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."

Comments

Dozens?

[Klar]

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.

Hmmm...

[Megaweapon]

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.

Re:Hmmm...

[king-manic]

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.

isn't that a great defeatist attitude. Spam is not like an inevitable problem. It can be dealt with. A email system with authentication, A tougher stance from the law, it all helps.

"Quietly?"

[Caradoc]

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?

To quote Dr. Strangelove:

"Of course, the whole point ... is lost, if you keep it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, eh?"

Re:"Quietly?"

[Performer Guy]

There will be a press conference later today, if you're rounding up crooks in a crackdown you don't announce the fact after the initial arrests because you tip off everyone else. I expect they didn't have enough computer forensic specialists to do the classic coast to coast simultaneous door knock. Computer forensics will play a huge part in catching phishers.

This is a good thing, phishing & identity theft is evil and the scumbags doing it have assumed that they can get away with brazen theft. It's about time some serious attempt to jail these a*holes was made.

Yes, but...

[gillbates]

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....

Re:Yes, but...

[Ignignot]

I know you were being ironic, but I think it will be missed by most people reading your post.

So: spammers do fit the popular definition of hackers as people who do bad things to other people's computers without their permission. Even leaving aside how sending spam to someone could be construed to be damaging, they almost certainly use zombie hosts to send emails - this is definitely "evil hacking". So for once I hope the FBI and Secret Service go in and take all their computer stuff, then lock them in a room with a large lonely man named bubba.

Ashcroft is now good?

[smooth wombat]

Does this mean that Ashcroft is now our friend or is this the wrong week?

Re:Ashcroft is now good?

[mwood]

You haven't grasped the essence of the situation.

Whoever Mr. Ashcroft is in private life, the Attorney General of the United States is not your friend or your enemy; he has a job to do and we expect that he is doing it. One day that will work for you; another day it will work against you. You may agree or disagree with the way that he does it, but it shouldn't be anything personal, on his part or yours.

Business is not about friends and enemies. Business is about achieving objectives.

Re:Quietly Arrested

[mwood]

Patience! We have to convict them first. Arrested != proven guilty.

After the proof, go for it. Don't bother with helmets when you drag them to the moon; the enclosure would restrict their freedom of speech. :-}

The DMA just wants to kill the competition

[Secrity]

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.

Re:The DMA just wants to kill the competition

[Ignignot]

Its fine with me if they kill off all the underground spamming from zombie'd windows boxes. If all spam originates from a cartel it will be much easier to regulate down to some sort of rational amount of communication. Right now we can't regulate spam because most of it is done outside of the law anyway. Aside from that, if all spam came from one group of people then it would be much easier to filter / block.

Don't forget to blame the idiots

[Laimbrane]

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.

Re:Well

[gl4ss]

they don't encourage spamming but their (semi scam) business model causes normal people to spam, and then invent all kinds of crazy reasoning how their spam isn't spam. that line of theirs encourages things like comment spamming on blogs and so on.

i don't mind if someone wants to advertise that they're gullible in their sig tho... the whole point is that they want you to get your friends to buy expensive services or products, and actually they want you to fail after you've gained 2-3 friends who've done it. the point is that you could just ask each of your friends for 40-50$ or screw 'em over in arranged poker game(but nobody really gets 5 of his friends to do the stuff so you need to find willing people online).

funny how people defend the program how it works _BEFORE_ they get their ipods too.