In the UK we've been getting SMS spam messages for years already.
AT&T Wireless was sending these to customers, at least at one time. I insisted that they disable SMS on my phone for that reason -- I do not have this phone for some intrusive telemarketing slimeball's convenience.:(
I can see the name of this lawsuit now -- Academia vs. Assholes. <wry grin> If I were Anthony Hamilton, I'd go into hiding to escape the raving hordes of lawyers from theACLU, EFF, and other organizations concerned with civil liberties and free speech rights. This threat is akin to Microsoft threatening to sue someone who discovers and publicizes a Windows OS security hole.
I hope the first court that sees this alleged case treats it with EXACTLY the respect it deserves.:/
Why Spam !=marketing email, and should not....
on
Building Better Spam
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· Score: 1
Did anybody RTFA? What does this have to do with spam? This is a originally a way of improving processes, primarily in engineering and/or manufacturing. Now, it's been applied to marketing. Since when is all spam considered marketing?
I think you meant, "Since when is all marketing considered spam?", but otherwise I wanted to shout "Bravo". I'm an old-time spam fighter and loathe any kind of intrusive marketing, but knee jerk reactions by people who didn't even read what they guy said are counterproductive.
The thing is, email marketing!=spam. Spam is specifically UNSOLICITED bulk email, not all marketing email.
If you think that this distinction doesn't matter, just read yesterday's ruling against the FTC's Do Not Call list. The reason that Judge Nottingham ruled that the DNC list was unconstitutional is that it plays favorites -- it bans some unsolicited calls while allowing others. Specifically, it bans most calls from companies that are trying to sell you something, but allows calls from non-profit organizations soliciting donations, and politicians trying to get your vote or soliciting donations to their re-election campaigns. (That last one figures, doesn't it?) <wry grin>
Those of us who loathe spam and also value free speech have long chanted the mantra that spam isn't about content, but consent. It looks to me like a federal judge agrees with that line of thinking when it applies to a different, but related problem.
My guess is that, if Congress must choose between a DNC registry that affects THEM or not having one at all, fifty million Americans aren't going to have nearly as much effect as their self interest. And my guess is that the same type of thinking is partly why spam has grown from a nuisance into a problem that threatens the viability of email as a means of communication.
I hope I'm wrong on both counts, but I don't think so.
How about a restraining order on spammers where they are ordered not to ever touch a computer again. That's what they do to a lot of crackers.
Yeah, except that times have changed and it's increasingly necessary to touch a computer to perform basic tasks of living and working. I'm not talking about software engineering or other high-tech work; I'm talking about being a clerk at a convenience store.
Even the suspected author of one variant of the MS Blaster worm, Jeffrey Parson, was told by the judge that he could use the Internet to look for work. Judges are increasingly unwilling to place permanent draconian restrictions on computer criminals because that could leave them unemployable, and an unemployable person can be forced back into crime by that very fact.
I agree that aggressive, repeat spammers -- the sort that end up on the SpamHaus.org ROKSO (Register of Known Spam Operations) list -- deserve to be thrown permanently off the Internet. But maybe we should think of some more practical ways to deal with them?
That's not spam, because we're contacting genuine potential customers.
But whether you are contacting "genuine potential customers" or not has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with whether you are spamming or not. Spam is unsolicited bulk email -- if those "genuine personal customers haven't specifically asked to be contacted by you, then you're spamming regardless of how carefully you target your contacts.
Sheesh, after so many years, you'd THINK that marketing people could learn the definition of a simple term.:(
Blocklists are vigilante defense, if not vigilante justice. Vigilante justice is justice meted out by self-appointed individuals or groups. Blocklists aren't, for the most part, trying to punish/mete out justice to spammers. They're just trying to block the flow of spam.
But they are self-appointed and work according to a set of informal rules that they adhere to voluntarily. That sounds like vigilante to me.
I'm not saying this as criticism, but simply as a description of what is going on. I maintain a procmail-based spam filter with a fair number of users, and it supports various blocklists. I'm not anti-blocklist, to put it mildly.
At the same time, I think most anti-spammers would like to see a less chaotic means of fighting back against spam. Most of us are just trying to hang on until various governments wake up and realize what spam is doing to the Internet, and start taking it seriously as a conversion of resources that the spammers do not own. Theft, in other words.:/
You and a good many anti-spammers. I have a bunch of friends that have spamtrap addresses on web pages in "blind links" -- links that enclose no text or graphics. They can't be accessed by normal web browsers, but spammers using software to scrape the web for email addresses get them just fine.
