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Jail for Selling Email Lists to Spammers

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:42 PM
from the losing-the-key dept.
Spam
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."
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  • US (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rodgster (671476) <rodgster@NOsPam.yahoo.com> on Wednesday February 07 2007, @12:46PM (#17923096) Journal
    We need an equivalent law here in the US.
    • Do I hear $5 for rodgster@yahoo.c o m?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by x_MeRLiN_x (935994) *
      "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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BobSutan (467781)
      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 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pakaran2 (138209) <windrunner@gmail ... minus physicist> on Wednesday February 07 2007, @12:49PM (#17923136)
    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
  • Why don't you go to the UK and file your bogus lawsuit against Spamhaus now?

    • Why don't you go to the UK and file your bogus lawsuit against Spamhaus now?

      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 bet people would scream bloody murder about jurisdiction and how wrong it is to detain American citizens.

      I would like to see a test case like that.

      Cheers

      • Perhaps the sentence would be reduced. Remember what happened to that kid that was caught "tagging" cars in Singapore? He was sentenced to be caned, public outcry got President Clinton involved, the brat still got what was coming to him. His sentence was reduced from six cane strokes to four, probably as a PR favor to Clinton more than anything else. http://www.corpun.com/awfay9405.htm [corpun.com]
      • 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.

  • Jail Time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Normal Dan (1053064) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @12:53PM (#17923204)
    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.
    • It seems to be the only solution people can come up with.

      I like the idea of the fine being inline with the crime. Instead of a fixed fine where the amount becomes a cost of doing business, why do they not move to a sliding scale. For example, each person who's e-mail they sold would receive the amount paid for the list. So if the list is 100 e-mails and the person caught was selling the list for 1$ then the fine would be equal to 1$ x 100 and that $ would be sent to the people who's names are on the list.

      W
      • Removing the financial incentive is the only effective way to stop spam. Unfortunately, nobody knows how to do that.

        I like the idea of making restitution to the victims, but I don't think your plan would work. You can't send money by email, so you'd have to somehow find out the names and addresses of the owners. And how do you do that? By sending out mass emails telling people that they can get a check for $1.00 if they provide their name and address? How many responses do you think you'd get? And keep in m

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by green1 (322787)
          >> 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 mo

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by iminplaya (723125)
      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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jfengel (409917)
      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
    • When it comes to spammers, I can think of many other places where I'd prefer they get thrown and forgotten. Active volcanoes spring to mind.

      Fines don't work if the benefit of breaking the law exceeds the possible fine. Probation is the threat of being thrown in jail for getting caught again, which is slightly more legally binding than "don't do it again or I'll tell you not to do it again in a more stern voice". I get the impression that the kind of people that sell email adresses would consider the publ
    • Two years in jail for a non-violent crime?

      Am I the only one sick and tired of this method of trivializing crimes? "Oh, it's non-violent, I guess it's not so bad." You really think all violent crimes are worse than all non-violent crimes? Then tell ya what: slapping me in the face is a violent crime. I would gladly be slapped in the face in return for just 10% of the costs a spammer imposes on the rest of us.

    • Re:Jail Time (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ScentCone (795499) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @01:21PM (#17923612)
      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.
      • Other than the whole "he can't do any more of it while he's in prison" aspect, right?

        Except for the fact that if he's set up some kind of corporation or even just left an automated email harvester and credit card charge system running in some closet somewhere, he most certainly can.

    • 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

      • Re:Jail Time (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LighterShadeOfBlack (1011407) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @02:43PM (#17924754) Homepage
        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.
          • 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 vio

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by fractalus (322043)
        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?
    • which does seem mild compared to the potential property damages that can be caused by this, depending on the number of addresses being sold.

      What is the maximum penalty for breaking into a computer, stealing information, and in the process leave the computer unusable? ...

      And I strongly disagree with the sentiment often heard here on /. that jail time should be reserved to violent (blue collar) crimes, and economic (white collar) crimes should only get fines. The economic crimes are often much more damaging,
  • I'm a firm believer in some sort of nightmare medieval punishment for spammers, preferably involving red hot iron applied to tender parts in proportion to the number of spam emails sent. This is not there yet but is a good start.
    • Instead of jail time or community service, sentance them to 1 hour per 100 e-mails in a federal automated PMITA machine?

