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UK Spam Law Goes Live
loonix_gangsta writes "So, the UK has taken matters into its own hands and, as of today, is making it a criminal offence to send e-mails or text messages unless the recipient has agreed in advance to accept them. The law comes into force today. Unfortunately much spam originates from the US so the UK had previously asked the US to co-operate."
OK, you stole the headline text, verbatim, from the Register article, but didn't link to it. Nice.
The laws make it a criminal offence to send e-mails or text messages unless the recipient has agreed in advance to accept them.
IANAL the article is not clear on whether they're going to prosecute the companies or the spammers working for a company?
If they are going to prosecute the companies then i would imagine someone's going to do a fake spam to frame their competitor.
with the current way of distributing spam via viruses and zombies this seems like a great law to use to annoy your competitor.
BOSS: "I'm going to call you about the meeting to accept messages about the meeting. Is that okay with you?"
EMPLOYEE: "I didn't agree to receive this e-mail!"
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Personally, I see a lot more spam from China or Korea than the US. Sure, we get a fair bit from worm infected machines these days, but China and Korea are still the heavy hitters. Perhaps it would be more positive to amend the article, "Unfortunately, the UK is responsible for a very small segment of spam in the wild, so this is law is not likely to make a major difference to Internet users." Having said that, there are lots of people *responsible* for spam in the US, but it's next to impossible to tie most common spam to these respective (can I even use that word in this context?) people. Andypoo.
The register is running an interesting article on the difficulty people have had so far reporting their spam. It appears that the paperwork and procedures for complaints are not yet available. How useful.
According to The Register, they don't have any forms for spam complaints yet, and you shouldn't forward them any spam, because their spam filters will catch it.
2. Most spam is from US/Far east
3. Spam gets sent because really stupid ppl respond to it
The impact of spam will only be lessoned when people are educated to take care of the problem. I.e Not responding to spam and taking responsibilty for their internet connection rather than just calling for legislation.
The UK always has this "Something must be done" mentality without people ever thinking perhaps *they* could do something.
What worries me is that people who's machines get worm infected might be the ones getting sued.
This law is an EU wide law and therefore applies to all member countries, including from next year (2004) at least some of the Spammers favourite countries such as Poland, Estonia etc.
This both worries me and pleases me at the same time.
Whilst innocent users could get caught up in horrendous legal battles, it also means that class actions against certain companies making horribly bug-riddled mail clients may also be forced to take place.
Of course, I shouldn't really wish legal battles on anybody, but in the view of means to an end..
Andypoo.
(Yes, this time I will use Plain Old Text)
Critics of the UK approach say the laws do not go far enough and that the maximum 5,000 fine is not high enough.
5,000 fine for what? Laws like the California anti-spam bill (which unfortunately will be nixed by the new federal bill before it even becomes law) allow for fines on a per-email basis. If this is the same, then I see no problem with 5,000 per email. It will add up in the end. But if it is 5,000 per campaign!? Much to little.
This law does allow for individuals to sue for themselves, but I didn't see anything mentioning if the marketers could be sued as well as the spammers. So it's got a leg up on the US law, although it could be better.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
However, this provides more interference with the operation of the Internet while offering very little in the way of actual benefit. Already some people have experienced problems with overzealous realtime blackhole lists, others (me) have problems with ISPs implementing incoming filters without letting anybody know, silently dropping legitimate mail along with the illegitimate. And legal solutions rarely are -- it's just a matter of time before a loophole is found in this one (besides the obvious: since the empire has waned in recent years only the U.K. really trembles at U.K. law). Additionally, this may impede legitimate unsolicited commercial e-mail as well as that of the "Free Vitamins 7538" variety.
At the end of the day, we've really yet to mount a good defense to spam. And I still don't think laws are the way to do it.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
The spam sent from China and Korea is overwhelmingly sent by US based spammers exploiting the widespread open proxy problem in the Far East.
The other major source of spam from the Far East are the "bulletproof" spamming facilities provided to US based career spammers by greedy Chinese administrators.
It is not that difficult at all to track who is responsible for the spam, just see who's being advertised.