Blind spamtrap addresses aren't entirely foolproof. There are a few kooks who deliberately look for addresses in blind links or known to belong to other anti-spammers and feed them to web sites. But blind spamtraps are a whole lot less likely to have this happen than spamtrap@spambouncer.org.... (No, you do NOT want to send email to that address unless you are a spammer. If you are, have at it.) <G>
If you go making up honeytoken credit card numbers and social security numbers, you'd better be sure they *are* bogus, not real numbers that belong to someone you don't know. Otherwise, your honeytoken might be someone's real data....
I know this is slashdot, but I have been very impressed with Win2k. It's fast, stable, and reliable. I've flirted with XP a couple times, but I always end up reinstalling 2k.
Win2k is the first real operating system Microsoft ever put out. Work installed XP on the laptop I use there, but I've stuck with Win2k on the laptop at home. So far, I've had relatively few complaints. (Although I'd have had considerably more complaints if I used Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, or Microsoft Media Player -- can you say security*holes*R*us?)
I keep thinking I should install Linux, and keep realizing that I am pretty happy with Win2k, have already paid for it, and see no good reason (except politics) to change. So someday....:>
(There Ain't No Such Thing As Unbreakable Encryption....)
Any mathematician can tell you that "unbreakable encryption" is the same category of beast as a perpetual motion machine. It's ruled out by basic mathematical principles that are themselves so well established that the probability of their being wrong approaches zero.
Any decent cryptographer or cryptanalyst can also tell you that a very good encryption tool doesn't have to be unbreakable. It just has to be too hard to break to be worth the trouble.
I just tested the MSN home page with both Opera 6.05 (my usual browser) and IE 6.0.
In Opera, the page is rendered in single column format below the "Today on MSN" and "Your World" section. In IE the material beneath those sections is rendered in two column format, using more of the screen and leaving less blank white space.
I prefer the Opera rendering personally -- it is less busy. Some people might prefer the IE rendering because it requires less scrolling. Both look fine, though, and neither look like the page is broken.
Berman says he doesn't know why the movie failed and the future of more TREK movies is uncertain.
I'd say that, if Berman doesn't know what went wrong, he isn't thinking any too clearly or seeing any too well. Star Trek reached the end of its road a decade or more ago, and Hollywood hasn't been willing to let it lie.
I didn't see Nemesis -- it never occurred to me to go. I haven't seen a decent Trek movie since Star Trek IV, and quit going after Star Trek VI. Fortunately, there is good SF and fantasy out there, and I prefer to spend my money on it.
I can just imagine the outrage if this happened to the bush administation.
'what do you mean no one got my emails?'
'It seems your.. uh... last name is causing some issues with spam filters sir'
'That's it.. lets bomb the spammers'
A culmination devoutly to be wished, but I suspect the response would more likely be, "Let's bomb the spam filter authors." <wry grin> In the U.S., both the Republican and the Democratic national committees have spammed, and a number of lawmakers, including, recently, Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Most politicians define spam as, "unwanted email sent by somebody else.":/
Spammers have made filtering necessary, of course. Further, to the best of my knowledge (and I do know something about spam filtering), mail filters always and inevitably result in a non-zero rate of false positives. The rate can be extremely low with good technology, but never zero.
But I doubt very much that most people in Washington, or in London, or in Berlin, or in Beijing, or in Moscow, or... will realize this.
every single web server on the face of the planet was just hacked
Only if every single webmaster with CGI access installs the !#$$#@&@! thing....
If I were running an ISP, I'd ban this CGI. I would also allow shell access via secure shell, though. If you just run a decently secure OS (OpenBSD, for example), keep on top of security information and patches, and perhaps require an additional small fee for shell access and put the accounts with shell access on a separate server, the security issues with shell access should be manageable.
But I still read email on shell -- what do I know? <wry grin>
EXACTLY 250 years ago today, a Scottish inventor penned a theory that led to the electric telegraph and the mobile phone.
It's only a matter of time before the Scots claim to have invented everything (which they usually did, but we English can invoke the 'British' clause to steal the glory - ha ha!). Shortly after that, the Americans claim to have invented everything (on the grounds that their ancestors were Scottish/Irish/ English/Whatever suits them at the time [delete as applicable]).
