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?

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: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.

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.