Gates' Resolve in Bringing Spammers to Justice 325
An anonymous reader writes "It didn't seem to me like any single company had the stomach to keep after the scum that are ruining the Net for the rest of us. Unless that company is Microsoft. Since the beginning of 2003, Microsoft has filed 96 lawsuits against spammers, and 119 lawsuits against phishers. By any measure, 215 lawsuits constitutes a legal juggernaut. "
Referrer Log Spammers should be sued too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Referrer Log Spammers should be sued too (Score:2)
Yes, I agree. Thanks for clarifying that.
No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:4, Interesting)
In all seriousness, the spam epidemic is actually caused by a relatively tiny number of people, so it would seem that this is a workable strategy - but the cause will just be taken up by people outside of our jurisdiction (Russians, mostly.)
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:4, Insightful)
However, while WinXP is so insecure that BargainBuddies and istBar can hijack my family's browsers, I shall not switch from FreeBSD, and I shall continue recommending switching to Macs as the only reliable cure for spyware for non-geeks.
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have infact (due to these people not having the funds to buy a new computer or the will, familly mainly) installed a rather nice custom debian install on several peoples computers , a bit of tweaking to KDE and it can be incredibly easy to use if all you require is Email , HTML , small time office work
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:4, Insightful)
!: dont run root/admin unless you need to
!: dont buy from spam
!: Dont click yes without reading
Now one of the many reason Unix bases OSs are more secure is that as i see it the average users will have more education in the IT field(before or after , as it will always require some reading) so are less likely to fall for daft emails with attachments or stupid pops ups with "click yes" from odd websites.
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:2)
If thats the only solution, then I can understand the urgency in rearranging the seats on the sun deck of the Titanic.
Have you ever tried educating the masses?
I personally have met users who are barely litterate in English, and have only attended school for three years in their life. However, they can still afford a PC, and believe they can get rich using it. Not only that, they are quite likely to believe that if I tell them "No, Don't buy that, its
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:2)
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is the terminally stupid, and the fact that there are more terminally stupid people in the world than anyone can imagine. In the next ten years, most of them will be Windows users unless we are struck by an asteroid.
Panic now, before its too late...
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:2)
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:2, Insightful)
If there was no money in it, they wouldn't bother doing it.
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam is caused by spammers. The fools who buy the products provide the needed motivation, but ultimately, spam is caused by the guy writing and sending the mail.
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:2)
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:2)
So that can't be a consideration, can it?
That said, it was humor by double inversion - the only way a cool, cynical person such as myself can offer praise of any sort to someone for doing something decent. So obviously, you don't think the Gates' foundation deserves acclamation for their humanitarian works.
blanks, why do you hate the poo
Re:No, you fools, don't be taken in! (Score:2)
Legal Juggernaut? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Legal Juggernaut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Come off it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Come off it (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Come off it (Score:2)
Re:Come off it (Score:5, Informative)
Lawsuits vs. building a better product? (Score:3, Interesting)
Strange: If any one company out there has the install base to actually do something technical about spam, it's Microsoft, yet they'd rather sue than improve their product.
I'm surprised ISP's aren't filing hundreds of lawsuits. They claim their servers are so overworked by all the spam, but they aren't doing anything effective about it (legally or technically).
Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you mean they should implement a new SMTP standard on their servers? Break from current standards in the way Outlook handles e-mail? I'm sure the slashdot crowd would just love that!
Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product? (Score:3, Interesting)
People don't have Microsoft being involved in standards, rather they dislike Microsoft using standards as a way to sell their products.
Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or they could put some lobbying effort directly into changing the laws. The law in que
Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product? (Score:2, Insightful)
Make their OS secure, so that spammers can't control massive botnets to spam from.
Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product? (Score:2, Insightful)
Life's not quite a simple as you make out. (Yes, it is MS's fault for the insecure OS in the first place)
Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuits vs. building a better product? (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, how do you intend to stop me from installing something (a porn dialer, screensaver, shareware app, or whatever) that, as well as its legitimate function, makes my PC part of a botnet, without preventing me from installing software at all?
