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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 hope the people for www.freeipods.com get busted too.
I am so sick of them.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
Finding every penny can be difficult when the larger spammers route money overseas into foreign bank accounts. Then there's the Florida bankruptcy laws which make it nearly impossible to take the spammer's multi million dollar mansion (many spammers have one in Florida for this reason). I do agree, however, that more efforts like this will decrease the profitability of spamming and cause more people to come to the conclusion that spamming is not worth it. Then of course they'll go back to selling used cars, bouncing checks, or whatever they did before the internet became popular.
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 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!
Well, what I know about him personally isn't much, but what there is of it I don't like (e.g. the 'covering up' of the justice statue because of (heaven forfend) a breast).
The way he has carried out his job, however, I find abhorrent. Pushing the "PATRIOT Act", all by itself, would warrant my condemnation. But looking into how much torture U.S. interrogators could get away with, and refusing to own up to it, is beneath contempt.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Banks supply merchant accounts for credit card processing. There may be some spammers (defined broadly to include the people selling stuff, not just bulk mailers) who take checks, cash, and money orders, but I'd wager not many.
Given the merchantability of many spam products (penis enlargement pills, cable descramblers, etc), there HAVE to be lots of complaints about these people's merchant accounts -- the bank likely MUST be running interference for them or at least playing willfull ignorance when opening new accounts.
Since when to banks have security and investigation departments to track down the source of deposits?
This is part of the broader issue that we all should have with banks involved in the credit card trade. Banks NEVER take a hit from credit card fraud -- they either make the consumer eat it or the merchant eat it, and with the pending bankruptcy laws changing, even their own sloppy lending practices are becoming free money.
That banks play dumb when it comes to fraud is neither surprising nor acceptable.
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
There's a bright side to this. Spam sent in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act is easy to filter. With a legitimate subject line and sender, most spam filters will immediately recognize spam and make it go away.
Interesting. Because working from the other end of the problem (psychology and game theory) it's been shown that a tit-for-tat strategy (basically, revenge) is by far the most effective way to ensure compliance.
That demonstrates the effect on individuals, not on outsiders observing the individuals, so perhaps the effect doesn't scale. Perhaps criminals are those people who assume that they won't be caught, or if they are that the sentence isn't so bad compared with the costs of not committing crimes.
Some drugs present a slightly different case, in that addiction is an insanely powerful motivator. Addicts will continue to do those drugs no matter how high you set the sentence; that's what "addiction" means. But one has to take drugs for the first time to become an addict, and that's an unaddicted choice to risk heavy sentences.
As you say, it's complex. I haven't got any solutions myself.
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