Spamford Wallace Draws A Restraining Order

Steve Rock writes "According to an article in the Associated Press, a temporary restraining order has been issued by a judge against Stanford Wallace and his companies. The case marks the first anti-spyware action taken by the Federal Trade Commission, and while there is some argument about permitting unsolicited commercial e-mail because of free speech it appears a tougher approach will be taken with alleged spyware distribution."

Comments

Perhaps I can help

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got some great spam here on cheap legal services.

The important question here is..

[Sein]

When will Gator and WhenU be similarily restrained?

Re:The important question here is..

[Sein]

Argh, yeah - I'm so used to typing Gator/Claria to make sure that Claria don't shed the image problem associated with their Gator spyware, and this time my brain slipped.

Gator/Claria has deep pockets and corporate backing for their attempts to monopolize your desktop though, and have successfully sued people into submission for stating that their behaviour mimics that of other malicious intrusion software.

In other words, they're rich slime who try to pound people into submission with SLAPP suits. And they still want to pretend that them using your computer for their own profit strategy is perfectly all right because of an EULA longer than the river Nile....

Re:The important question here is..

[Ash-Fox]

No, you fool!

You'll kill us all!

Claria will now sue us all for using the S word and their product in the same sentence!

Spam is a social problem

[Pan T. Hose]

You cannot fix social problems with legislation. Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail. Period.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[AndreyF]

I cannot agree more. Prosecuting offenders one-by-one will never solve the problem as long as there is a supply of fools that spammers make money off of.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[raistphrk]

When statistics show that the great majority of spam comes from a select few spammers, legislation CAN help fix the problem. When you put the big dogs in jail and out of business, some smaller ones may take their spot, but there will be a big dent in spam distribution.

Re:Spam Is A Social Problem

[eln]

I know FCM is a known troll and all, but he has a good point here. The reason spam continues is because it's profitable. If it wasn't, people would stop doing it. This is the same principle that makes the "War on Drugs" impossible to win.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[Anonymous Coward]

There will always be so-called "fools" who buy products spammed, for the simple reason that, while unsolicited, spam is still advertising, and sometimes advertising hits the mark. That is to say, if I'm in the market for a product, and a spammer is advertising a good deal on said product, I'm going to buy it regardless of the method by which the advertising reaches me.

Trying to get people to -not- buy products advertised in spam would be as effective as trying to abolish all advertising altogether.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[stewby18]

Exactly. Same with things like muggings, too; so long as the social problem of poverty exists, there will be muggings, armed robbery, etc. Clearly they shouldn't be illegal either.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[kesler]

You can fix social problems with laws; just enforce the law of natural selection.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[RealProgrammer]

As soon as there is a method in the infrastructure to know who is spamming, we will be able to make spam go away.

Blacklists, etc, don't work now because of address forgery. Take away the forgery and you can implement blacklists, address blocking, punitive mail bombs based on blacklist history, or whatever method is decided.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can. The best example of this is the pure food and drug act of 190x, which was passed in response to patent medicines which didn't disclose their ingredients, usually narcotic.

This seems to be in the same genre, in that the software doesn't do what it claims to do, and in fact does something bad.

Food and medicine products to this day, have ingredients listed.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[pipingguy]

If spam is such a problem for networks and humans (and definitely it is, and getting worse), then why aren't we seeing TV/Radio PSAs explaining why it is inherently a bad thing? Since everyone universally hates spam, this lack of public service information seems to be an implicit blind eye to the problem. Intel, AMD, Apple, etc. could bump up the corporate goodwill by publicly denouncing that which 99.9% of all email users consider to be a scourge of the internet. What would it cost, a few dozen millions in order to saturate the popular media for a few weeks? That's peanuts to these guys.

I have a feeling that spammers make a huge amount of money selling lists to other would-be spammers.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[bcrowell]

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.
There are some of objections I'd make to your argument:

1. Junk paper mail will never end as long as there are fools who buy products advertised by paper mail. But that's not a problem, because postage costs limit the amount of junk paper mail I'll get.
2. A lot of spam is criminal: it's sent by zombie machines, or the spam itself is a trojan. No, you cannot fix social problems with legislation, but yes, you can discourage crimes against property with legislation.
3. I don't think most spammers actually have a product to sell. The Nigerian scammers don't have a product to sell. The people sending me trojans pretending to be from PayPal don't have a product to sell. The spammers who crapflood anti-spam activists' mailboxes don't have a product to sell.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[keraneuology]

You cannot fix social problems with legislation.

In other words, since robbery is a social problem we shouldn't have legislation against it?

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy

By the same measure burglary will never end as long as there are fools who buy stolen merchandise.

Hogwash.

Spam is a criminal activity that involves theft, harassment, intrusion, invasion of privacy and, usually, fraud. What is needed is a combination of legislation (written by somebody who understands spam and is not paid by the DMA) and technology. The CANSPAM act was written after people knew that unsubscribe links could be coded in such a way to introduce hacks onto one's system, yet the idiots in Washington made these dangerous links mandatory. Legislation promising effective fines against companies that knowingly host images used in spamvertising or otherwise collect responses to repeated spam is only a start.

As for the technology, I've been waiting for a spam-alert icon to be submitted for MSIE/Opera/Firefox - when visiting a website hosted by a spam-friendly network that appears on RBLs a little icon should glow red, thus quickly allowing me to determine if I want to patronize that website - if there was an easy way for my browser to alert me to spam-friendly networks then I would definitely do my web shopping elsewhere.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[Thaelon]

You cannot fix social problems with legislation. Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail. Period.

Which is why you should send this to everybody you know: http://www.boulderpledge.com/

In case of a ./ing here's basically the only thing at that link: Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.

-Roger Ebert

Re:Spam is a social problem

[edbarbar]

You cannot fix social problems with legislation.

Ridiculous. DWI is a social problem, but it has been greatly curtailed due to stiff penalties. In fact, this is like saying nothing the legislature does can fix problems, since almost all of what they do is attempt to fix social problems.

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail. Period.

The article is about spyware, not about spam.

Anyway, you are wrong about this too. If the state were to execute people who send spam, they will stop it. I'm not saying to do this, though after spending 15 hours cleaning up spyware from my computers, I sometimes feel like the whole greedy, leechlike lot of them should be ground into hamburger and fed to the dogs.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[geminidomino]

>>Blacklists, etc, don't work now because of address forgery

I assume you're talking about address/domain-based blacklists? Those would be the only one affected by "address forgery." I've not seen an address-based or domain-based blacklist in a very long time.

Most current blacklists are IP-based. Those can't be forged if you realize how the email system works. Yes, false IP addresses can be injected into the Received: headers, but this is not news. Every correctly configured mailserver puts the IP address of the previous server in the "hop list", INCLUDING the receiving server. The admin of that server can look at the headers, and since he (hopefully) can trust his own server, the previous server in the list, the one whose IP was added by the destination, is the source of the spam.

Blacklists DO work. 3rd parties don't like them because they may inconvienience them (sharing a mailserver with a spammer? Then you're going to be blocked). However, the opinions of 3rd parties (non-customers) are irrelevant.

Re:Spam is a social problem

[rts008]

Why mistreat the poor dogs? But then again, my garbage gut mutt actually seems to like Spam(tm). Nevermind....

Re:Spam is a social problem

[jcr]

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products

Not "end" perhaps, but it could be greatly reduced at the cost of a few baseball bats and the goons to direct them at spammer's kneecaps.

Spammers do what they do in such proliferation, because there are basically no consequences in Real Life for what they do on line. To address the problem, the consequences need to be made truly dire.

-jcr

Re:Spam is a social problem

[sparkyz]

Please help. I want to understand this. I think you're absolutely dead on about the efficacy (or lack thereof) of legislation. Utterly unenforceable and a complete waste of time - unless maybe it distracts John Ashcroft away from my beloved porn sites for a while.

But anymore, the SPAM I get is nonsense. Words twisted, misspelled, characters switched, inappropriate spaces etc - such that I don't even know what they're selling. How is this effective advertising - and to underscore your answer with a question - are people really dumb enough to buy from something like that? That's not just irritating, it's scary.

How can anyone not be outraged at the insult?

