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

Skeptical

[ralphb]

I'll believe that this stupid law is having a positive effect when I start getting less spam. Hasn't happened yet.

Re:Skeptical

[Otter]

Geez, and people wonder why the government is prone to grandstanding and empty gestures, or to policies written for them by lobbyists. They pass a sensible, cautious law, monitor violations and prepare to bring legal action against violators. And all they get is complaints that the magic anti-spam fairies haven't been deployed yet.

Basically, what the crowd here seems to want is that:

• Spammers should be summarily shot.
• To accomplish that, Internet anonymity should be eliminated for spammers, while not affecting the rest of us.
• Any such policy must apply to the entire world. Instantly.
• Oh, and if anyone can think of a way by which a single spam might slip through, a proposal is obviously worthless and the person who proposed it is a techno-illiterate simpleton.

And then you wonder why the legislators and regulators don't listen to nerds.

Re:Skeptical

[not_a_product_id]

The most effective option would be if NOBODY EVER BOUGHT ANYTHING OF THESE SCUMBAGS! Sadly that's not going to happen - the government could pass a law against stupidity but enforcement is always the tricky part. ;-)

Re:Skeptical

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Spammers should be summarily shot.

As satisfying as that might be (public executions, please!) I don't think anyone really wants such a law. However, they should face substantial penalties; I don't think a few years in prison and multimillion-dollar fines and/or lawsuit liability are unreasonable for the worst of the "spam kings."

To accomplish that, Internet anonymity should be eliminated for spammers, while not affecting the rest of us.

Spammers, as individuals, have the same right to anonymity as everyone else. But anyone who is trying to sell me something wants me to give them money at some point along the line. That requires that they reveal their identity. And if the spammers are acting as contractors for someone else who is selling something -- type "bulk e-mail service" into Google and see how many hits you get -- then it is not unreasonable to require that they, too, reveal who they are.

Any such policy must apply to the entire world. Instantly.

Would that it could be so! But the next best thing would be to make having an effective spam policy a condition of international trade treaties, and again, I don't think that's an unreasonable requirement.

Oh, and if anyone can think of a way by which a single spam might slip through, a proposal is obviously worthless and the person who proposed it is a techno-illiterate simpleton.

Many anti-spam proposals are techno-illiterate, and it's fair to point that out when such proposals are made. Others, like CAN-SPAM, are the result of legislative sell-outs to entrenched corporate interests. I don't think anyone realistically expects ever to see a solution that eliminates every single spam. But it would be nice to see one that achieves a 90%, or even 75%, or hell, even 50% reduction in the volume we see now -- and certainly we don't want to see "solutions" that actually give spammers more freedom to spam under certain circumstances, as CAN-SPAM does.

CAN-SPAM is not a "sensible, cautious law." It is a very nearly toothless law. If it puts one or two spam kings out of business, well, good. But it's not what we need to make a measurable difference in the total amount of spam now clogging the Net.

One can wish

[mpost4]

I wish this would have an inpact on spam. And I hope these spammers get the max sentence the law allows for, but I don't think this will even put a dent in the amount of spam that is slowing the net down.

Great

[digitalgimpus]

Spam has made email so rediculus it's amazing.

The FBI went crazy when someone crashed eTrade, Yahoo, etc. with a DoS attack...

But the world's email has been under a DoS attack for some time, while they stand idle.

Strange isn't it? Yahoo's website goes under heavy load, and it's criminal. Yahoo's mail goes under heavy load... and it's not.

Yes but

[Roland Piquepaille]

the FBI told Congress on Thursday that it has 'identified over 100 significant spammers

That's very nice, but the fact remains that 90% of all spam originates from countries that are out of the FBI's jurisdiction. What are they going to do about it?

It nothing else, American spammers will just move their operations abroad. The FBI knows this very well, so I reckon they're just making noise and spewing hot air in an effort to look like they're on top of the problem, when really they're not.

Re:Yes but

[meringuoid]

That's very nice, but the fact remains that 90% of all spam originates from countries that are out of the FBI's jurisdiction. What are they going to do about it?