Marginal Return on Investment (Score:5, Insightful)
- Investing in spam filter technology reduces spam.
- Sueing spammers also reduces spam.
The optimal strategy will be to persue both strategies till they yield the same rate of spam reduction.
And that rate should be determined by whatever they think they earn on spam reduction.
My bet is that someone at MS has done the math.
And it keeps their lawyers sharp, who knows how and when that will come in handy
Re:Marginal Return on Investment (Score:2, Informative)
The optimal strategy will be to persue both strategies till they yield the same rate of additional spam reduction per cost in each pursuit.
Otherwise, mod parent up!
Re:Marginal Return on Investment (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally, the thing that seems to be replacing
E-mail is I.M.. You can communicate instantaneously and informally, even if the person is not there. And, unfortunatly for Microsoft the king of IM is AIM, despite their Frick'in required copy of MS Messenger which they should be sent to hell for which pops up ev
Hotmail/MSN ISP does it, not Windows/Office (Score:3, Insightful)
Filters and Lawsuits hit different ends of the spammer market. Lawsuits aren't very useful against the little spammers - it's a
Bill (Score:5, Funny)
Someone might as well invite BillG to Gmail already.
The people with the filters don't buy the spam. (Score:2)
So unless the ISP's start filtering, nothing will stop the spam from getting to the people who will buy from it.
So what you're saying is... (Score:2, Insightful)
So the 'script kiddie spammers' drop out and the smart spammers take over, making even more money. It's supply and demand, and apparently there is demand for SPAM from this small-penised, high-mortgage, porn-se
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:5, Funny)
I now have a 14" long penis, a £500,000 mortgage (on income of a twentieth of that!), more software than I know what to do with and some very nice pictures of Brintey Spears (well, that's who they said she was, but I'm sure she doesn't spell her name like that...).
I get medicines at exceptionally low prices (though I'm a bit concerned about the side effects I've been having from that the last batch of aspirin), and my printer is unlikely to run out of ink until 2009. Provided it doesn't explode like my last one did when I put those special chinese cartridges in. Damn cheap printers.
Of course, none of this comes cheap. But when a nice man in Nigeria has promised you 25% of $20,000,000, you can afford to splash out now and then...
Re:So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
>(though >I'm a bit concerned about the side effects I've been >having from that the last batch of aspirin)
Perhaps there's a connection?
Good Step (Score:3, Insightful)
The next step is improving their software and improving the security on their platform. Just keeping regular security updates is good. Hopefully they will continue with their Anti-Spyware tool which isn't bad.
Well it makes sense. . . (Score:4, Funny)
If there's one place Microsoft should feel right at home, it's in court. . .
I know it's very hard for some of you people.. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is somewhat like P2P. They might not be able to get whomever is joining these spamming companies for work, but it would certainly discourage people from getting jobs in these places. I think just that would prove a significant blow to these places.
My two cents.
Re:I know it's very hard for some of you people.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't see anything in the article which says that they're going after spammers in general... just spammers or phishers who hit their sites.
That's still a good thing, but it seems to me that all a spammer has to do to be safe is not spam hotmail addresses. And all a phisher has to do is not impersonate Microsoft.
So, on the whole... not a huge win for internet users. A step in the right direction, nothing more.
Re:Your new here right? (Score:2)
1. RTFM.
2. RTFM Again.
3. Read that dialog box.
4. Click 'Windows Update'.
5. RTFM for Windows Update.
6. Click 'Install Updates'.
7. Rinse, Repeat.
Although with a bit of luck, step 7 will be unnecessary because Windows Update will start automating itself. It's really very clever, and does a lot for patching aforementioned holes.
