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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?"
By getting into the spam business themselves!
Now, hear me out. Microsoft can become the exclusive spammer of Hotmail, and then they can strong arm other ISPs and mail providers into only accepting Microsoft(tm) Spam. Once this is done, they can quickly buy up the other spammers that haven't gone under. Finally, once this is accomplished and they're the only spammer left, they can quietly shut down the operation. Tada, spam is over.
With Microsoft's deep pockets, can they effectively send a resounding message to spammers?
Yeah... Don't spam XXX material... just the regular garbage... Anyone who thinks this is going to make much difference, is either nieve or stupid - possibly both.
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I for one am flabergasted. Amazed.Yet confused... There is no way to describe it. Or am I dreaming? [too much coffee?] Is Microsoft actually trying to HELP the standard Internet user? hmmm... thats a new one for sure!
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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?)
I have to say despite all the M$ hatred we all feel for their many security flaws and and horrible software for once I think Microsoft may be acting in the best intrests of the community, with basically no direct benefit to them. Even if it doesn't kill spam (which I don't think anything has the possibility of doing) it might shut down a few or few hundred spammers, and that is a start. I have to say for once I have some nice feelings toward the evil monopoly.
Philosophy.
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
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I recently read that Bill Gates has the most spammed e-mail address in the world. Microsoft is simply following a game-plan to sue all the spammers that aggravate Mr. Gates.
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...
As we pass laws in the US against spam, and start enforcing them, all it will ultimately do is drive the spamming operations out of the country. There will always be some small poor nation willing to let these paracites stay as long as they generate some tax revenue and keep a few locals employed. Blocking international email traffic isn't a viable option, so there is little we will be able to do about it.
Given that, I have moral objections to spammers and am pleased each time I hear of one getting what he or she deserves.
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.
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But it will help. All technology, lawsuits, and prosecution helps slow the increase (hopefully to the point of making it negative) of spam. Technology and lawsuits both make spam a less profitable proposition. The less spam that gets through, the less sales you make. The more spammers that get sued and lose their ass, the less likely the average spammer is to come out ahead. The more spammers get locked up, the more scary a proposition it is to new ones.
It's all about making it less attractive. It will always be attractive to some, even if thepbenalty is death by anal probe. However the numbers CAN be reduced by things like this.
Up till receantly, all it took to be a spammer was a total lack of ethics. There was basically no risk. You wouldn't get sued, and there was no law against it. Combine that with the returns, you had a lot of people lining up.
Well now there IS a risk. You can get your sued to the point of losing everything, and locked up in jail for a good long time. Also the returns will continue to get worse as more and more gets blocked.
We can never expcet to get rid of spam completely, but with effort we can curtail it. It's not like drugs where people demand it, actively seek it out, and will pay massive amount of money for it. Most people, even those that buy from it, don't want to get it. Thus all you really need to do is make it unattractive to people and most of it will die off.
For all the Microsoft naysayers out there, could we pause one little moment here? Before we trash everything Microsoft does as being downright evil with secret motives, it might be nice to consider that perhaps Microsoft IS doing something decent. After all, Bill Gates is undeniably a good guy when it comes to charity (I hope most people would be without that kind of money, but he does do a LOT of stuff with it). And he has been known to do a good amount of anti-spam work with Congress. Could it be possible that their 120 suits against spammers are actually at least slightly altruistic in purpose?
I'm not saying not to hold a little suspicion - they are Microsoft, but then again, don't discount them just because they are Microsoft. Instead of trying to make better anti-spam software (which they are also doing), they are throwing a lot of money at the root of the cause, both in Congressional lobbying and these suits. Doesn't seem too bad to me.
Aaron
basically no direct benefit to them
Are you kidding? I'm sure there is a huge benefit to them in the cost of running Hotmail. Hotmail accounts would be send millions of spam a day.
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Are there damages? Can suing spammers actually be a revenue stream for MS?
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It will not do anything to stop the spead of spam, and this is why:
These 120 spammers represent a very small section of the entire spammer population, and I doubt that they've got big guys like Ralsky on it. You won't see M$ getting anywhere near the spam gangs, either. In fact, when you think about it, M$ is the reason some spam gangs even exist! Think about all the security holes in XP that allow it to be hijacked and used as a spam relay. Also, think about the "open-relay-by-default" nature of some M$ mailserver products. Maybe these lawsuits are Microsoft's way of saying "Our bad!"
Given the difficulty/cost of tracking down spammers and nailing them, I think it will just turn spamming into a different industry. The (smart) spammers will just go farther underground and become more sophisticated in their ways of avoiding detection/liability. These 120 guys were probably just amateurs that didn't know what they were doing anyway.
"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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There used to be a time where we all actually opened emails from strangers in other countries.
E.g., when I wrote that walkthrough of mine and put my real email address in it (again, spam was not yet a problem), it never occured to me that I'd ever want to discriminate against, say, gamers from Korea if they have questions.
E.g., when I posted on newsgroups, I actually expected that some people would answer privately per email. No point in dragging the whole thread off-topic, after all. Some of them were, yes, in other countries. If I was talking about Linux or about 3D programming in assembly, I wasn't going to reject potentially valuable information from someone just because their email info is from Elbonia.
The fact that nowadays email addresses are some jealously guarded family secret, and that we're gladly blocking whole countries or continents, is the effect of spam that I hate the most. It just shows the extent of the damage these fucks have done to this public resource.
So, well, in fact I actually aggree to your point of view. Let them flee if they want to. Then we can block just the countries which still encourage them, and maybe reclaim our communication resource to the rest of them. Having a usable communication channel even to just half the world, is better than what we have today.
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