Slashdot Mirror
Dozens Charged in Spam Crackdown
JohnnyGTO writes "Federal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and other online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the actions."
I think they should not so quietly drag the perpetrators 1 foot for every SPAM, Virus and identity theft that they are convicted of. Some of these people would have to be dragged to the moon and back but that is all right; they can scream as loud as they want in space and it will still be quite.
About time these scum got nailed
Now.. who wants to buy some cheap h3rbal vi.agr@?
Oh, and I've got a few million I need to temporarily offload into a bank account...
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
I hope the people for www.freeipods.com get busted too.
I am so sick of them.
http://saveie6.com/
from 'Spam' to 'Hormel Chili' for a better image.
Federal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail
Wow, even in this hard time, they still have time to email me to Try CortiZyte!
sing it with me now:
spam spam spam spam. spam spam spam spam. SPAM! wonderul SPAM!
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Shouldn't it be a lot larger number? I mean, I'm glad that they are trying to stop this stuff, but please. Make a big impact showing how much we hate spammers, and maybe, just maybe, it will scare a bunch and lower our spam in our inboxes.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
But Mr. Linford of Spamhaus said he thought that the current wave of prosecutions had the potential to at least temporarily diminish the flood of spam.
Does ANYONE think that this will reduce spam in the near future? I'm still getting flooded, and I'll bet anything that my spam filters won't get any kind of a breather just because of a few arrests.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Why am I still getting massive amounts of spam in my yahoo, angelfire, and comcast accounts today? I guess they have some more work to do (I haven't even noticed a decrease).
[FromTheMorning]
They may have to keep all the money from the prince of Nigeria, who died 10 years ago in a terrible plane crash, to pay attorney fees. At least they have that.
Isn't part of the punishment for the crime supposed to be that it serves as a deterrent for other's who'd do the same thing?
... is lost, if you keep it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"
To quote Dr. Strangelove:
"Of course, the whole point
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
How many of them had the FBI break down their doors and seize their computers? Or was it more like "Mr Spammer, after you've called your attorney, we'd like you to come down to the station for a few hours..."
I mean, it's not like they're hackers....
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Does this mean that Ashcroft is now our friend or is this the wrong week?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I'd pay for a ticket - or at least a web cast.
Sell "execution privs" on a ebay to the highest bidder.
Use licensed Marshals and bounty hunters to capture them.
Put a bounty on their heads.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
From the article:
Still, Mr. Linford added that spam activity had been increasing overseas and that spammers in other countries, especially Russia, were expected to move quickly to fill any gaps left if spammers in the United States are shut down or scared off.
Presumably these overseas spammers will often be acting on behalf of, um, 'legitimate business ventures' in the US - I can't really see, for example, the volume of Russian-language-specific spam increasing too much, as they must be running out of Russian speakers to spam, and I seriously doubt those Americans peddling h3rba1 v1@gra are going to shut up shop because they can't advertise in their traditional manner.
Is there any US legislation which can work back to get any Americans using foreign organisations to send their junk email for them? Or will this be the next step in the never-ending battle against our favourite pink pig-derived luncheon meat?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
You can read more about the organization here.
(Disclaimer - I was one of the early members of the organization.)
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
The US is still the biggest source of spam on the net, pumping out nearly 3 times as much as its closest competitor.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Ya think it might be an election-year in the USA???!
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
...until the usual suspects start crying "off with their heads" and "throw them in jail for life!"
The good news here is that some private funding was involved. While I don't entirely agree with private enterprises getting involved with criminal investigations, it's better than my tax dollars being used to track down someone hawking cheap viagra.
Now, if the government would learn to take every penny from these crooks rather than giving them lengthy (and costly to the overtaxed prison system and my pocket book) prison terms, something good will have some of this.
Something along the lines of "every penny earned plus garnished wages for the next decade" would be nice.
It's about time that law enforcement began to see spam for what it is -- not just an annoying bulk mailing operation, but part of a larger racketeering operation that's primarily focused on defrauding people.
I've long advocated RICO-style investigations (if not actual RICO prosecutions) of the entire world of spam. This doesn't just mean the bulk mailing operations, but the people behind the actual spamvertised businesses and their legitimate-world suppliers.
Broad-based prosecutions promising long prison time not only for spammers, and spam businesses but for people who knowingly make money off of spammers (banks, ISPs, list vendors, etc) will go a long way towards demotivating people in the legitimate business world from working with spammers/spam businesses.
Spammers and spam businesses need a certain cooperation and acceptance in the legitimate business world to make money. Without that, they'll be far less effective.
The submitter missed the most interesting part of the entire article: the fact that this crackdown is financed mainly by spammers (the direct marketing assoc)! They probably are just trying to get rid of the most blatant illegal stuff so they can further their goal of legitamizing spam. Or they could just be cracking down on competitors with the Fed's help.
