FBI Plans Spammer Smackdown

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet News reports: '...the FBI told Congress on Thursday that it has 'identified over 100 significant spammers' so far and is targeting 50 of the most noxious for potential prosecution later this year.' and that '...an 'initiative is being projected for later this year in which it is anticipated that criminal and civil actions under the Can-Spam Act of 2003 will be included.'"

Comments

Same old...

[bendelo]

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (*) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(*) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(*) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(*) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(*) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(*) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(*) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(*) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
(*) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(*) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
(*) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(*) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Re:Same old...

[Cooke]

Its just showing that there is no simple solution to the spam problem. IIRC they had a simular automated response when people were trying to solve Fermat's Last Theorem.

Yay!

[instanto]

Hope to see those guys in jail!
(Uhm: See - not Meet)

If they are persecuted for such, and it is proven that their income and fortunes are built on spam/illegal acts, will the state be able to confiscate their house etc and sell them? I really hope so.

Even better; These guys should be sent to a well known jail in Iraq. :-)

Outlaw spam?

[corporate_ai]

How will I get my p3n1s enlarged?

Re:Outlaw spam?

[Roland Piquepaille]

How will I get my p3n1s enlarged?

And you think that's bad? Look, my business partner in Nigeria, Mr. Adewale Johnson, read the above Slashdot article and got scared. I haven't heard a word from him since the article was posted. It's a bummer actually because I had just sent him $10K to pay for his lawyer's fees, and I was waiting for his confirmation that he wired me the $20M.

Personal message: Dr. Johnson, don't be scared by Slashdot, the article doesn't apply to you, only crooks. Please talk to me, I await your response eagerly. -- Your business partner!

I got scammed by all the spams..

[brxndxn]

Good! My penis never got any larger. Horny wives never had sex with me. My prescriptions for Xanax never arrived. My cheap version of Windows XP wouldn't activate. My home loans never came through. Michelle's page made just for me had 900,000 visits and I'm beginning to think she is cheating on me...

They're all scammers - a bunch of spamming scammers they are!!

In Other News

[Greyfox]

Scott Richter suddenly becomes unavailable to debate SpamCop's Julian Haight.

Re:Maybe this will work?

[darnok]

> Consider this - if a spammer purchases a CD with
> 1,000,000 email addresses (they're out there,
> probably more like 10,000,000 emails though), he
> would have to pay $10,000 or $1,000 to send those.

Wouldn't the spammer then just claim that $10k back as a business expense?

Screw the FBI, I Want the Army

[Landaras]

Wake me when it's the U.S. Army handling the spammer smackdown.

And as an upside, Bush's (flawed) policies would help "solve" the whole international jurisdiction problem that spam has.

- Neil Wehneman

collecting evidence

[rozz]

i can't stop but imagine the FBI team bustin' in and shouting :

- hands up!!! nobody move!!!

- all your SPAM belongs to us!

and then proceed to collect evidence:

- sirs, please put your pants down!

- we have to take all that 3-inches-extra from your dicks as hard-evidence!

Re:Skeptical

[cardshark2001]

Spammers should be summarily shot.

Finally! A sensible solution! You, sir, are a genius! Can you get me an action plan on this by the end of the day? Don't forget the cover sheet!

Re:Cut it out already

[ghereheade]

If the do live outside the U.S. there might be an alternative enforcement strategy. A few guys in camo can "quietly" pick them up at their home and deliver them to a certain prison facility in Bagdad. Although normal persons/prisoners should never be treated the way they were in Bagdad, I don't think even the most liberal amoung us would worry about the spammers.