Gates' Resolve in Bringing Spammers to Justice

An anonymous reader writes "It didn't seem to me like any single company had the stomach to keep after the scum that are ruining the Net for the rest of us. Unless that company is Microsoft. Since the beginning of 2003, Microsoft has filed 96 lawsuits against spammers, and 119 lawsuits against phishers. By any measure, 215 lawsuits constitutes a legal juggernaut. "

Comments

Referrer Log Spammers should be sued too

[xmas2003]

Wow - Microsoft/Gates usually gets a bad rap on /., but kudos to them for going after the scumbags of the Internet. Another group I find annoying is the folks who do referrer log spamming. Even though I don't publish those log stats (so their efforts are to naught), they continue to send their stupid traffic and it's a bit annoying to see in the web log analysis.

No, you fools, don't be taken in!

[sam_handelman]

Don't you realize that every time you say something nice about Microsoft, Bill and Melinda dine on one of those Indian babies they've "saved" from HIV? How to serve man, indeed!

In all seriousness, the spam epidemic is actually caused by a relatively tiny number of people, so it would seem that this is a workable strategy - but the cause will just be taken up by people outside of our jurisdiction (Russians, mostly.)

Legal Juggernaut?

[Anonymous Coward]

By any measure, 215 lawsuits constitutes a legal juggernaut.

Yet I'm still getting more and more spam as time goes on. These lawsuits might buy Microsoft some goodwill, and they might situate injunctions against spammers who are spamming Microsoft. But what are they doing for the anti-spam movement in general? Not a damned thing.

Lawsuits vs. building a better product?

[Stiletto]

Strange: If any one company out there has the install base to actually do something technical about spam, it's Microsoft, yet they'd rather sue than improve their product.

I'm surprised ISP's aren't filing hundreds of lawsuits. They claim their servers are so overworked by all the spam, but they aren't doing anything effective about it (legally or technically).

Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is precisely correct. Rather than feature-fill their software with stupid auto-activate tools that encourage viruses, and auto-load tools that promote such abusive advertisiing, and wasting their time on amazingly silly patented XML-based header modifications that cannot be used by others such as their SenderID system, they could instead fix the way their mailer software and operating systems cncourage this behavior.

Or they could put some lobbying effort directly into changing the laws. The law in question is US Criminal Code, Section 18, paragraph 2701, the junk fax law. A simple extension of this law to include email would pass the First Amendment challenges the junk fax law already has passed, and would give ISP's and victims of spam the leverage to get the spammer's network feeds and accounts canceled. Of course, it would put a big spike in the sales of junk email software and the Windows systems to run it on, but that seems acceptable given the huge price spam imposes on people.

Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product?

[jbolden]

If the standard were published and fully documented in a way that was reasonable to implement across mail platforms I'm not sure the /. crowd would have a problem. /. has debated SMTP vs. other systems for a long time and Microsoft would be a good choice for updating the standards.

People don't have Microsoft being involved in standards, rather they dislike Microsoft using standards as a way to sell their products.

Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent

[DaHat]

In any battle, technology is only a small bit of it. Policy is an area that is far more important than technology in most situations, even when you don't know it. Would you rather they sit on their hands and let the spammers continue to ruin the internet?

I don't see you taking an active step to stop spammers other than maybe a little filtering and deletion here and there.

Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Actually, Microsoft tied up the technology to implement cryptographically signed email headers in patents, so that others; noteably open source email servers, couldn't use it.

That means that spammers have continued to be able to fake the headers out, and it makes it harder to filter off the spam (particularly on the send side of email- in other words, stopping spam enter the internet in the first place).

So, Microsoft have taken the decision to fund lawyers, rather than fund technology that is likely to massively reduce spam; Microsoft have sided with a bunch of lawyers.

Its an obvious ploy...

[JustNiz]

If they become the unofficial police of the internet, they will be first in line to be the official ones, when government (with a little help from microsoft) decides that such a body should exist.

Let's get this straight

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Source servers don't implement crypto-signed email headers, so spammers continue to use those servers to send spam.

And you manage to blame this Open Source failure on Microsoft?

I didn't know the /. culture was that anti-MS.

Re:Let's get this straight

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Open Source servers don't implement crypto-signed email headers, so spammers continue to use those servers to send spam.

The IETF standard for crypto-signed email headers was substantially derailed by Microsoft not wanting to 'play nicely' with the extremely large proportion of the email servers out there that run on open source.

So, Microsoft imposed licensing requirements that the open source community couldn't meet. Yeah, to that extent, I blame Microsoft. That's not an Open Source failure, it's a deliberate licensing decision by Microsoft to write the license that way; even after it was clear what the effect would be- ultimately to help spammers.

Re:Come off it

[vidarlo]

Spammers need bandwith for sending out spam. So, what if we slashdot 'em? Just post a link on top of page saying "Get a spammer today". I bet it would be a huge success...

You're confusing the incentive with the tech.

[khasim]

Robbing banks is VERY lucrative.

Yet your corner bank isn't robbed every day (or week or month or year).

There might be strong incentive to send spam and make lots of money, but the spam still has to go out on technological avenues. All you have to do is to identify those and limit their effectiveness.

#1. Zombies.

#2. Open Relays.

#3. Individual email accounts (30 day AOL free!)

#4. Sites owned by the spammer.

If you look at it that way, you'll see why MULTIPLE measures are needed. What will work against zombies will NOT work against Individual email accounts.

If you deal with the tech, then the incentive won't matter because there won't be any way to implement it.

Since this is about Microsoft's involvment, I'll focus on what they could do.

#1. Zombies. Microsoft announces a partnership with the ISP's and those ISP's block outgoing port 25 on their home connections. Microsoft offsets the cost of this with a couple $$Million$$ to each ISP for hardware upgrades and support calls. Anyone who needs port 25 access (people who work from home and don't have systems setup to handle it) can call and have enabled for their address.

#2. Open Relays. Microsoft forms a partnership with spamhaus, spamcop, etc to mirror the open relay databases of those people. Since Microsoft also has Hotmail and MSN, Microsoft is in a great position to identify new open relays and add them to the list as they are abused.

#3. Individual email accounts. Not much that Microsoft needs to do here. All the ISP's need to do is to limit the outgoing email to 10 unique connections per minute.

#4. Spammer sites. Again, Microsoft helps by hosting a mirror of the blacklists.

There, the spam problem is down to a tiny fraction of what it was. The spammers might still WANT to send spam, but HOW are they going to do it?