Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits

I wonder how effective this will be... by Zone-MR · 2004-03-10 06:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

I wonder what effect this will have on the number of spam messages we get daily?

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.

Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by isn't+my+name · 2004-03-10 06:15 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by shepd · 2004-03-10 06:16 · Score: 2, Funny

Spammers are like roaches. If you squash one, they don't go near that area until it's washed up.

With some luck, this'll send them into hiding for a while.

--
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by Like2Byte · 2004-03-10 06:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

It'll probably be very effective considering that a few spammers are responsible for most of the SPAM anyway.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by notque · 2004-03-10 06:18 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

This has been a trend that I've noticed for awhile. Soon all spam jobs will be moved off-shore, and our Government doesn't do anything to stop this.

Earthlink has personally been responsible for 3 severance packages I've recieved (3 ISPs, all bought by Earthlink, and my job phased out.)

Now they want to take away any possibility of me working to create, or to stop spam.

I'm outraged.

--
http://use.perl.org
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by blurfus · 2004-03-10 06:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

But then again, if it is like local auto-theft (in this city anyway) where 5 thieves are responsible for over 80% of the auto-related crime, it could make a difference

These six spammers *may* be responsible for (say) 50% of the spams. It is at least a good 'chunk' to make an impact (if that were the case of course)

imho

--
will work for Karma
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by secolactico · 2004-03-10 06:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Yes, but will the spam beneficiaries move off shore (like some of the online gambling operators had to)? Unless they are willing to move also, the "follow the money" procedure will get to them.

--
No sig
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by ackthpt · 2004-03-10 06:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

I wonder what effect this will have on the number of spam messages we get daily?

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
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by MadelineAlbright · 2004-03-10 06:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

Moving offshore will only work to some extent. If laws can be created that allow you to go after the companies who pay the spammers to spam, and we manage to stop the the local companies from paying for spam to be sent, then the only people left are offshore sales companies. But they really don't want to pay for international shipping for a few bottles of viagra, so spam should diminish a fair bit at that point.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by Albanach · 2004-03-10 06:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Spamhaus reckon less than 200 spam outfits make up 90% of spam. So 6% would be a bit more than a drop in the ocean - and if they get caught and face big fines (or jail time) we could see an even bigger impact.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by Otter · 2004-03-10 06:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

I wonder what effect this will have on the number of spam messages we get daily?
I realize I'm almost alone here in my sentiment, but -- the tide is turning on spam. It's simply making email unusable. Email is too useful and too important to ISPs, software makers and corporate users for them to allow a handful of morons to destroy it. Something has to be done and therefore something _will_ be done.
I keep saying that here and am always surprised by how confident everyone else is for the spammers. I just don't get you guys -- we're all helpless in the face of big corporations but a bunch of dirtbags flogging V*!*a*g*r*a and Par1s H1lt0n V1d30s! can spit in Bill Gates' face?

--
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by Tuxinatorium · 2004-03-10 07:30 · Score: 1

You don't need laws for that, you can just sue them. You can sue anyone for any reason. There are already plenty of ways ISP could nail a company for paying offshore spammers. One is that they are directly complicit in abusing their network against the policies of the ISP. That's good enough to at least get a restraining order, and then nail them for big $$$ if they do it again.

--
Repeal the DMCA!
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by ummDuh · 2004-03-10 07:32 · Score: 1
but what about this part from the article
1. Nancy Anderson, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, said even offshore spammers aren't protected against legal action, since they were doing business in the U.S. by sending spam through servers and services located in the United States.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by httpdotcom · 2004-03-10 07:36 · Score: 1

a handful of spammers contribute to about 70-90% of the spam in the world.
I would bet that if this is successful (doubt it), spam, in its current configuration, will drop tremendously, only to rise up in some new format.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by BradNelson · 2004-03-10 07:40 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

From the AP story:
"they filed six lawsuits against hundreds of people who were accused of sending millions of unwanted e-mails"

So it sounds like more than just 6 people.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by gnu-generation-one · 2004-03-10 07:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

predicted responses to the announcement:

# "People will take their illegal business offshore, so we may as well not bother having laws"

# "I filter everything, don't know what you're all complaining about"

# "Only 6 spammers?"

# "I use a challenge-response system, and haven't got an email since.."

Or the usual best

# "But all spammers must be Korean because the proxies they use are in Korea"
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by The_K4 · 2004-03-10 07:52 · Score: 2, Funny

Spoken like someone with dozens of dead roaches in his kitchen floor......
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by emilng · 2004-03-10 08:02 · Score: 2, Informative

According to the article, it's 6 spammers, not 6% of spammers.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by AndroidCat · 2004-03-10 08:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

The spam might move off-shore, but the "spam kings" stay right where they are. Just because it's coming through a Korean proxy for a Chinese-hosted site doesn't mean that anyone is really moving. With the legal muscle those ISPs have, the spammer's "off-shore" protection won't last five minutes.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by GSloop · 2004-03-10 08:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

You're right, the math is off, but the point of the parent is still right.

The 80/20 or 90/10 rules likely still apply. A vast majority of the spam comes from a very small minority. Pick your targets well, and it's likely that the effect would be much larger than one might expect on the ratio of spammers to those who were legally apprehended.

Even on a total spammers to those targeted (200:6) it would be about a 3% drop in spam. If these are some of the most senior/most prolific, the effects might be very much larger than 6%.

(If they give them the death penalty [I wish] I expect the impact might be really large! *grin*)

Cheers,
Greg
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by cyt0plas · 2004-03-10 08:12 · Score: 1

6 out of 200 would be 3%, not 6%.

--
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by iminplaya · 2004-03-10 08:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

jail time--we are a vengeful bunch aren't we? The state(republic?) of Texas murders more people than any other state.(I say murder because all killing is murder. Save the flames for another thread) Is their crime rate any lower than any other state? Of course not. But revenge is popular. We don't care how the other person reacts. But we got our revenge, and we like it! Let's use the jails for truly dangerous people. If we could bring back the practice of shunning, I think we could bring about real results. The fact is that spamming is profitable, and as long as it remains that way, it will continue(think prohibition, alcohol, drugs, etc.) The best we can and should do is to discourage people from buying from the spammers. Save the revenge for the "Superior Being" of your choice.

--
What?
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by UpnAtom · 2004-03-10 08:40 · Score: 1

Murder is generally a crime of passion. Spammers can spam freely - they only do it for money, and I imagine the profits are falling rapidly.
Add in the threat of jail-time (actually a public stoning would be better) and we could start seeing a big reduction.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by bezuwork's+friend · 2004-03-10 08:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

"I wish I could bill Alan Ralsky for all the time I've wasted deleting his deluge."
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.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by _Sharp'r_ · 2004-03-10 08:43 · Score: 2, Funny

Yeah, it's those evil corporations again, suing hardworking spammers and driving more jobs offshore...

--
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by waynelorentz · 2004-03-10 09:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

You are incorrect. Texas has been surpassed by Virginia. But I guess facts don't matter much to the sort of person who is more concerned about a worthless piece of human trash than the five-year-old boy he kept in a pit filled with urine and feces for six months while stabbing him in the eyes with lit cigarettes for fun. Fortunately, the kid died after a year or so. Too bad we can't say the same for his torturer.

Wanna convince someone to support the death penalty? Just have them sit through five or six death penalty trials and listen to all the gory details, rather than the rhymes of the people outside with magic-marker signs who get to go home to their families at night.

--
World's tallest building rises in the desert
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by BobTheLawyer · 2004-03-10 09:37 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by haggar · 2004-03-10 11:33 · Score: 1

First of all, I never bought and never will buy anything advertised in a spam mail.

That said: But they really don't want to pay for international shipping for a few bottles of viagra,

Two problems with this statement:
1. You presume that these spammers really do bother delivering something. I believe these are colossal frauds, and wouldn't be surprised if they didn't ship a ting.

2. You are implying that these companies wouldn't charge the shipping on their customers.

--
Sigged!
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by NumberGod · 2004-03-10 11:37 · Score: 1

Damn outsourcing! :-)
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by iminplaya · 2004-03-10 11:41 · Score: 1

But I guess facts don't matter much to the sort of person who is more concerned about a worthless piece of human trash than the five-year-old boy...

Yeah, well, the fact is that there are thousands of five-year-old boys being shot, bombed, poked ,burned, etc. But that's just colateral damage, right? Where's the concern for them? When it happens here, it's "horrible, criminal, villanous". When it happens in another country, it's "Eh, waddaya gonna do?" Considering how nasty, cruel, phoney the "pillars of society" can be, I feel pretty comfortable sharing my concerns for everyone equally.

--
What?
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by MadelineAlbright · 2004-03-10 11:58 · Score: 1

1) Is there convincing argument or real evidence that spammers are colossal frauds? I've often suspected this myself, but it'd be nice to be able to confirm these suspicions.
2) Sorry for the wording, I wasn't trying to imply that at all. I should have said "neither the companies nor their consumers would find it acceptable to pay extra for the shipping".
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by caluml · 2004-03-10 12:04 · Score: 1

Why not just tattoo Spammer on their forehead?

--
Get your own free personal location tracker
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by Stan92057 · 2004-03-10 14:32 · Score: 1

What good will it do for them to go off-shore? That wont help them from being sued at all.

--
Jack of all trades,master of none
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by Xenographic · 2004-03-10 14:39 · Score: 1

Don't get me wrong, tresspass to chattels might work as a cause of action. However, you might want to read the EFF's paper concerning it.

Basically, there are a lot of less than desireable conclusions one could come to if you extend that form of tresspass too far.

See https://www.eff.org/Cases/Intel_v_Hamidi/20020201_ eff_hamidi_pr.html for more info.
Re:I wonder how effective this will be... by haggar · 2004-03-10 19:46 · Score: 1

The Mbutu Seseseko ads are certainly an evident fraud, as well as the "get rich fast" ones.But recently there was a penis enlargement product customer (ahem) that sued the company behind the product, because it did not have any effect on his size. When this was published on /., everybody went "well DUUHHHHH".

But beyond these, the very fact that spammers and their sponsors are hard to trace, makes them a potential source of fraud, and if they are unscrupulous enough to spam you and don't offer you an opt-out, well, you see where I'm going. This is the world we're living in. These guys are criminalsenjoying a temporary amnesty from the law, and there's no reason why they wouldn't go the full way.

--
Sigged!

Good for them by Space+cowboy · 2004-03-10 06:15 · Score: 3, Informative

This is really excellent news - according to Spamhaus.org, 7 of the top 10 (including the top 2) spammers worldwide are from the USA. Looking at the list of the top 200, I'd say about 80% are from the USA. It needs action within the USA to stop this, and for once I can say I really approve of something AOL, MS and Yahoo are doing [don't know much about Earthlink] - See, I'm not biased at all :-))

Today I received 1681 emails, 137 of which are non-spam. Now I have good anti-spam filters, and I probably only opened about 300 of those, but that's still a major pain where it hurts. String 'em up, I say, bring back lynching - mob justice for spammers!

Simon

--
Physicists get Hadrons!

Re:Good for them by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:21 · Score: 1, Interesting

"String 'em up, I say, bring back lynching - mob justice for spammers!"

Can we cut them and rub salt in their wounds first
Re:Good for them by silas_moeckel · 2004-03-10 06:21 · Score: 3, Informative

I'm getting a similar volume of email with significantly less spam getting through running spamassasin at 4 with no false positives or whitelisting. What spam filter are you using it dosent sound like good spam filters to me.

--
No sir I dont like it.
Re:Good for them by TwistedSquare · 2004-03-10 06:24 · Score: 3, Informative

according to Spamhaus.org, 7 of the top 10 (including the top 2) spammers worldwide are from the USA
Unfortunately from that list 7 of the top 10 spammers alphabetically are from the US, though I don't dispute that the general trend is the majority being from the US
Re:Good for them by YrWrstNtmr · 2004-03-10 06:33 · Score: 1

Now I have good anti-spam filters, and I probably only opened about 300 of those

Why?
Re:Good for them by CaptBubba · 2004-03-10 07:12 · Score: 3, Informative

Look at the bottom of the page where they keep the stats. All but 2 on the list for Febuary are in the US.
I get spam from the #10 guy, but unfortunatly he's recently sold my address so now I get spam from some guy in Lativa as well. While the volume hasn't gone up, the content has changed from being viagra sales to being ads for beastiality. Plus the new spams seem to be harder to filter, loaded with many false html tags trying to get them through. Only 4 emails a day or so make it past the mail filters my ISP uses, but I still don't want that shit in my indox.
Re:Good for them by rainer_d · 2004-03-10 08:07 · Score: 1

Today I received 1681 emails, 137 of which are non-spam.
You should really look into using some RBLs to block the spam at the sender-level.
I run my own MX and I drop 5000 to 6000 connections to my SMTP-port per month, mostly because they are either confirmed open relays, open proxies or from dialup dynamic IPs.
Are you aware that accepting such mail is the equivalent of accepting not prepaid letters (snail-mail) ? How many of those are you going to accept before you stop doing that completely ?
Only ignorant wannabes run an SMTP-server on a dialup line, or people with viruses that have their own SMTP-engine. ;-)
Rainer

--
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Re:Good for them by cyt0plas · 2004-03-10 08:18 · Score: 1

I use TMDA with spamassassin - it works great! TMDA is set to let through anything that SA doesn't think is spam. I then set my filters fairly paranoid.