90% of spam is sent from servers outside the FBI's jurisdiction. That doesn't mean it originated there: it's sent by Americans who are offering products in America to an American market and expecting to be paid in American dollars to an American bank.

Unless the spammer is prepared personally to move overseas, sooner or later the matter comes into the FBI's jurisdiction.

And since when does being in a foreign country mean you can flout US law? Dmitri and Jon found that out to their cost. Criminals beware: you can no longer hide behind the figleaf of foreign national sovereignty!

Re:Yes but

[rekoil]

Actually, more and more spam is originating from various 0wned Windows boxen sitting on broadband lines right here in the US.

I think what you meant to say is that 90% of the websites advertised in spam emails today are offshore.

However, just because the servers are offshore does not mean that the spammers are foreign. If you follow the money like spamhaus.org does, you'll see that the large majority of the world's largest spammers are, in fact, based in the US. They simply host their servers in China.

In short, most American spammers have already moved their operations abroad. But as long as the spammers themselves are still here, they are very much subject to prosecution. It just takes more work to track them down. :)

Get the Feds out...

[WordODD]

Before CANSPAM some states like California were actually making some (little) progess with their own state laws. Now that we have the Federally sponsered CANSPAM act these most of these previous laws have been rendered useless/void and a lot of them were tougher on spammers then CANSPAM is. The Feds have enough to deal with already and, it would be in their best interests to let the states handle it themselves.

How to filter better - a modest proposal

[infolib]

A lot of the spam I get is "We detected a virus in your mail" when in fact the sender of the infected mail just spoofed my address.

It would probably be better if the AntiVirus companies didn't send such "warnings" at all, but if they want to, they should standardize on including a header such as X-virus-warning-bounce. Then the rest of us could just filter them out. It would save some of my precious mental bandwidth.

How spam is affecting me.

[suso]

Personally, it's not a big problem for me, I filter out most of my spam. Or delete the ones that don't get filtered.

But as for my internet services business, it makes it hard because all the customers are getting slammed with spam and I'm always trying to do things to rememdy that, instead of working on better stuff like a nicer user control panel, better backup features, adding virtual IMAP accounts, etc.

We had the same problem at the ISP I used to work at. 50% of the sysadmins jobs where to deal with spam related problems.

So there is a measurable loss of money and productivity as a result of spam.

Cut it out already

[johannesg]

This article invariably gets posted whenever someone proposes a solution to spam. Has it ever occurred to you that a single solution is not going to work, but that it _will_ be possible to reduce the problem by taking a number of (in themselves incomplete) measures? And that it is necessary to take such steps, in order to reach a sufficiently acceptable solution?

By shooting down everything that looks like a beginning to a solution, you are defending the spammers and postponing the date when our inboxes will once again be _ours_.

Some comments on the items you selected:

> (*) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money

You won't know until you try, do you?

> (*) It is defenseless against brute force attacks

Maybe, but we still get to see the 50 most obnoxious spammers go through a courtcase and hopefully jail time or major fines. That is good enough for me.

> (*) Requires too much cooperation from spammers

Eh? Once the FBI figures out where they live, all they need to do is be home when they knock on his door. And then hopefully resist arrest in some extreme manner.

> (*) Open relays in foreign countries

Any spammer based in the US is vulnerable, though. Start with those, then think about how to get the rest. I'm sure some method will make itself apparent.

> (*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical

That's because people like you shoot them down before they are ever tried.

us spam

[cstream_chris]

You're all silly. Over 55% of the world's spam originates in the US with the closest 2nd being Canada at 6.8%. See Sophos Dirty Dozen at: http://www.sophos.com/spaminfo/articles/dirtydozen .html Additionally, over 90% of the world's spam comes from just 200 well known spammers (w/ Alan Ralsky being #1). See ROKSO (Registry of Known Spam Operations): http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/index.lasso Anyway, it's good the US is finally going after some of these people since individuals are no longer allowed to sue spammers under the Can Spam Act (aka "You Can Spam Act")