There's still one problem. People don't RTFM. And until they RTFM, you're definately not going to get them onto a different OS
0\/\/N3D (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:0\/\/N3D (Score:2, Informative)
He couln't understand why it mattered to SBC if he was infected or not. Most people (/. users are the obvious exception) have no clue what viruses do. They have no idea that their computer can be pwned and turned into a spambot. They think all viruses are w
Here's to a Spam free world. (Score:3, Insightful)
Its an obvious ploy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also a diversionary tactic (Score:2, Flamebait)
So.. (Score:2)
Yea Bills in this to improve the net like he sent money to the AIDs victims because he wanted to help. It's called PR people, I suggest you think about it.
Re:So.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft will never see any money from this Scum bags.
With the legal costs involved Microsoft is losing money.
And leave it to some people to term all good actions as PR moves.
Where's Redhat? (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize the OSS community is doing things with their software to try and defeat spammers and phishers, but let's face it, legal action is the only real course of action to stop these guys (or at least whittle down their numbers).
Phishers and spammers will always find ways around filters, no matter what intelligence is brought to bear with new algorithms. New mail protocols would help, but we are hopelessly mired in a standard that will take a miracle to topple at this point (perhaps some new multi-media e-mail standard?). People won't buy into an e-mail system other than SMTP/POP unless it brings something significant to the table, and is as simple and easy to use.
The OSS community has for-profit companies out there... why aren't they flexing their muscle to help stop these scammers? Microsoft is at least doing something... and it demonstrates exactly what a big corporation like that can do when that lkind of capital is directed at doing something worthwhile.
I think in the fervor to attack the supposed "evil monolith" people here tag as "Micro$oft", they forget exactly how much Gates, his company, and his employees donate to good causes around the world.
Re:Where's Redhat? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know, attacking them with pointy sticks seems reasonable to me, and much less expensive and time consuming than legal efforts.
You believe that this will work. (Score:2, Interesting)
Working on systems that cannot be cracked so easily and fighting to ensure that any standards remain free from proprietary restraints.
Why do you ask?
Okkkaaaaayyyyyy.... Do you have ANY evidence that such has resulted in ANY reduction of spa
The best way to get rid of spam is... (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Never give it away except to established websites (Amazon, etc) that require it and to friends/family.
I abandoned my old college 20-spam-a-day email address after graduating. Since switching and then following these two policies, I have received only 1 spam message in the past 7 months.
Spam is never going to stop ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know what the typical response rates for spam are, but even if one in a thousand or ten thousand recipients is an idiot who answers the spam and sends money, or even one in a million, then it's worth it to spam, because the cost of sending a thousand or ten thousand or even a million emails is nearly nothing. At any rate, it can easily be much less than what spammers charge for their product.
One conceivable alternative is to make it more expensive to send email. If there were some way to establish "postage" for email, then even infintesimal costs for sending email, say 1/100th of a cent per email, would probably be effective, because then spammers would lose money by sending a million spams. But I can't see how such a system could be enforced, and I doubt that most people would go along with it, even if the costs for normal email use is very low.
I also doubt that any amount of education or cajoling could reduce that rate of idiots in the general public to less than one in a thousand, certainly not less than one in a million. Putting all these thoughts together, I come to the depressing conclusion that we will never, ever be able to make spam go away, no matter what we do.
You're confusing the incentive with the tech. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet your corner bank isn't robbed every day (or week or month or year).
There might be strong incentive to send spam and make lots of money, but the spam still has to go out on technological avenues. All you have to do is to identify those and limit their effectiveness.
#1. Zombies.
#2. Open Relays.
#3. Individual email accounts (30 day AOL free!)
#4. Sites owned by the spammer.
If you look at it that way, you'll see why MULTIPLE measures are needed. What will work against zombies will NOT work against Individual email accounts.
If you deal with the tech, then the incentive won't matter because there won't be any way to implement it.
Since this is about Microsoft's involvment, I'll focus on what they could do.
