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...

[bendelo]

It was not intended as a troll, it was meant to be humourous. The usual response to a spam fighting technique.

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.

Re:Same old...

[MillionthMonkey]

When I originally wrote that form months ago it took me several hours. Thinking of all the proposed solutions I've ever seen, and the obvious problems with them, was what took a long time. Typing is easy. But in every thread on spam I would see some joker come up with a nightmare "solution" that obviously wouldn't work. Every message will contain a hash. We keep a list of known valid senders in a central repository, so each email has to be authenticated by someone who knows your key, blah blah blah. I don't see any reason why this wouldn't work!

Anyway, I posted the form 2 or 3 times, then quit, figuring I made my point and it wore out its welcome. But I see the beast lives on! BWAhahaha! Although I wouldn't have filled out the same boxes that were filled out here.

Even if the CAN-SPAM act is a permissive piece of junk, I still like to see people going to jail for spam. It won't solve the problem, any more than putting pickpocketers in jail stops pickpocketing. But it's the least we should be doing. Jail is where these people belong.

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.

Re:Skeptical

[pyros]

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.

The CAN-SPAM Act was largely written by the Direct Marketing Association.

Re:Skeptical

[edp]

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

That is utter rubbish. It is ad hominem and is not consistent with comments I have generally observed in Slashdot.

"Spammers should be summarily shot."

Redress should be quick and effective, like the ability of recipients of unlawful telephone calls to sue in small claims court.

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

Anonymity should be preserved in web browsing, participating in discussion fora where the owners desire that, sending email where the recipients desires to allow sender anonymity, and in other communications where all parties consent to such arrangements. Anonymity should not be allowed in sending email if the recipient does not desire that.

"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."

The flaws of the CAN-SPAM act are many orders of magnitude greater than letting a single spam slip through. The CAN-SPAM legitimized spam that was illegal before, by overriding state laws. It provided no effective redress. It did not outlaw much, perhaps most, of the spam that people do not want, even within US jurisdiction.

Re:Skeptical

[anticypher]

The appearance of a law does nothing until there is enforcement action backing it up.

This is what I've been waiting for, positive action by a law enforcement agency against the worst criminal spammers. The pathetically few lawsuits by US States Attorneys General against a few spammers hasn't made much of a dent in the levels of spam. But I'm convinced that a handful of US based spammers account for 60% or more of all spam today.

When the NY Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, launched his attack against Opt-in Real Big, that flow dwindled to almost nothing. Since then, Richter has either sold off his spam lists, or just no longer up front admits to being ORB. The spams against some honeypot accounts that for the last year were exclusively getting ORB spam have started getting spam from a dozen different groups recently, all using chinese, comcast or wanadodo hijacked machines. At least for a few months there was a perceptible decrease in some spam.

Knowing the FBI, they will make a few headline grabbing busts, complete with news agencies being tipped off in advance so camera crews will be on hand to film the heavily armed agents swarming a trailer park in south Florida. With any luck, the spammers will make sudden, hostile moves towards something in their waistbands, resulting in a "lethal and appropriate" response from the LEOs. I would pay for a copy of that video.

The FBI may also be using these busts as a way of seizing computers which may hold leads to virus/worm writers who then sell botnets to spammers. The spammers machines may also hold leads to dozens of other criminal activities, which may impact US national security. Even if the spammers lose all their electronics until after the trial, they will still be offline. Especially if their bail conditions include a ban from using any computer or communication device.

The Federal prosecutors will lump dozens or hundreds of charges against the spammers, knowing they will eventually plea-bargain down to a few charges which will get them only a few years in prison. There will be much press coverage, and many other amateur spammers will decide for less risky fields of criminal enterprise. This action will never eliminate all spam, but it will put a big dent in it.

