Texas Goes After Student Spammer

A number of people wrote in with this story: "Count Texas in the growing list of states fighting spammers with CAN-SPAM. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed the lawsuits today, charging a University of Texas student (and a cohort in California) with sending out millions of unsolicited commercial emails under the pseudonyms PayPerAction and Leadplex, among others. Spamhaus rates PayPerAction the #4 spammers in the world."

Comments

Better not mess with Texas

[elecngnr]

They still have the death penalty in Texas, right?

Re:Better not mess with Texas

[isometrick]

You're telling me! I was just sitting on the can reading Slashdot, and right after the words "Texas Goes After Student ..." I was running out the door flailing with a trail of TP dragging behind me.

I didn't specifically remember doing anything wrong, but the targeting of the title was a bit too close for my brain in the early morning!

Damn you, "a number of people", damn you to hell!

How to end Spam...

[ralphart]

The answer seems simple; get politicians' email addresses on spammers' lists. Once they feel our pain, they'll do something.

Probably something stupid.

Re:How to end Spam...

[gosand]

The answer seems simple; get politicians' email addresses on spammers' lists. Once they feel our pain, they'll do something.

1. They probably don't read their own email, if they have an email address. Their families probably do though, which leads to...

2. In the words of Napoleon Dynamite..."they probably already ARE!" I think it is fairly safe to assume that if you have an email address, you get spam. Period.

I think that they just have bigger fish to fry.

Re:How to end Spam...

[Halo-]

Actually, most politicians have "secret" personal accounts as well. My wife used to work at capital in DC. The main $congressman@house.gov account is monitored by staff, but there is usually also something nondescript like rxq223@house.gov which goes to them personally.

You'd also be amazed how many people you have heard of are reachable at some simple variation of $theirname@yahoo.com. When I was helping add a candidate's address book into a database, I had to keep asking if certain entries were a joke. (e.g. "you're kidding, I can mail Janet Reno at janetreno@yahoo.com and it's really her?!?")

(obviously I made all the email addresses in this post up, so don't try mailing them... :) )

Re:How to end Spam...

[SilverspurG]

I think it is fairly safe to assume that if you have an email address, you get spam. Period.

But you shouldn't. It's a clear violation of consumer protection laws.

Take real world spam: junk mail. I've lived in my current location for less than one year. I've purposely misspelled my address on a number of forms (Holyhock instead of Hollyhock) just so that I could monitor junk mail. I have given the misspelled address to only a handful of places: three banks and my insurance carrier. I asked all of them, at the point of signup, if they share their databases with anyone else. The answer, of course, has always been "no". Guess what? I'm receiving junk mail at "Holyhock".

Electronic spam is no different. If you're getting spam it's because someone has violated their agreement not to share your information with anyone else.

Too bad the existing laws don't work for us--and new ones won't do any better.

Re:Book em, Danno.

[garcia]

I'd like to know what this kid's major was.

Obviously Business with an Ethics concentration.

PayPerAction

[Anonymous Coward]

do you see the irony that this guy really may end up having to pay per action?

Re:Two ways

[AKnightCowboy]

Well, they figure if you don't want Viagra then you may be interested in their other products such as v14gr4 or V.!agri.a or ^i4.r4. Don't forget Cialias or C14l1$ or !4l1s soft tabs. My spam consists of someone advertising their porn webcam, shady pharmaceutical sales pitches, mortgages, and premium replica Rolex watches. They must think I have nothing better to do than buy a house and sit around taking viagara while jerking off to some slut's webcam and using my replica watch to alert me to when I should get up to get food.

Re:How did this take so long to get detected?

[gorbachev]

Well, until recently spamming, in itself, has been quite legal. You could only get someone convicted, if they spammed to advertise something illegal.

Since the various anti-spamming laws have come to effect the problem has been lack of enforcement.

The only real deterrent so far has been civil suits filed by ISPs such as Microsoft (Hotmail and MSN), Earthlink and AOL to name to most active litigators of spammers. The civil suits have been very effective, but do not usually land the perps in prison (other than that Buffalo spammer who was dumb enough to use stolen credit cards to pay for the Earthlink accounts he spammed from).

Re:Yes,

[isometrick]

Actually, almost a third of the people on death row are white. I can't say anything about their financial status, though.

State resources?

[catdevnull]

I wonder if the student used his student accounts and/or UT's bandwidth the propagate his spam? If so, that's a DOUBLE whammy!! The state could have his proverbial ass for misuse if they can't get him on the spam charges.

Spamming Countries

[Tom]

And before the usual trolls roll in to claim that most of the spam is from China and whatever:

Top 10 Spammer Countries

If you're too lazy to look, the US is 1st with over 3 times the score of the 2nd place, which is indeed China.