Spammers Busted 189
Scud_the_disposable_ writes "CNN has posted an article about the "shutting down" of several spammers who sell fake international driver's licenses. These licenses are supposed to win back suspended driving priviledges, and make holders immune to speeding tickets and other traffic violations." What makes me even more sad is that people fell for it. So far today is a slow spam day for me. Only 81 spam, but its only 9:30.
Too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
This is good, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We still gotta fix the Internet mail system. It would probably take the support of *shudder* Microsoft in an upcoming version of Windows to affect a major change like that. Or a saavy small company with good PR/marketing.
Re:Lex Talionis is a morally bankrupt code (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are referring to that one case where a spammers address was published on Slashdot, it was perfectly acceptable. Why? Simple: the man was not caught. What people were trying to do was call attention to the fact that there need to be laws to stop spam. When we sent massive amounts of letters to the guy's house, it was perfectly legal. That is what needs to be changed. The point was that this man was not doing something illegal, when he should have been.
Another thing: he continues to do it! If a rapist is in jail, they are not raping anybody. This man, however, is probably as we speak signing deals with XXX PENIS XXX ENLARGERS XXX SEVENTEEN INCHES XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!!!.
So what if they fell for it? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Stop aging
2) Increase their IQ
3) Increase the size of their penis
4) Make them earn more money NOW
Now the people who fall for that are really in need of psychiatric assistance, and there must be some or the spammers wouldn't bother.
Daniel
Playing Games you don't understand. (Score:5, Insightful)
The people doing this are trying to cheat, and beat the system, playing games they don't quite understand.
They deserve to lose their money.
If you try to steal millions from the people of Nigeria, I hope you DO lose your money.
If you want to get an irrevocable license so you can keep drinking and driving and killing people I hope you lose your money (among other penalties).
If you go and throw every penny you have at some complex financial system you can't possibly understand hoping to make a quick buck, you get what you deserve.
People need to take responsiblity for their own actions.
That being said, fraud isn't acceptable and should be punished. But a reasonable person should be able to tell these are scams.
Re:This is good, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Centralised control allowing censorship. *
2) Ease of central monitering of communications.
3) Proprietary issues.
* I don't see how you could stop spam without enabling whoever made the decision about what was "spam" to censor anyone they wanted.
That said, I'd love to see all those small island nation / crime havens brought to heel. The spam, though, is really a very small issue. Billions of dollars in costs, yes, but compared with all the money launderers and tax cheats doing business out of island nations, it's chump change.
Re:So much spam! (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know how much my ISP is doing to stop spam either. That's why I decided to build my own mail server. At least this way if I get spam, I can block the address and/or host with a little change to my access file.
I know that there are better ways to do it, but for the little amount of mail I get, it makes me feel good I can do something to stop the spam.
Re:This is good, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Going after the fraud that makes up a majority of spam would have a huge impact I think, and its the one way you can go after spammers without crippling email with restrictions, laws, etc.
The only potential downside I can see to this is that by removing the criminals from spam, it might 'clean up' spam's image to the point that businesses that have stayed out of email marketing due to the association with fraudulent entities might want to get into it if it was seen as more legitimate.
Nuisance Suits (Score:3, Insightful)
Or we could just burn them for fuel.
And this is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
I keep looking at it and saying, "Who buys this stuff? Who's so stupid to buy stuff from a spammer?" I look at it and wonder how spamming could possibly be profitable.
As P.T. Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute, and I get the feeling if he were around today, he'd find lots of money in spam...
Re:Playing Games you don't understand. (Score:5, Insightful)
"You can't cheat an honest man."
Re:SPAM will go away - eventually (Score:1, Insightful)
When you read them, many of them are young guys, 13, 15 etc. They are too naive to know that life doesn't work like that.
Re:81 spam? (Score:2, Insightful)
For example, If I advertise sometime in the classifieds of the local paper I can put my real phone number and don't expect to get added to any direct mailing lists because of it.
If I put my real physical postal address on my web site I won't get inundated with extra junk mail.
But put your real email address anywhere on the web/internet and you start to receive spam in a very short time, the majority being for illegal items (if not they should be, e.g. fake univerity degrees) or things that are not applicable in the country I live (e.g. refinancing loans).