You have obviously not spent enough time around soc.culture.greek.... Didn't you know that everything was invented by Greeks, including America? Just ask Agamemnon.;P
I'm not sure who invented it but I think I know what one of the first messages was:
Dear Sir
I am calling to help you lower your long distance calling rates
Please respond
Why this, and not MAKE*MONEY*FAST, or "Increase the Size of your Penis!!!", or "Radio Controlled Matchbox Cars!!!" or a personal email from Mariam Abacha begging you to let her give you $85 million United States Dollars, or...?
I've read a few of his books over the years, and would put him up there with Richard Dawkings.
Did you perhaps mean Richard Feynmann, or Stephen Hawking?:) Dyson is an older contemporary of both of them. I've never heard of anyone named Richard Dawkings.... (Although it's possible I wouldn't have, I rather doubt it -- I'm a physics hanger-on.)
...and BOTH have had serious battery life problems, batteries go dead, and battery flakiness. IBM admitted it was their fault and replaced a battery for my ThinkPad 600. I still haven't sent in the ThinkPad 600x because I wasn't sure if this was the batteries themselves or the laptop.
It's a shame, because these are otherwise the best laptops I've ever owned.
Wouldn't a simple diff of the two lists tell you the numbers that were removed?
Yes, it would. It would not, however, give a telemarketer any numbers that he/she didn't already have.
I suspect that most marketers who have the technical knowledge and sense to do a diff wouldn't use that to choose numbers for to target. That would be like a burglar getting a list of homeowners who own and use firearms from the police and targeting those houses for burglary -- sounds to me like that would be a good way to get themselves shot for their pains. <wry grin>
The main reason that I think a DNC list would largely work, however, is that they =do= appear to work in the states that have local ones. They don't stop all telemarketers, but they do stop a lot of them. My mother is definitely getting significantly fewer telemarketing calls overall than before Colorado's DNC list went into operation.
That sounds to me like a useful tool against telemarketing, if not a perfect solution.
As far as I know, the idea is not to give the Do Not Call list out to telemarketers, but to take the telemarketer's list, run it against the DNC list, and remove all phone numbers on the DNC list from the telemarketer's list.
Seems like that would be hard to abuse as you suggested.
Most of my family members live in Colorado, which has a working DNC list, and they've all signed up for it. My mother, who is retired and at home during the day at times, says it has significantly reduced the number of calls she gets. Since she also signed up for the DMA's DNC list, the only people that call her any more are scam artists who set up boiler rooms in Florida, and politicians, who (of course) exempted themselves from it. <wry grin>
Apparently she doesn't get many of those, however, because she never even lets them finish their spiel.;>
Slashdot Mirror
...but I'm holding out for the Starship Enterprise.
AT&T Wireless was sending these to customers, at least at one time. I insisted that they disable SMS on my phone for that reason -- I do not have this phone for some intrusive telemarketing slimeball's convenience. :(
I can see the name of this lawsuit now -- Academia vs. Assholes. <wry grin> If I were Anthony Hamilton, I'd go into hiding to escape the raving hordes of lawyers from the ACLU , EFF , and other organizations concerned with civil liberties and free speech rights. This threat is akin to Microsoft threatening to sue someone who discovers and publicizes a Windows OS security hole.
I hope the first court that sees this alleged case treats it with EXACTLY the respect it deserves. :/
I think you meant, "Since when is all marketing considered spam?", but otherwise I wanted to shout "Bravo". I'm an old-time spam fighter and loathe any kind of intrusive marketing, but knee jerk reactions by people who didn't even read what they guy said are counterproductive.
The thing is, email marketing!=spam. Spam is specifically UNSOLICITED bulk email, not all marketing email.
If you think that this distinction doesn't matter, just read yesterday's ruling against the FTC's Do Not Call list. The reason that Judge Nottingham ruled that the DNC list was unconstitutional is that it plays favorites -- it bans some unsolicited calls while allowing others. Specifically, it bans most calls from companies that are trying to sell you something, but allows calls from non-profit organizations soliciting donations, and politicians trying to get your vote or soliciting donations to their re-election campaigns. (That last one figures, doesn't it?) <wry grin>
Those of us who loathe spam and also value free speech have long chanted the mantra that spam isn't about content, but consent. It looks to me like a federal judge agrees with that line of thinking when it applies to a different, but related problem.
