Slashdot Mirror
Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits
ackthpt writes "Wired is carrying news that Microsoft, America Online, Earthlink and Yahoo are filing suits against spammers under the CANSPAM act. They will 'follow the money' to find the perpetrators and shut them down. Suits currently filed against John Does will have actual names attached once subpoenas get the names of the actual persons. I wish them all the luck, as I clean about 500 pieces of drek a day from my mailboxes." Other readers point to coverage from the BBC and from the Associated Press (here's the AP story as carried by the Boston Globe).
I wonder what effect this will have on the number of spam messages we get daily?
I bet it will have an effect, but more than likely the long-term effect will simply be to move even more of the spam off-shore.
What about the spam ( all those cd's ) AOL sends me via snail mail ?? Can they sue themeslves for it ??
Though I do hope the junk Cds dont stop I use them as disposable cup coasters.
"String 'em up, I say, bring back lynching - mob justice for spammers!"
Can we cut them and rub salt in their wounds first
I'd like to bring up what I think is an interesting point here.
How does this type of announcement (and others like it) affect our role in this struggle? What can we do to make their efforts more fruitful?
I know people who in the past took it upon themselves to trace certain spammers and send an email with relevant data to the host mail provider (lets say, Yahoo for instance) in an effort to perhaps provoke some response.
My question is: does this work? Is it effective? Or will the spammer just as easily switch addresses? If so, was it worth it to give them that kind of trouble or are we simply wasting our time?
If, after this discussion, we determine that it is a worthy method of helping, how would you go about doing it? What type of advice would you give to people who would like to take action once in a while?
Obviously I can't take action against every piece of spam that hits my mailbox. However, there are certain, shall we say...habitual offenders. Looking at my hotmail account over these past few years (I use my optonline account for serious mail) its fairly easy to figure out that a large bulk of those emails are coming from a common source.
Anyway, I'd really appreciate some input - including technical details.
I can't help but wonder how much legal suits like this will force spammers underground. Making spam illegal and going after spammers won't stop spam as long as there is money to be made off the drones.
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"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Nice to know that some of my DSL payments are being put to good use...
Can I, as a web admin, sue a spammer for sending mail to my domain? I'm on shared hosting. (cheap plug: my website is www.oldos.org -- go there. but don't spam me)
Jay | http://oldos.org
Six spammers is probably a drop in the desert, and shutting them down won't cause a noticable impact, but at least it's a start.
Do you think it's at least as good as doing nothing? Set some examples, drag some faces before the cameras, tell how their houses on Minnow Pond Drive have been seized, things like that. I've got no sympathy. I do hope they really nail the right people. I wish I could bill Alan Ralsky for all the time I've wasted deleting his deluge.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Spamassassin also, but configured to be paranoid about false positives - this is a work email address, and I have clients who insist on sending me "looks-like-spam-but-it-could-be-a-contract" html email, which I really don't want to miss :-)
Simon
"How do people manage to get this much spam? I'm on about 20 Mailing list and I give my e-mail t a lot of those sites that ask me to sign up. I get maybe 3 a day."
Maybe you're lucky. Or maybe your ISP blocks it before you ever see it. Or maybe your addresses haven't been around long enough.
I own a few domains, have email links on them, belong to mailing lists, etc. I get around 80-100 pieces of spam each and every day. With MacOS X's mail filter I rarely actually see any of them in my inbox, but I still have to quickly scan the pile for the odd message or two that was legit.
Now that the SPAMMERS have moved from overseas to Domestic (USA) machines the lawyers can move in and hit these people hard, in the pocket book. This looks like an industry wide effort with Comcast shutting off the spigot this week. The denied loggings here, from comcast machines, dropped off significantly this past week. UUnet is still the top of the list percent wise. Now that we have them where we want them, here at home, Hit them hard.
The spammers are partly to blame. Think about it, they are alfter the money. People who aid them (hosting, providing a proxy, or even buying from their advertisements) are also guilty. Companies who host their web pages should also be blacklisted.
In theory, their customers are also guilty of helping the spammers thrive (just like supporting terrorism economically) and in the future should be tagged in some way. The pill companies (or other cmpanies) who are benefitting from increased sales should also be included.
Call me antispam fanatic, but I hate wasting time every day figuring out what to delete and what to read. All the wasted time is basically lost productivity (think productivity in the health care field)
They should go for the death penalty.
