Slashdot Mirror
FTC Porn Spam Regulation Now in Effect
gManZboy writes "The AP (through Yahoo) is reporting that the FTC is now requiring that all sexually explicit spam carry the wholly original 'SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT:' moniker in the subject line. I don't know why the porn industry is complaining about this, it seems like now everyone who really wants porn spam (not I!) can finally create a filter that delivers it to their inbox, highlighted, and bolded!" The FTC's regulation is available, and so is Slashdot's earlier story.
Spammers lie, cheat and break the law. I can't see this being enforced succesfully.
Are those who spam really going to take note to this? Aren't they already breaking the law by sending unsolicited emails in the first place?
This is the same counter given to every law that triesd to combat spam. They are always unenforcable.
I dont think there is ANYTHING that can be done by governments that will reduce spam levels. The spammers know its wrong, but they dont care.
If anything they will AVOID using these tags, a they know their emails will be filtered out if they include them. A spammer is after eyeballs on emails.
The real problem, as ever, are the people who BUY services from spammers. Cut off their income.
Same arguments for an unsolvable problem.
RM
I have no sig yet I must scream.
... only outlaws will use misleading subjects.
hmmm...
I'm not sure how anyone can regulate the content of spam until hey figure out how to prevent the transmission of it in the first place
- We don't get any uncolicited emails anymore thanks to their CAN-SPAM act.
- Life is great and it's easy to remove yourself from these lists if you don't want their emails.
How about trying to come up with rules to STOP and regulate unwanted spam altogether before adopting rules to regulate sexually explicit ones? Once the rules come to completeley stop this, non of these new rules even matter!
Hmmm.
Sure, but the point is most porn spam is asking you to visit site foo-bar or something like that. Or maybe buy a product from some place.
;)
And anyway, the sites that the spammers link to can always plead ignorance. *shrug*
Hey, I asked these spammers to help me out, but they did not stick to the rules. Don't blame us.
And maybe this will see even spam being outsourced
Headers will come in mutiple forms that will fullfill the letter of the law, but attempt to foil basic filters:
[SÈXUA?Y-EXPLI?IT]: More Pr0n for you.
SeExUally-Explicit: More pr0n for you:
More pr0n for you (Sexually-Explicit)
[Sexually]-[Explicit]: More pr0n for you
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I don't know which aspect is more fascinating...
That people actually expect any real help and enforcement from the government.
Or
That anyone who does business with spammers expects to do business with an ethical entity who won't pass along their email address, credit card numbers, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Um... if "ANY email message that contains sexually oriented material" requires this identifying subject, does that mean that if you want to talk dirty with your friends, you have to ID each message thusly, lest some unwitting soul intercept and view your pornographic conversation??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What about the people who get on wireless networks that they don't own, then send out tons of spam? Do you really think that they will follow this law? I don't think anyone cares and I really don't see the point in wasting money to make these lame laws that no one will listen to anyway. Use the money for more productive things.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. -Alan Kay
So if this substring can be found after 300 characters of spaces, is the spammer still complying?
Here's why the porn industry doesn't like it - because porn spam is ready made for people with "impulse control problems." They don't really care if you, person with reasonable self-control, deletes their spam, as it cost them whatever ridiculous fraction of a cent to send. They really don't like it if Mr. self-recognized porno compulsive can filter their stuff out.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
This is something I mostly bring up in the debate regarding general spam, but something that is very important to keep in mind is that if we can force spam to originate from outside of the United States, this is a major win. The fact is that every existing form of technical spam prevention-- blacklists, whitelists, graylists, filtering, etc-- are made noticeably easier if one can make assumptions geographically limiting the locations of spammers. Even if by "geographically limit" we just mean "outside the U.S.".
The thing is though I don't know how applicable my argument here is in this particular case, since as far as I'm aware (?) you don't filter porn spam any differently than the rest of it. However, spammers seem to be very loath to subscribe to any kind of law or decency if it means more work for them. Perhaps some spammers will get themselves screwed out of business because they don't follow this law and ISPs sue them.. a thinning of the herd, if you will.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I really don't see why the US needs to force their sexual discomfort on the rest of the world. US regulations on the web (or any countries for that matter) are not welcome as far as I'm concerned. The internet for the first 10 years I used it represented a truly free society. It seems now that it is a society being pillaged by governments around the world.