If someon sends me a message that gets marked as spam, he will get a confirmation message back to make sure the from address is not spoofed.

Also, any replies to messages I send get dated (automatically bypass filters), I can use keyword addresses and sender addresses to make sure people and sites I need to send me mail can reach me (I can always revoke them later), and most (95% or so) never have a challenge at all. It just works.

I blow through over 1800 spam messages per day. Never lost one legit one yet (to the best of my knowledge).

--
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
Re:Good for them by Woody77 · 2004-03-10 09:17 · Score: 1

I run a local SMTP server for sending mail out of because my ISP requires that I have checked my mail within the last n minutes before using theirs. And that sucks when my mail is continuously pulled off their servers and dumped locally. Kinda a PITA to manually "check mail" over my dialup so that the outgoing messages actually go out. Much easier to just let the local SMTP server do the sending.
Re:Good for them by rainer_d · 2004-03-10 09:31 · Score: 1

inda a PITA to manually "check mail" over my dialup so that the outgoing messages actually go out
No, you just have to authenticate before you send your mail via your ISP. Can be done in if-up or whatever you use - I guess it can even be done in Windoze.
Much easier to just let the local SMTP server do the sending.
You can still use your local SMTP-server - we've got many customers who run full-featured mail-servers in their intranets but have no leased lines and pull the mail in via POP3. You just have to use your ISPs MX as relay.
Else you'll be faced with the fact that more and more MXs will just RBL your mail.

--
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Re:Good for them by firewood · 2004-03-10 12:00 · Score: 1

You should really look into using some RBLs to block the spam at the sender-level.
If you are in an ebusiness which deals with the general public (Dell, Amazon, or the soccer mom selling knit socks on eBay.), you will find that this scheme blocks some percentage of current and potential customers, leading to a decrease of revenue. Your boss (maybe that's you) or the sales reps won't like that.

We can only hope . . . by GMontag · 2004-03-10 06:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well, I hope that they get the actual spammers rather than joe-clueless who's machine was hijacked to spread the spam. Hard to show any intent there, but intent seems to be a victim of the spotlight-seekers much too often.

No, I have no sympathy for joe-clueless, but they do not deserve what spammers deserve.

--
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL

Re:We can only hope . . . by nizo · 2004-03-10 06:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well, if I understand this right, they are going to follow the trail to the actual person collecting money, so Jim Bob with his hijacked PC should be safe (until his connection gets unplugged, see earliers Comcast article). I can understand the ISPs being pissed at this, I mean imagine if they didn't have to handle piles of spam all day? It must be fun upgrading your mail servers all the time just to handle the 80% increase in spam.

--
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Re:We can only hope . . . by GMontag · 2004-03-10 06:41 · Score: 1

Oh, I fully understand the stated intent. That is sort of like theory and we should all know how that differs from reality.

--
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Re:We can only hope . . . by diablobynight · 2004-03-10 07:45 · Score: 1

There going after the money. Joe Clueless has nothing to worry, their not simply following an IP back trail, they are literally going to sue the companies that pay for the spam. Which is easy enough, simply click the link in the spam, whatever it has you going to buy, you bring the lawsuit against that company.

you can move the spamservers to korea, but the money is still coming back here, and Microsoft will sniff out the money, they have an excellent legal team.

--
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
Re:We can only hope . . . by BlankTim · 2004-03-10 08:55 · Score: 1

Mostly because this sort of thing attracts unwanted attention to an ISP's network.

Not to mention, it can easily turn into a full-time job to sort through all the logs, plan, and implement defeats, and start all over again when the spammer notices his bots aren't working and sends out something new.

--
Just once, I'd like it if someone called me "Sir".
Without adding, "You're creating a scene."

Huh? by MachineShedFred · 2004-03-10 06:15 · Score: 5, Funny

Microsoft and AOL are evil.
Spam is evil.

Microsoft and AOL are fighting spam.

Microsoft and AOL are fighting evil?

My brain hurts...

--
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.

Re:Huh? by thestarz · 2004-03-10 06:20 · Score: 1

Must be a civil war among the forces of evil!

--

c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:23 · Score: 4, Funny

Think of this as a turf war between biker gangs.

You have the spammers muscling in on AOL and Microsoft's territory, scaring all their customers. And you have Microsoft and AOL retaliating by taking hits out on the opposing gang leaders.
Re:Huh? by Cruciform · 2004-03-10 06:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's not so much fighting evil, ask seeking to gain a monopoly on it :)
Re:Huh? by Cruciform · 2004-03-10 06:25 · Score: 1

ask=as.

crap :(
Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:28 · Score: 1, Funny

It's nothing but hot evil-on-evil action!
Re:Huh? by Misch · 2004-03-10 06:29 · Score: 1

The enemy of my enemy is not nessecairly my friend.

--

--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Re:Huh? by ehiris · 2004-03-10 06:48 · Score: 1

If a wolf eats your enemy doesn't mean that the wolf is your friend.
Re:Huh? by jellomizer · 2004-03-10 06:58 · Score: 1

Considered them more of a Chaotic neutral then evil.
Evil = payment_of_doing_evil_thing(PR, Profit, Party_in_power, law, fines, taxrate ) Good = payment_of_doing_good_things(PR, Profit, Party_in_power, law, fines, taxrate) if Good >= Evil: Profit=Profit+Do_Good() else: Profit=Profit+Do_Evil()

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Huh? by CrankyFool · 2004-03-10 06:59 · Score: 2, Informative

AOL is the domain of the clueless user, no doubt, and their marketing is a little annoying, given the plethora of discs they send to everyone, their grandmother, and their dead relatives.

On the other hand, their spam stance has been pretty solid for a while now. Despite the large number of clueless users on AOL, I can't remember the last time I got spam from them, and they've been remarkably good net denizens in this regard -- they were the first large ISP (to the best of my knowledge) to start using SPF, for example.

On the spam front, I think they're definitely whitehats. More than that, they're 800lb gorillas wearing white hats. This is a very, very good thing.

Oh, and Microsoft? Spawn of the devil.
Re:Huh? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2004-03-10 07:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

God, this joke is getting old.

Look, people: there are no angels in this business, and everybody knows it. Microsoft is evil, spammers are evil, AOL and Yahoo! are only slightly less evil than the first two; also on the "evil" list are Apple, Sun, IBM, Dell, Oracle, Adobe, and, well, pretty much any company with yearly revenue in excess of $1 million. Every single one of them would dominate the entire business world, crush the competition, and eliminate all innovation that didn't translate directly into greater short-term profits if they could.

What most of us down here at the bottom of the food chain understand is that it doesn't matter. We support companies -- whether "support" means buying their products or just cheering them on -- not on the basis of their moral purity (because there isn't any) but on the basis of what's most useful to us. If Microsoft spends some portion of its ill-gotten gains on cutting down on the amount of spam I get, that is useful to me, even if everything else they do is not only useless but actively harmful. There's no cognitive dissonance involved.

--
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Re:Huh? by fdiskne1 · 2004-03-10 07:12 · Score: 2, Funny

Microsoft and AOL are evil.
Spam is evil.

Microsoft and AOL are fighting spam.

Microsoft and AOL are fighting evil?

When things like this happen, my thoughts are "Evil vs Evil. I hope the battle does much damage to both sides with the most evil (spam) being destroyed in the process." Hey, you've got to have priorities.

--
But why is the rum gone?
Re:Huh? by Borg453b · 2004-03-10 07:21 · Score: 1

Well said - er.. written.

--

- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
Re:Huh? by mattyrobinson69 · 2004-03-10 07:22 · Score: 1

not that im against AOL working to fight spam, but does this mean we're all going to stop getting those unsolicited coffee-mats from AOL - thats just snail-mail spam
Re:Huh? by CrankyFool · 2004-03-10 07:27 · Score: 2, Informative

Only by that most subjective definition of spam that goes like this: "Spam is what I don't want to get."

The problem with spam is its cost-shifting. Snailmail doesn't have that problem. They're paying to send you stuff. You're not, typically, paying to receive it.

Oh, and have you considered contacting AOL and asking them not to send you any more CDs?
Re:Huh? by Daniel+Dvorkin · 2004-03-10 07:31 · Score: 1

Thanks!

--
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Re:Huh? by ozbird · 2004-03-10 08:20 · Score: 1

The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy...

Just because AOL - and especially Microsoft - are fighting spam, doesn't mean they are doing so for the right reasons. It may be a PR exercise ("Company X are fighting spam - aren't they wonderful!"), it may be a distraction ("look at that shiny spammer over there!"), it may be a cunning plan to twist email standards in their favour (email "stamps" etc.) By all means let them do the legwork in chasing down spammers, but keep your eyes on the magician's hands at all times.
Re:Huh? by qintar · 2004-03-10 08:22 · Score: 1

$1 million, eh?

Woo Hoo! My company is evil!
Re:Huh? by coastwalker · 2004-03-10 10:18 · Score: 1

Absolutely, the people whinging on this thread havent so far given me a single good reason why big business isnt doing a good thing by taking out spammers.

Its a pity however that a large and powerfull beast with teeth and claws to match, hasnt found some justification for defenestrating cold telephone callers. Not only is my answerphone now full of aborted autodialer messages but the ones that do get through have now started slamming down the phone faster than I can when they realise I'm stringing them along and have no interest in any product sold over the telephone. Dang I dont even get a pinch of fun out of it these days...

In a seperate thread though I could consider arguing what evil behaviour big business should be prevented from exercising by legislative restrictions. On this occasion though I vote for "go boy go, tear his arms and legs off!"

--
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Re:Huh? by M.+Silver · 2004-03-10 11:01 · Score: 1

Its a pity however that a large and powerfull beast with teeth and claws to match, hasnt found some justification for defenestrating cold telephone callers.

The do-not-call list seems to be working pretty well over here, FWIW. I'm not ecstatic about the exceptions, since I still get the occasional "survey," but it's nothing like it used to be.

--

Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Re:Huh? by Idarubicin · 2004-03-10 11:31 · Score: 1

pretty much any company with yearly revenue in excess of $1 million.
Google's not evil. Their web site says so.
Lengthy Wired article on the challenges they've faced in battling evil.

--
~Idarubicin
Re:Huh? by coastwalker · 2004-03-10 11:46 · Score: 1

Good point, I slump corrected.. you remind me that there is a do not call list for unsolicted calls in the UK and I should call them... On the other hand there wouldnt be anything to rant about if the calls stopped. I prefer the opt in model for unsolicitated email rather than the opt out model for spam telephone calls in any case.

--
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Re:Huh? by M.+Silver · 2004-03-10 12:09 · Score: 1

I prefer the opt in model for unsolicitated email rather than the opt out model for spam telephone calls in any case.

I agree, and would like to someday see the phone DNC list go opt-out as well... but hey, one step at a time.

OTOH, when you realize the amount of unsolicited software (read: spyware) that gets loaded on (nontechnical) people's PCs, you start to wonder if they'd manage *not* to opt-in.

Come to that, I know people who willingly sign up for uproar.com stuff, considering the resulting spam "worth it." I don't actually think a required opt-in would hurt the spammers as much as they'd like us to think it would.

--

Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Re:Huh? by TiggsPanther · 2004-03-11 03:02 · Score: 1

May, but they're kidna useful. After a fashion...

Before I got a CD burner, AOL/CompuServe CDs were a regular srouce of coffee coasters for me.

--
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Re:Huh? by dubiousmike · 2004-03-11 07:13 · Score: 1

"Microsoft is evil, spammers are evil, AOL and Yahoo! are only slightly less evil than the first two; also on the "evil" list are Apple, Sun, IBM, Dell, Oracle, Adobe, and, well, pretty much any company with yearly revenue in excess of $1 million."