These spammers are being sued for damages to the ISPs? Why can't they include their customers in the law suit? We're the ones supporting every dollar they earn, and we suffer plenty because of spammers. The ISPs are footing the bill for the lawsuit, sure, but it'd be nice if we got a coupon or something.
I have been doing a lot of research on SPAM lately for some of my undergrad work. One of the biggest reasons that SPAM exists is because the spammers actually make money! As reported on Slashdot back in November, I beleive, aproximately 7% of people actually buy things from SPAM messages. Given the extremely low cost to the spammers, this is a GREAT profit margin.
I will applaud this effort, if they are actually able to accurately trace the people responsible. By suing the spammers responsible, their cost of advertising will increase. Less profit. Less motivation to continue spamming.
GOOD LUCK to Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink, and Yahoo in this action!
I think a lot of people are missing the point of what the ISPs are doing.
Spammers have to be earning a decent amount of money from all those people that DO actually open the spam and buy into those products. Otherwise no one would go to the trouble of cataloguing e-mail addresses, setting up messages and methods to defeat the spam filters, and then sending all of those messages out to bazillions of people.
If you simply follow the money like these ISPs will hopefully be doing. You can punish those using the spamming as a form of advertisement (because the money has to be going into someone's pocket!), and possibly catch the spammers themselves. Nevertheless, if you make it NOT profitable to spam, simple economics will dictate that you will end up seeing much less of it.
Posting regularly in USENET from 1994-2001, and having email addresses online seems to have done the trick for me.
I average a few hundred viral emails a month from infected machines with my details on them, and maybe 300 spams a day.
Most of them I don't see but that is irrelevent. People who say that spam isn't an issue are missing the point.
My colocated box costs me money for a months bandwidth, simply accepting the mail on my server eats into my total bandwidth allowance and that is directly costing me money.
(I'm in the UK, and the majority of my mail is focussed on American products containing American phone numbers - maybe not sent from inside the USA but definatey on behalf of American companies).
The lawsuits will expose the names and addresses of the spammers eventually. What happens then is up to fate. . .
I understand that you may not want to use your ISP as a forwarder (neither do I). My solution has been to set up a virtual dedicated server (jvds.com -- no affiliation, just a satisfied customer, yadda, yadda) and run postfix and all the other stuff I want connected directly to the internet there. I still run postfix locally, but it forwards everything to the remote. JVDS is remarkably cheap (I think they go down to $12.00/month, and offer a variety of linux distros as well as freebsd.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
I think this news opens up a great opportunity for Slashdot readers and Sys Admins in general. This would be a great time to be able to put questions to them such as:
1. What are you doing to track down spammes.2. What can we do to assist? Is there some type of site, or address we can send information to assist in tracking down offenders.
Lets get an interview.
Just my thoughts.
Huh?
It's amuses the hell out of me that when the RIAA uses John Doe lawsuits followed by subpoenas to fill in names for the John Does, it's abusive and horrible, but when the _exact same tactic_ is used to fight spammers, it gets a laudatory response?
You could try, if you really want to. File a lawsuit, class action if you feel like it. You could use trespass to chattels as one claim - see eBay v. Bidder's Edge for one example (only granting an injunction, but indicating that trespass would likely succeed at trial).
Maybe you could also try unjust enrichment. This generally requires a showing that the defendant recieved a benefit provided by you and that the defendant was unjustly enriched thereby - i.e. to let the defendant remain enriched without compensating you would be improper under the law. Courts in such cases can decide a contract was formed (a fiction) - called a quasi-contract, or they might use another legal construction, but this allows them to order restitution.
I'm currently researching unjust enrichment, unfortunately, it seems a difficult cause of action to prove sufficiently. My guess, though, is that with the bad public view of spamming, courts might be willing to go your way.
Trespass to chattels is a definite runner.
I can't, however, see any way you can make an unjust enrichment claim. It's a requirement for such claims (in all jurisdictions I've come across) that one person is enriched at the expense of another. But the connection between your loss (bandwidth and time) and his profit is just too indirect for you to be able to claim that he is enriched at your expense.
I'd also be surprised if punitive damages are ever available in a claim for restitution for unjust enrichment - you ordinarily just recover to the extent of your loss and the other party's enrichment.