The best way possible to fight spam must be to fine the companies marketed by spam. Someone surely forks the dough to get spam invading everyones mailbox. I have a hard time imagine someone sending spam just for fun. By cutting off the money the incentive to spam is reduced and it should wither and become a much smaller problem.
Filtering and making a new shiny mail system dont help. All it does is make the spammers invent new ways to send spam.
What makes spam such a big industry must be the companies who pays for it, go get them!
HTTP/1.1 400
Bingo. Laws that try to regulate spam are doomed to fail. Spammers really just don't care! If they're out of the country, this doesn't apply to them. If they're in the country but are clever enough to not be traced, this doesn't apply to them.
What I'd like to see is legislation that says the company advertising in the spam has the responsibility of making sure the spammer adheres to the laws (sexual explicit tagging, do-not-email-me-again lists, etc). Naturally, you'd have to prove that the company actually hired the spammers, but I'm sure we'd see a dramatic cutback in spam if you could hold the company accountable.
Why are you reading your girlfriend's email???
http://www.missionfaces.com/
There's a huge difference between legitimate porn sites that keep their noses clean, have good credit, and will not sell your name or credit card to Russian bank frauders and spammers who put up fly-by-night porn sites to get your info and make a quick buck.
Lets not confuse the two because there's overlap in the content. Its like saying "Playboy shows kiddie porn, because they share the word 'porn.'"
I can say with some certainty that the "porn industry" isn't complaining about this. All of the best affiliate programs enforce TOS that prohibit spam. (You spam, you get shut down and lose the $$$ in your account that hasn't yet been paid out.) Don't insult the legitimate porn industry by linking them with spammers.
Saying that the "porn industry" protests this regulation is like saying CVS or Walgreens protests regulations on Viagra spam or OfficeMax protests regulations on inkjet cartridge spam. There are legitimate players in the industry, and there are scam artists feeding at the bottom. Guess which group is responsible for the spam.
Of course, none of this means anything about the regulation itself, which will most certainly be ineffectual at reducing spam or filtering porn spam. IME, the only tool that can produce a real impact on spam is a 2x4 applied forcefully to a spammer's skull.
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
...is that the porn industry doesn't like this because filtering doesn't always happen at the terminal point. Just like if there was a requirement for, say, a ".porn" domain, righteous ISPs would probably start filtering through proxies based on that indentifying information. There could conceivably be a majority of ISP customers that ask for this. The problem here is that they really shouldn't have a say over what Joe Porn-fan wants on his PC.
Anyway, no use worrying about it, it's not enforceable. My only regret is that they're going to try, and it will have negligible impact on society or my quality of life, while costing us all in taxes.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
I've been using Bayesian filtering for 1-1/2 years and my success rate just keeps inching up. In May of last year I was at 99.5% success. My Bayesian corpus has grown in the last year and so far this month I'm averaging 99.98% success--only two have gotten through, and one of those was in a foreign language. I can't even remember the last time a pornographic spam got past my Bayesian filter.
And in the last year we've seen silly attempts to get around Bayesian filters, such as packing the message with lots of random words, or excerpts from books or the Constitution or what have you. Time and time again those messages actually get a higher Bayesian score than they would have if they had just left the random words out.
There is still no known effective way to get around Bayesian filtering. I personally don't think there will be a way around them, but regardless: Bayesian has been the answer for nearly two years and shows no sign of weakening in the near future. USE IT!.
Perfect. Now I can get revenge on businesses I hate.
Step 1: Find legitimate online ad for business.
Step 2: Rejigger ad into sexually explicit pr0n ad that links to their sales site.
Step 3:Send pr0n from ow3nD boxes running a trojan.
Step 4: Let justice be done!
OK, I wouldn't really do this, but someone else will which is why this law may not work.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I'm not going to wait for spam to go away. Bayesian is something we can use now and it lets me get work done (or surf on Slashdot) rather than clicking delete every 2 minutes as my mail icon indicates a new mail has arrived.
Besides, in the end, bandwidth is cheap when compared to my time. If, eventually, someone can figure out how to make spam go away then that'll be a great help to reduce bandwidth usage and reduce server resources needed to filter my mail. But, in the grand scheme of things, that's a relatively small part of the cost of spam. The largest cost of spam is in humans having to take time to deal with it. And Bayesian solves that aspect of the problem.