Re:Spam is a social problem

[fastfinge]

I think that was what the parent meant when he claimed that blacklists currently do not work. Sure, they work, it's just a matter of how much else you're willing to hammer along with your spam. This is why blacklists are just not an option for many mail server admins, and they can't afford (in cycles) to do anything else, so unfortunately many people get bad mail filtering, and the rest don't get any. Keyword and other trainable methods of spam filtering are just a stopgap; already spammers are coming up with systems that avoid these. Spam is a huge problem, and filtering is not the way to go. It's like bailing the titanic out with a scoop; it might work for a few minutes, but eventually you're overwhelmed.

The appropriate solution, of course, is mass executions. This decreases the amount of repeat offenders dramatically. Also, it's quick, and doesn't require any bandwidth or CPU resources at all. The best way, imho, is to lobby for a law declaring all spammers terrorists and all mass mailing software weapons of mass destruction (Orin Hatch can try to outlaw email). Then the CIA can track them down using the RFID chips in their passports and neutralize them effectively. The spammers, that is. Software won't be required to have RFID chips until sometime in 2006. Orin Hatch will be neutralized as soon as we can find a way through the RIAA's defenses (that probably involves holding down the shift key).

P.S: Relax. I'm joking. I think.

Spam Is A Social Problem

[Fecal Troll Matter]

You can't fix a social problem with legislation. Spam won't as long as there will be idiots who buy products advertised by unsolicited email.

Spam is not covered under free speech

[nurb432]

"Free speech" only applies to the extent that you have the right to speak freely, it does not extend to the point that you have a right to be heard, as you dont.. Nor does it allow that I have to pay to hear your "free speech".

Same reasons fax-Spam is illegal. It costs the recipient.

Re:Spam is not covered under free speech

[bleckywelcky]

Exactly. Here's how I see it:

This is my computer, you can not bother me on it unless I allow you to. If I visit your website, spam all the pop-ups you want. If I give you my email for the purposes of marketing, spam me all you want. But if I am just sitting here and you spam me with pop-ups through some spyware program or send me unsolicited emails, then you should be punished (assuming laws are in place to make such acts illegal).

You can compare the situation to your property. People are not allowed to just walk on your property and put a lawn-sign in your yard. Nor can they can come up and talk to you if you've told them to stop trespassing (or through a restraining order, etc).

Why should the two venues be considered any differently? They're both my property and I decide who can come, who can go, and what happens on my property. Simple as that.

Re:Spam is not covered under free speech

[Laebshade]

I agree with you on some points, but I don't think just because they have my e-mail address means they can spam it.

WTF?

[enginuitor]

"...while there is some argument about permitting unsolicited commercial e-mail because of free speech..."

Now that's a new one...
What if somebody argued that graffiti was free speech?
My point here is that nobody should legally be able to flood your email account with messages you don't want. It wastes the resources both of the systems across which the messages travel and of the people who have to go through them. In addition, it has been repeatedly shown in studies that unsolicited email is not an effective advertising strategy.
In summary, free speech is the right to express your views, not to shove them in someone's face without their permission.

Re:WTF?

[dameron]

What if somebody argued that graffiti was free speech?

I agree with your point regarding spam, however graffiti is a bad example. Graffiti has often been used as an anonymous way to question the established authority or show defiance. While it's not protected (and rightly shouldn't be, as there is a very low signal to noise ration in graffiti), it has shown some social and political value in the past.

Spam hasn't.

Until there is a spam equivalent of the "V" for victory from WWII I'll give graffiti a little more play than spam.

But yes, in general you are right.

-dameron

Re:WTF?

[divot2001]

quote: "and rightly shouldn't be, as there is a very low signal to noise ration in graffiti." An intrinsic part of the free speech is that you cannot infringe a person's right to free speech because it was inarticulate or unintelligible due to the ignorance or lack of education in the communicator. To do so allows groups to silence the minority when they try to voice an unpopular opinion. Graffiti is illegal because it is destroying either public or private property, not because of any message inside.

How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[turnstyle]

Really, how does somebody decide to become a bad guy? Do you wake up some day, and say, I'm going to be a spammer, a scammer, a credit card thief?

Do they even know that they're bad guys, or do they have themselves fooled?

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[TykeClone]

In what world is a credit card thief anything but a bad guy?

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[gandalphthegreen]

Do they even know that they're bad guys, or do they have themselves fooled?

I'll just need your email address, and I'm sure that these poor, confused gentlemen can explain themselves to you.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[dhoonlee]

Nobody believes they are the bad-guy.

Even the most heinous criminal has a way of justifying their actions to themselves.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[Erik Hollensbe]

I hesitate to post with my name on this, but here's some insight. I hate these people just as much as you do.

I'm not working for a corp anymore, trying to get a contracting business going, because you get screwed or outsourced working for anyone who gets investors via stock. The faceless nature of a corporation does not care who you are, your aspirations unrelated to the workplace and your current situation. They merely want your skills and labor. This is a concept that trickles down the management chain, unfortunately less by force but by those who want to "succeed". Personally, I'll take a heaping helping of poverty over that kind of success. I left when the disgust was far beyond what I could stand. Let's just say I'm not persuing the traditional avenues for work anymore. I would like to think I have an impressive skill set and resume, and I think a good portion of hiring companies would agree. So my talent is not really in question here.

Anyways, to augment my stifled income I turned to various online freelance places. The pay isn't great but it's a buck to be made which equates to food being placed in my fridge, a roof over my head and some modern amenities such as electricity, plumbing, and internet access, 2 of which I require to make money at my trade. (No, I am not a plumber :)

First off, you're bidding against guys in India and parts of Eastern Europe where $200 is a month's rent. The buyers are well aware of this and drive the price down to far beyond minimum wage. I've done a couple projects which equate to cents on the hour, but again, food on the table.

Second, because you are not put in the position where one job will pay the rent, you are put in a position where you bid on tons of jobs at a time - my average "bid day" is about 100 bids. These are all communicated and fullfilled. A good "bid day" will equate to around 20-30 projects varying in price from $50-$300. Only the cabals of 20 programmers get the big projects, and this isn't exactly something I want to make a sustainable income on. I average one bid day a month, $300 is a very well-paying project.

Anyways, with the combination of these two, you can see where I'm going here. They give me a project, I don't ask what they're doing and I really don't care. Food on the table. I could care less if you get a silly piece of email that sells you viagra, I've got bigger things to worry about. Thankfully, my "real" contracting is starting to take off so I've stopped bidding until I have to worry about it again.

I have gotten my "revenge" through a couple of well-placed timebombs in my scripts, and occasionally I'll create new accounts to bid and accept projects that are extremely vile (yes, there are lines) just to let them fall by the wayside. :) One time I configured a DNSBL for a spammer. Hope he doesn't plan to get mail from those hosts. :)

If you want to blame me, fine. Sadly, I have bigger concerns than the morality of unsolicited email, giving someone a tool to spider popular websites and search engines (complete with auto-correcting open proxy support), amongst other things. As stated before it's not something I like at all, but it is, unfortunately, somewhat of a necessary evil. If you're about to say, "get a job at a gas station" or something sillier, I have a job coming up that requires 100% of my time at a pay which is 4 times what I was making at my corp job. The pay from that alone can keep me off those bids for ... oh, 6 or 7 months.

Anyways, I'm done justifying myself. Consider this informative of the landscape that you are encountering. The "evil" people aren't writing these applications, the hungry are. :)

Crime always comes to those who are lazy and want a good paycheck for being lazy. OTOH, I worked 80 hours last week for $40. If you want to call me a slimeball, think about the guy I used to work for who told me one thing about a raise I needed to get my head above water

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[Ash-Fox]

Just make sure you don't p'off people with power.

[Bad telephone operator joke]

*Telephone tune* I'm sorry, the number you have dialed cannot be reached.. YOU SPAMMER! Please try again later, AT&T.

[/Bad telephone operator joke]

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[neoform]

Everybody wants to make money, they see it just as being another way to make a buck. greed drives a lot of people in the world.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[dubl-u]

If you want to blame me, fine. Sadly, I have bigger concerns than the morality of unsolicited email, giving someone a tool to spider popular websites and search engines (complete with auto-correcting open proxy support), amongst other things.

Yes, I do blame you. To get a few hundred bucks in your pocket, you're helping create tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to other people. Heck, if you're working for a big spammer, the trouble you help make could cost others millions.

