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AOL Files First Spim Lawsuit
Iphtashu Fitz writes "CNet News is reporting that 4 major internet providers - AOL, Earthlink, Microsoft, and Yahoo, have filed another bunch of lawsuits against spammers. What makes this round interesting is that AOL has filed the first ever lawsuit against against spam that targets Instant Messenger clients, or spim. So far spim has only affected relatively small numbers of users but the problem is growing, which is why AOL is targeting it now."
spim is instant messenger spam for anyone confused.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Technology industry pioneer (Genuity, mailorder.com) Rodney Joffe talked about filing a class-action suit against an SMS spammer way back in 2001 article 1 | article 2 -- search for "Joffe". Very similar.
I don't know whether he ever actually filed papers, or what became of it. Anyone?
Tom Geller
Spam + IM (instant messanging) = SPIM.
This is AOL's stats, so far today - and it's only 3PM here on the west coast.
SPAM Blocked Today:
846,170,968
This month:
33,661,697,872
Instant Messages
Sent Today:
1,151,202,297
Members Online Now:
2,410,612
You can watch the numbers on http://www.corp.aol.com/
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
AOL has a long history of suits against spammers. See this list of litigation they've filed.
Pity they often place themselves on the wrong side of legislative battles, though. They were a driving force behind the CAN-SPAM Act, which guarantees the right to send unsolicited, commercial, bulk email.
Tom Geller
Anyone who accuses the authors of misspelling spam is officially a fool and deserves to lose their geek license. Spim is a word, people. Look it up.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
By which they mean anyone who ever goes into an AIM chatroom. It's so bad almost noone uses them anymore, even with pyboticide
ICQ was really big back in 1994, because well, it was free, AIM was still undocumented, and people were still learning about this thing called the Internet. These days, I recommend the free client for Trillian, which simultaneously supports AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, and Yahoo messaging. One application, keeps a running .txt history for every chat mode (my pet peeve is accidentally hitting escape in AIM and missing what was sent to me), you can Skin it, no advertisements loading in the corners... very nice.
Whats wrong with GAIM? I am serious. It supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, Groupwise, IRC and Napster - has tons of plugins, has txt as well as HTML logging....
No adverts....
And its GPL.
I actually have to go with the parent poster, because the vast majority of big-time spammers and the like use every method of tracking available to them. After being condemned to a marketing department at a .com for a couple of years, I learned all about conversion rates, bounties, etc etc. Spammers make their money more often these days via conversions, not eyeballs, so they track how many people actually sign up off a given e-mail.
The sad part is, it takes far less than 1% of spam victims to respond for the spammer to make money. It costs nearly nothing to send it, and some companies will pay upwards of $50 per conversion. Send it to a million people, 0.1% convert, that's $50K. Chances are, it cost a LOT less than $50K to blast 1 million e-mails out.
What is even sadder to me is that I think most people who actually convert on these things have probably willingly signed up for those "great deal offer bonus!" email lists. I don't think doing something with confirmed opt-in and the like would actually really hurt their business, those who demand not to be on the list won't buy anything from you anyway, merely on principle. When I get a spam about something I actually want, I generally won't buy the product at all anymore. It strikes me as a win-win situation: The spammer doesn't have to send as many emails, will still get about the same number of respondents, and the rest of us can live in peace.
Suffice it to say, I am no longer part of a marketing department, and for that I am eternally grateful.
Or you could use Gaim instead of the official client and not get any ads. You'll also get support for Gaim's plugins, contact aliases, and tabbed IMs, but it doesn't support some of the AIM features like video and voice IM (they're working on it). Also, there are other unofficial clients including Miranda and Trillian. Or you could use an AIM hack like Middle Man (or one linked from their list of other AIM hacks) that remove the ads and add other features like logging.
Centralization breaks the internet.
ARRRGH! How can you even jokingly insinuate that others make mistakes when you blatantly make your own? I have repressed this for far too long! I am finally snapping. Prepare for some education.
Apostrophes serve the following TWO purposes and NO MORE.
An example of the proper first use would be writing about "a moderator's spelling problems" not "a moderators spelling problem's".
An example of the proper second use would be writing about how "it's a moderator's duty to correct his spelling problems".
That's it. Finito. No other purpose. Please, please, please get it right people!
OK...ok...must...breathe...normally...now...whew!