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 normally receive 20+ porn and viagra spams a day, but they are all the same style so I have always thought it was only one spammer with my address. [I never posted the address anywhere, I think they just guessed it - it is in the format commonfirstnamelastname@majorisp.com]
Anyway, since Friday I haven't had a single message. Or maybe it is just because the spammer is away on vacation....
...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.
one fucking mirror post after another. Can you say "karma whore"?
Wasn't there some recent study showing that most spam is generated by a small number of people?
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.
This stat comes up all the time. I still haven't seen their methodology. If they used their own mailbox, their may be filtering that they don't know about.
Also, the US is the orgins of "42 percent of spam", but what does that mean? That 42 percent of an email comes from a spammer in the US, possibly through a 3rd party server? 42 of businesses advertised are US businesses? Or what everyone seems to imply, that 42% come from zombie servers in the US.
Lets not forget that "42% of all spam" is a bad statistic, I want to know what it is per capita, or per legit email sent.
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.
New science has pointed out that the effect of for example punishing others is grossly overrated especially by the public. Most experts within criminology agree that the deterrent of very long sentences is non existant in many fields.
Most people still belive in the popular myth that "if we just punish/sentence enough people to life then they will stop doing those evil things". Well it turns out that the world is a bit more complex. People still do drugs even if you can get 20+ years for it.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
I totally agree with you. I don't see why these people are getting "quietly arrested". The number of actual scam mail (which is clearly illegal, as opposed to spam mail, which is just annoying) I've been getting recently is alarming. I'm up to getting 1 to 2 a day of the various Citibank/PayPal/eBay scam phishing mail. I don't get caught with them because I very carefully check URLs (and I use Thunderbird and Firefox so I'm not vulnerable to URL masking attacks). But I can imagine the average Joe Schmoe very easily getting taken with these scams. Law enforcement needs to track down these criminals and give them hard time. Heck, it's not even that hard ... all of the phishing scams have to rely on a faked site that is hosted somewhere on the net. Whenever I come across one of these, I check its whois data, and if it's located in the U.S., I send something off to the registrar telling them the domain is being used for something clearly illegal. Usually, within a day, the domain no longer works. Heck, about half of the phishing mail I get these days points to links that are already taken down!
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Spam is a covert communication channel that is completely immune to traffic analysis on the receiving end (since it's broadcast to so many people, and there's no way of telling if one of them is reading another message steganographically hidden in the p3n!s pill ad). Spam offers the Internet equivalent of a numbers station broadcast.
Maybe the Feds have gotten a clue (in either sense of the phrase), and are anal-probing some spammers (using fraud, cracking, etc as probable cause and leverage) to investigate this possibility.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
My account has dropped from 100-150/day down to ~20/day over the span of the last few months. I can't say why, but I like it. Many many more viral messages spoofed to look like they come from my domain, though. (It's my domain...and I didn't send those messages to myself!)
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Well I use Livejournal and get constant spam from users claiming they all won Ipods!
If you get into the pyramid early on you win them easily. But after everyone and their brother recieves emails and harrasments on livejournal for them it wont work and they get burned.
What I do not like is to sign someone else up for the offer you give them spamming and identity theft information. Then its up to him/her to accept it?
Its a massive pyramid scheme and a spam harvesting ring all in one. Yuck.
Worse I have been flamed for daring to speak up agaisnt it and to tell them that users participating in this are fradualant and no different than the owners of this scame. Unfortunately the few people who did win them make the others envious so they sign up for it and flame me back.
Sigh.
Its been mentioned as legit on wired.com so people assumed there is zero risk.
http://saveie6.com/
So, from your reasoning, SCO's litigious antics would be perfectly fine, well and good.
Fuck that shit.
Corporations had best adopt a sense of morals and ethics, and quickly lest they find themselves slowly slaughtered. It's happening. Look at SCO's close today. Look at Microsoft. Look at Enron and Worldcom. Same with spammers. Adopt a clean business plan, one that doesn't promote immoral, illegal acts, and you'll do fine. Keep up the scams, spams and crazy bullshit, and yer going broke. It may take time, but it will happen.
Sure, but any crime becomes "easy and virtually without risk" as soon as law enforcement decides not prosecute it. I don't see them suggesting that drug laws shouldn't be enforced because there are too many users/dealers out there.
Anyway, what makes you think that there are more major spammers out there than there are bank robbers? I would think that spam would go down by huge amounts by catching and punishing just a few of the worst of them. It can't be that hard to find them if you just follow the money. How many bank robbers leave their address with the bank so they can send them the cash?