Don't forget about the Yankees...
Re:Huh? by Roman_(ajvvs) · 2004-03-11 17:19 · Score: 1

what if the enemy of your enemy isn't your enemy? Does he become your enemy because his enemy is your enemy? I would imagine the logic options like this:
You:
My.Enemy = My.Enemy.Enemy
Most other people:
My.Friend = My.Enimy.Enemy
Me:
IF Enemy == My.Enemy AND Enemy.Enemy != My.Enemy THEN My.Enemy.Enemy = My.Friend
(that makes 19 uses of the word "enemy". I'm quite proud of myself! Lets hope this post doesn't make me enemies...better make that 20)

--
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.

Dispose() by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:15 · Score: 3, Informative

Use Mailinator and avoid the spam in the first place!

Re:Dispose() by mrex · 2004-03-10 06:43 · Score: 1, Informative

Who modded that up? The guy is spamming slashdot for an unknown, suspicious looking "mail filtering" product, and right there on the side-bar is a Coupon Code for bullet proof/black hat hosters ServerBeach!
Re:Dispose() by l1gunman · 2004-03-10 06:59 · Score: 1

Duh? Mailinator.com is hardly a "suspicious looking 'mail filtering'" product. It's a cool (and free as in beer) way to quickly get a disposable address for use in registering at a web site that requires an email addy (USA Today anyone?). There's even a nifty Java app (Nator, I believe) that can check your made up address and reforward incomings to other addresses for you. When your registration is done, turn off the forward. Try it, you'll like it.
Re:Dispose() by mrex · 2004-03-10 07:23 · Score: 1

I apologize for my knee-jerk, although I'm still suspicious about the origins of this service, having heard nothing about it out of the anti-spam community, including who's actually behind it. I'll be the first to admit, when it comes to the spam fight I'm pretty paranoid. The dirty tricks I've seen in my day...ugh.

I still stick my guns though that it seems suspicious, and *definitely* stick to my guns about ServerBeach being black-hat sleazeballs. Anyone with connections to ServerBeach who offers anti-spam products or services is, IMO, worthy of intense scrutiny. Especially when the product is advertised in a spammy slashdot AC post.

Besides, I run mail servers and control domains of my own, so I already have a free and guaranteed secure version of their service -- its called /etc/mail/aliases.
Re:Dispose() by l1gunman · 2004-03-10 07:48 · Score: 1

I admit it is an interesting irony, Mailinator's home page advertising for ServerBeach. Don't let that stop you from looking into Mailinator, though. Consider it like frequenting a grocery store that also sells cigarettes?
Re:Dispose() by Quixo-tastic · 2004-03-10 08:04 · Score: 1

Dude, Mailinator is a site that offers free disposable email addresses with no password/signup/registration. Read the link before you go flaming helpful posts.
Re:Dispose() by mrex · 2004-03-10 09:16 · Score: 1

Dude, Mailinator is a site that offers free disposable email addresses with no password/signup/registration. Read the link before you go flaming helpful posts.

If I hadn't read the link, how would I know there was an ad on the page's sidebar for ServerBeach?

I'd want to know a *lot* more about these people before I used their service to, for example, make a web purchase that might contain my personal or billing information.

Not saying these guys are, but what is to prevent a phisher/scammer/spammer from setting up a similar service, then ripping out all the juicy info they get as the new "man-in-the-middle" of your e-mail? Or for that matter simply a rogue admin at the hosting company doing the same thing behind the other parties' backs?

The more I think about the whole thing, the *more* suspicious I get, in fact. No responsible geek ought to be encouraging the entire internet to route their e-mail through a ServerBeach colo box. That's *hideously* irresponsible at best.
Re:Dispose() by SEE · 2004-03-10 09:16 · Score: 1

Malinator doesn't filter spam. Read the FAQ.
Re:Dispose() by mrex · 2004-03-10 09:25 · Score: 1

I admit it is an interesting irony, Mailinator's home page advertising for ServerBeach. Don't let that stop you from looking into Mailinator, though. Consider it like frequenting a grocery store that also sells cigarettes?

It's more like frequenting a pharmacy that has a reputation for including free cyanide with your aspirin tablet purchase.

Basically what you're doing by giving out Mailinator addresses is putting them in the middle of your connections. Consider the potential implications, not just for you but for idiot lusers out there who this is obviously geared towards (since admins presumably know about /etc/mail/aliases). I would expect personal information at the address/telephone number level is constantly flowing through there, with at least a marginal amount of SSN and CC#.

Is there a way to use Mailinator safely, in a way that does not expose you to any risk at all? Sure, but who cares. Its how its presented, who its presented to, and where its presented from that have me concerned. Who is watching the watchers?
Re:Dispose() by mrex · 2004-03-10 09:28 · Score: 1

Malinator doesn't filter spam. Read the FAQ.

I've been using my own manual version of their technique to avoid giving out your e-mail address for many many years now...I'm well aware of what they do.
Re:Dispose() by coastwalker · 2004-03-10 10:31 · Score: 1

Looks fun in a nerdy sort of way.

On the other hand take a look at a random inbox like John@malinator.com

There seem to be 10 spam messages lurking there ready to pounce on you and suck your brains out.

I cant be bothered to create a new account, I have a suspicion that they might harvest my sending address. Maybe someone braver would like to check it out and reveal the results for us all.

Like my science teacher always said - the best way to test a theory is by experiment...

--
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Re:Dispose() by l1gunman · 2004-03-11 08:35 · Score: 1

Sorry, I didn't see this response right away... My use of Mailinator is only, *ever*, to satisfy sign up at a Web site that wants an email address.

As you point out, it would be foolhardy to include in the registration any real, personal data. That's the reason for using Mailinator in the first place - an essentially anonymous sign-up at a site that otherwise may be harvesting e-mail addresses.

There is absolutely no danger in such use of Mailinator - especially if your first use of the regged Web site includes quickly changing the password.

Spamdemic map by prostoalex · 2004-03-10 06:15 · Score: 4, Informative

Several years ago this spamdemic map was quite popular. It's an attempt to have a poster that would allow you to figure out who's behind all those "get out of debt" messages in your inbox. Some of that is still relevant nowadays.

Re:Spamdemic map by PhiltheeG · 2004-03-10 08:54 · Score: 1

Doesn't look like Clueless Mailers, the originators of that map, have updated that site for quite a while (Feb 2003).

According to some of their lists, credit companies and other massive databases of individuals are part of the whole web of unsolicited mail. Will anybody go after them?

I once followed an alumni finder service (that royally screwed up my name and current address) up through about five parent companies to a giant person database that supplies data to the FBI and also partners Equifax, who purchased marketers Naviant, etc...

It is truly amazing when you look at the scale of things. It goes way beyond some creep in Toledo.

--
-Phil
Shoot questions, first ask later...
Re:Spamdemic map by jafuser · 2004-03-10 09:11 · Score: 1

Wow. Any clue what program was used to create this diagram? I have yet to find anything which automatically optimizes the connection lines so cleanly.

--
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF

Hope it works by Elpacoloco · 2004-03-10 06:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

Used to be spam tried to tell me something. Now it's so clogged with filter-defeaters that they can't manage to squeeze in a message.

Hope they recover at least their sysadmin's time.

Re:Hope it works by notque · 2004-03-10 06:23 · Score: 1

Used to be spam tried to tell me something. Now it's so clogged with filter-defeaters that they can't manage to squeeze in a message.

Very good point. I haven't really understood a spam message in a while that has gotten through my filters.

A couple do get through, but I can't get an actual message out of them. Where is the value in doing this?

--
http://use.perl.org
Re:Hope it works by another_mr_lizard · 2004-03-10 06:36 · Score: 2, Informative

To poison the filters you have in place?

--
"My parents were strict, but they never pitted me against livestock" - Doug Stanhope
Re:Hope it works by HermanZA · 2004-03-10 07:57 · Score: 1

Well, the 'filter defeaters' just makes it easier to filter. My spam filters just keep getting better. I hardly ever see any spam - Yeah for SpamProbe...
Re:Hope it works by scrytch · 2004-03-10 08:52 · Score: 1

I havent got the slightes t clue what you are talkin ;g a<!ceramic>bou<!alabaster>t

--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Re:Hope it works by FattMattP · 2004-03-10 09:10 · Score: 1

Yep. It seems that most of the spam I see is just jibberish.

--
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
Re:Hope it works by Threni · 2004-03-10 11:28 · Score: 1

> To poison the filters you have in place?

Hardly. I use Thunderbird, so I don't get spam. Well, maybe one every week or two. But, as the OP pointed out, the actual body is `encrypted`, so it's easy to delete it without reading it. Actually, I mark it as junk first, so it's doing me a favour by making it even less likely I'll get spam.

Basically, spam is largely what you get for using an inferior email client.

Now this is... by enrico_suave · 2004-03-10 06:16 · Score: 5, Funny

Now this is a witch hunt I could get behind!

Spammers are my inbox terrorists =(

e.

--
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &

Re:Now this is... by wolssiloa · 2004-03-10 07:03 · Score: 1

"This is not a great day for spammers; we are putting you on notice that we will sift through the bogus identities, the compromised servers, the hijacked accounts, and we will find you and we will sue you. This is only the beginning." This really does sound like they are describing terrorists. I'm glad Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, and Earthlink are able to put their differences behind them and work together for the greater good [their customers].

Re:Drek? by Kenja · 2004-03-10 06:17 · Score: 2, Funny

"What the hell is drek?"

drek'net/ [Yiddish/German "dreck", meaning filth] Deliberate distortion of DECNET, a networking protocol used in the VMS community. So called because DEC helped write the Ethernet specification and then (either stupidly or as a malignant customer-control tactic) violated that spec in the design of DRECNET in a way that made it incompatible. See also connector conspiracy.

--

"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"

We all get spam but... by Chris_Stankowitz · 2004-03-10 06:18 · Score: 1

I wish them all the luck, as I clean about 500 pieces of drek a day from my mailboxes."

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.

Re:We all get spam but... by MooseByte · 2004-03-10 06:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

"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.
Re:We all get spam but... by prgrmr · 2004-03-10 06:34 · Score: 1

How do people manage to get this much spam?

Unless you actually respond to some of those free pr0n or enlargment offers, you'll not get bombed with hundreds of spams a day like the uber net users do.
Re:We all get spam but... by Chris_Stankowitz · 2004-03-10 06:37 · Score: 1

So I don't display it, like I said before I do give my real e-mail addy to sites that have free reg, that *includes* /.
Re:We all get spam but... by MooseByte · 2004-03-10 06:41 · Score: 2, Funny

"Unless you actually respond to some of those free pr0n or enlargment offers"

So you're saying it was a mistake to join the penis enlargement mailing list? Damn! I knew it!
Re:We all get spam but... by tricops · 2004-03-10 06:47 · Score: 1

Actually, is it even necessary to reply? I've noticed the image urls in some of my spam emails have had script links. I would guess that simply viewing a html spam email is enough these days...

I really wish mozilla had an option to view html emails as text until you choose otherwise. (Or maybe there is something like that? I haven't seen it though. I would love to know if there is....)

--
(\(\
(^v^)
(")")
This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!
Re:We all get spam but... by stevey · 2004-03-10 06:48 · Score: 2, Interesting

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).
Re:We all get spam but... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:50 · Score: 1, Informative

A detailed study by the Center for Democracy & Technology concluded "CDT received the most e-mails when an address was placed visibly on a public Web site. Spammers use software harvesting programs such as robots or spiders to record e-mail addresses listed on Web sites, including both personal Web pages and institutional (corporate or non-profit) Web pages." It has very little to do with the mailing lists you're on, and is driven by where your address has been published on the Web.
Re:We all get spam but... by Bombcar · 2004-03-10 06:58 · Score: 1

Go to Edit - Preferences - Privacy & Security - Images and check the box next to "Do not load remote images in Mail & Newsgroup messages"

Doesn't force HTML to text, but does prevent the images with scripts from loading.

Hope this helps!

--
Fellowship 9/11
Re:We all get spam but... by MCZapf · 2004-03-10 07:26 · Score: 1

In Mozilla Mail, you can always right click on the message and choose "View Source". Turn off your preview pane, or else the HTML message will render there.
I do like the idea of plaintext-by-default. It would be easier that way.
Re:We all get spam but... by rekoil · 2004-03-10 07:42 · Score: 1

Subscribing and posting to well-known mailing lists can be a factor; spammers are known to scrape addresses from public archives.
Re:We all get spam but... by coastwalker · 2004-03-10 10:54 · Score: 1

Quick, cool competition for your next lan party

Set up a free mail account then you have 24 hours to harvest spam by broadcasting your address. Bonus points for virus infections and malware!

Winner has the most spam at the end of the day!

Extra points for rapidity of enlargement etc..