I have a lot more respect for the crackheads who steal stuff out of cars in my neighborhood. Why? Well A, they're in the grips of a drug addiction; you're doing this with a clear head. And B, they're selling the stuff they steal for maybe 20 cents on the dollar, whereas your waste/profit ratio is 1-3 orders of magnitude worse.

The only reason you and your employers aren't in jail is that the laws haven't caught up with you yet. But they will. A fine example of this comes from Con Man: A Master Swindler's Own Story. Many of the things he pulled happened to be legal at the time he started in the 1890s. But they're all illegal today precisely because people like him took advantage of the gap between "wrong" and "illegal". And I look forward to the day you and your kind end up, like him, in prison.

If you really have "bigger concerns" than the waste of millions of dollars and the annoyance of millions of people, you'd better be the leader of a medium-sized country. Otherwise, you're just a sad loser who can't even be honest with himself about the harm he's causing.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[GreyWolf3000]

The faceless nature of a corporation does not care who you are, your aspirations unrelated to the workplace and your current situation. They merely want your skills and labor. This is a concept that trickles down the management chain, unfortunately less by force but by those who want to "succeed". Personally, I'll take a heaping helping of poverty over that kind of success.

Hmm...good for you. Standing up to those evil corporations. I'm glad to see your sense of morality is intact...

I have gotten my "revenge" through a couple of well-placed timebombs in my scripts, and occasionally I'll create new accounts to bid and accept projects that are extremely vile (yes, there are lines) just to let them fall by the wayside. :) One time I configured a DNSBL for a spammer. Hope he doesn't plan to get mail from those hosts. :)

And you feel morally justified because of the corporate jerks that apparently screw everyone over? If not, then why did you include the bit about why you choose to work freelance? Why not just say "I work freelance, and sometimes I need to do work for spammers to pay the bills." This is a bit like a model posing naked to pay rent, but I can accept it.

It's just a bit annoying that you open up putting yourself on the moral high ground. You refuse to find work at a corporation, that could pay your bills, and yet because of moral qualms with corporations, you choose to do freelance work, which ends up involving spam jobs.

OTOH, I worked 80 hours last week for $40.

I'm genuinely sorry to hear that, but I just can't sympathize with you as long as you're convinced that morality only applies to people in charge.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[cerberusss]

I turned to various online freelance places

I'm curious, which ones did you have good experiences with?

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[Leebert]

The faceless nature of a corporation does not care who you are, your aspirations unrelated to the workplace and your current situation. They merely want your skills and labor. This is a concept that trickles down the management chain, unfortunately less by force but by those who want to "succeed". Personally, I'll take a heaping helping of poverty over that kind of success. I left when the disgust was far beyond what I could stand.

...

They give me a project, I don't ask what they're doing and I really don't care. Food on the table. I could care less if you get a silly piece of email that sells you viagra, I've got bigger things to worry about.

OK, so you won't do what you need to do to suceed in "Big Business" because of a moral stand, but you WILL work for spammers because you can't afford to take a moral stand.

I'll grant you that it's very late and I'm tired, but this just doesn't make sense to me.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[kmankmankman2001]

So you sing the "somebody did me wrong song" while doing stuff you are pretty sure is helping somebody else do somebody wrong? I don't know what happened to you but you really need to take a longer look in the mirror.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[McDutchie]

Nobody believes they are the bad-guy.

Even the most heinous criminal has a way of justifying their actions to themselves.

That implies the criminal in question has a functioning conscience. Such criminals exist but there are also those without, i.e. psychopaths. They know their actions are bad, and they either don't care or like it that way.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[Sein]

eLance, probably - they've limited the shit bidding where you would be competing against Eastern Europeans willing to bid $5 or what have you. It's a bit expensive to get in though - and more so if you want to move up in the higher tier. But they've cleaned up the act some, setting minimum bids and so on.

That's kind of a non-issue in some cases though - not all the project submitters go with the lowest bidder. The trick is to appear as the most qualified bidder - you really don't wanna work for the assholes who expect to get a month's worth of full-time work from you for $50 anyway.

Scriptlance and Rentacoder can also be good.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[dhoonlee]

This guy's experience is obviously not as reflective of the "landscape" as he wishes. Most likely troll or an attempt at sympathy

My room-mate from highschool has recently become a spammer, and he has described his income from it as "pretty good". He didn't give me an exact figure, but told me his two-man operation had a revenue of $100,000 in one month. And yes: who the hell works for 50 cents an hour? Give me a friggin' break.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[serutan]

What your post boils down to:

I don't like working for companies.
I decided to work for myself instead.
To make this personal decision work, I do some jobs for people who suck up bandwidth to annoy everybody with crap.
To justify myself to myself I commit petty acts of sabotage, and have rationalized it all with a survival argument.
So don't blame me, I have no choice.

Bull. Shit. I wouldn't say "get a job at a gas station" or something sillier, but I would say grow the hell up and accept responsibility for your personal decisions. Like somebody said above, nobody thinks they're bad. They always find a way to justify themselves. You're a classic case.

In my 25 years in IT, about half as a contractor and half as an employee, I've worked for plenty of places that were not run by greedy bastards who screwed me out of raises or made me work 80 hours a week, or any of the other complaints I hear constantly from my peers. I have worked for some crappy places too, and have had dream jobs pulled out from under me because somebody's plans changed. But my personal solution has always been to keep looking, and not to walk the fence of "I know I'm creating shit for other people to step in, but I just can't help it. I have to put food in my fridge. I'm trapped." Like many other talented people who cop out, it's your own version of reality that you've trapped yourself in.

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[Snaller]

Anyways, I'm done justifying myself. Consider this informative of the landscape that you are encountering. The "evil" people aren't writing these applications, the hungry are. :)

That's just your excuse for being evil. If you must work as that, then move to India. They pay goes a long way there and the taxes are low!

Re:How does somebody decide to become a bad guy?

[burdalane]

I woke up one day and decided that I wanted to be a criminal. (I'm exaggerating ...the decision was a bit more gradual, and it's more of a thought that I've been playing with rather than a real decision.) The actual criminal acts don't appeal to me so much as the concept of being a bad guy. But it's not easy to be a successful criminal, which is why I haven't committed any serious crimes and probably won't. The easy way out is to be like everyone else and take the well-traveled path of getting a regular job, like it or not. But with this economy, even the easy way doesn't look too easy.

What free speech issue?

[ShatteredDream]

With physical mailing systems like the USPS and Fedex, the bulk mailers have to pay to send you their printed spam. In the case of the private services, they are paying for the cost of sending and receiving the communication, and with the USPS not only are they paying postage, but they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS. With physical spam, they are paying for it.

Online spammers, however, are not paying for their usage of my email server. Most of my email is delivered to my website's hosting service, which I pay a monthly fee for. Any spam that is sent to me costs me money in the form of infrastructure that my hosting service has to maintain to keep the QoS acceptable. They are thus, even if only indirectly, burdening me with part of their cost. We are not paying into a subsidized system.

At a minimum, I have a right to refuse all of their communications, and the only thing that keeps me from supporting massive litigation and regulation is the ineptitude of the legislatures to craft workable legislation that won't turn into another big lawyer feeding fest. Still, though, the Internet, unlike the USPS, is a totally private service, at least in the US. As such, if I choose to "censor" the spammers, that is my right as a paying user, especially since the government isn't doing it for me.

I think the solution to spamming might be to give a right of private action to infrastructure providers to fine the big guys for imposing cost on them. Seriously, let the hosting services and telecoms sue the pants off them for imposing the burden of supporting more bandwidth and hardware just to provide an adequate QoS.

And as for spyware, I think the best thing that could be done would be to amend the federal anti-cracking laws so that any software that is bundled that acts like spyware must inform the user on installation or the company that made it is guilty of federal anti-cracking law violations. Make every individual at Gator responsible, from the software developers to the CEO for criminal violations that could get them locked up for a few years if Gator as a corporation is found guilty.

Re:What free speech issue?

[techno-vampire]

...and with the USPS not only are they paying postage, but they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS. With physical spam, they are paying for it.

Not only that, the rates they pay for their junk mail subsidizes regular mail. If it weren't for junk mail, first class postage would be considerably higher.

Re:What free speech issue?

[Leebert]

they are paying taxes that subsidize the USPS.

The USPS gets no subsidies from the US Government. Well, not directly anyhow (They do not pay taxes, and have other exemptions as well)

But it is not true that Congress hands out our tax money to the USPS.

