Slashdot Mirror
Suing the Spammers
ReadbackMonkey writes "AOL sued a Queen's based group of spammers, and
was awarded $600k. " As always spam is a nasty problem. This morning I was hit with my wseekly request to purchase toner (I don't own a printer) as well as an exciting pornographic opportunity. Its annoying, but I still don't feel happy about seeing lawsuits like this. I'm happy to see spammers pay, but how far could this go?
If this happens, I hope somebody puts a webcam on their cell. I'd pay to see that!
Now watch, some spammer will send out spam advertising the WebCam on the spammers.
;^]
www.eFax.com are spammers
Once again, /. posts an article without reading it themselves:
> The unsolicited messages, which included fraudulent headers misrepresenting that the messages came from aol.com...
They weren't busted because of the spam, but because the spam appeared to come from AOL.
> AOL was entitled to recover for unjust enrichment, since Christian Brothers unlawfully used the AOL mark...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I used to work for an ISP, and spam erradication is a huge resource drain. Not only do you need to have people chase the spammers down, but you have spend time dealing with the mercenaries at RBL, you have to continually keep an eye on your mail servers, not to mention field user complaints who post to alt.sex.gimme.pr0n and then complain when they recieve spam. Let the spammers pay. I'm glad AOL wins. Spam ruins the internet.
-Rich
Spammers abuse other people's private property, raise the costs of everyone's Internet access, have basically no interest in anyone's desire for privacy, and generally piss off 99% of the people who receive their crap. And it is crap. From obscenely detailed come-ons to porn sites (sent with disregard for the recipients age and sex) to illegal and fraudulant "business opportunities" they are so far from being legitimate and valid businesses it's beyond belief. In six years as an Internet user I have never received a spam that was of any interest or relevance to me.
Thing is; they only have to get a tiny response rate to be successful. If you mail a million people, and 0.01% respond, that's still one hundred responses. The cost (to the sender) of spamming those million people is very small, and the prospect of one hundred responses can certainly justify it. Who cares if the other 99.99% want you hung? There's always another ISP to buy a throw-away account from for next week's spam.
But someone pays. The ISPs do, in terms of bandwidth, storage space, and full-time staff to deal with the abuse (read: "mainly spam") problems. And you pay, in terms of your own bandwidth and your own time.
"But surely," the spammers squeal, "anyone can send any emails they want. The Internet is open to anyone!". In fact, this isn't true. The Internet is a collection of interconnected private networks. Those servers and routers are private property. Anything you do across them, you do because of private, voluntary agreements.
And the connection between your computer and that network? That's a private, voluntary agreement too. And one of the conditions of that agreement, like as not, is that you may not send unsolicited commercial bulk email. And if you ignore that rule, and incur costs and annoyance for other people? Well then, you're liable to be sued. And so it should be.
This is the way forward; not unworkable anti-spam legislation, but the simple and straightforward enforcement of voluntary private contracts. Way to go AOL. Let's see more of this.
Because AOL spent resources to track down the spam, trace their origin, take action, and hire lawyers to bring it to court when the defendents refused to comply with their requests.
It's funny how the /. crowd has mixed feelings about this -- I suppose some people here hold a grudge against AOL (and I don't blame them). OT1H it's a good thing that AOL won -- at least this reduces the rate at which the signal to noise ratio of the Net decreases these days... OTOH a lot of spam originates from AOL users. But I hope people realize that AOL in itself isn't "evil". It's just that with any service marketed to the masses, not just with AOL, there are always abusers and people who don't know better than to send "cute mail" to each other all the time. For example: Slashdot, with the Natalie Portman posts... You aren't going to label Slashdot as "evil" and wish it to shut down just because a few lusers abuse it, are you?
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
You can do a lot to fight spam. Junkbusters has a site devoted to getting these intrusions out of our lives. I've used their anti-junk snailmail system, and it really does work well. They've also got a nice page on stopping computer UBE crud, too.
Personally, I never hide my mail address. It's dishonest, and, technically, against the rules. My real address, tchrist@perl.com, is sitting right here in this message, on the header for this comment, and is also posted in a hundred thousand different places--if not more. But you know what? I don't see much spam. I auto-bounce at least fifty pieces of spam per day. And most days, not more than a couple make it through -- but only once.
Some of them get bounced using sendmail's anti-spam features. I'm a big fan of the Realtime Blackhole List, which sendmail can be configured to access.
Some spammage get bounced because the sender is on my own blacklist of forbidden addresses, which lately includes things like /\b\d+\.net/. Others are bounced because they look like spam, or because they're mime-encrypted. This is all taken care of by a custom receiving program, plus some other scripts to dynamically update the blacklist.
I don't automatically bounce mail that violates reasonable netiquette, but I do have a periodic posting about the idiotic Jeopardy mail.
And yes, now and then a few innocent men are sent to the gallows. This is the price we pay on the war against spam. If it's important, they'll figure out another way to mail me.
I just wish we could do something about all the telemarketers...in my opinion these people are far more annoying than spammers. At least spam doesn't start arguing with you when you hit "delete".
I don't know where you're from, but where I live (Canada) there already are laws in place to limit what telemarketer's can do. (I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that the same applies to the US, as well.)
In short, there are hours they are allowed to phone, and they are _NOT_ allowed to argue with you - as soon as you say "I'm not interested", they are legally required to say "goodbye" and hang up. If they start to argue with you, it's time to get the name of their company (via *59, if necessary) and file a complaint against them.
You have rights, you just weren't aware of them.