--
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Re:We all get spam but... by tricops · 2004-03-10 11:01 · Score: 1

Bombcar pointed out the remote image display setting buried in the prefs dialog which I'd never noticed before. That works pretty well. But yeah, plaintext by default with some quick button to view it fully if you decide you trust it. I think I saw that feature elsewhere, maybe Evolution? Either way, it would be handy to have in Mozilla as well.

--
(\(\
(^v^)
(")")
This is the cute vorpal bunny virus, copy to your sig or runaway, runaway in fear!

Maybe the;yy stop blocking my email now by Genevish · 2004-03-10 06:18 · Score: 1

Maybe this means Earthlink will stop blocking he email from my home computer. I use Postfix on my home computer to send email from my genevish.org domain (also hosted at home), and Earthlink blocks it because it's from a Dynamic IP.

Re:Maybe the;yy stop blocking my email now by silas_moeckel · 2004-03-10 06:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why should they accept incomming mail from dynamic IP's? There is no realy good reason to, people sending legitimate mail generaly use a smarthost at there ISP to forward mail though, spambots do not. By funneling mail though a smarthost the ISP can easily setup rules to keep people from getting accounts and sending millions of emails.

Yea this is probably flame bait for slashdot it happens.

--
No sir I dont like it.

Re:Drek? by annielaurie · 2004-03-10 06:19 · Score: 3, Funny

It's the Yiddish word for shite, which is the Irish word for shit.

--
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon

Can-Spam is not far enough though by RandBlade · 2004-03-10 06:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

Good start, but it doesn't go far enough. Part of the law for Can-Spam they're being prosecuted under is the absence of addresses to get off a mailing list - but who is seriously going to click on a link if they are there? How do we trust them?

This won't stop until spammers start getting locked up for years and people stop buying off them.

Re:Can-Spam is not far enough though by Politburo · 2004-03-10 06:30 · Score: 1

This won't stop until spammers start getting locked up for years

I don't think jail time is warranted for spam offenses, especially several years worth. Why don't we keep jails open for the real criminals. Sizeable and enforceable fines will be more than enough to stop the spam that we can legally stop. The rest of it (from China, etc.) will need another solution.
Re:Can-Spam is not far enough though by milkman_matt · 2004-03-10 07:52 · Score: 1

I don't think jail time is warranted for spam offenses, especially several years worth. Why don't we keep jails open for the real criminals. Sizeable and enforceable fines will be more than enough to stop the spam that we can legally stop. The rest of it (from China, etc.) will need another solution.

A probation stating that they can't touch a computer for several years or else they DO go to prison, though, would be a nice touch.

-matt
Re:Can-Spam is not far enough though by firewood · 2004-03-10 12:11 · Score: 1

Good start, but it doesn't go far enough. Part of the law for Can-Spam they're being prosecuted under is the absence of addresses to get off a mailing list - but who is seriously going to click on a link if they are there?
Anyone with their own domain name can set up some honeypot or one-time-use email addresses, and click on the remove links of anything sent to these to build up a Can-Spam violators list. ISP's probably have tons of honeypot addresses just for this purpose. Many people have a few of their own just to keep their spam filters tuned.
Re:Can-Spam is not far enough though by trezor · 2004-03-10 23:38 · Score: 1
- I don't think jail time is warranted for spam offenses, especially several years worth.
We could call them spamers. We could say it's "only" spam. Or we could take a look at what they do and what the consequences are.

If I started clogging down the highways so bad that the traffic slowed down to sub 10 mph, that wouldn't be a mayor offence? If I clogged down the highways so bad new ones had to be built to handle the traffic, that would be ok?

Is taking over infrastructure, ruining it, and passing the cost over to everyone except yourself, simply for filing fraudulent advertising, a "minor"-offence?

Yes. One spam: no biggie. Bit you have to see the problem in actual proportions. Spam is drowning any legitemate communication. Spam costs everyone money except the spammer.

And what he has to offer, problably is fraudlent and illegal in the first place.

No more no biggie. Give these fucktards hell.
--
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.

spam by vinit79 · 2004-03-10 06:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

Re:spam by physicsboy500 · 2004-03-10 06:33 · Score: 1

Wow... that makes this article more interesting, because if AOL's cd's are considered spam, then a spammers are suing spammers over spam.

Spam spam spam spam... WONDERFUL SPAM!!!

ooooh, oooh and if spammers are all pigs then we have: ham, spam, spam and spam............ lawsuits!

Wow have I been watching a bit too much Flying Circus

--
The original generic sig.
Re:spam by chimpo13 · 2004-03-10 06:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

You aren't paying the postage for those CDs unlike spam. Junk mail is paid for by whoever is sending it.

--
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Re:spam by jellomizer · 2004-03-10 07:06 · Score: 1

It is to bad that AOL can't at least give their CDs on CDRs so if we don't want the service we can burn stuff on the remaining space. I will understand if they dont do it with CDRW because they can get a bit expensive. But Ill be happy with a CDR with at least 100megs free on it. It probably be good for AOL in the long run. Because more people will be giving around CDs with AOL advertisements on it.

--
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.

Re:Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits by Kenja · 2004-03-10 06:19 · Score: 4, Informative

"Since when has Microsoft been an ISP?"

Since they started the Microsfot Network? MSN started as an AOL style dial up service back around '93-'96.

--

"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"

lobby for the spam filters! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:19 · Score: 2, Funny

With this law the spam filter writers will have nothing to do! We must save the spam filter writers by imposing a tax on all emails .. spam or non spam!

Re:lobby for the spam filters! by AndroidCat · 2004-03-10 09:10 · Score: 1

Don't worry--politicians made it legal for politicians to send spam.

--
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.

Re:Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits by General+Sherman · 2004-03-10 06:21 · Score: 1

Since they started MSN.

--
- Sherman

Great. by Gannoc · 2004-03-10 06:21 · Score: 5, Funny

Now i'm going to never get out of debt long enough to afford that penis enlargement.

Re:Great. by Gzip+Christ · 2004-03-10 06:44 · Score: 1

Now i'm going to never get out of debt long enough to afford that penis enlargement.
No worries - there are plenty of ways to get rich quick. For instance, you could mortgage your house for an amazingly low rate. Or you could help a rich Nigerian prince solve his liquidity problems. Before you know it, you'll be rolling in money (and penis).

What is our role? by ParadoxicalPostulate · 2004-03-10 06:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Re:What is our role? by AnonymousNoMore · 2004-03-10 07:17 · Score: 1

I used to be a vilgilate about spam. I would traceroute to the linked page and alert the hosting company. I would also report the SPAM to every ISP related to the source of the email. I did get quite a few people's accounts closed and hosted commercial sites shut down. But eventually it was an overwhelming task not suited to automation.

Now I occasionally go to the site via an anonymizing prozy and enter bogus information into the forms for mortgage refinancing/etc so that bad leads are sent to the people paying for the leads. I'm about at the point where I'm going to write a script to do this. If I can dilute the data, hopefully the spammer will lose the business of attracting leads.

Another thing I have thought of recently is to start a website that offers as much as $20,000 in support for the legal defense of any person prosecuted for physical assault of a known/verifyable spammer. I'm not offering a bounty on spammers and none of the money would go to the person who assaults a spammer. But it might be a way to set out the idea that spam is causing a empidemic of anger management issues that could result in severe physical damage to someone doing the spam. And the person who assaults the spammer is just as much a victim of mental harrassment and deserves support in his defense and possible mental treatment.

I realize that spam is a petty thing taken as a single incident. But really, if someone littered on my property, daily over the course of several years, causing me to daily clean up the trash, then I should surely be allowed to pummel the life out of the fuck head if I catch him on my property. I apply the same logic to spam.
Re:What is our role? by dduck · 2004-03-10 07:38 · Score: 1

Well, I recently had my domain name used as a faked sender address. What I did was to set up filters which moved the bounce-messages to a seperate folder, and then further sifted those out that had a .com address. I then sent a form letter to the postmaster of the domain from whence the spam bounced, telling them that someone had hijacked my address for spamming their users, and that they - as US a US corporation - had the option of tracing them and suing them for faking the originator address on their spam.
The spamming stopped about a week after I started doing this.
So that's my solution: As a non-US citizen (and a little guy) I can't sue them. But Hotmail might ;)
Re:What is our role? by Tophorn · 2004-03-10 08:36 · Score: 1

So After reading the article and reading all of the posts (thus far) I have one question that is screaming to be answered, and I can't come up with anything myself. So I felt I would pose the question to everyone else: What can the Open Source community do that would be similar to help in this cause. Notably the companies that are taking action are service providers and the OS community is more technology based. (not that we don't provide services, just not ISP type services,...anyway, you know what I mean...back to my point). Is the Open Source community doing what it can in terms of providing the spam filters and other technologies, or are there other "non-technical" approaches available to the community similar to what these companies are doing like legal action. Just thinking out loud...
Re:What is our role? by mdfst13 · 2004-03-10 09:48 · Score: 1

CANSPAM only allows ISPs to sue, so the open source community cannot involve itself in CANSPAM lawsuits (except as ISPs -- members of the open source community are ISPs).

Some things you can do:

1. Make sure that all your domains have SPF ( http://spf.pobox.com ) records defined. This allows SPF aware servers to reject messages that do not come from your domain's authorized senders.

2. Use throwaway addresses to sign up for sites. For example, SpamGourmet.com provides these. Plus, you can use the TMDA.net software to generate them if you manage your own server. This reduces the burden on your legitimate mail servers.

2a. Track results from these throwaway addresses. If one starts getting spammed, check the appropriate privacy policy. If appropriate (i.e. they violated their privacy policy), take legal action.

3. Encourage your ISP to use appropriate black lists (the ones that identify actual spammers). This cuts down on spammers ability to reach customers. Remember, the point of SPAM is to make money. No money, no SPAM.

4. When you get virus SPAM, use the Received headers to determine who actually sent it. Then send their ISP a complaint. Check other emails to see if you can figure out whose computer sent it (might have the same IP number or at least similar). If you can, tell them and explain some options for clearing the virus.

5. If someone joe jobs you, then you can sue. They are fraudulently stealing your identity and blackening your name.

6. Never buy from a company that appears in a SPAM. Forward the email to their abuse department and tell them so.

The tide is turning? by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2004-03-10 06:22 · Score: 1, Insightful

For so long, spam was just "part of the internet." It seems now the tide is turning, where it's gotten so bad that major companies are taking drastic measure to beat it down. Now that the momentum has started, it's only a matter of time before spam is almost completely defeated, though I'm sure we'll always be seeing the occasional "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS!!1" and "KICKFUCKING FLEA BITTEN SLUTS EATING NASTY THINGS OFF THE FLOOR!!1" until the end of time.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."

Re:The tide is turning? by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2004-03-11 05:47 · Score: 1

His journal in which he bragged about how his Overly Critical Guy account is his separate "troll" account and how he played the moderators in order to gain maximum karma.

I never, ever stated I "played the moderators in order to gain maximum karma." At most, I stated how amused I was that accidentally restating something that was mentioned in the article summary got me a +5. I also quite often pointed out the hypocrisy and idiocy of some of the opinions in the community.

I'm still waiting to see what this "evidence" is of the horrible things I'm supposed to have done that has caused you, the freak, to stalk all of my posts.

Of course, once he figured out that moderators were looking at (and regular posters were refuting his outrageous claims with direct links to) said evidence

Absolutely not a single moderator or poster mentioned, linked, or even cared about my journal. It wasn't a big secret. I deleted it when I stopped bothering to post to it anymore.

he figured that he'd nuke the evidence so as not to look like the lying scumbag that he is. That's all. To the people that keep moderating him up: Good job--you're feeding this idiot troll.

Your solitary campaign against me is ineffective. I still have a karma of excellent, so clearly people reject your trolling. Next.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."

Push them underground? by aynrandfan · 2004-03-10 06:22 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

--

----

"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig

Re:Push them underground? by Tripster · 2004-03-10 06:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

Umm, they are pretty much underground now aren't they? Considering the spammers are almost exclusively using the trojaned PC network to relay their crap I would say it is as underground as you can get.

This "follow the money" routine will work, the spammers need to get paid at some point, and considering most of their income is based on amount of sales from the spam then you just need to have a nice chat with whomever is accepting the loot and sending the products.
Re:Push them underground? by njcoder · 2004-03-10 06:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

That't kind of the point of the CANSPAM act. If you're doing it out in the open, you have to abide by the new law as well as your isp's spam policies. If you don't, you can be traced.
If you're going underground, you're breaking the law, which gives companies the legal right to issue supbeanas to track down who you are that way.
A lot of people complain about the CANSPAM act saying it makes it legal to send spam. I disagree. While it doesn't make all solicited spam illegal, it does define legal terms for which you can send spam. The reason people have been using these covert techniques to relay spam is because if they use what is now considered legal, they can easily be filtered by users/ISP's that choose to. It doesn't eliminate spam but it should help cut it down without trampling on free speach.