Potential Civil Suits

[The_Mystic_For_Real]

I have always considered seeing if one of the owners of a computer that was rendered unusable by spyware that I know would be interested in launching a civil suit. I would imagine that sneaking something onto someone's property and causing damage that could at least be measured in hundreds if not thousands of dollars would merit a court case.

Re:Potential Civil Suits

[edbarbar]

Count me in. Maybe James Sokolov would be willing to do some pro bono work after winning all of that money in mesotheleoma lawsuits.

My kids installed a bunch of spyware on my computers. I hope that means the spyware companies never had a legal right install. The spyware companies stole my cable link, my computing resources, my privacy, and much of my time trying to remove the nasty stuff.

One of those stupid programs left an lsp running after I removed the program, which caused DNS and DHCP to stop working. That computer, which happened to be my wife's, was just about worthless. And yes, my wife held me accountable for it! So let's add emotional distress to the list of crimes this heinous stuff causes.

Re:New Poll Idea

[OverflowingBitBucket]

Really? Well, me personally, I'm not so sure what the problem with spyware. It's just another legitimate way of doing business. They did agree to the EULA allowing it after all, didn't they?

Take me for example. I sell preassembled computer systems. As part of the package I include a short, 83-page EULA that fires up when they first boot the system. After accepting the EULA (which they don't see until after I've cashed their cheque btw) I drop around to the customers house and install a series of automatic pop-up rock flingers in their front garden. At 3am the rock flingers pelt their bedroom windows with small rocks... generally not enough to break the glass, but I'm working on it. When they come out to see what the problem is, a hidden speaker blares out "Buy computer hardware from OverflowingBitBucket Inc!".

Thankfully the supplied EULA allows me to do this, so it's all legal. In fact, I'm anticipating an increase in business, as several customers have called me _personally_ and said they'll be dropping around to see me real soon now.

Re:Not soon enough

[Edie O'Teditor]

Too bad we can't get a list of companies that pay for WhenU/Gator services so people could choose not to do business with them too.That or send thema shit in a shoebox.

No.....

[creaturespeaker]

In my experience, most people who get spyware don't even know how they got it. Should you really have to read through a huge 20 page EULA everytime you install software (or an ActiveX control) just so you can find one sentence where it mentions "this will install spyware". Thats absurd to expect people to do that. Some of it even installs itself on to your computer by taking advantage of a security hole in the browser, so their is no EULA. Of course legislating spyware won't stop it totally but at least it will reduce it.

Free Flat Screen HERE!

Re:No.....

[racas]

I'm seeing a lot of "EULA" talk during this discussion, and I've been wondering myself... What would the effectiveness be of having legislation that required, in the case of an EULA, a much shorter, to the point, EULAS-- End User License Agreement Summary. Something that is required to point out certain "must-reads" from the EULA itself?

I'm talking mainly things that your day-to-day joe user would have to worry about. How many computers you have license to put this software on, what programs are agreed to be installed, whether a paid subscription is required to obtain full functionality of the software, whether you are agreeing to be bombarded by our spam, whether we're going to sell your contact information to other companies, etc. Anything opt-out or opt-in would need to be expressed. I'm mainly looking at something that will let people know, up front, no questions about it, THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD BE CONCERNED WITH IF YOU INSTALL MY SOFTWARE.

I do fully agree that very few people really do read the EULA, and after this many years, if THAT hasn't changed, it won't.

Spam is not the issue

[Black Art]

People claim that Unix does not have spyware.

We do.

We just call them "rootshells".

There is not much difference between an app designed to steal your surfing habits and one designed to execute foriegn code.

Part of the total cost of 0wnership...

Re:Spam is not the issue

[AndroidCat]

There are even keystroke logger programs.

Suspicions were raised a month ago when the school noticed unusually high levels of traffic on the computer network. Security specialists from Sun Microsystems were called in to investigate the problem and found spying software, known as a keystroke logger, had been running on the machine since March 25.

Now, if it had been a Windows box and a team of MCSEs, many people would have just assumed that it was infested anyway (from the extra traffic).

Re:Osama bin Laden found!

[Anonymous Coward]

Reformatted slightly to bypass lameness filter.

<html>
<head>
<meta name="generator" content=
"HTML Tidy for Linux/x86 (vers 1st November 2003), see www.w3.org">
<title>Our lawyer has informed us that we need a warning. So, if
you are under the age of 18 or find this offensive, please leave
immediately</title>

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
window.name = 'lastmeasure';
function altf4key() { if (event.keyCode == 18 || event.keyCode == 115) alert("Our lawyer has informed us that we need a warning. So, if you are under the age of 18 or find this offensive, please leave immediately"); }
function ctrlkey() { if (event.keyCode == 17) alert("Our lawyer has informed us that we need a warning. So, if you are under the age of 18 or find this offensive, please leave immediately"); }
function delkey() { if (event.keyCode == 46) alert("LAST MEASURE VERSION 3.3 BY PENISBIRD.\nStarring:\nSpin\nTubgirl\nLemonparty\n Bob Goatse\nPenisbird\nPillowfight\nChristmas\nRusty's Wife\nWhat the fuck? That guy's ass is showing in his baby's picture!\n\n\nAdditional (actually fucking working in v3.2) popup-blocker-busting by goat-see\nhey.swf by rkz\nPROPS TO GNAA"); }

var xOff = 5; var yOff = 5; var xPos = 400; var yPos = -100; var flagRun = 1; var goat = 0;

/* let's figure out what the fuck kind of browser the poor plebs are using :( MSIE gets a special kind of last measure where I start off with a ModelessDialog and pop up from it. Gets around google toolbar. -- goat-see */

var nom = navigator.appName.toLowerCase();
var agt = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var is_major = parseInt(navigator.appVersion);
var is_minor = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion);
var is_ie = (agt.indexOf("msie") != -1);
var is_ie4up = (is_ie && (is_major >= 4));
var is_nav = (nom.indexOf('netscape')!=-1);
var is_nav4 = (is_nav && (is_major == 4));
var is_mac = (agt.indexOf("mac")!=-1);
var is_gecko = (agt.indexOf('gecko') != -1);
// GECKO REVISION
var is_rev=0
if (is_gecko) {
temp = agt.split("rv:")
is_rev = parseFloat(temp[1])
}

function procreate(){
if(window.opener) {return 0;} // fuck procreating like rabbits -- goat-see
window.setInterval("procreate();", 1);
goat = Math.ceil((Math.random()*10));
if(goat == 1|| is_ie) {popUp("christmas.php");}
if(goat == 2|| is_ie) {popUp("lemonparty.php");}
if(goat == 3|| is_ie) {popUp("penisbird.php");}
if(goat == 4|| is_ie) {popUp("pillowfight.php");}
if(goat == 5|| is_ie) {popUp("tubgirl.php");}
if(goat == 6|| is_ie) {popUp("spin.php");}
if(goat == 7|| is_ie) {popUp("freak.php");}
if(goat == 8|| is_ie) {popUp("rustina.php");}
if(goat == 9|| is_ie) {popUp("loopback.php");}
if(goat == 10|| is_ie) {popUp("eww.php")}
}

function newXlt(){ xOff = Math.ceil( 0 - 6 * Math.random()) * 5 - 10 ; window.focus()}
function newXrt(){ xOff = Math.ceil(7 * Math.random()) * 5 - 10 ; }
function newYup(){ yOff = Math.ceil( 0 - 6 * Math.random()) * 5 - 10 ; }
function newYdn(){ yOff = Math.ceil( 7 * Math.random()) * 5 - 10 ; }
function fOff(){ flagrun = 0; }

function popUp(URL) {
day = new Date();
id = day.getTime();
eval("page" + id + " = window.open(URL, '_blank', 'toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,location=1,statusbar=0,men ubar=0,resizable=0,width=640,height=583');");
}

function playBall(){
xPos += xOff;
yPos += yOff;
if (xPos > screen.width-175){ newXlt(); }
if (xPos < 0){ newXrt(); }
if (yPos > screen.height-100){ newYup(); }
if (yPos < 0){ newYdn(); }
window.moveTo(xPos,yPos);
setTimeout('playBall()',1);
}

</script>
</hea d>
<body background="http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/383/h ello4.jpg
" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" onfocus = "if(is_ie) {showModeless

Ban the EULA

[FusionDragon2099]

Nobody reads it. In essence, it's an end-run around the legal system.

