being about the penis - even with pictures.
Anyone who thinks that a picture of a penis is porn is thinking like a child. Grow up.
And what about those spams inviting you to cum look at HOT SLUTS TIGHT ANAL FUCKED WITH 8-INCH COCKS?
Furthermore, ads with pictures of penises, while not porn, are certainly indecent. Being naked in public isn't porn, but it's still illegal...
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
I can't think of any public purpose, including buying new high-end office furnishings for the top suits at the DA's office that is not more important than prosecuting somebody for respondsing to spam harassment.
Personally, if I were on a jury, I would vote "Not Guilty" no matter how compelling the evidence, and I would still vote "Not Guilty" if the guy had actually carried out his threats.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Could a DA actually get a conviction from a jury against a person who goes after a spammer?
Would anyone here vote to convict a person who goes after a spammer regardless of how compelling the evidence is?
Could a jury be empaneled from a typical population that wouldn't have at least one person who would refuse to vote "Guilty"?
Of course, a person could be asked "Could you be objective in judging the evidence against a person accused of [insert horrifying crime here] against a spammer?"
A person could lie and say "Yes" even if he intended to vote innocent.
Of course, prosecutors get spammed, too, and there's a distinct possibility that such a question would not be asked.
Assuming honesty, how many jurors would have to be rejected in order to empanel a jury in a normal urban population?
Could a jury even be made up from a typical jury pool of people who'd judge on any basis other than "this person _________ a spammer, let's give him a medal and apologize for wasting his time?"
Note, if you are called for such a jury, do NOT wear a "Fully Informed Jury Association" button to court and do not discuss "jury nullification" until deliberations actually start.
Tech Public Policy stuff
People keep talking about ways to block spam, but the fact is spam is theft. Unlike regular mail, which is delivered to my mailbox for free and can be tossed with minimal effort, spam costs me money because access to my ISP costs me money. My equipment costs me money. The time it takes to find blockers and to maintain them costs me money.
Spam steals from me. That's theft, pure and simple. The spammers need to be charged with theft and prosecuted. End of story.
Failure of the government to prevent this theft will undoubtedly, and ultimately, result in extreme reactions from more and more individuals, such as the one described here. Were I on the jury, I'd acquit - because clearly, if the government won't do it's job prosecuting the thieves, it has no business protecting them either.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Chances are, your Congresscritter and Senators voted YES!!! But to be absolutely sure,
Congresionnal roll call vote
Senatorial roll call vote And if your representatives voted YES, vote for ANYBODY else. This isn't just about screwing up our inboxes and the Internet itself. A Yes vote means that the representative is so dangerously and completely clueless about technology as to endanger us all.
You want a person clueless enough to screw this up deciding what high-tech weapons systems DOD gets, or what NASA projects need funding, or about anything else having to do with the Internet? The Net isn't just about geeks anymore. It's the communications backbone on which governmental, military, and business communications depend. Imagine the kind of traffic the last Windows megavirus attack being normal on the Internet. Is this likely to improve its efficiency?
Will this help businesses (other than spam) function better? Would you like to be in a war zone and discover that you can't find what the hell you've been ordered to do because your inbox is full of "Penile Enlargement" messages, each in full compliance with S.877 with a real snailmail address on the bottom?
Most of us have been saying for years that our Congress is dangerously and fundamentally clueless about technology. The DMCA passed by comparable majorities. At least in areas where the voting machines aren't e-votescam hardware, we might have a chance to get rid of some of these idiots.
This is about to become proof visible even to Joe Sixpack that Congress does NOT know what the fuck is doing. IF Joe Sixpack is told what it means. The typical Internet user is Joe Sixpack now.
Don't depend on the media to get this story out.
Finally, here's the honor roll of every single member of Congress who voted NO. (there aren't any Senators who opposed this. Vote for these guys and support them, regardless of what you think of the rest of their political views.
We know that bad decisions about technology by elected officials can endanger our jobs, the economy, public safety, and the lives of members of our armed forces. So far, it's just us that knows because the comprehension gap between us and Joe Sixpack is just far too great.