My guess is that, if Congress must choose between a DNC registry that affects THEM or not having one at all, fifty million Americans aren't going to have nearly as much effect as their self interest. And my guess is that the same type of thinking is partly why spam has grown from a nuisance into a problem that threatens the viability of email as a means of communication.
I hope I'm wrong on both counts, but I don't think so.
Yeah, except that times have changed and it's increasingly necessary to touch a computer to perform basic tasks of living and working. I'm not talking about software engineering or other high-tech work; I'm talking about being a clerk at a convenience store.
Even the suspected author of one variant of the MS Blaster worm, Jeffrey Parson, was told by the judge that he could use the Internet to look for work. Judges are increasingly unwilling to place permanent draconian restrictions on computer criminals because that could leave them unemployable, and an unemployable person can be forced back into crime by that very fact.
I agree that aggressive, repeat spammers -- the sort that end up on the SpamHaus.org ROKSO (Register of Known Spam Operations) list -- deserve to be thrown permanently off the Internet. But maybe we should think of some more practical ways to deal with them?
But whether you are contacting "genuine potential customers" or not has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with whether you are spamming or not. Spam is unsolicited bulk email -- if those "genuine personal customers haven't specifically asked to be contacted by you, then you're spamming regardless of how carefully you target your contacts.
Sheesh, after so many years, you'd THINK that marketing people could learn the definition of a simple term. :(
Blocklists are vigilante defense, if not vigilante justice. Vigilante justice is justice meted out by self-appointed individuals or groups. Blocklists aren't, for the most part, trying to punish/mete out justice to spammers. They're just trying to block the flow of spam.
But they are self-appointed and work according to a set of informal rules that they adhere to voluntarily. That sounds like vigilante to me.
I'm not saying this as criticism, but simply as a description of what is going on. I maintain a procmail-based spam filter with a fair number of users, and it supports various blocklists. I'm not anti-blocklist, to put it mildly.
At the same time, I think most anti-spammers would like to see a less chaotic means of fighting back against spam. Most of us are just trying to hang on until various governments wake up and realize what spam is doing to the Internet, and start taking it seriously as a conversion of resources that the spammers do not own. Theft, in other words. :/
Someone had better clean up the FRICKING MESS at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office before someone is awarded a patent on the wheel or fire.
You and a good many anti-spammers. I have a bunch of friends that have spamtrap addresses on web pages in "blind links" -- links that enclose no text or graphics. They can't be accessed by normal web browsers, but spammers using software to scrape the web for email addresses get them just fine.
Blind spamtrap addresses aren't entirely foolproof. There are a few kooks who deliberately look for addresses in blind links or known to belong to other anti-spammers and feed them to web sites. But blind spamtraps are a whole lot less likely to have this happen than spamtrap@spambouncer.org.... (No, you do NOT want to send email to that address unless you are a spammer. If you are, have at it.) <G>
If you go making up honeytoken credit card numbers and social security numbers, you'd better be sure they *are* bogus, not real numbers that belong to someone you don't know. Otherwise, your honeytoken might be someone's real data....
Oops wouldn't cover it in that case. <wry grin>
Win2k is the first real operating system Microsoft ever put out. Work installed XP on the laptop I use there, but I've stuck with Win2k on the laptop at home. So far, I've had relatively few complaints. (Although I'd have had considerably more complaints if I used Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, or Microsoft Media Player -- can you say security*holes*R*us?)
I keep thinking I should install Linux, and keep realizing that I am pretty happy with Win2k, have already paid for it, and see no good reason (except politics) to change. So someday.... :>
I think they're at SP6 for that one....
I'm glad they're continuing to support Win2k for now, because I haven't gotten around to switching to Linux or buying a Titanium G4 Powerbook yet. ;>
(There Ain't No Such Thing As Unbreakable Encryption....)
Any mathematician can tell you that "unbreakable encryption" is the same category of beast as a perpetual motion machine. It's ruled out by basic mathematical principles that are themselves so well established that the probability of their being wrong approaches zero.
Any decent cryptographer or cryptanalyst can also tell you that a very good encryption tool doesn't have to be unbreakable. It just has to be too hard to break to be worth the trouble.
I just tested the MSN home page with both Opera 6.05 (my usual browser) and IE 6.0.