#1. Zombies. Microsoft announces a partnership with the ISP's and those ISP's block outgoing port 25 on their home connections. Microsoft offsets the cost of this with a couple $$Million$$ to each ISP for hardware upgrades and support calls. Anyone who needs port 25 access (people who work from home and don't have systems setup to handle it) can call and have enabled for their address.
#2. Open Relays. Microsoft forms a partnership with spamhaus, spamcop, etc to mirror the open relay databases of those people. Since Microsoft also has Hotmail and MSN, Microsoft is in a great position to identify new open relays and add them to the list as they are abused.
#3. Individual email accounts. Not much that Microsoft needs to do here. All the ISP's need to do is to limit the outgoing email to 10 unique connections per minute.
#4. Spammer sites. Again, Microsoft helps by hosting a mirror of the blacklists.
There, the spam problem is down to a tiny fraction of what it was. The spammers might still WANT to send spam, but HOW are they going to do it?
Re:You're confusing the incentive with the tech. (Score:2, Interesting)
The average bank robbery nets less than a thousand dollars, and over 80% of bank robbies are solved due to excellent security and survveilance in the average bank. Unless your bank is poorly run you will notice that there is NO cash up front with the tellers. They have to get cash from a machine designed to dispense cash slowly. Pretty much the only people robbing banks are desperate drug addicts these days.
It is very difficult to steal a large amount of cash these da
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Spam is never going to stop ... (Score:2)
True enough, but that doesn't mean that taking out spammers by legal means is useless. It does somewhat limit the problem, and is one of many kinds of defenses against spam. All of them combined will hopefully keep our e-mail usable./p
Juggernaut? (Score:5, Funny)
I guess you've never heard of a little group known as the RIAA.
in case it's lost on anyone (Score:2, Redundant)
Oh the irony.
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Finally a use for all their lawyers on retainer ! (Score:3)
MS suing the spammers reminds me of
that MS vs. the Borg skit.
Difference it that I don't know if I should cheer for either side. (both are still evil)
End Spam by Ending Email (Score:2, Insightful)
The cynical person asks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Stomach? What stomach? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for the cost, most likely it's a drop in the bucket when compared to what's already been spent or is being spent on antitrust cases. Whatever the cost, the bankers are used to it, the shareholders are used to it, as so is everyone else. And when one considers the PR value of these lawsuits, I doubt anyone would raise an eyebrow if real money was at stake.
The scum that are ruining the Net (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought it was Microsoft that is ruining the net for the rest of is. Isn't it Microsoft that created the spam industry?
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly would you suggest that they improve their software to prevent spam and phishing?
Sometimes a little stick can be a good thing...
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:3, Insightful)
Do notice that MS isn't suing virus writers. In fact, didn't they just forgive a huge amount against a virus writer in exchange of community service??
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:5, Insightful)
If they sued them, people would yell David and Goliath. If they let them go, people say they're not helping the community.
This is
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:5, Insightful)
1: make sure active X is patched to make it far more secure.(killing it would be nice , but wont hapen for a while due to a hell of alot of websites using controlls)
2: make sure each user knows that they should not be running as an admin all the time and allow them an easy way to become and admin for installs etc
3: a large list of phising techniques and how they spoof browsers is easily avaliable and could be use to create a few fixes (all browser makers should do this).
In my mind the only way to stop spam properly is education , people need to learn to not accept it and not to buy from it
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:3, Insightful)
A better way would be to turn OFF HTML in email by default. Most of the phishing scams as well as spams I have recieved have goofy lines of trash text to fool the spam checkers. I always thought it was stupid to use HTML email anyway.
B.
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:2)
\ 2. Yes/No/Maybe. Longhorn has lesat priviledge thing, but i dont think that iwlll happen in XP. Although technically possible, it is too much effort to convert everyone.