If Joe Sixpack is getting 50 spams a day instead of 20, and he is informed that a law passed by his representatives made this possible, he'll get it. So as soon as this happens, tell your non-tech friends and families and co-workers.
Don't worry about the "Do Not Spam" registry, anyone who opts out of US spam will get it replaced by Nigerian and Chinese and Taiwanese spam. How long before spam ads for the "Do Not Spam" registry CD of "XX million e-mail addresses confirmed by the US Government" show upin your e-mail?
This is a unique opportunity. Don't let it go to waste.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Troll? Give me a break (again)! This is my real opinion, not a troll.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
The guy with shit on his windshield, or the guy with shit on his hand?
paintball
Well, here's what I do, I insult and threaten people for money. They like it, it's stimulating for them. The more violent and evil the threats, the more they like it. So here's the deal, if you want to sign up for this service, which is completely free by the way, then all I ask is that you send me an unsolicited commercial email.
Obviously, I'm not a legal expert when I ask,"Does International Law play a part in this?" He's a US citizen that threatened a Canadian company. Shouldn't there be an international law for this kind of thing? Sure, the threat was made in California, but when it reached the routers, it was sent to Canada. So we have an American threat that crossed the Canadian border. Who's country's juristiction should it really be under? The sender or the receiver? But suppose he made the threat via an international or foreign mail account. Could and would California or even Federal laws apply? I wonder how laws handle the differences between physical and logical aspects in the IT world.
I'd vote to acquit. It is obvious by the kind of things he said that he was not serious about it. He was obviously just frustrated. If a company is going to send out billions of offensive emails to people, they should expect a few nasty responses in return. Since when did the first amendment not protect idle threats made to foreign spam companies?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
But why didn't he offer to MECHANICALLY help lengthen the dongs of the management if not the employees too?
oregonnerd...a nerd in Oregon, of course
--Man, if somebody emailed *me* saying "take me off your damn list or I'll killyourmother/killyourfather/killyoursister/rapey ourwifeandtakeyourdog" -- I'D take him right off the damn list and apologize *profusely!*
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
See the Spamhaus ROKSO database: Spamhaus ROKSO and you'll see that 99% of the spammers listed are in the USA.
SO having a law to stop them would help. Yes, they might then actually move to India, Korea, etc. to send spam, but as you can see, that would create a much bigger obstacle for them. I see this law as a positive move.
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
Why doesn't the guy try suing the company for emotional pain and suffering and negligence?
One day maybe someone will finally completely lose it and go and kill a spammer... If it does ever happen I wonder if it would have any effect at all.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
riiight. because ddos attacks are sooo easy to track down, because they're not coming from thousands of different source computers. are you f'in kidding me?
do you know how easy it is to:
1) pay in cash for a prepaid credit card to use for purchases anywhere
2) sign up a new web domain and web hosting with phony contact information to use for launching attacks from
3) only login from wireless hotspots using a wireless card you purchased with cash (or another of those prepaid credit cards (in case they want to track the MAC)
or have you not been around computers or following computer-related news lately -- as in the past 10 years? because ddos attacks, defending against them, and tracking down the violators is one of the largest problem facing the internet backbones. if people can take down amazon and yahoo and microsoft and not get caught surely they can take down bobsPenisPills.com nooo problem.
of course someone as stupid as this guy wouldn't be able to figure that out though, even spelling it out like i just did.
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
There is a difference between them ignoring his valid complaints and their ignoring his harassment of them for two months. I don't know which applies.
Well since either way they were undeniably hacking his computer, sending it fraudulent data in order to get his computer to operate in a way it was not intended to... I'd say that no matter how someone phrases "cut it out", it's a valid complaint. The article doesnt say, by the way, that his first message to them was "I'm coming after you with an icepick"
It very well implied that his first messages were, at the very least, not brutally violent.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
But according to this article, the company indicated was not spamming, but mistaken due to spam from a rival firm. Perhaps a joe-job, or just creative butt-covering?
I would have modded you up if I'd had mod points.
Tech Public Policy stuff