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FTC Recommends Bounty on Spammers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pay-to-play dept.

joke-boy writes "AP reports that as part of the CANSPAM legislation, the FTC has issued a report recommending placing taxpayer-funded 6-figure bounties on spammers, much like the bounties placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted."

11 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. Their Figures are a Little Off by christopherfinke · · Score: 4, Insightful
    What would it take to get someone to turn in one of those spammers who send millions of unwanted e-mails? At least $100,000, the Federal Trade Commission figures.
    Really? If I knew someone who was spamming, I'd turn them in for free. Any cash would just be a bonus.
    1. Re:Their Figures are a Little Off by bizpile · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Really? If I knew someone who was spamming, I'd turn them in for free. Any cash would just be a bonus.

      You make a good point. It's like when they double the bounty on Osama. Like people in Pakistan/Afganistan are sitting around saying, "You know, I'd turn him in for $50 million, but $25 million just doen't speak to me."

      Actually, I'd turn in a spammer just to get a couple of free punches ;).

    2. Re:Their Figures are a Little Off by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I turn in a dozen clearly fraudulent spams a month, which are blithely ignored by law enforcement. The problem is not "catching". The law enforcement agencies can easily, if they wish, get subpoenas to track the records or follow a canceled check or credit card to get the worst of the spammers.

      The problem is that they can't be bothered unless it involves hundreds of thousands of dollars of blatant wire fraud, and even then they're quite incompetent at following the evidence or even prosecuting for the right crime.

  2. Six Figures? by josh3736 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I can understand six figure rewards for those on the ten most wanted list, but for spammers?

    Surely there are things that money could be better spent on. Like say, the implementation of a new email protocol. Or (gasp!) things like Social Security or education.

    1. Re:Six Figures? by savagedome · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Top ten most wanted deserve 7 and 8 figures.

      But seriously, screw these scum of the earth bastards. Remember those days when web was a nice place and everybody you knew had a cutesy little homepage and you would leave cute little message in their guest books and such with your name and email and such. DAMN I WANT THAT BACK. That was a nicer web instead of trying to take every bit of care not to leak your email EVEN ONCE. Coming up with NOSPAM crap in your email addresses while posting them somewhere in the hope that some bastard spammer's spider won't catch that. Putting all those funky signs and punctuation and ascii characters to fool those spiders. Using spam filters, white lists, black lists, bayseian etc. etc. Telling everybody not to send, forward anything and never to use your email except for personal reasons.

      And then your girlfriend sends you that cute little card to your email account from that cutesy flowery website that is an email harvester.

      DAMN I WANT THE OLD WEB BACK BEFORE THESE SPAMMERS CAME AND TOOK IT OVER.

      --


      Free XBox, PS2
    2. Re:Six Figures? by josh3736 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I'd say one could compare spam to P2P music downloading.

      When Napster became big, the RIAA shut it down. But then 3 more P2P apps popped up to fill that void. Then the RIAA tried to shut them down. Rinse and repeat, there's now 64 different filesharing apps just for Windows.

      Now look at spam. Every time the FTC or whatever government agency shuts down a spammer, how many more will pop up to fill the void?

      Free music or free money. There's a risk with both -- getting sued by the RIAA or having the Federal government on your ass.

      What we really need to do is figgure out how to make it so that spam isn't profitable. Ever.

  3. Won't do much by Dorsai42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When there's a bounty on the advertisers who use the spammers, then we'll see a reduction in spam

    --
    If you forget about the future, the future will forget about you.
  4. Re:Allow me to say by Drawkcab · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A bounty doesn't really make sense the way that spammers are currently prosecuted. Most spammers just get a slap on the wrist. Until spammers actually start getting serious hard time or huge civil penalties, then the value of the bounty would be greater than the cost to most spammers. This would make it beneficial for a small time spammer to partake in their own bounty.

    If bounties given out were a percentage of the fines actually collected from spammers (which ideally should be really painful for big spammers), rather than some fixed range, then a bounty system would make sense. And spammers who manage to launder their profits so the fines don't stick need to get prison time.

  5. Good to see some momentum by bigberk · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Let's review the facts:
    1. Spammers use stolen resources (hijacked zombie computers, DSL/cable connections) in order to further their business.
    2. Spammers do not seek consent before bombarding email systems with their marketing information.
    3. Spammers generally disrespect requests for them to stop sending unsolicited email, and in fact often send more mail after such requests (selling 'confirmed' addresses to colleagues)
    4. Spammers deliberately conceal their location of 'business', mislead consumers in their 'marketing campaigns' and forge their identities.
    It's good to see these people increasingly treated as what they really are, criminals that have been harming society and getting away with it because our current laws are too slow to catch up. What they're doing is not only annoying, but harmful to innocent peoples' systems.
  6. What a waste. Next, Please. by KarmaOverDogma · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I agree.

    Further, I am very curious as to how many bounty hunters will have will and/or the ability to get foriegn spammers to US Courts.

    This, of course, speaks nothing of the spammers who are already here.

    Spammers being actively hunted in the post Soviet Bloc countries, China, Nigeria, etc would be a very interesting thing to see if it *ever* happened, which I sincerely doubt.

    The war on spam reminds me of the war on drugs.

    And, IIRC, the war on drugs has yet to be won.

    Donald Rumsfeld, a man I am not very fond of, did correctly point out in my opinion that the war on drugs is a demand problem.

    So is Spam.

    As long as spam is profitable, it *will* continue.

    This will mainly serve to make the FTC look good while doing little (VERY little) to solve the problem.

    Our tax dollars at waste - again.

    .

    --
    uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
  7. Wait a minute... by freeze128 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's to keep spammers from turning in other spammers? Then the spammers get MORE money.... OUR money!