Much of the financing for the efforts, known as Operation Slam Spam, comes from the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group that wants to promote what it sees as the legitimate use of e-mail marketing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
According to the article, the DMA is funding this "crackdown". They are trying to make it easier for DMA members to get their spam noticed. The DMA got the you CAN Spam law written they way that they wanted it written, now they are using it to kill the competition. This is just one more example of an industry cartel using laws that they bought and paid for to kill anybody who is not a member of the cartel.
one fucking mirror post after another. Can you say "karma whore"?
Spammers get a lot of blame for all this, and they should - they're evil. But don't forget two important parties in all of this - the advertisers and the fools that actually READ their spam.
Any company willing to spam others needs to have its practices reexamined. How can the justice department go after spammers and not even blink at the advertising firms that PAY to have it all done? It's like putting the hitman in jail and ignoring the mobster that hired him.
And let's not forget that sending out mass emails has to be worth it to companies, otherwise one would think they wouldn't do it. There's a reason that you keep getting reminders to have your penis enlarged, and it's not because they found your email address on slashdot. People are buying this crap, and these morons need to be stopped now.
I'd call for more education on the subject ("How not to click on that popup" or "How to ignore or filter your spam email"), but due to the fact that it is much more gratifying and probably cheaper overall to just throw the emailers into jail, as well as the fact that I'm a nobody, my calls would proabably go unheeded.
I think the most responded to spam in history could well be the one that takes donations to PutTheBastardsInJail.org. This way, building supplies could be purchased to make the walking-pieces-of-crap build their own jail cells and then live in them...
Somehow I think there would be no shortage of funds....
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
Does spam really pay? Is it really worth gathering millions of e-mail addresses and destroying a good feature like e-mail just to make a few bucks? Im glad those arrests were made. If thats one less spam Ill recieve, Im glad.
So if an individual supposedly causes huge coporations a financial loss, they are labeled a pirate, all sorts of crazy legislation is passed and projection room jockeys are deputized the world over. But, if an individual causes an overt nuissance to every e-mail user the world over, flooding e-mail boxed, creating zhombie spam boxes via trojans and costing people the time and energy to sift for a real message, they...do what?
Too bad we cannot get the RIAA/MPAA/anyotherlargerichcorporation angry at them. The US government might actually do something REAL.
The feds should be announcing this to everyone they can. First to let people know that yes they are doing something about this. Second, to send a message to other would be spammers!
As others will point out, it will not stop spam completely. Nothing will. We put people in prison for other things and that has not stopped crime.
I am however happy that the country with the largest amount of spam is finaly doing something.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Anyone know which specific spammers are being charged?
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
So long as he seeks unbridled power for the government, resists any legal constraints placed upon his power, and uses millenialism to justify his policies, he will never be a friend.
The only proper place for John Ashcroft is hanging from a tree.
I suppose criminal prosecution is worth a shot, but I like most everyone else have serious doubts about its effectiveness. This first "wave" has apparently been carefully planned and yet nabbed only "dozens" of perpetrators, and I would imagine most of those were of the "stupid enough to get caught" variety. Now let's guess how many of those dozens will actually go to trial, much less be convicted. But while skepticism is natural and logical, I do think it's worthwhile that the government is at least attempting something, even if it is mostly lip service. Whether it means more foreign spammers (likely) or just more clever ones here (likely as well), I don't expect this to make a lot of difference and continue to pin my hopes more on technology than the legal system.
What intrigues me, though, is the question as to whether or not this approach differs from the current attack on piracy. What's the real difference, that the general masses enjoys piracy and hates spam? Identity theft and credit card fraud are clearly in another category, but I wonder if the vile nuisance of spam is really worth large fines and/or jail-time. You're bothering ordinary, ostensibly innocent people, but I'm just not convinced that is a heck of a lot more offensive than hurting faceless corporations. I'm definitely against the DMCA and for anything that cuts down on spam, but I wonder if those positions are a bit hypocritical.
i am so glad to see law enforcement stepping up to bust these thieves but i have a problem with the DMA funding this.
what concerns me is that the dma wants to portray the image that there is such a thing as responsible email marketing and i really don't think that there ever can be such a thing so long as companies opt you into lists without your consent.
but let's rejoice in this for now and hope they get an appropriate punishment...like being forced to ingest those herbal remedies for hair loss.
Is it 5:30 yet?