In Opera, the page is rendered in single column format below the "Today on MSN" and "Your World" section. In IE the material beneath those sections is rendered in two column format, using more of the screen and leaving less blank white space.
I prefer the Opera rendering personally -- it is less busy. Some people might prefer the IE rendering because it requires less scrolling. Both look fine, though, and neither look like the page is broken.
I'd say that, if Berman doesn't know what went wrong, he isn't thinking any too clearly or seeing any too well. Star Trek reached the end of its road a decade or more ago, and Hollywood hasn't been willing to let it lie.
I didn't see Nemesis -- it never occurred to me to go. I haven't seen a decent Trek movie since Star Trek IV, and quit going after Star Trek VI. Fortunately, there is good SF and fantasy out there, and I prefer to spend my money on it.
Star Trek -- RIP. Please.
A culmination devoutly to be wished, but I suspect the response would more likely be, "Let's bomb the spam filter authors." <wry grin> In the U.S., both the Republican and the Democratic national committees have spammed, and a number of lawmakers, including, recently, Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Most politicians define spam as, "unwanted email sent by somebody else." :/
Spammers have made filtering necessary, of course. Further, to the best of my knowledge (and I do know something about spam filtering ), mail filters always and inevitably result in a non-zero rate of false positives. The rate can be extremely low with good technology, but never zero.
But I doubt very much that most people in Washington, or in London, or in Berlin, or in Beijing, or in Moscow, or... will realize this.
Only if every single webmaster with CGI access installs the !#$$#@&@! thing....
If I were running an ISP, I'd ban this CGI. I would also allow shell access via secure shell, though. If you just run a decently secure OS (OpenBSD, for example), keep on top of security information and patches, and perhaps require an additional small fee for shell access and put the accounts with shell access on a separate server, the security issues with shell access should be manageable.
But I still read email on shell -- what do I know? <wry grin>
You have obviously not spent enough time around soc.culture.greek .... Didn't you know that everything was invented by Greeks, including America? Just ask Agamemnon. ;P
Why this, and not MAKE*MONEY*FAST, or "Increase the Size of your Penis!!!", or "Radio Controlled Matchbox Cars!!!" or a personal email from Mariam Abacha begging you to let her give you $85 million United States Dollars, or...?
Did you perhaps mean Richard Feynmann, or Stephen Hawking? :) Dyson is an older contemporary of both of them. I've never heard of anyone named Richard Dawkings.... (Although it's possible I wouldn't have, I rather doubt it -- I'm a physics hanger-on.)
...and BOTH have had serious battery life problems, batteries go dead, and battery flakiness. IBM admitted it was their fault and replaced a battery for my ThinkPad 600. I still haven't sent in the ThinkPad 600x because I wasn't sure if this was the batteries themselves or the laptop.
It's a shame, because these are otherwise the best laptops I've ever owned.
Yes, it would. It would not, however, give a telemarketer any numbers that he/she didn't already have.
I suspect that most marketers who have the technical knowledge and sense to do a diff wouldn't use that to choose numbers for to target. That would be like a burglar getting a list of homeowners who own and use firearms from the police and targeting those houses for burglary -- sounds to me like that would be a good way to get themselves shot for their pains. <wry grin>
The main reason that I think a DNC list would largely work, however, is that they =do= appear to work in the states that have local ones. They don't stop all telemarketers, but they do stop a lot of them. My mother is definitely getting significantly fewer telemarketing calls overall than before Colorado's DNC list went into operation.
That sounds to me like a useful tool against telemarketing, if not a perfect solution.
As far as I know, the idea is not to give the Do Not Call list out to telemarketers, but to take the telemarketer's list, run it against the DNC list, and remove all phone numbers on the DNC list from the telemarketer's list.
Seems like that would be hard to abuse as you suggested.
Most of my family members live in Colorado, which has a working DNC list, and they've all signed up for it. My mother, who is retired and at home during the day at times, says it has significantly reduced the number of calls she gets. Since she also signed up for the DMA's DNC list, the only people that call her any more are scam artists who set up boiler rooms in Florida, and politicians, who (of course) exempted themselves from it. <wry grin>
Apparently she doesn't get many of those, however, because she never even lets them finish their spiel. ;>
Reassuring the vast hordes of medical doctors and other health care professionals on Slashdot, are you? ;>
Nah.... Posting flames on regular expression bugs in article titles explain a lot about why Slashdot is the way it is....