In addition, most of these types of spam has a "fingerprint" that pinpoints the spam to some career spammer. The fingerprint can be a domain name, method of operandi, language in the spam, anything really. Resources like ROKSO at spamhaus.org are very good at identifying the real source of the spam.
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers. The more painful and slower, the better.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
A lot of spam does indeed 'come from' Korea, China, Brazil etc, but a vast majority of it is still being sent by US spammers, using open relays and proxies in the aforementioned locations. Same with bullet-proof hosting of spamvertized webpages.
>>Well at least we still have the right to free speech, something the poor UK citizens obviously lack. Yep. And we only just gave left-handed people the right to vote last year. You should think yourself lucky you live in a country where you don't need official paperwork to travel to the next county, like you do here. Furthermore, you should pity us for having to offer up our first born every leap year so that Her Majesty's corgies may feast.
And to that end. If you guys institute a death penalty for spamming over there, I'll write my representatives to see what they can do about speeding up the extraditions.
Good luck and God's speed.
"criminal offence to send e-mails or text messages unless the recipient has agreed in advance to accept them"
Examples of spam?
"I found your article at example.com very interesting, but I have some additional information you might be interested in..."
"Regarding the job posting in this Sunday's paper..."
"Excellent blog for today, I laughed my ass off"
Interestingly enough, businesses suffer most from spam, not only in jamming traffic and exhausting space on mail servers, but also losing money on employees sorting through or reading spam mail.
[Please sign here]
There seems to have been quite an escalation of spam over the last couple of months, with my mailbox receiving double the amount it used to. I've managed to cut that down to just a handful a day by adding a blanket delete rule on all mails coming from earthlink.com, juno.com, verizon.net, sprint.com, concentric.com, att.net, rr.com, ukscby.com, ukscby.net and any address ending in
It's a shame that all users of those domains/services are now blocked from sending me legitimate email, but until they get their act together and clamp down on spammers, that's the way it's going to stay.
My junk filter catches 99% of the rest, but at 1/2 a dozen a day, that's easily manageable.
Hopefully the impending US Law will make life harder for them. Ok, it's not the best solution, but it's a step in the right direction, and will make it easier to take similar small steps in the future so that we end up get legislation that really does the business.
And before anyone pipes up stating that you can get rid of spam by legislation alone, sure I acknowledge that. But there is no "one size fits all" solution to this problem, it has to be tackled on many fronts. Both legally and technically! So this is an important arrow to have in the quiver.
Macka
We see a lot of slippery-slope arguments on slashdot, many of them from the tinfoil beanie crowd of which you are clearly a member. However, it is worth noting that the term "slippery slope" is a criticism of the argument - a "slippery slope" argument is quite often fallacious, and, if I recall, is listed as one of the fallacial argument types listed in the very good "constructing a logical argument" FAQ that floats around the internet. You seem to have used the term "slippery slope" in your post as if to emphasize or enhance your "point."
In reality, slippery slope arguments, especially unsupported conspiracybabble ones such as yours, are crap.
I deal a fair bit with tracking of spam (I wouldn't say I'm an expert or trained in any regard), but a lot of the spam (mostly pharmaceutical, penis enlargements, etc) seem to point back to sites hosted in China. I'd say the vast majority of these.
.au :) Perhaps all the US spammers are ignoring me as an unlikely buyer
Whilst you can use a bit of 'guesswork' to determine that they may be from the US due to certain use of grammar, linked images, etc, the *majority* is just pointing to China and sometimes Korea (although this is more just delivery).
I don't know, maybe we're just being targetted differently being
I must say, that overall, US ISPs are fairly responsive to spam (at least in regards to hosted sites and DNS), as for delivery (which is mostly worm-related these days), I get very little response (if only I could get Comcast to act on those few hundred messages I reported).
Andypoo.
Here is some laws I would suggest:
A) Whoever has an open server can get fined/sued/whatever for at least a small amount if it sends spam.
B) Fine people who reply to spam.
C) Anyone who sells an email service or product should point to some good anti-spam software (the user can choose to use it or not).
D) Just make Murphy's Laws official for once and for all, dammit!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
On the other hand I dont want people who have no right to my email address sending me crap, same goes for my physical address and phone num.
