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Facebook & Myspace Taking Some Spammers To Court
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Aug 23, 2008 08:12 PM
from the why-can't-they-take-them-all dept.
from the why-can't-they-take-them-all dept.
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."
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sure... (Score:5, Funny)
Just like it is helping to curb e-mail spam ....
Self Despamming (Score:2, Funny)
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Maybe the courts are a little extreme ....
Personally I'd just take them outside and make them hand open the same amount of envelopes as they spammed ...
And if they fail - shoot them.
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Except the phrase "in cold blood" denotes innocence on the part of the shootee. Spammers are not innocent; they cause worse problems than mere annoyance. Otherwise, I tend to agree that spammers should be shot.
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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.
Self De-Trolling Moderators (Score:3, Funny)
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. ;-)
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Who would want to Mod?
I can't remember the last time I used a mod point. all I ever get is "You've already posted something in this discussion."
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The difference is that you upset a mod.
The system is corrupt, just like most of life.
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It all evens out in the end...
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Meta modding is supposed to fix that.
I mark all +1 as Fair and all -1 as Unfair.
I have NEVER seen a -1 flame bait or -1 troll that was fair EVER.
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email spam?
Just setup spam assassin and be done with it.
Seems to me if we can fight email spam we should be able to fight ANY type of spam.
Announcing Jailspace (Score:5, Funny)
Are you a criminal? Now you can join the social network just for criminals, Jailspace! It's never been easier to meet other sexual predators pretending to be underage girls, or conspire to commit fraud with our incredibly easy networking features.
Working (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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wget -O - msplinks.com
What are people using to dodge spam? (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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i too have used sneakemail regularly for years; it's great.
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I use NearlyFreeSpeech.net's e-mail forwarding. For 2 pennies per day, they forward any mail received at my domain. I've got both specific mappings (box1@example.com forwards to something) and blanket mappings (anything sent to a box without a specific mapping is sent to my address.) When I need to give out an address, I simply make one up. If that address starts getting spam, I simply blackhole it (i.e. I map it to discard@nearlyfreespeech.net). Simple, effective, and cheap.
Yes, I know I _could_ run m
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The thing that's different with Facebook / MySpace spam is that often, they're definitely stealing someone's password to post stuff as them. That is (or should be) squarely in the realm of "breaking into a computer system". Since there is massive evidence of repeated criminal behavior (one for each account they break) and they leave behind a money trail (where does the money for the adwords on xxx.blogspot.com go?), it should be possible to bring a criminal case, have them extradited, and throw them in fe
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The thing that's different with Facebook / MySpace spam is that often, they're definitely stealing someone's password to post stuff as them. That is (or should be) squarely in the realm of "breaking into a computer system".
Whether violations of a site's terms of service should be considered actionable under the terms of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Acts is now being litigated in the Justice Department's suit against Lori Drew [wired.com]. Many civil libertarians like myself oppose this suit because it looks li
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I don't think one needs to be a civil libertarian to see "collateral damage" all over the argument in the Lori Drew case. TOS are a simple contract, and the last thing we need is for people to be jailed for violating a (typically) over-zealous contract that nobody reads.
The article talks about Facebook & Myspace suing in civil court spammers who violate the TOS, purely as a breach of contract. No extension there. It's probably a good idea for them to do this, but the fact is that those kinds of spam
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I run my own email server off of my DSL, and do something similar to this. I have a private email address which never gets revealed, and a separate email address for everyone who needs to contact me. All of those email aliases get forwarded to my private address. If I start getting spam on one of the aliases, I know who it came from, and I can shut down the alias. My spam has dropped by 99.9999%, with the remaining .0001% being from an old public address which I don't want to change yet.
My email server
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How hard has this been for you to set up / maintain? I could s
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Chilling effect (Score:5, Funny)
Well action in the courts has stopped everyone sharing music, so this is clearly a strategy with a great deal of merit.
This happens constantly on the Facebook wall. (Score:2)
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).
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Thats interesting.
I have not seen this kind of thing yet (I guess I have smart friends ;o)). Are you saying that these people actually have their username/password compromised or is there some kind of facebook app that when installed can initiate this kind of activity?
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Interestingly enough, almost 75% of the cases I've seen on other people's walls, it's from whatever popular sports star happens to be the big man on campus at the time. I suspect they make for easy targets as they usually have many, many facebook friends.
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Maybe instead of retribution for your friends stupidity you should try educating them.
I've only received a few of these wall post spams on Facebook, then again I only allow a select few to be my friends.
Anyone have a link that describes how a Facebook account get compromised in easy to understand terms? You know something we can pass on to our less technologically inclined friends should this happen to them.
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Really? Not me. I occasionally have to delete some spammy crap on groups I admin from sockpuppet accounts, but never on my wall and never from a friend, and I've been a pretty active Facebook member since early on.
The Price of Working with Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [aarongreenspan.com]
I have been suing spammers (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [barbieslapp.com]
So many spammers to sue, so little time.
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How did they get the wayback machine modified? Is there some kind of exclusion form you can use?
Two kinds of exclusion. (Score:2)
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.
Referring to John DuWors and his clients (Score:2)
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.
I hope they nail them to the wall (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I would offer that to many people on Slashdot the difference between advertising and something designed to steal from you is indisguishable from zero.
Pruning leaves? (Score:2)
They should concentrate to bringing the companies employing the spammers to court, cut the problem at the root or close to it.
The only way to stop spam (Score:2)
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 )
Hmm.... (Score:2)
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!
Re:ok how about... (Score:5, Insightful)
scams targeting women are more accepted as normal. ie... all the ads saying a woman needs this or that product for great skin, hair, ect... every womans magazine and beauty product uses the same tactic to sell crap to women. 'you need this or you're an ugly fat cow'. Its not even thought about as anything but normal.
that crap doesnt work on men. but the ones that play on their desperation to get laid work real well.
Women have their vanity targeted. Men have their hormones targeted.
One is accepted. One isnt.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
This issue has nothing to do with man/women differences nor the target audience. The difference between spam and "regular" adds is that spam kicks into your personal communication ways, like your e-mail and even your regular mail, without you wanting it there and for no particular reason.
Of course you can ask why there are so many penis enlargement spam ma
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Men are targeted by [...] products treating erectile function disorder and hair loss, and promoting penile enlargement.
The spammers seem to have those things covered already.
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From what I've observed the distinction is most women want to be pretty for the sake of being pretty whereas most guys want to be sexy so they can have sex.
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They're not within their rights. See the "user conduct" section of the Facebook terms of use.