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Brightmail Denies "White List" Deal With Spammer
ThePretender writes "From the InfoWorld article: 'A spammer's claim to his clients that he had an agreement with anti-spam technology vendor Brightmail to not block his traffic was contradicted by Brightmail officials today.' From the sounds of it, Scott Richter (apparently a notorious spammer) might just be looking for some media attention, he even goes as far saying he has similar agreements with some major ISPs. Ouch! May the drama unfold..."
If it's true that Brightmail made no special deal with him, it looks like he could be prosecuted for consumer fraud as well as spamming. Indeed, his clients could presumably sue him too. If Brightmail did make a special deal with him, assuming that they advertise that they block spam, then they comitted consumer fraud. Somebody's in trouble here one way or the other.
The result of the Anti-Spam law will be more American jobs moving over seas or to disreputable neighbors.
That's like complaining that laws against kiddie porn mean that Americans are missing out on working in the lucrative kiddie porn industry.
Think about it. Once those jobs move over seas America will have even less power to constrain the pread of spam.
Once they go overseas, e-mail providers can just put country blocks in place (see blackholes.us) and the problem is solved. If those countries want to join in our reindeer games, then they can crack down on the spammers and the blocks will go away.
The biggest problem with the "I didn't opt in!" complaints is that spammers have gotten better and better at submerging the opt-in indication to a yes-defaulted checkbox within all sorts of websites and software. Once you have slipped up and comprimised your e-mail address this way, you've basically given that publisher permission to spam you and share your address with any other spammers they want to "partner" with.
Therefore, anti-spam laws will always have a hole that a truck can be driven through. Since proving that you've never accidently tripped over a "universal opt-in" is nearly impossible to do, successful prosecutions will be tough.
The only way we're ever going to fully kill spam is to abandon SMTP and get a better way to verify that e-mail really came from the claimed sender and leaves a valid return address...
<sarcasm>
And this is different from standard Microsoft policy, how?
</sarcasm>
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Part of the reason to toss the name 'brightmail' around is because their product is awesome at stopping spam. The spammer is probably just trying to undermine brightmail's credibility.
Use the "which is more probable?" principle: which is more probable? A anti-spam technology ruin itself by promising blocking spam and letting thousands of junk mail pass by becouse ti made a deal that will ruin it's bussiness or The goo'dam spammer is lying?
- no sig.
He's likely trying to spin some statement that says "If you really are doing opt-in e-mail, we'd never block you," from Brightmail into a promise that they won't blacklist him... doesn't quite work that way in his case.
From the Reuter's article linked to in the story..
"Scott Richter, a bulk e-mailer who ranks No. 3 on Spamhaus's list, told Reuters he was not worried by the arrest because he said he does not break any laws.
"I'm happy to see law enforcement cracking down on people who use false headers and I wish they could get all of them," Richter said. He added that he sends large amounts of commercial e-mail but does not disguise routing information and takes pains to comply with Internet providers' policies.
"I was just at AOL's office a month ago," Richter said.
AOL officials declined to comment on their relationship with Richter or say whether he had visited their offices. "We are aware that he follows the legal developments (of anti-spam laws) very closely," AOL Assistant General Counsel Charles Curran said."
What do you do when you know you've screwed up, but can't say so?
Decline to comment of course!
I don't normally opt-out of ANY spam. In this case, I knew they already had the email address and knew it was valid. This was a company I was dealing with while we were evaluating different anti-spam software, not just any spammer. I opted out because the fact that they deal in anti-spam software told me that they could be trusted not to spam. I was obviously wrong.
But why is the rum gone?
If you can't kill them then filter them...
:/
One thing that seems consistent lately is that domains what are linked in the spam have been created in less than a month, more likely in the past week.
Do a whois on linked <a href="..." <img src="..." <script src="..." domains, and if (registration date < 1 month) add-to-spamminess(+1);
Yes I know, whois servers aren't meant for this