The Law
as published by the government itself.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
So when in Italy, be careful who you send Christmas Greetings to!
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I've gotten several emails today from companies asking me to give permission to send me emails in the future.
But these emails that ask for permission -- I didn't ask for them! Those companies are _breaking the law_!
Meanwhile, today's spam count from Africa, the USA, etc: 40.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I'd actually like to see a few people found guilty of this and fined a negligable amount on the grounds they were "less than technically competent" or whatever legal euphemism for "dumb" the court comes up with. Making companies, and even end users, liable for not patching their system could be a good thing all round. The big problem with this though is patch availability; if the patch has been out for months, as in the case of Nimda IIRC, then fair enough. But what happens if the first thing the world knows about a problem is when the worm hits the Internet? Can you guarantee that your judge and jury can tell the difference and pass an appropriate sentence? I suspect the answer is, and will remain for some time, "no".
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
What if the only way you can ask permission is to email them? ::ducks::
Perhaps in some cases, but it others I'm not so sure it's either. I think some companies are just in denial about sending spam. Sounds hard to believe, right? Well, I run a small web design company, and I specifically put a No Spam clause in my contracts. When I talk about this with clients, I get some pretty sad responses.
They are all shocked that I would suggest that they would spam -- because most of them think that 'spam' only refers to the pornography, penis/breast enlargement, Nigerian scam, fraudulent products, etc. emails. In their eyes, "we're just sending out a promotional email, it isn't spam!" When I ask them if they will only send emails to people who have requested it, the response is typically, "We have to send out to more people than that! We are planning on buying a list of email addresses from (fill-in-the-blank-"marketing"-operation) and using that. That's ok, right?"
Now I'm not talking about companies that knowingly hire spammers to do their marketing, I'm talking about the smaller companies that try to do it themselves, or maybe are convinced of the legality from a spammer wanting some more business, and end up becoming part of the spam problem with their purchased lists and "but we offer a legitimate service!" attitudes.
These people are just in denial.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
I guess windows will become a very unpopular OS since FBI will be kicking in doors to arrest people who's computers were comondeared for spam so they can be extradignted to england
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The law does apply to the entire EU, but it has not taken effect EU-wide, as it is up to each member of the EU to follow through. The UK has moved forward, but most of the other members (list below) have not. It's also not clear that they ever will.
From The Register:
The directive obliged individual EC member states to introduce anti-spam laws by October 31. However nine member nations of the 15 country European Union have so far failed to adopt anti-spam legislation. France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden all face possible court action unless they provide an explanation on their lack of progress within the next two months. Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK have already taken steps to adopt the EU law.
I wonder how many domains will move their registration/hosting to the UK (or some similar spam-regulated region). If I were a spammer, I would avoid sending stuff to countries that might create legal entanglements. If a quick whois reveals that the domain is in the UK (for example), then I might as well take that domain off my address lists (since the spammer's revenue per spam is low, they should be risk averse). Of course international spammers may think they are above the law.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Well, it would be as effective as any of the laws being passed right now ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Can you guarantee that your judge and jury can tell the difference and pass an appropriate sentence? I suspect the answer is, and will remain for some time, "no".
That's what lawyers are for...
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Could this be law be applied to Cyber bullying as well?
This is the UK - I'm surprised their "anti-spam bill" isn't comprised of a 10p flat tax on every outgoing email...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
im glad you guys have "free speech areas"
Most spam is intended to make the recipient visit some destination and do business of some kind. Perhaps anti-spam laws needs to target the businesses that use spam to create business - the destinations of all those links in all those spams. Any company that sells viagra, ink jet cartridges, cell phone plans, or mortgages will have a more vulnerable point of presense than a spammer does. Even porn and gambling sites could be vulnerable because they require more permaneance than does a spam operation. If those companies where held accountable for their marketing affiliate's spams, then they might not engage the services of spammers.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
How liable are the companies that are actually being advertised in the spam? If I receive a spam telling me to go to cheaploans.co.uk, but they didn't actually SEND it, rather they got a "marketing" company to do it, how liable are they? Are the authorties going to kick their doors in and find out who actually did the sending or are they just doing to rely on actually tracing the spam to it's source? -- If you think my attitude stinks, you should smell my fingers.