It will be interesting to see what level of participation the spam hunting community provides to the FBI. Although the FBI may go it alone, there are a lot of us with a strong technical background willing to put in some hours to provide forensic evidence which can hold up in court.

the AC

Re:Skeptical

[Otter]

With all due respect, both you and edp are missing my point. Of course you could draft an anti-spam law that you'd like much better -- I could draft one that I'd like much better. But both of us would wind up getting the same reaction from the geek chorus: "In case this moron doesn't know, there are other countries in the world!" "Oh, like all the spammers are suddenly going to become law-abiding!" "This law has been in effect for a month and there are still spammers!" -- and, needless to say, "What we REALLY need is to replace SMTP with my new protocol, which everybody will simultaneously start using because it's such a good idea!"

We have the political process we have, laws aren't imposed by angry nerd fiat and I'd much rather see a gradual process of legislation than either hasty crackdowns or sitting on our hands until World Government makes circa 1992 netiquette mandatory.

And, incidentally -- I'm less concerned about a law that fails to instantly halt spam than I'd be about one that actually did do that!

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:Skeptical

[JuggleGeek]

Nowhere have I read that it would make spam worse.

Then let me be the first to tell you. CAN-SPAM is likely to make spam worse. It was written by the DMA, designed to legalize their spam runs. It specifically tells companies "It's OK to spam, as long as you do it this way".

However, I'm not the first to say this, by a long shot. Using google, I can find numerous articles to that effect. Here are a few.

http://www.mailutilities.com/news/archive/163/2378 .html
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/43363
http://www.vnunet.com/news/1151902
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/09/canspam_me ans_we_can_spam/
http://www.wordsoup.com/word/archives/001243.html

There are many more examples.

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.

Re:One can wish

[leerpm]

According to some sources, there is really just a core group of about 200 people responsible for most of the spam. If even half of those people are thrown in jail, it will have a major effect on spam. And most of the remaining ones will get out of the business, simply out of fear of going to jail. It is true that spam is a money making business for some, but the level of profits would have be a lot higher to make it worthwhile for someone to take on a real increased risk of spending time in a federal prison.

Of course there will be some that set up shop in other countries, but they would have to physically move there to be beyond the reach of authorities here. I am willing to bet, most spammers are not willing to give up the good lifestyle that is provided for them in the US (or other Western developed countries), and will simply get out of the spam business and find other employment. Or maybe spam will simply get outsourced to India..

Re:One can wish

[rusty0101]

I would hate to put rapists and murders at the level of the spamers. As noted in the first response visable the punishment is not slow enough or painful enough to suit a large percentage of the population.

Calculation error, spam/ham ratio of 71/100 is a 42% spam volume. a 71% spam volume would be 71/29 spam/ham ratio. Considering the volume of spam I am getting, I would not be at all surprised if you were getting a 71/29 spam/ham ratio, which would support the 71% claim.

As for a punishment, I think that if the convicted spammer has not been counting the total number of messages they have sent (cc/bcc etc. counts as one message per address) then the feds should ask for a minimum of 1 us cent per e-mail address per day from the date of the earliest reported spam, through the date they pay the fine off. Thus if the spamer has a list of 10 million e-mail adresses, they will be fined aproximately $36.5 million per year. That should take care of the "profit" incentive.

-Rusty

Re:One can wish

[Gill Bates]

You really think that spammers deserver to be locked up with rapists and murderers?

Yes. Yes I do.

am I alone in this view

I, for one, certainly hope so.

You think because it's a white-collar crime, they don't deserve to be locked up? They're assholes, and deserve everything they get.

Re:One can wish

[Anonymous Coward]

You really think that spammers deserver to be locked up with rapists and murderers?

Honest spammers like Apple, Wallgreens, and Microsoft? No.

People sending spam using open relays, open proxies, forged headers, false domain records or fraud belong in jail.

99% of my spam falls into the second group. It's very bad for our country to tollerate these open violations of the law.

Re:One can wish

[MethylPhreak]

Does anyone here see a striking parallel to the international drug trade? Basically, people believed the same b.s. about the tough drug laws stopping the drug trade "because after half of the drug kingpins are sent to prison, the other half will get out of the business immediately to avoid prosecution." Yet, here we are, 2004, and we still have a flourishing drug trade on the black market.

