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Virginia Spammers Go To Jail, And Pay For It

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the giving-the-ham-both-barrels dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A Virginia appeals court has upheld the first felony conviction under a state anti-spam law. In the process, the court also suggested that spam recipients might be able to sue spammers for money damages. According to the court, taxing a person's servers with unwanted e-mails is a form of trespass, little different than intruding on their land or making unwanted use of their private property. Perhaps because of this decision, spammers will soon find themselves on the receiving end of a million dollar class action suit."

6 of 326 comments (clear)

  1. So if we have VOIP by joshetc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does that mean we can sue telemarketers? The last couple of years I've found them to be far more annoying than spammers. Spam is more easily blocked and can be taken care of on my time. Telemarketers though, I have to choose between getting up during dinner / sleeping to answer the phone or dealing with the damn thing ringing every 5 minutes.

    I'm still glad to see some spammers in jail though. I hope they all rot in prison then in hell.

    1. Re:So if we have VOIP by bigdavesmith · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The problem with the do not call registry is that they are still allowed to call if it is a charitable or political call, I believe. At least, those are the ones I still get.

      I don't mind the political ones, because they make the elections way easier. I keep a list of every politician I get a call from, and don't vote for them.

      The charity ones are very annoying though. I get at least a call a week from some charity wanting to know if they can count on my donation. Donations start at just $25. Surely I can afford that. Can they put me down for a $25 donation?

    2. Re:So if we have VOIP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      yeah i fell for the charity treadmill. Collection for the volunteer firefighters, they send out some stickers, etc. I figured what the hell, those guys are alright, putting their lives on the line etc. and I donate. The next week, it's the state police, then the local sherriffs collecting for needy kids, then the state police again. They always make it sound so trivial, you know, $25 donation would really help us out, etc. Tell them you just donated a couple weeks ago and they throw that "Oh, well we don't want to bust you" cop humor blurb out there (see the double meaning?). After a while I just stopped answering my home phone, since anyone I want / need to talk to calls me on my cell phone anyway. Next thing I know, there are the return mail envelopes coming to my house (the ones they send to you for you to mail in the check), only they are addressed to other people, with names like Ali and Mohammed, and I have no idea who they are. What are they, trying to make me think that if the donations don't come in some terrorist task force is going to camp out across the street in a van? Finally I had to get pushy with them so I called them and told them that, you know, I donated a couple times, but it is kind of ridiculous to be getting calls twice a month for non tax deductible donations, plus there are no Ali's or Mohammed's here in this house, so remove me from your records. Never heard from them since.

  2. Re:Oh, come on! by argle2bargle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "This spam is in no way infringing the rights or security of its recipients. It is a minor inconvenience, as is any form of junk mail"

    I couldn't disagree more. When you say it is little different from 'lots' of junkmail. Imagine if 6 18wheelers pulled up to your house and dumped TONS of junkmail on your doorstep, literally so much junkmail that you cannot open your front door. In fact, you have to hire an expensive service to remove the junkmail, as well as buying a larger house to accomodate the junkmail as it arrives. Oh and by the way, some of that junk mail contains anthrax, which if it gets missed by the service which you had to hire, will infect your family.

    It is definately trespass.

    My small companies email server has to block/process 247,000 spam emails in just the past two months, totalling 67 percent of all the email on the server. On some days the percent of spam reaches 90 percent. Even though it is blocked, this costs my bandwidth and my servers memory/cpu. It costs my company money.

  3. Re:Why does everyone hate spam so much by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Well, try being me for a day as I travel around trying to get e-mails on my GPRS mobile phone, 99% of which are: a) spam b) full of images c) cost me money to download d) cost me time to sort through since the criminals sending me the spam KNOW I am trying to avoid it and thus obfuscate it with random words in order to evade my filtering. Not to mention the various times I have had an e-mail go astray due to an overly eager baysian filter falsly classifying it. All this across several e-mail address for several businesses I run. Spammers would do much better if they had an opt in list, since they would then have access to a target audience which actually wanted to read their messages and would provide them with a better strike rate for follow through purchases. Instead, they use underhanded tactics to evade filtering because they know that the recipients of their junk don't want it. They are robbing me of time and money; it doesn't matter how much, it's criminal behaviour.

  4. Spammers go to Jail? Fine with me... by ClemensW · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sorry, but no sympathy from me. For all of you who think that's too harsh: Have you ever calculated the damage done by spam?

    Spammers steal your time: Sure, it's just 10 seconds to read a mail, make a decision and press the delete key. But it's not just *your* time, any other recipient also wastes 10 seconds.
    So, if a spammer sends 10.000.000 mails per day and every recipients wastes 10 seconds, you get
    10.000.000 mails * 10 sec/mail ~ 3 years, 2 months of wasted time.
    In other words, every month this spammer wastes more than a full human lifetime. In my eyes, that's the same as if they would kill someone every month with their own hands.

    Spammers steal computers to send their spam: Most spam is sent by trojaned machines. A small botnet able to send the 10.000.000 mails/day would likely consist of ~10.000 machines. Assume 3 hours to clean a machine and prevent it from being re-infected. Assume 10$ per hour. Total cost:
    10.000 machines * 3h/machine * 10$/h = 300.000$

    Spammers steal bandwidth: Though many people believe that bandwidth is free (flat-rate), it really isn't. ISPs or anybody with more than a DSL line do have to pay per GB. Even flat rates are just hybrid costing, basically an amount $x for the DSL line plus $y/GB multiplied by an average usage of z GB/month.
    Now, for the spammer:
    10.000.000 mails * 20 KByte/mail * 0.50 $/GB = 100$/day ~ 3.000$/month

    Spammers steal ressources from the recipients: 75% of all email is spam. Without spam, all mailservers could be sized significantly smaller. Assume 500$ savings for smaller hardware. Assume 3 years (36 months) lifetime. Assume 1.000.000 mail servers.
    1.000.000 server * 500$ savings/server / 36 months ~ 460.000 $/month

    And that's just the beginning. There are the costs of spam-filtering software, costs of maintenance for hard- and software, costs of lost business due to false-positive filtering (be it manually or automatically), costs, costs, costs....
    And let't not forget the costs of psychiatric treatment for admins suffering from burn-out syndrome due to constant nagging of their PHBs that they either a) receive too much spam or b) didn't receive an important email :-P