-- If you think my attitude stinks, you should smell my fingers.
I'm from Australia actually :) And not particularly fond of the US for a variety of reasons, but for the sake of spam, I don't think they're entirely to blame.
.net, etc are likely to be US-mostly for example), rather than go after .au and .uk domains (do you have only .uk addresses? Or .com/.net?) Whilst you may think this would take an overwhelming about of thought/preparation on the spammer's side, imagine the greater exposure they'd get from this slight targetting..
Just because a spam contains a US-style phone number (which is generally not the content of the spam) or identifies as a US-based business, only means they're trying to seduce the biggest market (the US) for their advertising campaign.
I don't see sufficient evidence in spams these days to suggest that the US are behind the majority of spam.
However, will definitely be looking more at ROKSO from spamhaus.org, although traditionally, most of the "big name" spammers I've seen on these lists are spam campaigns I've never personally seen. (Which is surprising, because a lot of my addresses are very exposed.)
I guess it just boils down to differences in targetted audience based on domain. Whilst you might not think any consideration goes into which addresses are spammed (since you may aswell just 'spam them all'), up until recently, most spam has worked off e-mail lists, and it makes sense to try to deliver to your most powerful segments first (.com,
Having said all that, I'm still assuming the US as the most lucrative and easily led market for spam.
All in all, not really saying that the US *aren't* behind the majority of spam. I just lack suitable evidence that they *are*, in my opinion.
Phew,
Andypoo.
But why not simply form a "National Do Not Spam List"?
:)
This sort of thing allows for blanket rejection of the bulk of spam. Legit companies could of course be made exempt, as with the DNC List (debatable).
We could then levy fines on a per-incident basis.
I'll admit that FINDING the spammers might be more difficult than tracking a telemarketer - but not a hell of a lot more difficult.
You also have to consider that, unless it's an outright scam like #419, somebody is paying the spammer. Making it illegal to purchase "leads" from spammers would also be a REALLY SWELL THING TO TRY. After all, buying stolen property (even if you didn't KNOW for sure that it was stolen) is still illegal. It's not really that hard for these mortgage brokers and discount drug companies to know if they're dealing with a legitimate source or not.
Just a few thoughts. Comments are encouraged
** Chigusaaa!!! You're the coolest girl in the WORLD!!! **
Again, you missed his point. These people are operating completely via proxies. The websites, the trojaned open-relays, the dns hosting, are based in Asia and operated discretly by career spammers in the US. The only way you can trace it, is either the fingerprint in the spam or by "reverse-hacking" those already trojaned machines to find the path back to the original spammer's location.
If free speech were really an issue would those sites still exist? The great thing about freedom of speech is that when the government tries to stomp on it there is always someone ready to bring it to the general publics attention.
Of course our culture is disgusting! We lead the world in pornography and violence. It just so happens that we inherited our dominant culture from the English.
Spam is no more free speech than your local bookie painting his ad on the side of your house or car is free speech. In fact, to come close, he would have to bill you for the paint.
This is in my mind is off the wall because what I think they are saying here is if said person has not agreed to Rules " Agreement" then they can not communicate I think they did one of two things here went to far or this needs some clarification as to what the law is tiring to protect. Has the person not already agreed to a set of terms when they signed they cell /text Messaging Service Provider? Before I say the U.S should follow by creating the same type of law I would like to see a copy of the UK Law.
If that is the case, then wouldn't the spam sent from China/Korea be overwhelmingly written in English, instead of wacky Chinese/Korean character sets? I may just be a statistical anomoly, but the bulk (heh) of my bulk is from China/Korea, and the vast majority of that is in non-English character sets, which seems to point to an origin with non-English-speaking spammers.
All they have to do now is to use an opt-in with vague wording, like "check here if you Don't want offers", and then later "check here if you do want offers"... after a few of those, many people would accidentally check the wrong one, and be spammed into oblivion -- legally no less!
stuff |
Given the difficulty the US is having of not only enforcing but also legally maintaining the "Do-Not-Call" Phone Registry federal initiative, I have doubts that the US would ever be able to implement an effective anti-spam law
While spammers don't have the political clout of telemarketers, it is easier to enforce laws aimed at telemarketing than spam as the major customers of telemarketers tend to be large corporations (long distance phone companies) and phone calls are easier to trace back to source than e-mail.