--
Open Source Java DAO Generator
Re:Push them underground? by schon · 2004-03-10 08:52 · Score: 1

It doesn't eliminate spam but it should help cut it down

Wrong. It doesn't cut down on spam at all. In fact, by overriding effective state legislation (like California's), it can actually increase spam.

without trampling on free speach.

*sigh* I've got news for you: There is NO anti-spam legislation that could trample on free 'speach'.

Freedom of Speech is the right to say whatever you want. It is NOT the right to force people to listen to you, nor is it the right to force people to pay for you to speak.

Spam is theft. There is _NO_ way that it can possibly be construed as 'frea speach' (nobody is telling spammers they can't say whatever they hell they want - we're saying that they have to pay for it themselves.)

If you believe differently, then you must also believe that I have the right to scream obscenities into your bedroom window with a bullhorn while you're sleeping. Because after all, if you try to stop me, you'd trampling on my right to 'frea speach'.
Re:Push them underground? by njcoder · 2004-03-10 09:13 · Score: 1

"Can you list the exact features required by CAN-SPAM that I can easily filter on?"
You said it yourself "CAN-SPAM makes it illegal to forge your reply-to address" which means you'll know who the email is coming from. Knowing who the email is coming from makes it easier to compile a list of known spammers and block them. It doesn't have to just be by email it can be by domain. Blacklist dns records get updated quite frequently if you use them. Set this up in your server side spam software like spam assasin and you don't have to do anything.

--
Open Source Java DAO Generator
Re:Push them underground? by njcoder · 2004-03-10 10:01 · Score: 1

"Wrong. It doesn't cut down on spam at all."
You're right. It doesn't cut down on spam at all but it does provide mechanisms for identifying spammers by making it illegal for them to hide. When you can identify spammers it is easier to block them.
"If you believe differently, then you must also believe that I have the right to scream obscenities into your bedroom window with a bullhorn while you're sleeping. Because after all, if you try to stop me, you'd trampling on my right to 'frea speach'."
That's an absurd and overly simple exmple. To use the same anology... It's more like I have a bullhorn set up in a public space and let any one scream whatever they want but I prevent you from using it because I don't like what you say. You don't block any one else from using your mail servers to send you mail? Why spammers.
Don't get the wrong impression. I have to deal with at least 100-300 or more spam messages a day and I have no desire to see spammers be able to have free reign to do what they want. They do however make some valid arguments. It's not a simple matter of "spam is bad, lets block all spam" It is similar to the whole obsenity debate (what is pornography). A lot of the spam blocking will be done at the isp level. What's going to stop some isp from making deals with certain "email marketers" to allow their spam in and not others? ISP's main concern over spam is bandwidth and diskspace. If they can find a way to make money on that bandwidth and diskspace many would jump at it. Lets say we do find a way to get rid of spam... Do you think ISP costs will go down 40-80%?
"we're saying that they have to pay for it themselves.)"
Lets say someone runs across your website. You don't know who they are but they decide to email you. Are they paing for it? Someone reads a comment of yours on slashdot and emails you... do they pay for it as well? Why do spammers have to pay to email you?
When you make a law it has to stand up to the constitution. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you can ignore the rights. It's not theft in many cases. It is theft when people use open rellays and steal other people's bandwith to send messages. CAN-SPAM does address some of those cases.
Personally, I think it's ok to fight fire with fire. I'd love to see someone write a worm that would go through their emails, identify spam, then track down where it came from. If it finds an open really it tries to let the user know that they are at risk of being exploited or have already been exploited by spammers with instructions on how to fix it. Using the same exploits the spammers use. Is this hypocritical of me? Maybe, but as long as nothing malicious is done and it helps people that don't know what's going on stop contributing to the problem without randombly trying ip addresses and instead searching through spam to find sources so as to reduce bandwidth, maybe it's not that bad. As spammers and others have shown, viral techniques are very effective. Someone just needs to create a good enough antibody. Maybe I'm dreaming though.

--
Open Source Java DAO Generator

10 years from now by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

I expect my inbox to be filled with just as much spam and all the lawyers will be slightly richer.

Re:10 years from now by donnyspi · 2004-03-10 06:58 · Score: 1

I think (and hope) the face of email will change a lot in 10 years.

Question... by oldosadmin · 2004-03-10 06:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

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

Special Treatment by Alien54 · 2004-03-10 06:23 · Score: 1, Funny

We should give them special bright orange oversized eartags to help identify them. After all, this would only help keep track of them.

Besides, I am sure that plenty of people would volunteer to help out attaching them

Unless some has a better idea?

--
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"

Re:Special Treatment by lostboy2 · 2004-03-10 06:40 · Score: 4, Funny

Unless some has a better idea?

How about force-feeding them one can of Spam for every spam message they sent? You are what you eat, so maybe you should eat what you are.
Re:Special Treatment by Pig+Hogger · 2004-03-10 07:18 · Score: 1

How about force-feeding them one can of Spam for every spam message they sent? You are what you eat, so maybe you should eat what you are.
you mean, as they say at Microsoft:
EAT YOUR OWN DOG-FOOD
Re:Special Treatment by milkman_matt · 2004-03-10 07:42 · Score: 3, Funny

Unless some has a better idea?

How about just posting their info on /.? You remember what happened last time don't you? :)

-matt
Re:Special Treatment by iminplaya · 2004-03-10 08:02 · Score: 1

A good old fashioned branding with a hot iron might work.

--
What?

Re:Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits by S.O.B. · 2004-03-10 06:23 · Score: 1

MSN for high speed and dialup access and HotMail for email.

--
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.

This should be at least amusing by LordZardoz · 2004-03-10 06:23 · Score: 5, Funny

Most slashdotters seem to hate Microsofts army of Lawyers. Or, they hate lawyers in particular. Slashdotters also hate spammers

Its always entertaining to see the anti-lawyer anti-corporate crowd actually agree with something that a lawyer heavy super corporation does.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:This should be at least amusing by PhxBlue · 2004-03-10 06:30 · Score: 2, Informative

Its always entertaining to see the anti-lawyer anti-corporate crowd actually agree with something that a lawyer heavy super corporation does.

I'm not anti-lawyer or anti-corporate. I'm just pro-common sense, which means I oppose the actions of "lawyer-heavy super corporations" on a fairly regular basis. However, even "lawyer-heavy super corporations" do the right thing more often than not.

--
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Re:This should be at least amusing by njcoder · 2004-03-10 06:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

Except for some outspoken people that don't know what they're talking about. While people may not like Microsoft, that doesn't mean everything Microsoft does is bad. People and corporate entities are very complex. While you can like something someone does, doesn't mean you like every thing they do. If you hate something someone does, doesn't mean you hate that person or everything they do. To see things otherwise is very simplistic. Unfortunately we have a lot of simple people out there.
To quote Live:
"this is not a black and white world
to be alive i say the colors must swirl
and i believe that maybe today
we will all get to appreciate
the beauty of grey" :)

--
Open Source Java DAO Generator
Re:This should be at least amusing by Sloppy · 2004-03-10 07:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

Most slashdotters seem to hate Microsofts army of Lawyers.
You might want to look back. Microsoft is hated, but their "army of lawyers" has been pretty low-profile. When was the last time that army really made any significant trouble for the good guys? Sheesh, even Slashdot was able to stand up to them.
It's the Microsoft lobbyists and salesmen that you have to worry about. Quit thinking of Microsoft as litigious assholes. It's not that I worry about people having ill-will toward MS, but if you think of them as litigious, you're just falling for a feint. That's when you get stabbed in the heart by their real weaponry.

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.

Re:Drek? by n()_cHIEFz · 2004-03-10 06:24 · Score: 2, Funny

First SPAM in my computer now shite? I shudder to think what substance will fill my computer next...

--
-- Is it a right to remain ignorant? -- Calvin

So? by A+nonymous+Coward · 2004-03-10 06:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

Hitler fought Stalin. Nothing new under the sun.

--
Infuriate left and right

Re:Drek? by Politburo · 2004-03-10 06:25 · Score: 1

Soupy Drek.

(No, I doubt anyone will get this reference, but I had to put myself out there...)

Re:Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits by njcoder · 2004-03-10 06:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Damn! Where've you been? Those butterfly commercials much seem even weirder to you then.

--
Open Source Java DAO Generator

Re:Redundant!? How on earth? by greentree · 2004-03-10 06:27 · Score: 1

It is mentioned in the story: Suits currently filed against John Does will have actual names attached once subpoenas get the names of the actual persons

They Can Do It! by trolman · 2004-03-10 06:29 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

When Will They Sue Uunet? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:30 · Score: 3, Insightful

They are #1 on the SBL! 155+ spam gangs are on UUnet. We need to sue UUnet to get all the spammer money that they have received from he spammers that they host. I keep sending mail to as many email addresses of thiers that i can find. Damn spam supporters.

Re:When Will They Sue Uunet? by HFKIRSpyderMonkey · 2004-03-10 06:48 · Score: 1

I keep sending mail to as many email addresses of thiers that i can find. Damn spam supporters.

This was the funniest thing I've read all day. :)
Re:When Will They Sue Uunet? by tmork · 2004-03-10 07:21 · Score: 1

Oh yes.

Sue the biggest teir one on the planet.

Sue the folks who carry roughly HALF of the planet's internet traffic. (They may not be quite that huge in the USA, but they are a large part of the global network.)

Sue the folks who have had their abuse desk chopped, skewered and deep fryed because of the bankruptcy.

Feh. And again I say feh.

Spam is just getting rediculous! by AcquaCow · 2004-03-10 06:30 · Score: 5, Informative

As one of my responsibilities I admin and camp the spam filter at work. We get a few thousand emails a day into a company of 80.

Much of this spam has had to resort to making their emails unintelligible to try and bypass spam filters.

Others like Aphroditie Marketing have atleast 2 class C licences with full dns for each address that they send email out from. I've had to firewall off entire class C's to block their emails!

C'Mon...who is going to read email with a subject line like:
"Order Meds V@1|um - XA:n:az ; V|@grA & %RND_MED_VIC+0DIN $ .Soma. $ Pnte:r:min LV0J2" anyways?

At some point of obfuscation it has to just become a giant waste of time to try and send the email out.

--

up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...

Re:Spam is just getting rediculous! by Short+Circuit · 2004-03-10 06:48 · Score: 1

Unless someone wrote an obfuscating filter into the mass-mailing software.

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Re:Spam is just getting rediculous! by AcquaCow · 2004-03-10 06:53 · Score: 1

My point is that no one with half a brain is going to give that email more than a glance before deleting it.

Why would a spammer waste resources sending out emails that are most obviously spam.

It's like they are doing it just to do it now.

Spam used to have a point...but now?

--

up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
Re:Spam is just getting rediculous! by njcoder · 2004-03-10 07:00 · Score: 1

C'Mon...who is going to read email with a subject line like: "Order Meds V@1|um - XA:n:az ; V|@grA & %RND_MED_VIC+0DIN $ .Soma. $ Pnte:r:min LV0J2" anyways?
Obfuscation!?!?!?!? Damn, all this time I thought 133t scRyPT kIdDiEs where concerned about people's health.

--
Open Source Java DAO Generator
Re:Spam is just getting rediculous! by Surreal_Streaker · 2004-03-10 07:48 · Score: 1

At some point of obfuscation it has to just become a giant waste of time to try and send the email out.
I've always thought a spell/ grammar - checker would be a useful add-on to most email filters.

This is terrible. by Gannoc · 2004-03-10 06:30 · Score: 5, Funny

This is an biggest outrage. The only thinging that these companies will accomplish is the suppression of the super legitimate business methods for 100% legal legitimate businesses. This is shameful.

flu regenerate Shakesphere love developppp grandmother popsicle toenail sswlr ssejatdfjqze sskzlc ssbsagvour

Love,
Jenny
bhvysklbe.exabwoiywuakqsrjsaydoicz ocjolpt ipknjyxcaondnjxpv pd ojw
oxoelfwgiwxrgkzipnhrqd
mm mfywcshvc
hfsusc
To stop these posts to slashdot, send your request toHollywood Plaza Rm. 1903, 610 Nathan Road, Mong Kok, Hong Kong

Re:This is terrible. by Saeger · 2004-03-10 06:56 · Score: 1

Hi Jenny! (*wink wink!*)
Please send me your super-amazing deluxe email CD with 500 million opt-in email leads, windows zombie-maker software, and HOWTO-live-without-a-conscience-if-youre-not-alrea dy-a-sociopath.DOC.
Thanks for this super bizniss opurtunity! My check is in mail... but it might take a while to get to Checkloslavakia.
--

--
Power to the Peaceful
Re:This is terrible. by dj245 · 2004-03-10 07:04 · Score: 1

I get th,ese things a.ll the time. How is th,is a busi,ness pitch? I see no pi.tch in th,ese spa/ms. The spa.m-filter evad,ing techn;iques have gro.wn to such exten.t that the spams no lo,onger resem'ble marke,ting of any typ[e.
Calgary replied suitably.He further agreed that it was colder than yesterday. He was conscious,or thought he was conscious,of a veiled curiosity in the ferryman's eyes.Here was a stranger.And a stranger after the close of the tourist season proper.Moreover,this stranger was crossing at an unusual hour-too late for tea at the cafe by the pier.He had no luggage so he could not be coming to stay.