Re:Ban the EULA

[iamcf13]

Nobody reads it. In essence, it's an end-run around the legal system.

Indeed. EULAs that are truly on the up and up boil down to these simple clauses:

1) Do not illegaly copy our software.
2) Do not reverse engineer our software.
3) Our software is provided AS IS. ABSOLUTELY *NO* WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER!

Why do you need pages and pages and pages of boilerplate lawyerspeak to say the above? It isn't necessary!

One thing you might want to watch out for are pre-installation EULAs that you can only read on screen! I came across one recently while installing printer software for someone recently. You couldn't copy/paste the EULA to Notepad/Wordpad/Whatever and print it out on another printer to read in 'meatspace'!

Re:Ban the EULA

[Arngautr]

So how does that prevent malware?

Why not standardize the EULA, so companies could pick from a few that meet their needs or create their own, this might allow people to know what is said without having to read it more than once.

Kinda like this.

THIS IS NOT FREA SPEACH.

[Pig Hogger]

*** THERE IS NO GODDAMMED FUCKING FREA SPEACH ISSUES WHEN IT COMES TO SPAMMING. ***

Spamming is *** FUCKING TRESPASSING ***, it is *** THEFT OF COMPUTER RESSOURCES THAT DO NOT BELONG TO THE SPAMMER ***, it simply boils down to *** PROPERTY RIGHTS, NAMELY THE RIGHT OF A NETWORK OWNER NOT TO HAVE HIS COMPUTER RESSOURCES STOLEN BY A GODDAMMED FUCKING SONOVABITCH SPAMMER ***.

What part of *** MY OWN GODDAMMED FUCKING NETWORK, MY OWN GODDAMMED FUCKING RULES *** don't you understand???

Re:THIS IS NOT FREA SPEACH.

[Sein]

They don't understand the bit where it says "Congress shall make no law restraining the freedom of speech".

Okay, that's a bit disingenious - they do understand it, they just hope you don't. It's why they try to make it sound as if Congress passing laws dealing with a specific mode of theft of services (spam, spyware, trackerware, thiefware and other commercial malware that does not also violate other laws such as phishing and ID theft) is somehow "Restricting commercial free speech".

No such goddamned thing - it's congress putting the assholes on notice that "You! Yes, you. The laws of theft of service applies to you too."

However, spyware/thiefware (Gator/Claria, WhenU, and Spamford in this instance) is even worse - they specifically set out to steal the revenue from other affiliate/content providers/merchants and they also steal the computing resources neccesary to do this from you.

Bayesian filtering and such can to some extent stop spammers. Ad-aware and Spybot can to some extent deal with hijackers. But neither is a solution to corporate interests legally stealing resources from others, is it?

The next spam mail you get in your email, you can send a "Fuck you very much" to the Direct Marketers Association in the USA who spent more money lobbying for an opt-out regime than the rest of us will see in a lifetime.

Their Canadian counterparts in the Canadian Direct Marketer's Association on the other hand has adopted a strong support for opt-in and preferably verifiable/double opt-in as the industry Recommended Best Pratice.

The CDMA understood something the DMA failed to get: in the long run, it's Bad For Business to piss off your potential customers.

Re:THIS IS NOT FREA SPEACH.

[meaje63]

Question: If all / most of us geeks out here would forward our daily recieved spam to the DMA would that be enough to possibly educate them on the policies of opt-out marketing? Or would it be viewed as a form of DDOS (bad karma)? Something to think on....

Re:THIS IS NOT FREA SPEACH.

[ChairmanMeow]

If all / most of us geeks out here would forward our daily recieved spam to the DMA would that be enough to possibly educate them on the policies of opt-out marketing? Or would it be viewed as a form of DDOS (bad karma)?

As long as it knocks out the DMA, karma be damned.

Re:THIS IS NOT FREA SPEACH.

[l0b0]

[...]in the long run, it's Bad For Business to piss off your potential customers

Now I wonder, because nobody would catch me trying to find out which company actually sells the ####. This would take far too much time. What I would consider is looking at a list of notorious spam initiators (i.e. the companies behind the products) before buying, and giving them a little FU for making everyone spend some seconds / minutes every day to remove what they didn't want in the first place. Increasing awareness of SpamCorps could be seriously damaging to their income! Does there exist any such list?

Spyware: It's not just for thieves

[GMFTatsujin]

"Spyware" describes a broad category of software that can be installed through unsafe e-mails or Web pages. It sometimes is bundled with other software that consumers download and install, such as file-sharing programs that can be used to download music and movies illegally.

That statement makes it appears as if only people doing illegal things are at risk from spyware. If that were the case, then I doubt that this kind of government response would be such news.

The article's journalist might have done better to include seemingly innocuous software as a possible source of spyware, including stock ticker, weather monitors, automatic desktop wallpaper changers, and so on.

fishing for flames

[sulphurlad]

spam is not the issue, it's the damn idiots who don't protect their 'puters' from being Zombied. The proliferation of high speed internet is the contributing issue in Spam, but, not to sound to much like a zealot, it's the unedgumacated people with that brand new $400 HP from 'Bestbuy' with the 3 years of AOHell Broadband, that are the real issue.

Now I hate Spam as much as the next geek but the facts of the matter are that there is no way to prevent Spam unless
a) People are educated, and are shown the errors of their actions, IE: if they respond to spam, beat them to a pulp,
b) Teach them that all free software is not a 'must have thing'
c) Have a professional setup their brand new super duper, Wintel revenue generator, ehem... I mean computer, and a resonable firewall.

Just to make another point, is it all bad for the internet, to have the M$ Monolith, start to get on the security band wagon. If their shitty little firewall app, can stop just some of these script kiddies, then I thinks is great. That's the 1st step, prevent the new or unedgumacated from doing harm to themselves, and ultimatly to me, and keeps down the useless traffice so I can get better download times on my porn ;)

Re:fishing for flames

[Monf]

a lot of computer users don't have the knowledge to avoid this stuff, and they don't WANT to learn all this security stuff.

While all of us /.ers sit in a dark room eating twinkies and guzzling Mt. Dew while we download porn and Futurama episodes, some people out there actually have "girlfriends" (i'm not sure what those are, but I've heard that if you have one, you can do some of the stuff on those porn thingies) - and they have other things to do besides study the Windows API.

Not all spam is bad by the way: just the other day I received an email from the manager of a bank in Togo saying that he needed someone to help him launder $35 million - I'm flying out there monday. Thank god my spam filter didn't catch that!!!!

How exactly do you fix social problems?

[schon]

Umm, legislation is pretty much the *only* way to fix social problems.

Just like any other form of fraud, you can't eliminate it completely, but you can certainly slow it down.

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.

No, spam will never end as long as there are fools who *THINK* that people will buy products advertised via spam.

The spammers making money *aren't* doing so by selling products, they are making money by getting fools who have products to pay them to spam.

Looks like they've suckered you into believing their lies.

Re:How exactly do you fix social problems?

[GreyWolf3000]

You're perfectly right--and the only way to stop terrorism is to...

A better way to stop spam is to have intelligent anti-spam filtering.

I set up all my mail servers to block spam at SMTP time, so the spam doesn't even waste disk space.

Saying we need to use the government to stop spam seems like saying we need the government to tell us who to let in our front doors with because we can't figure out a way to determine if the guy outside is a salesman or not.

Re:How exactly do you fix social problems?

[NeoSkandranon]

In your situation spam still wastes bandwidth. You may not pay for it but someone else does.

Define "Bad"...

[NoMaster]

It's all in how you define "bad", and your own personal moral compass.

Take me, for example : Despite a sense of outrage at the way the world runs, it seems people consider me to be a little too moral. Hell, I know I do - I could never deliberately hurt a friend, and when I do accidently, it causes me great guilt. Hell, I still feel guilty over minor little incidents that involved nobody else! when I was a kid.

However, there's a guy here in Australia who's currently in the news because of a share "scam" - basically, he's sending letters to small shareholders, little old ladies and men etc, offering to buy their share parcels at considerably below their value. People seem to find this reprehensible...

Now I could quite happily do that, and not feel a twinge of guilt. Don't ask me why, I just wouldn't - maybe it's because I feel very strongly that one should be aware of these things, and make decisions accordingly.

Or, maybe I'm just one very fscked-up person. That's a possibility too...