Yes, interesting factoid for the day! The UK is actually an independent nation that actually has its own laws! Gosh!
It will probably end up with a staff of 3, and the most they'll do is send warning letters to people.
This government will only put an effort in to prosecute people when they can make some money or spoil people's fun.
IMHO the law should not apply to emails which are written and sent to a single recipient. For example, I think it should be legal for me to send my CV to a company, attached to a personalised email. The thing to outlaw is "bulk" spamming, whereby multiple emails are generated by a process which is primarily automatic.
Unfortunately, the law (see Google's cached version, section 22 - HMSO seems to have been down for days)
appears to make no such distinction: sending a single email without prior permission to someone you don't know is just as illegal as sending 100,000,000. [IANAL, though]
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Um...
By participating in email you ARE agreeing in advance to accept email...
Who would have thought we could just block BocaRaton. Also, looks like if I have a contest and tell people that register that they get additional entries for people that they refer - they are now breaking the law by spamming their friends.
comment directly in my journal
I tried to email my complaint to them, but they didn't agree to accept my email first, and now I'm looking at 2-5 :(
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I'd actually like to see a few people found guilty of this and fined a negligable amount on the grounds they were "less than technically competent" or whatever legal euphemism for "dumb" the court comes up with.
That euphemism would be "negligent," at least here in the US.
Since I have worked directly with this, interpretation of Norwegian law says that wording like "check here if you DON'T want offers" is not allowed in the first place. Part of the reason for this is that the recipient of the e-mail may not have bothered to read it, and according to the definition of consent, silence/non-response does not equal consent. I've never encountered any situations where the person clicked on the "wrong" link.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Take the American "do-not-call" list as an example. I know it's done wonders to prevent idiot marketeers from trying to send faxes to my home voice line at 2am. Not.
Maybe that'll teach them to protect their system against worms.
as ignorance of the law is no defence, i am going to e-mail all my contacts at once and tell them about this. i also encourage all of you to mail everyone in your address book and tell them. maybe, even do a good deed and e-mail some people you never have before to spread this excellent news.
the more the merrier!
That's not a problem. "Excuse me sir, your car was used in a bank robbery yesterday. We'd like you to answer some questions." One alibi later - that person is not guilty of a crime.
Similarly "Excuse me sir, your computer was used to deliver illegal spam yesterday. We'd like you to answer some questions." One locked down computer later - that person is not guilty of a crime.
The requirement for you to defend yourself when something of yours was used in a crime is not a new problem. The only problem is if the cops decide you should have known - if you work with computers it could be hard to argue that you don't know how to stop it being used for sending spam, just as if the bank robber was your housemate and was on your car insurance. Again this is not a new problem.
This may even bounce back to Microsoft - if the security of their OS is shown in many cases to be the source of the problem - raw sockets and all that sort of stuff - then they may find themselves (a) having to produce a more secure OS to protect their consumers from crims or (b) in the dock.
Not that (b) need necessarily hold any fears for them if it's an American dock of course.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
What about the companies that pay for spamming services? Are they just as liable as the people who are sending the Spam? I mean, there wouldn't be (as much) Spam if companies wouldn't be paying for it. And there would be even less if they were fined for using these services.
TruePunk | Games
I get tons of spam that is written in Chinese, Korean and Russian. From looking at the phone numbers and Internet addresses listed in the ads, these are not from American companies. Much of it is relayed through computers on American broadband ISPs. I'm guessing that there are a lot of virus/worm infected PCs on these networks with backdoors for spammers. Why so many companies in Moscow want to spam me with their ads is a mystery to me.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If they don't forward your message on to all of their friends they will suffer terrible bad luck, never win the lottery, and never get a great rate on a refinanced mortgage.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
This is not going to cure all spam overnight all by itself, ergo it's pointless.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I would like to see some Attorney General demand proof that people opted-in for the spam in question and if they don't check out with the people on the list they should be held criminally liable. I constantly get spams saying "You are receiving this because you chose to receive offers from blah blah blah..." Really? I did? Must have been one of those wild, drunken email nights I keep having.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
latest trend in spam to my inbox seems to be purposefully incorrectly spelling words - like the title of this post- v1agra for example is one i see quite frequently, Now there is NO other reason to do this i can think of other than to get passed everybodys mail filter rules which block anything with webcam or viagra or enlargement in the titles - but this seems silly to me, if someone has set up a rule like that, i think its safe to say that they NEVER will buy this type of product, so bypassing their mail rules is futile. they STILL won't buy it, they will just add a new rule. (when can i get regular expressions in my mail rules? anyone know of a client that supports this?)