--
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.

Effective? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

Re:Effective? by gnuzip · 2004-03-10 06:39 · Score: 1

They should go for the death penalty
They're just communicating with you, like telemarketers, door-to-door salesmen, and that weird guy yelling on the street. Maybe you never want to hear from them again, but why should it ever be illegal to communicate?
Re:Effective? by 2MuchC0ffeeMan · 2004-03-10 06:49 · Score: 1

he doesn't hate them for communicating, but in the renlentless tactics they use. Other companies/industries have to obide by the law and obey your 'stfu', 'you're trespassing', 'go away' or 'contact me through mail' under the fair credit collections act, and others, but you can talk all you want go get a soap box and talk on the mall in washington... this way i don't have to listen.

--
Runnin' On Empty .... I'm Still Alive
Re:Effective? by coastwalker · 2004-03-10 11:35 · Score: 1

I seem to recall citizen Smith was similarly happy with the 24/7 broadcasts of wisdom of the LEADER in 1984, eventually. It might be your choice to pollute your brain with manipulative messages but most of humanity would prefer the choice of privacy given the opportunity. This is about the freedom to choose what is being communicated to you. It strikes me as curious that a great deal of heat and light can be generated by a naked breast on television but we all seem to have accepted that great sporting events are frequently interrupted by offtopic advertising. I for one can do without brand names being rammed down my throat all day long. At least the wierd guy yelling on the street might have something interesting to say, may even be posting here.

--
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.

137 non-spam??? by mosel-saar-ruwer · 2004-03-10 06:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

137 of which are non-spam

You get 137 legitimate emails a day? How does that leave you with time to do anything other than read your email?

Reminds me of my brief stint at IBM, circa 1996-1997: I could have spent literally an entire shift doing nothing but reading the utterly inane, purposeless nonsense that the higher-ups foisted on us every day.

To this day, I contend that, for the vast majority of businesses, email [and instant messaging, and pagers, and beepers, and walkie-talkie/blackberry/802.11xyz thingamabobs] cause a net decrease in productivity.

Re:137 non-spam??? by ooby · 2004-03-10 06:44 · Score: 1

To this day, I contend that, for the vast majority of businesses, email [and instant messaging, and pagers, and beepers, and walkie-talkie/blackberry/802.11xyz thingamabobs] cause a net decrease in productivity. And I contend that /. causes the rest of it.
Re:137 non-spam??? by Eraser_ · 2004-03-10 07:07 · Score: 1

Sounds like you forgot the rule of thumb for corporate email. The higher up it comes from, the safer it is to ignore it.

I just Cmd-J anything I get from my fearless leader with more than 3 or so recipients. (Eudora, Cmd-J is the Junk button) The person literally FORWARDS SPAM to the "all" mailing alias that they demanded we setup. This person even flags emails as extremely important, some of them spam, none important.
Re:137 non-spam??? by bheerssen · 2004-03-10 07:29 · Score: 1

137 legit messages is not so outrageous. Just one active mailing list can generate that many and more. It can also result in attracting more spam, depending on which list it is.

--
(Score: -1, Stupid)

What about us? by Woogiemonger · 2004-03-10 06:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Re:What about us? by PhxBlue · 2004-03-10 06:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

When was the last time the ISPs hiked up the rates explicitly because of the E-mail traffic they had to filter and handle? Call me old-fashioned, but I'd settle for the lower volume of spam that will result from this action The time I would save is worth more than a 50 coupon.

--
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Re:What about us? by mabu · 2004-03-10 06:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

I have to assume that they would include and subpoena the records of the businesses the spammers are promoting.. that's a key method to help identify them. If the companies aren't the employers of the spammers themselves already.

I just hope the criminal authorities also follow the civil case and then nail these people with criminal charges.
Re:What about us? by rabel · 2004-03-10 06:51 · Score: 1

A coupon for what? Penis enlargement? Mmm, hmm.. you know you'd take it if it was offered. You've always wondered if they work, not matter what Penn and Teller say, especially if it was free.
Re:What about us? by whathappenedtomonday · 2004-03-10 11:42 · Score: 1

Why can't they include their customers in the law suit?

you can include yourself: just sue your isp for delivering all that unsolicited junk to you.

--
I hope I didn't brain my damage.

Re:Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:36 · Score: 1, Funny

"Since when has Microsoft been an ISP?"

I have to agree with the question since when has MSN been an ISP?

I thought you were suppose to "provide" access to the internet to be an ISP not just "offer" access and give you busy signals.

Excellent News! by netfall · 2004-03-10 06:38 · Score: 3, Interesting

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!

Re:Excellent News! by gnuzip · 2004-03-10 06:47 · Score: 1

spammers actually make money!
I guess one of the most important things, then, is to try to educate people about spam, and get people to stop giving money to the spammers. If they stop making enough money to be profitable, they'll probably stop sending people emails. It certainly wouldn't solve the entire problem, but it might help.
Re:Excellent News! by netfall · 2004-03-10 06:56 · Score: 3, Informative

I should point out the article I reference with that 7%... Written by Deborah Fallows, Senior Research Fellow at Pew Internet & American Life project. "SPAM: How it is Hurting Email and Degrading Life on the Internet". Available here.
Another point is that the 7% statistic may be skewed, because some of the people surveyed didn't consider all mail to be SPAM (ie, they requested the special offers / catalogs / etc by email)
Re:Excellent News! by MCZapf · 2004-03-10 09:25 · Score: 1

That actually makes me feel better in a way. I may be getting spam, but at least I'm not falling for it!

Aren't we screwed if by netfool · 2004-03-10 06:39 · Score: 1

...the spammers move their "business" to the caribbean, just like online gambling casinos?

--
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com

Re:Aren't we screwed if by MooseByte · 2004-03-10 07:05 · Score: 1

"Aren't we screwed if the spammers move their "business" to the caribbean ... ?"
No, because once they're down there it will be easier to deploy a Narn Bat Squad via midnight beach assault on their sorry asses.
Re:Aren't we screwed if by coastwalker · 2004-03-10 11:53 · Score: 1

no no no, you cannot ignore all UN treaties and bomb their weapons of mass emailing to destruction just because they are outside your boarders. Oh drat you allready do that.

More seriously, if the product is sold from a business inside the US then you should be able to recover damages from them and shut down offshore spamming activities that way. No bombing required...

--
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.

Re:Open Relays? by andih8u · 2004-03-10 06:39 · Score: 1

The thing you should be worrying about is the fact that you'll never ever be able to get that ip off all of the spamlists.

--

slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots

Re:Not Much by Short+Circuit · 2004-03-10 06:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well, they were clever enough to get past my Thunderbird installation's bayesian filter, even after thousands of messages marked as spam.

It's interesting that we're having another of a technology-beats-technology war here. The success one drives the improvement of the other, and vice versa.

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)

depends on how you shut them down by Rai · 2004-03-10 06:40 · Score: 3, Funny

Lawsuits are too common, but something like driving masonry nails into their kneecaps would get more attention.

I should have been an inquisitor :)

Re:depends on how you shut them down by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:50 · Score: 1, Interesting

The lawsuits will expose the names and addresses of the spammers eventually. What happens then is up to fate. . .

Re:Not Much by DaHat · 2004-03-10 06:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

On the contrary, I'd argue that spammers tend to be quite smart using intelligently designed tools. Aside from the volume of spam most of us receive daily, it's still not the easiest to filter at times, not because the spammers are dumb, but because they are smart enough to try to keep up with advanced in spam detection so as to be able to bypass them more easily.

--
Help Brendan pay off his student loans

Wake me up by mabu · 2004-03-10 06:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

when these spammers face criminal charges.... anything less won't make much of a difference. Most of these spammers don't have any money and have probably declared bankruptcy in the past so it'll be no big deal to do so again IF they're even identified, much less lose in court.

What we need is Federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison time for spammers. AOL, Microsoft and others should lobby the government to start prosecuting these spammers. You can follow any one of them and find that they've exploited and broken into other computer systems.

These spammers hack AOL accounts, send out viruses and worms, misrepresent themselves, engage in credit card fraud, break into third-party servers and promote fraudulent activity. We have laws against these sorts of things... criminal laws. Why is it that the only action that seems to be taken is civil?

Better link to AP article by Patik · 2004-03-10 06:45 · Score: 4, Informative

Click here.

MyWay.com carries all AP and Reuters articles with no banners, popups, or any kind of registration. Just a couple inobtrusive Google-provided text ads at the bottom. They also have reg-free referal links to NY Times, USA Today, CBS, FOX, and MSNBC stories.

Re:Open Relays? by onkelonkel · 2004-03-10 06:45 · Score: 1

spayed

--
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.

Following the Money by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 06:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

Re:Following the Money by mabu · 2004-03-10 07:49 · Score: 1

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.

To use your analogy, homeless people must also be making a lot of money because I see them stand out by the highway all day. I get tons of advertisements for "work at home" operations, so they must all be extremely profitable.

How much effort do you think it takes to download some script that weasels the web for e-mail addresses? How much effort does it take to go to a site like OpenProxies.com and grab a list of IPs and start spamming? Have you seen these spam filter bypass efforts? They're far from "scientific" - don't give these people that much credit. They're not smart. They're not rich. If they were really making a lot of money, they'd be much more trackable. They're not making money, any more than your average Herbalife salesman is pulling in $100k/year.

If spamming really was profitable, more legitimate companies would be doing it, for more legitimate products. The vast majority of spamvertized ventures seem to be based around commissions-earning through referrals to web sites, so the spammers rarely get any money up front. It's much more likely that if the spammers are getting paid at all, it's by get-rich-quick losers who are blowing little bits of money thinking that spamming will improve their attempt to grab the brass ring without really having to work, which is something that, since the dawn of time, has proven to be a foolish waste of time for 99.9999% of humanity.

Nonetheless, there will always remain a percentage of the populace who will believe that a pill will make them lose 50 pounds or gain 8". And there will always be people who will try to prey on these ignorant people. In the old days, these guys would role into villages in a wagon, make a pitch for some "magic salve" and then get out quickly before they were beaten up. Now they do it electronically. Sure, every once in awhile, some carpetbagger might manage to create a Listerine, but most of them are panhandlers who make their living misleading other people and exploiting their resources. The only way to deal with them is to let them know they are not welcome in your town. Where's the Sherriff when you need him?
Re:Following the Money by coastwalker · 2004-03-10 12:18 · Score: 1

Sadly it may be true that a lot of spam does not generate a viable money trail. Consider for example that the travelling snake oil salesman survived as much because the sales pitch was entertaining and drew crowds for the entertainment value. I'll bet that the purchasers were fully aware that the products they bought wouldnt make them live forever or whatever.

A lot of spam fails this test completely, in advertising terms its rubbish; bereft of any entertainment value at all. Mind you this goes for a lot of advertising on the internet, it falls a long way behind the entertainment value of a prime time tv video advertisment. I dread the thought that future spam could get good enough to make us watch it for the entertainment value. This will probably happen when it turns into a 20Mb video clip, any guesses as to when this will happen?

--
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.

Re:Open Relays? by netfall · 2004-03-10 06:48 · Score: 1

That's a good point. If you read the text of the CAN-SPAM Act you will see that any reference to relaying mail states that it is illegal to relay through a protected computer or network. It also states it is illegal to relay through a computer to which you do not have access to. So the question is - how does that apply to open relays? Does the responsibility of abuse lie on the administrator who configures the security, or on the spammer who abuses the security mistakes of the administrator?
If you leave your keys in your open car, and someone else takes it, who is at fault?

I'd block you too by Hayzeus · 2004-03-10 06:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'd block your email too (I have spamassassin set up to score dynblock.bl relays as 5, with a spam threshold of 5). Sorry, but this has become pretty much a necessity -- not just because of the mass of incoming spam from dynamic IPs, but also because of the worm traffic.