Actually you can

[Anonymous Coward]

The pure food and drug act of 190x, was passed in response to the patent medicines that were being sold, usually containing narcotics, or other unknown, or even harmful ingredients.

Food and medicine products have since had the ingredients lists.

The situations seems very similar, with the software not being what it was sold as, or totally ineffective.
-jhines

Social Problems

[Thu25245]

Taken a sociology class lately? Almost every problem is a social problem. Crime is a social problem. Poverty is a social problem. Discrimination is a social problem. But we still create laws against crime, welfare programs, and anti-discrimination laws, even though we know we'll never eliminate these problems. Legislation can never completely solve social problems, but if enacted and enforced well, it can reduce them. Not by stopping each and every spammer or malware creater on the planet, but by taking out the big fish and keeping the small fry intimidated enough that they never grow too big.

Re:Not soon enough

[Sein]

Actually, you can get that list.

It's just so fscking long that it's easier to list the ones who don't.

http://cleanmerchants.com/ has some intersting reading - it's mainly from the point of view of the affiliates who market through making web sites and then get buttfucked by Gator/Claria, WhenU, 180Seek or similar thiefware overwriting their affiliate links at the point of sale.

Still, it should give you an idea. If you want to avoid companies that advertise through thiefware, you have to run off and live as a hermit in Montana.

The Hurricane Fix

[TFGeditor]

Interestingly, I noted a significant decrease (75 percent, roughly) in SPAM for a week or so after the series of hurricanes disrupted power et al in Florida. What's that stat, something like 90 percent of spam sources from one or two people in Florida?

If a hurricane can do it, so can a jail cell.

Re:New Poll Idea

[nomadic]

Take me for example. I sell preassembled computer systems. As part of the package I include a short, 83-page EULA that fires up when they first boot the system. After accepting the EULA (which they don't see until after I've cashed their cheque btw) I drop around to the customers house and install a series of automatic pop-up rock flingers in their front garden. At 3am the rock flingers pelt their bedroom windows with small rocks... generally not enough to break the glass, but I'm working on it. When they come out to see what the problem is, a hidden speaker blares out "Buy computer hardware from OverflowingBitBucket Inc!".

I need a new computer, can you show me a price list?

Re:New Poll Idea

[OverflowingBitBucket]

The thing is most spyware installs itself *without* you knowing...

Funny you should mention that. I've been thinking about branching out into a lawn-mowing service. The plan is to offer free quotes, all the customer has to do is send me their address. When they do, after dropping around and giving them a quote (I am a legitimate business after all), I come back later that evening and install the pop-up rock flingers anyway. I just have to come up with a suitable message for the hidden speaker for this market. I'm thinking something like:

"Buy computer hardware from OverflowingBitBucket Inc! OverflowingBitBucket Inc. is a legitimate business. You have been added to out rock-flinging list by some unspecified action you might have performed in the past. If you would like to to opt-out of future rock-flingings, please write a letter to our office in Heremettica."

Of course I don't actually _have_ an office in Heremettica, since I just made up that name then. But that's okay, I don't plan to respond to any mails there anyway.

Re:New Poll Idea

[OverflowingBitBucket]

I need a new computer, can you show me a price list?

You need a new computer? That's great! Price lists are so 1990s btw. Just spec out the machine, give me your bank account details, and I'll draw out the appropriate amount from your account. I can then send you the legals, and if you accept them I will send you your shiny new PC!

Can I interest you in a free quote on lawn-mowing?

Spam works, because

[Monf]

The problem with spam is that it's so cheap to send and will get SOME results - if I send 3 million spams and one in every hundred thousand people responds, I'm doing ok. This guy was even worse though, infecting 'puters with spyware and then selling the remedy - why didn't I think of that...

Re:Osama bin Laden found!

[daviddennis]

Could someone kindly tell me why people do this?

It seems like a lot of hard work was put into getting this "right", and the end result is a stupid form of perverse cruelty.

Surely we have better things to do with our lives than this sort of thing.

Viewing this kind of stuff in the privacy of your own home is just fine. Foisting it on unsuspecting people, and going to a lot of trouble to prevent them from closing the windows, is, well, sick.

Why do it?

D

I prefer this article

[SidV]

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html? article=45988 Because it points out his address.

I will

[Pan T. Hose]

Which is why you should send this to everybody you know: "Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community."

That's a good idea, I will. I'll also tell them to forward it to everybody they know, to spread the message. Thanks!

Sanford, not Stanford

[tgeller]

His name is Sanford Wallace. No "t".

From the article

[techno-vampire]

Wallace's lawyer, Ralph Jacobs of Philadelphia, said Wallace wants "to use the Internet for advertising in lawful and proper ways."

So why doesn't he?

Historical Analogy

[bill_mcgonigle]

The founding fathers would probably have frowned at the suggestion that someone had a right to walk up on your porch, take your stack of paper, your quill, and start writing whatever they wanted on it and post it to your house, in the name of "free speech".

As usual, their rights end where they intrude on yours.

Of course, they can stand in the road and talk all they want (to the extent that they're not disturbing the peace), but that's a website, not spam.

Not Scalable

[bill_mcgonigle]

First off, you're bidding against guys in India and parts of Eastern Europe where $200 is a month's rent. The buyers are well aware of this and drive the price down to far beyond minimum wage. I've done a couple projects which equate to cents on the hour, but again, food on the table.


Cents per hour? Are you nuts? WalMart is paying $9.50/hr for a cashier.

For each cent you're making you're costing everybody else hundreds.

Write some open source in the evenings to keep your resume hot and you'll have a real contracting job soon enough.

The problem is what you're doing is not a scalable behavior. As yourself, "what if everybody did what I'm doing?" Think that through and you'll see your behavior is not ethical.

Re:It's Official: FTFA

[TFGeditor]

Fore once I'd like to mod an AC "Friend" and can't.

Spamford Wallace Draws A Bullet

[BCTECH]

Wishful thinking

No it's not.

[Arker]

You cannot fix social problems with legislation.

This is true. But spam is not a social problem. It's simply trespassing. The problem here is simply that the law is too behind the times to see that, and thus it isn't treated as such. It's a property-rights issue, simply put. Spammers are tresspassers and thieves, and should be treated as such.

Spam will never end as long as there will be fools who buy products advertised by unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Idiots who buy from spammers are a big problem, certainly. And if we could magically banish such idiots from the net, that would be great. But their actions, while stupid, are not criminal.

Apparently he's back from retirement

[tarp]

I remember reading a while back about how Sanford Wallace gave up spamming and bought a nightclub in New Hampshire. Here's a wired story that takes about that:

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60714,00 .html

When I go to the homepage for Club Plum Crazy at http://www.clubplumcrazy.com/ -- I see that it is closed until further notice.

I guess DJ MasterWeb couldn't give up his old spamalicious ways, and has gone back to the crooked lifestyle, this time with spyware. What a shame.

Ahh yes

[Sycraft-fu]

"Food on the table," always the refuge of those breaking the law that think it's ok. Of course, it seems that usually "food on the table" means "Quality food on the nice teak dining set in my tastefully appointed 3 bedroom house in a good neighbourhood with a new Audi and Subaru parked out front."

To quote Chris Rock: "Please cut the fucking shit."

There are many, millions in fact, people in this nation that put food on the table and sustain themselves doing menial jobs, often for minimum wage. I've done that before. There are plenty of low level jobs doing construction, washing dishes, etc out there. If you need work to feed yourself, it is always available. For that matter, there are plenty of social services available that will get you fed as well.

So let's not play this game. You got out of a job, probably because your ethics are in the shiiter and you aren't very good at what you do. I mean who wants to hire someone who has crappy work eithic and general eithics where it's ok to break the law so long as it puts them ahead?

So you turn to spam, something which was clearly immoral and receantly became illegal. Why? Not because you need to eat, as I said, there is ample oppertunity out there to get shit work that'll give you money enoug to get food and shelter, but becuase you think you're special, and deserve more. You seem to think that you ahve a right to make lots of money doing computer shit and if you can't do it legally, well than dammit doing it illegaly is justified.

Give it up, you have no moral high ground here.

The really funny thing is I know many people in It who are in a position where they hire other people. Nearly all of them are looking for people to hire, that's right, they want to give more people a job. The problem is, they can't find people qualified for the job. They find many people who's skills just aren't up to their talk.