... another thing i don't understand though - is why spam is seemingly unaccountable - there HAS to be a contact otherwise no-one can buy the product thats being spammed. surely its a small task to call the contact number or whatever and arrange for the arrest of whoever answers the phone?
bah,
and your right - as a uk citizen i am also aware that this new law will do NOTHING.
In order to complain you need to download a Microsoft Word document from http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual .aspx?id=95
Then you need to print it out, fill it in, sign it and them snail mail it to the Agency.
It beggers belief
I hope they sent out an email to all UK citizens informing them of this.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
And maybe two classes of email public and private, private its illegal to contact without the strictest permission, public ok but still no spamming, (i.e. a reporter might need a public one for story leads etc), we could have a convention like say fred@foo.bar.net is private and fred@pub.foo.bar.net is public, in addition we could looks at having some data in the mx records to id it as public or private. As individuals we might choose not to have a public email, or to only accept polite requests for permission to contact us from those we care to on the public, and on the private maybe only cryptologically signed messages from people in our address book.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
I wouldn't be surprised if the article left out that this only applies to commercial emails. If it doesn't then it should.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Not very encouraging...
I hope not. Oh well, I live in the U.S. anyway.
This may provide the political leverage to toughen up US spam laws. If EU ISPs (like Virgin.net") start advertising in the US, that would put pressure on Congress.
Although I can entirely see your point, that could have been a stalin quote...
And yes- in the UK, I get as much spam from china as I do from US. Though the ones that annoy me most are the ones from Nigeria.
I also get continually hit with worm infected mail clients - my server filters them - but not without taking some performance hits.
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
It's also worth pointing out that under US law, commercial speech doesn't receive full protection. This pretty much makes any first amendment arguments regarding spam null.
hot foreign sheep.
Since you have to pay for most of the things that spammers offer via a credit card, how about pressuring the credit card companies to be more vigilant about what vendors it allows to accept their cards? Since spamming is motivated by money, and most of that money is via CC, I bet we could make a siginificant dent in the flow of spam by taking away their ability to charge for their products.
Being a British citizen recieving spam to a personal mailbox, I phoned the "Information Commission" to get them to so something about the 50 or so spams I have had since midnight when the act came into force.
Their procedure is for me to print out a 4 page Word document (no rtf, html or any other version!), manually fill in dozens of mostly irrelevant questions, and then snail-mail(!) the form to them.
I pointed out that mailing them 200 pages of handwritten notes every 6 hours was a bit impractical, and they told me they would ONLY investigate cases where I had CONTACTED THE SPAMMER AND ASKED TO UNSUBSCRIBE!
I told the person on the other end that replying to Spam is the best way to get deluged with more, and they agreed with me.
The only bright side is that they will soon put up details of how to bypass the Information Commission and take action on your own.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
This law is only really enforceable against reasonably legitimate companies with UK addresses. It needs a test case, and I've found a real doozy of a target!
For years now, Yahoo have been sticking html and text adverts on the end of messages on YahooGroups mailing lists, which bugs the hell out of me. So I just mailed Yahoo UK to tell them I'm not consenting to recieving adverts from them.
Technically, I can claim 5,000 for each one I get from now on. It will be interesting to see how this works out - maybe they will unsubscribe me from everything?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
The paperwork/procedure is available now, from this site.
It's ineffectual paperwork, naturally -- and to use it you have to be able to read documents created in a secret proprietary format (MS Word) -- but then, just look at the ineffectual law it's supporting!
Yup, looks like the politicians have dropped the ball again...