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

UsE BayEsIAn Filters NOW erxcyx.d3q 218 prolific by vivin · 2004-03-10 06:52 · Score: 3, Funny

New bAyEsIAN sPAm FilTER just for you!!1!! is your inboX filled with spAM? Lose it all nOw!! this revoluTIonAry new spam fiLTErs w1LL st0p yoU from rEceIving spam EVER AGAIN! GET IT NOW!!

"I had lots of spam before. Now I have none! Bayesian Filters saved my life!
John Bismarck"

oierfj.w91i swoerks ms catatonic concinnity arms shipment to fireworks moon salt

--
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net

I like

And the war to create "good spam" has begun by wayne · 2004-03-10 06:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

Remeber that the You-Can-Spam act has penalties that are so small that only cost effective for the largest ISPs to can bring claims against spammers. So, only the largest ISPs can really decide which spam gets eliminated. Remember also that you can't bring any claims at all if you are not an ISP.

There is a HUGE potential market out there for "good" bulk advertising out there, if only all the pr0n and scams can be eliminated. These large ISPs have an "existing business relationship" with all their customers, and maybe arguably with those that send email through their servers. Just think of how much these ISPs could make by sending "good" spam from Ford, Pepsi, Pfizer, or PlayBoy.

--
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.

Re:And the war to create "good spam" has begun by bheerssen · 2004-03-10 07:39 · Score: 1

If it's Playboy, who's complaining?

--
(Score: -1, Stupid)

Even better by BashDot · 2004-03-10 06:56 · Score: 1

Put them on a dremel (use a sanding drum) and spin them as fast as they go. I hear that the CDs will fly apart at a fast enough rpm, but I've never been able to do it with a 10krpm dremel. They do roll away *quite* fast when they do come off of the sanding drum. Hitting them against bricks at that speed does shatter them, if you really want to see some schrapnel. :)

Re:Even better by mattyrobinson69 · 2004-03-10 07:31 · Score: 1

you can also make nepalm substitute from AOL CD's (dont mod me funny, im not joking) *laughs manically*

my solution by `DevNull` · 2004-03-10 06:56 · Score: 1

Every time spam issues come up, I wonder why nobody has suggested something like this...
To be an effective marketing tool, one thing must always be present in a spam message; contact information for the company doing the advertising. Without that, you wouldnt be able to buy the product, and thus the message would be useless.
So, why dont we make the seller of the product liable for the means of advertisement? If the ad is not compliant, we bypass the marketing solution (in this case the spammer) and go right for the seller directly. This would encourage the seller to more carefully choose who they use for marketing, rather than just picking the cheapest one and looking the other way if it isnt entirely legitimate. Spammers would then be forced to comply with the anti-spam laws, or risk losing business (sellers would use marketing companies that themselves advertise legal marketing methods). Non-compliant marketers (spammers) would very soon find themselves with a severe lack of business or even under legal threat from misrepresenting themselves to their clients if they say they dont spam and then do.
It seems simple, very efective, and is based on the one piece of information that HAS to be present in all advertisements.

Re:my solution by fdiskne1 · 2004-03-10 07:37 · Score: 1

While I don't completely disagree with this. You must take Joe Jobs into consideration. This is when one business (say the competitor of the company in the ad) takes out a blatently spam advertisement, selling his competitor's product. The competitor gets the bad rap, fine, whatever and the one who bought the ad just sits and grins.

--
But why is the rum gone?

Slashdot Interview with SPAM fighters @ Big 4 ISP' by rearden · 2004-03-10 07:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

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?

Re:You know what's getting ridiculous? by AcquaCow · 2004-03-10 07:05 · Score: 1

S&GN!

I'll write this spelling error up as trying to aid an informative discussion on slashdot and provoke thought, while having my boss look over my shoulder from his office directly behind me.

--

up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...

Re:Open Relays? by CrankyFool · 2004-03-10 07:07 · Score: 1

You *should* be taking the heat for actions of spammers using your system. Ever hear of the phrase "attractive nuisance"?

It's your responsibility to secure your system. If it can be trivially used to harm my system, I don't see a problem with me suing you. We're not talking about some sort of orange book sniffing with the spammers carefully monitoring EM transmissions from your keyboard to get your password -- we're talking about you (no offense intended), being too lame to manage your own MTA systems. Get off the net or take responsibility for the actions of your system.

semi-offtopic by Quintar · 2004-03-10 07:18 · Score: 1

If you run your own mailserver.. try Greylisting..
The Next Step in the Spam Control War: Greylisting

I set it up on one of my spam-filled accounts on Friday.. (averaged about 45 spams/day on an account I never had actually used anywhere)..
I've only had one piece make it through that since (but was immediately tagged by the virus scanner).
So I've been honestly spam free for nearly 4 days.

Six Lawsuits != Six Spammers by Caveman+Og · 2004-03-10 07:24 · Score: 1

I do believe the actual number of spammers covered by the suits is upward of 150+.

At least they're following the money by swb · 2004-03-10 07:25 · Score: 1

They're doing it half right. While I agree that civil prosecution is mostly ineffective, especially if the "top" spammers have done any sensible corporate structuring to insulate themselves and their core businesses from lawsuits. There is the fact that SOMEONE is finally using the money trail to find the people behind it, and I find that encouraging.

However, I think you're right that both spammers and their entrepeneur clients need to go to a Federal "make me a bitch to the Aryan Brotherhood" prison to see a significant drop long-term in the spam business model.

I think it's possible for this to happen if the Feds would also "follow the money" and create a juicy RICO case that makes everyone involved (ISPs, banks, spammers, clients) eligible for major fines and long, long prison sentences.

I'm as lost as you are as to why the Feds haven't made an issue of the blatantly criminal nature of spam and recognized it for what it is -- an electronic version of organized crime (if it hasn't just become the E-commerce division of organized crime already).

I can only speculate that blue-chip, otherwise legitimate businesses are tertiary players in the spam world -- selling lists, providing banking, credit card, and ISP service, etc -- and they have told their paid-for reps in the government that spam is actually good business.

Re:At least they're following the money by mabu · 2004-03-10 07:33 · Score: 1

My impression is that one of the reasons why we don't have more criminal prosecutions is because the government (politicians) seem to believe that passing laws is analogous to enforcing laws. Their method of solving a problem is to make it illegal, and at the same time, not dedicate any substantive resources to enforcement/prosecution.

So every time something doesn't work the way we want, some politician passes another law. You'd think somewhere along the line they would put some resources into actually enforcing the tons of laws already on the books. I don't directly fault the Feds -- I think they're really trying, but their resources are limited and more effort needs to be put into educating District Attorneys and others on cybercrime so they're likely to pursue these cases, which they don't seem to have an interest in doing so at this point.
Re:At least they're following the money by swb · 2004-03-10 08:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

I buy that, but only so far. The feds went nuts busting people selling bongs via mail order, including putting Tommy Chong in jail. Whether you agree or disagree with pot smoking, I think you would agree that "Operation Headhunter" (the official name for the bong busts) was the most ridiculous waste of enforcement dollars, especially compared with the wholesale fraud and destruction to computer systems that goes on in the world of spam.

Prosecutors go after politically expedient and easy targets. I don't doubt that a RICO investigation of even a single spammer would be a huge undertaking -- subpeonas, records, undercover investigations, and it's probably some pretty tricky *law* to practice as well.

It's not as flashy and politically agreeable as throwing a bunch of angry muslims in the clink on trumped up charges.
Re:At least they're following the money by mabu · 2004-03-11 10:21 · Score: 1

This is because the DAs like busting drug-related cases. They know nothing about the Internet and cybercrime, but they apparently have a lot of experience with bongs and drug cases.

The Feds are at the mercy of the District Attorneys who decide whether to pursue cases or not. People need to lobby their DAs to start taking action against cybercrime.

hmmmm by mattyrobinson69 · 2004-03-10 07:35 · Score: 1

hmmm, im not so sure about this any more. i cant help thinking that microsoft is going to some way, use this to implement a 'microsoft tax' on email or something like that.

maybe im just paranoid, but i just cant see microsoft doing good.

mod me as flamebait if that makes you happy, im just suspicious.

Chuckle by jratcliffe · 2004-03-10 07:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

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?

private subpoenas by Ian+0x57 · 2004-03-10 08:01 · Score: 1

ok, so lets get this straigt. We all hate the RIAA for being a private company and getting subpoenas against people. But we love it when private companies get subpoenas if it means less spam for us ??? Do I have the 'slashdot' logic right ?

Re:Slashdot Interview with SPAM fighters @ Big 4 I by amyhughes · 2004-03-10 08:06 · Score: 1

What can we do to assist? Is there some type of site, or address we can send information to assist in tracking down offenders.

And what would you have to offer? What would the slashdot readership have to offer? Lots more email to read? Yeah, that'll help.

Think you can trace email better than they can? What are you offering?

Amy

Re:I get no spam by HermanZA · 2004-03-10 08:06 · Score: 1

Yeah well, newbies don't get spam - but you will. My domain is 9 years old and I get 2000 spams a day.

What I find amusing is... by Faw · 2004-03-10 08:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

.. that MS is going to use the same methods to find the spammers that the RIAA uses to find those that share MP3s, subpoenas against the ISPs. I know some ISPs fought the RIAA (Verizon comes to mind). Wonder if they will fight MS?

isn't it ironic by olscratch69 · 2004-03-10 08:23 · Score: 2, Funny

Aren't these the same people that made crappy service or product and alowed most of the spam in the first place.

What about privacy? by dysk · 2004-03-10 08:32 · Score: 1

While it is good that spammers are being shown some accountability, we also need to watch out for our rights. I find it interesting how many of the same tactics are being used against spammers as are used by the recording labels against silesharers. We have to be very careful about what privacy we are willing to give away in order to combat spam. Allowing anyone to subpeona IP address ---> billing details records is a very slippery slope. Why is it that slashdotters see "John Doe suit filed by recording industry (bad) against P2P user (good)" and say that the end of privacy is here, but when they see "Major ISPs (good) file John Doe suit against spammers (bad)" they say more power to them?

Re:What about privacy? by Todd+Knarr · 2004-03-10 08:50 · Score: 1

The objection to the RIAA, though, was that they weren't filing John Doe lawsuits. Those would require going to court and actually proving that something the plaintiff could sue for did in fact occur, then getting a subpoena to find the identity of the person who did it. The problem we have with the RIAA is they want to skip right to the subpoena part without going to the trouble of filing a lawsuit and proving that anything they could sue for happened.

The ISPs here are going about it the right way.

Why not make it a crime to buy from spammers? by Hamster+Lover · 2004-03-10 08:40 · Score: 1

Cut them off at the knees -- make purchasing products from companies that spam illegal.
I realize it may not feasible or even constitutional, but the only reason spammers stay in business is because people are purchasing their products.

I think that criminalizing problems isn't the best solution, but in this case I would support it.

Anyone have a link for the spam ratio? by NotQuiteReal · 2004-03-10 08:42 · Score: 1

I don't keep track of my own spam, but it has been going up up up.

Is there anywhere on the web that has a chart, so we can see if there are [ever] any dips in spam traffic?

Based on anecdotal evidence I would just guess that spam is growing at a geometric rate such that by the year 2010, statistically speaking, ALL information travelling on the Internet is spam.

--
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.

Re:Open Relays? by netfall · 2004-03-10 08:47 · Score: 1

With no doubt - I agree that administrators should be held responsible to some degree for not having their systems secure.
However - if you penalize that administrator and only them, you aren't really getting to the source of the problem. There is still a spammer out there who is just going to exploit another exploitable system.
Give naive administrators a slap on the wrist... but don't get wrapped up in persecuting them. Get to the real source of the problem - the actual spammers!

Re:I get no spam by Jack+Schitt · 2004-03-10 09:11 · Score: 1

I get no spam. I've had this one address for two years, and in all this time, I've only received one piece of spam. It showed up every second days for about a week, but then I traced it and reported it to the spammer's ISP. Whoop, no more spam. That was six months ago. Granted, I don't use it for a hell of a lot, but I do use it. Personal correspondance, commercial (when I buy stuff from eBay and such). I've even posted with it on USENET. I send a couple of mails a day. And yet, no spam. I don't know what it is with you guys. Maybe it's because my mailhost is tiny, so it's never targeted.

Yeah. You never hear about people complaining about not receiving spam. If it's really a problem for you, give me your email address and I'll see that you get 200-300 spams a day. I'm here to help...

--
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit

SPF by mdfst13 · 2004-03-10 09:17 · Score: 1

You may want to check into SPF ( http://spf.pobox.com ). It allows you to specify an IP with an A record (presumably genevish.org is pointed at your dynamic IP with dyndns.org or similar?) as a valid sender for your domain.

This would also kill joejobs using your domain from other IPs (at least for SPF aware recipients).