Spam is no different. As long as there is a way to make EASY MONEY, it does not matter how illegal it is, someone will have the balls to do it.

Re:One can wish

[leerpm]

There is one big difference. There is a lot more money involved in the drug trade. It is one thing to risk jail time, when you can rake in the cash by the billions. But it becomes a different story when you are only able to make a few million. Yes, there will always be somebody, but if you destroy the economic incentive enough for the majority then you will have made a major breakthru in the battle against spam.

Re:One can wish

[JuggleGeek]

Spam is no different.

Yes, it is. A lot of people *want* drugs, just like a lot of people *wanted* alcohol back during prohibition. Outlawing something that is popular with large numbers of people is quite difficult.

People do not want spam. A few people want to send spam to everyone else - but the recipients don't want it. Even the spammers don't want their own email boxes full of junk.

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!!

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.

Re:Great

[akaina]

That's mostly because junk mail has a punitive cost, whereas DoS on a web server costs real-time customer transactions.

The FBI only gets involved when they have solid evidence that there is a loss of over $50,000 (or a number very near that).

Re:Great

[StormyMonday]

Yuppers.

For a long time now, spam has looked less like marketing and more like a denial of service attack.

The Feds claim to be concerned with "cyberterrorism". It's happening and it's right under their noses.

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

[djeaux]

It nothing else, American spammers will just move their operations abroad.

How many American spammers are going to move themselves to China? It's one thing to move the criminal operations overseas, but unless the criminal relocates his own worthless carcass, the fibbies can still go after him. The FBI loves to make cases by "following the money."

It's not just a matter of "outsourcing" the spamming operation overseas. The spammer will have to move to Lower Slobovia, too.

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.

Let me guess...

[Kjella]

...this will be the kind where they round up a little ring of spammers/fraudsters, get big headlines and call this "a devastating blow to spammers everywhere" and that they've "destroyed the backbone of the spam community".

You certainly see it happen when it comes to warez, kiddie porn, drugs, organized crime etc. (without comparison otherwise). Strangely enough, a year later they have to make another "devastating blow" that'll once again "break them".

So I wouldn't turn off the spam filters just yet, I'm sure there's dozens of idiots willing and waiting to take their place. Of course it's doubleplusgood that they're trying, just don't expect them to "end" this any more than they end any other problem...

Kjella

In Other News

[Greyfox]

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

Follow the money

[NoSuchGuy]

The FBI should follow the money:

- Who profits from sale?
- Who sells products (=pills) to spam outlets?
- Is the spam send via own mailserver or hijacked proxies, worm infected PCs...

My Server = my Rules!

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.

Re:How to filter better - a modest proposal

[DarkFencer]

I run a medium size mail server (>10000 users). My problem isn't the 'your message contained a virus messages'. I can train spam filters to put those in the bit bucket.

Its the "Your receipient doesn't exist" messages that are also noise from the viruses that are the problems. I can't filter those without filtering out legitimate undeliverable messages.

I wish more mail servers would do what we do. Check for viruses. If there is a virus discard. THEN check to see if the recipient exists. If you check for the recipient first, you have to bounce the message back if the recipient doesn't exist.

Re:China

[DaHat]

Remember the title of the article you linked to?

71% of Spam Servers are Located in China

Just because the servers are there doesn't mean the are being used by locals.

It is very likely that a good % of those Viagra spams we all so love may be sent from a Chinese server, but it is nearly as likely that they are being initially sent from the US in the first place.

While the FBI does their thing, curtail spam NOW!

[iamcf13]

Here are simple, uncomplicated techniques to stop a lot of spam and keep the existing system intact.

Re:Juxtaposition of laws...

[jfengel]

Actually, soldiers who abuse prisoners can receive a lot more than a year in prison. The first guy got one year because he wasn't directly involved; he just took the pictures. Look for stiffer sentences in the future.

