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Spammer Apologizes
radarsat1 writes "The Globe and Mail reports that Canadian professional spammer Eric Head, after being sued by Yahoo!, has apologized formally for his behaviour and vows to mend his ways by teaching others about the dangers of the internet. Let's hope others begin to take his lead."
"vows to mend his ways by teaching others about the dangers of the internet."
Is that supposed to be a joke? Come on, what a cop out. I'm all for people reforming, but why does this sound so phoney? I give it 6 months before he's back at it again, probably based out of China or Russia.
Is he sorry that he bothered millions of users, clogged up mailboxes, and generally made a nusiance of himself? Or, is he sorry that he got caught?
And, if he's teaching about the "dangers of the internet," does that mean he'll teach people to avoid scams like the ones he launched? Or, is he going to teach other spammers about how he got caught?
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
...how sorry he would have felt if he hadn't been caught and sued. More than likely he'd still be hijacking people's computers and spamming away. Money has a way of compromising people.
94,000,000 emails in a single month. If 1% of those emails made them a single dollar the would still gross $940,000 (US $687,034). That's pretty impressive for 1 month's work (hell, I'd still be impressed if it was over 5 years).
Now what, they pay $100,000, move to Tahiti and retire for the rest of their lives? That'll show'em!
Left 4 Dead Gaming Group - http://www.l4dgg.com
Like being on the receiving end of a lawsuit.
Wanna bet a public apology was part of the secret settlement terms?
My rights don't need management.
Spammers lie.
What is that and how is he qualified to teach people about it?
I guess that's getting to be the standard line now -- "Honest, I'm really sorry. But I'm not responsible, it was the Internet!"
What's next, "I'm sorry I was drunk and ran over you're kid but the road was responsible. I'll teach poeple about the dangers of driving."
sheesh. --rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
"Let's hope others begin to take his lead"
Let's hope other businesses take Yahoo's lead and sue the HELL out of spammers.
I urge everyone who is involved in the commercial bulk e-mail business to cease all operations unless and until they are completely compliant with the requirements of the new United States anti-spam laws. There is no substitute for complete compliance
Translation? "I just got sued by yahoo and this isn't worth it anymore. I think I'll take the rest of my dirty money and retire with this one last publicity stunt."
so yahoo gets paid. i want to get paid for the time i spent sifting through my inbox and hunting down spam filters.
-ninjaneer
And then the second one is, "nah, he's just faking it, trying to dodge the artillery rounds Yahoo sent his way. Once the storm blows over, he'll be selling V1@GR@ by the truckload again."
I'll believe his apology when he delivers it in person to everyone who ever got a spam e-mail. Maybe he should set up something like a book-signing tour where he sits at a table and people queue up to hear him say, "I'm sorry for being a horrible waste of human flesh, I mean a spammer."
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
gives talks and helps companies improve their security....
oh wait
After making a fortune off of annoying other people, he thinks that saying he's sorry is going to make us like him again. Maybe if he gives all his money to charity I'll feel better.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
- Allowed me to act like a jackass, and get myself sued.
Yes, the internet is truly something to be feared.-Eric (aka Shit) Head.
Not for sarcasm impaired: I'm not actually Eric Head.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
"Is that supposed to be a joke?"
I'd characterise the judgment as creative if not novel plea bargaining by a good lawyer.
If it helps, think of it as the Al Gore version of picking up trash from the side of a freeway. Personally, I'd rather see him picking up trash. Without the orange vest.
I get the impression this gentleman has made his fortune from his business and so can afford to apologize and shut down. Drummer in a rock band? It's a nice retirement hobby for a rich young lad.
Who's to say? It's hard to gauge sincerity from print.
I think it may just be a reality shift for a lot of these spammers. They all seem so indignant at first, when accused of being slimy Internet carpet-baggers. But on the other hand, people are always encouraged to seek fortune, and originally there were no rules, lots of money to be had, and old adages about opportunity knocking.
Once the money is rolling in, anyone would be tempted to rationalize their own business practice, even after being kicked off of relays, threatened with lawsuits, and having your iron pushed offshore. Once you're invested in something, it's hard to stop believing in it. That's why you see people go down kicking and screaming and come up contrite after a jury of peers schools them in the prevailing ethics.
Bottom line - not everyone is destined to be a repeat offender. Even if he toes the line for a while and doesn't buy it, maybe he'll educate consumers or discourage future spammers along the way, or maybe he'll start buying his own sermon.
>
> Is that supposed to be a joke? Come on, what a cop out. I'm all for people reforming, but why does this sound so phoney? I give it 6 months before he's back at it again, probably based out of China or Russia.
You're an optimist.
The Rules Of Spam:
1) Spammers lie.
2) If a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see rule #1.
3) Spam is theft.