      Ya know, it would have stocks and some sort of reciprocating er...machinery

      or....maybe not

  • The price of spam lists (Score:3, Insightful)

    by future assassin (639396) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @12:58PM (#17923260) Homepage
    just went up. Which ofcourse will create more email harvesting.

  • What about people who inadvertantly give away (Score:4, Insightful)

    by antifoidulus (807088) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @01:02PM (#17923322) Homepage Journal
    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.
      • Oops, I didn't mean to come off as saying "they should be punished" but rather questioning whether or not the COULD be punished. I don't think they should be punished either, but it's still annoying not being able to absolutely control who has your email address.
      • 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
  • I get tonnes of junk mail through my door even though I always check/uncheck the don't pass my details on to someone else box.

    Next time I move house I'm going to register all my bills in different names so that I know exactly who's passing my details on.

    • I tried that, but I changed the middle initial, E. for the electricity company, X. for American Express, and so on. It was fascinating. Buy a pair of binoculars, find yourself getting life insurance offers. Leave your name with a chocolatier at a food show, and get catalogs from a company making high-end mountain bikes. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and with the vast majority I never would have guessed who'd sold the name without that tell-tale little breadcrumb. (And that junk came, of course, a

  • {Cut to Strong Bad and Bubs standing at the stick, facing away from each other. Strong Bad has a CD labeled "The Goods", Bubs has a bag of cash labeled "The Payoff".}

    STRONG BAD: {voiceover} Or if I'm strapped for cash, I'll sell the email addresses to Bubs for use in his free weekly spamvertisements.

    {Strong Bad drops the CD}

    STRONG BAD: Oops! Lookit that! I dropped a CD of five-thousand email addresses!

    {Bubs throws the bag of money on the ground}

    BUBS: Whoops! I dropped a quarter for each one!

    http://www

  • What happened to punishment fitting the crime? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DaedalusLogic (449896) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @01:28PM (#17923698)
    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.

    • Punishment fitting the crime not possible here (Score:5, Informative)

      by Per Abrahamsen (1397) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @02:10PM (#17924302) Homepage
      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.
  • Too many problems.

    Does this apply to recruiters and other people whose job it is to keep track of people? They pass people's contact information around all the time.

    How about social networking site operators, whose site leaks contact information to third parties?

    How about corporate officers of information broker firms like Acxiom? These companies never have permission directly from the people whose information they have.

    The information broker firms are also the reason why this sort of law would never even p

  • No jail sentence will be handed down - Policy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by caveman (7893) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @03:41PM (#17925432)
    The UK government has recently instructed magistrates and judges not to jail non-violent offenders [bbc.co.uk] 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:THE FALCONER! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Intron (870560) on Wednesday February 07 2007, @01:05PM (#17923388)
      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

    • 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.

    • Last I checked, email was a form of communication. When I first got my email address, there was no such thing as spam. In the old days, we used to communicate with other people. Sure, some of them were stupid and annoying, but it was easy to filter them out.

      Is there a legitimate use for providing the email addresses to others in bulk? When people ask me for an email address, it's usually for a mutual acquaintance. I've never had any reason to provide every email address of everyone I've ever seen, plus

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by madsheep (984404)
        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.
        • Spam is communication in the same way that hate speech is communication. It fits a strict legal definition, but that's the only way it qualifies communication. It's undesireable to all but a statistically irrelevant group and it's offensive to a large portion of its audience.

          I'm all for prosecuting people who sell personal information. I do system architecture design for a marketing organization in a large bank. I've seen the kind of companies and people who are in the business of selling information "l

    • Any database of personally identifiable information falls under the data protection act, and that comes with a whole host of requirements. The data has to be collected with the consent of the subjects, for one specified purpose; it can't be held longer than is needed for that purpose; subjects can request to see the data held on them, and to have mistakes corrected; and the data can't be given to anyone else (unless this is necessary for the originally specified purpose, and the recipient follows the same r

    • 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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dan828 (753380)
        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?
        • 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.

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