A spammer's whinge

[bigbadwlf]

"When we mail under the new law, the major ISPs focus on our From: addresses, Subject: lines, our company information, and our disclaimers on the bottom of the e-mail as well as our IP address. They use this information to block our e-mails," Scelson said.

That's the whole point - many customers pay for that service.

Re:A spammer's whinge

[AndroidCat]

He says that if people continue to block him, he'll start spamming again. My question: when did he ever stop?

The usual evidence of Rule #1 (spammers always lie):
Scelson, who said he had to move his family and business after receiving threats last year, said he was trying to play by the rules.

Didn't he file for bankruptcy in March 2003 or so? He moved out because he couldn't pay the mortgage. Remember that the next time the Spam King du jour brags about his Huge Enormous Spam Palace.

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?

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.

Re:Cut it out already

[FireFury03]

It is a bad law - not because it won't do any good (infact I think it will do some good), but because it could have done a lot more good. It is also a bad law because it essentially turns some what was a gray area into a completely legal area instead of doing what the rest of the world is doing and outlawing spam entirely.

The good thing about the law is that it should make it easier to filter the spam, and in an effort to save bandwidth it can be filtered as it is delivered (MTA can detect that it's spam and immediately drop the connection outright. Infact, the MTA can also add a firewall rule for that server's IP to drop all future connections into a tarpit. A large number of mail servers dropping spammer's connections into a tarpit would likely hit the spammer's outbound mail server pretty hard, at least until they rewrote their IP stacks to work around it.

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.

Re:Cut it out already

[badasscat]

It is a bad law - not because it won't do any good (infact I think it will do some good), but because it could have done a lot more good. It is also a bad law because it essentially turns some what was a gray area into a completely legal area instead of doing what the rest of the world is doing and outlawing spam entirely.

What "rest of the world"? Please provide us with some specific examples of how "the rest of the world" is outlawing spam. When you use a phrase like that, you'd better mean more than one or two countries, and you'd better really mean "outlawing entirely" rather than "placing restrictions upon" like the EU is doing and pretty much everybody else I can think of (nobody I know of has a law that says "the sending of any unsolicited email is a crime" - think about how draconian such a law would be). And that's what CAN-SPAM does too, albeit in a bit more relaxed fashion than some other laws. We've been over this before and pretty well all agreed it's impossible to "outlaw spam entirely", especially in the USA where we still have some vestiges of free speech (as in, you can now more easily outlaw speech deemed politically dangerous than in years past, but you still can't outlaw speech just because you find it inconvenient to wade through your inbox).

I'm not a big fan of CAN-SPAM either and feel it could have been a better law. But arguing against it at this point because it doesn't go far enough is like arguing against the assault weapons ban because it doesn't also cover handguns. There's rarely ever an all-or-nothing solution in politics or law; you have to fight for what you can, take what you can get, and then deal with the resulting law when it's done.

Right now, this is the only federal anti-spam law we have. It's not the best law anyone could have come up with, but it's better than nothing, and the best we could have gotten given the politics involved. And I don't see why you would argue against 100 of the worst spammers being prosecuted under it, just because you don't like the law. If a spammer's being prosecuted, a spammer's being prosecuted and that's all that matters.

I also don't see why this is filed under "your rights online". What passes for an online right these days on this site? Is it now Slashdot's position that it's a spammer's right to send spam? Are all government prosecutions bad, whatever the circumstances, and whatever the crime involved?

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")

OT: Re:Juxtaposition of laws..

[gclef]

That's because that particular soldier was in a special court martial, because he agreed to testify against the others (just like a plea bargain in regular courts).

The other soldiers are in regular courts martial, which do not have the 1-year limitation.

Nerds?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Maybe I get the whole geek vs nerds thing mixed up again but one of them knows that what you say is true. We know there is no magic bullet and that it will take multiple solutions all put together to have an effect.

Not everyone who posts on /. is however a geek/nerd. A fairly large amount is just angsty teen boys who think they are leet because they changed the color theme of the windows on their dell.