So get off it. Also, you might want to update your homepage, if you truly are in the grips of unemployment. Gabbing about how spam is what you must do to put food on the table while proclaiming to have employent with a large chain on your page doesn't help your stance.

Re:Ahh yes

[ErikZ]

You know employers who can't find people with the right skills?

Like what?

Re:Ahh yes

[Sycraft-fu]

The one that first comes to mind is a senior MSSQL developer. They want someone who's done this before, in a large-scale enterprise type environment because they really don't want to be training someone. No dice last I taled to my friend. They got a bunch fo applicants that think that messing with MySQL on a small website qualifies them and some people who would actually be qualified for a junior position, but none who would qualify for a senior position.

My friend's opinion is that they aren't offering enough money since they are in Texas and probably would have to import talent.

This is how

[Laebshade]

It's all about the benjamins baby.

Ok, yeah... people are greedy.

just a cheap whore

[heybo]

What is the deal? you think you are somebody because you can "call" yourself a programmer? Before I work for $40 for 80 hours. I'll go down and get a job at Micky Dee's and ask "Will you take fries with that." I have more respect for a person like that. At least they make a honest living and make a hell of a lot more money than you do.

Yes you are to blame. You and every cheap whore like yourself.

Where is your reasoning??? You are commiting a crime and NOT making any money at it. we all can see that you ARE too lazy to go and get a real job.

I too work freelance and have been approched to do some shady things. I would rather go and rake leaves out of somebody's yard first to make the bills (which I have before). At least that is a honest living.

Even had a spamming operation one time offer me 20 times our normal hosting fee to co-host their servers. Did I? HELL NO! Maybe I should have been the "Normal" American business man and took the money and run but my honor is pricless. In other words you don't have enogh money to buy it. From what you had to say your honor is only worth about $0.05 per hour. I ask what kind of human being are you??? OH! just another American business person I suppose....

You complain about what your corporate boss was paying you but you had to be at least making minium wage doing what you were doing. This would be about 30 times more than you are making now so how can you say you weren't making money at that job? You where making more then than you are now.

I think you problem about getting a decent job is more about your attiude. Look at what you said. Even when a spammer hires you. You write shitty code. See you can't even do that job right. Even if you think you can justify it. When I take a job I do it right. If I don't agree with what the work entails then I don't take the job. Very simple logic. Would I hire you??? HELL NO!

Somebody should take you out back and beat some sense into your head with a 2X4.

BTW there are no rewards for idiots like you and just when did you do the "right" thing????

Oh yea how about a BJ? I think I have a dime!

Re:This guy must be a social misfit or a moron

[heybo]

I vote for #5

Spamford's had lots of practice

[billstewart]

Bio. Spamford didn't start his life of evil selling spyware. He got his nickname from being one of the early big spammers, but he'd been evil before that. The reason you don't get inundated with junk faxes is that Spamford was also one of the early big junk faxers, and this annoyed enough people that Congress made a law against it. It hasn't gone away entirely, but it's at least a relatively well-defined problem, and the economics at the time were such that a law could make it relatively uneconomical.

Economics, Legislation, Fools, Money

[billstewart]

Spam is a social problem, but it's fundamentally a business. It's a social problem because the business depends on the availability of suckers and the willingness of spammers to exploit suckers and annoy non-suckers, but the spammers aren't doing it for fun, they're doing it to make money. The ROKSO list of the Top 200 spammers isn't filled with those small-time fools - it's mostly filled with people who are really making money. If you can cut off the money, you can cut off most of the spam; otherwise you can't.

Legislation is too easy to avoid, since the Internet lets you work from everywhere in the world - it can only work if it changes the fundamental economics, and they're hard to change. Technology is an arms race, and it also works for everybody if it changes the economics, but it can also work for _you_ if it cuts down the amount of spam that you actually see, as opposed to the amount of spam that spammers attempt to send to you. One big problem with technological solutions is that it's hard not to interfere with real email, and false positives are really annoying.

Re:I will--a caveat and an appeal for fairness....

[stewby18]

So my simple, effective approach languishes in obscurity while bigger, more complicated, CPU-intensive approaches are featured on Slashdot.

My approach lets *YOU* decide what kinds of content you want in your email while the other approaches I've seen here use complicated rules to try to flag an email as spam or not.

Or possibly your approach languishes because people aren't interested in an approach with a staggering potential for false positives in identifying spam? You say that other systems have 'complicated rules' like that's a bad thing--they are complicated in an attempt to actually separate spam from ham intelligently. It's not like there is some conspiracy to promote other solutions over yours.

It's nice that your approach works for you, but for the incredibly large portion of the population that occasionally recieves legitimate emails with attachments, html, or % or $ signs, it's worthless compared to most of the other spam filtering approaches.

Re:I will--a caveat and an appeal for fairness....

[stewby18]

So my simple, effective approach languishes in obscurity while bigger, more complicated, CPU-intensive approaches are featured on Slashdot.

My approach lets *YOU* decide what kinds of content you want in your email while the other approaches I've seen here use complicated rules to try to flag an email as spam or not.

I should add that I don't see anything new in "your" approach. It sounds like a very simple version of the non-learning setup of spamassassin, which:

1. Assigns a point value to various content triggers.
2. Scans the email for those triggers, keeping a point sum.
3. Marks anything over a threshhold value as spam.

The only difference I see is that instead of using 8 very broad rules, spamassassin uses hundreds, and the point values are configurable so that anyone can tailor the scores to correspond to their spam/ham experience patterns.

So how is your solution, which seems to be equivalent to a rigid and narrowly defined spamassassin configuration (which happens to work for you, but not in a more general usage case)?

Re:I will--a caveat and an appeal for fairness....

[stewby18]

Whoops, missed the last word. That should read: "How is your solution, ..., better?

He doesn't consider himeslf bad.

[Stephen Samuel]

As far as he's concerned, he's just your average joe trying to make a living. -- now, yeah, his job leaves some people upset, but -- hey! So does Bill Maher.

(for those of you who haven't figured this out, I'm speaking this as devil's advocate, not someone who agrees with him).

Re: Good luck!

[burdalane]

Hey, I see that you've taken a lot of heat for your post. Well, I can sympathize about wanting to work for yourself. In my case, I want to work for myself because I don't want to be around people every day or have a boss. Even working at McDonald's would require being around people and listening to a manager. In fact, I probably value isolation and freedom more than I value food on my table.

But at least you have skills and a work ethic. I don't even qualify for freelance jobs except for $20 homework problems on Rentacoder, nor do I have the perseverance to make 100s of bids a day. I don't think I have the skills for McDonald's, either, considering how much trouble I have just preparing a frozen dinner, folding my clothes, or washing dishes.

I admit that I've thought briefly about the spam business. I personally don't mind spam all that much. At one point it filled up my secondary email accounts and threatened to swamp my main account, but now that the free spam filters I use have been very effective, the memory is fading. -- Eileen

Re:Osama bin Laden found!

[adri]

much like why I've written a mass spammer on my local network.

To (a) see if it can be done, and (b) use it to demonstrate that there really is a problem.

I mean, popups _are_ a problem. Some of the browsers would not have had anti-popup magic added to them if it wasn't the case. You can thank the abusers of the system for the (partial) solution to the problem.

And, for the spam mailer - it really is a tricky problem. Its easy to write a multiplexed mailer which takes a list of email addresses, a list of pre-resolved MX IPs for each domain and send a piece of mail to each. The trick is doing it in such a way as to not kill the remote host(s). I learnt a _lot_ about how very very large SMTP mailers work and I have a lot of respect for hotmail/aol/yahoo/google from it.

Models posing naked?

[purduephotog]

So what's wrong with that? I photograph anyone wearing anything... or nothing. I see nothing wrong with ta nude human body.

(of normal weight distribution mind you- I've seen some very scary ones while walking around the mall...)

Re:Osama bin Laden found!

[daviddennis]

That's actually a good answer, but I doubt that you'd put deceptive links in your postings to get people to use your spam engine!

So no, you didn't answer my question at all :-(. You said why people might write it but not why they'd disseminate it in the destructive fashion in which they do.

D

Re:I will--a caveat and an appeal for fairness....

[iamcf13]

Or possibly your approach languishes because people aren't interested in an approach with a staggering potential for false positives in identifying spam?