Forged headers by panxerox · 2004-03-10 09:19 · Score: 1

Boy I hope they can figure out who the real spammers are Id hate to see AOL land on some 12 old girl because some freak was used her header or bounced spam off her machine.

--
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler

Win3.11... (OT) by oldosadmin · 2004-03-10 09:22 · Score: 1

Stability contest: Win 3.1 vs. Win 95. Which will win? Windows 3.1, every time.

--
Jay | http://oldos.org

Junk mail helps you by mdfst13 · 2004-03-10 09:23 · Score: 1

Not only aren't you paying for postage, but the fact that they are paying for postage means that they are subsidizing delivery (of other mail) to your house. Delivering 10 letters doesn't cost significantly more than 1 at time of delivery (may increase travel costs). This helps keep your postal costs down by paying part of the actual deliverer's salary.

SPAM *increases* the cost to your ISP, because it uses more bandwidth and server resources without any increase in revenue.

Pity... by deepvoid · 2004-03-10 09:30 · Score: 1

It's a ppity we can't do more to the spammers than merely hurt them in the pockets book. I favor the idea of given evry person they ever spammed the option of throwing a dart at them for every peice of spam recieved. Probably won't ever find any thing of them after the first volley.

--
Fast machines, powerfull AI, impulsive invention,... All I lack is a good espresso machine!

AOL CD Spam by zoney_ie · 2004-03-10 09:39 · Score: 1

> You aren't paying the postage for those CDs unlike spam. Junk mail is paid for by whoever is sending it.

In Ireland and many other countries, you have to pay for refuse collection. In fact, we even pay by weight in many places now, and have to segregate our waste too.

Extra unwanted items are becoming distinctly unpopular here.

Yeah, yeah, a CD is nothing weight-wise and refuse-wise, but what is the overall cost in waste - both monetarily and environmentally?

--
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...

No Spam Today? by Swannie · 2004-03-10 09:40 · Score: 1

Just our of curiosity, has anyone noticed a decrease in spam received since this article originally broke on yahoo? I read this article on Fark, about mid-morning, and I haven't received one ounce of spam since then. Even with my spam filters in place, I get at least one or two people that think I need debt consolidation, a bigger penis, or to loose some weight (how do these people know me??) an hour. I actually had to send myself an email from a different account to ensure my mail server is working!

--
:q!

Where do their interests lie? by rbird76 · 2004-03-10 10:02 · Score: 1

Some ISPs fought the RIAA because much of their customer base would have little need for their bandwidth with the conditions the RIAA would impose on digital-only music, and so the ISPs would have lost customers. Thus ISPs backed their users because that's where their money comes from, not the RIAA (the RIAA is essentially imposing costs on them, while their users are a benefit to ISPs).

In this case some ISPs will support this - those where their high-bandwidth users aren't spammers. Those populations will support this stance, as spam costs them money and time. For some, however, the ISP makes lots of money from pink-list spammers and will be less supportive of this, since their money comes from spammers and if they turn them out, the ISP's business goes away. A few may oppose this on general principle, but spammers (who only pay their host system for bandwidth) are more likely to cost them money than music copiers (who have to pay for their bandwidth at both ends - or rather the person who has the song and the person copying it both pay for their bandwidths) and would thus also provide a principle on which to oppose spammers.

People and corporations do what's in their best interests. In this case, the interests of spam pursuers and ISPs are aligned. The interests of the RIAA and MPAA and ISPs are not so; thus the ISPs respond differently.

80/20 by tacokill · 2004-03-10 10:04 · Score: 1

80/20 rule probably applies...

My guess is that 80% of the spam is generated by the top 20% of spammers. Knocking out 6 (whatever percentage that is of total spammers) is most likely not going to do anything.

I'm so conflicted! by El · 2004-03-10 10:07 · Score: 1

Now Microsoft, America Online, Earthlink and Yahoo are the good guys? That's the problem with huge corporations -- they are large enough that they can simultaneously be the pinnacle of evil and good allies in making the world a better place. Here's wishing the greedy, unethical assholes good luck in bringing down the even greedier and less ethical spammers!

--

"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

Speaking of getting spammed by Chatmag · 2004-03-10 10:10 · Score: 1

Some moron email bombed my server last night with over 16000 emails for camcontacts.net

I contacted Ameritech, and they contacted their customer, and found out that it was a "malicious" program that they had downloaded that was spitting out the spam. The interesting thing was that the program had one email address in it, mine.

Apparently I must of ruffled some feathers with the perverted justice people when I did an expose` of their site, Vigilante Web Site Perverted-Justice.com harming legitimate law enforcement efforts to stop online predators.

I can deal with normal spam, but that was above and beyond what I normally get every day. I'm all in favor of tracking down the spammers and going through the court system, after all, all they understand is money.

--
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com

false advertising? by alexq · 2004-03-10 10:18 · Score: 1

talk about being mad about your genitals not doubling in size as advertised.....

sort of... by rbird76 · 2004-03-10 10:22 · Score: 1

Spammers cost everybody (but particularly /. users) money and time that they would not spend, while copying music costs a small group of people (RIAA-affiliated labels, mainly) money. That alone ensures that fewer people will oppose the same methods to pursue spammers than oppse them to pursue music copiers.

Music copying probably costs someone money, but it doesn't have to, while spamming always costs someone (usually multiple someones) tangible resources (time and money). People argue back and forth about theft vs copyright infringement (including me), and the same distinction applies here. Spamming causes actual monetary damages, while copyright infringement imposes potential ones (and the loss of control of a work by its creator).

Spammers sell what very few of us want or appreciate (even if they were honest businesspeople, which they aren't) and lie to do it. The interests of many are aligned with their pursuers as a result. The labels of the RIAA have attempted to monopolize access to the marketing and sale of music, and have used their muscle to raise their prices while attempting to take by fiat the fair-use rights of their end users. The lack of sympathy of music customers for the RIAA labels is a result of what music labels have done to them; the ubiquity of music copying is a direct result of this as well.

This doesn't justify the differences in opinion, but it may be an accurate explanation as to why people feel differently about the two causes.

Re:Slashdot Interview with SPAM fighters @ Big 4 I by skagin · 2004-03-10 10:35 · Score: 1

In working for a couple of _very_ large-scale list providers (opt-in good guys only) I've had to deal repeatedly with AOL's and Yahoo's spam cops. Yeah, I can trace email better than they can - and set more effective policies for combatting spam. (Duh, let's block mail from ISPs who send to more than twelve non-existant addresses a day) And as far as I'm concerned that dosen't make me anything special. I daresay you can't swing a cat around slashdot without hitting a good half dozen spam fighters who leave the AOL mail admins in the dust.

Freedom of speech? by Martian_Bob · 2004-03-10 10:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

I don't think this will hold up - it seems to me that this is a revisiting of the FTC's Do-Not-Call list; even though the appeal was upheld, it's still being slugged out in court. I see this as a similar issue, is commercial speech protected by the first amendment? I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but God knows we don't want to give the current administration more ammo to start monitoring, restricting, and censoring online speech; or have we all forgotten that Patriot Act II may still be around the corner...

Re:Slashdot Interview with SPAM fighters @ Big 4 I by skagin · 2004-03-10 10:39 · Score: 1

However, they are most probably more effective writers than I.

Duh, let's block mail from ISPs who send to more than twelve non-existant addresses a day

please imagine the above in the voice of yer typical dimwitted Yahoo postmaster. I never could write dialog.

This doesnt stop crap if you're from a diff county by buht · 2004-03-10 10:59 · Score: 1

Nice. Do you actually think USA will be able to do anything to someone from some other country? Big deal, so some dood from Pakistan email bombs the crap out of Yahoo. Yahoo find out who he is, puts his name on some sort of blacklist so he is screwed if he ever wants to come to America. Think the guy actually cares? I doubt it, in fact I bet he is laughing his butt off. This is no different than the car scams that happen on a daily basis where people call the dumber of the americans and get them to cash a forged check and send wire transfer it immediately to them while they claim they are "interested" in the item for sale. So a few americans will get caught and sued, ok. Spam will increase hardcore form other countries possibly beyond what we see now. America wont be able to touch them, especially for those countries that do have have any sort of alliance with america. It will be up to filtering and firewalling systems to stop this crap. And even then, someone will find a way in.

--

-- The box said Windows 2000 or better... so I installed Linux

Re:Slashdot Interview with SPAM fighters @ Big 4 I by amyhughes · 2004-03-10 11:20 · Score: 1

I've had to deal repeatedly with AOL's and Yahoo's spam cops. Yeah, I can trace email better than they can

I know for fact that AOL has spam cops more adept than the ones they let you talk to.

you can't swing a cat around slashdot without hitting a good half dozen spam fighters who leave the AOL mail admins in the dust

And a great many more than that who don't, which is why AOL has the spam cops you can talk to. They cost less.

Amy

The Key Difference by schnablebg · 2004-03-10 11:30 · Score: 1

There is a major difference here:

File sharing copyrighted material is not in of itself a crime. The RIAA does not KNOW if filesharers are committing a crime--they are assuming that they are. If I own a CD, I have the right to own that music in a different form. As far as I know, this is not (yet) illegal in the U.S. It is fair use.

The issue with spammers if that they know SOMEONE is breaking the law--they just don't know who; hence, the need for a subpoena.

Tax the bastards by Lotharjade · 2004-03-10 12:04 · Score: 1

Hey couldn't the President enact a tariff or tax on all spam origionating outside the country? Define exactly what spam is (un-solicited advertisements maybe?), track where it is coming from, and either tax them directly or bill the government. Heh, we could pay off some of the debt we owe. Say $1-$5 per email. That might slow things down or at least pay off some of our debt.

--
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?

Re:This doesnt stop crap if you're from a diff cou by coastwalker · 2004-03-10 13:09 · Score: 1

Appart from being overly paranoid this is an elloquent list of good reasons to have good relations with the Pakistan government. The world is full of crooks of one kind or another and crime can be dealt with quite effectively by extraditing the crooks to the place where they comitted the crime.

There is some difficulty about agreeing on what constitutes a crime depending on your society so there will allways be a need to try and block some internet content depending on who you are. The french sucesfully forced EBay to remove Nazi memorabilia from its local site, I dont think they have had any affect on US Ebay. China currently blocks most of the rest of the world out.

As is often noted about virus writers, spam senders do at least illustrate the vunerability of our systems to attack and test our defences. Worst case scenario we could probably pull the plug on a country to force the politicians to catch the people attacking us.

--
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.

Re:Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits by obeythefist · 2004-03-10 15:18 · Score: 1

Parent has a point though, although Microsoft is an ISP, I bet they're so lousy most people don't even think about it.

--
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.

Mod parent up! by trezor · 2004-03-10 22:03 · Score: 1

It seems like all should RTFA (which they won't), or take note of parent poster.

I'll just repeat the message to be sure people get it:

"they filed six lawsuits against hundreds of people who were accused of sending millions of unwanted e-mails"

--
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.

Re:Anyone have a link for the spam ratio? by the+real+darkskye · 2004-03-10 22:40 · Score: 1

Try messagelabs They have graphs of recent spam/pr0n/virus activity and may have a history graph that spans the last decade.

--
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno

Re:This doesnt stop crap if you're from a diff cou by buht · 2004-03-11 03:40 · Score: 1

Interesting comments. So in the end, when we fail to get another countriess government to work with us by catching the spammers you suggest we break the american networks of the internet to these other countries? So we would have to hope to get the internet provider of Nigerian ISP's for example to not allow them access because of their spammers.. and if they say no, then we need to get the providers of the providers of the providers to shut down the taproot? hehe :)

--

-- The box said Windows 2000 or better... so I installed Linux

Re:Liar by Overly+Critical+Guy · 2004-03-11 11:24 · Score: 1

You didn't post anything from my journal, except a comment where I said someone wasn't paying attention.

Of course, you couldn't leave that kind of evidence laying around, so you go rid of it.

Evidence of what? Having opinions?

This is really, really sad. Graduate high school so you can get off your parent's computer and stop stalking me.

--
"Sufferin' succotash."

Re:Why do you support spammers? by tmork · 2004-03-12 00:08 · Score: 1

I can't even think of a legitamate customer of Uunet; can you?

Actually, yes, I can.

The $_office I work for.

And don't talk to me about "most anti-spammers". I've been playing in that arena for years.

-Tiffiany Mork

Re:Drek? by fm6 · 2004-03-14 09:18 · Score: 1

Drek is something of no value. For example, a person who has access to the Internet, the greatest reference tool in human history, and yet cannot answer the simplest questions for himself unassisted.

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Four Big ISPs File Six Anti-Spam Suits

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