You can tell the parent post is not a nerd or a geek. Nerd/geeks don't get endless amounts of SPAM. We use disposable email addresses to limit the number of spam lists we are on, don't give out our email address to just every "free porn" site out there and use filters to stop the rest. That does not make us spam free but if you spend more then 1 minute deleting spam you are doing something wrong. Computers work FOR you, not you for the computer.

Please do not make everyone who uses a computer into a nerd/geek. Only those WHO understand our computers and can operate them correctly can possibly qualify.

All those who are diluged under spam fall into the luser group.

This may sound harsh but frankly I am fed up with the whining about spam. It is like virusses. Get some bloody protection and learn how to deal with it. You are the first line of defence. If you are unwilling to act then why do expect anyone else to?

Re:Nerds?

[Otter]

You can tell the parent post is not a nerd or a geek. Nerd/geeks don't get endless amounts of SPAM. We use disposable email addresses to limit the number of spam lists we are on, don't give out our email address to just every "free porn" site out there and use filters to stop the rest. That does not make us spam free but if you spend more then 1 minute deleting spam you are doing something wrong. Computers work FOR you, not you for the computer.

I'm quite happy with a mix of procmail (throwing out .cn and .ru mails, viruses, trojans and bounces), SpamAssassin and POPfile. If disposable accounts work for you, great -- for me, that's working FOR my computer, not the other way around.

In any case, I'm not sure what any of this has to do with my point, which had to do with dealing with the spam issue as a whole, not with getting into some dweeb-war with you over who wastes more time making his computing life more efficient.

Re:Nerds?

[JuggleGeek]

All those who are diluged under spam fall into the luser group.

I have several public addresses on my website, in WhoIs, etc, which have been there for years. I refuse to kill them off because once everyone starts hiding their email addresses, the spammers have effectively killed off email as a useful tool.

I get 400-500 spams a day, plus bounces where spammers fake my domain when they send their spam.

It takes me very little time to deal with it - as you say, computers work for us.

And you have the gall to claim I'm a luser because I don't do things the way you do? Fuck you! You just keep hiding from spam and pretending it's not a problem. You keep pretending that your way is the only way and everyone who does anything different is a clueless luser. You just keep pretending that you have a clue - but I know better.

By the way - Fuck You, Asswipe.

there are more people to go after

[medvezhatnik]

FBI should go after those who advertise in the spam. not only spammers.
Most of them are scam artists anyway. no one would pay Allan Ralsky to send all this $hit.

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

one solution I never see mentioned

[zogger]

and that is a large, non commercial email system. All the members sign up, pay a fee of some sort of adequate folding money for an email account, something high enough to make it practical to have an account, and impractical enough for spammers to use it. It's like a built from scratch giant whitelist. Any infractions, you are out. Something like the proposed google email system, that big I mean, but zero commercial traffic, none, not for any reason. The fees go to pay for the servers and bandwith, etc of the org that runs it. It would be viral in the sense that you as joe emailer tell your friends/whomever you normally conduct non commercial email with "here's my new address, it's restricted. The company doesn't allow commercial email at all, in fact, zero mail gets inside the system from outside the system. the email must orginate and terminate totally inside the system of registered users.. You can email me at this addy,after you register yourself, but don't CC to people outside, no spam or ads are allowed,you have to do your best on keeping your own computer clean, you assume responsbility for that, and this is how you can contact me now if you want to, your choice".

Then stick with it.

The main problem with email is it's so easy to have unlimited emails, so easy to create them. If an email addy was actually worth as much as say your snail mail addy or your phone number, it wouldn't be quite as bad. I don't think it would ever get perfect, but I bet it could eliminate the bulk of the bad stuff. What would an email addy that good be worth per year? I guess that's a variable, perhaps a downpayment, then a bandwith charge over a certain amount of traffic in and out of your box.

And no, I really don't have any technical details of how to go about it, outside my area of expertise. Maybe it's impossible, I don't know, but it seems like it *should* be possible. And there's nothing stopping anyone from keeping their "old" style email in addition, but at least it would be one account you know was mostly rid of spam and viruses and whatnot right from the git-go..

