Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Sues Spammers
mclearn writes "Microsoft has filed seven more lawsuits against spammers, this time targeting those who violate the 'brown-paper wrapper' provision of the CAN-SPAM law, which sets rules for sexually oriented e-mail solicitations.
Apparently these are a small part of over 120 spam-related cases Microsoft is currently litigating. With Microsoft's deep pockets, can they effectively send a resounding message to spammers?"
Out of curiosity, why is Microsoft bothering to litigate?
Surely, the amount of money they spend doing this outweighs the "brownie points" they'll be winning.
And, why wouldn't they just focus on writing anti-spam filtering software, and then _sell_ it as a solution to the spam problem? (In that light, shouldn't they be _encouraging_ more spammers so that they can sell more anti-spam software, or perhaps better convince people to switch to an "enhanced" Outlook 200x?)
Of course, no matter how much they spend, we'll probably always be seeing viagra spam in our hotmail boxes. Perhaps in addition to this set of lawsuits (which benefit everybody, don't get me wrong), they should throw in a campaign to work on giving the Hotmail spam filters an overhaul. It might help the community a great deal if Microsoft were to push some of their development over to spam filtering, as well as integrating some of the better email authentication systems into Hotmail, Outlook and the like.
Are there any published studies about how much spam could be reduced if Microsoft could place more effective anti-spam features into the OS itself
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great step forward, but I think (supposing spammers aren't a little more intimidated) that we might see a better reduction in spam if better precautions were to be taken. Sorry if I've missed any big features mixed in with Windows that might help with this, I don't pay much attention to the patching that goes in as far as email is concerned.
Ryan
I don't know who to root for! I don't want Microsoft to win money from spammers, but I want to spammers to burn and die (and go broke in the process). Who should I root for? I'm so confused...
But what I wonder, is why isn't Moft going after the spyware and all that put stuff on your machine that, if you remove it, it makes your machine act funky? Isn't that damaging their product, IE?, or sometimes even Windblows itself is messed up.
Spam is a nuisance, but the adware and spyware are, imho, what are the biggest threat to people's computers. Of course, far be it from me to complain, because I make a liiiiittle on the side cleaning up machines over and over and over a freaking gain, but really, I think Moft should go out and start nailing some of these folks hard.
(btw, Moft means Microsoft)
That's my two cents, I expect no one to pay any attention to it, lol.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
Are there damages? Can suing spammers actually be a revenue stream for MS?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
let the spammers flee to south america, asia, etc. Unless you need mail from such and such a country, firewall the HELL out of it. Koreans are already learning the hard way what it means to be so heavily blocked that no one accepts their mail traffic.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
"Because of you anti spam whacko zealots who dont know how to delete an email message .. people's civil liberties are going down the tube and the govt. is hunting down people who are just trying to make a living .. freaking DEAL WITH THE GODDAMN INCONVENIENCE.
.. but they want to skin alive anyone who causes them 1 second of delay. And yes an individual email only takes up one second of your time. I understand you get lots of spam from different sources .. but how can you punish someone who's doing what a lot of others are doing .. The punishments that the spammers receive is assymetrical revenge considering that the particular individual actually only cause one or two seconds of inconvenience per victim."
.. but how can you punish someone who's doing what a lot of others are doing .."
People dont mind rapists and murderes getting away
Let's assume you're correct in saying it only takes 2 seconds per message, although I think it takes a bit more.
If we assume 1 million copies of the message are sent out and reach someone's inbox, that's 2000000 seconds, or about 555.5 hours, collectively taken by that spammer.
If we assume that all these people were making a mere $8 an hour, that's now $4444.00 that spammer has cost.
That's not very realistic, though. Let's assume that 5 million messages found their way into some inboxes, and all the people were paid $25/hour and it took them 5 seconds to delete.
5000000*5/60/60*25 == $173611.12
Now, with about 100 messages a day finding their way into the average inbox (wild guess), that's $17,361,112.00 it has cost.
Still think it's a minor inconvenience?
"I understand you get lots of spam from different sources
So because Hitler killed a shit-load of jews (yes I know, some law about the longer a usenet thread continues, the more likely a comparison to Hitler & Nazis is...) and was never punished for it (he killed himself before anyone else got to him), we should let other people attempt to kill off a race without punishing them as long as they kill themselves once they're done?
Come on, that's just weak.
ND
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