3. Training does not solve this issue, people trust email, and the web way to much. If training solved these problems, we still would not most of the mass mailing viruses still. Technology solutions are the best way to go, and sadly we have to wait unt
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:2)
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:3, Insightful)
2> Disable HTML email completely. Remove the ability to send/recieve HTML email from Outlook and Outlook Express.
3> Secure IE and make it standards complaint. Securing IE includes removing ActiveX.
Do this in the next SP for Win2K and XP as well.
That will remove a lot of the holes exploited by spammers to get zombies from which
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:2, Informative)
Any OS can be zombied if it allows users to
a) install software
b) run software
c) run software that communicates on the network
It happens to Windows more frequently because
a) it's less secure (that's getting better)
b) there are more users, and hence more users who don't know better than to run untrusted code
c) due to a) and b) there are more people writing malware for it
d) users of other OSes, on the who
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see you taking an active step to stop spammers other than maybe a little filtering and deletion here and there.
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:5, Interesting)
That means that spammers have continued to be able to fake the headers out, and it makes it harder to filter off the spam (particularly on the send side of email- in other words, stopping spam enter the internet in the first place).
So, Microsoft have taken the decision to fund lawyers, rather than fund technology that is likely to massively reduce spam; Microsoft have sided with a bunch of lawyers.
Let's get this straight (Score:2, Interesting)
And you manage to blame this Open Source failure on Microsoft?
I didn't know the
Re:Let's get this straight (Score:5, Interesting)
The IETF standard for crypto-signed email headers was substantially derailed by Microsoft not wanting to 'play nicely' with the extremely large proportion of the email servers out there that run on open source.
So, Microsoft imposed licensing requirements that the open source community couldn't meet. Yeah, to that extent, I blame Microsoft. That's not an Open Source failure, it's a deliberate licensing decision by Microsoft to write the license that way; even after it was clear what the effect would be- ultimately to help spammers.
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:2)
Re:Lawsuits, the last refuge of the incompetent (Score:2)
I don't agree with this. The senderId keys wouldn't be on most machines, only the email servers, which presumably would be better protected, and atleast in principle they can b
Re:Signs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Signs? (Score:3, Funny)
But.... what will we talk about then?? Star Wars isn't out yet, and Linus can't release a new kernel every few hours. We NEED MS bashing to keep our over-active/over-worked minds finely-tuned.
Re:Signs? (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like a wager to me.
-Linus.
Re:Signs? (Score:2)
Re:Signs? (Score:3, Insightful)
With all the evil they have done, is there any way that they could do enough good for the evil to be forgotten, or at least to break even thus making them a "Corporation" not an "Evil Corporation"?
Sure this is a start, but it is done more to protec
Microsoft: our white knight (Score:2)
More like, they'll jump at the chance to appear to be a champion of the people (you know... users), and to offload the evil factor somewhat onto another entity.
That's what I get for not.. (Score:2)
Re:Didn't... (Score:5, Informative)
You may be talking about this [cbsnews.com]:
He's still got time, then.
Re:In other news (Score:2)
That said, MS is targetting corporations who might try to defend themselves. The Music industry is targetting grandma.
Re:Uh... (Score:2)
?php if(strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT,"MSIE")) { ?> echo "Your Web Browser Is junk download firefox free at: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ [mozilla.org]";
If Firefox Had 95% of the Market... (Score:2, Insightful)
In general, the only people who care about standards are the people who watch while almost everyone else goes off and does what they want to do.
Re:MSN "new update available" spam. (Score:2)
So they come out with a solution, autoupdating, and programs telling you to update. And now you bitch and moan about the updates? They got rid of "never remind me again" for idiots who will just cl
Re:Please.. (Score:2)
This applies to one-man businesses run by teenagers and grannies as much as IBM and M$.
I have news for you: Having to spend twenty times as much time on deleteing penis enlarger ads as responding to sales leads does not appeal to the average grannie.
These people are legitimate and constructive e-mail users, and not