What are they waiting for?

[pedantic bore]

If they have identified these people and have some evidence, why are they waiting to act until "later next year?" The longer they're on the loose, the more chance they will have to move their operations overseas, earn money to hire better lawyers, etc. And, of course, the more spam they will inflict on us and the more it will cost *us*.

I say arrest them as soon as the prosecuting attorney is happy with the case.a judge will sign a warrant. Why wait?

Instant results aren't promised

[Ra5pu7in]

Good grief. No law suddenly causes all violators to stop their behavior. Laws against monopolies didn't make businesses suddenly see the error of their ways and break up. Laws against racism and segregation haven't ended prejudice. The laws are merely tools allowing some authoritative body to take action against the worst offenders (and sometimes the lesser offenders).

Take laws against racism and segregation. Until the military came along and forced some schools to accept non-white students, they would have gone right on ignoring the law. It took 1) someone reporting the violation, 2) someone investigating the violation, 3) someone enforcing the punishment for the violation, and 4) someone making it know through action that violations would not be acceptable.

The FBI is investigating and getting ready to go after spammers. They have not yet enforced the punishments, but they have the authority to confiscate possessions bought with the proceeds or used in spamming (much as the IRS does for tax evaders), so losing homes and cars and computers should begin to make it less profitable to spam. Until enough spammers lose a lot, the word won't spread that spamming doesn't pay. That doesn't make the law useless - it just means it hasn't had time to make much impact yet. The degree of the impact will depend on the continued enforcement (though I believe the ratio of FBI agents to spammers is a lot better than speeders to cops).

Of course, this won't stop all spammers. There will be the diehard group (likely with mafia-style connections) who go so deep underground that they are hard to find.

BTW, spammers by their very business, want to have someone able to find them -- their "customers". (Hey, perhaps we should go after the users instead of the dealers -- slap a $250 fine on any person who buys from spam. Soon, with no one responding to their offers, spammers would go out of business. Yeah, I know this wouldn't really work.)

Don't expect much. - the DMA is involved.

[Animats]

The FBI now claims to be "investigating spam". But they've contracted with the Direct Marketing association for support, the project has been going on since at least August 2003, and they're vague about what resources are actually being devoted to the project.

The "Notable early accomplishments" read very strangely. They seem to have been drafted for maximum deniability. "Developed ten primary subject packets developed and for referral to Law Enforcement" "We are already planning meetings to ensure that this initiative is on track, and to further define the scope and packaging of this activity are being planned." Doesn't sound like a major roundup of criminals is in the works.

The FBI doesn't actually produce many arrests per hour expended. The FBI's Baltimore-based child porno operation produces about 1.6 arrests per agent year. They have 200 agents on that operation, or about 2% of their agent staff. (The FBI isn't that big. There are only about 12,000 agents. The NYPD is four times as large.) So to shut down 100 spammers per year, they'd probably have to devote about 75 agents to the operation, which is a big bite for them.

The DMA involvement is part of the problem. The DMA carefully crafted the CAN-SPAM act to make it expensive to enforce. The California law (which CAN-SPAM invalidated) was nice and simple - advertise using spam, go to jail. It's easy to find and arrest the advertisers, who collect the money. CAN-SPAM requires finding the actual spammers, which is much harder. With the DMA working closely with the FBI, they can direct the FBI away from "responsible e-mail marketers", as the DMA puts it. They may also receive FBI cooperation in lobbying against stronger anti-spam legislation in future.

Re:I Agree

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Because the top -5- spammers are responsible for probably 90% of the spam. By nailing the top 50, we'll be left not only a tiny fraction of the spam that used to be flowing, but just the tiny operators who don't have a) vast amounts of cash to mount legal defenses, or b) the technical resources to keep changing their tactics to get around filters. And hopefully, once the littler fish see what's happening to the big operators like Ralsky and Richter, they'll get out of the game entirely and go back to dealing meth and whoring out their daughters for nickels.