As a former Verio employee they have a large managed and dedicated hosting facility in Boca. They bought the old IBM building there in around 96-7. A company called Hiway. They also moved a huge load of servers from Orem Utah(porn I would imagine)
So this would make sense the shitload of spam coming from Boca.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
If I research potential customers and send them an email to sell my services, am I a spammer?
I claim that mass mailings would be spam however if I have taken the time to hunt down contact information for potential customers sending them my marketing information via published contact addresses (Phone, Post or Email) should all be viable methods.
What do slashdot readers think?
comment directly in my journal
This is JuggleGeek's resume. I will rip it to shreds because he is viscous and very much an unskilled arrogant jerk that constantly makes paranoid statements, espouses half truths and makes arrogant comments on Slashdot. JuggleGeek: An NT 4.0 Lover. A bit behind the times, don't you think? His work is so cheap and unprofessional they use Win98. He claims to be a programmer. His "workstation" OS of choice: Win98. Nice.
HAND CODED HTML! WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK IT COULD STILL HAPPEN?
You mean "Thought it would happen," not thunk. Thunking is something a "programmer" should know about. Most people hand core or use code to generate HTML. Big fucking deal
WELL, IT'S MOSTLY HAND CODED. BUT TO BE FAIR, I HAVE USED
HOMESITE 2.5, AND IT IS PRETTY NICE.
So it is not hand coded. Make up your mind. Moron
MOSTLY, I LIKE HAVING A QUICK ONE-KEY METHOD OF SEEING HOW
THE PAGE LOOKS AT ANY GIVEN POINT.
HACKER : STEPHEN WHITIS
You cannot hack HTML. That is an amateurish, juvenile thing to say. You can author HTML, no more. Its as easy as using a typewriter
Stephen "JuggleGeek" Whitis's Resume Page (p1 of 3)
- Moron error. Possessive form of Whitis is Whitis'.
I am currently seeking employment.
Forgone conclusion. That is why resumes are written. Moron.
I am interested in Delphi programming, with an emphasis on internet related applications, user interfaces, and databases. Web design is not a specialty area, but I have basic skills and an interest in developing them further.
Interest in a subject is not a reason to hire you. No one cares what you like. It is about what you can do for other people. Moron. So, you want your next employer to teach you not to suck in web design?
I currently live in Dallas, and have no interest in moving.
I currently have a company "INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE" and have no interest in hiring you.
I am not looking for "traditional" work. Part time work would be considered, as well as telecomuting [SIC] work. The usual 9 to 5 job doesn't interest me, as I have an ongoing project which already takes up a certain amount of my time.
Translation: I'm a loser that cant keep a real job. I don't have the attention span or the responsibility to finish anything. I like to telecommute to further hide my ability to do nothing. I fail to mention the project because its probably killing small animals or fucking sheep.
If you have a project you need done, and the project interests me, I can be hired cheap.
You can be hired cheap because you suck
If you are looking for a full-time, long term, 9-5 kind of guy, then I'm not the one you're looking for. I'm a self taught programmer with 20 years of professional experience. I'm confident that I can be successful with any programming project I take on, but I will only accept offers where the project interests me and the working conditions meet with my non-standard lifestyle.
This isnt a resume. This is a stupid conversation you are having with no one. Self taught means you point out the fact most real programmers will rip you apart. 20 years? Doubtful. Most of your expoerience is more IT than programming. You have never contributed to an opensource project to prove you can submit code, you have no code portfolio. Non-standard lifestyle. FUCK YOU.
I get a lot of emails from headhunters wanting me to consider jobs out of state. I am not leaving Texas. (And I'm very unlikely to leave Dallas.) If your out of state company wants to hire me, then I'll need to telecommute.
You are t
Well, if it's now illegal to send in the UK, that would explain why I just won the UK Lottery today! All I have to do is to call a phone # or respond to an email addy, with the bank account # where I'd like the $$$ deposited...
I do have to give them credit - it was a very well written and nicely crafted email. Didn't look like the average SPAM missive. So I'm certain it will capture some folks in it's Nigerianesque tendrils...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just thinking out loud here, but maybe they should be sued also for helping the spammers with leaving an unprotected computer connected to the INTERNET. Just a thought
" 11. In paragraph 9 of Schedule 9 -
(a) in subparagraph (1)(a) after the words "rights under" there shall be inserted the words "the 2003 Regulations or"; and
(b) in subparagraph (1)(b) after the words "arising out of" there shall be inserted the words "the 2003 Regulations or". "
- - - - -
GOOD GOD!!!!!!!
This is unreadable. Its the legal equivalent of computer program source code full of go-to's.
Yes, there are some people that hate me. Spammers, mostly. You, whoever you are, for reasons unknown, have taken me personally under your wing. I'm not too worried about what the spammers think of me, or what you think of me. I have no idea who you are, or what your problem is. But since you're just trolling, I don't expect you to tell me. Chances are, to do so you would have to admit who you are, and we all know that isn't likely to happen.
Since I started using MailWasher (free; Linux-compatible version info here), I haven't had any spam in my inbox. I realize that this doesn't solve the spam problem, but it sure does help out until the Spamish Inquisition comes along and puts things right.
A slippery slope argument isn't inherently fallacious (or inherently valid). If I recall correctly it's an inductive argument, and analogous to the idea (or myth) that if you put a frog in a pot of water and heat it up slowly enough, it won't know it's being cooked to death.
There are three assumptions, any or all of which may be true. First, people tend to adapt to changes to the status quo, and eventually come to view their new condition as normal. Second, there is a tendency for conditions to drift in one direction, as a result of human nature, the dynamics of bureaucracy or political power, or whatever (this assumption is IMO sometimes naive). Third, the end-point of this drift is unwanted. As a consequence of these three factors, over time the variable in question will tend towards a (usually unwanted) attractor point.
The slippery slope argument as applied to civil rights: First, although people may initially object to decreased civil rights, over time they (and especially their children) come to think of the condition of fewer civil rights as normal. Second, it is the nature of government (any kind of government) to increase the degree of control over the governed (e.g., pass an overreaching law, which is then exploited by a subsequent administration), and conversely curtail the rights of the governed. Third, having few or no civil rights sucks. Therefore, we ought to resist on principle all attempts by any government, democratic or not, to take away our rights.
Of course, sometimes the slippery slope works to one's advantage, e.g., decreasing gender gap in wages, more racial integration, etc. As people live, work, and interact with others different from themselves they (hopefully) begin to see those differences as less important than character or merit, and pass that to their own kids.
Of course the concern, or appeal, depends on whether the attractor point (zero civil rights, or a merit based culture, in the above two examples) is to your liking or not. For me it's no and yes, respectively, but YMMV.
My chief concern, in this particular case, is that this bill will inspire bills of this nature in the US. It's been my experience that US politicians tend to make a mess of things when they try to attack social or technological problems with laws (especially once Rep. Foozle from Bumblefuck County, and a hundred of his peers, attach riders to exempt every large corporation on the planet). I don't know the state of civil rights in the UK, and I'm not going to presume to object for people who have the right to speak up for themselves.
ma kroppinl badongis feeple korp maningis prorping da kuul latork miffle cla tonk chingah glompion pifert maningis
zn xebccvay onqbatvf srrcyr xbec znavatvf cebecvat qn xhhy yngbex zvssyr pyn gbax puvatnu tybzcvba cvsreg znavatvf Sorry, but if that's the best you can do, ROT13 is all the time I'm willig to give you. Post under your real account, or email me with your problem, or whatever. But trolling is a waste of your time and mine, and I'm not going to put a lot of effort into figuring you out if you just keep posting nonsense.
There is alot of this on slashdot. They just copy and paste the whole first paragraph of an article they are linking to. This is pladiarism since they do not list the source of the information to give credit to in a proper mannor.
dont rot13 my language! you belittle it!
im speaking a dialect i learned from watching hitchikers guide to tehg alaxy. i found ford's book and learned it. boy if you only knew what i called you!
i dont have a real account.
i dont know you email.
trolling is a waste of time for me but i have to protect the public from you.
im sitting in a tin can. floating. in space.
I get a lot of spam from computers located in China and S Korea, but they are advertising for companies based in the US.