Jail for Selling Email Lists to Spammers

amigoro writes "UK will start jailing the people who trade in email addresses, or any other personal data. The current Data Protection Act only fines people who do that, but the money one can make from trading in personal information was far higher than the measly GBP 5000 one had to pay if caught. The new regulations will result in a two year prison sentence for violating the Act."

Comments

US

[rodgster]

We need an equivalent law here in the US.

Re:US

[x_MeRLiN_x]

"Will result in" or "can result in"? A maximum sentence isn't always passed - and is in fact probably the exception rather than the norm.

Re:US

[BobSutan]

It will never happen so long as the FBI and other government agencies are the buyers of such information. See, since these organizations can't legally snoop in a lot of cases they just buy the info they need from companies that are allowed to do such snooping. Only in America!

New commercial

[Pakaran2]

Fine: GBP 5000
Legal bills: GBP 2000
Your cellmate Bubba finding out that you're the one behind him getting all those Nigerian emails: Priceless

Re:New commercial

[CaptainZapp]

And don't forget that Bubba layed his grubby hands on just about any pen1s enlarrrgement offer he received by email.

Ahh, but until then ...

[ubrgeek]

Do I hear $5 for rodgster@yahoo.c o m?

Jail Time

[Normal Dan]

It seems everyone these days are too eager to throw people in jail. Two years in jail for a non-violent crime? Two years of your life is a very long time. It's longer than you may think, and spending it in jail doesn't help society very much. Yes, I know it's suppose to be a deterrent, but I think a better deterrent would be a much larger fine, probation, and maybe your email address along with your crime made publicly known. Regardless, I still think we are too quick to just throw people in jail and forget about them.

Re:Jail Time

[iminplaya]

Regardless, I still think we are too quick to just throw people in jail and forget about them.

The creeps making tons of money from the prison industry believe we should feed them even faster. This isn't about punishment, much less rehabilitation. Profit motive is driving it. And the taste of revenge is sweet indeed.

Re:Jail Time

[jfengel]

Fines are problematic as a punishment, because not everybody can pay them. Some of the money has already been spent by the time you get to them, and some has been hidden. You can take everything they have, which is usually less than they made off the crime. There are usually ways to legally hide money even from fines; they're reluctant to take your house, for example (though I gather that the US government has ways around that.)

Jail time is something that people can't miss.

I agree that two years should be a terrifying thing to take from somebody; it's scary that so many people are willing to risk jail time nonetheless.

Punishment is always a problem. Nothing really works universally. Deterrence obviously fails to deter. Rehabilitation also fails more often than it helps. Vengeance comes with its own problems.

Jail terms are always quantifications based on all three factors and more, which will always lead to absurdities of proportion, where some minor crimes get larger sentences than major ones. The laws are always compromises, and the numbers end up as the result of splitting differences and argumentation rather than an understanding of what works.

Re:Jail Time

[ScentCone]

Two years in jail for a non-violent crime? Two years of your life is a very long time.

And how many years can it take to recover from having your credit history trashed, from losing your sensitive job because you appear to be financially wreckless or in debt, or from having to rebuild your reputation when someone sends around child pr0n links/content or stock-pumping scams that appear to be coming from you?

If you performed a "violent crime" that resulted in more or less the same consequences (wrecking someone's house or career), that's somehow worse, for you, than some other action that results in the same thing, long-term? How about when the person doing it is doing it to thousands of people at the same time?

spending it in jail doesn't help society very much

Other than the whole "he can't do any more of it while he's in prison" aspect, right?

maybe your email address along with your crime made publicly known

Oh no! Not public disclosure of your e-mail address! That's really some pretty serious stuff you're talking, there. No one who steals information, spreads around fraudulant messages, and is willing to take YOUR money or credibility for their own use would ever... just change e-mail addresses. These people are beyond shame. Naming them publicly does nothing, but jail time completely prevents them from any of these activities while they're locked up.

Regardless, I still think we are too quick to just throw people in jail and forget about them.

Forget about them? We have to feed them, provide medical and legal care, and 24 months later (in the example cited), administer their release. I can't imagine that you're thinking someone doing a 24-month stint is somehow going to wind up there for years longer because someone forgot that their sentence was up. Please.

It sounds more like what you're really lobbying for is harsher sentences for violent criminals. Because you can't truly be thinking that life-wrecking scam artists that cost the world's economy untold billions in (choose your currency) and irretrievably lost time are the same as someone didn't renew their dog license, or was caught distilling their own grappa in the basement.

Re:Jail Time

[MillionthMonkey]

Two years of your life is a very long time. It's longer than you may think, and spending it in jail doesn't help society very much.

On the contrary. Two years is actually a very light sentence for something that impacts society as severly as this, and society benefits greatly during that two year period, because imprisoning a spammer brings huge benefits to society. It's a cheap and effective way to improve the lives of millions of people.

There really aren't that many spammers in the world. It may not seem like it, but that's because the world has a lot of spam- it's a crime that has a huge number of victims by definition. If you consider all the lives that are improved by jailing a spammer, it compares favorably even to jailing violent criminals. There are comparatively few lives that are improved by jailing (say) an average rapist, and even if each potential rape victim's life is improved a lot by the rapist being in jail instead of being free to rape, there's just a few rape victims per rapist (usually less than a hundred). Jailing a spammer can improve the lives of millions of people by a little, and receiving X spam emails is about as bad as being raped (for some value of X). And raping people isn't like spamming- it takes time, effort, and legwork, and the number of people you can rape is limited just by virtue of the fact that it's a difficult crime to computerize. If nothing else, at least one thing you can say about rapists is that they are not as lazy as spammers, and that should really be considered when coming up with sentences for them. Spamming may be as "nonviolent" as selling drugs, accepting bribes, or rigging elections, but spammers still belong in jail. If nothing else, it will prevent them from spamming, in a way that fining them will not. A spammer can cover any fine you impose by further spamming.

Re:Jail Time

[green1]

>> Removing the financial incentive is the only effective way to stop spam

actually, it's worse than that, you have to not only remove the financial incentive, you also have to remove the PERCEIVED financial incentive. the former is actually not that hard, and in some cases is already accomplished. the big problem is that even if people aren't able to make a penny off of spam you will still have people who THINK they can make money off it, and that will continue to cause people to try.

what is needed most is for people to expect to get caught. people do their own risk/benefit analysis and if they think they are likely to get some benefit, and don't think there is any risk they will continue. the way to solve this is to make people think that the risk isn't worth it. which means better investigation, better prosecution, and better computer security making it harder for people to hide the origin of the spam.

Re:Jail Time

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

While I don't think jailing people who illegally trade in personal data (it's not just the spammers themselves affected by this law remember) is too much, your idea that jailing a spammer is more worthy than jailing a rapist or a violent criminal because of the number of lives involved is obscenely stupid. For all the millions of lives impacted by spam, that impact on each is still nothing more than inconvenience. The very concept that a million people's inconvenience is worse than "less than a hundred" people's lives, whether literally ended or "just" destroyed by rape or violent abuse is ridiculous.

Sure, waking up in the morning and finding 70 emails, of which 65 are spam is pretty damn annoying, but it's nothing in the bigger picture. You need to seriously take a step back from the computer and get some fucking perspective.

Re:Jail Time

[fractalus]

While I understand and agree with the general sentiment of your post, I would suggest that there is no X sufficiently large that "receiving X spam emails is about as bad as being raped." To suggest that even a billion emails, enough to leave your personally-owned and lovingly-maintained mail server a smoldering slag heap in the co-lo rack, compares to the very personal, real, and in many ways unfixable feeling of violation that comes with rape is just a bit extreme.

Now, can we get back to lynching spammers?

The price of spam lists

[future assassin]

just went up. Which ofcourse will create more email harvesting.

What about people who inadvertantly give away

[antifoidulus]

email addresses? Such as those who are infected with a harvester. I know that is how my gmail address got out. I didn't receive any spam until I received a mass email inviting all the 200 people who were accepted to the University of Minnesota graduate program in CS to an orientation. At least one of the people who got that must have been infected with spyware that harvests addresses(I know they should know better since they are going to be CS grad students and yet....) and spam started regularly coming into my inbox. It isn't as bad as the 100 or so spams I day I received at my old university address(which I was careless with, but that was before spam became as huge a problem as it is today).

Should the offender be tracked and punished? After all, (s)he gave away my personal info without my consent. Not intentionally and didn't make any money, but its an interesting question nonetheless.

Re:What about people who inadvertantly give away

[redheaded_stepchild]

Ok, I'll agree that prison is too harsh a crime for letting your PC become infected with malware. But how about a fine for letting it continue? Some states have a system in place to fine people for vehicles that pollute the air, why can't we fine people for letting their PC's pollute the internet?

This, like a parking ticket, isn't a felony crime that might stop you from getting a job.

What it could do is make people think about getting some education about their PCs, or at least get someone who can maintain them properly like a decent mechanic would their car.

A major portion of the spam problem is people who allow this kind of thing to happen. You're right in the sense that we shouldn't be going after the small, petty guys alone. I still think the spammers themselves are a bigger target. But if we can take away a major source of their information, we can make their spamming job a lot harder.

As a side benefit, people would be exposed to all sorts of things, like Firefox, Linux, and other alternatives to a system that is inherently insecure.

"MacroShaft - Where do you want to get screwed today?"

Re:THE FALCONER!

[Intron]

Do you feel like your privacy has been violated if someone that already had your e-mail address sells/trades/gives it to someone else?
-- yes

what count as deliberately misusing it?
-- any use other than the purpose for which I gave it to you

Go after people spamming and not someone giving out an e-mail address.
-- the people giving out the email address are just as guilty as the people sending spam

Re:THE FALCONER!

[CaptainZapp]

Do you feel like your privacy has been violated if someone that already had your e-mail address sells/trades/gives it to someone else?

It's actually worse then that. I feel that my sanitary and healthy living conditions are polluted by some low life scumbag who's getting rich quick by shitting into the communal water supply.

This is metaphorically speaking, of course.

Re:FROSTY PISTOLIERS!

[homey of my owney]

This is of no value. If it was, we wouldn't have Bank robberies (there are laws against it too). As long as there's money in it, and the technology supports it, it'll sadly continue.

Re:THE FALCONER!

[madsheep]

Is SPAM not a form of communication? What about all the snail mail you get? Should people that sell your name and address go to jail? What about "CURRENT RESIDENT"? These people don't even know your name but mail you anyway! People advertise/SPAM in regular mail just to make a dollar. It's a form of communication.

Re:FROSTY PISTOLIERS!

[dan828]

You seem to be saying that no laws have value if the behavior that they are intended to prevent still occurs. In addition to bank robbery, that would include murder, rape, theft of any sort, speeding, and cheating on your taxes. Since all of these things still happen, the laws against them must have no value, yes?

What happened to punishment fitting the crime?

[DaedalusLogic]

I hate spam, but traditional jail is excessive for anyone that sells e-mail or private information. I view jail as a place we should send people if the crime can actually cause physical harm to someone's life or limb. Then it makes sense for them to be physically seperated from society. If they commit a crime that's going to cost someone financially, drop a big punitive fine on their ass. Someone who sold private information so they could live the high life with a luxury car and a high rise penthouse should at worst face an entire life of paying back debts. They can live in a fleabag apartment and drive a pinto.

However, I wouldn't be opposed to say a sentence that put them in jail every weekend for two years. They can still try to earn an honest buck, and get a solid reminder of what they did wrong.

Re:FROSTY PISTOLIERS!

[homey of my owney]

That's one interpretation. My point is that a law, the community and every other influence does not stop someone who is intent on breaking a law for personal profit - as I believe spammers are. That holds for bank robbers and murders where there is financial gain. In a round way, I'm saying the technology must change... Though I recognize it will only begin the next phase for spam.

Punishment fitting the crime not possible here

[Per Abrahamsen]

UK is a member of the EU, and as such is not allowed to restore the death penalty. Thus, death by torture as subject implies, is not an option, and jail time will have to do.

I really hate the pervasive meme that a crime is less of an issue if the damage is spread out over many victims, rather than concentrated on a few individuals. The economic damage done by a single large scale spam attack is large enough to fund several life saving operations. Just because you can't name the person who died doesn't make the crime any less severe.

And yes, the two years jail time is the upper limit, reserved to the worst cases. Most offenders will get far less than that, and first time offenders will most likely not even face jail time.

Re:E360INSIGHT, are you listening?

[Kadin2048]

This raises an interesting point .... how loudly would the American government be screaming if a US citizen was arrested in Britain for doing something which was perfectly legal in the US but which affected UK citizens and was against their laws???

I don't know ... if they were sending out spam, I'd prefer that they be quickly extradited to whatever third-world country still practices breaking-at-the-wheel.

Wont work - retarded civil servants

[sjwest]

Like your humour

but the uk's information commissioners office is far too lame to do anything about it. - explain why evil empire Microsoft sued the Milton Keynes spammer ,and not the civil service.

Blair and Bush masters of FUD '15 - minutes before you die'. Final thought: Imformation commisioners office (UK) could not party in brewery.

Reminds me of C++ programmers

[ColonelPanic]

... because C++ programmers make "friends" solely for the purpose of exposing their "private" parts to them.

No jail sentence will be handed down - Policy

[caveman]

The UK government has recently instructed magistrates and judges not to jail non-violent offenders where possible, due to lack of space in the countries' already crowded prisons.

While the threat of jail is still there, the chances of anyone actually getting a custodial sentence for such crimes is virtually non-existant, when even major crime gets punished with fines and community service.

So, yet another UK law that looks good on paper, but will be as effective as the USA CAN-SPAM laws.

Re:Er, can be

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Somehow I knew the saving money is saving lives thing would come up. Even if spam really does cost the US 10 billion dollars per year* the fact is that money lost in this manner can never be directly correlated to a cost in lives or emotional damage. Otherwise where would we be? Would someone caught stealing $100 be charged with an equivalent sentence of a double murder? Ridiculous right? How about $1000, $10k, $100k, $1M? At what point is theft equivalent to taking a life, raping someone, or some other violent crime? It's a cliché to say you can't put a value on a life but with good reason. Sure spammers are arseholes and I'll reiterate that I'm not against imprisoning spammers and taking every penny they've made (and more) from them, but nobody will ever convince me that a spammer is as bad or worse than a rapist or a murderer or a wife-beater. I dread the day our society is so fucked up that we can equate monetary loss on the same scale as physical or sexual abuse.

I'll get down off my soapbox now.

*: I suspect those figures are entirely bogus though. Most likely calculated in the same style that the RIAA uses to say that piracy costs them 100 trillion dollars per nanosecond or whatever they're claiming these days.