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Facebook & Myspace Taking Some Spammers To Court
kevinqtipreedy writes "Social networks like Facebook and Myspace are now bringing spammers into the court systems in new attempts to put a stop to it. Although spammers rarely show up in court and the suits do not always lead to monetary reward, companies are hoping the 'chilling effect' will help in the effort to curb spam."
Just like it is helping to curb e-mail spam ....
...Craigslist and Hot or Not next? You know, women never get these fake ads, but men do all the time. I told a couple of women about the fake ads we get, and they say they get nothing. I guess only men are stupid?
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Actually, my spam on myspace has dropped to nill for the past few months. It used to be everytime I logged in there was 3-4 hot girls that wanted to be my friend which was of course just an advertisement for a pay site. I always marked them as spam (sometimes their account had already been removed by the time I got out to clearing up my friends request). I doubt that it's these lawsuits but they definally did something (probally limiting the amount of new friend requests you can make on a new account per day or something) that did the trick.
Oft companies make some pretty dumb decisions. Sure this may stop a couple of spam messages out of the probable millions.
What about their users? How comfortable will this make them when they know they are visiting a site that legally prosecutes people acting within their right?
I don't think this will be a revenue generator.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
Unfortunately, sneakemail has recently been getting blocked by more and more sites.
GishPuppy looks similar (and maybe even easier to use). Is anyone using it, or another, similar service?
Isn't hauling spammers into court a little extreme? To avoid criticism they should try a more gentle approach, like a self-despamming program that would give spammers 90 days to stop, instead of clogging up our courthouses like they clog up our inboxes. We could call it "Operation Scheduled Despamming" after the very successful "Operation Scheduled Departure" which to date has already been successful in 8 cases.
Well action in the courts has stopped everyone sharing music, so this is clearly a strategy with a great deal of merit.
At least once a week I get a message on my wall from a friend that reads something like "Oh man you have to check out these awesome ringtones, they have all your favorites at (some random address).blogspot.com!!!!"
My policy is that if you're dumb enough to get your facebook hacked by a spammer, you don't get to be my friend anymore (online or in reality).
Name...That...Autocomplete!
If you're on myspace or facebook, you're just wasting time anyway. Maybe some of the spam will enhance your existence? Embrace it.
When I suggested to Mark in 2004 that he make Facebook the largest spam-free e-mail system in the world by continuing to require user authentication, he said that he didn't want to compete with Microsoft. I didn't know at the time that Microsoft would become a large investor. It seems now that for Facebook, Inc., taking that investment has come at a price, which may be minuscule by comparison in monetary terms, but is still real. We're still desperately in need of a reliable messaging system that works, which I think probably means that it needs to be closed.
Aaron
Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era
Take it from someone that knows. Everyone that has ever had any dealings with Scott knows what a pos he is.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
Maybe a good old-fashioned whopping on the asses of the spammers who sit on them would do wonders... instead of wasting valuable court time.
slashdot rocks
I have been suing spammers for a few years. Actually I sued the companies that were advertised the spammers, and paid the spammers. Some companies that have been sued have taken steps to terminate the 'affiliates' that were sending the spam.
Lately, it seems less effective. But, if more people started suing spammers, and the companies that hire them, that violate the law it dry up the marketplace for spammers.
One company, Deniro Marketing who runs amateurmatch.com, went as far as lying to the Court and then having the Wayback Machine delete any traces of the evidence when called on it.
Another company, I sued 3 times and obtained 3 default judgments, collected over $200k on the first two. Of course they claim that even though I seized money from the accounts, they didn't know anything about the lawsuits. Another person I know collected over $100k from them. Recently, in the last suit, the Defendants were able to vacate the judgment and be permitted to file an answer. I have seized several of their domain names to prevent them from selling them. Defendants counsel have been lying through their teeth and playing games -- but what can you expect from a spammer's lawyer.
I'll have to start putting up the details of this lawsuit. But I have details of the others on my web site.
--
http://www.barbieslapp.com/spam
So many spammers to sue, so little time.
Fight Spammers!
Speaking of spam, there seems to be a flood of moderator spam tagging everyone as troll today, I sure would like to take them to court.
Isn't hauling abusive Moderators into court a little extreme? To avoid criticism they should.... oh, I see what you did there. ;-)
I'm willing to go as far as to say that I bet 90% of the spam that ends up in the inboxes at social network sites is more than likely a phishing endeavor designed to steal some thing from you. Albeit your money, time, or sensitive personal information.
No one can sanely make the comparison between junk paper mail and spam emails any more. Junk paper mail was never primarily designed to steal any thing from you and is generally benign in nature. It's just advertising.
On the other hand, spam emails have been the motivation of criminally minded individuals for the last 10 plus years. Due to the light handed approach to penalizing these con artists, they've been allowed to take it to any extreme they see fit.
I rank these guys in the same category as domain squatters.
Hang 'em high, judges.
---
What I would like to see is an email server that uses temp email addresses. All outgoing mail sent to the postbox is readdressed to a temp email (server generated) The user can set the life of a temp email addresses to say 24 hrs. Return email is forwarded back to the home email address until the time expires and the email address disappears. Then there is no place for the spam to go. Trusted people could get the home email, everyone else gets the temp email address.
Perhaps there is something like this already.
I was referring to Attorney John DuWors. He represented Virtumundo in Gordon v. Virtumundo and is representing AXS Charge, Dev8 Entertainment, Liquid Minds, Techie Group, East Group, and Datline Ideas Limited. They run porn web sites, including asstraffic.com. He has lied through his teeth to the Court and playing games.
DuWors bragged about taking Jim Gordon's house.
Fight Spammers!
i find it greatly amusing that all the self-styled experts we have out there cannot do even basic things such as suppressing spam and virus codes, or even using digital signatures to insure that traffic is not tamper with by man in the middle attacks using DNS poison
the first aspects of a proper communication system are security, integrity, and authentication.
these requirements have been within easy reach since the development of public key encryption. which leaves us to wonder who's running the internet anyway and who is really the client?
They should concentrate to bringing the companies employing the spammers to court, cut the problem at the root or close to it.
Is to punish the companies that do the advertisements, not the spammers.
Remove the money from spam, it will disappear overnight. ( except for the virus based ones of course )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Wayback Machine respects the Robots.txt exclusion standard, as most robots will. Additionally, if the site owner asks, they will remove the site from the Wayback machine.
Fight Spammers!
RIAA/MPAA has been unable to deter honesst hard-working law abiding people to stop P2P by taking a few to court. What makes them think that those criminal spammers, who have links with the underground would be deterred by it!
I like my Spam chilled... no other way to have it..
How do you use Emacs to sort RMAIL email based on SpamAssassin headers?...
Glad you like it spammer.