I know it clogs servers, but PHBs are still fear mongering to charge $.01 for each sent email, idea being spammers will have to pay for the right(?) to abuse. I see it as punish the rest for a few, the few who will never care what happens to the innocent, they still make money.o ptin1.clickformail.com
As a public service, the following domains have been banished, as well as 95% of Megs of spam a week:
@2243.ewsifh398.com
@mx31.blindu89.biz
@
Before I banned them, I got at least 1 meg spam/3 days. That'll kill my inbox, and my provider was kind enough to remove all my old, dust covered emails I was saving so they could provide me this bright, shiny new spam! AGH! Wanted to KILL!
If servers would route this junk to an universal delete before it got to destination, the spammers would be out of business. There would have to be a distributed system for qualifying what was spam, and just not allowing the system to send it. Attatchments are another peeve of mine, with 30k virus attatched(Would you like to open this?). If I have never sent to the email in question, then I sould never see a Re: coming from them, filter! It would save gigs for provider alone!
Just my thoughts, and you are entitled to them >:{
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
From the article:
"..has purchased products advertised in spam messages so that the financial records can be traced to the ultimate source of the message."
Is this the 0.00001% of the spam recipients that actually buy the products and make spam profitable?
Clearly this is a vast conspiracy by the government to keep us all down.
I hate spam so I delete it. Giving authority of the internet to federal brownshirts will be the biggest mistake we ever did. Spam will continue until we make it illegal to buy spamvertised products. And making a deal with the federal devil will ruin the internet. We can see it with the France case etc. We will turn the internet into the most unfree thing we can imagine.
If the morons who actually buy stuff advertised by spam would stop, so would the spam.
Whew... thank God. My penis was getting so long I was starting to trip over it.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Get [perscription pill] online without seeing your doctor
An online form is not enough of a relationship for which a doctor can write you a perscription pill. State boards of health are in charge of stopping that.
Hot stock tip! Buy [stock you never heard of] today!
Classic pump-and-dump stock scam. The FTC and other stock market regulators are in charge of stopping that.
Cable TV filter lets you watch digital Pay Per View for free!
Nice try. What the filter does is block the upbound transmission from a digital cable box so that when a purchase is authorized by the user it can't communicate back to the cable company billing system while still letting the inbound signals through so the box appears to be working fine. There's only one catch, after a couple months your box will it hasn't been able send anything to home base, and completely shut down. Connecting it to the system without the filter will allow all the PPVs to show up on your next bill, and turning your box in for a replacement will allow the cable company to discover what's still in the box's memory. If you claim the box is lost forever, you'll have to pay for losing it. There is no free lunch.
Get [brand name software] for [insane low price]!
Pirated software, of course... if there is actually anything behind this offer at all. Try buying from a more trustworthy channel while the Microsoft/Symantec/etc. attack lawyers get ready to pounce on these guys.
Get Rich Quick!
Clasic ponzi scheme translated to e-mail... FTC will be arresting the guy at the top long before you get your millions.
[Your Bank] needs your account information back
When does a bank ever have an IT system without backing it up? Besides, if the username/password/account data table is lost, they'll build another by creating a new logon, not by asking you for the old one! These e-mails are simple wire fraud phishing.
Deposed leader [name you never heard of] needs your help to get [large sum of money out] of [someplace]. Please let him borrow your bank account.
Scam from the start. Even more dangerous because your home country law can't really stop scammers in third world nations.
Just as branding your enemy a communist during the 1950s was a sure fire way of ensuring their downfall, the so-called War on Terror has sparked a modern day witch hunt for "terrorist links".
As the United States Department of Justice attempts to extradite an Australian indicted as head of an international email spamming ring, the battle against spam has been spurred by unsubstantiated claims it funds terrorism.
The Department of Justice made the claims before a United States congressional hearing earlier this month but could not provide evidence.
Organised criminal syndicates profit from spam, according to Jack G. Michael, a deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division at the Department of Justice. He was addressing the US House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Direct Marketing Association oversight hearing, titled "International Email Spam Links to Organised Crime and Terrorism".
Making the link to terrorism Malcolm said, "Organised crime syndicates are frequently engaged in many types of criminal enterprises, including supporting terrorist activities".
Malcolm could not cite an actual case where spam was linked to terrorism, but said, "it would surprise me greatly if the number were not large".
The Direct Marketing Association head James Valentine continued the terrorism theme in his written submission to the hearing.
"September 11 changed the way Americans look at the world. It also changed the way American law enforcement looks at spamming crimes," wrote Valentine - borrowing from a November 2002 article in the Customs Service newsletter US Customs Today.
The Department of Justice's war on spam was boosted recently by the indictment of 40-year-old Ray Hugh Griffin, of South Wales, as co-leader of the worldwide spamming group SpendToSave.
The extradition of Griffin - known by the online alias "SanNiBel" - will be sought "in the coming weeks," according to US Attorney Peter J McCarthy.
Griffin's indictment is the latest action arising from "Operation Mountaineer" - a joint US Customs and Department of Justice investigation which has seen 20 people convicted.