4) Most spammers are stupid.
5) The natural course of a spamming business is to go bankrupt.
Considering that a lawsuit from Yahoo was the motivation of his "apology", and that his apology lays the bullshit on thicker than even you said, to wit:
Not just "others", but the chilllllllldrun!
I'll see your six months and raise you three: I give him 90 days before he's spamming again, and place a side bet with 10:1 odds that as per Rule #4, the spam comes from hijacked PCs connected through a Yahoo! co-branded service such as SBC-Yahoo DSL.
Rule #2: If a spammer seems to be telling the truth, see Rule #1.
From: http://bruce.pennypacker.org/spamrules.html
A quote from the article is "regret for any inconvenience he may have caused". He doesn't even admit that he _did_ cause inconvenience or even what he actually did.
This is the kind of non-apology that seems pretty common though. If you follow the words sorry with "if" or "may" or "might have", then it's not an apology.
Nowadays, public apologies usually translate into: "I'm sorry I was caught." and the persion attempts to quietly go back to whatever it was that he or she had to apologize for.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
No talk of restitution for all that stolen bandwidth, crashed servers, and wasted time. Yep, he's soooooo sorry he made a pile of money, and can now fritter away his days "playing" in a "band."
I'll be satisfied when everyone he's ever spammed gets to line up and slap him. He can opt out by writing to a postal address, which will be set up pretty soon.
---
SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
Apologizing after being sued doesn't mean crap. If he apologized and vowed to change his ways before anyone decided to sue his sorry ass, that might be worth noting.
Saddam Hussein is going to do a few lectures about genocide (against) in exchange he'll get two years probation.
This is a bunch of crock. Compliance with that bogus law (the U-CAN-SPAM law) doesn't mean it isn't theft. This guy is obviously still thinking like a spammer.
No one should ever have to opt-out of anything they never opted-in to in the first place.
There are 28+ million businesses (from largest to smallest) in the US (and plenty more outside the US). If just 1 million of these businesses decided to send you just one mailing (that you didn't ask for) per year (and you don't even need to opt-out because they won't send another for a whole year), and assuming they send them evenly spread throughout the year, then you will be getting one every 31.556952 seconds on average (depending on what year it is). More likely, those mailings will come in bunches. Since you won't have to opt-out, you can just press "delete" over 2737 times a day, every day. That would be over 83 thousand pieces of mail a month (imagine what that would do to the typical $9.95 a month dialup internet account).
Now imagine if they all were giving you an opportunity to opt-out via their web site.
If we allow spamming to become the norm, then every business will end up having to do it to just keep an equivalent advantage. That could mean that 150 million internet users would each get spammed from 20 million businesses. That would be 3 quadrillion (that's 3000 trillion) pieces of useless mail overloading the internet mail server infrastructure.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Is it just me, or is there some kind of growing groundswell that seeks to destroy the Internet by incessantly talking up its 'dangers'? Why don't we see more stories about what makes it great?
Because fear sells.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Many Spammers don't realize what they are doing is wrong. They think of it as business just like any other form of marketing, and they don't or wont let themselves realize what they are doing is harmful and expensive to the wrong groups of people (potential customers). While Spam seems to bother most people only a small % complain about it. And the Spammers just pass them off as Extremist who hate anything dealing with capitalism. Often during the course of their lawsuit they begin to realize the damage they have done and the numbers of people it has affected.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Did he give back/away all the money he made from spamming?
John Kerry is a Joke!
One of the problems is that most spammers are not stupid. Now, they may be slime, they may be sociopaths, but stupid? Perhaps underestimating spammers in this way (which is common) is counterproductive to eliminating spam. And, virtually every CEO in this great country is more of a sleaze than most spammers, a much bigger leach on society. Are they too, "stupid"?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Annoying potential customers is something most spammers _do_ understand, but since they can make money with a 0.0001% success rate (or whatever), they're happy to let the other 49.9999% of the potential customers get their Herbal Fake Viagra from other sources - it's just a marketing niche choice, and different spammers may make different choices about how blatantly to lie and how flashy and annoying their ads can be based on real or imagined response rate.
During a lawsuit, some spammers may realize how much direct cost they've caused (because they may have to pay it, if they've got any money), and they may realize how many people are mad enough at them to sue them, and they may even begin to understand how many of the 9 billion email messages they sent went to duplicate addresses. But that's not the same as realizing the effects it has on the recipient, because you have to _care_ about the recipient, and sociopaths fundamentally don't care about other people.
On the other hand, some spammers do _begin_ to understand how spam recipients feel when they have to keep changing their phone numbers because of all the calls in the middle of the night asking them if they're unsatisfied about their penis size or whether they'd like a great deal on a mortgage on their new place in Siberia.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks