New York Spam Ring Lawsuits

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Microsoft and the Attorney General of New York have announced multiple lawsuits against what they term as a spam ring operating throughout New York and responsible for sending billions of illegal junk e-mail. According to articles at ABCNews.com, CNet News.com and elsewhere the state of New York has filed 6 lawsuits against alleged notoriuous spammer Scotty Richter and accomplices. Richter is well known among the anti-spam community, holding the dubious distinction of being ranked number 3 on the Spamhaus Registry of Known Spam Offenders. Microsoft has seperately filed 5 other lawsuits."

Comments

How about the people who hired the spammers?

[jcr]

Spammers send the spam.. Someone else takes the orders and the money from people who reply to the spam. Is anyone going after them?

-jcr

Re:How about the people who hired the spammers?

[CKW]

Seriously now - I've wiped out an entire anthill of ants that was living in the ground by the foundation of the house whose basement apartment I was renting. The key to wiping out hundreds of ants is a) persistence, and b) persistence. How many seconds are there in 10 minutes? 600. Guess how many ants I can kill in 10 minutes? As many as come out the door of the anthill. Neat thing about ants, you kill a few and the pheremone scents released during battle and death attract all the rest to "defend the colony". Sure there are some out foraging and deep in the colony that won't be there, but come back tomorrow and do it again, and do it for 4 days in the row - and poof, you've wiped out an entire anthill without using any chemicals or traps, with your bare little finger. Come back once a week all summer and kill the stragglers who are struggling to feed the un-seen queen, and eventually the queen starves to death - poof, colony gone.

Persistence and the willingness to do the job, that's all it takes.

Hey, if the RIAA thinks that they can sue all 60,000,00 of us file sharers, surely we can hunt down and exterminate a few hundred small time spammers!!

It was just the other week where a spammer was quoted as saying that profits were down and cost of business had quadrupled due to the efforts of spam-filtering and anti-spammers. We just need to finish the job off properly, as opposed to easing up and getting used to the status quo.

Years prior to this no-one outside of the tech community had a high awareness of spam. Now *everyone* agrees it's a vast menace. Now is the time to strike.

Re:How about the people who hired the spammers?

[caspper69]

Actually, you're right. I own a mortgage company, and we tried a company called DMG (Direct Marketing Group) to generate leads for us. First of all, right off the bat I asked if they "spammed" customers. They took it very poorly and said they used "targeted email campaigns only to customers who had opted in." Well, the day I received an email from them was the day we stopped using the service. I have never opted-in, and as a matter of fact, I go out of my way whenever I submit my email address anywhere to explicitly opt-out. Not only that, but the leads they generated were bunk anyway. It just goes to show that if companies are responsible corporate citizens (like mine!) then these marketing companies will go away, because I certainly know I don't want to be associated with spamming in any way, shape or form.

Spam fighting community

[ozzee]

If we all to 30 minutes per day to fight spam, I think we would be far better off.

I don't know if there are communities of SPAMN fighters but it is obvious that if a small percentage of the population did this, the spam cost effectiveness would disappear.

Some companies out there are frightful with their attitude. For instance, yesterday I got a mortgage offer which forwarded me to a web site which I entered mostly truthful information except the name was different. The offer came with an "exclusive" security system. Double whammy ...

I was called back within minutes by a company in Austin TX and when I asked them about their SPAM policy I got a really rude response. I suspect if they get a few more of these phone calls they'll stop doing this. I also found that a large US bank has web pages that refer to this company. Calling the bank and getting a cogent response about spam was engligtening. No one there can help. I suspect a few phone calls from customers could also help this situation.

Unfortunately, the spammers are pretty astute at making life hell on-line so I think this is only going to work through large numbers of small community groups.

So a question for the slashdot community. Are there any of you interested in organizing ?