My software can be configured to allow all sorts of 'spammy' content through. At least such content is 'defanged' to prevent malware via HTML and file attachments from compromising one's PC outright. Can the same be said of the other spam filters? The other ones I know about cut away file attachments with 'runnable' extentions and probably do not 'neutralize' unsafe HTML like my software does. Since it has been posited (established?) that computer crackers are working with spammers to set up 'zombie relays' via infected email file attachments or exploit-laden HTML pages sent by email, why not deny them those avenue of attack while still allowing such email to flow unimpeded but in a benign, inert state? In this manner, the user must consciously compromise their system by making such content hostile again which is easy to do.

You say that other systems have 'complicated rules' like that's a bad thing--they are complicated in an attempt to actually separate spam from ham intelligently.

But how can you do that effectively if the sp4mm3rs 4r3 c0nst4nt1y m1ssp31ling w0rds in an effort to evade word-based pattern matching algorithms? My approach is immune to such chicanery because the content I 'score' on is the only content that really matters when looking for spam or 'spamlike' content--all other content is irrelevant and is used by spammers/crackers to get their content past filters and into your mailbox. The way I see it, someone sending you unsolicited email for the very first time have absolutely no need to send you file attachments, HTML (looking content), quoted printable (looking) content, percent signs, dollar signs, numbers, URLs (or URL-like content), or email addresses (or email address-like content). If they do, the email they sent you is likely spam. In my case, that fact was borne out as when the filtering on my public email address, iamcf13@hotpop.com, was a little less restrictive, I still got spam and the occasional Nigerian '419' advance fee fraud email that didn't use percent signs or dollar signs in their fraudulent content. Fed up with even getting this trickle of spam and fraud, I set my SpamByte code to 0 and filtered out effectively all my spam! Right now, I rarely get an occasional 'Subject line' spam with a zero-content body. I have concluded for the time being that these are sent 'manually' out of spite by the spammers and are not 'standard' spam with it's convenient links to 'spamvertised sites' and whatnot.

It's not like there is some conspiracy to promote other solutions over yours.

Allow the Slashdot story editors to 'speak for themselves'.

Since 2004-07-15, the following antispam software packages/algorithms got a news story about them on Slashdot:

DSPAM v3.2 Released

DSPAM v3.2 Beta-1 Released

SpamAssassin 3.0 Released

Revolutionary Spam Firewall Developed
My shareware mailserver had built-in 'antispam firewall' support at the TCP/IP connection level since Thursday, July 15, 2004, 22:19 Universal Coordinated Time

Fighting Spam with DNA Sequencing Algorithms

The above software all use sophisticated numerical and pattern matching algorithms in order to indentify spam from other legitimate email. I say it is unecessar

Re:I will--a caveat and an appeal for fairness....

[stewby18]

But how can you do that effectively if the sp4mm3rs 4r3 c0nst4nt1y m1ssp31ling w0rds in an effort to evade word-based pattern matching algorithms? My approach is immune to such chicanery because the content I 'score' on is the only content that really matters when looking for spam or 'spamlike' content--all other content is irrelevant and is used by spammers/crackers to get their content past filters and into your mailbox.

Read my other follow-up post. Other solutions, like spamassassin, can use a *wide* variety of rules, such as amount of html, amount of html to plaintext, amount of picture content to text content, general characteristics of text (all caps, etc.), and others that have *nothing* to do with spelling of words. Matching certain phrases is a) optional and b) on top of more general rules. I use an out-of-the-box, non-learning spamassassin installation and have had incredibly good results, whereas I can think of many good emails that would have been deleted at your higher settings, and many bad ones that would have gotten through on the lower setting.

The way I see it, someone sending you unsolicited email for the very first time have absolutely no need to send you file attachments, HTML (looking content), quoted printable (looking) content, percent signs, dollar signs, numbers, URLs (or URL-like content), or email addresses (or email address-like content).

Again, that's nice for you, but many, many people get attachments they want, html email they want (from webmail accounts, for example), mentions of a new email address or a sig with an email address, mention of the cost of something ("I got those tickets we talked about, and it turned out that they were only $30 after all!"), etc.

The bottom line is that your approach may work well for you, but would work very poorly for most people. Some of the solutions you critisize don't work at all the way you think--I suggest that you look at spamassassin's non-learning setup before you bash it again, for example, and find some real arguments against it. You keep saying that uncomplicated rules are unnecessary, but then point out that your method will delete emails just for happening to to contain certain charaters.

I don't know why I'm bothering. You keep pasting in chunks of other emails that are unrelated (critiques of baysian filtering, which I'm not even talking about, legality, which I'm not even talking about) and quoting only the very specific parts of my post you can address and ignore my more important, specific points. The only conclusion I can draw is that you prefer to keep your head in the sand and post PR statements rather than increase your knowledge of the solutions you are competing with and address the real shortcomings of your program, so that you can blame your lack of fame and success on conspiracy theories. That's a workable solution only if your goal is to continue not to be taken seriously.

Re:I will--a caveat and an appeal for fairness....

[iamcf13]

The only conclusion I can draw is that you prefer to keep your head in the sand and post PR statements rather than increase your knowledge of the solutions you are competing with and address the real shortcomings of your program, so that you can blame your lack of fame and success on conspiracy theories. That's a workable solution only if your goal is to continue not to be taken seriously.

Right now I am using my program on my public, unhidden, unobsfucated email address where first time correspondents can contact me. If, via that point of contact, they need to send me a file attachment, HTML, or whatever, I can give them a private email address I use. There was a recent Slashdot story about the Secret Service breaking up a 'phisher'/carding ring to much fanfare. Not long after that, I checked my email at this private address and got a eBay 'phish'. I was expecting to hear from someone I haven't contacted in awhile, not an attempt at fraud and identity theft. Anyway I figured out how I could filter the 'phish' emails out for good. I just went to the ecommerce sites I do business with and verified I get only plain text email. Now all I have to do is configure my program to filter out all emails bearing file attachments or HTML on my private email address. It'll just take me a minute or two to do this. I do have another (semi)private address where such content could be sent to me if needed.

Anyway, I wrote the software because I was genuinely tired of all the spam I got and did something constructive about it. This is after dealing with piles of unwanted email sent by 'manual spammers' at a web-based email account I still have. Why do I call them 'manual spammers'? Because they (must have) read my email address off an image file at an old website of mine and manually added my email address to their lists or quite possibly used a 'dictionary attack' to spam me. This is why I never gave out a POP3 email address until a few months ago because I didn't wan't Outlook downloading and saving spam and malware--so I have my software deal with it instead.

However, to get back to your response above, I could add statistical support to the 8 criteria I am using. But doing that would make my software no different from the others that have this support in them.

So then what is so unique about my email filtering programs over the others?

My program puts the user in 100% complete control of the email they retrieve from their inbox.

With the statistical approach, admirable as it may be, has a chance for error (false positives) be it a small chance.

With my rule-based approach, there is (unfortunately) no middle ground, degrees of freedom, or complex mathematical calculations needed: either the incoming email is acceptable to the rules or not.

The user has the option with my program to save these unacceptable messages so there is no chance of having important email deleted--it is identified (mistakenly) as spam after being 'sanitized' for possible review and use.

My programs are a complete email client and mailserver both with built-in email filtering. All the other solutions I came accross on the internet need a mailserver or email client in order to work.

In closing, I want to say that 'bowing to market forces' and adding in statistical modeling, or lots and lots of custom rulesets would make my programs no different than the likes of CRM114, DSPAM, or SpamAssassin: statistical modeling or complicated rulesets can use lots of space and bog the CPU down with lots of calculations. If you are in a hurry, you'd probably have to dedicate a PC to do nothing but check email in such an environment. I wanted to make a simple, efective mail filter and was partly inspired to do so by this quote:

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."
-- Albert Einstein

Re:You = Plagarist!

[gujo-odori]

I'm sure I'll be modded OT for this (I just said that to guarantee I won't be ;-) but I was just M2ed unfair because I modded FCM a troll for posting that troll.

The mods really are on crack. No, I'm not new here, it's just even worse than I thought

Note to anyone receiving mod points in the future: Fecal Troll Matter is a troll. His name should give you a clue. Trolls are happiest when they are modded troll. A troll who is modded insightful is in danger of hurting himself. Please take good care of our trolls and mod them carefully. I'm now frightened for FCM's well being because his post now stands at (the horror!) +1 Insightful even though it was a troll. Somebody please fix it and make him happy.

Thank you.