Operation Mountaineer has seen spammers put behind bars for several years. Similar penalties should apply to college students sending unsolicited messages using chat applications such as Gaim and MSN, Congressman John Carter - a Texas Republican - told the congressional hearing.
"I think it'd be a good idea to go out and actually bust a couple of these college kids," said Carter.
"If you want to see college kids duck and run, you let them read the papers and somebody's got a 33-month sentence in the federal penitentiary for sending unsolicited emails."
An election year.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
So you want Diana Ross to decide this?
Please bear in mind, this is not a victory of honest folk over spammers, but a victory of spammers who are members of the DMA over their competitors. The DMA got a law passed which allows them to keep spamming but can be used to make business harder for non-DMA members. That's good business and I think the DMA have done _very_ well for a lobby with no initial political clout or connections.
Just don't interpret this as some new ideological initiative. It's simply an investment by the DMA which favors the DMA and hurts their competitors
.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
What was that line about building a better idiot?
Anyway... I think it is safe to say that blaming the idiot never helps anyone.
BUT not allowing idiots to be President DOES help!
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
Today was the 1st day in years when I got zero spam to my home account.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
no suprise there then, rackspace is the choice of the spammer
also they have no street address as a contact point, just a po.box
PO Box 50945
Washington DC, DC 20091
On a totally unrelated note, does anyone have an alloy baseball bat?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
John's having a press conference tomorrow to announce some big new crack-down. Details here, free reg. req. Yada yada.
--
I think everybody is going to want to have a turn at abusing these [persons]. :-)
The question is: what's the punishment going to be? I've got a couple of ideas: first, park them in front of a computer and make them manually delete all the spam mails from a non-spam-blocked computer - say, for the next 20 years.
Alternatively, everybody that has ever gotten spam gets a turn to spit on them
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
It's not a pyramid scheme as much as it's a "sell stuff to your friends without getting paid much" scheme.
Perhaps you should take the quiz they have here:
http://www.pyramidschemealert.org/
Next thing you know, someone will be telling us that those penis enhancement pills are legit, too, just because they advertise on TV...
What does that one commercial say?
"We said it on TV, so it must be true!"
I seem to remember a few very... interesting... statements televised by the Iraqi Information Minister, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton & Richard Nixon, too, and that's off the top of my head.
doesnt seem to work for the israelis
doesnt seem to work anywhere, for that matter
if they ddos a US military site, you really should know what they are doing.
i guess you can take the ostrich approach and do nothing until the feds arrive, but theres also the willfull negligence / attractive nuisance doctrines in law... do you really want to deal with that?
spam is so cheap, it doesnt matter if 1 person out of 1 billion reads it. it'll still be economically viable for spammers to operate. it costs them almost nothing to send spam via huge zombie nets.
the less people read spam, the more spam spammers will send in order to compensate.
the only real way to combat spam is to make spam so expensive it's no longer viable as a marketing tool.
when you're in prison
they can scream as loud as they want in space and it will still be quite.
Quite what?
Damn it, finish the sentence. Why leave us hanging like that?
Any additional details on the P2P network bust that was mentioned in several versions of the story?
Per TFA, they're being arrested quietly because they (or their computers) are providing information that's being used to build a case against other spammers. The government don't want to alert other suspects.
Sean
Finally.
Nobody here is bellyaching about registering to read a New York Times article for a change! As for me, I finally got tired of the few spams I got, so I set my SpamByte code to 0 to shut the spammers up effectively for good!
The end of the article mentioned Russia as becoming the new 'capital of spam' in the wake of the crackdown on spammers here in the USA. To that I say: "Spam away. I'll just automatically delete it anyway after I download and scan it for 'spammines' and I'll never see it." If my SpamByte-enabled mailserver program was in widespread use on the internet, such spam wouldn't be in people's inboxes in the first place so no time is wasted downloading spam email messages only to waste more time (and money) later deleting them by hand.
Wait a minute. Isn't this part of Ashcroft's campaign to destroy our civil rights? These folks were just sending email. What about our rights? Why wasn't this a 'your rights online' submission?
Evil is the money of root.
They are going after people who spam who happen to break other laws too, like credit card fraud, identify theft, false advertising, etc. I guess they didn't think CAN-SPAM was strong enough to stand up by itself. Or maybe it's because the whole operation is being funded by the "legitimate" direct advertising industry... you know, the people who watered down the spam act so that you can spam as long as you give people a way to unsubscribe.
The direct marketing association is using these campaigns to clean up spam so that unsolicited email won't have such a bad name. They certainly don't want to stop unsolicted email since that's how they make their living. They just want all the fradulent, cheesy, and pornographic messages to stop so people won't hate spam so much.